living small

...is a the ultimate cure for what ails us. Consuming less, spending less, using less, leaving a smaller footprint -- these are expressions of sanity, but also acts of passive resistance.

I'll soon move into a small apartment in the city -- the standard deal right now seems to be $750 a month for a one bedroom layout with a kitchen/living room combo, the two spaces separated by a dining counter. I don't know what size this place will be, but I'm certain it'll be well under a thousand square feet, which would be very uncomfortable for anyone who couldn't reduce material existence to a few fundamental possessions. However, I don't expect any problem with that.

My only requirements for my new place are that it be within walking distance of a supermarket and sited on a major bus line, because at the same time I move I'm going to reduce the number of miles I drive by at least 90 percent, out of choice and because I have to, due to a medical condition.

There are several blogs devoted to living small, at lovinglivingsmall.blogspot.com, livingsmall.wordpress.com, and my favorite, livingsmallblog.com whose header characterizes the way of life described above as possessing "subversive power," among other things.

That it does. Right now the most foolish thing we could do in resisting the enraged and violent mainstream culture we live in is to cling to romantic and childish notions of revolution like what we saw in the movie "V for Vendetta," such as "manning the barricades" and other antique clichés. At this point, opposing violence with violence would be the quickest way for us to get ourselves killed for no purpose. The way to undermining this regime of war and larceny is through nonviolence, passive resistance, and most of all refusing to feed this monster, whose mind is a cannibalistic computer program, whose veins are running with oil, and whose only value is cash payment. The military-industrial-insurance-banking-media-medical-complex and the tyrannical state founded on it can't long survive a population which refuses, either out of necessity or by choice, to continue to underwrite its madness.