How Our Surroundings Would Come To Change

If we scaled down our consumption, how would our Surroundings change? Corporations own our hometowns Corporations own our hometowns. They’ve eaten them. And because of this, our surroundings have dried up in inspiration and beauty, in the ability to touch our hearts with awe. They have become stale and ugly, with so much within them done in the cheapest and most efficient, scalable ways. If we were to begin consuming local, our cities would be sold back to us, and it would be up to us to make them exactly how we wanted them. Not only the businesses themselves and their properties, but everything impacted by how our businesses work, which is everything. Every detail will be subject to change, determined by us, those it is created by and for! Take anything as an example and ask, how is it in comparison to what it could and should be? If we were in charge how would we make it better and truer to us? Beauty, Inspiration, and the Spiritual If we were calling the shots, would what we create not be more beautiful and inspiring, more in line with and respectful to nature, holy, spiritual, and timeless? Could our city not become as beautiful as Paris, our homes and small town as full of character as Brooklyn, our countrysides as charming and peaceful as England’s? Would our surroundings not be full of places with so much beauty they would almost be spiritual? Could our community not grow full of places with so much peace and beauty we would have moments of clarity during uncertainty? Where is our place to contemplate a big decision? We may have one now, but isn’t it by accident? What would one be like which was made intentionally with the will and backing of our entire community? Romance Would this beauty not be more romantic, causing spontaneous romantic interaction and continued romantic living? Romance has been dying. What has been the cause? What might be the solution? A beautiful environment to soften the heart, to take in with others may be a good start. Imagine a community so romantic, people fall in love spontaneously while out and about. Slowing Down Would our community and our lives we live within them not slow down, allowing us to take in and make more beautiful moments? We’re so rushed and addicted to efficiency that we don’t and we can’t nowadays. Isn’t this something we’d like to change? Don’t we want our roads to be as far as they can be from highways on the spectrum of transportation? Slower, smaller, all the way to the point they disappear? What would be the effect of changing all roads to 20 miles per hour? Wouldn’t our drives be more peaceful and intentional? Wouldn’t we be able to take in the beauty more so? Where there isn’t beauty, wouldn’t we be better able to see it so we could make it so? The slower the roads, the slower time moves. We’re less in habit, less unconscious. Even driving, something we think of as just a means to an end, could become memory making worthy. 2 lane roads, 20 mile per hour speed limits, roundabouts, police officers that walk and ride bicycles around communities rather than drive around in military-like armored vehicles. Eliminating Drive Throughs Continuing with this, if we want to maximize the beauty potential of all moments, wouldn’t we want to eliminate drive throughs? Wouldn’t the alternative, going inside to spend a moment with someone we know, who also knows us, having a conversation about our lives not be so much better? This may sound silly, but aren’t these “cheats” to get what we want and need faster not a source of social anxiety? People used to social interaction don’t have anxiety at the thought of interacting with people. It’s only those not used to it. We want people to enjoy social interaction. We want people to see and meet each other, not be afraid of them. We want to know the people we interact with on a day to day basis. Wouldn’t they more so with the surroundings that would come about if we began consuming locally? Closer and More Connected If things were to slow down, would things not become closer? And how much better would closer be? If you were sitting at a coffee shop, looking out the window, would you rather see a parking lot and road with cars driving about, or people walking by laughing and smiling and existing, where you’re able to “people watch,” take in their clothes and identities, able to run out and stop them for a conversation? In your daily life, would you rather see 500 people for 10 seconds each or 50 people 5 minutes each, twice a day? Would you rather a 10 minute drive or a 10 minute bike ride and 20 minute walk to all the things you want and need? We need cars to get where we want and need to go because what we want and need isn’t close enough to take better forms of transportation. What if where we wanted and needed to go was within walking distance? How would our cities be organized if we no longer needed cars? We wouldn’t need a place to park them any longer. We wouldn’t need a place to drive them. Buildings and businesses would come together and become a beautiful town square. Parks would replace what parking lots and roads once were. Rather than one big supermarket serving one big city, now there would be multiple smaller locally owned grocery stores with items produced by those within. What would life be like? People walking, seeing each other, a community being reborn. It would slow us down. We'd be brought together. How good of a thing that would be. The faster you can get from one place to another, the more efficient, the less there is sense of community. To slow down would show us how far away those we are supposed to share a community and destiny and will with actually are from us. Are how things organized now not built on falsity, lies and compromise? Do we not live more so in a corporation than a community? How many of us can walk to a park? How many of us can ride our bikes to a bakery for a sweet treat? How long does it take to get to your favorite restaurant? How long of a commute would work be if you could no longer take your car? With the new problems that would come, what solutions would we come up with? Are we so sure that the world we will have created after won’t be better than the one we have now? Bikes, walking, scooters, horses, trains and trolleys to other communities? Climate Change & Voluntary Change To those who believe in climate change, would the world created not be better in solving that problem? Wouldn’t we be doing everything we could to solve the problem? Wouldn’t those in other communities who also believe in it see us and model their behavior after us if they wanted to? To those who don’t believe in it, aren’t the other benefits of local consumption worth it, regardless of your belief here? And isn’t this way of being an example and inspiring others to voluntarily follow the way you believe in change happening, rather than top down force? Emotional Safety & Expression This also may sound silly, but we want to exist in places we feel comfortable to express ourselves truly. We want to smile and cry when we naturally feel to do so. We want to exist in a place where we don’t feel it necessary to repress truth within us. We want our community to be emotionally and mentally safe places. Would they not become so? We live in communities where we don't feel safe and capable of being truthful with the people we’re around. Would this not change? Necessary for this are people around us who know us, who relate to us, who understand us, and are there for us. We want our community to be a family. And it would be if we began to consume locally. Clear Identity & Boundaries Our community, with a clear identity, would come to have clearer boundaries of distinction. When one enters or exits our community, it would be clear they’re doing so. We want people from anywhere to see a picture of anywhere in our community, and know it’s our community.