Waste AM
Errantly Consuming. Buying and having less of everything
3
Let me give you one personal example of where you could say ‘science’ or more specifically medical intervention brought about by science actually serves to make a problem worse. It’s deeply personal, but it’s part of my experience and worth sharing because it is in some way related to my spiritual awakening (see previous post).
In 2005 I developed depression. Within the space of two months I had been fired from two jobs, had been dumped by my then boyfriend, and had moved to live with my cousins in the countryside.
My mum encouraged me to see a doctor. I had one appointment and came out with a prescription of prozac.
I couldn’t understand where the depression came from. I had ‘no reason’ to be depressed. One minute everything was fine, and the next minute I alternated between feeling angry and tearful all the time. My social life fell apart because I didn’t want to see anyone and I started messing up at work, which led to me being doubly fired from different jobs.
Only later did I get some insight into the trigger for this depression. I had been having contraceptive injections. By means of a cocktail of hormones they stop you menstruating for three months and then you go and have another one. Around the time of the first injection I was unaware of any side effects, however, it was the time of the second injection that everything began to fall apart.
Only later did I learn that a known side effect of this injection is depression in some people. Had I been aware of this, I would never have taken it. Taking it was in no way worth endangering my mental state.
I have no idea whether the prozac had any beneficial effects. The sporadic fits of crying stopped, my sadness was deadened, but I also lost the ability to laugh or indeed feel any emotion whatsoever. Things that would usually irritate me went by unnoticed. I was like a robot going through the motions and not feeling anything.
I don’t remember exactly how long I took the prozac for. I never became dependent on it because I didn’t like the robot feeling. I don’t know if it did anything to lift my mood, all I know is that I didn’t have another injection and after a couple of months I started to gradually feel better.
I know a few people who swear by antidepressants but I don’t think I’d ever take them again. I also feel angry that I was given an injection that I feel certain triggered the lowest point of my life. It makes me think the medical establishment is seriously fucked up to push an injection that may cause depression to a teenage girl. It’s even more fucked up that antidepressants were doled out without the trigger having been identified. I think I would have naturally picked up anyway, once the hormone cocktail leached out of my system.
I write about this because it is related to my spiritual awakening. Part of my spiritual awakening involves questioning the culture I live within. I think a lot of the stuff we are doing is insane. If we could step outside of our culture and look at ourselves from the outside, or from a point of time in the future, things that we take to be rational and logical are in fact totally nonsensical and even damaging. What I am trying to say is that not everything science provides for us is in fact logical and rational and therefore ‘best’.
Science caused my depression (by means of a hormonal injection) and science tried to cure it (by making me pop a pill). But my mind is not merely rational – I have feelings and a soul that doesn’t respond merely to medicine. The treatment for the problem science created did not in any way seek to address what was going on in my emotional self; it just tried to stop me from feeling any emotion.
An even bigger question is why are so many of us depressed anyway? Why are there even depressed children whose parents consensually medicate and eradicate their feelings? When 10% of a culture at any one time is depressed it is clear and apparent that there are problems with modernity and what we are experiencing in the here and now isn’t just merely progress.
I’m not saying I have the answer, I’m merely picking at the conceit that science knows best. In the split that exists between science and spirituality, or science and art, science is always championed by default in practically every area of public life – from school to governmental policy. Science shouldn’t always be the default position. We have gained a lot from the scientific world view occasioned by the enlightenment but we should be careful about how much further we take our ideas of rationalism. I am an irrational being experiencing desire; I do not always fit within a science-shaped box.
I think I’ve always been a self improving person. I always worked hard to do the best I could academically, and there have been times where I have actively sought to change myself. Growing into adulthood I remember changing my accent (which has since partially reverted) and also that I stopped speaking my mind in order to conserve the feelings of others.
I generally found that if I applied myself to anything I would improve at it and could change myself. There are limits of course – and it’s not like I want to change most of my social deficiencies anyway. For all the ‘improvements’ made along the way, I have come to realise an omission. While I worked on my mind and modified aspects of my social self, I never gave a thought to developing my spirituality.
In fact it never occurred to me. I have never practised any religion. Indeed, you could say my upbringing was actively against it – my mum put an end to my Brownie career when I told her one day we had cleaned the church as an activity.
All I knew was that when I was in nature, walking or dancing outside, it was possible for me to feel heightened emotions. I always had a deep appreciation of trees and things such as mushrooms that most people tend not to notice. I especially like the woody odour of forests, which makes me imagine life in past times. A recurring thought when I am in unspoilt nature is that I’m looking at something people hundreds of years before me would have seen. It is a satisfying feeling of connectedness with the past.
The strongest feelings I have had in nature have been at the top of mountains. It may seem obvious but to be standing on a mountain puts everything in perspective, and you realise your small part within it all.
The waste fixation (and original theme of this blog), I think, was borne out of my connection with and respect for nature. The way most of us live now is so dissociated from nature that little thought is given to the environmental consequences of our actions. I see waste as the physical manifestation of the unfulfilling excess that is all around us. By writing this blog, I suppose I was performing an act of atonement for my own excessive consumption.
So I turn now to self-development from a spiritual perspective. Right now this involves meditating everyday and also reading about faiths. I am not shopping for a religion but I am seeking knowledge and heightened spirituality.
Meditating has helped bring focus and a better state of mind in general. Although I am giving it a lot of time, I’m peculiarly just as productive, but without feeling over-stretched from it all. I am also turning off the computer more – so I can fully unplug, so to speak.
I am not seeking to change myself through a new found spirituality, however, if anything can help me achieve a more emotionally fulfilled state, then it is most welcome and worth investigation.
There are a few homes I know where someone in the house sits on the sofa for upwards of six hours per day, in the same seat, watching television. I sit in this very chair for eight hours per day sometimes. Neither the sofas nor this chair gets washed. The point I wish to make is that I don’t find it necessary to wash clothes often; my skin comes into contact with furnishings around my house, these furnishings are not considered to be dirty, so they don’t get washed, yet conversely my clothes would be considered dirty by some people’s standards.
I have many items of clothing I have never washed. I have some jeans I bought a year ago I have never washed. I think I’ve worn them upwards of 600 hours – at least 70 days of wear. All I do is air them once in a while. The reason I don’t wash them is not because I am lazy or am trying to save the planet; it’s because washing them would destroy the style and they would begin to fade.
I have a velvet jacket I wear out clubbing sometimes so I know it has got sweaty before. I have never washed it in 10 years; it is from the 1940′s. I expect it has never been washed in its life, and if it were to be washed it would fall apart.
None of my coats have ever been washed, and they come into contact with unsavoury germs whenever I sit down on a bus or tube.
It is my opinion that washing machines plus detergents destroy clothes. Most clothes bought from Topshop or H&M only have three washes in them before the cotton goes bobbley and the fast-fashion becomes unwearable. Before I buy something I always look at the label to see what it’s made of; I won’t buy clothes made of fabrics that disintegrate.
I have a lot of good quality clothes I’ve had for more than ten years. My clothes seem to last a ridiculously long time in comparison to other people’s. I rarely wear out anything, and will repair clothes that get tears in them. While I think a few factors are at play, I think the main reason is that I don’t wash my clothes very often and only use washing machines infrequently. Plus, if it is an item of clothing I particularly like, it never goes in the machine, it gets handwashed.
Let me give you an example of how washing machines destroy clothes. I have some jeans that are light green in colour which I hand washed earlier this week. The thing I hate most about handwashing clothes is rinsing them out, and while washing the jeans I had a brain wave. I decided to put them in the machine just for a rinse. Well, I put them into rinse and then I had to go and teach. When I came back for them I realised to my horror that someone else had put their stuff in with my jeans and had washed them. (Surely everyone knows that you check the washer for socks etc before you put your own stuff in!)
This truly was horror for me because they were *never* going to be actually washed in a washing machine. Especially with mixed colours and towels and also quite fearfully at 40% or higher (the enzymes in my body work fine at 37.5% why do we insane people think we must out-do nature?). One of my washing machine fears is centred on the conviction that 40 degree washes and higher are the ultimate clothes’ destroyers…
Now, the jeans were also quite possibly washed with fabric softener because they have changed unrecognisably. They have gone from a very tight fit to a slack fit, and it is as is they have lost all of their elasticity.
It’s just another lesson learned; if you really care about it never put anything in a washing machine, especially if you live in a shared house.
If it smells dunk it in a bucket and leave it there with some soap for a day. Then hang it outside if you can. If something needs to be freshened up a bit just hang it outside or by a window for a couple of days. If it is a vintage piece, never wash it, just hang it outside until the must smell dissipates. This is all that needs to be done. Don’t let them brainwash you to wash your stuff; think of your sweaty and grubby ancestors who did well without.
Don’t believe that you need to wash things after you have worn them for a couple of hours. If you wash it you will destroy it. If you find that your clothes are always getting holes in and they wear out quickly, you can blame your washing machine and strong detergents for that.
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