Alterhito

In French we have this saying: It is by forging that one becomes a blacksmith, everyday things can also be learned according to this adage. It’s doing it that we learn it. While we are unlearned how to do because we are use to buy, learning to slow down is learning to do. Art and crafts are a snub to the consumer society, which demands speed that prevents reflection. The art of knowing and taking time will be what will allow us to reflect and look where we are.

Started on the road, then developped, here are creations that I can teach you to do or make for you. I learned how to work wood, pallet or new, in order to realize my everyday objects and furnitures. I had a hobby for lamps made from various materials, perhaps to shed light on our waste.

I learned a technique of lamps in Guatemala, made from tissue paper, we can model what we want and make decorative lampshades.

In addition to having a purpose, whether for collective gardens, street works, furniture or just personal items, building in a group is also creating the link between people. This is not always the perfect result, but having it built makes it possible to modify, repair and improve it.

Continuing the road by building is a bit of a walk on the Alterhito way.

Speaking about degrowth and transition, does not mean that we must make tabula rasa of all that surrounds us. The tools that surround us often diserve us because we don’t know how to use them, to make them or we do not give ourselves the time to look for an alternative. The technological society that grows is making us used to receive everything in hand and to the monopolies that surround us.

Without being an IT expert, which I am not, we can make a change in our computer usage habits. Businesses on the internet have launched the principle of: If it’s free you are the product. For ease and habit we accept this operation.

There are however many solutions to what we use, no more complicated or less efficient, just less known because the marketing does not sell them. Free software is free and royalty free software that is built by a community. They are collectives projects on the internet, like the version 2.0 of the collective garden if I can say so.

It is important to learn how to use them, because making your garden, not using plastic, is only a drop if our technophile habits continue to fill the hard drive of datas centers. This is the point which is the most contradictory in our actions, because of the system, the step aside is difficult.

It can be evenings of discussions on the subject, initiation to their use or courses on how to use these software, whether for personal needs or for an association there is a multitude of software that we could adopt and so value projects that fit our values.

Hosting a website, multimedia software, office automation, project management, calls, collaborative work, etc. Free software is a solution to technological capitalism and its environmental misdeeds, knowing them and using them will make our technological use a citizen act.

It is not possible to have infinite growth in a finite resource world.

Key concept to understand that we can’t continue our way of life as we have always done. Degrowth is a general political concept to respond to the environmental and societal issues of our society.

It is not possible to say that another world is possible, if we don’t make a political analysis of what we want to improve. Opposing to capitalism, but also to sustainable development; degrowth criticizes our society of work, but also the social injustice that it engenders.

Rethink time, because it is for time that we try to always go faster, to earn more to buy things that will make us win time, whatever the ecological cost. The technological appeal pushes us to always want to go faster without thinking about what we use to move forward. This is not a return to a primitive society, but a reflection on how we develop at the expense of the earth and other species. It is in 1972 that the idea is widespread with the report “Limits of growth” of the club of Rome. For a few years now, we have been able to calculate precisely the day of the overtaking, it is the day of the year when we have consumed the quantity of resource that the earth can produce in one year, the following days are a debt that we contract . Years after years this day is sooner in the year.

Voluntary simplicity is a good thing, but it is on an individual scale, degrowth is on a collective level in order to make a global change. It is not good to overlook what happens even if you try to be better inside. It may be its political side that makes it less attractive than the transition movement in some areas. Even if the positive side and hands in the dough on a local scale is necessary, it is also important to remain critical and alert about the world that engulfs us and the social injustice created.

It is a global vision, a political idea, which also includes the voluntary simplicity, the transition movement, but also the anarchism and the social struggles it implies. Look for an egalitarian society that has a place for everyone while being in harmony with the blue planet and other species. Find a societal permaculture while fighting against inequalities.

How did I come to think like that? It is walking in this way that I try to understand what surrounds me and the actions I am doing. Not from here, or from anywhere else, but from all over the place, where I am, where I am heading.

Little I wanted to be president, child of the society, now I would like to overthrow it. To travel and discover the small parcels of collective intelligence held by the cultures of the blue planet.

Having left the university (unfinished), I took a backpack and from the city of light I landed in a small village in Guatemala. My head was full of academic thought, to cajole a thought that stays in words. I was staying 3 days, I stayed there for 1 year and a half discovering the pleasure of doing by myself the things we use and that feed me. Then I continued the road for 6 months, until Bolivia.

At the end of the trip, I returned to Quebec with my thoughts changed. It didn’t took a while to let the mold to close on me and that I comfort it. It took me two years before I noticed the trap that was closing. I left.

Then I discovered the associative world and the collective projects, during more than 2 years I evolved in this environnement and found a pleasure to be there. The collective construction of a society has finally found a meaning that can never be removed from my mind.

Now on the road untill the next stop, the goal is to understand the path that thought takes. Why do we have these ideas? These opinions? When is the path different?

In search of AlterHito.