Tuesday, January 19, 2010

SELF-RELIANCE

According to this article (unfortunately, the link is currently unavailable) by Naomi Dunford titled why we’re broke and how to fix it which I found through this very resourceful blog, the modern human being seems to delegate more and more of his every day activities that are essential in sustaining a nourished existence to other specialist human beings. The modern man will rely on another man to grow his food, sew his garments, fix the roof of his house and so on contrary to the ancient man who did almost everything by himself. A modern man in turn specializes in another thing which he also does on the behalf of his fellow human beings. This makes the average human being of today extremely reliant on his mates and this, according to the earlier mentioned article, is what makes people broke today.


The idea may seem a little radical and unrealistic, even misguided, to most people of today’s world, primarily because it’s something we have not witnessed, possibly in our entire lives and thus do not attempt to take a shot at it because maybe the traditional way is working just fine for us or it hasn’t ever crossed our minds as a possibility. Just so I ensure we are on the same wave length, the idea I’m talking about is self-reliance in today’s human being. Imagine if you could generate your own electricity, recycle and treat your own drinking water, fix your own TV when something becomes wrong with it, wouldn’t that be something?

After reading Dunford’s article, which seemed to suggest that the way to financial freedom is through some degree of self-reliance, I appreciated the thought behind it but that’s just what it was to me until I recently watched on CNN’s Eco Solutions, where they featured an Egyptian young man in his early twenties who is taking a shot at realizing the idea. The Egyptian, who is said to have learned English from old newspapers and radio only, which is impressive in a non-English speaking country, makes his own cooking gas (two hours worth of cooking gas daily) from kitchen garbage, the by-products of that makes good manure. What’s even more fascinating is that it’s a rather simple phenomenon. In addition to that the Egyptian made himself a water heating system and a radio both of which use solar energy, all this cuts his electricity bill by half! Needless to say, he’s facing criticism in his own country from his neighbours who are not that much impressed and are skeptical about his energy saving/creation tactics. At least he is brave enough to try.

A man is not an island and we will always need one another but one thing I wish to not rely on another person is the generation of electricity. Not as long as KPLC (Kenya Power & Lighting Company) is treating us the way it is. This is something I have promised myself I would pursue, strike power bills off the utility bills list.

Currently as scientists are working day and night to come up with alternative environmentally friendly, cheap and renewable energy, biofuel has attracted significant attention. I’m mentioning biofuel here because it’s one of those things you can make at home from rotten plant material (I don’t want to bore you with technical terms). One form of biofuel is biodiesel which can be used as fuel in existing vehicles with little or no adaptation! In other words, you can make your own fuel for your car at home! It’s both simple and cheap. Give it a thought. So how self-reliant are you?

4 Educated Opinions Yet:

joyunspeakable2011 said...

Hey, tell you what? This is so cool. I guess God created everything with capacity for everything. Think about shit and urine as manure, power providers, wow. I have liked your message.

Wyndago said...

I'm glad you liked it.

lulu said...

i like this wyndago but honestly... i think we are all a network of people graced with the ability to do something better than others and i am of the view that finding your potential, if everyone found their potential and tasked at it well enough, we would be healthily reliant or self reliant. a dgree of self reliance aint bad... but what is that degree, it varies with everyone

Wyndago said...

@lulu Not a single soul can rely entirely on herself, am just saying it would be nice if it were possible or even something close to it. I wish you could read Dunford's article..

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