DIY

We live in a post-industrial society dominated by global production chains- apples and t-shirts and gadgets from China, cars from Japan and Germany, call centers in Bangalore. Just think for a minute, every piece of matter we use in life has been analyzed and reanalyzed, constructed a thousand times over by multiple companies thousands of miles apart. An army of specialists has planned and programmed every bit of dust we breath, and worked to maximize its profitability.
Our economy, our politics, our culture, our education all work to alienate us from one another and from the things we encounter in our daily lives. We are alienated from our neighbors, nature, and the tools and materials upon which we depend for sustenance and expression in life.
There's another way of doing things, both contemporary and old-fashioned. Do-it-yourself. "Self" in this case can include your friends, family, and neighbors.
My personal interest in this comes from philosophy, not the punk scene, not the DIY ecology world, not from craft circles or home building. The glorious thing about humanity is that we can understand the world we're immersed in, and if we are respectful and intelligent about it, we can add to that world, make oursleves part of it. We can engage with one another and with the world at large through a sort of mutual fabrication, a play of bricolage through which a vibrant and beautiful world is constructed. There's something supremely rejuvenating in this, something that makes us feel strong, secure, free yet connected. As we learn to build the world for ourselves, without the intervention of bureaucratic machinery and corporate consumption, the world becomes less foreign, less forced, less oppressive. As we learn to build new things, to satisfy our needs and invent new tools and habits, we start to understand on a deeper level that the way things are is not necessarily the way things have to be. We start to realize that free people working together with hammers and needles and wrenches and paper and instruments understand the world more truly and more powerfully than any bureaucrat, any corporate or state machine.
So grab a hammer and get some cloth, and let's get going!