Come on, baby, light my fire

I spent the morning in the kitchen cooking up the bones of Wednesday's roast chicken, then making soup, a leek casserole and the chicken-based shepherds' cottage topped with mashed parsnip to which I referred yesterday. 

And now it is one of those afternoons when the only sensible thing to do is to retire to the study, light the pot belly stove and bask in its heat. 

I have fed it with just enough wood to get the room warm, which somewhat assuages my guilt about releasing carbon into the atmosphere. (It is a constant juggling act...)

The weather has taken a turn for the worse with low cloud, intermittent rain and single-figure temperatures again. 

But of course it could be far worse.

Whilst heat-basking I have been watching some of Nate Hagens' latest contributions to the debate about the metacrisis and am particularly taken with this 20 minute musing. 

One of the things he discusses (at 10 minutes) is cognitive dissonance which resonates strongly with me. It explains my endless frustration and irritation with my inability to influence almost anybody to fundamentally change their behaviours to avoid the worst outcomes from the system collapse which lies ahead.

I meet so many people who talk the talk, but 99% of whom then blatantly do not walk the walk. 

Do I point this out to them? No I do not, although I do try to find non-threatening ways to illustrate the impact of one or two of their actions on the planet. Basically I believe that everybody has to make up their own minds about their influence on the future. 

And I want to be able to continue to plant the seeds of change in people's thoughts, in the (increasingly fragile) hope that one day they will wake up and start to live in a way which cares for this planet, rather than to rely on the planet to provide them whatever they desire.

This is important. Possibly the most important thing ever. No kidding.