Life is Easy!
A recent post on Twitter links to a blog on ecademy with the title Is this a new way of thinking? showing a video from May last year at a TED event in Chiang Mai
The message is seductive and not without its good points. What is the point of working 8 hours a day in a system that poisons the environment? Why work 8 hours a day to be poor in Bangkok when on my (family’s) farm back home, people work 2 hours a day and 2 months a year – planting and harvesting? Why work all your life to pay for your own home, when you can build one with your friends in 3 months? So the guy drops out of university, goes back home to his village where he founds the Pun Pun Center for Self Reliance in 2003 – the name meaning thousands of seeds.
But how would this work in the UK, for example? Can you go home to your parents and decide to live there, or on your own plot of land? One guy has done it in the UK, using a home made from straw bales, shown on the Channel 4 series Grand Designs
Not a bad thing if your parents are getting old and you can care for them too, making me wonder if this didn’t play a part in his decision to return home. Thai (and Asian) families generally do not put their old people into nursing homes. Responsibility for looking after parents in old age generally falls on the youngest child, meaning they may not be able to marry and have a family.
Just get on with it!
Without a home base you can return to, the dream of Jon Jandai seems a bit unrealistic here. Squatting in an empty property is another option perhaps? There are a staggering 720,000 empty properties in the UK. The counter argument of course is “Do It!” as in Jerry Rubin’s book and more recently in Just Do it! used by several people
Jon’s Easy Option has a bit more to it when you look more closely.
His Pun Pun centre promotes seed retention for sustainability, self reliance and simplicity – so far so good. But it is with their version of the latter that some of us hard-pressed Westerners might have a problem. The centre is linked to the strict Santi Asoke Buddhist sect which has a political agenda being involved in the occupation of Bangkok International airport, for example. According to a lifelong Thai friend, the extreme simplicity means one meal a day and no beer “Not for me!” he said.
In a nutshell, it comes down to the choices you make. Choosing one thing often means giving up another. Hope Jon’s video helps you but if you are going to follow its message, do some homework and best of luck. Feedback welcomed.