SPCC A Casa Amarela

we've successfully built a dry toilet. thanks Tori for the input and skills. it's much better than the previous one, with no smell at all and no need to carry around water buckets. also, we put it in our compost pile for the first time and it didn't stink remotely as bad as i expected. just a brown sludge. not as smelly as our leftover compost. we might need a big composting bin now to speed up the process. since humanure can carry diseases, we need to be more careful about it. we'll be writing a story soon on how we did it.

we've also successfully started our green roof (a tiny patch). it still needs about 100L of soil, which we still have to get. i abandoned the full water filtering system on all of the farmed soil. instead, we will collect the rain water and add a filter after the collector. this makes the set up much easier. getting off the water grid is probably the hardest step these days. we are also using the concrete tiles as a replacement to the stone layer, since it allows for quick water flow down. we will use the existing water collecting layer and the pipes, so all we need is to plug a container to these pipes.

we're also starting our own solar panel construction. i got some damaged solar cells on ebay and we'll be running trials on building and using these. i'll write more on this soon.

now that summer is starting, people tend to abandon their dogs. that's what happened last week, when someone abandoned two puppies near our street. O took them in, so we now have two more dogs. they are friendly but clearly traumatized. they are great guard dogs though.

other than that, we were helping a couple out until they found a place to stay. the guy was clearly troubled, and once he realized he couldn't stay, he robbed us and left (this is the current established perspective on what happened). nothing much. he took the house money box (about 50€ in), my mp3 player (which is worth nothing these days) and money from A's pocket (about 3€). again, people on survival mode show a very obvious behavior pattern, which i will try to summarize.
1) they are unlikely to say thank you or i'm sorry, even when you give them food or shelter (he fit this, she didn't)
2) they tend to empty praise people around them excessively (he fit this, she didn't)
3) they tend to be overly friendly, yet selfish and hoarding (he fit this, she didn't)
all of this is mainly connected to, in my opinion, self preservation and awareness of ingroups. someone on survival mode will not care for anyone but themselves. but they know human groups are tribal and that they need to create a "non zero sum", a fake reciprocity that creates a sense of understanding, so that they are welcome in a community. he did this with skill, though he wasn't the most skilled we've hosted so far. he was friendly and funny and tried to compliment and be friends with everyone. yet he never said thank you for the food or appreciated what we were doing for him. he enjoyed our surplus while he could, and once he realized he couldn't move in, he took off with our money.

i do wonder how this works. the fact that the people in the house weren't willing to take him in caused him to go on self preservation mode. people off the street are frequently like this.

we later learned that he had done this before to his girlfriend. he also stole money from her and skipped rent. her perspective is that he's bipolar. my view is that he is exploiting her for being insecure. i can find no other explanation for someone putting up with this kind of behavior. when he left, he didn't say goodbye to her at all. he left her behind and took off with his stolen goods.

it is tragic that the people that need help are the ones that end up falling in the selfish preservation loop. like previous people that lived with us, the pattern repeats itself over and over. when self preservation is an issue, people will hoard, be selfish and violent. but self preservation is a fable, made up in the junkie / social outcast mind. we live in a society of surplus, with food, water, electricity everywhere, with safe streets. no one is "out to get us". there is no need for a survival mode approach, except if one choses to make that the defining story of their lives. inevitably, it will leave them alone, or with enablers, that will perpetuate the cycle of abuse and violence.

healing this is incredibly hard. it requires a very positive setting that allows for each individual to grow out of their vicious cycles. unfortunately, at our house we can't really do it when someone is so down this loop. they require full professional help. maybe one of our future helpxers or surfers can turn out to be a psychologist and help us out. but more and more, we're understanding that sometimes we have to push people away to preserve our community. this is a tremendous political defeat for me. over and over again, anarchy doesn't work because of anarchists and their selfish authoritarian ways.

in line with this, check out Chris Hannah of Propagandhi on the G20 protest.

i updated my personal feed, all i'm sharing is now on one URL, if you're also interested in my other topics of interest. the address is http://starstuff.collected.info/ .

godspeed starstuff ☆★☆☆★★★☆☆☆☆☆