Want to be a crunchy?

[MyVavies]

So what do you think is wrong and right with the crunchy life style?

***What is a crunchy? Adjective. Used to describe persons who have adjusted or altered their lifestyle for environmental reasons. Crunchy persons tend to be additionally but not exclusively categorized as vegetarians, vegans, eco-tarians, conservationists, environmentalists, neo-hippies, tree huggers, nature enthusiasts, etc. ********

 

[MyVavies]

What? No opinions?

To me, I have a hard time not being so black and white… all or nothing thinking. The idea of being a crunchy sounds good. But NEVER going out to eat unless it is Organic/eco friend/ far trade or America food at the local/ mama and papa restraint, sounds a bit to the extreme… I don’t know.
And where do you drew the line about stuff. I mean, do you only have eco friend furniture, electronics, cloths?

 

[Elostirion]

I seriously had no idea what you talking about because of the thread title. Heck, that’s the only reason I clicked it!

Do these people use electricity in their homes? Do they know where it comes from? There are almost no “eco-friendly” ways to provide enough power to satiate a populace. There are green ways to supplement an existing infrastructure though…

How you define “crunchy” it doesn’t even seem like it’s possible. It also sounds likely to breed self-righteousness (smug storms to steal from South Park).

For personally, I don’t have the money to be that discriminating. About as far as I get is avoiding WalMart, but I don’t like their stuff much anyway.

 

[MyVavies]

I seriously had no idea what you talking about because of the thread title. Heck, that’s the only reason I clicked it!

Do these people use electricity in their homes? Do they know where it comes from? There are almost no “eco-friendly” ways to provide enough power to satiate a populace. There are green ways to supplement an existing infrastructure though…

How you define “crunchy” it doesn’t even seem like it’s possible. It also sounds likely to breed self-righteousness (smug storms to steal from South Park).

For personally, I don’t have the money to be that discriminating. About as far as I get is avoiding WalMart, but I don’t like their stuff much anyway.

IF I would do this crunchy lifestyle, I wouldn’t advertise it unless asked about it, and I wouldn’t be self righteous at all! I am a total believer of what Saint Francis said. " preach the word always, use words if necessary" in every aspect in my life.

 

[MyVavies]

I seriously had no idea what you talking about because of the thread title. Heck, that’s the only reason I clicked it!

Do these people use electricity in their homes? Do they know where it comes from? There are almost no “eco-friendly” ways to provide enough power to satiate a populace. There are green ways to supplement an existing infrastructure though…

How you define “crunchy” it doesn’t even seem like it’s possible. It also sounds likely to breed self-righteousness (smug storms to steal from South Park).

For personally, I don’t have the money to be that discriminating. About as far as I get is avoiding WalMart, but I don’t like their stuff much anyway.

They feel that EVERYONE should have solar panels on their houses.

 

[vz71]

***What is a crunchy? Adjective. Used to describe persons who have adjusted or altered their lifestyle for environmental reasons. Crunchy persons tend to be additionally but not exclusively categorized as vegetarians, vegans, eco-tarians, conservationists, environmentalists, neo-hippies, tree huggers, nature enthusiasts, etc. ********

God and his church are the only things I consider worthy of my faithful action.

All else is going to get scrutinized for the benefit to myself and my family.

This includes many environmental issues.
I am not going out of my way to recycle - unless there is some economic benefit.
Driving a fuel efficient car - I consider the cost benefit of it.

 

[MyVavies]

God and his church are the only things I consider worthy of my faithful action.

All else is going to get scrutinized for the benefit to myself and my family.

This includes many environmental issues.
I am not going out of my way to recycle - unless there is some economic benefit.
Driving a fuel efficient car - I consider the cost benefit of it.

I want to do the best for me, my family and the world. With doing things like recycling so our world for generations to come will have a nice place to live, boy coting items that enslaved children from some foreign countries spending 18 hours a day on, or eating only organic food for our temple of God that isn’t altered or added junk to, before or after processed. Don’t you think that’s how Jesus would live if he was in this century? Proactive?

 

[Contarini]

I seriously had no idea what you talking about because of the thread title. Heck, that’s the only reason I clicked it!

Do these people use electricity in their homes? Do they know where it comes from? There are almost no “eco-friendly” ways to provide enough power to satiate a populace. There are green ways to supplement an existing infrastructure though…

How you define “crunchy” it doesn’t even seem like it’s possible. It also sounds likely to breed self-righteousness (smug storms to steal from South Park).

I find that accusation rather odd. It seems to me, frankly, that it’s a kind of rhetorical defense mechanism that people activate when faced with a challenge to their lifestyle. It is, after all, exactly what secular people say about various moral standards that Catholics and other Christians hold dear. You can use that as an argument against any kind of moral behavior just as easily as against “crunchiness.”

One important point: “crunchiness” (I don’t much like the term) is not all-or-nothing by any means. It’s a matter of gradually adjusting your choices so as to be healthier for yourself, the rest of the human race, and God’s creation as a whole.

Power for heat, light, etc., is indeed one of the big problems. People with more commitment and expertise (and/or money) than I possess have managed to live “off the grid,” though.

Food choices are relatively easy, though still constraining in various ways. I actually find the constraints fun–eating seasonally provokes creativity in cooking, I find, more than does just going to the supermarket and grabbing whatever you fancy.

For personally, I don’t have the money to be that discriminating. About as far as I get is avoiding WalMart, but I don’t like their stuff much anyway.

Certainly making “crunchy” food choices is generally more expensive than standard supermarket food shopping. However, I think people exaggerate this greatly. For one thing, Americans typically spend a lot of money on entertainment and relatively little on food (at least home-cooked food). Eating out less and spending less money on entertainment can more than compensate for any increase in the cost of groceries. Similarly, doing more of the “value-adding” processing yourself (buying flour and making your own bread, or even buying grain and grinding your own flour, for instance) saves a lot of money. Growing your own food saves even more.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

God and his church are the only things I consider worthy of my faithful action.

All else is going to get scrutinized for the benefit to myself and my family.

This includes many environmental issues.
I am not going out of my way to recycle - unless there is some economic benefit.
Driving a fuel efficient car - I consider the cost benefit of it.

It sounds to me as if you’re compartmentalizing life–God and the church are in one corner of it, and the rest is governed by worldly considerations.

Shouldn’t everything we do be done for God’s glory and the good of His creation, especially humanity?

Edwin

 

[vz71]

It sounds to me as if you’re compartmentalizing life–God and the church are in one corner of it, and the rest is governed by worldly considerations.

Shouldn’t everything we do be done for God’s glory and the good of His creation, especially humanity?

Edwin

I would hardly consider my family to be a ‘worldly’ concern.
Being a husband and father are a vocation I take very seriously.

 

[Mrs_Sally]

I know many Christians - perhaps not Catholics as much as others - who in fact follow many of the same strateries as “crunchies” but without calling themselves that.

Peope who homestead, who do a lot of home-cooking, repairing and making do rather than buying new, buying used instead of new, making things last instead of trashing, limiting purchases and consumption. The Family forum and Faith and Finances forum are full of questions about ways to limit consumption and spending, and increase simple living. Perhaps there isn’t a rash of solar panels going up on Catholic homes or semi-religious recycling, but cooking from scratch, more meatless meals (which we will all be doing soon! ), and fewer toys and trinkets will almost automatically mean that a family is generating less trash, using fewer resources, and ending up in about the same place - although for different reasons - than the crunchies.

We have been given dominion over the earth by God, but that doesn’t mean we have the right to run the place into the ground (metaphorically speaking). God asks us to be good stewards. While caring for our families is more important, I can take excellent care of my family while also buying local, in season food, recycling, and not driving a huge, gas-guzzling car (there are only 3 to 5 of us at any one time). We don’t have solar panels, but I do regret that we didn’t buy them years and years ago - we’d have saved so much on electricity!

 

[Contarini]

I would hardly consider my family to be a ‘worldly’ concern.
Being a husband and father are a vocation I take very seriously.

Good for you. But surely that should include being concerned for your family’s lifestyle, both in physical and spiritual terms.

I’m not arguing that any particular practice is absolutely mandatory–I’m simply suggesting that the set of concerns which people sometimes express with the rather silly term “crunchy” are ones that everyone should care about.

Edwin

 

[vz71]

Good for you. But surely that should include being concerned for your family’s lifestyle, both in physical and spiritual terms.

I do not believe the vocation falls properly into what has been defined in this thread as ‘crunchy.’

When looking at the current politics, what is described as ‘crunchy’ does not coincide with having a large family.

The family is my concern, not whatever the priority of the environmental movement is.

The question posed here asks about physical and spiritual terms.
That says a lot about the environmentalist movement. Spiritual?
NO. I am Catholic, I worship God, not his creation.

 

[Contarini]

I do not believe the vocation falls properly into what has been defined in this thread as ‘crunchy.’

When looking at the current politics, what is described as ‘crunchy’ does not coincide with having a large family.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. And why are you taking your cues from “current politics”?

The family is my concern, not whatever the priority of the environmental movement is.

So only the family matters? Creation doesn’t matter? And you serve your family by buying into our consumerist, materialist culture?

This makes no sense. I have no investment in the term “crunchy”–I think it’s silly. But eating healthy, natural food, raising some of it if possible, making things from scratch, contributing to your local community, caring for God’s creation–all of these things fit perfectly well with traditional Christianity. All of these were things that the very conservative homeschooling evangelicals I grew up around in East Tennessee practiced. It’s only by a perverse fit of cultural insanity that these things have come to be seen as somehow “liberal.”

The question posed here asks about physical and spiritual terms.
That says a lot about the environmentalist movement. Spiritual?
NO. I am Catholic, I worship God, not his creation.

It’s perfectly Catholic to say that, in St. Bonaventure’s terms, creation bears the “footprints” of God. The fact that modern Christians (Catholic or Protestant) think of this as somehow “pagan” shows how far they’ve bought into a fundamentally atheistic, materialist view of the world.

But the point about spiritual concerns is primarily that consumerist, materialistic ways of living aren’t good for us spiritually. Living simply, knowing where our food comes from, respecting God’s creation–these are all things that help us spiritually.

Again, compartmentalizing is unhealthy. Every aspect of our lives should glorify God.

Edwin

 

[Boulder257]

Who defined the term and why is it a “Crunchy?” I am interested in the origin of this word.

 

[Mrs_Sally]

Who defined the term and why is it a “Crunchy?” I am interested in the origin of this word.

It has something to do with granola. That’s all I know.

Try reading Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher. He is Eastern (Orthodox?), but the book gives you the idea of how these supposedly opposing ideas come together.

NFP for that matter is very “crunchy.” Witness the whole “green sex” thing.

Googling “crunchy Catholic” brings up quite a few results - lots of very interesting looking blogs.

 

[Contarini]

It has something to do with granola. That’s all I know.

Try reading Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher. He is Eastern (Orthodox?), but the book gives you the idea of how these supposedly opposing ideas come together.

NFP for that matter is very “crunchy.” Witness the whole “green sex” thing.

Googling “crunchy Catholic” brings up quite a few results - lots of very interesting looking blogs.

Dreher’s book was the first place I encountered it.

I basically liked the book and identified myself with what Dreher called “crunchy cons.” But I have some problems with it too. First of all, it was news to me that being a “conservative” and being “crunchy” was supposed to be some sort of weird or counterintuitive combination. It was a genuine shock to me to realize that Americans had somehow come to identify being “conservative” with pursuing a consumeristic, materialistic lifestyle, favoring big business, etc. (At about the same time, I was watching FOX News for the first time in my life with any regularity, since this was just after my marriage and I had never had cable when I was single. I have hated the FOX News brand of conservatism with a passion ever since.) That wasn’t the conservatism I knew growing up.

Perhaps connected with this is Dreher’s rather snooty tone (as if he’s part of a special elite of people with good taste who are also conservatives). It clearly annoys a lot of “non-crunchy” conservatives. So I try to distance myself from it. Dreher is particularly unpopular among Catholics these days because he has now left the Church and become Orthodox, largely because of his experiences as a reporter covering the abuse scandals, and has written some rather snarky things about the Church, including most recently about Pope Francis. That’s not directly relevant, except that I know Catholics who go ballistic if you mention his name, so it’s not a name I generally bring up in the context of these discussions

I think that “crunchy cons” are in fact the only consistent conservatives. Again: simple living, living close to nature, working with the processes of creation rather than using technology to free oneself from nature, maintaining practices and traditions that have come down from the past–all of these things seem to me to be obviously conservative. We don’t need some sort of special label, as if we had with great ingenuity paired two naturally divergent things.

That being said, it was a fun book and helpful in a lot of ways

Edwin

 

[Mrs_Sally]

Contarini, agree with everything you just said - and I’ll go you one better. When I was single I didn’t even have a TV. We didn’t get cable until after we moved into our house from the newlywed apartment. Double

My favorite part about the book was the chickens in the backyard. I would love to have a few laying hens. Don’t know if I could slaughter and pluck the birds, but I would definately eat the eggs!!

 

[Contarini]

Contarini, agree with everything you just said - and I’ll go you one better. When I was single I didn’t even have a TV. We didn’t get cable until after we moved into our house from the newlywed apartment. Double

My favorite part about the book was the chickens in the backyard. I would love to have a few laying hens. Don’t know if I could slaughter and pluck the birds, but I would definately eat the eggs!!

I have chickens coming next week! (We’re moving to a house in Kentucky on an eight-acre property–hopefully returning to my goat-rearing roots as well.)

I didn’t actually have a TV of my own when I was single either. I used my roommates’ TVs.

Edwin

 

[Bob_Crowley]

I was quite unaware that Greenies are sometimes called Crunchies. I suppose you could liken them to celery stalks - rigid, not very flexible and all fibre.

Sarcasm aside, we do a little bit ourselves for the “environment” - solar power, “heat pump” hot water system (like a hot water system with an air conditioner on top) and an external water tank for outside use only - all subsidised by the taxpayer.

But the reality is that we still rely on mains power to give sufficient clout to start and run most appliances, and entirely at night, or in overcast and wet weather. I estimate we produce about 85% of our power, but most of it is probably fed into the grid.

The water tank doesn’t do anything for internal water savings, which is where most of it is used. The heat pump HWS cut that part of our power usage down by two thirds, but to make these things really effective, the solar power would need battery backup, the water would need to be fed into the internal plumbing with a one way valve, and even solar hot water would need mains power from time to time, if we had it.

So the best you could say is that we provide a bit of a compromise.

My wife and I both drive petrol driven cars (read “gas” for US readers), both of which are probably have mid range fuel consumption. So we’re not all that environmentally friendly.

Frankly to really make a difference, we’d have to plan our societies much better than we do. When I was a kid, most people lived a lot closer to where they work. I still remember every afternoon watching a lot of workers at a nearby factory and tannery walking past our place on their way home. One bloke rode a pushbike with a tiny motor.

But as the years went by and people became more affluent, they acquired cars and started driving to work. Now they commute ridiculous distances in some cases.

I still remember seeing on TV a Soviet era university town somewhere in Russia where people could walk anywhere in the town within about 20 minutes. I suppose I’d like to see more of that sort of planning. But that might work in a university town where most of the people are employed in a university. It’s not going to work when businesses keep opening and closing down, when factories disappear, and while we’ve got so much disposable income.

So in the end it’s up to individuals to make a difference. I believe we’ll be held to account for how we use the earth’s resources, just as we’ll be held to account for the way we’ve treated other people, used our time, used our money, our moral behaviour and all the rest.

And I think some of us are going to be condemned for extreme wastefulness.