Durable Mechanics

The other day, I asked my 17 year old son to fix one of our double hung sash windows. Both of the counter-weight ropes had broken. The whole process of taking apart the casing, replacing the rope, knotting things up - and really just appreciating the simple, elegant mechanics of a durable design solution - quietly taught him more than a month of surfing the internet could.  

Our civilization shows no signs of putting itself onto a sustainable footing - and on the contrary seems to be doubling down on the devourous destruction of our underlying generative foundations.  The coming decline is going to mean (eventually) a retrenchment to more sustainable designs and approaches to life. It would save energy to replace these windows and the removable storm windows with whatever high-tech double-paned construct is currently on the market, but I've stuck with the less efficient windows, because I can repair and understand them.

I believe in "fate", but not as an external, inevitable force - rather as the culmination of the hundreds of micro-decisions we make every day, based on our habits and inclinations. I'm not ready yet to make an abrupt leap to "collapse now and avoid the rush", but I'm trying to re-orient my fate toward decline. There is no brighter future ahead.