On electricity

Following a brief blackout during Storm Eunice in which I literally couldn’t do anything – even have a hot bath – I have become preoccupied with the idea that Western society has become far too dependent on electricity. We use it for everything, even things which we have been doing electricity-free for thousands of years: cooking, heating, food storage, laundry, cleaning, lighting, communicating…

When the next Carrington event comes, we’re fucked, basically.

Approached from an animist perspective, how does one enter right relation with electricity? A prominent occultist recently described electricity as a ‘permanent scream’, a theft from the Stone People. A gift, for which to be thankful, before acknowledging that our relationship with electricity is fucked.

If electricity, like fire, was thieved from the gods, and if the gods who grant electricity are of the Earth – in the form of conductive metals, wires through which the current travels before it must be ‘grounded’ – then electricity is inherently chthonic. It comes from the Underworld.

(This would then paradoxically set Fire up as an opposing force from the Sky – which is interesting because technically the natural kindle of a lightning bolt is pure electricity! Anyways.)

If electricity is theft, and humans have done the thieving rather than sympathetic Titans, then it is us, rather than Prometheus, who have chained ourselves to a rock. An electric chair. Pre-cooked for interested eagles.

ANYWAYS. What can be done about our dependence on electricity? How can we unchain ourselves from the rock?

(Come to think of it, Electricity is generated by combustion, giving it a reciprocal relationship with Fire. Anyways!!)

So here is my partial list of how to enter into right relation with electricity, bearing in mind that my family is currently wholly dependent on the stuff. I will go through as many uses of electricity in my household as I can think of, and consider any manifest alternatives.

1) Heating / Cooking. I’m combining systems where that makes sense. Heating and cooking are really just one system, because cooking by definition involves heat. Now, you could use electricity to heat filaments in your radiator or hob, or combine it with gas, but were someone to set off an EMP bomb in your neighbourhood you at minimum wouldn’t be able to heat your home, and potentially you wouldn’t be able to cook as well! Unless you built some kind of risky campfire in your back garden, and I don’t know about you but I don’t have any practical cooking cauldrons.

Combustion produces objectionable emissions, but are these emissions really much worse than that required to produce a kWh? Not to mention that we’ve been using fire for cooking and heating for thousands of years, and I think Fire misses our company. When combined with other reductions in electricity use, I think combustion for heating and cooking is an acceptable and sustainable alternative.

2) Food storage. I ask you, do we really require appliances running at all times, just to prevent our food from rotting? For one thing, older homes have pantries or cellars which also double as cool rooms. For another, you can build a zeer pot using just two large terracotta jars, a bag of sand, and some water. If a zeer pot can keep food cool in the Sahara, then we don’t need electricity for refrigeration.

Ah, but what about freezing? What about it. Humans have smoked, salted, and fermented food for thousands of years – your chest freezer is not the be-all end-all of long-term food storage. In fact, fermented food is demonstrably better for you, so why demonise the rotting process when you can use it to such advantage instead? In short, give me back my pantry, I want to stash sauerkraut in it!

3) Laundry and cleaning. This is probably the trickiest one, because the adoption of electricity in these systems was done to relieve housewives of the burden of ‘women’s work’. I, for one, don’t know how to use a mangle, and the harmony of my household relies on a functioning dishwasher. Not to mention that every time I’ve tried washing clothes in a bath they come out smelly, and brushing a carpet is an experience I would rather not repeat.

And yet. We already ditched our tumble dryer as air drying is significantly more economical. With a little research, I could probably get the hang of hand-washing. All we’re missing is a (completely optional) mangle.

Having said all that, is the ‘problem’ with laundry and cleaning that it is time-consuming and wearisome, or is the actual problem that the burden of these tasks still falls almost completely on women? Would laundry and cleaning be so burdensome if women’s work wasn’t routinely devalued?

My proposed solution, therefore, is threefold:

• Overthrow the patriarchy (ie make men do hand-washing)
• Rip up your carpets and replace with large, luxuriant rugs that can be transported outdoors and shaken (or just have wooden floors…or use a vacuum, I guess. Humph.)
• Bring back the laundrette, because then the electricity use is outsourced to someone else with the added benefit that you have an excuse to leave your house and meet people

4) Communication and lighting. Here it is. The one thing I would continue to use electricity for.

Where would we be without the telegraph and lightbulb? Without the ability to speak near instantaneously with loved ones and even strangers across the oceans? Without the ability to see things and not run the risk of setting our whole damn house in fire?

Whether for better or worse, we wouldn’t have computers and the internet without the lightbulb and telegraph. However gross both of these things are, they remain the greatest repositories of human knowledge that have ever been. (Much as I prefer knowledge in more resilient physical or oral form.)

So in my retrofitted house setup, most everything would be analogue except for a quarantined ‘computer room’, and maybe a home lighting system. Food can be preserved and prepared with minimal wastage of the gift from the Underworld. The mechanics of our life above should not rely on theft from Below.

(She says, in a blog post on the internet. Anyways!)