Do you want to make the world a better place, but sometimes feel like giving up because the problems are so big?

Do you long to become self-reliant and not have to depend on the industrial food, medicine, and energy systems?

Are you ready to step away from the cultural conditioning that tries to turn us all into good consumers and obedient citizens?

Then it’s time to Plant Yourself.

When you Plant Yourself, you wield kitchen tools and garden implements, not weapons.

When you Plant Yourself, you enrich life rather than destroy it.

When you Plant Yourself, you create the future rather than hope for it or fear it.

On this site, you’ll discover simple and beautiful ways to enrich your life while regenerating the earth; whether it be upgrading the food on your table, the soil in your garden, the thoughts in your mind, or the strength of your community.

You'll get inspired by the Plant Yourself Podcast: dozens of interviews with inspiring and knowledgeable experts, movers and shakers who are making the world a much better place.

You’ll find videos that clearly demonstrate how to grow your own food and how to store and serve that food. How to move joyfully and get fit without having to plug into the dreary and body-shaming fitness industry. How to grow your awareness and reduce the stress in your life.

You’ll be introduced to tools and techniques for unplugging from the “system” and living life on your own terms.

Who am I?

My name is Howard Jacobson. I'm a marketer, consultant, ecological gardener, author, and performance coach. I helped T. Colin Campbell, co-author of The China Study, write his latest bestseller, WHOLE: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition.

I built this site for my own benefit; to remind myself on a daily basis what's important, and to have a good excuse to call up some of the most fascinating and inspiring people on the planet and ask them everything I want to know from them.

The Vast Conspiracy

Remember the Terminator movies, in which there is a vast artificial intelligence that seeks to destroy humanity and the earth upon which we live?

It's real, but it's not called Skynet.

Instead, we know it as “consumer culture.”

And consumer culture's prime directive is to turn everything into money: our time, the earth’s resources, art, beauty, music, kindness, compassion. It all goes into the economy and comes out as dollars.

That’s why we’re destroying our environment, waging endless wars, enslaving millions in the 3rd world to grow our import crops and manufacture our clothes and sporting equipment, and numbing ourselves with alcohol and drugs and reality TV and Facebook and all the busy-ness that keeps us from listening to the anguished pounding of our own hearts, telling us that This Isn’t All There Is.

Our Options

We can ignore this cry and keep plugging away within the system, saving for vacation and retirement and telling our kids to study hard and get into good colleges.

We can become revolutionaries and drop-outs and try to bring the system down.

We can become survivalists, stocking up on guns, ammo, and five years worth of canned food and bottled water so we can survive the coming collapse.

Or we can take a soulful stand and Plant Ourselves, creating a beautiful new world from the ashes of the old as it crumbles around us, falling apart from the weight of its own infinitely hungry logic.

You see, we’re running out of things to turn into money.

The Coming Collapse

The Pyramid Scheme that we call global economics has hit a wall. And there’s no turning back.

Soon it will be obvious to everyone that our systems are stressed beyond their capacity, and are breaking down beyond our ability to repair them.

The Plant Yourself Toolbox

Some of us are taking action now. We’re learning about the old ways, the ways our great-grandparents knew and consumer culture has hypnotized us to forget. Ways that keep us from dependence on supermarkets and supply chains.

Like growing our own food. Building our own dwellings. Maintaining our own tools. Educating our own kids.

We do this not out of a sense of despair and diminishment. To the contrary, when we unplug from the treadmill of consumerism, we discover a vitality and abundance and purpose that those stuck in the rat race can only envy.

We Create Community

While we enrich ourselves, we’re also enriching our communities.

By reminding our friends and neighbors how to rely on each other instead of hired help and government programs.

By building webs of connection; by weaving economies that resemble ecologies: local, efficient, and diverse.

We Regenerate the Earth

We understand that only species who improve their environments can survive long-term. Bears shit in the woods and improve the soil. Impalas eat grass and maintain healthy savannas. Bats keep down mosquito populations. And so on.

We are way beyond living “sustainably.” We see too much that needs repair: our soil, our air, our water, the biological diversity of our ecosystems, our cultural diversity, our spirits.

Using nature as inspiration and each other as council members, we build life-giving systems to replace the death-dealing ones mandated by civilization.

Ready to dive in? Browse the site, and feel free to steal and distribute everything you find valuable – everything on PlantYourself.com is offered under the Creative Commons license. (But please link to us if you support the mission and want to see it grow.)

And feel free to join the conversation by commenting on any contact that moves you so we can stay connected.