Living in the Deep South With No AC

[00:00:00]Hello everyone, Alfa Cromwell here. You know, whenever I tell people all the time [clears throat] that I live in the deep south without air conditioning, they tend to react as though I have confessed to dwelling in a lighthouse during a hurricane or as if I were crossing the Atlantic in a rowboat. A lot of people look at me, they're the funny people actually. How can you live without AC? That's sometimes some people that's that's weird or they'll say you're crazy. I couldn't live you can't live in the south. But what what you think people were living for hundreds of years down in the south and the assumption of our age is simple.

[00:00:42]They think heat is an emergency of some kind or discomfort is a crisis and the um the the climate itself is an enemy to be subdued by machinery. And yet for most of human history and indeed for most of the history of the American South, people lived through summers that were every bit as hot as our own. And they endured them not because they possessed superior constitutions but because they possessed a different philosophy of life and they understood that one does not conquer the climate.

[00:01:16]You can't fight God.

[00:01:18]You enter into a kind of negotiation with it. So I would like to speak about that negotiation. I would like to offer you this as advice for those of you young people who don't know how to survive. A lot of you haven't been taught these things. uh your your parents even your parents are too pathetic to teach you something about survival. You have no idea how to survive. Uh if the power grid were to go out for more than two or three days, many of you would just perish and just die literally. Um so I'm not merely going to talk so you should thank me for this message. I'm not merely going to talk to you about surviving summer without AC or air con as the English say, but I'm going to also teach you how to live well without it because there is a difference. It's not just survival, it's about living well. And the first thing you have to understand is that heat is not a singular uh problem.

[00:02:09]Modern people speak of heat as though it were a switch. You are either comfortable or you're miserable. And either the thermostat reads 72° or your civilization is collapsing. Previous generations understood something far more subtle.

[00:02:24]They understood that comfort is the sum of many small decisions. The shape of a house, the height of a ceiling, uh the direction of a window, the cut of a shirt, even the hour of a meal, the weight of a blanket, the position of your chair on the porch, a thousand little adjustments, none of them dramatic, and all of them meaningful.

[00:02:46]And the old southern house was itself a a machine for cooling. I happen to live in a very some of you know this in a very old 18th century plantation house and the ceilings um they stand 11 foot high and above [clears throat] many of the doors you have transom windows your grandparents have that if you're especially in the south the rooms are very large the walls are thick they're substantial they're plaster now none of these features were accidents of style and I know some of you you don't have that luxury you live in some of these modern buildings that are you know probably made by some unqualif qualified builder or something. That's that's your problem though. But they were these are masterpieces of engineering and hot air rises and you give it space to rise and you create pathways for movement and you allow breezes to pass from one side of the structure to the other and you encourage circulation uh rather than confinement.

[00:03:43]Uh some of you live confined all the time. I don't know how you can live like that. You you are prisoners. You got no fresh air. You don't go out. You don't experience nature. You just sit all day at home under the AC. But our ancestors did not possess compressors and refrigerants. And what they possessed, however, was the laws of physics. And physics has not changed because God has not changed. And one of the greatest mistakes of modern architecture is, as I said, this obsession with ceiling buildings. And we construct houses that resemble insulated boxes. It's really rather sad to see all the that you go all across America. There are these suburbs. Every crack is eliminated.

[00:04:24]Every window is closed. Every surface is designed to separate you from the outside world. And then you spend enormous amounts of energy mechanically correcting the consequences. But the old southern home assumes something different. You have a relationship with the outdoors. [snorts] Windows are not just decorative. They're operational.

[00:04:45]And transoms are not something quaint that you look at when you come here.

[00:04:48]They're practical. And the porch is not an aesthetic flourish, although it is beautiful, too. But the it's a living space. And a man sitting on a shaded porch in moving air experiences a very different summer from a man who is sealed inside a drywall cube. You're all pathetic, some of you. You're just working, working, working for a corporation all day. You're sitting there sweating even with even under the AC. And the first cooperates with nature. The second you wage war against it, I'm wearing a suit. I'm not hot. I know the rules. I'm okay. You're probably wearing shorts and you're still hot. But that brings me to fans. And I'm And by the way, you can see the evidence. A lot of you have seen in the oldfashioned pictures and films, you see that under the heat of summer, all the men were wearing suits. No one was complaining. You're wearing a hat.

[00:05:38]Nothing wrong with that. You can survive. Your body will adapt. and we're going to get to that. But I'm often asked whether I use fans. Certainly, you can use a fan. I have uh one of the fans I like in this grand house is uh it's called the old Havana fan. It's a brand.

[00:05:56]It's the old Havana fan. Beautiful stuff. Uh and the idea, but so the idea that living without air conditioning requires rejecting every technological convenience is absurd.

[00:06:06]A fan, you see, consumes a fraction of the energy required by a cooling system.

[00:06:11]So, I'm also saving you money. And the effect is remarkable because moving air transforms heat. An 85 degree room with a steady breeze is going to feel vastly more comfortable than some kind of 75° room with stagnant air. And again, our ancestors understood this instinctively.

[00:06:29]They prized cross ventilation. They designed homes around the prevailing winds. The southern Europeans still do that. You go to places like Greece, you go to places like Italy, Spain, they still do that. Most people don't have AC and they survive quite well. In fact, uh I was reading recently about life expectancy in some of that. They have a higher life expectancy than we do. And so entire towns were planned according to patterns of air flow. And today we often purchase ever larger cooling systems. And while you neglect the humble movement of air itself, but the house is only half the uh the equation, the other half is the body. And here we encounter one of the most neglected truths of modern life. Many people are hot because they insist upon behaving as though it were winter. You eat heavy meals. You wear heavy clothing uh made out of polyester. Uh you undertake strenuous activity during the hottest hours of the day. Then they wonder why they suffer. The traditional cultures, those of us who have lived in a warm climate, you develop habits and customs for a reason. And these customs are not random. They are adaptations. If you consider food, for example, the modern American diet, they want you dead. It's astonishingly ills suited to summer. You got gigantic portions, excessive processed industrial slop sugar, heavy uh artificial fats, caramel color, constant snacking, food engineered to stimulate your appetite and keep you as a slave consumer. Some of you are slaves by nature. That's what you do rather than to satisfy your body. And then you wonder why you feel sluggish and overheated. A large meal is a furnace.

[00:08:13]Come on now. The blood has to circulate.

[00:08:17]The temperature rises. You know, traditional southern eating when it's stripped of modern excess because nowadays everything has become unfortunately globalized. So even southerners are adapting really bad habits. Uh it often reflects a different logic. You got fresh vegetables, seasonal fruits, cold preparation. I love my chilled tomato soup, cucumber, cold salads, cold foods in general. uh porridge, simple proteins, water- richch foods.

[00:08:47]You see, it's all about moderation.

[00:08:49]You notice that the cuisines developed in warm climates around the world, they frequently share these characteristics and there is wisdom in that. You don't have to have in in a in June and July a July supper. You don't need to resemble doesn't need to resemble a medieval banquet. You're you're a peasant anyway, most of you. You don't need to resemble no kings. You can eat lightly and you can live better. And you should also learn to drink intelligently. You have a [snorts] modern obsession today with chemical beverages. It's extraordinary, isn't it? We have somehow convinced ourselves that hydration requires turning water into dessert. And the result is predictable.

[00:09:28]Many of you suffer more thirst, more consumption, less satisfaction. But if you're accustomed, you know, to um constant ice cold drinks, you often discover that ordinary temperatures become intolerable and the body loses its adaptability. Everything becomes a shock. Now, I like ice. Most Americans do. I like ice on my drinks. I just don't need it. You don't need it in water, though.

[00:09:53]Ice would be better suited in a cocktail, for example. A nice cocktail as you sit on the porch. But everything becomes an emergency these days.

[00:10:02]Everything is a crisis for you and the old way cultivated resilience that I I look around today and I see so many people who are sorry excuses for men especially the men women too but I can't speak of them because I'm not a woman.

[00:10:16]Um I can speak of what I see in them right but I don't know all the details and I don't want to know but I can tell you men today they're sorry excuse always complaining you have no resilience. No wonder you allow no wonder in the western world we are being overrun by undesirabs because there are no men left anymore with with character with resilience with a with a certain toughness. And then there is the clothing. And perhaps nowhere is modern society more absurd. You wrap yourself up in synthetic fabrics that are originally, by the way, derived from petroleum and you your materials that trap the heat, materials that also resist breathability. and they seem specifically designed to make your summers miserable. I don't care if you're wearing shorts, you're still hot because you're not wearing the right fabrics. And then you compensate by lowering the thermostat. They got you right where they want you. What? Right where they want you as a consumer. And this is backwards. You know, linen exists, by the way. 100% linen. Cotton.

[00:11:17]This is cotton exists. 100% cotton. Locally tailored.

[00:11:24]Less is more. Less is more. Light wool.

[00:11:27]I like wool, too. Light wool even has its place. I've bought a few wool jackets as well. And for centuries, people discovered what worked. The purpose of clothing in summer is not merely to cover you. Um, it's also ventilation. And the finest warm weather garments, they feel almost alive because they cooperate with the body. a loose linen shirt can accomplish what many imagine requires another 5 degrees less uh on the thermostat. But I con I'm going to confess that one of my harsher criticisms of modern life today. It concerns our relationship with consumption itself. You increasingly treat every inconvenience as a purchasing opportunity to warm by a larger unit. I've heard people all the time say that. Oh, it's so hot. I'm I need a better AC. You're still warm. Buy another and another and another. still uncomfortable, buy something else. And so the cycle continues. But rarely do you ask whether your habits are the true source of the problem. You excel, the modern world excels at selling solutions. But you are less um interested in cultivating wisdom. And the old approach began with observation.

[00:12:36]Where does the sun strike the house?

[00:12:38][clears throat] Which rooms remain cooler? What time does the breeze arrive? Uh when when should work begin?

[00:12:45]when should it end? How should furniture be arranged? How should shutters be adjusted? These questions, they cost nothing. And yet um they often matter more than expensive uh equipment.

[00:13:00]Another forgotten art is the the the management of time. People once organized their days according to climate. Imagine that. What a revolutionary idea. The hottest hours were not treated as ideal moments for strenuous labor. One rose early. You accomplish difficult task before the day reached its peak. You slow down when nature suggested slowing down. There's a cleaning lady who comes here. And I told her the other day, I want you here earlier. She kind of looked at me. I said, I don't want you fainting. I saw you the other day at the bus stop. You were under that hot sun one of the one one day you're going to faint. I told her, "You need to come earlier. I don't want to I don't want to have some kind of death on my watch. You're going to have a heat stroke." She really thanked me. She She was almost in tears. She said, "Nobody has ever spoken to me that way." I said, "Well, it's about time you start getting used to it." And the reason I speak to you that way, to the cleaning lady, is because I'm actually doing her a favor. She even realized herself.

[00:13:57]The maids sometimes, you know, they're so used to doing things off schedule.

[00:14:01]Cleaning should always be done in the morning. And in this house, there are rules. And the cleaning is always done in the mornings. And every week is a different task.

[00:14:13]And there there's specific cleaning products that go into each thing as well, but I won't get into that right now. So you resume your activity later.

[00:14:22]The south was full of such rhythms. And the modern world seeks to maintain identical levels of activity at every hour of every season. That is the part of the the predatory na nature of of unrestrained capitalism, which is not a Christian idea. By the way, capitalism is not compatible with the scriptures. At least not not the capitalism we understand today. That's what I'm referring to.

[00:14:48]But this requires enormous mechanical intervention. Air conditioning now becomes less a convenience than a prerequisite for an unnatural schedule.

[00:14:57]So, as I said earlier, food is very important. Cucumbers, watermelon, water, you know, a lot of people they say, "Oh, watermelon, they say only black people eat uh water like watermelon." That's not true. That's it. They got it from the south. Our ancestors, we all It's It has a It's a water-based meal. Of course, they like watermelon. It's natural in the south, but it's not just black people. It it's the climate.

[00:15:19]And there's also a psychological dimension to all this. This and and this really may be the most important point today because many people suffer from heat long before heat actually harms them. And they anticipate misery. They dread it. They monitor it constantly.

[00:15:35]And every bead of perspiration you it's a catastrophe, evidence of catastrophe.

[00:15:41]That's not resilience. You are masquerading fragility as sensitivity.

[00:15:48]And sweating is normal. Warmth is normal. Seasonality is normal. And we are more adaptable than we imagine. One of the things I've noticed um is that you start sweating a lot less if you're not under the AC. Now, of course, because you still sweat, you should always keep your bodies clean. If you're one of these people, you don't keep your body clean, you don't at least wash your face in the morning and you do nothing, then then you're you're you're a pig at that point, right? You're not keeping your body clean and you and it's disrespectful to other people.

[00:16:20]So, adaptation requires exposure and you cannot become accustomed to heat while you're spending every moment avoiding it. The body learns. So, given the opportunity, it learns remarkably well.

[00:16:34]Now, let me be clear before some of you start getting hysterical. I am not declaring war on air conditioning. I am not saying that AC is sinful. It has saved lives in many cases. It has. We've seen it's transformed entire regions. Uh it's not good for the environment though. It's not good for the wildlife.

[00:16:52]Certainly not. But there are circumstances in which it is unquestionably, especially today, necessary. I know the elderly need it. I know the the the ill uh the vulnerable and and they deserve every protection available. I understand that. I am merely suggesting that many of us have forgotten skills once regarded as pretty fundamental and basic and ordinary because your parents are too incompetent to teach you otherwise. And those are skills that make you less dependent and skills that make you more observant and skills that connect you to place. Uh living without AC for me has taught me that comfort is not just a temperature.

[00:17:32]It is some kind of relationship. It's a relationship with your house, with your clothing, with your habits, with your food, with your expectation, and with your climate. You got to be aware of CL.

[00:17:43]The old plantation house in which I live, it was designed by people who understood this relationship uh intimately. And many of you are old enough to remember taking your school final exams in the heat of summer and at best your teacher brought in a box floor fan like the one I have while you got yelled at and told off for being a pathetic loser or a failure. If you are at least generation X, come on now, be honest in the comments. You most certainly remember this. I'm generation X. I remember this. Especially if you went to a private Christian school. It was very non nonsense. And nowadays, they'll even close school for any excuse, whether it be, "Oh, it's snowing or it's too hot." There were no snow days in the past, by the way. At least not up north. There were because I I know people who are the the baby boomers tell me they they many of them didn't have snow days. You still had to go to school under a blizzard. Many of you are so coddled and weak today and so weak and pathetic. We really do have a weak generation of pancies.

[00:18:43]And I look at, like I said earlier, I look at so many men today and I just find them so weak in every possible way.

[00:18:49]No manly qualities at all of leadership and endure and endurance. Weak, cowardly men.

[00:18:58]No real men would allow their nations to be overrun as we have them today.

[00:19:02]Certainly not. Although I will admit it's not just it's not just a Gen Z problem or or or a millennial problem.

[00:19:09]This the decline started right after the Second World War. with. But the difference was that they it's not that they were not resilient men, but they had very misguided ideas. It was all about democracy and civil rights and it just took off.

[00:19:25]But the high ceilings, the transom windows, the deep rooms, the movement of air, it all of it reflects a philosophy largely abandoned by modern life. You know, I keep getting notifications on my I'm about to just throw this away and get Linux. I'm I'm so fed up with the notifications. I don't even know what it is. I'll ask my assistants later. Uh but it's not a philosophy of domination.

[00:19:53]It's a philosophy of accommodation. And there is wisdom there. So when people ask me, how do you live without air conditioning in the deep south? My answer is surprisingly simple. I don't try to make it feel like Minnesota.

[00:20:08]I allow summer to be summer. I don't fight God. I open windows when wisdom dictates in the morning or the evening and it works. I use fans as well. I wear um well this is cotton. I wear linen. I drink lots of cold beverages. Uh I eat sensibly. I rise early. I find myself I don't know about you all. Uh in the summer I sleep less. And I was investigating this these facts the other day and u they were saying that in in the past summer is made to sleep less.

[00:20:39]It's a it's a natural and so I live pretty close to nature and it makes sense. I'm not sleeping as as much as in the winter. So I respect the climate rather than resent it. And above all I remember something that our ancestors knew perfectly well. The goal is not to eliminate every trace of discomfort from life. The goal is to live gracefully within the world as it actually exists.

[00:21:04]Thank you all. I hope this was useful and I hope that I'm going to save you some money this summer. ditch your AC if you can. You don't need it. You know, students at uh many of the colleges up north in the northeast especially, but even in the south when they had dorm rooms, they didn't have AC in their dorm rooms. This was as recently as the 1980s. You can ask Gen X people this. Uh but anyway, uh we do have a forum. The forum continues to grow. By the way, thank you all. Uh I'm going to link it down in the description and pin it as a comment. I encourage you. There's some interesting discussions going on. I've opened one up today, but time permitting, I will try to participate if somebody asked me a direct question. And I I do try to check uh but u I can't moderate it because I don't have time.

[00:21:42]So just I I would ask that you are polite to each other. Um you know we don't we don't we want something nice going uh respectful at least of other people. But uh I do encourage you to uh participate and if this was useful to you then also I encourage you to subscribe to the channel. Thank you all and uh hopefully on Sunday I can give you my latest message. It's going to be a little um controversial, I think, but it it's it's something that needs to be said. Thank you all.