When I was a child, I believed, as I do now, that humanity has taken several wrong turns somewhere back in our dark and distant past. Anthropologists are finding more and more compelling evidence that the 1% have been waging an all out assault on the rest of us since at least as far back as when humans first developed grain storage. Turning one person against another has been the modus operandi of those who build up brutal forces that wield power and control over us, at least for the past dozen centuries or so.
It is rather funny that the grains, which first allowed us to get through the starving times are now considered staples. The most savagely abused among peoples of the Earth seem to cling most desperately to their grains of oppression. When those who wrote the Bible wanted to exact social control over masses, they called wheat the staff of life. The three sisters of Native American life included the corn and we all know how rice has shaped the Far East. These foods were the domain of those who had a relationship with the plants until the most "refined" classes found that through them, they could control the population. now that social control has become a science, there are those who feel that nothing more is needed besides the staving off of starvation.
I continue to live as a testament to the fact that there is absolutely no truth to these and other lies that we are told. They used to say that "You are what you eat." and this is true. When you consume the fodder of the corporate food machine, you are just that, fodder for their planetary rape machine. The vast amounts of fossil fuel used to create a toaster waffle, or rice cake dwarf the calories available in the "food". In days of old, a man and an ox could clear about one acre per year of the tree stumps left after the native vegetation was removed. With the advent of dynamite, this process was increased exponentially. Now, we have fossil fuel burning machines that both remove forests, grind them to chips and they can be carted away by another vehicle burning fossil energy the very same day. Our society is currently built on the ability of the top classes to wreak more and more havoc in less and less time.
The slow food movement continues to grow, people are homeschooling and giving home birth at ever-greater rates, but doubling the popularity of things from 1/2% of the population to one percent can feel like a hollow victory for the forces of change. My ex and I had our first child at home and home schooled her for most of her education and we remember the doubling of home birth in our state from 1/2 to one percent. That was over twenty-five years ago. We worked in the field of childbirth education and saved many couples thousands of dollars by teaching them what to expect and how to handle the attempts that the hospitals would make to get them to agree to a medicated and assisted birth process. doctors and scientists cannot help but fall into the trap of thinking that they know better than the rest of us, what we need and would want, if only we were as smart and educated as they think themselves to be. The public is realizing that it is their dependence that has allowed them to become victims of usury, of illogical and short sighted corporate raiders. As more people have taken greater and greater responsibility for their own lives, their own educations and their own food and housing choices, fewer and fewer dollars are flowing to those who claim to be "experts".
For many, the time tested "truth" that lies behind the slogan "Fuck the other guy before he fucks you." is coming into question. At an outdoor event the other day, my wife and I wanted to sit and enjoy a few bites of food at a picnic table. Before we could, I had to remove the trash left behind by the group of people who had left it behind. These sorts of decisions of expediency, the ones that let a fairly large group by the looks of the amount of trash they left behind, neglect their part is the social order are exactly what has been going wrong on a macro-cosmic level for many hundreds of years. The industrial revolution only allowed the rate at which the planet got trashed to increase. Now that we are in the information/techno-logic/industrial age, it seems that the trashing of the environment has just become a foregone conclusion. Even the act of giving birth has become an excuse for women to desire the strongest drugs available, letting the doctors do the work, for whatever they want to charge...insurance will cover it anyway. Once you understand that we all pay under this scenario, making that decision is much harder to do.
What is coming to be has never been before. The knowledge about important technologies, especially those that have been with us for centuries, but were lost because someone found it financially expedient to hide, or because the populations utilizing them were labeled "backward" or "primitive". Our recent history is replete with stories of folks coming from the old world and adopting new world perspectives, techniques and methods. A Hmong friend told me that the use of biochar is common in Southeast Asia. Tribal people all know that the marginal soils would be washed of their nutrients quickly if they did not mix char into their soils. Now, we have relatively rich white people trying to rediscover this ancient agricultural practice. We have Madison avenue types and suits of both colors and stripes lining up to howl at the moon, do sweat lodges or participate in all manner of rites of passage, but this alone is not how we are going to reformulate our civilization. What it will take is understanding who has what to gain if we relinquish or abdicate our responsibility. Once we understand why the lies that our current culture is based on, we can begin to reconsider what, if anything we want to leave for future generations.
It is rather funny that the grains, which first allowed us to get through the starving times are now considered staples. The most savagely abused among peoples of the Earth seem to cling most desperately to their grains of oppression. When those who wrote the Bible wanted to exact social control over masses, they called wheat the staff of life. The three sisters of Native American life included the corn and we all know how rice has shaped the Far East. These foods were the domain of those who had a relationship with the plants until the most "refined" classes found that through them, they could control the population. now that social control has become a science, there are those who feel that nothing more is needed besides the staving off of starvation.
I continue to live as a testament to the fact that there is absolutely no truth to these and other lies that we are told. They used to say that "You are what you eat." and this is true. When you consume the fodder of the corporate food machine, you are just that, fodder for their planetary rape machine. The vast amounts of fossil fuel used to create a toaster waffle, or rice cake dwarf the calories available in the "food". In days of old, a man and an ox could clear about one acre per year of the tree stumps left after the native vegetation was removed. With the advent of dynamite, this process was increased exponentially. Now, we have fossil fuel burning machines that both remove forests, grind them to chips and they can be carted away by another vehicle burning fossil energy the very same day. Our society is currently built on the ability of the top classes to wreak more and more havoc in less and less time.
The slow food movement continues to grow, people are homeschooling and giving home birth at ever-greater rates, but doubling the popularity of things from 1/2% of the population to one percent can feel like a hollow victory for the forces of change. My ex and I had our first child at home and home schooled her for most of her education and we remember the doubling of home birth in our state from 1/2 to one percent. That was over twenty-five years ago. We worked in the field of childbirth education and saved many couples thousands of dollars by teaching them what to expect and how to handle the attempts that the hospitals would make to get them to agree to a medicated and assisted birth process. doctors and scientists cannot help but fall into the trap of thinking that they know better than the rest of us, what we need and would want, if only we were as smart and educated as they think themselves to be. The public is realizing that it is their dependence that has allowed them to become victims of usury, of illogical and short sighted corporate raiders. As more people have taken greater and greater responsibility for their own lives, their own educations and their own food and housing choices, fewer and fewer dollars are flowing to those who claim to be "experts".
For many, the time tested "truth" that lies behind the slogan "Fuck the other guy before he fucks you." is coming into question. At an outdoor event the other day, my wife and I wanted to sit and enjoy a few bites of food at a picnic table. Before we could, I had to remove the trash left behind by the group of people who had left it behind. These sorts of decisions of expediency, the ones that let a fairly large group by the looks of the amount of trash they left behind, neglect their part is the social order are exactly what has been going wrong on a macro-cosmic level for many hundreds of years. The industrial revolution only allowed the rate at which the planet got trashed to increase. Now that we are in the information/techno-logic/industrial age, it seems that the trashing of the environment has just become a foregone conclusion. Even the act of giving birth has become an excuse for women to desire the strongest drugs available, letting the doctors do the work, for whatever they want to charge...insurance will cover it anyway. Once you understand that we all pay under this scenario, making that decision is much harder to do.
What is coming to be has never been before. The knowledge about important technologies, especially those that have been with us for centuries, but were lost because someone found it financially expedient to hide, or because the populations utilizing them were labeled "backward" or "primitive". Our recent history is replete with stories of folks coming from the old world and adopting new world perspectives, techniques and methods. A Hmong friend told me that the use of biochar is common in Southeast Asia. Tribal people all know that the marginal soils would be washed of their nutrients quickly if they did not mix char into their soils. Now, we have relatively rich white people trying to rediscover this ancient agricultural practice. We have Madison avenue types and suits of both colors and stripes lining up to howl at the moon, do sweat lodges or participate in all manner of rites of passage, but this alone is not how we are going to reformulate our civilization. What it will take is understanding who has what to gain if we relinquish or abdicate our responsibility. Once we understand why the lies that our current culture is based on, we can begin to reconsider what, if anything we want to leave for future generations.
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