so why aren't Permites all vegetarians?

Discussion in 'General chat' started by kimbo.parker, Jun 6, 2014.

  1. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    it is something of a rhetorical question that i feel i know an answer for...

    it was put to me recently....and i ventured " because they are all hypocritical morons?" ;) .... yet that's not it and i know it....they (Permites) think it's some gardening thing
    (Permaculture), which it is (now).

    yet from the conservation and ecological context of Permaculture as 'systems design', one is immediately confronted by the consumptive footprint of meat eating.

    basically, it is massive, unjustifiable, consumptive excess - lest one is some small holder doing synergistic relationships with animals practising an unusually ethical manner of deriving ones meat.

    if you are just the average urban monkey getting your meat pre killed and from the butcher you are hitched to a consumptive excess that makes recycling and the like the equivalent of a band-aid on an amputated limb.

    if any of this is flying over your permie head - let me assure you, as i have been assured, that mainstream meat eating is truly a consumptive excess....
    to do with the losses in the conversion of plant based proteins to meat based proteins.

    like i said, there are exceptions,,,and slow food and synergistic relationships comprise the bulk of these.....
    (oh, and eating only roadkill, blameless)

    _______________________

    while i have you here;
    are you a misanthropic bit of human stew who is battling with the ethics of the continuation of your life as such? ( *hug - i love your accuracy but don't despair ),,,,there is a way out without topping yourself ....

    become the man / woman insider for the animals....turn traitor.
    it works for me.

    you can undo lots of humans by just living for the non human earthlings.
    there is lots of support for this....

    it is a lifestyle thing....it has a richness, and makes sense of an otherwise pointless human existence.
    get in touch with the inner animal, transcend your benighted humanity and be the thorn in the side of comfortable speciesists where ever you may find them (they are frkn everywhere).

    i believe that misanthropes make the uber animal activists....

    leave the stew,

    start by watching "Earthlings" - which you can do free online.
    and join the fight,,,

    along the way you'll encounter many other misanthropes and jaded permacuture designers who have found new reasons and ways to address saving the world....
    it is a subtle tweaking of the objectives when what we are saving the earth from is humans.

    embrace your inner animal, get new license to be a prick, and dam it - if love doesn't come calling.

    it's real.

    let me hear your animal noise - give me a haaarrr harrrr harrrr and baby kick some arse.

    love ya
    k

    ps( ya see what happens when ya stop eating meat Helen?,,,when was the last time you heard me wish anyone love?....never: )

    meat eating reduces potentially gentle herbivores - to the personalities of cats - pricks, selfish cruel torturers.....

    i moderate my inclination to extremism by reserving my option to kill cats - after i toss them around for a bit of fun first.

    vegans - now they are extremists....they can not dig the possibilities of synergistic relationships with bees and chickens for example.

    but i'm not going to piss on vegans - i appreciate that it takes some extreme 'weight' to counter the massive inertia of the unthinking, violent, cruel, self serving masses of human stew....

    it is the same reason i find space for christians and muslims - extremists to counter extremists.

    too tired for more fun,,,night night.
     
  2. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    I eat vegetarian all the time; deer, elk, cow, goat.....

    Why I don't... ..it does NOT work for my body, that simple.

    My other reason, the Doctor that championed this diet in the 70's recanted and went back to meat.
     
  3. helenlee

    helenlee Junior Member

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    "if you are just the average urban monkey getting your meat pre killed and from the butcher you are hitched to a consumptive excess that makes recycling and the like the equivalent of a band-aid on an amputated limb.[/I"

    Unless you are living *the most* sustainable life you possibly can, you're contributing to the exsanguination. As far as I can tell, that is just about everyone in the western world. Simply not eating meat isn't enough to stem the flow. We need people to immediately embrace radical simplicity & sustainability in every area of their lives, & that just isn't going to happen.
    How many people do you reckon you could convince to eat only what they grow or swap with neighbours? Only eat meat they kill themselves? To use & consume housing, clothing, household & personal care items they produce themselves, from materials they grew themselves, or sourced ethically & locally? Don't even mention transport! How many do you reckon would embrace giving up their car or sharing a car? To forget flying anywhere ever again? The answer is almost zero. The truth is that unless you're doing that, or at least working your butt off to drag your lifestyle towards something resembling that, you're not doing enough. For these changes to happen en masse, we need a political & social framework that allows that shift. Right now, not only the governments but the people who elect them would still prefer to sit in the first class seats of jetliner's flying into the World Trade Centre than walk to paradise. And we can't even say this truth out loud, because if we do, everyone will get all hot & bothered & disillusioned & feel the need to jump in their personal car & drive down town to grab a Big McCrap, a six pack & a video to sooth their overwhelming feelings of anxiety & depression & helplessness & isolation.

    For my money, Permaculture is the best answer we have to how to survive on this planet. The "OMG ... YES!" feeling I had when I first learned about this stuff is still with me, & I have never found another theory or system that comes close. I don't reckon you can have a Permaculture system without animals. Theoretically you could have them & not eat them, but once you start going down that road it becomes problematic & it all gets a bit silly pretty quickly. For me, raising & killing ones own meat in the most humane, ethical, natural way possibly is the answer. To do that, we all have to be living in a Permaculture system to start with, or at least bartering with others who do. And therein lies the problem - getting people to make the move to actually living this stuff, to living sustainably.

    love ya
    k

    ps( ya see what happens when ya stop eating meat Helen?,,,when was the last time you heard me wish anyone love?....never: )



    If not eating meat causes you to experience love & connection, then I'm gunna support it : ) For a man who lives in a house he built with his own hands, grows his own food, doesn't burn fossil fuels driving anywhere unnecessary in a second hand car he maintains himself, who takes holidays at his own water-hole, wears recycled clothing, who reads & thinks & sweats, & who shares the things he learns from that reading & thinking & sweating, who mends & makes do, who gets up & does it all over again after the gods knock him down - decade in, decade out, I'll make an exception. A man whose life respects the dharma of one tap can eat what he bloody well likes. He earned it.


    PS: May I have a hug while you're feelin' the luuuuurve please? : )
     
  4. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    What she said. ^^^ Including the hug bit!

    I was going to talk about using animals for manure and other versions of soil improvement and how they reproduce and you only need one male version around so you eat the others. But you and I both know I'm an urban monkey getting prekilled (organic locally produced mostly) meat from my butcher. But I'd like to aspire to the former one day. At present I'm about 80% of total calorie intake vegetarian - the remaining child living at home is vegan so rather than making 2 different dishes each meal I do vegan for most meals, but I do best on bacon and eggs for breakfast. The eggs come in a non-exploitative way from the cloacas of my own chickens. I have tried cereal based breakfasts and by 10 am I'm in a pile on the floor looking for another decent feed again. I can go almost all day on 2 eggs and 2 rashers of bacon, and have managed to lose 15 kg in the past few years while eating my grand breakfast of queens.

    I can't produce enough non-animal foods for myself to feed two of us full time from a backyard without nutritional deficiency - so at some point I need to access the exploitative food chain even if it were just for fruit and vege. I do what ever I can in my power to do that ethically by shopping at farmers markets and the local organic shop rather than the stupid market.

    I have no issues with the choice to be vegetarian, vegan or Kalathumpian. I'm more bothered by people over consuming and voting for Tony Abbott. Even worse - over consuming WHILE voting for Tony.
     
  5. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    i have been vegetarian in the past and will likely be so again in the future, but right now i'm not. instead of having another home, i'm living with someone else, cutting down on the demands made upon the planet as much as i can, it is easier to live as two in the same general space than to have to keep up yet another homestead. i think that counts for something.

    as for food, we grow some here, i like beans of all sorts so i try to grow as many of them as i can once the other crops are planted. right now i have more varieties and cross-breeds to work with than i have room to grow. if i had acreage i'd probably grow most of it in beans in rotation with other cover crops. can't say i'd have animals, worms do everything i need for them to do and i don't have to worry about how many males to females, inbreeding, or parasites or dunking, spraying, spaying, clipping, ... the thought of keeping animals makes me tired right there and the fact that i can't go days and ignore an animal like a chicken, but i can go a month at times after topping off the worm bins with food.

    i haven't figured out the ratio of what we grow to what we buy, but it is probably not very high as i'd like it to be, but that is because this really isn't a permaculture household, it's a mixed household, of one person who'd like to be more sustainable and integrated and the other person who is pretty well set in her ways and she doesn't want to get into "that other stuff" as she puts it. so i do what i can and we eat beans several times a week, and other veggies we grow that are put up for the winter. tomatoes are probably the biggest crop and largest cash savings, but right now i'm looking at a bumper crop of strawberries and so i'll be sharing them around and making stuff from them as much as i can. the critters get their share too - including the worms.
     
  6. Gonhar

    Gonhar Junior Member

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    We do the best we can according to our means and real life situation. I hunt and am the only one in my household that eats wild game (deer, turkey, squirrel, dove) although I have been successful in having my wife partake on several occasions. We shop from local farm produce as much as we can and we grow some fruit. I do not judge vegans, vegetarians, paleos or another person that tries to be conscious about the planet. My mantra is to educate and lead by example not by pontificating about the superiority of this or that.
     
  7. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    iss that you John Wayne?

    g'day gonhar,

    if i extract one word from your post and lay it bare - PONTIFICATE - i shine a light on your value judgement of your superiority.

    i do pontificate ( as you correctly allude to ) and this is my style,,,,

    you hunt? and this is one hell of a superiority issue of yours - where do you get the right to hunt, who says you can kill?.....you do.

    so i pontificate and allege my ethical superiority, whilst you hunt and kill using the extreme violence of a hunter killer, whilst employing the advanced technology of your species to ensure you suffer no risk and the playing field is never level....i call this a coward,,,that's right John Wayne, callin you yella.

    i acknowledge you are leading by example and this scares the beejeezies out of me; but mate, i respect you,,,i respect your choices, and i will stand by your freedoms to choose.....

    in doing so, i find myself backed into a corner....where all that is left for me and my gentle ethical platform is PONTIFICATION -

    it is what those of us with an Ethics issue do,,,we did it with Nazis and their choices with Jews, and the leading by example they did.
    we PONTIFICATED and still do.

    We do it with Islamic Extremism and the violence and killing associated with that bit of value judgement and that version of leading by example.

    Mate - mercury is retro - we should not even be having this discussion, not now.
    ,
    so why don't we let smarter people and democracy do the job for us?....

    why not put our selfish agendas up for intellectual critique and moral reasoning, then as flawed as it may be, accept a democratic call on the outcome.....i'm game but are you?

    here's where it happens -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNED7GJLY7I

    if you were the hunted, would you feel the same.
    or is your notion of fairness a totally selfish bit of your Superiority complex.

    do you have kids? are you teaching them your shit by example....dam it john wayne, you're a smart guy, snap out of it.

    (see, mercury retro,,,,,sorry )

    the reason i can PONTIFICATE and you can not,,,is my ethical platform is so even handed...the deal i offer to life, is the deal i will accept from life.

    i notice some of your country men have taken this hunting ethos into schools and public places.
    one of my countrymen, a baseballer recently fell victim to some hunters in your country....no doubt following the example set by those removed from an ethical platform upon which they could pontificate from.

    (dam, mercury retro again - or aspergers - either/ or)

    i like it when you post on threads i'm active in - so few people attempt it - those that do sometimes get thought of as paid.,,,,in flurries of private messages the word goes out, "for gods sake don't encourage the bastard. "

    it's been real
    K

    https://www.all-creatures.org/articles/act-ab-anger.html
     
  8. Gonhar

    Gonhar Junior Member

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    I like reading your rants Kimbo. I do agree with some of your viewpoints, particularly , if i read you correctly, the insidiousness of multiculturalism. As for Hitler, my dad,a real John Wayne, fought nazism and spent 5 months in a Nazi POW camp. So by his example i will defend my family and heritage from threats from the islamic caliphate dreamers.
    Anyways, i enjoy the market of ideas i get to read here.
     
  9. helenlee

    helenlee Junior Member

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    "in doing so, i find myself backed into a corner....where all that is left for me and my gentle ethical platform is PONTIFICATION -"

    I respectfully & humbly disagree kimbo. I ask that you consider sharing in place of pontificating.

    Perhaps some people don't post on threads you're active in because they're afraid of responses that would scold the skin off a pig? Some of us continue to try - in my case because you have a brilliant mind & I derive a great deal of knowledge & pleasure from what you write. Perhaps others are not so brave because you might employed the cruelty of the hunter who uses his great advantage without the proper restraint of the stewardship of a true stockman? Allowing oneself to be vulnerable by dropping one's weapons & engaging in hand to hand combat is, as you point out, an act that requires unparalleled courage, especially for those of us most vulnerable to wounding. It is an act terrifying beyond the understanding of most of the rest of the herd. I know, because I feel that terror. Your intellect is a rare & fascinating thing. But when intellect joins forces with fear it becomes a liability as well as an asset, a double edged sword that causes one to bleed as one wield it at others less skilled. Exsanguination from wounds inflicted by ones own sword is not the hill I want to die on, & I am now summoning the courage required to step out of my castle & into the street. Would you consider taking the journey with me? I know it's a fearfully dangerous thing to do, but you are not a man who strikes me as being willing to be ruled by fear, nor to die with territories left unexplored.

    Sincerely,
    with love & affection & gratitude for all I have learned from & enjoyed of you on this forum,
    Helen
     
  10. adiantum

    adiantum Junior Member

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    One time I got into a debate with a young vegan who was refusing to even eat honey, saying it would be "co-opting the agenda of the bees to my own purpose". I told her that the agenda of that cabbage out there in the garden was to sit there till next spring and then sprout up and bloom and make a whole bunch of cabbage seeds....and when I, or she, or whoever, picks that cabbage and eats it, we are co-opting it's agenda to our own purpose..... Permaculture for me starts with observation of nature. What I see going on in nature is opportunism....plants and animals looking for niches, often more than one, and resources, to exploit. Because ultimately they all are relying only on solar energy, the playing field is pretty level, but ultimately all the players are playing to win. We don't judge a dog or a deer for being greedy.....it's just being what it is and doing what it does. The problem with the human condition is ultimately a problem of energy.....we've gotten addicted to a huge overplus of fossil energy. I'm not sure anyone can totally get rid of it. I know I can't, and I'm one who has made many a meal of roadkill and dumpster diving and what not....but I'll still save up and buy gas and run a chainsaw, because I know what it takes to chop wood without one and I don't want to go there....not with an indoor space to heat and a wife to keep warm!
    Here's another conundrum....touched on before. I had a friend in New York City who was feeling depressed at how unsustainable her life was becoming, while there I was in my off-grid permie commune homestead. I reminded her that she lives in a place with functioning public transit. I, by contrast, had to drive 15 miles to get to the nearest library, grocery store (and its dumpster), church, nightclub, etc. At that time over half my budget went into maintaining that car (even though it was a fully paid-off gift...) My friend, by contrast, could simply walk to most of these things, and take the subway to the rest. The ecological footprint surveys make it clear that the big issue is not car use so much as car ownership.....since so much energy has been used up to produce the car itself.....
    Here's yet another conundrum. Nobody can do it alone, or even in a nuclear family. There are so many questions around sustainability which are only amenable to real solutions in larger collectives. Right now I'm spending an hour daily shelling and sorting and leaching and smashing foraged acorns to feed my laying hens....all for two eggs a day plus the raising of thirteen babies. And that's with their still getting protein supplement. I still have hopes to eliminate that as my black soldier flies come on line. But at what point do I give up and put the chicken feed into the same category as the chain saw.....to do without it is simply incomprehensible in my overly private, isolated, single family homestead.
    And this from someone who has spent much of his adult life living in community of various sorts, and has seen it's advantages and it's downfalls on multiple occasions. Among it's advantages are car sharing and chainsaw sharing and group acorn processing or whatever other monotonous task processing. Among it's downfalls are a deficiency, in modern "western" societies, of a set of people skills necessary to live long term in close proximity (like, enough so as not to cut enough firewood to heat individual spaces, but rather some kind of consolidated space).
     
  11. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

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    no no no no and no

    no
    no
    no

    dam it woman, between you and gonhar i am rendered a quivering wreck.

    did you miss the bit where i'm a retard, i am not able to do group think distinct from able but choosing, i am not the full fkn book,
    i live in fear, all i have is my sting, and every time i have to use it, it hurts me as well.

    i pontificate, i don't share.
    when ever i step out to share - i get hit.

    i am a walking fkn target because i wear t-shirts with targets on them - "like stop live export", "PETA", "Save the Whales", "Permaculturalists are Wankers",
    "Multiculturalism Sucks" and so on.

    i attack hunters - armed hunters!...i can not do this by just walking up to them and saying "hey jerk, i want to share with you".
    what happens is i get the butt of a firearm in the face and a hunter telling me "yeah, and i want to share with you"

    no, i sit in my desert location ( armed, with telescopic sights ) strategically located such that there is no cover for an approaching hostile, backed by vicious dogs, maintaining the perimeter with siege mentality engaged, that is the only 'sane' response this sick mind, cursed with individuality is capable of.

    i am an unusual animal - something like a skunk - but i don't wait for hostility to get close - i piss at a distance - this is mistakenly viewed as PONTIFICATION,,,,it's not

    it is me pissing on things that threaten me
    like multiculturalism, hunters, factory farms, permaculturalists, little old ladies with mandala gardens and so on.

    i can hear you;
    "what is so threatening about little old ladies with mandala gardens?"

    nothing if you are not this weirdo,
    nothing if you are socially acceptable,
    nothing if you eat meat, nothing to any one but me apparently...
    and i don't give a shit

    they all scare the beejeezies out of me.

    i put it to you that hunters probably don't scare hunters, and that cruel murdering factory farmer bastards probably enjoy the company of the same in church on sundays,
    but to me,
    just a sniff of one and i am cocking the magnum.

    it's a language issue ( it's gotta be - mercury retro )
    so i don't pontificate - i piss

    and i piss from fear
    and i piss at distance

    when you imagine me,,,,think of more aspergers than Sheldon Cooper, but smaller and skinnier like the little jewish guy, old like your grandpa, bearded like Gandalf, armed like Gonhar (i'm guessing), with the self esteem and confidence of a beaten dog....my tail aint waggin and that is not a smile.

    if you think this is an over the top aberration - you ought to try it from my side
    basically i confine myself to chat, having been chased out of the other realms -

    even when i went off to some obscure corner of this place where i could piss in private - people came looking - 9000 ! Helen 9,000!

    even at permacrazies in the old days - mods surrounded me like i was a westboro baptist.

    i spend 6 months in antartica, come back with a shred of confidence and boldly step out here to piss on a threat ( old lady, mandala garden ), and it takes just days before i'm thinking seals and penguins again.

    :)

    G, rant? i thought i was articulating ;)

    K

    (mercury retro and we are doing this now!!)
     
  12. helenlee

    helenlee Junior Member

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    So I guess that hug is completely out of the question now?
     
  13. helenlee

    helenlee Junior Member

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    YES! How exciting to hear from someone else who is doing it tough, doing things the hard way. Hello : )

    "Nobody can do it alone, or even in a nuclear family. There are so many questions around sustainability which are only amenable to real solutions in larger collectives. "

    THIS! This is where I'm at. And I'm at this point because I'm doing all the stuff you're doing, like cutting fire wood by hand, & chipping the weeds on 30 acres with a thistle hoe, & grinding chook food in return for a few lousy eggs.

    "Among it's downfalls are a deficiency, in modern "western" societies, of a set of people skills necessary to live long term in close proximity ..."
    And this. Where on the face of this earth do I find a small group of people who have the desire & the skills to live in peaceful, mutually beneficial close proximity long term? That is the question burning a hole in my mind right now.
     
  14. Grasshopper

    Grasshopper Senior Member

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    I get people to kill most of my meat and get polluting exploitive factories to make me things and have companies burn coal so I can have some power to run my computer and have armies kill people to bring me oil to drive my car.
    The rest of the time I try and do the best I can being self sufficient and as nice a human as I possibly can (within reason, sometimes I just dont give a shit and sometimes Im an arse hole without realising).
     
  15. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

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    Ditto but with the exception of the killing the meat bit.

    kimbo's right about the unless you're a deep ecologist etc etc bit we're really just a bunch of self-deluded tossers. Honestly, sitting here tv on, lights on (thanks AGL), computer buzzing, newly purchased stuff at Masters proudly in the lounge room, just getting over post-international holiday blues I have no cred. I'm faffing about with growing stuff and reducing consumption on some levels and playing at other things but it is a piss in the ocean and assuages my guilt I suppose over the other stuff. :(
     
  16. Gonhar

    Gonhar Junior Member

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    I think Helen's quote sums it up, " we are co-opting it's* agenda to our own purpose. We are all "takers."

    And Mouse puts the final stitch with, "we're really just a bunch of self-deluded tossers."


    Can we really stop the next ice age?

    Perhaps not, but it keeps us occupied and gives us some purpose until we kick the bucket.

    Ok, gotta go and tend to my three sisters' mounds.. the deer are co-opting their purpose and some kind deterrent is needed.
     
  17. adiantum

    adiantum Junior Member

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    This may be getting off the original topic (vegetarianism), but I wanted to respond further about energy and community.
    Years ago I lived in Bangladesh for three years, and traveled in India and Nepal. When I was there, I could get on my motorbike and in an hour's time be somewhere where I was the first white person that anybody could remember ever having seen. Around me, in that rather densely populated, rice-farming landscape, I saw almost nothing that did not come from that very landscape. Housing (bamboo and rice-straw thatch), clothing (cotton), earthenware cooking utensils. No machinery of any kind, no plastic, no electronics..... There were probably a few metal knives and farm tools, that's all. And those people were, generally; friendly, happy, and inquisitive. At some point on my journey back to town, following along from the few paved roads and railroads, I crossed an invisible, or not-so-invisible frontier, beyond which radios, televisions, plastic, aluminum and such like began to appear; and where people knew what I was and what I represented and treated me with either aggressive begging or smoldering resentment a lot of the time. This was, I now understand, the frontier of "modern civilization" and the money economy. I think it would be much much harder to get to such a place now. That was 1985, after all. No cell phones or internet....anywhere hardly, and certainly not in Bangladesh!
    Along that invisible frontier, people had begun to see and realize that, with some money and a motorcycle, they could go to the big town (which quite a few of them had never been to, ever, but only heard about secondhand) in a few hours, and back the same day if they wanted; whereas in the backcountry one could spend a whole day on an oxcart, or a canoe, or your own weary feet...just to get to the next village.....
    That's a difference, ultimately, in energy availability. Energy runs the motorcycle....lots faster than its sustainable alternatives. What's more, energy makes the motorcycle. Far away, from widely dispersed, mined and concentrated and refined stuff, and then more energy used to move it to where it's sold to someone and used. Where I went that day, in 1985, my motorcycle might as well have been an alien spacecraft to those people. Perhaps they had heard of the possibility of such a thing, or maybe seen one whiz by in the distance. I recall the crowd of kids round about...gazing...gently stroking the shiny hard red metal surface of the thing.....
    Ultimately I think people live fragmented, affluent, energy-profligate lives because it's easier that way in the immediate short term. Because we can. Ultimately it seems that most of us are lazy, greedy, egotistical, and lecherous, in various combinations, much of the time. In a solar-income, sustainable culture, those things are self-limiting and can serve as useful motivators. But dump fossil energy into the mix and watch out! I recall too, the exasperating, thrilling nightmare of riding that motorcycle in highway and city traffic, too. I called it an explosive mixture of caffeine, adrenaline, testosterone and gasoline. But really, of the four, only one is truly "explosive".
    The other reason for the isolation of modern society in many ways is that it has been more or less deliberately engineered that way in the interests of profit. In America at least, and I suspect elsewhere in the "first world" as well, the "nuclear family" didn't become common till after WWII. Before then, the extended family was more common....relatives by birth and marriage living close together, whether under one roof or in the neighborhood, and doing things together. Large families were also common, and both form functional communities of a sort. So people opted for independence because they could, but also because the advertisers recommended it. Just think of all the functions of those households and farmsteads that are now by and large outsourced into the money economy.....starting with childcare and elder care, and moving on to the whole cluster of activities, and skills, around food cultivation, preservation, preparation..... How many young people out there nowadays don't even cook?
    The challenge is a huge one, and in my more depressed moments I tend to think that vibrant community life will not return until such time as the other options are exhausted....just like a truly sustainable economy and agriculture ....we will, as a broadscale culture, do these things when we have to, and not before.
    Attempts at getting to community now are fraught with peril not just because of the learning curve required. Even to make the choice to buck the mainstream and live outside it's boxes requires a strong will.....and what results (and this I know from living personally in two communities that blew up in my face!) is new communities full of strong-willed, stubborn, highly principled people. All is well, so long as everyone is getting along. But watch out when a conflict comes around, which it inevitably will. It's a problem of too much leadership...."too many chiefs and too few braves"....Ordinary society, ancient and modern, contains a scattering of leaders, idealists, out-of-the-box thinkers, but they are surrounded and diffused by a lot more "normal" people who want to come home at the end of the day, crack a cold one, chill out with the TV, and forget about the big issues. My experience is that most people in intentional community nowadays don't or can't do this very well....
     
  18. helenlee

    helenlee Junior Member

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    Thank you for this fantastic post adiantum : ) It's helped me begin to crystallise multiple life events I've experienced lately but had been unable to intellectually organise into meaning. Your thoughts on these topics have given me much to contemplate today : )
     
  19. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Gonhar - is there much meat on a dove? (Ooops! probably the wrong question to ask in this thread - but I'm curious…)
     
  20. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Helen one day you and I need to live on the same bit of land - one house each (tiny house that is) and start inviting random folk over to join us. Kimbo can come if he promises to keep to himself. (Shouldn't be a problem!)
     

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