So lately, when I've been in places like, say McDonald's to use the bathroom or something, or sometimes on a bus, I find myself suppressing an urge to yell "can't you all see the apocalpse all around us?!" Maybe this is crazy, but something has changed drastically lately in how I see the world, and I can't help but feel that this culture, this civilization, is not just falling apart, but rapidly hemorraging all about the edges...and we, the poor, are caught in the middle of all this, as usual, the poor folks are going to be the ones who have the hardest time adjusting to the increasing chaos.
What is it about McDonald's that especially made me realize how bad our siduation is? Well, when nearly everyone inside a place is carrying their belongs about in garbage bags, while pop songs blare on the radio and a T.V. bolted to the wall yells about Obama's presidency. The electric lights glare, machines in the back with the workers bing and beep and ring, to remind the workers about the "fries" that are done, the "apple pie" that is warm, etc. In a place like that, where food isn't even really food, but that is all some of the people in there feel they can afford, or all they are worth, where the overstimulated homeless go to drink coffee and freak out and watch T.V., well, that is where you get a real sense of what is going on in the world. I've noticed in the past few weeks the numbers of homeless downtown has skyrocketed; and also, apparently, the overdependence on self-medication.
We are, some of us, living the lives Charles Dickens was fond of describing; and we all know, things are just gonna get progressively worse. We already live crowded into unheated houses, (which, admittedly, makes for more and better cuddling, which I'm a big fan of) unemployed and unable to pay for college, even if we wanted to go. Probably at least half of my friends are currently unemployed, and while some of them are relishing their freedom, many want to work and can't find any. Things are bad; and I'm not just talking about the money siduation. We find the middle east erupting in violence, while our own streets are doing likewise; I have to admit, for the first time since I've lived in Portland, I'm a little scared to be out on certain streets at night; so-called "gang" violence and the like has been escalating enormosly. I was shocked the other night to hear a bus driver telling some African American men to "leave their guns on the bench" as they boarded the bus. They looked pissed that she would just assume they might be carrying weapons, but they kept their mouths shut; she was a white woman and they where two black men; certainly if they'd said anything back, other people on the bus would have accused them of something. As we drop bombs increasingly all over the world, our own streets mirror back what is happening elsewhere; the poor end up fighting each other, while the rich in their offices decide how to spin the story. "Shall we make Israel the bad guys today Jeeves?"
"Oh no Henry, blame the Palestinians, we've always been alleys with Israel, so how would that make us look if we suddently had sympathy for the Palestinians?"
As siduations around the world get worse and worse, self-proclaimed messiahs are springing up everywhere as well. This is the age of the cult; when Latter Day Saint splinter-groups force fourteen year old nieces to marry their uncles, when even the soap I buy has a message of "salvation" on the bottle, the rantings and ravings of the madman Dr. Bronner. Rewilders promise that learning to use a bow-drill to start a fire and hides to make clothes will save us all. Pagans chant in what is left of the woods. Fundimentalist Christains await the return of Jesus. This is the end, people. The apocalpse is here.
Love ya,
Carrot
I had a very strange dream the other day. I was compelled to run from the place where I was standing when a fireball from the sky fell on the place where I was (which was all of Orange County, CA, which might explain why I was not sad). I watched it explode and turn to nothing but a black hill of ash.
I felt exhilarated and kept going. I found someone. He was nice, and seemed to know what was happening> He like I knew this was only the beginning.
He stretched out his arm to a global map we found displayed on a wall. His arm became transluscent and a part of the map, he was pointing where the fires were going to hit, and where we should go.
I wasn't totally asleep because I was somewhat "conscious," and hearing the wind outside my window.
I think it was what some call a "lucid" dream.
It's been 85+ degrees here in So Cal with winds up to 65 mph, seriously.
I felt neat about meeting my alien friend.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one becoming increasingly fearful of the city I live in.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
Tomorrow I'm going to say "I told you so" because the last time you wrote a blog along these lines (I think it was called something like "Is Anybody Else Scared?") you were predicting that President Bush was going to declare Marshall Law and was going to make himself into a dictator. That did not happen and it is pretty clear that it is not going to happen and I told you it was not going to happen and that will be a proven fact tomorrow. In fact, there have been dozens of articles in the otherwise hostile to Bush media complimenting President Bush for organizing one of the most seamless and cooperative transitions of power in American History.
My point to you is that you should probably take your own worst fears with a grain of salt because you are probably wrong. It is doubtful that we are going to have an "apocalypse", at least not in America in the near term. We are probably going into a patch of economic rough times that may get worse then it already is and will last several years but I'm fairly certain that the good times will eventually return and that the world is not going to end. Most of you young people have no sense of perspective. So far, what we have been going through now is nothing like the Stagflation of the 1970's. And the comparisons to the Great Depression are a joke. You don't even know what misery is .....yet.
It seems weird to me that a person like yourself who has many times declared their hatred for our economy and has many times expressed your desire to screw up our society in various ways is now suddenly worried about an economic downturn or the failure of the economy to produce jobs for your friends that hate our economy. The irony makes me laugh.
You are correct that the poor are going to experience the worst of it. That is ever and always true. My advice to those of you that are still in school is to study a field that will actually be attractive to an employer. Forget the racial and women's studies and useless junk majors like that. For those who can't afford school find a job in economic demand that requires skills that cannot be trained overnight to any illegal immigrant and then whenever you get the chance be the hardest, best and most reliable worker at the job site. We may eventually get to 12% or 15% unemployment. The recession will be a scary time but it won't be nearly so bad for the 85% or 88% or 93% who remain employed. It is important to be one of the people who is still working. It may not be your dream job but in bad times a paycheck is a paycheck and if you have one, life will remain very tolerable.
I have limited sympathy for the poor in America because, while it is not always the case, most of them are poor because they have made poor choices in life, Carrot, you came from a middle-class background from a landowning family. I bet quite a few (most) of the kids who you grew up around your farm in upstate New York, where I have never heard is a place that the schools were not reasonably adequate, have joined in one way or another the relatively prosperous middle-class. I have read enough of your writing to know that you are not mentally deficient. Yet you chose a different path and if now the bad economy is especially bad for you then I suggest you look in the mirror. You chose a self-indulgent lifestyle where you mooched, scrounged off of and lived at the fringes of economy that you pretend to hate and now the chickens have come home to roost. There are parts of the country that are still doing pretty well. You are footloose. Go get a job and buckle-down.
I'm sure that Portland is getting more dangerous but it has little to do with the economic downturn. It is the result of the city making poor choices (do you see the parallel between the city and yourself?) Most of the gang problem is caused by immigrants, illegal immigrants and the children of these people. Portland is a sanctuary city that actively promotes immigration lawlessness and now they are reaping the rewards. When you invite lawlessness you get lawlessness and when you import the third world you get the third world. Ah .... the joys of multiculturalism. Enjoy!
Actually, you well know my position on immigration. While I don't have a lot of sympathy for the poor, I see no point in making their plight worse and that is exactly what mass immigration (both legal and illegal) does because our own poor are forced to compete with the newly imported poor. Businesses love this because it depresses wages and makes it easy to exploit poor people. Businesses give money to Republicans to keep the flow of cheap labor flowing. Democrats also love all the immigrants because they are poor and they keep the native born people poor. Poor people vote for Democrats. The poor get screwed by both parties but the Democrats are worse because the Republican base has wised up and won't tolerate that open border behavior from Republicans. But you have expressed your support for open immigration so I guess you shouldn't mind living with the results even if it means you have to live in fear of gangs and have less job opportunities and lower wages.
You pointed out a little turmoil around the world and attempted to correlate it with our current economic woes but turmoil in the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia in one shape or another has been pretty much a constant for decades if not centuries It is happening independently of our economic cycles. Most of the rest of the world is hopelessly over-populated and they are in for a rough time. You might call this an apocalyse but I would call it the Malthuisian Solution. It is nature's way of cleaning up a mess and I think in the grand scheme of things it will be a net good. I don't think there is anything that can be done to help them until enough of them die so that some sort of balance is restored between the human population and the Earth's carrying capacity. To me, because I have a daughter and will hopefully someday have grandchildren who I want to have an opportunity at decent lives, the answer is to limit population growth in the United States so that the population driven disaster that is inevitable in most of the rest of the world does not happen here.
I've been dying to ask you this for awhile, jackbenimble. Why are you on this site? Even if you did want to go back to school (which from your posts I've gathered you don't) you obviously don't need a scholarship. I says that because you were able to send your daughter to a private school, even if that did mean sacrificing your plane.
Also, you strick me as someone who leans more towards action than words, not someone who wants to sit and write about problems and solutions. I made this inference because you said you've had two start-ups. Anyways, do you just get bored? Do you like pretending to be creative? (Sorry, but your pathetic puns such as "Nobama" and "McShame" annoy me.) Or is it the opportunity to complain?
Seriously, this is something I've been wondering about you.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711
I stumbled on this site due to an illegal immigration blog more than a year ago. I am an activist on that topic and post in forums all over the web. I view my efforts in that area as "action". I noticed the lack of balance here particularly on political issues and decided to participate.
I have started several companies and am still running three of them but I am no longer trying to grow them so they do not require a lot of effort. I work a few hours per day. I'm not over-the-top wealthy but I have earned enough where I have no worries. I don't need a scholarship and am currently paying full tuition for my daughter at Auburn. I suppose my participation here earns scholarship points for the bloggers that I most enjoy reading and commenting on.
Sorry you don't like my puns. I think our so-called "leaders" have given us plenty to complain about and I don't mind mocking them at all. They have done much worse to us. If my posts irritate you perhaps you should not read them.
I'm not above mocking politicians, my complaint about your puns is just that they are bad.
Actually, I've never read your blog posts. And In some cases I do enjoy your comments, because, as you pointed out, this site is rather liberal sided, which might have something to do with the age difference. Anyways, your posts do provide a different side to arguments in most cases.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711
Bring on the apocalypse! We'll combat it with victory/liberty/guerrilla/beauty veggie gardens and with generosity. Because that's what happens in nature when there are few resources to go around. They don't horde them from the immigrants. The mushroom shelter and the algae photosynthesize, and together they make lichen.
The great hope is that biology will kick in (finally) like true human ecosystems and symbiotic relationships will exponentiate.
Lest you feel warm and fuzzy about symbiotic relationships, the species that act in them do so out of a mutual understanding. If they were not getting something out of the deal, they wouldn't act in that symbiosis.
Dig, Jack?
my documentary...
"some folks say that a hippie won't steal,
but I caught three in my corn field"
--John Hartford
Back in the days when Missoula was able to grow some reasonable percentage of its food Missoula was a very small place and it was people who had spent their whole lives making do for themselves.
What was its population then? What is its population now? How many of those people know squat about growing a garden or preserving the food that they manage to grow.
I'm sorry but your gorilla gardens are a pipe dream. Most of you will starve if it comes to that.
Missoula has changed indeed.
People are beginning to realize, for example, what effect all this development on the outskirts will have in the future--how much agricultural soil is going to be lost--and the community food and assessment coalition has created a database of productive soil outside the city. But here's the key: they don't involve the community in assessing how much we can grow in neighborhoods using good techniques and involving different organizations and old-time growers. I'm starting a project called 1,000 New Gardens that will make these community connections with the hope that the Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/home/la-hm-victory10-2009ja...) and seed companies around the country aren't just boasting lies.
Frankly I'm not surprised to hear your defeatism. Guerrilla gardening seems to me to be a natural band-aid (aesthetically pleasing stuff that will take our minds off the ugly, mono-chromatic, worthless development of the past 50 years). The guerrilla gardening movement is very strange. It's very necessary, but like you said, it is a pipe dream to say the movement will create a sustainable foodshed.
Still, you do the virtuous act of gardening a great disservice Jack, and guerrilla gardening is only a very small chunk of the solution. More later.
my documentary...
"some folks say that a hippie won't steal,
but I caught three in my corn field"
--John Hartford
But, I tend to agree with Jack; most of us will starve...the facts support this. This world wasn't built by the benevolent mice who paid for this planet to sustain 7 billion people...I've been reading a bit about how much land it takes just to suistain one person, and depending on the climate, evelvation, etc, it takes somewhere between 20-50 acres easily, if not more, if that one person was going to get everything they needed from that land, with very intensive permaculture.
Ok, so say we divide the earth up to give each of the 7 billion around 50 acres...what would that leave? Do we even have that much acreage? And, obviously, if you are talking about a desert or something, you need a lot more, like 300 acres or something. So this, obviously, isn't doable.
As I said to my friend Wood last night; we are living in a sort of mad Thunderdome where the last of the remaining resources will be fought over to the death...
Love ya,
Carrot
And so, survival of the fittest rules again. In this case, the "fittest" are the ones that can fend for themselves in a life without economy as we know it.
Nature will throw problem after problem at her denizens in a battle to reduce their numbers. One way or another, she will be successful. Those that survive each ordeal will live on to strengthen the species.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
People like carrot and jackbenimble
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Survival of the fittest operates now. It has never gone away. But fortunately we live in an era and environment of such incredible abundance that even the least fit are doing pretty well. What passes for poverty in America is a completely different animal from the massive deprivation that is the real poverty that inflicts the vast majority of people on earth.
If I survived, I think I might rise to the level of "Warlord" in the post apocalyse economy. I have a great education, a ranching background that has taught me how to make do, and I have a lot of leadership experience in my career and a fair amount of not paper wealth (land) that I would try to hold. Being of a conservative bent, a lot of my close friends and some of my family are ex-military. Most importantly I have loads of ammunition. I used to shoot a lot of trap and skeet and to keep it affordable I re-loaded my own shells and bought re-loading supplies in bulk when they were on sale. I don't do that much anymore but as a legacy I have about 3000 12-guage shotgun shells in my basement and enough powder and primers to reload them and make perhaps 10,000 more. I'd have to improvise on shot because I don't have that much lead. Scrap metal is abundant. They are getting a little dated but I bet the majority of them will still fire 20 years from now. And I have perhaps another 1000 miscellaneous rounds for my other miscellaneous firearms and two or three (haven't looked lately) bricks of 500 rounds of .22 calibur ammunition.
And I'll have plenty of time to prepare because Wyoming will be a long ways from the worst of the ugliness which will begin in places like LA, NY, Chicago and even, as Carrot reports in this blog, Portland.
I figure on being a fairly benevolent lord of my fiefdom but I wouldn't tolerate much nonsense. If Carrot or GreenUnderbelly ever passed through my realm they would find themselves toiling in the fields because I would hold them responsible for precipitating the mess.
I don't have much enthusiam though for that scenario. I suppose I would fight tooth and nail but I much prefer the current life of abundance. I very much want to avoid the apocalyse or, what I view as the more likely scenario, which is slow decline into equilibrium with the nasty rest of the brutish third world. It really distresses me that I can't get people to realize that over-populating America is going to inevitably lead to a bad consequence.
That ammunition won't help against a flesh eating bacteria to which you aren't immune. Those who can fight off the most diseases will be the survivors.
Germs are equal opportunity killers and you are correct that if the nature of the apocalypse is disease that ammunition won't do me any good. I thought the blog was about economic meltdown.
I am not aware of any flesh eating bacteria against which any particular segment of our population enjoys immunity so I guess we would be watching a general cull of the weakest among us which generally includes the very young, the very old and the physically unfit. Depending on how virulent the disease it might take a lot of the healthy too.
I imagine that cities would be a lot more likely to experience large die-offs then rural areas like Wyoming where it is easier to keep oneself isolated from the infected.
Lest you feel warm and fuzzy about symbiotic relationships, the species that act in them do so out of a mutual understanding. If they were not getting something out of the deal, they wouldn't act in that symbiosis.
I was re-reading this thread and I realized that I had not adequately commented on your thought.
In my opinion, humans are perhaps the most adept creature at forming symbiotic relationships of any species so far. You write like this process has yet to kick in but I would argue that it has been going on ever since we invented agriculture and that in the last couple of centuries it has exponentiated beyond wild imagination.
We have symbiotic relationships with various grains. They give us food. In return we give them especially prepared soils, protection from bugs and weeds, plant food and often carefully controlled breeding that improves them in many ways. We consume a large part of what they produce but we retain a large enough proportion of their seed to propogate them into the future and we propogate them with great care. They thrive because of us and we thrive because of them. Take a drive through the American midwest and you will be awed by the extent of our symbiotic relationship with corn. Interestingly, contrary to your assertion of "mutual understanding", these grains have no understanding that they are benefitting from this relationship and they have no choice in the matter.
Our relationship with agricultural animals is similarly symbiotic. They thrive because of us. Yes, we do eat them and make sweaters, shoes and pillows from their various by-products but there are vastly more sheep, cows, chickens and other agricultural animals in the world and because of us and they are prospering as specieses in symbiotic relationship with us.
I think you attribute unjustifiable intelligence to lifeforms when you say they act in a symbiotic relationship because they understand that they are getting something out of it. Most of these lifeforms are incapable of "understanding" anything or choosing anything. For example we have considerable life living symbiotically with us in our intestinal track. We feed this life and they aid our digestion process. Both lifeforms benefit from the symbiotic relationship. Certainly this microscopic flora is incapable of understanding anything or choosing not to live with us. It has no choice. Until perhaps 100 years ago, almost no humans knew that they were living with these lifeforms either. Probably the majority of the earth's 7 billion people are still ignorant of this fact. They lack this understanding and they cannot choose to terminate the relationship yet they still benefit from the symbiotic relationship. A few of us humans now possess the technology (antibiotics) to kill most of these symbiotic life forms but it would obviously be a bad choice and most of us who possess the abilitiy to make this choice understand its negative consequences. The fact that we understand that we benefit from a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship puts us in very rare company.
Great points. Before I get respond to your writing, however, I'd like to clarify my original statement again because it must have been confusing. I WAS WRITING OF HUMAN ECOSYSTEMS AND POTENTIAL SYMBIOSIS IN THEM IN THE FUTURE.
Like you say, we are at the beckon and call of corn. This symbiosis makes sense. I didn't mean to glorify the idea that one organism in a symbiotic relationships will make some sort of conscious decision, the algae deciding to leave the fungi in a storm of dust like a husband might depart from a wife. That was just my human brain attempting to explain it, and poorly. What I believe, and I've heard an ecology professor profess to, is that one organism will simply leave the symbiosis if their needs are not being met. If they're losing more carbon than they're gaining. That makes sense doesn't it? Perhaps I'm not explaining it right.
Now I don't know how that theory would play out with our intestinal bacteria. But I do know how it should play out in our cities, including Missoula, and in the burbs. We don't have a symbiotic relationship with sod and grass. Grass has formed something more closely resembling a parasitic relationship-- unless you deduct some sort of pleasure from looking at lawns all day--we don't get anything substantive from the relationship. We've been duped because, like you say of grains, "we give them especially prepared soils, protection from bugs and weeds, plant food," but we also water the hell out of the unproductive green, give them the harshest dose of fertilizer and pesticide inputs out of any other plant, and according to aerial studies we also devote more land to this "crop" than any other in the United States, including your corn.
Anyways, I've always wondered how we came to be so duped by this grass when we moved from the city to the burbs. I guess we wanted more land, a bit of the dream. But, you might agree, that became completely perverted when we didn't become stewards of the land nor did we use the land for anything but a happy, utopian lifestyle. What I'm trying to say is that we need better design. We need redesign.
My project's slogan is "You're not growing your own food if you can't eat the crops."
I don't pretend to feed everyone locally. But I have set goals for 6 months down the road and goals for 2010. It's time to stop pretending we can't feed ourselves better and enjoy doing it. It's time to clean up your generation's mess.
my documentary...
"some folks say that a hippie won't steal,
but I caught three in my corn field"
--John Hartford
It's time to clean up your generation's mess.
I was mowing my family's huge yard when I was a pretty young kid and believe me, I had no say in the matter and I definately did not plant it.
I do agree with you that yards are wasteful. I think your opinion of yards reflects a lack of understanding of economics. People have grass in their yards because they WANT grass in their yards. A nice cool soft green grass yard has UTILITY for them that justifies the expense and the effort. It gives them PLEASURE.
Economics are going to be the problem you have as you try to get your gardening movement off the ground. Most people find very little UTILITY in a vegetable garden. Very large numbers of people barely cook in their homes anymore. Loads of people live on restaurant food and fast food and prepared microwave food from the store. A vegetable garden is a huge amount of work. I put at least as much effort into my 50 x 12 vegetable garden as I do my 1.5 acre grass yard. I can mow the yard in 2 to 3 hours per week. If I only put that much effort into the garden, it goes to hell. Most people would rather do something relaxing or exciting or with family in their free time rather than pulling weeds out of a garden. And for most people the payoff just isn't there. They may like fresh vegetables but not enough to work at it. Food is dirt cheap in the store and planting a garden is actually fairly expensive. I usually have about $100 into mine by the time it is all planted and that is valuing probably 50 hours of labor across the summer at zero. I get a few hundred dollars worth of vegetables out of it but I probably only realize about $100 of savings at the grocery store. Most of it gets given away partly because most of it all ripens at once. Preserving food is not cheap either. A canning jar costs $1. A can of vegetables in the store costs about the same.
Most people in your generation just j=don't understand economics. Green energy has the same issues. They don't make economic sense.
Around Portland anyway, I've noticing these trends:
1) People aren't getting UTILITY out of their grass yards anymore, nor in many cases, their driveways, due to being a very bike and public transit friendly city. Because of this, people in increasing numbers are depaving their driveways and getting rid of the green lawn and in place, planting fruit trees and veggies and bushes and herbs...this is very exciting to me!
2) People are enjoying gardening as families! Rather then spending a Sunday afternoon playing kickball on a green yard, I do see families in Portland weeding the veggies together, and enjoying it! Hell, one of the most enthusiastic gardeners I know here in Portland is of the wee age of four..he talks excessively about the gardening he and his dad do...
3) People are really getting into raising microlivestock in their backyards as well!
4) Seed-saving is the answer to not having to put so much money into the garden every year. My mom has really gotten into seed saving and says it is very easy and makes it possible for her to have an almost free garden! And yes, canning jars initially cost money, but they last a lifetime. Admittedly, my mom doesn't work a wage job, so she has a lot of free time to can and seed-save and do those sorts of things, but she claims a good twenty percent or so of the food she and my dad eats comes from their garden, so for them, it is a worthwhile endeavor and does save them money.
5) Lots of people are giving up the fast-food lifestyle in favor of slow food; home-cooked meals, microlivestock, garden stuff, foraged stuff. This is a very exciting trend as well. One of my favorite things about the lovers and friends I've had lately was their enthusiasm about making meals together; in Portland, if you want to hit on someone, you invite them over to make dinner with you...that is like code around here for "I like you..." True, once you start doing all these slow-food things, you realize that a good portion of your day is centered around food; but since I love food, this is really no problem for me. I don't mind spending a good fifty percent of my day devoted to food!
Love ya,
Carrot
In Portland you have a bunch of left leaning people who believe in that stuff. In my travels (and I see quite a bit of America every year) that is not a trend which I am seeing widely repeated.
If I were seeing it I would suspect it was more a symptom of declining real incomes and a declining standard of living. Of course such a phenomena would cause a shift in the relative utility of green grass vs an arduous garden vs eating at restaraunts.
If people change their values and voluntarily grow gardens and enjoy it like you suggest is happening in Portland I am fine with that. But if they are being forced to do it because our government has screwed up the economy and imported so many poverty stricken immigrants that they have no choice but to lower their standard of living involuntarily that is pretty sad.
I'd have to beg to differ with you on the whole "everyone that's doing the things Carrot describes is only done by the Left" sentiment you seem to have. It sounds to me like the majority of your travel keeps you in the urban/suburban areas. However, if you go out into the rural areas, you'll find far more people living off the land (granted, this isn't just gardening, I'm talking about subsistence/family farming, hunting/fishing, etc), most of whom are at least as far Right as you.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
I grew up with those people. That is not a change of attitude but a continuation of a lifestyle that has existed since the country was founded. Those people were there from before either of us were born. Just because you are just now noticing them does not make it something new.
I never said I "just noticed them," please don't read more into my words than what I write.
The way you've been talking, it's as if you didn't believe that anyone still lived on family farms or with gardens or whatever and that the use of such things is a purely "Left" thing.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
And once again, you preserve your right to be in the brutally honest committee.
"People have grass in their yards because they WANT grass in their yards. A nice cool soft green grass yard has UTILITY for them that justifies the expense and the effort. It gives them PLEASURE."
I don't want to beat the lawn issue too much or take it through the gauntlet, but you have some pretty interesting views about lawns. Grass, you say, has more utility today for the average person than a vegetable garden? I submit that they don't know any better. No one has shown them the ropes, the pleasure. The key is that people are beginning to intellectualize many of the kinks in our current food system and they're willing to give gardening a chance to show its utilities compared to complacent television watching. Just think about a society where everyone took thirty minutes that they would ordinarily devote to their tv schedule in order to work in the dirt with friends and family and neighbors!
That's not a whole lot of time and yet, it would produce tangible results in our social lives, our recreation and our health. That's all I'm asking. We don't need to unroll a 50X12 plot. You've heard of productive square foot plots.
Many people are questioning the type of arguments that you've made (that it's time consuming, that there's no joy involved, THAT IT'S NOT RELAXING TO DO WEEDING, that it can't be a family activity, etc.). They're beginning to see how disconnected they are from food, what external costs are associated with our oh so modern food system, and how gardening is not such a bore--it's a social event. Did you read the LA Times article?--I got the feeling from that article that there are more and better reasons now to have a victory garden than there were in the 1940s..
I submit that many gardeners see their actions virtuously either as political statements or ways to know what food they're putting on the family table or ways to make a little extra dough (look at how much money this family made on their investment -- http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2009/01/11/7-tips-for-starting-your-ow...).
As I see it, gardening is in vogue. The real trouble is not going to be getting them out into their yards to retrofit because people are beginning to understand the tradeoffs that are inextricably linked to the 1,500 mile tomato. 1,000 New Gardens is going to connect aspiring gardeners to information and tool resources. The real trouble will be tracking this lifestyle choice, documenting the successes and overall worthwhileness of the project so that once the recession peters out like it did in the 1980s, we can prove to people that it was a worthwhile pastime--and one to continue.
my documentary...
"some folks say that a hippie won't steal,
but I caught three in my corn field"
--John Hartford
I grow a garden because I enjoy it. Fortunately it is a choice. I have sufficient wealth where I could choose to do something different.
I also grow a lot of green grass and so do my neighbors. I live on a dry hillside, just regular old 30-acre to a cow/calf unit Wyoming rangeland. Along with my neighbors we operate a pump that costs us each $150 a year and pump a lot of water up the hill from the creek for our lawns, trees and gardens. We literally alter the micro-environment around our homes. If I walk off of my cool green shaded lawn out in to the surrounding dry hills the summer tempurature goes up by 15 degrees. I can grow grass for $150 per year or run an air conditioner (which I don't own) for $500 per year. The grass is a good choice and it makes my home like a beautiful oasis in the desert. Living on the hillside is also a responsible choice. I'm sick of seeing Wyoming's best agricultural river bottomland being turned into homesites.
I have no problem with you educating people about the possibilities of gardening and trying to get them to make this choice. I think for a lot of people it would be healthy. Better food, some exercise and some positive family time which connects them with their food supply. I think we are in full agreement about that.
My problem is when it stops being a choice and becomes a necessity. You and our government will essentially have converted us from people who enjoy a high standard of living and a lot of choices about how we live to being peasants and subsistance farmers. We'll still of course be 'free". We can freely starve or freely choose to toil and till our yards. There is not a lot of pleasure in freedom when poverty and necessity dictate all your choices.
I don't much fear Carrot's Apocolypse. But I do fear the steady erosion of our wealth and our standard of living, and our choices that is being caused by the government's immigration policies. You think that my generation made bad choices when we built green-lawned suburbia. Your wrong. We made perfectly rational and happy free choices that were completely sustainable when we had 150 or 200 million people. And Americans by and large realized this and vountarily reigned in our population growth by limiting our family size from the excesses of the baby boom. It has been the government's policy foisted on us by liberals and progressives like Teddy Kennedy, to massively grow our population through mass immigration that make all these choices made 50 years ago look like a mess.
Your generation can keep re-thinking things. You are going to re-think yourself right into subsistence style peasanthood until you think hard enough and realize that it is excessive population growth that is the root cause of everything that you are needing to rethink. You'll probably not quite achieve that level of thought though because before long you'll be keeping the kids home from school because they are needed in the fields. Like most of the people in the world they will be too ignorant to understand what their government is doing to them. Subsistance farming is a hard, ignornant and short life. Your transformation to third world peasant will be complete. Of course a few will rise to the top of the heap and more or less enslave the rest in the chains of economic arrangements like share-cropping. There are few examples of agrarian societies that don't end up with gross economic injustice. "Middleclass" is not something that happens on farms.
but your image of our new peasant share-cropping slave system is only a likely possibility as a result of carrot's apocalypse.
It's going to take a lot more than some gardening hippies to overthrow the American government.
It's smart for anyone to start thinking about survival, no matter what you think. Whether the rapture is going to come and some will be "left behind," or Yellowstone blows, or we erupt into a real world war, or terrorists manage to destroy all of our information infrastructures, or Global Warming melts our atmosphere, is really truly irrelevant. The truth is that at least 3 of those things are likely to happen in the next 5-500 years.
Whether it is good for our generation or not is only part of the question. Follow through and know that what we do now will affect generations to come. If we do not try to reverse the damage done somehow, an apocalypse of some sort is inevitable. If no such thing occurs in my lifetime, I will still feel better leaving the world knowing that I have contributed to my offspring basic survival skills. Gardening is definitely a good one.
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It's going to take a lot more than some gardening hippies to overthrow the American government.
Nope it won't be the hippies and it won't be the apocalyspe. It will be demographics. If you want a good example take a look at what is happening in your own state of California. You all are essentially bankrupt. You are paying your bills with IOUs. You have imported so much third world poverty that now you look ridiculously like the third world. California used to be one of the wealthiest states.
Demographics are destiny. And your state's destiny dows not look too good.
if there might be some kind of thing so much bigger than ourselves that we don't perceive it, but that is providing us with some kind of nourishment that we could not exist without.
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Carrot: Forty years ago when I was your age, we hippies bought Dr. Bronner's pure Peppermint Oil soap because it was a good product. In college, we tried to get to the bottom of all his references--"All-One-Faith-in-a-One-God-State!". He wasn't ranting--he was acting like a prophet. If you get his references, he doesn't seem quite as nuts. He is dead now, but it is still a good, biodegradable product.
I still use Dr. Bronner's but have switched over to the Tea Tree Oil formula--for some reason the smell of tea tree oil is more pleasing than peppermint, and I don't smell like a candy cane. I urge all your readers to try Dr. Bronner's soap--it usually can be found in bulk at most health food stores. In Peppermint, Almond, Eucalyptus, Lavendar and Tea Tree oil I believe. Good stuff.
Taylorbad
"The person who defines Reality wins."
Yeah, I like Dr. Bronners...I'm not sure what this post has to do with all the pervious ones, but thanks for that little infomercial about Dr. Bronners soap.
I agree that it sucks if gardening as a way of survival is forced upon us...this is not what I'm arguing for. I do enjoy gardening and probably wouldn't enjoy it quite so much if I was depending on the food I was growing for survival; if I knew, for example, that this crop failure or that one would mean my ultimate demise, I'd be freaked out the entire time I was gardening.
I'm hopeful when I see the positive changes many people in Portland are making towards "food security" although true food security for a city this large would be a difficult thing to achieve...as Jack pointed out, he is in a much better position for almost any upcoming disaster on his ranch in Wyoming then I am here in Portland...as much as Portland brags, we are not a sustainable city at all....but the little changes people are making are making me hopeful, if only in a small way...
Basically, we are fucked; our environment is fucked, our economy is fucked, our natural resources are gone, we are overpopulated, over our carrying capacity...yeah, there isn't really a forseeable way out of all these messes we've created...
But Dr. Bronner's soap and Obama may be the saints that will save us!!!!
Love ya,
Carrot
"I'm hopeful when I see the positive changes many people in Portland are making towards "food security" although true food security for a city this large would be a difficult thing to achieve...as Jack pointed out, he is in a much better position for almost any upcoming disaster on his ranch in Wyoming then I am here in Portland...as much as Portland brags, we are not a sustainable city at all....but the little changes people are making are making me hopeful, if only in a small way..."
I only wish Jack didn't live so close to yellowstone. I'd be asking for ediblewoman's doomsday party to be relocated.
carrot:
"Basically, we are fucked; our environment is fucked, our economy is fucked, our natural resources are gone, we are overpopulated, over our carrying capacity...yeah, there isn't really a forseeable way out of all these messes we've created..."
The only foreseeable way for the human species to survive at all is for an apocalypse to occur. The earth needs to violently purge her parasites. Those who survive are her anointed, her "Noah's."
If no such apocalypse happens, humans will become extinct from the universe in less than 500 years.
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I just don't buy into any kind of apocalypse prediction. Frankly, people living during the black plague had more reason to believe that the world would end. Humans adapt, we always have, and always will. Polio was cured, the plague ended. Europe came back into power after the Roman empire fell. Because there are homeless people in a city of two million humans will all die soon? While we may never find a cure all solution for any of our problems, we will be able to fix them. If some of our resources get depleted we'll find new ones or better uses. Things are always changing and that's why you can't always rely on patterns to predict the future.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711
I'm not saying that just because there are homeless people we are all going to die...what I am attempting to say, is probably the same tired message I say in many of my posts, which is "WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE? SEVEN BILLION IS TOO MANY...PLAGUE AND FAMINE ARE INEVITABLE AT THIS POINT...MOST OF US DON'T EVEN HAVE ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER AT THIS POINT!!! AHHHHHHHH!!"
Whew, now I feel better! Yes, people pulled through the collapse of the Roman Empire, but there was much chaos and destruction and death in the meantime, and that is what I'm a tiny bit afraid of. No doubt some of us will make it; some macho, gun-hording, land-owning folks who are out in the middle of nowhere will survive, and some of us from the cities will survive as well, but I'm afraid I'm gonna be one of the ones who doesn't. Not because I don't have access to land; I have a little as I've mentioned before, but because I'm sorta weak; I get sick often and easily, I don't deal well with stressful situations, I like to cry, I'm not the tough-ass punk chick I sometimes wanna pretend I am...I'm pretty much the working-class, white, all American wimp I picture dying in droves, probably due to a combination of disease, lack of safe water and nutritious food...
Look around; our system is collapsing, no doubt about it...this terrible empire is falling fast and hard...now the question is, where to be for best chance of survival as it all comes down...?
Love ya,
Carrot
ps. I'm not one of those doomsday primitivists who somehow feels entitled to survival and smirks at the idea of masses of people dying; I really hate the idea that most of us will have to die...I'm scared of that reality, yet I know with certainty that that is the reality we are up against...people show no signs of some great "enlightenment" that is going to change everything, and so, we are most assuredly fucked. I myself show no signs of "enlightenment" and therefore deserve to be fucked as much as everyone else...and I'm not going to claim I'm glad this is the way things are all going down.
take heart. I might sound like one of those doomsday primitivists at times, but in reality I am scared too. I have dreams about it more than 3 times a week, very vivid ones. i do not like one bit the images I have had of running with daughter under blackened skies from invisible, raining bullets. Or the ones of terrorists snatching her from me, or my house exploding with her inside and me out. I don't think these things in particular will necessarily happen, though they are possible, but I do think the common thread is being placed in a situation where reality just shifts in one split second, and suddenly all the things that seemed to matter a minute ago don't even exist anymore.
All that matters now is survival. I might die along with everyone else, but I feel as though the extraordinary things I have already survived, coupled with my mind's preoccupation with such things is an indicator that I will survive. I feel as though it is going to be my job to pull survivors together and to figure out how we are going to go on.
It is scary. I have to be mentally prepared though, because if I am not, there is absolutely no way I will be of any use to my daughter whatsoever. I am going to do my damnedest to make sure that if I do lose her, or if she loses me, that both of us are strong enough to survive. If not and we die, I hope we are together. If I have to go on without her, i will, but I won't be one of those struck dumb by fear. I am going to be ready to act, to shift and move.
Maybe these are just silly dreams and they are a result of the 10 minutes of news radio I manage to digest each day. I don't know that any of these things are going to happen, or that they will happen in my lifetime. However, I am inclined to fascination when I find others who are experiencing these same visions.
They don't seem so silly or crazy either, especially after reading DB's global warming blogs. No matter how we look at it, we can all pretty much agree that the planet earth is not immortal, and that it will end. As humans, if we are lucky, there is enough time to reverse some of the risk factors, but even if we do that, we cannot stave off an eruption from Yellowstone.
And even if we gather ourselves as humans on this planet and work to eradicate any pollution at all, the earth still has a date with death at some point. The question is, how can we work together to at least make our coexistence on the planet pleasant enough so that even at the very end, humans can find comfort in each other.
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no matter how bad things get, some people will always do an excellent job of banding together to take comfort in each other; look at how many of the Jews dealt with being in consentration camps, look at how Native folks dealt with starving together on "reservations" at the turn of the century, when at first, the government shoved them out into the desert and did not provide them with enough food for their people, look at any of the countless ways humans have banded together in really terrifying and terrible siduations...
As things crawl into an ever deepening state of disrepair humans will definately continue to love each other...what else can we do?
I have a quote on my wall which says "remember the heart is a weapon as large as your fist..."
Love ya,
Carrot
And I choose to direct its energy toward you at this moment, not promising anything.
I see the same end as you, "what are we going to do, but love each other?" I see as *the* end. This is the culmination of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Ishmael, Cain and Abel.
Humanity is coming into a dawning of awareness that we are not so neatly compartmentalized, and that we in fact are craving connection, and are willing to look virtually anywhere for it.
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I love it! The culmination of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Ishmael, Cain and Abel...7 billion people, pollution so bad that in some places nearly all the kids have asthma, streams so polluted nobody dares drink out of any of them anymore without filtration devices, mommas on welfare getting invetrio fertilization to have eight babies at once (what the heck is wrong with this woman? What the heck is wrong with this doctor?)
Anyway, as you all know, I could list countless things that are really, really fucked up about the world, but I think, instead, tonight I'm gonna make a list of positive things...
Love ya,
Carrot
Maybe I'm the one who's screwed because I'm in denial. I still say the human race has survived worse and come back stronger than before. Things of course won't be hunky-dory, even my business professors who think we haven't seen the worst of the recession say we aren't in all that much trouble.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711
You and I might die before the earth goes through another one of her "resurfacing" events, like the ice age, which was a result of "global cooling.
I happen to care about the future of humanity beyond my own existence.
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I never said I didn't. But the most any of us can really do is make the present the best we can and hope that when we change for the better those changes will have a real and lasting impact after we're gone.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711
but by choosing to stay in "denial," you are choosing to remain part of the problem. Ignorance is a very dangerous thing.
I am saying this mostly not to you specifically, but to anyone who refuses to pay attention to what is right in front of our faces.
I happen to be particularly pissy about this at the moment because I had a very agitating conversation with my father yesterday.
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Ok, so the world won't continue to be perfectly dandy without some human interference. Afterall, we've caused a lot of our own problems. I just don't see the world bursting into oblivion or the dawn of the apocolypse coming anytime soon. And by anytime soon, I mean the next couple of thousand years. And frankly, the world will be around long after we're gone. all it has to do is get rid of the problem (humans) and then fix itself all on its own.
As for us, we're learning. And people are taking steps to improve their actions. Maybe not everyone, but they'll learn on their own, in time. This recession has nothing to do with the end of the world, its just part of an economical cycle. In order for there to be good times, there must also be bad times.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711
"And frankly, the world will be around long after we're gone. all it has to do is get rid of the problem (humans) and then fix itself all on its own."
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Short of a world-killer type of cataclysm (like a major Yellowstone eruption), I think you are right that humans are going to survive and thrive. This particular economic event is fairly minor compared to some of the other trials humanity has endured.
But I think that it is very possible that we will see some sort of major event or perhaps a whole series of smaller events in the next hundred years that results in a large scale "cull" of humanity.
The earth is over-populated and the problem is getting worse. When you put fruit flies in a jar and they reproduce to the point where they are over-populated the result is not that some die until a sustainable number is achieved but rather they ALL die. They rape their environment to the point where it will not support ANY fruit flies.
I think humans will survive but we may experience a dramatic reduction in our population numbers. But we are a prolific species and we will rebuild.
"I think humans will survive but we may experience a dramatic reduction in our population numbers. But we are a prolific species and we will rebuild."
I *feel* as though some kind of global disaster is going to wipe out the majority of the human population everywhere. I also feel that there will be survivors who will work together to rebuild. They will have to start from scratch, as far as making fire and inventing a new wheel, but luckily they will have a basic knowledge of human history and will learn quickly.
I do not think we are going to see a *28 Days* type of situation. Though it may look a lot like "Children of God," before we get to Utopia.
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"I think humans will survive but we may experience a dramatic reduction in our population numbers. But we are a prolific species and we will rebuild."
I *feel* as though some kind of global disaster is going to wipe out the majority of the human population everywhere. I also feel that there will be survivors who will work together to rebuild. They will have to start from scratch, as far as making fire and inventing a new wheel, but luckily they will have a basic knowledge of human history and will learn quickly.
I do not think we are going to see a *28 Days* type of situation. Though it may look a lot like "Children of God," before we get to Utopia.
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I'm not sure what exactly our weather changes will bring, but Waterworld seems the most likely scenario, out of all of the "end of the world" type movies I've seen; well that and that cult classic A Boy and His Dog (this is a must-see; very bizarre movie, but I think it is a pretty realistic view of the world we are moving towards.) Roving bands of "pirate" types and communities aboard ships and floating cities seems likely as ice caps continue to melt.
Humans will survive; or small pockets of humans will. We may well be fighting over cans of Spam, making clothing from animal skins and living almost entirely on sea creatures, but some of us will press onward...telepathic dogs or no (A Boy and His Dog reference.)
Love ya,
Carrot
A Boy and His Dog was great. I have not seen that for decades. Now I am going to have to look for the DVD.
If all the ice in the world melts there still will not be enough water to make Waterworld very likely. And I don't think people evolving into fish-like creatures in one or two generations is even slightly likely. But I liked the movie.
I also like all the Mel Gibson Mad Max movies. Carrot, you would probably be right at home in Barter Town.
I like my luxuries so I lean towards the Logan's Run scenario.
One of my all time favorite movies is "The Postman" and I think it lays out a fairly reasonable post Apocalyse scenario. All those shotgun shells I mentioned above will come in handy.
But of all the visions of the future, I think the classic that captured what I think is going to happen the best is Soylent Green.
Isn't that some sort of cannibalism movie? Like a 28 days/ children taking over and killing off the parent generation? I didn't see it, but I have heard about it. I must admit I do sometimes breathe freely when I imagine my father's generation over and done with.
For me the movie, 'Turtles Can Fly" is about the most riveting depiction of the beginning of the "New World" I have ever seen. Not very pretty, but where there are children, there is always hope.
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Is set in a miserably overpopulated world (picture about 100 perople living on a grimy flight of stairs in an apartment building in the projects) where the environment has been destroyed by pollution and excess humanity. Food shortages are chronic and most people (except the very rich) are living on soylent green which is supposedly harvested from the sea (algie and whatnot). Frequently there are food riots and people get scooped up indiscriminately in giant garbage trucks with scoop on the front and hauled away (we find out later what happens to them). Charleton Heston is the main character (which guarantees great acting) and is a conflicted cop hating a miserable life, one of the lucky few who actually has a job, investigating the murder of a rich person. All the rich people are executives in the company that makes soylent green. Eventually his investifation leads him to one of the very popular and heavily used State sponsored voluntary suicide clinics where he figures out that the volunteers are going out the back door into the Soylent Green Factory. The movie ends with him being hauled away with its most famous line being delivered as only Heston could, "Soylent Green is made out of PEOPLE".
It is an excellent but depressing movie depicting a reality that may very well be in much of the world's future.
Here is the Readers Digest Condensed version of the movie:
Soylent Green Trailer
Charleton Heston was also in another end of the world movie which I forgot to mention above, Planet of the Apes. Again he has a great end of the movie line, "Damn You!" meaning all humanity as he sees the crumbled ruins of the Statue of Liberty and realizes that the world now dominated by apes who enslave humans used to be Earth. Entertaining but not very realistic.