I've only had this dish once or twice, but I remember it being absolutely delicious. Perfect for vegetarian barbecues. They are not, however, the sturdiest of foods, so be careful if considering cooking them on an open grill.
Ingredients:
1 15 ounce can black beans
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 red or yellow bell pepper, diced
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 Ener-G egg replacer
1 cup bread crumbs
oil for frying (optional, although I wouldn't recommend it simply because I hate fried food)
Preparation:
Its pretty simple to prepare; just throw the black beans into a bowl, mash them up, and throw in whatever ingredients you want plus the ones listed above, and mix them to your satisfaction. Then, make them into whatever shape pleases you, and fry or grill them at a medium heat for however long seems necessary to you.
I'm going to go run and make me some of these when I get home.
Peace,
Dylan
Friday, June 12, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
FInal Paper!!!!!!!!
The topic for AWOL students is - "How I make sense of the American Way of Life". You should address some specific examples of US practices (government, capitalism, birth, health care, economic inequality, food, energy) and connect them to each other and to deeper underlying patterns.
Some starter suggestions and questions:
You should share your orientation towards the American Way of Life - do you resist it? Enjoy it? Enjoy and resist different aspects? What aspects of the mainstream American Way of Life account for its global dominance and dominance here in the U.S.? What aspects of the American Way of Life are particularly tragic or dumb? How did the essential aspects of the American Way of Life develop and where are we headed? Please include some quotes from your own or others' earlier work that expresses strongly what you believe or what you don't (any longer) believe.
As many Americans have probably realized, our country is in trouble. Some blame it on the mortage crisis, others on the past administration, etc... There are many different theories on what is wrong, although I would have to argue that many of them are shortsighted. There is one fundamental issue with America and all other industrialized societies; since we have all grown so comfortable with having machines and the poor do everything for us we consider it unsanitary or demeaning to perform such lowly tasks. Thus, we are unwilling to alter our status of life to anything other than what it currently is. This staunch inflexibility is what will lead to our downfall...
This issue permeates every aspect of our culture, be it food, housing, birth, medical insurance, our outlook on social wellbeing, or transportation. Having looked at many of these aspects in this class I feel that I can rightfully proclaim that they bear certain similarities to one another. In short, we are bent on preserving our individual comfort regardless of the cost, and most of us will continue living alienated, superficial, and overindulgent lifestyles similar to the ones we now lead regardless of how much we know to be wrong with our way of life.
I recently read "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, and in the end I walked away with one solitary insight. Not how to combat an enemy in mountanous territory nor how to use an enemy's strengths to their own disadvantage, but rather how to lead. The fundamental message of the book, aside from all the war mumbo jumbo, is that if the
"base and superstructure" of a system are sound and with good intention then all that proceeds it will follow suit. Think about it; if you are good to your troops and lead them with morality and honor, they will follow you and do as you please. If the nature of your leadership is characterized by selfishness then your troops will be selfish. The same can be said of any system, ours included. Now lets take a nice, close look at the U.S. and the groundwork that provides the foundation for our entire system. All wealth is based on the primitive accumulation of capital; A hoarding of valuable natural resources or other useful sources of production. Our "civilized" ancestors exploited the natural land for crops and enslaved black people, all of which provided our country with its first source of income. So one can rightfully assume that all that came to pass prior to this bears many similarities to our past. It is here that we first soughed the seeds of our own destruction.
Since the industrial revolution every aspect of our culture has become massively mechanical; we produce food on a massive scale, we have mass media to entertain us, we have chemically synthesized medicine to fix every tiny ailment, and we operate on a universally massive scale that stifles the humanity within us all. We all have to work like well oiled machines in order to get by; god forbid we should show any sign of emotion. We aren't dealt with on an individual basis and thus, generalities are made and we are all treated exactly the same when in reality we aren't.
I'll start first with the American way of birth: Supposedly, upon turning three infants lose all memory of past events in their lives, but the impact of our birth stays eternally with us. Something as simple as being born in a bath-tub could have a profound effect on ones experience. So one could probably see why people feel the need to manipulate every little factor. What other miniscule factors could alter the life of a child? In our society, natural birth is looked down upon by mothers and Obs alike and all the while people are becoming more and more reliant on medical technology. But why when our own bodies provide us with all the tools necessary to give birth to a child. Just as we rely on our corrupt politicians to straighten things out we rely on doctors to heal us. Yet in doing so we lead ourselves astray and lose sight of the ultimate importance of birth. The Techno-medical way of birth alienates us from our bodies and perpetuates the same mindless capitalist system that is the driving force behind the rest of our culture.
Looking at birth statistics, mothers, more often than not, use epidurals during labour to relieve themselves of pain. However, evidence proves that epidurals drug the baby as well which can make it reluctant to breast feed, an important factor in the mother child bonding process. Breast feeding soon after birth helps the mother to release oxytocin, a “bonding” chemical, that the child then absorbs into his body through the breast milk. If mothers are willing to sacrifice their bodies and their entire lives for their unborn children, one would assume they would be willing to endure a few hours of pain to ensure the healthy and un-stoned birth of their baby. This being said, why then do most mothers use epidurals and other birth intervention drugs? It’s not that I believe that most mothers don’t love their babies, but there has to be something, aside from the pain, that would encourage a mother to take such a risk.
Being fairly familiar with the way our culture works I feel that I can adequately assess what may possess people to use these drugs. Who other than the multi-billion dollar business that holds the lives of millions of Americans at stake for money; big pharmaceutical companies, the puppet masters that tug us whichever way best suits them.
Its astounding to see how much Capitalism and the profit motive permeate our culture to the point where people designated to provide us remedies and treatments deceitfully trick us into paying for drugs and procedures that could potentially harm or affect the life of an unborn child. Orgasmic birth is a natural birthing method that, as the name entails, turns the process of birth into an ecstatic and beautiful orgasm. I mean, compared to the alternative of having your feet put up in sturrups in a cold hospital environment you'd think that any woman would jump at the chance to have an orgasmic birth. But we have been conditioned into believing that the world of sex and birth must be kept seperate. Also, instead of allowing the mother the intimacy of their own home, doctors have been taught to encourage the mechanical, clockwork hospital environment.
If the majority of us are brought into this world via machine, then we ourselves will grow to be little carbon copy, atomaton droids bent on upholding the same system that beckoned us into existence. And we quite obviously do. After being born into a mechanical world we accept it and live it as if it were natural. One thing we Americans do "naturally" is shop. In fact we shop so much that even our religious holidays are plagued by capitalism. On December 25th of every year, people around the world celebrate the birth of the lord Jesus Christ with decorated evergreen trees, candy filled over-sized stockings, and of course, gifts. It is a time of giving, a time of love and goodwill towards fellow man, and don’t forget jolly old Santa Clause with his big white beard, red fluffy suit, dangerously large paunch, and enormous sack of gifts. To emulate this pudgy, jovial man people stuff their faces with calorie-dense foods and fritter away their yearly salaries on plastic shit mostly made in China. Yes, I’m talking about Christmas, the one time of the year where it’s considered ok to buy, eat, and drink (ironically) to excess.
Ideally, Christmas is a winter wonderland filled with joy and happiness and morbidly obese men squeezing their way down chimneys with bags filled with colorfully wrapped gifts for Jack and Sally. But, as one could expect, this is hardly the reality most face come December 25th. For me, the Christmas season brought nothing of the sort. Several days before Christmas I accompanied my father on a trip to Macy’s in hopes of finding evidence to use in this analysis. It was a very white Christmas at Macy’s. I got what I expected, people crowded together cursing under their breath at how crowded it was, lines of exhausted white people stretched throughout the store, each one tapping their feet, waiting to purchase Christmas gifts. Workers uselessly stationed at random places throughout the building giving samples of cologne and only increasing the general intensity of the store. When the people on line finally reached their destination, the look on their faces was priceless, or worth as much as they were spending. In short, the place was an absolute mob-scene, Macy’s as the scene and the consumers as the mob. We can't even have a merry, merry Christmas without all our hard earned cash on crap that the media machine tells us to buy.
Worst of all is that in the end we really don't have much of a say in what we buy, at least in regards to food. Our crops are sprayed with pesticide so that that very same poison is hardwired into their genetic structure. Worst of all is that we willingly put this crap into our body's, not just in regards to plants. In fact, I'd say that pesticides are the least of your average Americans worries, seeing as most people here don't eat nearly enough fruits or veggies. Instead, we eat chemically synthesized foods with nondescript ingredients. That there is one of our largest problems in regards to eating; we don't know what goes into most of what we eat. All we know is calories, fat, sugar, and carbs. I was reading the ingredients off of a can of soda my brother had just purchased and not one of the ingredients made sense to me; whats sorbitol? whats high fructose corn syrup? Whats potassium benzoate? and the list goes on and on... But sadly, this is our idea of the food world; we entrust massive companies like Coka Cola and Mc Donalds with our diets and leave it to them to not poison us. So as you can clearly see, it is out of our hands while we sit back and let others decide what is put into our slobbery gullets. At least Hunter Gatherers knew what they were eating.
The rest of the food industry is no different. Our meat is more or less factory raised, and treated inhumanely as a result. Most meals are packed full of this tortured meat and processed produce that has been sold to us by the big food corporations. The act of eating has become factory like. Hell, kids are told now that our bodies are like factories. What are they supposed to believe?
...And just like a Hummer, what does our entire country run on? OIL! Who'd think that this black, tarry, noxious fluid would literally pave the way to our peak and our ultimate demise? Certainly not the creators of the first oil well, nor the many individuals who first used their product. In this day and age, however, we all know full well that oil is bad for the environment and how incredibly limited of a resource it is, so one would assume we would do something to stop tearing apart the world around us like a spoiled infant with tinker toys.
First off, I'd like to establish this one fact: EVERYTHING IS RUN AND CREATED BY OR BY USING OIL IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER. The Hummer drivers aren't the only ones at fault; even many of those so called health nuts that work out at the local YMCA contribute; they buy nylon exercise outfits to allow for flexibility (nylon being a derivative of oil), they buy shoes with rubber soles which are also made out of rubber, and they buy bottled drinks on the fly because canteens require commitment that they aren't quite prepared to give simply because they are cumbersome and once you are done working out you have to carry it around, at which point it is no longer of use or wanted. The point being that we all contribute. Hell, even using water requires oil to filter and heat. Its truly inescapable.
Now lets take a country as massive as ours; just think how much oil it takes to run things...evaluating everything in our daily lives that is somehow related to oil is no small task. According to the documentary "A Crude Awakening" the U.S. uses 25% of the worlds oil despite the fact that we make up a whopping 3% of the world population. Shocking, right? And worst of all is that its not just us doing it; the majority of people in any industrialized country go through life with blinders on, ignoring all the shit that goes on out of pure convenience, entirely disregarding the obvious effects on the natural world.
Peak oil is the theory that the peak of our oil production "coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted" (Life After The Oil Crash, Matthew David Savinar) Once we reach this peak oil production continuously decreases while cost simultaneously increases. Because we are a constantly growing nation, both in regards to population and the economy, demand for oil will certainly increase and we will need an even greater amount to satisfy our thirst. The U.S. reached peak oil in 1971 and since then the theory has held true. Of course we, the people, haven't actually seen this, after all we are still producing more and more crap each year. We leach oil from other countries to sustain ourselves, and what do we have to show for it? We produce very little of anything and most of the goods we buy are from foreign countries.
But what would we ever do with out oil in this day and age? Nothing. We simply cannot do without oil since it is now firmly ingrained in every aspect of our existence. The real worry, however, is not so much that we will run out, but that our world supplies will diminish to the point where we will no longer be able to sustain our status of life. "In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him." I like how he characterized America as this tremendous, obviously overindulgent man. The main point here being, that this lifestyle is unsustainable.
Yet what do we do? Millions upon millions of Americans continue driving and buying plastic despite knowing how it will affect the earth. Even when the world spells it out for them in the weather and in the news people still don't take a hint. But as the theory of entropy states, all societies will inevitably decline and degenerate.
We can see that this theory has held strong throughout the entire history of human kind; the mayans fell, The Roman empire fell, china has fallen several times...Every past civilization has been reduced to ruins, whey then do we feel that we can preserve what we now have, especially with all the many new complexities our system has placed on us. We no longer have just sticks and rocks, nor do we have only our own seperate islands at our disposal; we have the entire world at our finger tips. Its not just us exploiting our own local natural resources anymore, no, we can now take from the rest of the world because everything, the earth included is treated like a commodity. This is made especially clear in the case of the Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island. In order to build the monumental statues off of which they have been made famous, the Polynesians cut down trees to construct lifting mechanisms, for the strength of no man nor group of men was enough to lift the tremendous statues. To build more they had to cut down more trees, and for a while they could sustain this ideal, but as time bore on and the trees steadily decreased in number their land already reflected the impact that they themselves had caused. And thus their society fell apart; the people overthrew the chiefs, toppled the statues that they had sacrificed so much to build, and people fled or died.
There are obvious parallels between these two different circumstances, the main one being the rapid depletion of natural resources to uphold a certain standard to which they held themselves and the society around them, the standard in this case being the statues. History has told us that any society that exploits mother nature to such a degree will collapse, yet we still follow our ancestors with the misguided optimism of a pack of freerange cattle being led into a truck to the slaughterhouse.
After reading most of these articles and hearing of our disgusting, gold-digging affair with petroleum I feel that I can proclaim with the utmost certainty that our civilization is going to fall and we're taking the rest of the world with us. God can send all the plague and pestilence that he wants; one way or another, no matter what religious deity we pray to, our addiction to oil will be our downfall.
While investing and utilization of alternative sources of energy such as sunlight and wind could definitely improve our current situation and provide us with something to fallback on I believe that it is only prolonging the collapse...that and you can't build bottles out of wind or sunlight. Also, our country has so firmly embedded oil in its structure that switching to another more expensive source on which to fuel our country would not likely fly. Do you really think people would give up their hummers for some dinky looking electric car? Do you think that people would be willing to stop buying their morning bottle of water? I think people wont be willing to alter their way of living until the reprecussions of their actions are pointing a a big fat GAT at their porky fucking heads, at which point it will be too late for us. And as for reverting to a more primitive lifestyle, I think we will keep on searching for ways to mimic what we currently have, and each time we find away entropy will follow through once again. Its the nature of the world, especially in our highly mechanical culture that depends on this limited natural resource to survive.
I see the American way of life as an unchanging and unsustainable drill, careening its way to the very real magma-filled core of our existence. Once it hits and we all finally realize the reality of our situation it will be too late to save us. History has made it crystal clear to us that all civilizations will diminish and collapse as entropy sets in and we steadily eat away at our precious natural resources. Blame it on the human consciousness, blame it on selfishness, blame it on our ability to adapt to any given environment, whatever it is, industrial humans have lost sight of the human aspect of existence and we have been reduced to mechanical drones, operating within the confines of an unstable system. In order to change our system we would need to alter our entire world outlook, but until we do that we will continue on, searching for ways to prolong our reign while simultaneously trying to uphold our specific standard of life. Its like fueling a fire with the logs from your own cabin.
Some starter suggestions and questions:
You should share your orientation towards the American Way of Life - do you resist it? Enjoy it? Enjoy and resist different aspects? What aspects of the mainstream American Way of Life account for its global dominance and dominance here in the U.S.? What aspects of the American Way of Life are particularly tragic or dumb? How did the essential aspects of the American Way of Life develop and where are we headed? Please include some quotes from your own or others' earlier work that expresses strongly what you believe or what you don't (any longer) believe.
As many Americans have probably realized, our country is in trouble. Some blame it on the mortage crisis, others on the past administration, etc... There are many different theories on what is wrong, although I would have to argue that many of them are shortsighted. There is one fundamental issue with America and all other industrialized societies; since we have all grown so comfortable with having machines and the poor do everything for us we consider it unsanitary or demeaning to perform such lowly tasks. Thus, we are unwilling to alter our status of life to anything other than what it currently is. This staunch inflexibility is what will lead to our downfall...
This issue permeates every aspect of our culture, be it food, housing, birth, medical insurance, our outlook on social wellbeing, or transportation. Having looked at many of these aspects in this class I feel that I can rightfully proclaim that they bear certain similarities to one another. In short, we are bent on preserving our individual comfort regardless of the cost, and most of us will continue living alienated, superficial, and overindulgent lifestyles similar to the ones we now lead regardless of how much we know to be wrong with our way of life.
I recently read "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, and in the end I walked away with one solitary insight. Not how to combat an enemy in mountanous territory nor how to use an enemy's strengths to their own disadvantage, but rather how to lead. The fundamental message of the book, aside from all the war mumbo jumbo, is that if the
"base and superstructure" of a system are sound and with good intention then all that proceeds it will follow suit. Think about it; if you are good to your troops and lead them with morality and honor, they will follow you and do as you please. If the nature of your leadership is characterized by selfishness then your troops will be selfish. The same can be said of any system, ours included. Now lets take a nice, close look at the U.S. and the groundwork that provides the foundation for our entire system. All wealth is based on the primitive accumulation of capital; A hoarding of valuable natural resources or other useful sources of production. Our "civilized" ancestors exploited the natural land for crops and enslaved black people, all of which provided our country with its first source of income. So one can rightfully assume that all that came to pass prior to this bears many similarities to our past. It is here that we first soughed the seeds of our own destruction.
Since the industrial revolution every aspect of our culture has become massively mechanical; we produce food on a massive scale, we have mass media to entertain us, we have chemically synthesized medicine to fix every tiny ailment, and we operate on a universally massive scale that stifles the humanity within us all. We all have to work like well oiled machines in order to get by; god forbid we should show any sign of emotion. We aren't dealt with on an individual basis and thus, generalities are made and we are all treated exactly the same when in reality we aren't.
I'll start first with the American way of birth: Supposedly, upon turning three infants lose all memory of past events in their lives, but the impact of our birth stays eternally with us. Something as simple as being born in a bath-tub could have a profound effect on ones experience. So one could probably see why people feel the need to manipulate every little factor. What other miniscule factors could alter the life of a child? In our society, natural birth is looked down upon by mothers and Obs alike and all the while people are becoming more and more reliant on medical technology. But why when our own bodies provide us with all the tools necessary to give birth to a child. Just as we rely on our corrupt politicians to straighten things out we rely on doctors to heal us. Yet in doing so we lead ourselves astray and lose sight of the ultimate importance of birth. The Techno-medical way of birth alienates us from our bodies and perpetuates the same mindless capitalist system that is the driving force behind the rest of our culture.
Looking at birth statistics, mothers, more often than not, use epidurals during labour to relieve themselves of pain. However, evidence proves that epidurals drug the baby as well which can make it reluctant to breast feed, an important factor in the mother child bonding process. Breast feeding soon after birth helps the mother to release oxytocin, a “bonding” chemical, that the child then absorbs into his body through the breast milk. If mothers are willing to sacrifice their bodies and their entire lives for their unborn children, one would assume they would be willing to endure a few hours of pain to ensure the healthy and un-stoned birth of their baby. This being said, why then do most mothers use epidurals and other birth intervention drugs? It’s not that I believe that most mothers don’t love their babies, but there has to be something, aside from the pain, that would encourage a mother to take such a risk.
Being fairly familiar with the way our culture works I feel that I can adequately assess what may possess people to use these drugs. Who other than the multi-billion dollar business that holds the lives of millions of Americans at stake for money; big pharmaceutical companies, the puppet masters that tug us whichever way best suits them.
Its astounding to see how much Capitalism and the profit motive permeate our culture to the point where people designated to provide us remedies and treatments deceitfully trick us into paying for drugs and procedures that could potentially harm or affect the life of an unborn child. Orgasmic birth is a natural birthing method that, as the name entails, turns the process of birth into an ecstatic and beautiful orgasm. I mean, compared to the alternative of having your feet put up in sturrups in a cold hospital environment you'd think that any woman would jump at the chance to have an orgasmic birth. But we have been conditioned into believing that the world of sex and birth must be kept seperate. Also, instead of allowing the mother the intimacy of their own home, doctors have been taught to encourage the mechanical, clockwork hospital environment.
If the majority of us are brought into this world via machine, then we ourselves will grow to be little carbon copy, atomaton droids bent on upholding the same system that beckoned us into existence. And we quite obviously do. After being born into a mechanical world we accept it and live it as if it were natural. One thing we Americans do "naturally" is shop. In fact we shop so much that even our religious holidays are plagued by capitalism. On December 25th of every year, people around the world celebrate the birth of the lord Jesus Christ with decorated evergreen trees, candy filled over-sized stockings, and of course, gifts. It is a time of giving, a time of love and goodwill towards fellow man, and don’t forget jolly old Santa Clause with his big white beard, red fluffy suit, dangerously large paunch, and enormous sack of gifts. To emulate this pudgy, jovial man people stuff their faces with calorie-dense foods and fritter away their yearly salaries on plastic shit mostly made in China. Yes, I’m talking about Christmas, the one time of the year where it’s considered ok to buy, eat, and drink (ironically) to excess.
Ideally, Christmas is a winter wonderland filled with joy and happiness and morbidly obese men squeezing their way down chimneys with bags filled with colorfully wrapped gifts for Jack and Sally. But, as one could expect, this is hardly the reality most face come December 25th. For me, the Christmas season brought nothing of the sort. Several days before Christmas I accompanied my father on a trip to Macy’s in hopes of finding evidence to use in this analysis. It was a very white Christmas at Macy’s. I got what I expected, people crowded together cursing under their breath at how crowded it was, lines of exhausted white people stretched throughout the store, each one tapping their feet, waiting to purchase Christmas gifts. Workers uselessly stationed at random places throughout the building giving samples of cologne and only increasing the general intensity of the store. When the people on line finally reached their destination, the look on their faces was priceless, or worth as much as they were spending. In short, the place was an absolute mob-scene, Macy’s as the scene and the consumers as the mob. We can't even have a merry, merry Christmas without all our hard earned cash on crap that the media machine tells us to buy.
Worst of all is that in the end we really don't have much of a say in what we buy, at least in regards to food. Our crops are sprayed with pesticide so that that very same poison is hardwired into their genetic structure. Worst of all is that we willingly put this crap into our body's, not just in regards to plants. In fact, I'd say that pesticides are the least of your average Americans worries, seeing as most people here don't eat nearly enough fruits or veggies. Instead, we eat chemically synthesized foods with nondescript ingredients. That there is one of our largest problems in regards to eating; we don't know what goes into most of what we eat. All we know is calories, fat, sugar, and carbs. I was reading the ingredients off of a can of soda my brother had just purchased and not one of the ingredients made sense to me; whats sorbitol? whats high fructose corn syrup? Whats potassium benzoate? and the list goes on and on... But sadly, this is our idea of the food world; we entrust massive companies like Coka Cola and Mc Donalds with our diets and leave it to them to not poison us. So as you can clearly see, it is out of our hands while we sit back and let others decide what is put into our slobbery gullets. At least Hunter Gatherers knew what they were eating.
The rest of the food industry is no different. Our meat is more or less factory raised, and treated inhumanely as a result. Most meals are packed full of this tortured meat and processed produce that has been sold to us by the big food corporations. The act of eating has become factory like. Hell, kids are told now that our bodies are like factories. What are they supposed to believe?
...And just like a Hummer, what does our entire country run on? OIL! Who'd think that this black, tarry, noxious fluid would literally pave the way to our peak and our ultimate demise? Certainly not the creators of the first oil well, nor the many individuals who first used their product. In this day and age, however, we all know full well that oil is bad for the environment and how incredibly limited of a resource it is, so one would assume we would do something to stop tearing apart the world around us like a spoiled infant with tinker toys.
First off, I'd like to establish this one fact: EVERYTHING IS RUN AND CREATED BY OR BY USING OIL IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER. The Hummer drivers aren't the only ones at fault; even many of those so called health nuts that work out at the local YMCA contribute; they buy nylon exercise outfits to allow for flexibility (nylon being a derivative of oil), they buy shoes with rubber soles which are also made out of rubber, and they buy bottled drinks on the fly because canteens require commitment that they aren't quite prepared to give simply because they are cumbersome and once you are done working out you have to carry it around, at which point it is no longer of use or wanted. The point being that we all contribute. Hell, even using water requires oil to filter and heat. Its truly inescapable.
Now lets take a country as massive as ours; just think how much oil it takes to run things...evaluating everything in our daily lives that is somehow related to oil is no small task. According to the documentary "A Crude Awakening" the U.S. uses 25% of the worlds oil despite the fact that we make up a whopping 3% of the world population. Shocking, right? And worst of all is that its not just us doing it; the majority of people in any industrialized country go through life with blinders on, ignoring all the shit that goes on out of pure convenience, entirely disregarding the obvious effects on the natural world.
Peak oil is the theory that the peak of our oil production "coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted" (Life After The Oil Crash, Matthew David Savinar) Once we reach this peak oil production continuously decreases while cost simultaneously increases. Because we are a constantly growing nation, both in regards to population and the economy, demand for oil will certainly increase and we will need an even greater amount to satisfy our thirst. The U.S. reached peak oil in 1971 and since then the theory has held true. Of course we, the people, haven't actually seen this, after all we are still producing more and more crap each year. We leach oil from other countries to sustain ourselves, and what do we have to show for it? We produce very little of anything and most of the goods we buy are from foreign countries.
But what would we ever do with out oil in this day and age? Nothing. We simply cannot do without oil since it is now firmly ingrained in every aspect of our existence. The real worry, however, is not so much that we will run out, but that our world supplies will diminish to the point where we will no longer be able to sustain our status of life. "In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him." I like how he characterized America as this tremendous, obviously overindulgent man. The main point here being, that this lifestyle is unsustainable.
Yet what do we do? Millions upon millions of Americans continue driving and buying plastic despite knowing how it will affect the earth. Even when the world spells it out for them in the weather and in the news people still don't take a hint. But as the theory of entropy states, all societies will inevitably decline and degenerate.
We can see that this theory has held strong throughout the entire history of human kind; the mayans fell, The Roman empire fell, china has fallen several times...Every past civilization has been reduced to ruins, whey then do we feel that we can preserve what we now have, especially with all the many new complexities our system has placed on us. We no longer have just sticks and rocks, nor do we have only our own seperate islands at our disposal; we have the entire world at our finger tips. Its not just us exploiting our own local natural resources anymore, no, we can now take from the rest of the world because everything, the earth included is treated like a commodity. This is made especially clear in the case of the Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island. In order to build the monumental statues off of which they have been made famous, the Polynesians cut down trees to construct lifting mechanisms, for the strength of no man nor group of men was enough to lift the tremendous statues. To build more they had to cut down more trees, and for a while they could sustain this ideal, but as time bore on and the trees steadily decreased in number their land already reflected the impact that they themselves had caused. And thus their society fell apart; the people overthrew the chiefs, toppled the statues that they had sacrificed so much to build, and people fled or died.
There are obvious parallels between these two different circumstances, the main one being the rapid depletion of natural resources to uphold a certain standard to which they held themselves and the society around them, the standard in this case being the statues. History has told us that any society that exploits mother nature to such a degree will collapse, yet we still follow our ancestors with the misguided optimism of a pack of freerange cattle being led into a truck to the slaughterhouse.
After reading most of these articles and hearing of our disgusting, gold-digging affair with petroleum I feel that I can proclaim with the utmost certainty that our civilization is going to fall and we're taking the rest of the world with us. God can send all the plague and pestilence that he wants; one way or another, no matter what religious deity we pray to, our addiction to oil will be our downfall.
While investing and utilization of alternative sources of energy such as sunlight and wind could definitely improve our current situation and provide us with something to fallback on I believe that it is only prolonging the collapse...that and you can't build bottles out of wind or sunlight. Also, our country has so firmly embedded oil in its structure that switching to another more expensive source on which to fuel our country would not likely fly. Do you really think people would give up their hummers for some dinky looking electric car? Do you think that people would be willing to stop buying their morning bottle of water? I think people wont be willing to alter their way of living until the reprecussions of their actions are pointing a a big fat GAT at their porky fucking heads, at which point it will be too late for us. And as for reverting to a more primitive lifestyle, I think we will keep on searching for ways to mimic what we currently have, and each time we find away entropy will follow through once again. Its the nature of the world, especially in our highly mechanical culture that depends on this limited natural resource to survive.
I see the American way of life as an unchanging and unsustainable drill, careening its way to the very real magma-filled core of our existence. Once it hits and we all finally realize the reality of our situation it will be too late to save us. History has made it crystal clear to us that all civilizations will diminish and collapse as entropy sets in and we steadily eat away at our precious natural resources. Blame it on the human consciousness, blame it on selfishness, blame it on our ability to adapt to any given environment, whatever it is, industrial humans have lost sight of the human aspect of existence and we have been reduced to mechanical drones, operating within the confines of an unstable system. In order to change our system we would need to alter our entire world outlook, but until we do that we will continue on, searching for ways to prolong our reign while simultaneously trying to uphold our specific standard of life. Its like fueling a fire with the logs from your own cabin.
Comments on other people's final papers
Maggie-
Hey, first off, nice overview of all the units we've covered. I agree with you on most of these concepts.
There are, however, two things I would like to ask you to reconsider:
1.)At one point in your essay you spoke of shitty working conditions under which many lower class Americans operate. You claim that it is as simple as using your services as collateral, now tell me this; lets say you are a small business owner and you buy some of your products from this big corporation for way more than is reasonable. If you were to impose an embargo against them they could just fall back on their other clients. They could easily just cut you off, cold turkey, and their sales would still be more or less the same. My point being that the workers are interchangeable; were they to stop working for the "capitalists," who, by definition, already have money, the boss men would just get some mexicans to do it. Their individual input isn't that important because the capitalist pigs could just as easily employ some other poor person who'd be just as happy to make that money.
2.) In regards to doctors; lately I have been talking to my individual team of doctors, and not one of them seemed nearly as profit-bent, or plotting as we have made them out to be in this class. Next time you go to your doctor, talk to them about this stuff. They don't become doctors to fuck people over and make shitloads of money. They could just as easily become a buisness bastard on wallstreet. People who want to become doctors pay more for their education than they even make in the combined first years of actual hospital work. And malpractice insurance is a bitch.
Think about these things. But overall I think you have done a wonderful job laying down the basic injustices in the American Way of Life.
Sandy- I like how you blame it on our dependence and not just the system. That is something I find that many people neglect talking about; its not just their fault for imposing it, its our fault for accepting it despite all of the many counterarguments against the common way of living here in the U.S..
In regards to SICKO; sure the Brits live longer and have better health coverage, but they have to put up with those funny accents. tee hee. CONSIDER THAT!
I also like how you aren't blaming the doctors for the problems with health coverage and the health care system in general. After all, they are cogs in the machine just like us.
Fight the Power! Put a muzzle on the lamb!
Very in depth. Good Job!
Chloe- Whether or not chemical reactions are relevant to dismantling the AWOL is debatable. Ever heard of the Anarchist Cookbook? If not then check it out.
In regards to insurance: It all depends on the lifestyle one chooses to live. Some prefer privatized medical insurance because it represents the freedom to do whatever the fuck they want, while on the other hand some may be partial to universal health coverage because it doesn't create such vast socio-economic rifts...eithe that or they are just poor. I kid.
This is far too long for me to read right now, but its looking good. Keep on questioning the American way of living, you've already got yourself a firm foundation on which to build a tower of anti-Americanism. Good Job!
Hey, first off, nice overview of all the units we've covered. I agree with you on most of these concepts.
There are, however, two things I would like to ask you to reconsider:
1.)At one point in your essay you spoke of shitty working conditions under which many lower class Americans operate. You claim that it is as simple as using your services as collateral, now tell me this; lets say you are a small business owner and you buy some of your products from this big corporation for way more than is reasonable. If you were to impose an embargo against them they could just fall back on their other clients. They could easily just cut you off, cold turkey, and their sales would still be more or less the same. My point being that the workers are interchangeable; were they to stop working for the "capitalists," who, by definition, already have money, the boss men would just get some mexicans to do it. Their individual input isn't that important because the capitalist pigs could just as easily employ some other poor person who'd be just as happy to make that money.
2.) In regards to doctors; lately I have been talking to my individual team of doctors, and not one of them seemed nearly as profit-bent, or plotting as we have made them out to be in this class. Next time you go to your doctor, talk to them about this stuff. They don't become doctors to fuck people over and make shitloads of money. They could just as easily become a buisness bastard on wallstreet. People who want to become doctors pay more for their education than they even make in the combined first years of actual hospital work. And malpractice insurance is a bitch.
Think about these things. But overall I think you have done a wonderful job laying down the basic injustices in the American Way of Life.
Sandy- I like how you blame it on our dependence and not just the system. That is something I find that many people neglect talking about; its not just their fault for imposing it, its our fault for accepting it despite all of the many counterarguments against the common way of living here in the U.S..
In regards to SICKO; sure the Brits live longer and have better health coverage, but they have to put up with those funny accents. tee hee. CONSIDER THAT!
I also like how you aren't blaming the doctors for the problems with health coverage and the health care system in general. After all, they are cogs in the machine just like us.
Fight the Power! Put a muzzle on the lamb!
Very in depth. Good Job!
Chloe- Whether or not chemical reactions are relevant to dismantling the AWOL is debatable. Ever heard of the Anarchist Cookbook? If not then check it out.
In regards to insurance: It all depends on the lifestyle one chooses to live. Some prefer privatized medical insurance because it represents the freedom to do whatever the fuck they want, while on the other hand some may be partial to universal health coverage because it doesn't create such vast socio-economic rifts...eithe that or they are just poor. I kid.
This is far too long for me to read right now, but its looking good. Keep on questioning the American way of living, you've already got yourself a firm foundation on which to build a tower of anti-Americanism. Good Job!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The collapse part 2
How do we envision the end of the world? Will it all end in a big fiery blast on judgment day where the good will be lifted up into heaven and the sinners will meet there comeuppance? Will Nostradamus's ancient speculations come to pass? Or will we single handedly destroy the earth? Philosophers, economists, and religiousos alike have dealt with this question throughout the entire history of man kind, not for the sake of being morbid, but because it occupies a certain place in all of our minds. We are all fixated on this idea that the world will end; even today millions of Americans are exposed to theories on the coming apocalypse through the history channel and other such mass, televised programming. How it will end, none of us can rightfully say, as religious beliefs cannot rightfully be disproven, and one can never know the validity of a theory (nostradamus) until it actually occurs. All that we can deal with is the concrete.
As many Americans have probably realized, our country is in trouble. Some blame it on the mortage crisis, others on the past administration, etc... There are many different theories on what is wrong, although I would have to argue that many of them are shortsighted. There is one fundamental issue with America and all other industrialized societies; since we have all grown so comfortable with having machines and the poor do everything for us we consider it unsanitary or demeaning to perform such lowly tasks. Thus, we are unwilling to alter our status of life to anything other than what it currently is. This staunch inflexibility is what will lead to our downfall...
...but of course its not that simple. This issue permeates every aspect of our culture, be it food, housing, or transportation. Having looked at many of these aspects in this class I feel that I can rightfully proclaim that they bear certain similarities to one another. Out of all of these, however, one thing stands alone, for it permits us to perpetuate the overindulgent lifestyle that all industrialists follow; Oil! Who'd think that this black, tarry, noxious fluid would literally pave the way to our peak and our ultimate demise? Certainly not the creators of the first oil well, nor the many individuals who first used their product. In this day and age, however, we all know full well that oil is bad for the environment and how incredibly limited of a resource it is, so one would assume we would do something to stop tearing apart the world around us like a spoiled infant with tinker toys.
First off, I'd like to establish this one fact: EVERYTHING IS RUN AND CREATED BY OR BY USING OIL IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER. The Hummer drivers aren't the only ones at fault; even many of those so called health nuts that work out at the local YMCA contribute; they buy nylon exercise outfits to allow for flexibility (nylon being a derivative of oil), they buy shoes with rubber soles which are also made out of rubber, and they buy bottled drinks on the fly because canteens require commitment that they aren't quite prepared to give simply because they are cumbersome and once you are done working out you have to carry it around, at which point it is no longer of use or wanted. The point being that we all contribute. Hell, even using water requires oil to filter and heat. Its truly inescapable.
Now lets take a country as massive as ours; just think how much oil it takes to run things...evaluating everything in our daily lives that is somehow related to oil is no small task. According to the documentary "A Crude Awakening" the U.S. uses 25% of the worlds oil despite the fact that we make up a whopping 3% of the world population. Shocking, right? And worst of all is that its not just us doing it; the majority of people in any industrialized country go through life with blinders on, ignoring all the shit that goes on out of pure convenience, entirely disregarding the obvious effects on the natural world.
Peak oil is the theory that the peak of our oil production "coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted" (Life After The Oil Crash, Matthew David Savinar) Once we reach this peak oil production continuously decreases while cost simultaneously increases. Because we are a constantly growing nation, both in regards to population and the economy, demand for oil will certainly increase and we will need an even greater amount to satisfy our thirst. The U.S. reached peak oil in 1971 and since then the theory has held true. Of course we, the people, haven't actually seen this, after all we are still producing more and more crap each year. We leach oil from other countries to sustain ourselves, and what do we have to show for it? We produce very little of anything and most of the goods we buy are from foreign countries.
But what would we ever do with out oil in this day and age? Nothing. We simply cannot do without oil since it is now firmly ingrained in every aspect of our existence. The real worry, however, is not so much that we will run out, but that our world supplies will diminish to the point where we will no longer be able to sustain our status of life. "In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him." I like how he characterized America as this tremendous, obviously overindulgent man. The main point here being, that this lifestyle is unsustainable.
Yet what do we do? Millions upon millions of Americans continue driving and buying plastic despite knowing how it will affect the earth. Even when the world spells it out for them in the weather and in the news people still don't take a hint. But as the theory of entropy states, all societies will inevitably decline and degenerate.
We can see that this theory has held strong throughout the entire history of human kind; the mayans fell, The Roman empire fell, china has fallen several times...Every past civilization has been reduced to ruins, whey then do we feel that we can preserve what we now have, especially with all the many new complexities our system has placed on us. We no longer have just sticks and rocks, nor do we have only our own seperate islands at our disposal; we have the entire world at our finger tips. Its not just us exploiting our own local natural resources anymore, no, we can now take from the rest of the world because everything, the earth included is treated like a commodity. This is made especially clear in the case of the Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island. In order to build the monumental statues off of which they have been made famous, the Polynesians cut down trees to construct lifting mechanisms, for the strength of no man nor group of men was enough to lift the tremendous statues. To build more they had to cut down more trees, and for a while they could sustain this ideal, but as time bore on and the trees steadily decreased in number their land already reflected the impact that they themselves had caused. And thus their society fell apart; the people overthrew the chiefs, toppled the statues that they had sacrificed so much to build, and people fled or died.
There are obvious parallels between these two different circumstances, the main one being the rapid depletion of natural resources to uphold a certain standard to which they held themselves and the society around them, the standard in this case being the statues. History has told us that any society that exploits mother nature to such a degree will collapse, yet we still follow our ancestors with the misguided optimism of a pack of freerange cattle being led into a truck to the slaughterhouse.
After reading most of these articles and hearing of our disgusting, gold-digging affair with petroleum I feel that I can proclaim with the utmost certainty that our civilization is going to fall and we're taking the rest of the world with us. God can send all the plague and pestilence that he wants; one way or another, no matter what religious deity we pray to, our addiction to oil will be our downfall.
While investing and utilization of alternative sources of energy such as sunlight and wind could definitely improve our current situation and provide us with something to fallback on I believe that it is only prolonging the collapse...that and you can't build bottles out of wind or sunlight. Also, our country has so firmly embedded oil in its structure that switching to another more expensive source on which to fuel our country would not likely fly. Do you really think people would give up their hummers for some dinky looking electric car? Do you think that people would be willing to stop buying their morning bottle of water? I think people wont be willing to alter their way of living until the reprecussions of their actions are pointing a a big fat GAT at their porky fucking heads, at which point it will be too late for us. And as for reverting to a more primitive lifestyle, I think we will keep on searching for ways to mimic what we currently have, and each time we find away entropy will follow through once again. Its the nature of the world.
As many Americans have probably realized, our country is in trouble. Some blame it on the mortage crisis, others on the past administration, etc... There are many different theories on what is wrong, although I would have to argue that many of them are shortsighted. There is one fundamental issue with America and all other industrialized societies; since we have all grown so comfortable with having machines and the poor do everything for us we consider it unsanitary or demeaning to perform such lowly tasks. Thus, we are unwilling to alter our status of life to anything other than what it currently is. This staunch inflexibility is what will lead to our downfall...
...but of course its not that simple. This issue permeates every aspect of our culture, be it food, housing, or transportation. Having looked at many of these aspects in this class I feel that I can rightfully proclaim that they bear certain similarities to one another. Out of all of these, however, one thing stands alone, for it permits us to perpetuate the overindulgent lifestyle that all industrialists follow; Oil! Who'd think that this black, tarry, noxious fluid would literally pave the way to our peak and our ultimate demise? Certainly not the creators of the first oil well, nor the many individuals who first used their product. In this day and age, however, we all know full well that oil is bad for the environment and how incredibly limited of a resource it is, so one would assume we would do something to stop tearing apart the world around us like a spoiled infant with tinker toys.
First off, I'd like to establish this one fact: EVERYTHING IS RUN AND CREATED BY OR BY USING OIL IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER. The Hummer drivers aren't the only ones at fault; even many of those so called health nuts that work out at the local YMCA contribute; they buy nylon exercise outfits to allow for flexibility (nylon being a derivative of oil), they buy shoes with rubber soles which are also made out of rubber, and they buy bottled drinks on the fly because canteens require commitment that they aren't quite prepared to give simply because they are cumbersome and once you are done working out you have to carry it around, at which point it is no longer of use or wanted. The point being that we all contribute. Hell, even using water requires oil to filter and heat. Its truly inescapable.
Now lets take a country as massive as ours; just think how much oil it takes to run things...evaluating everything in our daily lives that is somehow related to oil is no small task. According to the documentary "A Crude Awakening" the U.S. uses 25% of the worlds oil despite the fact that we make up a whopping 3% of the world population. Shocking, right? And worst of all is that its not just us doing it; the majority of people in any industrialized country go through life with blinders on, ignoring all the shit that goes on out of pure convenience, entirely disregarding the obvious effects on the natural world.
Peak oil is the theory that the peak of our oil production "coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted" (Life After The Oil Crash, Matthew David Savinar) Once we reach this peak oil production continuously decreases while cost simultaneously increases. Because we are a constantly growing nation, both in regards to population and the economy, demand for oil will certainly increase and we will need an even greater amount to satisfy our thirst. The U.S. reached peak oil in 1971 and since then the theory has held true. Of course we, the people, haven't actually seen this, after all we are still producing more and more crap each year. We leach oil from other countries to sustain ourselves, and what do we have to show for it? We produce very little of anything and most of the goods we buy are from foreign countries.
But what would we ever do with out oil in this day and age? Nothing. We simply cannot do without oil since it is now firmly ingrained in every aspect of our existence. The real worry, however, is not so much that we will run out, but that our world supplies will diminish to the point where we will no longer be able to sustain our status of life. "In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him." I like how he characterized America as this tremendous, obviously overindulgent man. The main point here being, that this lifestyle is unsustainable.
Yet what do we do? Millions upon millions of Americans continue driving and buying plastic despite knowing how it will affect the earth. Even when the world spells it out for them in the weather and in the news people still don't take a hint. But as the theory of entropy states, all societies will inevitably decline and degenerate.
We can see that this theory has held strong throughout the entire history of human kind; the mayans fell, The Roman empire fell, china has fallen several times...Every past civilization has been reduced to ruins, whey then do we feel that we can preserve what we now have, especially with all the many new complexities our system has placed on us. We no longer have just sticks and rocks, nor do we have only our own seperate islands at our disposal; we have the entire world at our finger tips. Its not just us exploiting our own local natural resources anymore, no, we can now take from the rest of the world because everything, the earth included is treated like a commodity. This is made especially clear in the case of the Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island. In order to build the monumental statues off of which they have been made famous, the Polynesians cut down trees to construct lifting mechanisms, for the strength of no man nor group of men was enough to lift the tremendous statues. To build more they had to cut down more trees, and for a while they could sustain this ideal, but as time bore on and the trees steadily decreased in number their land already reflected the impact that they themselves had caused. And thus their society fell apart; the people overthrew the chiefs, toppled the statues that they had sacrificed so much to build, and people fled or died.
There are obvious parallels between these two different circumstances, the main one being the rapid depletion of natural resources to uphold a certain standard to which they held themselves and the society around them, the standard in this case being the statues. History has told us that any society that exploits mother nature to such a degree will collapse, yet we still follow our ancestors with the misguided optimism of a pack of freerange cattle being led into a truck to the slaughterhouse.
After reading most of these articles and hearing of our disgusting, gold-digging affair with petroleum I feel that I can proclaim with the utmost certainty that our civilization is going to fall and we're taking the rest of the world with us. God can send all the plague and pestilence that he wants; one way or another, no matter what religious deity we pray to, our addiction to oil will be our downfall.
While investing and utilization of alternative sources of energy such as sunlight and wind could definitely improve our current situation and provide us with something to fallback on I believe that it is only prolonging the collapse...that and you can't build bottles out of wind or sunlight. Also, our country has so firmly embedded oil in its structure that switching to another more expensive source on which to fuel our country would not likely fly. Do you really think people would give up their hummers for some dinky looking electric car? Do you think that people would be willing to stop buying their morning bottle of water? I think people wont be willing to alter their way of living until the reprecussions of their actions are pointing a a big fat GAT at their porky fucking heads, at which point it will be too late for us. And as for reverting to a more primitive lifestyle, I think we will keep on searching for ways to mimic what we currently have, and each time we find away entropy will follow through once again. Its the nature of the world.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Final Food Assignment: Our "New-Found Livelihood" (second draft)
http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer
Over the course of our evolution, human beings have developed these unique and complex brains; as a result we have art, literature, math, science. We have an entire world of academics and learning that was previously unheard of on earth, amongst other species and human beings alike. But how; why did this come to pass and what allowed us the luxury to persue these "New-found livelihood"'s? Since the creation of agriculture the human brain made room for more "noble" quests, but with it also came the difficulty of class difference, a sense of ownership of the natural land, population increase, and "dramatic changes in our smug self image" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). In this day and age we have seen a dawn of new problems; the food industry is entirely out of our hands and thrown to wealthy, profit-bent capitalists. Of course they don't actually do the work themselves; instead they pay migrant farm workers low wages and systematically demolish the beautiful gifts given us by mother earth. And, worst of all, they are paid beneath minimum wage to ravage our earth for its natural resources which, at this point, have been taxed to non-repair.This system with which we handle food is unsustainable and it sacrifices the wellbeing of others, plants and animals included, for a specific standard of living that people feel entitled to. In order to allow for universal equality and environmental prosperity we must revert to a more, hunter-gatherer way of surviving in which food is not grown in excess, and we control all that we put into our bodies.
Before we approach the whole concept of Hunter-Gathering from our current, comfortable social stand point, we should first understand why agriculture started in the first place. Agriculture, as we know, allows for mass production of select crops in one region; but what change would stimulate the need for such methods of survival? Professionals have noticed that as our ancestors numbers multiplied, so did their demand for food, and thus, we now use agricultural farming methods to feed the masses. Instead of going through the laborious task of finding food day by day, we can now sit back and relax comfortably and dawdle around with other such life difficulties that have arrived as a result mass farming. For our still relatively simple ancestors, agriculture meant "an efficient way to get more food for less work" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). For us on the other hand, agriculture is a standard of living that most individuals would not be willing to sacrifice.
But what was before this, before we developed this wide expanse of interests and expressive mediums? Something along the lines of 10,000 years ago mankind was still picking berries off trees and running along side his prey, armed with a spear and ready to kill. The hunter gatherer man killed and managed his own diet accordingly to what he could find for sustenance and, unlike farmers, they had to look for their food and eat whatever they found. And because food is scarce in every environment they had to travel around season to season to stay alive. Their entire lives revolved around eating.
Of course, like any system, agriculture has its benefits; "agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. Planted crops yield far more crops per acre than roots and berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). It also allowed us the liberty to lounge about and relax, which as we all have seen, can, if left unproductive, lose its appeal after some time. Thus began the world of art, mathematics, and science and other such intellectual or personal journeys. So, as one could probably guess, our lives no longer revolve around food...at least not in such a direct survival related way. Most of the people in our country, hell, the world, are entirely removed from the process of preparing, eating, and gathering what we eat.
Eating: Looking at your average American one can see this alienation quite clearly reflected in our actions. Every day I wake up to people rushing, people working, sticking to their strict schedules like some massive spider web, their bosses, the giant black widow licking their chops a few feet away. But what are we so busy doing if we aren't out searching for food? We are out working at jobs, each in their respective category of math, science, and art, begrudgingly placing one more obstacle on the direct path for getting food. We have created an un-necessary middle man that stands between us and our daily bread, and this stands true for all agricultural societies, not just America. Work, being as stressful as it often is, starts incredibly early, so one can imagine how challenging eating and enjoying a meal can be. Instead of cooking their own breakfast or going out and collecting food for their morning nourishment, what do Americans do? We rush out of the house to the nearest fast food drive by terminal and get some processed junk with indeterminable ingredients that we then, over time, convince ourselves is real food.
That there is one of our largest problems in regards to eating; we don't know what goes into most of what we eat. All we know is calories, fat, sugar, and carbs. I was reading the ingredients off of a can of soda my brother had just purchased and not one of the ingredients made sense to me; whats sorbitol? whats high fructose corn syrup? Whats potassium benzoate? and the list goes on and on... But sadly, this is our idea of the food world; we entrust massive companies like Coka Cola and Mc Donalds with our diets and leave it to them to not poison us. So as you can clearly see, it is out of our hands while we sit back and let others decide what is put into our slobbery gullets. Hunter Gatherers knew what they were eating.
Also, on a side note, self prepared food just tastes substantially better than prepackeged food. Not only is it fresh and lacking in preservatives necessary to keep it good on shelves for months at a time, but it involves you in the process of preparation. Just think to yourself: what is more pleasurable? Handing over a few bucks and having your food handed to you, or working in the kitchen for an hour or so to prepare a dish with home grown or even store bought goods and then sitting down and enjoying it? Personally, I'd go with the latter of the two, but in our instantaneous pleasure society one could see how someone may not feel the same way.
However, in our culture, we are offered up a variety of different foods and food lifestyles, so we aren't nearly as limited as it may seem. If you like fast food (god knows how anyone could) we have mickey dee's and KFC. If you're looking for organic and local food there are plenty of local farms and markets around to go to...of course there aren't nearly enough family farms and cheap organic growers to satisfy our entire population because the general populous often prefers the efficiency of fast food joints and simply cannot afford to buy organic even if they want to. However, with enough widespread demand for products of that nature that could change over time. On a more important note; according to Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," the vast abundance and instantaneous availability of food in our culture complicates the entire process of eating and deprives us of any one specific food culture. This lack of a steady food culture has left us susceptable to the varying words of scientists and marketers alike, thus further removing us from our own food. And having been raised on this artificial shit we now perpetuate its reign over us by eating and supporting it. Instead of taking our own initiative we sit back and watch intelligence-reducing television and pray homage to our new-found livelihoods.
But, as we spend our idle time reading our books, creating our artistic masterpieces, and ultimately searching for individual happiness, somebody else is doing that work, picking our fruits and vegetables, and slaughtering our meat. But it most certainly isn't us out here in New York or even America for that matter; most of those jobs go to immigrants on both sides of the legal fence. They make low wages and are, more often than not, beneath the poverty line...but, because minimum wage laws explicitly exclude farm workers, they continue making wages that can't rightfully support the lifestyle of any human being in this culture, no matter how low to the ground it is. Almost all the food we eat is picked by these people and we owe our entire lifestyle to them, yet we continue supporting it by keeping ourselves in this little "not me" bubble. I have seen way too many people reflect on how insignificant such efforts would be and then continue living like the inconsiderate pig that they are. If we all sacrifice our own beliefs and call what we support a futile cause then nothing will get done, but if we all live by example and do as we would want others to do we could end that. Of course, with this new stance a new way of living would have to be upheld, but what does that compare to sacrificing the lives and liberties of others for our own selfish and indulgent way of life.
And it is here that I begin to broach on the topic of population and its impact on our farming system...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer
Over the course of our evolution, human beings have developed these unique and complex brains; as a result we have art, literature, math, science. We have an entire world of academics and learning that was previously unheard of on earth, amongst other species and human beings alike. But how; why did this come to pass and what allowed us the luxury to persue these "New-found livelihood"'s? Since the creation of agriculture the human brain made room for more "noble" quests, but with it also came the difficulty of class difference, a sense of ownership of the natural land, population increase, and "dramatic changes in our smug self image" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). In this day and age we have seen a dawn of new problems; the food industry is entirely out of our hands and thrown to wealthy, profit-bent capitalists. Of course they don't actually do the work themselves; instead they pay migrant farm workers low wages and systematically demolish the beautiful gifts given us by mother earth. And, worst of all, they are paid beneath minimum wage to ravage our earth for its natural resources which, at this point, have been taxed to non-repair.This system with which we handle food is unsustainable and it sacrifices the wellbeing of others, plants and animals included, for a specific standard of living that people feel entitled to. In order to allow for universal equality and environmental prosperity we must revert to a more, hunter-gatherer way of surviving in which food is not grown in excess, and we control all that we put into our bodies.
Before we approach the whole concept of Hunter-Gathering from our current, comfortable social stand point, we should first understand why agriculture started in the first place. Agriculture, as we know, allows for mass production of select crops in one region; but what change would stimulate the need for such methods of survival? Professionals have noticed that as our ancestors numbers multiplied, so did their demand for food, and thus, we now use agricultural farming methods to feed the masses. Instead of going through the laborious task of finding food day by day, we can now sit back and relax comfortably and dawdle around with other such life difficulties that have arrived as a result mass farming. For our still relatively simple ancestors, agriculture meant "an efficient way to get more food for less work" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). For us on the other hand, agriculture is a standard of living that most individuals would not be willing to sacrifice.
But what was before this, before we developed this wide expanse of interests and expressive mediums? Something along the lines of 10,000 years ago mankind was still picking berries off trees and running along side his prey, armed with a spear and ready to kill. The hunter gatherer man killed and managed his own diet accordingly to what he could find for sustenance and, unlike farmers, they had to look for their food and eat whatever they found. And because food is scarce in every environment they had to travel around season to season to stay alive. Their entire lives revolved around eating.
Of course, like any system, agriculture has its benefits; "agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. Planted crops yield far more crops per acre than roots and berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). It also allowed us the liberty to lounge about and relax, which as we all have seen, can, if left unproductive, lose its appeal after some time. Thus began the world of art, mathematics, and science and other such intellectual or personal journeys. So, as one could probably guess, our lives no longer revolve around food...at least not in such a direct survival related way. Most of the people in our country, hell, the world, are entirely removed from the process of preparing, eating, and gathering what we eat.
Eating: Looking at your average American one can see this alienation quite clearly reflected in our actions. Every day I wake up to people rushing, people working, sticking to their strict schedules like some massive spider web, their bosses, the giant black widow licking their chops a few feet away. But what are we so busy doing if we aren't out searching for food? We are out working at jobs, each in their respective category of math, science, and art, begrudgingly placing one more obstacle on the direct path for getting food. We have created an un-necessary middle man that stands between us and our daily bread, and this stands true for all agricultural societies, not just America. Work, being as stressful as it often is, starts incredibly early, so one can imagine how challenging eating and enjoying a meal can be. Instead of cooking their own breakfast or going out and collecting food for their morning nourishment, what do Americans do? We rush out of the house to the nearest fast food drive by terminal and get some processed junk with indeterminable ingredients that we then, over time, convince ourselves is real food.
That there is one of our largest problems in regards to eating; we don't know what goes into most of what we eat. All we know is calories, fat, sugar, and carbs. I was reading the ingredients off of a can of soda my brother had just purchased and not one of the ingredients made sense to me; whats sorbitol? whats high fructose corn syrup? Whats potassium benzoate? and the list goes on and on... But sadly, this is our idea of the food world; we entrust massive companies like Coka Cola and Mc Donalds with our diets and leave it to them to not poison us. So as you can clearly see, it is out of our hands while we sit back and let others decide what is put into our slobbery gullets. Hunter Gatherers knew what they were eating.
Also, on a side note, self prepared food just tastes substantially better than prepackeged food. Not only is it fresh and lacking in preservatives necessary to keep it good on shelves for months at a time, but it involves you in the process of preparation. Just think to yourself: what is more pleasurable? Handing over a few bucks and having your food handed to you, or working in the kitchen for an hour or so to prepare a dish with home grown or even store bought goods and then sitting down and enjoying it? Personally, I'd go with the latter of the two, but in our instantaneous pleasure society one could see how someone may not feel the same way.
However, in our culture, we are offered up a variety of different foods and food lifestyles, so we aren't nearly as limited as it may seem. If you like fast food (god knows how anyone could) we have mickey dee's and KFC. If you're looking for organic and local food there are plenty of local farms and markets around to go to...of course there aren't nearly enough family farms and cheap organic growers to satisfy our entire population because the general populous often prefers the efficiency of fast food joints and simply cannot afford to buy organic even if they want to. However, with enough widespread demand for products of that nature that could change over time. On a more important note; according to Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," the vast abundance and instantaneous availability of food in our culture complicates the entire process of eating and deprives us of any one specific food culture. This lack of a steady food culture has left us susceptable to the varying words of scientists and marketers alike, thus further removing us from our own food. And having been raised on this artificial shit we now perpetuate its reign over us by eating and supporting it. Instead of taking our own initiative we sit back and watch intelligence-reducing television and pray homage to our new-found livelihoods.
But, as we spend our idle time reading our books, creating our artistic masterpieces, and ultimately searching for individual happiness, somebody else is doing that work, picking our fruits and vegetables, and slaughtering our meat. But it most certainly isn't us out here in New York or even America for that matter; most of those jobs go to immigrants on both sides of the legal fence. They make low wages and are, more often than not, beneath the poverty line...but, because minimum wage laws explicitly exclude farm workers, they continue making wages that can't rightfully support the lifestyle of any human being in this culture, no matter how low to the ground it is. Almost all the food we eat is picked by these people and we owe our entire lifestyle to them, yet we continue supporting it by keeping ourselves in this little "not me" bubble. I have seen way too many people reflect on how insignificant such efforts would be and then continue living like the inconsiderate pig that they are. If we all sacrifice our own beliefs and call what we support a futile cause then nothing will get done, but if we all live by example and do as we would want others to do we could end that. Of course, with this new stance a new way of living would have to be upheld, but what does that compare to sacrificing the lives and liberties of others for our own selfish and indulgent way of life.
And it is here that I begin to broach on the topic of population and its impact on our farming system...
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Final Food Assignment: Our "New-Found Livelihood" (first draft)
http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer
Over the course of our evolution, human beings have developed these unique and complex brains; as a result we have art, literature, math, science. We have an entire world of academics and learning that was previously unheard of on earth, amongst other species and human beings alike. But how; why did this come to pass and what allowed us the luxury to persue these "New-found livelihood"'s? Since the creation of agriculture the human brain made room for more "noble" quests, but with it also came the difficulty of class difference, a sense of ownership of the natural land, population increase, and "dramatic changes in our smug self image" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). In this day and age we have seen a dawn of new problems; the food industry is entirely out of our hands and thrown to wealthy, profit-bent capitalists. Of course they don't actually do the work themselves; instead they pay migrant farm workers low wages and systematically demolish the beautiful gifts given us by mother earth. And, worst of all, they are paid beneath minimum wage to ravage our earth for its natural resources which, at this point, have been taxed to non-repair.This system with which we handle food is unsustainable and it sacrifices the wellbeing of others, plants and animals included, for a specific standard of living that people feel entitled to. In order to allow for universal equality and environmental prosperity we must revert to a more, hunter-gatherer way of surviving in which food is not grown in excess, and we control all that we put into our bodies.
Before we approach the whole concept of Hunter-Gathering from our current, comfortable social stand point, we should first understand why agriculture started in the first place. Agriculture, as we know, allows for mass production of select crops in one region; but what change would stimulate the need for such methods of survival? Professionals have noticed that as our ancestors numbers multiplied, so did their demand for food, and thus, we now use agricultural farming methods to feed the masses. Instead of going through the laborious task of finding food day by day, we can now sit back and relax comfortably and dawdle around with other such life difficulties that have arrived as a result mass farming. For our still relatively simple ancestors, agriculture meant "an efficient way to get more food for less work" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). For us on the other hand, agriculture is a standard of living that most individuals would not be willing to sacrifice.
Of course, like any system, agriculture has its benefits; "agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. Planted crops yield far more tons per acre than roots and berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). It also allowed us the liberty to lounge about and relax, which as we all have seen, can, if left unproductive, lose its appeal after some time. Thus began the world of art, mathematics, and science. Although these "new-found livelihoods" have developed a reputation in our culture, for granting pleasure, there are many more things we can do to satisfy ourselves.
But, as we spend our idle time reading our books, creating our artistic masterpieces, and ultimately searching for individual happiness, somebody else is doing that work, picking our fruits and vegetables, and slaughtering our meat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer
Over the course of our evolution, human beings have developed these unique and complex brains; as a result we have art, literature, math, science. We have an entire world of academics and learning that was previously unheard of on earth, amongst other species and human beings alike. But how; why did this come to pass and what allowed us the luxury to persue these "New-found livelihood"'s? Since the creation of agriculture the human brain made room for more "noble" quests, but with it also came the difficulty of class difference, a sense of ownership of the natural land, population increase, and "dramatic changes in our smug self image" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). In this day and age we have seen a dawn of new problems; the food industry is entirely out of our hands and thrown to wealthy, profit-bent capitalists. Of course they don't actually do the work themselves; instead they pay migrant farm workers low wages and systematically demolish the beautiful gifts given us by mother earth. And, worst of all, they are paid beneath minimum wage to ravage our earth for its natural resources which, at this point, have been taxed to non-repair.This system with which we handle food is unsustainable and it sacrifices the wellbeing of others, plants and animals included, for a specific standard of living that people feel entitled to. In order to allow for universal equality and environmental prosperity we must revert to a more, hunter-gatherer way of surviving in which food is not grown in excess, and we control all that we put into our bodies.
Before we approach the whole concept of Hunter-Gathering from our current, comfortable social stand point, we should first understand why agriculture started in the first place. Agriculture, as we know, allows for mass production of select crops in one region; but what change would stimulate the need for such methods of survival? Professionals have noticed that as our ancestors numbers multiplied, so did their demand for food, and thus, we now use agricultural farming methods to feed the masses. Instead of going through the laborious task of finding food day by day, we can now sit back and relax comfortably and dawdle around with other such life difficulties that have arrived as a result mass farming. For our still relatively simple ancestors, agriculture meant "an efficient way to get more food for less work" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). For us on the other hand, agriculture is a standard of living that most individuals would not be willing to sacrifice.
Of course, like any system, agriculture has its benefits; "agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. Planted crops yield far more tons per acre than roots and berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep" (The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, Jared Diamond). It also allowed us the liberty to lounge about and relax, which as we all have seen, can, if left unproductive, lose its appeal after some time. Thus began the world of art, mathematics, and science. Although these "new-found livelihoods" have developed a reputation in our culture, for granting pleasure, there are many more things we can do to satisfy ourselves.
But, as we spend our idle time reading our books, creating our artistic masterpieces, and ultimately searching for individual happiness, somebody else is doing that work, picking our fruits and vegetables, and slaughtering our meat.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
"Wildman" Steve Brill and sustainable agriculture
Today I went on the nature walk through central park with Steve Brill, and I have to say, I was surprised with the end results. First off, though, allow me to share me experience with this very strange and knowledgeable man; the second he passed out the consent forms I thought to myself, "this guys going to be all buisiness"; all work and no play, and such. Of course appearances can be deceiving; shortly before we set sail, so to speak, he gathered us all in a small cluster and made an expression similar to that on the face of the person in Edvard Munch's, "The Scream," brought his cupped hands together near by his face, and began omitting a strange conga, esque sound from his moth by banging them together. My point being, he was a strange guy.
Of course, shortly after he started the hike and his strange mannerisms were overlapped by the immensity of his knowledge of plants. After about 10 minutes of waiting, we set off, and about a hundred feet later, we came across, what he referred to as, "Poor-Man's Pepper," which was a small stalk with frayed leaves branching every which way, all beneath a tiny, practically insignificant little flower. He told us the etymology of the name; the exact time period in which the story took place escapes me at the moment, but during this one point in history the pepper plant was so highly taxed that very few people could actually afford it, but because the demand was so high people were driven to find other, more affordable, alternatives. Poor-Man's Peppers is, as it's name states, the poor man's version of the pepper plant. It tastes almost exactly the same as pepper, and could very well be used as a perfect substitute for pepper.
Seeing this brought a flood of thoughts rushing into my brain, not so much about the pepper (ha), but about how perfectly applicable to today this is.
A.) In this day and age, for every North Face or Ghirardeli there is a cheap knock off, which is, more often than not, just as good as the more expensive version, which draws its allure and cost from the name as opposed to the comparative quality of the item itself.
B.) It also goes to show that everything, plants included, has a natural alternative that can substitute for the "real" one. While pepper is no longer a heavily taxed commodity this shows you that you can get this stuff for free and from mother nature's very own backyard...in the middle of central park.
One of the main concepts, aside from the plants in specific, that he talked was how remarkably similar the properties of many of these plants were relative to their synthetic, man-made alternatives. I can't think of any examples at the moment, but the point is that, all the artificial crap that damages Gaia is un-necessary, and that if more people knew about the natural alternatives to what we are so commonly spoonfed by the system, they too would shift their eating habits to healthier and more sustainable substitutes.
I think the ability to self sustain is beautiful; not only does it feel better to be part of the process of handling and dealing with our own food, but it is less harmful to our already taxed environment. Actually hunting down and finding our own food is much more rewarding of an experience than simply paying for it at our local, flourescent bulb lit supermarkets. This, I feel is an important part of living a full and involved life; being part of the process of doing is something we so commonly miss out on in our industrialized culture, and we have grown to take things for granted, thus losing a greater appreciation of them. In doing so, we remove ourselves from all the necessary survival aspects of our lives, which, arguably, will make our experience more dull .
All in all, I'd say I had a fun time and I would definitely consider doing it again to find out more natural substitutes to common foods. Luckily, I bought a massive book on such foods throughout all seasons. Lately I've been trying to avoid buying all prepackaged foods, so this is perfect for me, and, as I am going to Hampshire College next semester, I feel that having this knowledge will be of use to me in the future.
Of course, shortly after he started the hike and his strange mannerisms were overlapped by the immensity of his knowledge of plants. After about 10 minutes of waiting, we set off, and about a hundred feet later, we came across, what he referred to as, "Poor-Man's Pepper," which was a small stalk with frayed leaves branching every which way, all beneath a tiny, practically insignificant little flower. He told us the etymology of the name; the exact time period in which the story took place escapes me at the moment, but during this one point in history the pepper plant was so highly taxed that very few people could actually afford it, but because the demand was so high people were driven to find other, more affordable, alternatives. Poor-Man's Peppers is, as it's name states, the poor man's version of the pepper plant. It tastes almost exactly the same as pepper, and could very well be used as a perfect substitute for pepper.
Seeing this brought a flood of thoughts rushing into my brain, not so much about the pepper (ha), but about how perfectly applicable to today this is.
A.) In this day and age, for every North Face or Ghirardeli there is a cheap knock off, which is, more often than not, just as good as the more expensive version, which draws its allure and cost from the name as opposed to the comparative quality of the item itself.
B.) It also goes to show that everything, plants included, has a natural alternative that can substitute for the "real" one. While pepper is no longer a heavily taxed commodity this shows you that you can get this stuff for free and from mother nature's very own backyard...in the middle of central park.
One of the main concepts, aside from the plants in specific, that he talked was how remarkably similar the properties of many of these plants were relative to their synthetic, man-made alternatives. I can't think of any examples at the moment, but the point is that, all the artificial crap that damages Gaia is un-necessary, and that if more people knew about the natural alternatives to what we are so commonly spoonfed by the system, they too would shift their eating habits to healthier and more sustainable substitutes.
I think the ability to self sustain is beautiful; not only does it feel better to be part of the process of handling and dealing with our own food, but it is less harmful to our already taxed environment. Actually hunting down and finding our own food is much more rewarding of an experience than simply paying for it at our local, flourescent bulb lit supermarkets. This, I feel is an important part of living a full and involved life; being part of the process of doing is something we so commonly miss out on in our industrialized culture, and we have grown to take things for granted, thus losing a greater appreciation of them. In doing so, we remove ourselves from all the necessary survival aspects of our lives, which, arguably, will make our experience more dull .
All in all, I'd say I had a fun time and I would definitely consider doing it again to find out more natural substitutes to common foods. Luckily, I bought a massive book on such foods throughout all seasons. Lately I've been trying to avoid buying all prepackaged foods, so this is perfect for me, and, as I am going to Hampshire College next semester, I feel that having this knowledge will be of use to me in the future.
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