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.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Response to Michael Pollan
Food # 6 - Response to Pollan 1
For this assignment please respond briefly to Michael Pollan's argument, in the first few pages of Omnivore's Dilemma, that we as a culture lack a stable food culture like the Italians or French, are obsessed with health, are confused and anxious about food, and therefore easily succumb to various expert-directed food fads.
What food experts do you and your family pay attention to - scientists, journalists, chefs, commercials on tv, doctors, nutritionists, health officials, book authors?
First off, I'd like to fullheartedly agree with Michael Pollan; we have lost faith our sixth sense that allows us to decide, on our own, what to eat and have become subserviant little minions to the health/nutritionalist experts as a catastrophic result. Crap-tons of people trusted that obese psycho who created the Atkins diet with their health and nutritional well-being simply because he was a certified "health expert." Look at him, he's dead now thanks to his all meat diet. All meat and no carbs makes Atkins a dead boy.
A few years ago my mother went on the weight watchers, points system, and I don't recall her losing any weight, which is not to say that systems such as this don't work, but its just interesting to see these highly praised diet plans fail. Its not so much the controlling that prevented my mother from dropping a few pounds, but more so the outlook. How do we as Americans look at eating?; with enough self control and hard work we can look forward to a brighter, lighter, and thinner future.
I see a direct correlation between the outrageous number of hours most Americans work per week and the way we eat. According to the documentary, "the overspent American" Americans work more hours than any other people on the entire planet, even more than those little Japanese kids that we've stereotyped into being workaholics. Just think about it; people all around the country wake up at 8 AM (if they are lucky), they have no time to make themselves breakfast, and because they are such a rush they buy the quickest, most convenient food possible; fast food. Then after hours of work they take their car/subway back home, possibly grabbing a snack along the way, and then they sit, exhausted, on their couch in front of the boob tube while they stuff crap down their throats. When we start gaining weight from all this quick, lazy eating, we are too exhausted and busy to have time to think about and savor that which we eat so we go to the professionals after years of mindless subserviance to our superiors, or those with the big label on their collar, and we trust people like doctor Atkins with our diets. It all kinda makes sense. This is not to say that the french are always out and about, eating wholesome meals in stead of junk food, but Americans are well known for their crappy eating habits and tense work situations. Stereotypes are there for a reason.
My family has never really relied on health professionals with the exception of my mothers encounter with the weight watchers diet. We've all gone with the flow and changed it for ourselves without the advice of health officials. We have, however, changed our diets according to commonly known things about eating, just like yur average American. Recently I've been paying attention to Dr. Andrew Weil; a friend of mine told me about him and his vitamin system, and while I did not buy into it (literally) I did consider doing it for some time.
For this assignment please respond briefly to Michael Pollan's argument, in the first few pages of Omnivore's Dilemma, that we as a culture lack a stable food culture like the Italians or French, are obsessed with health, are confused and anxious about food, and therefore easily succumb to various expert-directed food fads.
What food experts do you and your family pay attention to - scientists, journalists, chefs, commercials on tv, doctors, nutritionists, health officials, book authors?
First off, I'd like to fullheartedly agree with Michael Pollan; we have lost faith our sixth sense that allows us to decide, on our own, what to eat and have become subserviant little minions to the health/nutritionalist experts as a catastrophic result. Crap-tons of people trusted that obese psycho who created the Atkins diet with their health and nutritional well-being simply because he was a certified "health expert." Look at him, he's dead now thanks to his all meat diet. All meat and no carbs makes Atkins a dead boy.
A few years ago my mother went on the weight watchers, points system, and I don't recall her losing any weight, which is not to say that systems such as this don't work, but its just interesting to see these highly praised diet plans fail. Its not so much the controlling that prevented my mother from dropping a few pounds, but more so the outlook. How do we as Americans look at eating?; with enough self control and hard work we can look forward to a brighter, lighter, and thinner future.
I see a direct correlation between the outrageous number of hours most Americans work per week and the way we eat. According to the documentary, "the overspent American" Americans work more hours than any other people on the entire planet, even more than those little Japanese kids that we've stereotyped into being workaholics. Just think about it; people all around the country wake up at 8 AM (if they are lucky), they have no time to make themselves breakfast, and because they are such a rush they buy the quickest, most convenient food possible; fast food. Then after hours of work they take their car/subway back home, possibly grabbing a snack along the way, and then they sit, exhausted, on their couch in front of the boob tube while they stuff crap down their throats. When we start gaining weight from all this quick, lazy eating, we are too exhausted and busy to have time to think about and savor that which we eat so we go to the professionals after years of mindless subserviance to our superiors, or those with the big label on their collar, and we trust people like doctor Atkins with our diets. It all kinda makes sense. This is not to say that the french are always out and about, eating wholesome meals in stead of junk food, but Americans are well known for their crappy eating habits and tense work situations. Stereotypes are there for a reason.
My family has never really relied on health professionals with the exception of my mothers encounter with the weight watchers diet. We've all gone with the flow and changed it for ourselves without the advice of health officials. We have, however, changed our diets according to commonly known things about eating, just like yur average American. Recently I've been paying attention to Dr. Andrew Weil; a friend of mine told me about him and his vitamin system, and while I did not buy into it (literally) I did consider doing it for some time.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Grocery Store and Habitual food
Grocery Store and Habitual Food
Please write a post about how your family uses grocery stores and the variety of vegetables, fruits, roots, grains, and nuts that you eat in a typical week.
You should include your insights about how grocery stores "push" particular types of products, how you learned (or didn't) to eat a variety of foods, and information about your favorite meals and habitual diet pattern.
My parents usually go grocery shopping once a week, but, as I stated previously, my brother and I are often left to do our own thing. My parents usually buy copious amounts of fruits and vegetables that are usually gone within 2 or 3 days. We often thrift shop and because exotic fruits (ie: durian fruit, papaya, mangosteen, leechee, guava, rambutan, etc...)are usually more costly than main stream ones (ie: bananas, oranges, grapes, apples, pears) our fruit selection is fairly homogeneous. I, however, spend any money my parents give me (something along the lines of $20-$30 per day) on different kinds of fruit when I can. Papaya is one of my recent favorites.
I don't eat nearly as much grain as I probably should. I'd say I have a few pieces of what/whole grain bread each day with sandwich toppings (mostly veggies with tofu bacon and mustard), but most of it is just oats mixed with flour and white bread anyway. My parents don't really shop for oats and wheat simply because there is no real demand for it. They only started buying as much fruit as they do after I started asking for it. I eat fibrous, whole wheat cereal every now and again(and only fibrous, whole grain cereal), if that counts for anything.
Most of my meals generally consist of soy, some form of bread (always wheat or whole grain), mustard, veggies, with a large side various types of fruit; most recently its been grapefruit or papaya. I'd say that I'm a pretty healthy person; I eat a fairly wide variety of fruits and veggies frequently, balance it out with vitamins (for what I lack) and eat for the positive feeling that it gives me as opposed to just satisfying the gut urge, which I seldom get, seeing as I snack perpetually throughout the entire day between small meals.
I didn't always eat this way; I grew up eating a pint of ice cream every night with a massive, American- sized burrito for dinner. Over the past two years I came into my own diet-wise and helped to turn my entire family around in a healthier direction. Every member of my family has lost weight since I changed my diet.
Grocery stores may have influenced my eating habits as a child, but I don't feel too drawn to most of what they advertise. I'd say that grocery stores generally guide people towards buying cheap or marked-down foods. When I walk into a supermarket the first thing I usually see is a massive sign reading "discount prices." They try and harp on cheapster within each and every one of us.
Please write a post about how your family uses grocery stores and the variety of vegetables, fruits, roots, grains, and nuts that you eat in a typical week.
You should include your insights about how grocery stores "push" particular types of products, how you learned (or didn't) to eat a variety of foods, and information about your favorite meals and habitual diet pattern.
My parents usually go grocery shopping once a week, but, as I stated previously, my brother and I are often left to do our own thing. My parents usually buy copious amounts of fruits and vegetables that are usually gone within 2 or 3 days. We often thrift shop and because exotic fruits (ie: durian fruit, papaya, mangosteen, leechee, guava, rambutan, etc...)are usually more costly than main stream ones (ie: bananas, oranges, grapes, apples, pears) our fruit selection is fairly homogeneous. I, however, spend any money my parents give me (something along the lines of $20-$30 per day) on different kinds of fruit when I can. Papaya is one of my recent favorites.
I don't eat nearly as much grain as I probably should. I'd say I have a few pieces of what/whole grain bread each day with sandwich toppings (mostly veggies with tofu bacon and mustard), but most of it is just oats mixed with flour and white bread anyway. My parents don't really shop for oats and wheat simply because there is no real demand for it. They only started buying as much fruit as they do after I started asking for it. I eat fibrous, whole wheat cereal every now and again(and only fibrous, whole grain cereal), if that counts for anything.
Most of my meals generally consist of soy, some form of bread (always wheat or whole grain), mustard, veggies, with a large side various types of fruit; most recently its been grapefruit or papaya. I'd say that I'm a pretty healthy person; I eat a fairly wide variety of fruits and veggies frequently, balance it out with vitamins (for what I lack) and eat for the positive feeling that it gives me as opposed to just satisfying the gut urge, which I seldom get, seeing as I snack perpetually throughout the entire day between small meals.
I didn't always eat this way; I grew up eating a pint of ice cream every night with a massive, American- sized burrito for dinner. Over the past two years I came into my own diet-wise and helped to turn my entire family around in a healthier direction. Every member of my family has lost weight since I changed my diet.
Grocery stores may have influenced my eating habits as a child, but I don't feel too drawn to most of what they advertise. I'd say that grocery stores generally guide people towards buying cheap or marked-down foods. When I walk into a supermarket the first thing I usually see is a massive sign reading "discount prices." They try and harp on cheapster within each and every one of us.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
May Day
How does the forgetting of a workers' holiday commemorating an American labor struggle show fundamental aspects of the American Way of Life?
First off, I wouldn't call the holiday "forgotten" so much as erased and replaced with jovial and warm hearted Labor day. People prefer to keep things positive, especially if they are taking a day off from work to celebrate it. God forbid they should actually use this precious day off to be productive and commemorate the men that brought to them the eight hour work day.
International Workers Day, or May Day, is a commemoration of the Haymarket massacre/strike in chicago where police open fired into a crowd of workers, protesting for a shorter work day. When an Anarchist group set up follow up strikes a bomb went off in the crowd, killing policemen and rioters alike, the pigs opened fired once again on the crowd of unarmed civilians. The Anarchist leaders of this riot were held responsible and hung for the actions of the irresponsible individuals in the crowd.
Of course, few Americans actually know about this and blindly accept Labor day, a day now reserved for traditional family barbecues and drinking, as an adequate substitution. How typically American. No wonder we as a people are so disgustingly lacking in a voice, our schools don't teach it, our government doesn't celibrate it, and the media exploits it by destroying our brains with alcohol. Its been more or less hidden. What better way to keep people under control than by getting them to ignore their past.
First off, I wouldn't call the holiday "forgotten" so much as erased and replaced with jovial and warm hearted Labor day. People prefer to keep things positive, especially if they are taking a day off from work to celebrate it. God forbid they should actually use this precious day off to be productive and commemorate the men that brought to them the eight hour work day.
International Workers Day, or May Day, is a commemoration of the Haymarket massacre/strike in chicago where police open fired into a crowd of workers, protesting for a shorter work day. When an Anarchist group set up follow up strikes a bomb went off in the crowd, killing policemen and rioters alike, the pigs opened fired once again on the crowd of unarmed civilians. The Anarchist leaders of this riot were held responsible and hung for the actions of the irresponsible individuals in the crowd.
Of course, few Americans actually know about this and blindly accept Labor day, a day now reserved for traditional family barbecues and drinking, as an adequate substitution. How typically American. No wonder we as a people are so disgustingly lacking in a voice, our schools don't teach it, our government doesn't celibrate it, and the media exploits it by destroying our brains with alcohol. Its been more or less hidden. What better way to keep people under control than by getting them to ignore their past.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Research assignment
Does the fast, efficient way of preparing food now adays depreciate its importance to us?
Food Journal
4/28/09-
Dinner: TLT from/at Curly's. Consisted of tofu bacon, lettuce, pico de gallo, and mustard all on whole grain bread. I ate it in about 20 minutes and read inbetween halves. Before I ate I was feeling somewhat hungry, but not hungry enough to order an entree. I remember being low in spirits. While I ate I remember feeling happier now that I had this delightful sandwich to sooth my jangled nerves. This, of course, makes sense: food does after all contain vitamins and nutrients that helps to regulate our bodily functions.
I actually made the food myself. All the ingredients were perfectly visible and there was no calorie information on any of the ingredients. I just used common sense and my taste buds to mix health with satisfaction. I wasn't affected at all by this, if anything, it made me feel less encumbered worry. So often do we eat stuff just because it is low in calories. Its important to be knowledgable about what you eat lest you fall prey to those deceptive nutrition facts.
Dinner-Sleep: If I remember correctly I think I had a banana or two when I got home and then snacked on a massive bag of raisins that I bought at a health food store near Curly's. I try and make it a priority to eat a healthy, well balanced diet. I was doing work/on facebook so I was somewhat distracted and not really paying any attention to what I was eating. Before I knew it over half the bag was gone and I still wanted more raisins. I was pretty much just shoveling raisins into my mouth without knowing it and I don't recall any sensation that they would have normally initiated had I not been wrecking my brain with EMI waves. I don't worry about fruit calories nor should anyone else.
4/29/09-
Breakfast: I ate 2 Smart Dogs with Salsa for breakfast. They kind of tasted like rubber, but I stomached them anyway because I was hungry. Even when I was done with them I still felt dissatisfied, almost robbed of my breakfast, which is the most important meal of the day. I ate them in about one minute. None of the ingredients were visible; from what I remember it was just some processed soy mush shaped like a hot dog. It had a nice big nutrition facts sticker plastered right on the back and while it wasn't high in calories I still felt a little more calculative by having it there so I tore it off.
Breakfast-Lunch: I think I had some more of the raisins from that same health food store. I did, however, eat them with more thought this time; I stuck them between my cheek and gum and popped one out every so often and put it between my teeth where I chewed it piece by piece.
Lunch: I went over to Curly's again and ate the same thing the same way. Then I snacked on a few more raisins the same way I had previously.
Dinner: My family went out to an Indian restaurant less than a block away from our house. I ate Shag Panir with Indian rice sprinkled on top; its a spinach dish cooked with cheese. I ate it pretty slowly and enjoyed every second of it. It certainly lifted my mood a bit. The ingredients were all visible and there was no calorie information included. This, I think, helped me to enjoy the dish more which would make sense; if you have to worry about how it will affect you you lose sight of the experience of eating.
Dinner: TLT from/at Curly's. Consisted of tofu bacon, lettuce, pico de gallo, and mustard all on whole grain bread. I ate it in about 20 minutes and read inbetween halves. Before I ate I was feeling somewhat hungry, but not hungry enough to order an entree. I remember being low in spirits. While I ate I remember feeling happier now that I had this delightful sandwich to sooth my jangled nerves. This, of course, makes sense: food does after all contain vitamins and nutrients that helps to regulate our bodily functions.
I actually made the food myself. All the ingredients were perfectly visible and there was no calorie information on any of the ingredients. I just used common sense and my taste buds to mix health with satisfaction. I wasn't affected at all by this, if anything, it made me feel less encumbered worry. So often do we eat stuff just because it is low in calories. Its important to be knowledgable about what you eat lest you fall prey to those deceptive nutrition facts.
Dinner-Sleep: If I remember correctly I think I had a banana or two when I got home and then snacked on a massive bag of raisins that I bought at a health food store near Curly's. I try and make it a priority to eat a healthy, well balanced diet. I was doing work/on facebook so I was somewhat distracted and not really paying any attention to what I was eating. Before I knew it over half the bag was gone and I still wanted more raisins. I was pretty much just shoveling raisins into my mouth without knowing it and I don't recall any sensation that they would have normally initiated had I not been wrecking my brain with EMI waves. I don't worry about fruit calories nor should anyone else.
4/29/09-
Breakfast: I ate 2 Smart Dogs with Salsa for breakfast. They kind of tasted like rubber, but I stomached them anyway because I was hungry. Even when I was done with them I still felt dissatisfied, almost robbed of my breakfast, which is the most important meal of the day. I ate them in about one minute. None of the ingredients were visible; from what I remember it was just some processed soy mush shaped like a hot dog. It had a nice big nutrition facts sticker plastered right on the back and while it wasn't high in calories I still felt a little more calculative by having it there so I tore it off.
Breakfast-Lunch: I think I had some more of the raisins from that same health food store. I did, however, eat them with more thought this time; I stuck them between my cheek and gum and popped one out every so often and put it between my teeth where I chewed it piece by piece.
Lunch: I went over to Curly's again and ate the same thing the same way. Then I snacked on a few more raisins the same way I had previously.
Dinner: My family went out to an Indian restaurant less than a block away from our house. I ate Shag Panir with Indian rice sprinkled on top; its a spinach dish cooked with cheese. I ate it pretty slowly and enjoyed every second of it. It certainly lifted my mood a bit. The ingredients were all visible and there was no calorie information included. This, I think, helped me to enjoy the dish more which would make sense; if you have to worry about how it will affect you you lose sight of the experience of eating.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Eating in the USA: Outlook on food: family, america, and the bourjuazi
So I'll start with my own family's outlook and treatment of food. Our attitude towards food can best be described as unappreciative; having owned restaurants for the past 17 years my entire family has grown incredibly comfortable as far as eating goes. We can eat whenever and however much we want. My brother and I were raised on mexican food from my fathers old restaurant, Burritoville. It was pretty much a fast food mexican place without all the frozen shit, but the title certainly suited it. My family would sometimes order copious amounts of food twice every day for free. We actually lived upstairs from one of our stores for about 7 years and for the majority of our time spent there we had free food.
Each day we would call down to order up and each time some mexican guy making minimum wage would run our food up.I remember guzzling down burrito after burrito with a quesadilla chaser washed down with a nice tall plastic bottle full of horchata, a mexican rice drink. Yup things sure were...fat. Even now after 2 years without processed sugar, pizza, or (for the most part) meat, I still have the same eating habits only now with fruits and health food.
Since my brother and I began eating mostly vegan my parents have had to change up their shoping list quite a bit. The only remaining junk foods left are oreos and chips, that my brother only eats because he has deprived himself of all animal products. Most of our dinners consist of large vegetable plates with minor seasoning and the occasional tofu or meat as a small side dish. Once we've all piled our plates high with assorted veggies my family all crowds around a flashing screen while I sit in the other room and try to read/ zone out. While we aren't your average McDonalds eatin' American family we have certainly gotten the mindless act of shoveling food into our unappreciative gullets down.
I'm not too optimistic about the American way of food either. The way I see i, most of this country is just one big highway leading onto several massive strip malls and drive through fast food places with occasional detours to New York and San Fransisco. I have family in these wastelands; my aunt in LA is morbidly obese and whenever we go out she tries to get my brother and I to "put some meat on our bones" by going to KFC. UGH! My family in New Hampshire is no better; their idea of a balanced dinner is mashed potatoes and gravy, meatloaf, and a small side salad. Now when I say meatloaf I would like to place extra emphasis on the LOAF part; my grandmother raised 6 children, most of whom were overweight and every night, as they squeezed themselves into their seats lined up around their tiny, intimate kitchen table, she fed them precisely this. The meatloaf that my grandmother cooks could feed a small commune in Africa. Don't even get me started on those mashed potatoes...
My extended family is what I would define as being the the average American piggy. But it is certainly understandable; my grandparents are, after all, products of the same generation of idealistic and delusional individuals that attempted to live the sedate, pastel colored life of white suburbia.
The predominant US way of eating now is pretty gross. We are one of the few places that still consider Micky D's a fun filled, family restaurant. With our great abundance of food has also come a severe lack of appreciation for it.
One interesting thing that Andy brought up in class today was that America is one of the only countries that has food fights. How many movies have we all seen that have some crazy all out food war packed with kids. Here in America kids throw their food at each others faces when they so please while in Africa children with bloated stomachs can go for months without eating a single nutritious meal. Sounds pretty fucked up to me.
Every where we look we see food; on tv, driving our kids to school, at work, online... Its insane. Like so many other potentially beautiful things in our culture, we have been desensitized to food. We eat out of necessity, just to satisfy our being. In movies heartbroken women cry while stuffing their faces with Ben & Jerry's. Whole families crowd around flashing tvs while stuffing their faces with (mostly) unhealthy food. The point being that we eat for comfort or to fulfill some sort of oral fixation and in doing this we lose the joy of eating, the taste of the food as it hits our taste buds.
We are also one of the only countries that has nutrition facts on everything. We are calorie counters, weight watchers, diet deviants so fixated on our shape that we lose sight of the beauty of eating.
Each day we would call down to order up and each time some mexican guy making minimum wage would run our food up.I remember guzzling down burrito after burrito with a quesadilla chaser washed down with a nice tall plastic bottle full of horchata, a mexican rice drink. Yup things sure were...fat. Even now after 2 years without processed sugar, pizza, or (for the most part) meat, I still have the same eating habits only now with fruits and health food.
Since my brother and I began eating mostly vegan my parents have had to change up their shoping list quite a bit. The only remaining junk foods left are oreos and chips, that my brother only eats because he has deprived himself of all animal products. Most of our dinners consist of large vegetable plates with minor seasoning and the occasional tofu or meat as a small side dish. Once we've all piled our plates high with assorted veggies my family all crowds around a flashing screen while I sit in the other room and try to read/ zone out. While we aren't your average McDonalds eatin' American family we have certainly gotten the mindless act of shoveling food into our unappreciative gullets down.
I'm not too optimistic about the American way of food either. The way I see i, most of this country is just one big highway leading onto several massive strip malls and drive through fast food places with occasional detours to New York and San Fransisco. I have family in these wastelands; my aunt in LA is morbidly obese and whenever we go out she tries to get my brother and I to "put some meat on our bones" by going to KFC. UGH! My family in New Hampshire is no better; their idea of a balanced dinner is mashed potatoes and gravy, meatloaf, and a small side salad. Now when I say meatloaf I would like to place extra emphasis on the LOAF part; my grandmother raised 6 children, most of whom were overweight and every night, as they squeezed themselves into their seats lined up around their tiny, intimate kitchen table, she fed them precisely this. The meatloaf that my grandmother cooks could feed a small commune in Africa. Don't even get me started on those mashed potatoes...
My extended family is what I would define as being the the average American piggy. But it is certainly understandable; my grandparents are, after all, products of the same generation of idealistic and delusional individuals that attempted to live the sedate, pastel colored life of white suburbia.
The predominant US way of eating now is pretty gross. We are one of the few places that still consider Micky D's a fun filled, family restaurant. With our great abundance of food has also come a severe lack of appreciation for it.
One interesting thing that Andy brought up in class today was that America is one of the only countries that has food fights. How many movies have we all seen that have some crazy all out food war packed with kids. Here in America kids throw their food at each others faces when they so please while in Africa children with bloated stomachs can go for months without eating a single nutritious meal. Sounds pretty fucked up to me.
Every where we look we see food; on tv, driving our kids to school, at work, online... Its insane. Like so many other potentially beautiful things in our culture, we have been desensitized to food. We eat out of necessity, just to satisfy our being. In movies heartbroken women cry while stuffing their faces with Ben & Jerry's. Whole families crowd around flashing tvs while stuffing their faces with (mostly) unhealthy food. The point being that we eat for comfort or to fulfill some sort of oral fixation and in doing this we lose the joy of eating, the taste of the food as it hits our taste buds.
We are also one of the only countries that has nutrition facts on everything. We are calorie counters, weight watchers, diet deviants so fixated on our shape that we lose sight of the beauty of eating.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
See, I usually agree 100% percent with anyone who says anything about how the American way of life is indulgent, unsustainable, and generally crappy, but having had positive experiences with the health care system I feel somewhat disinclined to criticize it. I personally believe that general medical care cannot work very well in our culture/system simply because we are over indulgent and self centered. We do almost everything in excess especially unhealthy things, and we can't cover everybody when every Dick, Tom, and Laurie (Yes I included a woman in that phrase) is trying to beat the next girl/guy. Only a system that fosters an appreciation for the collective well being can work as such. We have some social medical care now, but hardly enough to cover each sick person. Anyway, here is my family's experience with the health care system in America:
My mother was generally positive about the health care system, at least in our experience with it. She said her her experience was mixed; she had had both expensive and affordable health coverage, but either way it was good. My whole family is covered by HMOs. My parents are covered by Oxford health care provided by my mothers job. They pay monthly. My brother and I are covered by Blue Cross, Blue Shield which is an HMO of NYC. We only pay $15 per person each month, a surprisingly low amount. My mother claimed that we have never really spent much time in the emergency room, in fact the most extreme surgery we ever had was a double hernia removal when I was only 3 years old. We've gone to the doctor for the occasional checkup or minor ailment, and each time we only waited for a fairly short time. Something my mother also emphasized was that hospitals prioritize treatment for children over that for adults. So, yes, they did have to wait a while, but the treatment was always good regardless of the cost or time spent waiting.
We have also been quite fortunate in that we have never dealt with any massive medical bills or denial of treatment. We have, as I stated before, always had great health coverage. We did, however, have a close friend with cancer that was refused treatment because; a.)he could not afford it, and b.) he had never had any health insurance in the past. He was also one of the laziest, most indulgent and self centered people my family has ever met, so in a way it makes sense; he really didn't earn his keep.
When I asked my mother weather or not she had wonderful experiences with doctors she replied "yes." In fact our very first pediatrician was both a wonderful human being and a terrific doctor. His name was Dr. Heiss and I remember going there every so often for a checkup or a cold and he was always so sweet to us, making jokes and playing with us while simultaneously providing us with some of the best medical care. He even gave us lolipops at the end of each visit. Even the receptionists were kind and accomodating. And the cost was never an issue; it was fairly casual actually; they would allow us to delay payments and get back to them when we could. We stayed there for about 10 years.
Our current general practitioner shares similar qualities.
I would have to disagree with the idea that doctors are generally unpleasant, money-grubbing, pricks, if anything they are just tiny cogs in the wheel allowing it to continue spinning. They are merely products of a fucked up system. My grandmother had a doctor that, even after retiring, cared for her and her entire family for free until about a week before his death.
Having had such positive experiences with the health care system and doctors in general I feel unable to complain about how much it has helped me. Even now I visit some form of doctor each week to satisfy my hypochondria and I would not willingly give up my ability to do so. Yet, I still full heartedly agree with Michael Moore; any system that denies people health coverage to those with more severe illnesses and rewards their workers for doing so simply because it saves them money, is truly evil. It practically defeats the point of health coverage.
In the end, I can only say that while it works for me now I still feel that it could be even better, for me and the rest of the country. After all, what works for the individual may not work for the rest of the population. Working solely for oneself divides the people because it creates power imbalances. In systems that do have general health care people are willing to help one another and go into it/are raised ready to pay for universal solidarity in medicine and/or all other aspects of a society. The idea that general health care is sluggish and weak is a product of pointless American anti-socialism and is disproven by the flourishing health systems in foreign countries.
My mother was generally positive about the health care system, at least in our experience with it. She said her her experience was mixed; she had had both expensive and affordable health coverage, but either way it was good. My whole family is covered by HMOs. My parents are covered by Oxford health care provided by my mothers job. They pay monthly. My brother and I are covered by Blue Cross, Blue Shield which is an HMO of NYC. We only pay $15 per person each month, a surprisingly low amount. My mother claimed that we have never really spent much time in the emergency room, in fact the most extreme surgery we ever had was a double hernia removal when I was only 3 years old. We've gone to the doctor for the occasional checkup or minor ailment, and each time we only waited for a fairly short time. Something my mother also emphasized was that hospitals prioritize treatment for children over that for adults. So, yes, they did have to wait a while, but the treatment was always good regardless of the cost or time spent waiting.
We have also been quite fortunate in that we have never dealt with any massive medical bills or denial of treatment. We have, as I stated before, always had great health coverage. We did, however, have a close friend with cancer that was refused treatment because; a.)he could not afford it, and b.) he had never had any health insurance in the past. He was also one of the laziest, most indulgent and self centered people my family has ever met, so in a way it makes sense; he really didn't earn his keep.
When I asked my mother weather or not she had wonderful experiences with doctors she replied "yes." In fact our very first pediatrician was both a wonderful human being and a terrific doctor. His name was Dr. Heiss and I remember going there every so often for a checkup or a cold and he was always so sweet to us, making jokes and playing with us while simultaneously providing us with some of the best medical care. He even gave us lolipops at the end of each visit. Even the receptionists were kind and accomodating. And the cost was never an issue; it was fairly casual actually; they would allow us to delay payments and get back to them when we could. We stayed there for about 10 years.
Our current general practitioner shares similar qualities.
I would have to disagree with the idea that doctors are generally unpleasant, money-grubbing, pricks, if anything they are just tiny cogs in the wheel allowing it to continue spinning. They are merely products of a fucked up system. My grandmother had a doctor that, even after retiring, cared for her and her entire family for free until about a week before his death.
Having had such positive experiences with the health care system and doctors in general I feel unable to complain about how much it has helped me. Even now I visit some form of doctor each week to satisfy my hypochondria and I would not willingly give up my ability to do so. Yet, I still full heartedly agree with Michael Moore; any system that denies people health coverage to those with more severe illnesses and rewards their workers for doing so simply because it saves them money, is truly evil. It practically defeats the point of health coverage.
In the end, I can only say that while it works for me now I still feel that it could be even better, for me and the rest of the country. After all, what works for the individual may not work for the rest of the population. Working solely for oneself divides the people because it creates power imbalances. In systems that do have general health care people are willing to help one another and go into it/are raised ready to pay for universal solidarity in medicine and/or all other aspects of a society. The idea that general health care is sluggish and weak is a product of pointless American anti-socialism and is disproven by the flourishing health systems in foreign countries.
Refrigerator Assignment
The Contents of my Fridge:
Carrot Juice, (organic) fat free milk, soy dream, salad, chicken breast, pea soup, beer, worcester sauce, four containers of salsa, (trader joe's) hot sauce and dijon mustard, chocolate syrup, teriyaki sauce, grapefruit juice, organic eggs, strawberries, tortillas, hummus, assorted soups, white wine, earth balance butter substitute, assorted veggies, apples, oranges, ketchup, an entire fridge wall of condiments, boca burgers, starbuck's coffee grounds, potato pancakes, organic mixed grain bread.
Half of my fridge is consistently stocked with fresh fruits and veggies. About one fourth is filled with condiments, some still there even after years and years of being left unused; why we do this, because they help to remind us of the past. The remaining fourth of my fridge is usually filled with meat, food from curly's or other such edibles.
When most of us think about the American way of eating McDonald's and fast food are the first things that come to mind. While this may be the way the majority of Americans eat it is most certainly not the only way. As far as I can tell, there are four different types of eaters; There are those who overeat and willingly shove anything backed with nutrition facts into their mouths (some of them don't even need nutrition facts). Right now America is the fattest country on the planet so I think it would be safe to assume that over-eaters are plentiful here. There are those who eat properly and attempt to maintain a healthy diet with little to no man-made edibles included. They control their portions as opposed to the American way of eating which is pretty much stuff your face until you can stuff no longer. There are those with eating disorders (ie: Anorexia, Bulemia, etc); every culture that has experienced something resembling an industrial revolution has them. They have manipulated their diet to fit their incredibly small pant size. There are revolutionary eaters; people who try to make a statement with how they eat. And of course, there are people with food allergies, but, as it is not their decision to eat that way, it doesn't speak for their outlook which is key in the American way of eating.
Most of the food in my fridge is organic.
I guess one could say that we have the fridge of an upper/middle class, white, American family. I wouldn't call my family health conscious; both my mother and father are overweight, and my little brother recently went from 200 lbs to 130 in matter of 8 months by becoming a vegan. My diet consists mostly of fruits and vegetables with large amounts of soy courtesy of my father who owns a vegan/vegetarian restaurant. Most people would call my brother and I healthy. I, however, would beg to differ.
Being vegan isn't as healthy as your typical American would think; all vitamins and nutrients found in meat and animal products are perfectly substitutable via vitamin but in my experience with them, they seldom take them unless a large problem arises. Having been, a vegan I know of the many problems that come with this extreme diet. I experienced fatigue, weakness, and exhaustion and my brother is currently anemic. Before he became vegan he was a die hard carnivore and could barely eat a meal without it containing some sort of meat. In hopes of satisfying his carnivorous bloodlust he eats soy meat, an adequate substitution. But because soy is an iron absorption inhibitor he has fallen prey to his diet.
Thats all for now folks...
Carrot Juice, (organic) fat free milk, soy dream, salad, chicken breast, pea soup, beer, worcester sauce, four containers of salsa, (trader joe's) hot sauce and dijon mustard, chocolate syrup, teriyaki sauce, grapefruit juice, organic eggs, strawberries, tortillas, hummus, assorted soups, white wine, earth balance butter substitute, assorted veggies, apples, oranges, ketchup, an entire fridge wall of condiments, boca burgers, starbuck's coffee grounds, potato pancakes, organic mixed grain bread.
Half of my fridge is consistently stocked with fresh fruits and veggies. About one fourth is filled with condiments, some still there even after years and years of being left unused; why we do this, because they help to remind us of the past. The remaining fourth of my fridge is usually filled with meat, food from curly's or other such edibles.
When most of us think about the American way of eating McDonald's and fast food are the first things that come to mind. While this may be the way the majority of Americans eat it is most certainly not the only way. As far as I can tell, there are four different types of eaters; There are those who overeat and willingly shove anything backed with nutrition facts into their mouths (some of them don't even need nutrition facts). Right now America is the fattest country on the planet so I think it would be safe to assume that over-eaters are plentiful here. There are those who eat properly and attempt to maintain a healthy diet with little to no man-made edibles included. They control their portions as opposed to the American way of eating which is pretty much stuff your face until you can stuff no longer. There are those with eating disorders (ie: Anorexia, Bulemia, etc); every culture that has experienced something resembling an industrial revolution has them. They have manipulated their diet to fit their incredibly small pant size. There are revolutionary eaters; people who try to make a statement with how they eat. And of course, there are people with food allergies, but, as it is not their decision to eat that way, it doesn't speak for their outlook which is key in the American way of eating.
Most of the food in my fridge is organic.
I guess one could say that we have the fridge of an upper/middle class, white, American family. I wouldn't call my family health conscious; both my mother and father are overweight, and my little brother recently went from 200 lbs to 130 in matter of 8 months by becoming a vegan. My diet consists mostly of fruits and vegetables with large amounts of soy courtesy of my father who owns a vegan/vegetarian restaurant. Most people would call my brother and I healthy. I, however, would beg to differ.
Being vegan isn't as healthy as your typical American would think; all vitamins and nutrients found in meat and animal products are perfectly substitutable via vitamin but in my experience with them, they seldom take them unless a large problem arises. Having been, a vegan I know of the many problems that come with this extreme diet. I experienced fatigue, weakness, and exhaustion and my brother is currently anemic. Before he became vegan he was a die hard carnivore and could barely eat a meal without it containing some sort of meat. In hopes of satisfying his carnivorous bloodlust he eats soy meat, an adequate substitution. But because soy is an iron absorption inhibitor he has fallen prey to his diet.
Thats all for now folks...
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Family Health Experiences
To start, I feel that the last question was skewed and seems unfairly biased even though I agree with the direction in which it is leading.
See, I usually agree 100% percent with anyone who says anything about American way of life is indulgent, unsustainable, and generally crappy, but having had positive experiences with the health care system I feel somewhat disinclined to criticize it. I personally believe that general medical care cannot work very well in our culture/system simply because we are over indulgent and self centered. We do almost everything in excess especially unhealthy things, and we can't cover everybody when every Dick, Tom, and Laurie (Yes I included a woman in that phrase) is trying to beat the next girl/guy. Anyway, here is my family's experience with the health care system in America:
My mother was generally positive about the health care system, at least in our experience with it. She said her her experience was mixed; she had had both expensive and affordable health coverage, but either way it was good. My whole family is covered by HMOs. My parents are covered by Oxford health care provided by my mothers job. They pay monthly. My brother and I are covered by Blue Cross, Blue Shield which is an HMO of NYC. We only pay $15 per person each month, a surprisingly low amount. My mother claimed that we have never really spent much time in the emergency room, in fact the most extreme surgery we ever had was a double hernia removal when I was only 3 years old. We've gone to the doctor for the occasional checkup or minor ailment, and each time we only waited for a fairly short time. Something my mother also emphasized was that hospitals prioritize treatment for children over that for adults. So, yes, they did have to wait a while, but the treatment was always good regardless of the cost or time spent waiting.
We have also been quite fortunate in that we have never dealt with any massive medical bills or denial of treatment. We have, as I stated before, always had great health coverage. We did, however, have a close friend with cancer that was refused treatment because; a.)he could not afford it, and b.) he had never had any health insurance in the past. He was also one of the laziest, most indulgent and self centered people my family has ever met, so in a way it makes sense; he really didn't earn his keep.
When I asked my mother weather or not she had wonderful experiences with doctors she replied "yes." In fact our very first pediatrician was both a wonderful human being and a terrific doctor. His name was Dr. Heiss and I remember going there every so often for a checkup or a cold and he was always so sweet to us, making jokes and playing with us while simultaneously providing us with some of the best medical care. He even gave us lolipops at the end of each visit. Even the receptionists were kind and accomodating. And the cost was never an issue; it was fairly casual actually; they would allow us to delay payments and get back to them when we could. We stayed there for about 10 years.
Our current general practitioner shares similar qualities.
I would have to disagree with the idea that doctors are generally unpleasant, money-grubbing, pricks, if anything they are just tiny cogs in the wheel allowing it to continue spinning. They are merely products of a fucked up system. My grandmother had a doctor that, even after retiring, cared for her and her entire family for free until about a week before his death.
Having had such positive experiences with the health care system and doctors in general I feel unable to complain about its many benefits. Even now I visit some form of doctor each week to satisfy my hypochondria and I would not willingly give up my ability to do so. Yet, I still full heartedly agree with Michael Moore; any system that denies people health coverage to those with more severe illnesses and rewards their workers for doing so simply because it saves them money, is truly evil. It practically defeats the point of health coverage.
In the end, I can only say that while it works for me now I still feel that it could be even better, for me and the rest of the country. The idea that general health care is sluggish and weak is a product of pointless American anti-socialism and is disproven by they flourishing health systems in foreign countries.
See, I usually agree 100% percent with anyone who says anything about American way of life is indulgent, unsustainable, and generally crappy, but having had positive experiences with the health care system I feel somewhat disinclined to criticize it. I personally believe that general medical care cannot work very well in our culture/system simply because we are over indulgent and self centered. We do almost everything in excess especially unhealthy things, and we can't cover everybody when every Dick, Tom, and Laurie (Yes I included a woman in that phrase) is trying to beat the next girl/guy. Anyway, here is my family's experience with the health care system in America:
My mother was generally positive about the health care system, at least in our experience with it. She said her her experience was mixed; she had had both expensive and affordable health coverage, but either way it was good. My whole family is covered by HMOs. My parents are covered by Oxford health care provided by my mothers job. They pay monthly. My brother and I are covered by Blue Cross, Blue Shield which is an HMO of NYC. We only pay $15 per person each month, a surprisingly low amount. My mother claimed that we have never really spent much time in the emergency room, in fact the most extreme surgery we ever had was a double hernia removal when I was only 3 years old. We've gone to the doctor for the occasional checkup or minor ailment, and each time we only waited for a fairly short time. Something my mother also emphasized was that hospitals prioritize treatment for children over that for adults. So, yes, they did have to wait a while, but the treatment was always good regardless of the cost or time spent waiting.
We have also been quite fortunate in that we have never dealt with any massive medical bills or denial of treatment. We have, as I stated before, always had great health coverage. We did, however, have a close friend with cancer that was refused treatment because; a.)he could not afford it, and b.) he had never had any health insurance in the past. He was also one of the laziest, most indulgent and self centered people my family has ever met, so in a way it makes sense; he really didn't earn his keep.
When I asked my mother weather or not she had wonderful experiences with doctors she replied "yes." In fact our very first pediatrician was both a wonderful human being and a terrific doctor. His name was Dr. Heiss and I remember going there every so often for a checkup or a cold and he was always so sweet to us, making jokes and playing with us while simultaneously providing us with some of the best medical care. He even gave us lolipops at the end of each visit. Even the receptionists were kind and accomodating. And the cost was never an issue; it was fairly casual actually; they would allow us to delay payments and get back to them when we could. We stayed there for about 10 years.
Our current general practitioner shares similar qualities.
I would have to disagree with the idea that doctors are generally unpleasant, money-grubbing, pricks, if anything they are just tiny cogs in the wheel allowing it to continue spinning. They are merely products of a fucked up system. My grandmother had a doctor that, even after retiring, cared for her and her entire family for free until about a week before his death.
Having had such positive experiences with the health care system and doctors in general I feel unable to complain about its many benefits. Even now I visit some form of doctor each week to satisfy my hypochondria and I would not willingly give up my ability to do so. Yet, I still full heartedly agree with Michael Moore; any system that denies people health coverage to those with more severe illnesses and rewards their workers for doing so simply because it saves them money, is truly evil. It practically defeats the point of health coverage.
In the end, I can only say that while it works for me now I still feel that it could be even better, for me and the rest of the country. The idea that general health care is sluggish and weak is a product of pointless American anti-socialism and is disproven by they flourishing health systems in foreign countries.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Response to Danish Visit
Given that I still know very little about the U.S. system of taxation I don’t feel that I have much of a right to rant and rave about how bad it is…but I have a feeling that it isn’t working very well considering the vast number of people in poverty today under our system of taxation and government. From what I can tell though, in the U.S., most of our taxes are actually regressive, why that is, I don’t know. We pay a federal income tax that helps to fund various public services and we pay a social security tax that I believe helps to pay for our insurance. People are given money based on their level of economic stability and others are taxed for having greater wealth. Relative to Denmark, we pay fairly low taxes.
In Denmark, there is a similar system set up but it leans slightly more towards the socialist side of socialist democracies. They have sales tax, income tax, and social security tax just like we do, but they have a substantially higher tax on things that harm the environment, and to help the less fortunate. In Denmark, housing is a right and the government pays for your housing and some of your living expenses if you are down on your luck. As a result the people don’t live in fear of poverty and are much more willing to help people out in order to maintain their status of life.
The key difference I noticed between these two systems is the reason and motivation behind paying the taxes. Here people begrudgingly pay taxes and whine about having to pay for those in poverty that we believe are selfishly living off the hard work and good nature of the wealthy. In Denmark kids are substantially more educated about their own system of government as well as those of other countries so they grow up aware of the reprocussions of selfishness and the virtues of collectivity. The conservatives have put it in our heads that the poor just want to steal from the rich and we believe such fallacies as a result. Whereas in Denmark the poor have just struck hard times and must be assisted in any way possible.
As of right now I think that we should take a step towards a more extreme social democracy with a revolutionary move towards socialist anarchy. My main problem with the Danish system of taxation is the reliance on the government. While all may seem well and good at a glance it takes one rotten egg to spoil the bunch. The fact is, people can be greedy and if given a spot in the government can corrupt it with their greedyness. Because of people that are willing to exploit such an idyllic system for their own personal gains we need to be cautious not to give the government too much leverage over its people. What would the people of Denmark do if all of a sudden their government had a draft of sorts and threatened to deprive them of food and housing if they didn’t join? IN a social anarchy, the people have more control over everything and it gives them the right to say no.
In Denmark, there is a similar system set up but it leans slightly more towards the socialist side of socialist democracies. They have sales tax, income tax, and social security tax just like we do, but they have a substantially higher tax on things that harm the environment, and to help the less fortunate. In Denmark, housing is a right and the government pays for your housing and some of your living expenses if you are down on your luck. As a result the people don’t live in fear of poverty and are much more willing to help people out in order to maintain their status of life.
The key difference I noticed between these two systems is the reason and motivation behind paying the taxes. Here people begrudgingly pay taxes and whine about having to pay for those in poverty that we believe are selfishly living off the hard work and good nature of the wealthy. In Denmark kids are substantially more educated about their own system of government as well as those of other countries so they grow up aware of the reprocussions of selfishness and the virtues of collectivity. The conservatives have put it in our heads that the poor just want to steal from the rich and we believe such fallacies as a result. Whereas in Denmark the poor have just struck hard times and must be assisted in any way possible.
As of right now I think that we should take a step towards a more extreme social democracy with a revolutionary move towards socialist anarchy. My main problem with the Danish system of taxation is the reliance on the government. While all may seem well and good at a glance it takes one rotten egg to spoil the bunch. The fact is, people can be greedy and if given a spot in the government can corrupt it with their greedyness. Because of people that are willing to exploit such an idyllic system for their own personal gains we need to be cautious not to give the government too much leverage over its people. What would the people of Denmark do if all of a sudden their government had a draft of sorts and threatened to deprive them of food and housing if they didn’t join? IN a social anarchy, the people have more control over everything and it gives them the right to say no.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
AWOB Synthesis 3/17/09, first draft
In all my criticism of the AWOL, I have neglected to even once mention the effect of birth on the rest of ones life. 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.
The whole concept of birth is still iffy to me. I believe that all of the world’s many problems branch from the fact that there are just too many people. But this doesn’t stop couples, date rapists, lonely mothers, and Catholics from reproducing at a rapid rate. But why do people have babies? They leak from every orifice on their bodies, they are loud, and above all, they are expensive. But for some reason in our clean, perfectionist culture people feel the need to have more and more kids. It appears to me that there are three main reasons why people continue to have kids: Some people want a baby that will love them eternally with godlike devotion. Other people force their kids to have kids that will love and adore them. And then there are those who just want to have sex: people who appreciate the process (sex) but not the product (the baby).
Regardless of their cause these all result in the same thing; a baby that will, if treated properly, love, adore, and take care of you in your old age. “Sounds like a sweet deal. I just have to wait 9 months, go through a few hours of physical pain and take care of the thing for a few more years and I’ve got me my own personal servant.” Of course, this is an exaggeration but does not stand far from the truth. People in our society love to watch other people live; doing so gives their dull lives some meaning. Seldom, however, do we see people like Brad Pitt or other tabloid celebrities reading shallow and low-brow magazines like “People,” “Vogue,” or “Elle.” Those with money can live their own fantasies while those without watch and try to experience the affluent lives of the very people that keep our capitalistic culture going for gold.
Back to babies; children provide more or less the same sort of entertainment. A child’s life is essentially a soap opera that parents can sit back and eat pop-corn to while watching, occasionally stepping in to assure that they turn into what they always wanted to be. They watch their children grow up and develop like Stephanie from “Full House.” When their little angels hit puberty, parents buckle down while trying to maintain a friendly relationship with their child and relive those first episodes of “The Gilmore Girls.” Finally they release their kids into the world after having hypnotized them into becoming everything and more than they (the parents) were as children. Sound familiar? Vicariously living through ones offspring is quite common in our culture.
Of course, some people may not agree with me on that. 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. Epidurals can run up to $1000 on top of the outrageous fees that come with most hospital births. Having searched around online, looked at blogs, and heard my mothers own personal birthing experience, it seems to me that most Americans believe that these drugs are basic essentials in the birthing process. Observing the normal way of birth, one can see why many mothers may believe this. My own birth was very typical, and was archetypal of the American way of Birth.
My mother’s water broke on august 10th, 1991. She went to the hospital where she was told to return home and wait for 24 hours. The following day she went back to the hospital where the doctors gave her Pitocin to help induce labor. From this point on there were about 15 hours of labor before I was actually born, so it was a fairly long wait. The Pitocin made her contractions more frequent and they grew stronger each time. To pass the time my parents walked around the hospital until the contractions got to be so painful that she had to be confined to her bed. My father helped her through each contraction until, finally, she began crowning. Shortly before she was given Darvon, a light sedative to reduce the pain, but it was ineffective so she had an epidural. In an attempt to make the environment more welcoming for me my mother had very relaxing music playing in the background. When she finally began crowning a surge of doctors appeared in the room; she recalled there being no medical figures there up until that point. She had an episiotomy to stop any inevitable ripping from happening and shortly after I was born.
It was a pretty standard birth. The key thing, however, that I questioned upon hearing this was why so many drugs? At that point I had to come out because if a mother doesn’t go into labour within 12 hours of her water breaking it puts the lives of both mother and child at risk. The doctor, however, neglected to warn my mother of the drugs harmful side-affects. Everyone is told that birth will be painful, but few are told of Pitocin’s more gentile and natural cousin. Believe it or not turning the birthing process into an orgasmic experience can mimic the effects of Pitocin. Pitocin helps the body to release Oxytocin which helps to induce labour, but because it is taken through a constant IV drip it gives the body far more than necessary, putting her in far more pain than she need be. Not only are orgasmic births more pleasurable and cost effective, but they help to release the very same chemical into the mother, her very own, internal Oxytocin IV drip. If I am aware of this then I am certain that most doctors are; why then do most doctors not encourage such an approach? These drugs are insanely expensive, and what better way to make money off of anxious pregnant mothers than to shamelessly give them some drug without any alternative treatment. Doctors tell people like my mother of this magical drug that can save their baby’s life while failing to mention that our bodies can produce the same substance for FREE.
People make sex and birth out to be very separate things, thus robbing people of the sexual aspect of birth and instilling this artificial need for drugs, doctors, and hospital. People are afraid of anything outside of the norm, for it upsets the balance of their lifestyle; the same can be said of birth. Even though many aspects of our culture are sexual, for some reason we cannot combine the two. Doctors, like all other capitalists, want to make a profit and by lying and telling mothers that birth will be painful they can make more money off drugs. Similarly to sex, drugs are demonized. For a culture that so heavily uses drugs like pitocin, Epideurals, alcohol, and cigarettes on a daily basis, people demonize drugs such as marijuana, codine, steroids, and LSD with a curious amount of enthusiasm. “A Rod can’t take steroids, but mothers are given epidurals on a whim.” This just goes to show how contradictory our societies image of whats right and wrong is.
It doesn’t stop there; after giving my mother Pitocin, they had to counter-act the pain with an Epidural. Birth is bound to be painful, especially without an epidural, but when induced with Pitocin it becomes a necessity. Having a natural, home birth is less painful; people have all they need (in cases where the birth is normal and healthy) right at home.
The setting plays an important role in natural birth as well. The standard birth takes place in a sterile hospital room with the mother propped up in lithotomy position, legs agape, surrounded by complete strangers and bright spotlights shining on her vagina. How sexual does this sound? If anything it sounds nerve-wracking, whereas a home birth allows one complete privacy, sensuality, and, above all, comfort. A natural birth with inborn labour inducing chemicals suggests that the woman should sit naked in a tub next to her husband in a warm and loving environment. If one chooses, one can have a midwife coach the mother through the birth. The husband may gently stroke his wife’s breasts or something of that sort to get the Oxytocin flowing, while the midwife helps the mother through each contraction. Unlike standard birth procedures, the mother is allowed privacy and has complete control over the entire situation. When the baby finally comes out he is born into water or the loving arms of his/her family, which allows them to transition from the womb into the outside world . All in all, this sounds far more appealing and humane than the birth that most doctors would like people to believe is necessary. 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.
In recent times, four Missouri physicians sued the state over a midwifery law allowing “certified professional midwives to deliver babies without collaborating with a physician” or having an “emergency plan” (amednews.com). When asked why in regards to their opposition to the law, one of the physicians (David Redfern, MD and OB-GYN) responded, saying that “a midwife doesn’t have the skills to handle the complications that can happen instantaneously during birth.” According to him, roughly “10% to 15%” of women who deliver at home need to be transferred to a hospital due to complications. First off, certified professional midwives are required to have prior, out of hospital, experience, to have taken classes accredited by the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council, to have passed rigorous written exams on the topic of birth, and to have been administered by the North American Registry of Midwives. What about this doesn’t check out? The fact is, most women even considering having a home birth have been scared into believing that birth outside of a hospital is dangerous, so chances are that most women in such a situation will do extensive and in depth research to find a midwife suitable for their wants and needs. Not doing so would be unwise. The likelihood of someone picking an unqualified midwife for their birth is extremely low. Also, in an emergency situation almost anyone would have themselves rushed to a hospital, after all, half the mothers that have home births pray to all around them for an epidural as it is. And as the majority of expecting mothers already get ultra-sounds and amniocentesis’ they are often aware of any complications in their pregnancy and would doubtfully go through with the home- birth were there anything severely wrong with their unborn child.
Aside from the doctor’s fallacious observations there is something even more important to take from this reading. Most modern day doctors have been to taught to cure and treat everything as an illness, and birth is just another one of these illnesses. They have been taught to fear for the worst when in fact birth is quite simple. Thanks to the “cascade of medical interventions” encouraged by most doctors birth has become far more complicated than it need be. Instead of just having the baby and allowing the mother and child to experience the beautiful experience of birth doctors have convinced us that if there is pain something is wrong so women believe the use of pain medication and doctor intervention to be indispensable parts of the birthing process. The fact is, most OB- GYNs or birth doctors haven’t ever experienced a home birth so they cannot rightfully speak against it. When ones entire education is clouded by fear and the possibility of death passed on generation to generation of doctors its understandable why they feel as such. But one should trust their body to handle birth and not just the doctors, after all women and animals have been giving birth for quite some time now. Its thanks to people like Dr. Redfern that women now don’t trust their own bodies to be able to give birth even though it is perfectly modeled for being able to do so.
I had the opportunity to watch a certain skit done by The Monty Python acting troup, that perfectly epitomized the Techno/Medical method of birth. The video takes place in a cold hospital room with two doctors getting dressed for a birth. In the short skit they cover all of the aspects of birth that I have just talked about: they deal with all of the formalities of birth; bringing in the expensive machines that legitimize their practice and please the almighty hospital administrator. Most importantly, the mother is dealt with as an object and is barely acknowledged as part of the process. When she asks what she should do the doctors reply with a resounding “nothing dear, you aren’t qualified!” It seems that the current world of birth and pregnancy works in a similar way; women and patients in general are pushed along by each doctor and told what to do with out any questioning on the patients behalf. We have become passive as a people and we accept the word of the “qualified” as the word of the holy father. Not even the female form, which has been specially selected by thousands of years of evolution and development, is seen as being qualified enough to birth a child. Doctors just like those in the Monty Python skit have perpetuated the business of birth and encouraged the removal of the self from the creation of life.
For better or for worse I watched a documentary called “The Business of Giving Birth” that was very informative helped to give me further insight into the world of birth in America. It would be pointless for me to reiterate all the points brought up throughout the film because I have already more or less outlined them in this paper, but what I got from the film was, “we, as Americans, seriously need to revise the normal way of birth because mothers are removed from the experience and if we don’t people will miss out on the beautiful experience of birth.” I agreed with most of what was said there were however a few points that I thought could use some revision. The whole film was more or less, anti-hospital, anti-doctor…except for when it’s an emergency. This seemed to me a case of cognitive dissonance; mothers are still just as reliant on these supposedly evil, money-grubbing hospitals. They look to the very people that attempt to remove them from their birth proceze for mid pregnancy checkups, amniocentesis’, and other such treatments/check-ups. This is not to say that I believe these proceze to be unimportant, I just think that if one must have a baby, they should be accompanied by someone who has been trained in medicine, like a doctor, but with the care and compassion that often comes with a midwife. Call me an idealist, but I believe that if people want to continue giving healthy natural birth that we should have doctors who actually care about their patients. Even though this new form of doctor/midwife has a position similar to that of the standard doctor, the patient should be kept as an important role in the birth process and not treated like a leper.
Just as we educate teens about practicing safe sex, I believe we should educate mothers about birth. Women’s subservience to doctors is largely due to the fact that they have no clue what they are doing. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies get filthy rich off of mothers who haven’t been properly advised of the many basics of birth. Doctors have, according to the video, tricked women into believing the lithotomy position is the best to give birth in, that they shouldn’t move around, and that they should take drugs like pitocin, and darvon to aid them in giving birth. Women need to be able to see through the “cascade of interventions,” and make the right decisions for themselves; if you don’t care about the birth process and just want your baby, then give birth in a hospital, but if you do care you should be informed enough to be able to make such a decision.
I would have to argue that ignorance to the process of giving birth devalues the entire life of ones child for birth is one of the most important experiences of one’s child’s life. Doctors merely interfere with the mothers organic flow of emotion and physical sensations and end up turning the birth process into an artificial, and impersonal experience just as the Monty Python skit portrayed. Within the first few moments after giving birth, the mom and her baby are attached to one another through this “cocktail of love hormones,” and without them there is a divorce between mother and baby. Doctors simply haven’t been given the training necessary to view birth from a natural perspective thus perpetuating the current method. Any mother who cares about their child would have as loving and natural a birth as possible.
The whole concept of birth is still iffy to me. I believe that all of the world’s many problems branch from the fact that there are just too many people. But this doesn’t stop couples, date rapists, lonely mothers, and Catholics from reproducing at a rapid rate. But why do people have babies? They leak from every orifice on their bodies, they are loud, and above all, they are expensive. But for some reason in our clean, perfectionist culture people feel the need to have more and more kids. It appears to me that there are three main reasons why people continue to have kids: Some people want a baby that will love them eternally with godlike devotion. Other people force their kids to have kids that will love and adore them. And then there are those who just want to have sex: people who appreciate the process (sex) but not the product (the baby).
Regardless of their cause these all result in the same thing; a baby that will, if treated properly, love, adore, and take care of you in your old age. “Sounds like a sweet deal. I just have to wait 9 months, go through a few hours of physical pain and take care of the thing for a few more years and I’ve got me my own personal servant.” Of course, this is an exaggeration but does not stand far from the truth. People in our society love to watch other people live; doing so gives their dull lives some meaning. Seldom, however, do we see people like Brad Pitt or other tabloid celebrities reading shallow and low-brow magazines like “People,” “Vogue,” or “Elle.” Those with money can live their own fantasies while those without watch and try to experience the affluent lives of the very people that keep our capitalistic culture going for gold.
Back to babies; children provide more or less the same sort of entertainment. A child’s life is essentially a soap opera that parents can sit back and eat pop-corn to while watching, occasionally stepping in to assure that they turn into what they always wanted to be. They watch their children grow up and develop like Stephanie from “Full House.” When their little angels hit puberty, parents buckle down while trying to maintain a friendly relationship with their child and relive those first episodes of “The Gilmore Girls.” Finally they release their kids into the world after having hypnotized them into becoming everything and more than they (the parents) were as children. Sound familiar? Vicariously living through ones offspring is quite common in our culture.
Of course, some people may not agree with me on that. 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. Epidurals can run up to $1000 on top of the outrageous fees that come with most hospital births. Having searched around online, looked at blogs, and heard my mothers own personal birthing experience, it seems to me that most Americans believe that these drugs are basic essentials in the birthing process. Observing the normal way of birth, one can see why many mothers may believe this. My own birth was very typical, and was archetypal of the American way of Birth.
My mother’s water broke on august 10th, 1991. She went to the hospital where she was told to return home and wait for 24 hours. The following day she went back to the hospital where the doctors gave her Pitocin to help induce labor. From this point on there were about 15 hours of labor before I was actually born, so it was a fairly long wait. The Pitocin made her contractions more frequent and they grew stronger each time. To pass the time my parents walked around the hospital until the contractions got to be so painful that she had to be confined to her bed. My father helped her through each contraction until, finally, she began crowning. Shortly before she was given Darvon, a light sedative to reduce the pain, but it was ineffective so she had an epidural. In an attempt to make the environment more welcoming for me my mother had very relaxing music playing in the background. When she finally began crowning a surge of doctors appeared in the room; she recalled there being no medical figures there up until that point. She had an episiotomy to stop any inevitable ripping from happening and shortly after I was born.
It was a pretty standard birth. The key thing, however, that I questioned upon hearing this was why so many drugs? At that point I had to come out because if a mother doesn’t go into labour within 12 hours of her water breaking it puts the lives of both mother and child at risk. The doctor, however, neglected to warn my mother of the drugs harmful side-affects. Everyone is told that birth will be painful, but few are told of Pitocin’s more gentile and natural cousin. Believe it or not turning the birthing process into an orgasmic experience can mimic the effects of Pitocin. Pitocin helps the body to release Oxytocin which helps to induce labour, but because it is taken through a constant IV drip it gives the body far more than necessary, putting her in far more pain than she need be. Not only are orgasmic births more pleasurable and cost effective, but they help to release the very same chemical into the mother, her very own, internal Oxytocin IV drip. If I am aware of this then I am certain that most doctors are; why then do most doctors not encourage such an approach? These drugs are insanely expensive, and what better way to make money off of anxious pregnant mothers than to shamelessly give them some drug without any alternative treatment. Doctors tell people like my mother of this magical drug that can save their baby’s life while failing to mention that our bodies can produce the same substance for FREE.
People make sex and birth out to be very separate things, thus robbing people of the sexual aspect of birth and instilling this artificial need for drugs, doctors, and hospital. People are afraid of anything outside of the norm, for it upsets the balance of their lifestyle; the same can be said of birth. Even though many aspects of our culture are sexual, for some reason we cannot combine the two. Doctors, like all other capitalists, want to make a profit and by lying and telling mothers that birth will be painful they can make more money off drugs. Similarly to sex, drugs are demonized. For a culture that so heavily uses drugs like pitocin, Epideurals, alcohol, and cigarettes on a daily basis, people demonize drugs such as marijuana, codine, steroids, and LSD with a curious amount of enthusiasm. “A Rod can’t take steroids, but mothers are given epidurals on a whim.” This just goes to show how contradictory our societies image of whats right and wrong is.
It doesn’t stop there; after giving my mother Pitocin, they had to counter-act the pain with an Epidural. Birth is bound to be painful, especially without an epidural, but when induced with Pitocin it becomes a necessity. Having a natural, home birth is less painful; people have all they need (in cases where the birth is normal and healthy) right at home.
The setting plays an important role in natural birth as well. The standard birth takes place in a sterile hospital room with the mother propped up in lithotomy position, legs agape, surrounded by complete strangers and bright spotlights shining on her vagina. How sexual does this sound? If anything it sounds nerve-wracking, whereas a home birth allows one complete privacy, sensuality, and, above all, comfort. A natural birth with inborn labour inducing chemicals suggests that the woman should sit naked in a tub next to her husband in a warm and loving environment. If one chooses, one can have a midwife coach the mother through the birth. The husband may gently stroke his wife’s breasts or something of that sort to get the Oxytocin flowing, while the midwife helps the mother through each contraction. Unlike standard birth procedures, the mother is allowed privacy and has complete control over the entire situation. When the baby finally comes out he is born into water or the loving arms of his/her family, which allows them to transition from the womb into the outside world . All in all, this sounds far more appealing and humane than the birth that most doctors would like people to believe is necessary. 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.
In recent times, four Missouri physicians sued the state over a midwifery law allowing “certified professional midwives to deliver babies without collaborating with a physician” or having an “emergency plan” (amednews.com). When asked why in regards to their opposition to the law, one of the physicians (David Redfern, MD and OB-GYN) responded, saying that “a midwife doesn’t have the skills to handle the complications that can happen instantaneously during birth.” According to him, roughly “10% to 15%” of women who deliver at home need to be transferred to a hospital due to complications. First off, certified professional midwives are required to have prior, out of hospital, experience, to have taken classes accredited by the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council, to have passed rigorous written exams on the topic of birth, and to have been administered by the North American Registry of Midwives. What about this doesn’t check out? The fact is, most women even considering having a home birth have been scared into believing that birth outside of a hospital is dangerous, so chances are that most women in such a situation will do extensive and in depth research to find a midwife suitable for their wants and needs. Not doing so would be unwise. The likelihood of someone picking an unqualified midwife for their birth is extremely low. Also, in an emergency situation almost anyone would have themselves rushed to a hospital, after all, half the mothers that have home births pray to all around them for an epidural as it is. And as the majority of expecting mothers already get ultra-sounds and amniocentesis’ they are often aware of any complications in their pregnancy and would doubtfully go through with the home- birth were there anything severely wrong with their unborn child.
Aside from the doctor’s fallacious observations there is something even more important to take from this reading. Most modern day doctors have been to taught to cure and treat everything as an illness, and birth is just another one of these illnesses. They have been taught to fear for the worst when in fact birth is quite simple. Thanks to the “cascade of medical interventions” encouraged by most doctors birth has become far more complicated than it need be. Instead of just having the baby and allowing the mother and child to experience the beautiful experience of birth doctors have convinced us that if there is pain something is wrong so women believe the use of pain medication and doctor intervention to be indispensable parts of the birthing process. The fact is, most OB- GYNs or birth doctors haven’t ever experienced a home birth so they cannot rightfully speak against it. When ones entire education is clouded by fear and the possibility of death passed on generation to generation of doctors its understandable why they feel as such. But one should trust their body to handle birth and not just the doctors, after all women and animals have been giving birth for quite some time now. Its thanks to people like Dr. Redfern that women now don’t trust their own bodies to be able to give birth even though it is perfectly modeled for being able to do so.
I had the opportunity to watch a certain skit done by The Monty Python acting troup, that perfectly epitomized the Techno/Medical method of birth. The video takes place in a cold hospital room with two doctors getting dressed for a birth. In the short skit they cover all of the aspects of birth that I have just talked about: they deal with all of the formalities of birth; bringing in the expensive machines that legitimize their practice and please the almighty hospital administrator. Most importantly, the mother is dealt with as an object and is barely acknowledged as part of the process. When she asks what she should do the doctors reply with a resounding “nothing dear, you aren’t qualified!” It seems that the current world of birth and pregnancy works in a similar way; women and patients in general are pushed along by each doctor and told what to do with out any questioning on the patients behalf. We have become passive as a people and we accept the word of the “qualified” as the word of the holy father. Not even the female form, which has been specially selected by thousands of years of evolution and development, is seen as being qualified enough to birth a child. Doctors just like those in the Monty Python skit have perpetuated the business of birth and encouraged the removal of the self from the creation of life.
For better or for worse I watched a documentary called “The Business of Giving Birth” that was very informative helped to give me further insight into the world of birth in America. It would be pointless for me to reiterate all the points brought up throughout the film because I have already more or less outlined them in this paper, but what I got from the film was, “we, as Americans, seriously need to revise the normal way of birth because mothers are removed from the experience and if we don’t people will miss out on the beautiful experience of birth.” I agreed with most of what was said there were however a few points that I thought could use some revision. The whole film was more or less, anti-hospital, anti-doctor…except for when it’s an emergency. This seemed to me a case of cognitive dissonance; mothers are still just as reliant on these supposedly evil, money-grubbing hospitals. They look to the very people that attempt to remove them from their birth proceze for mid pregnancy checkups, amniocentesis’, and other such treatments/check-ups. This is not to say that I believe these proceze to be unimportant, I just think that if one must have a baby, they should be accompanied by someone who has been trained in medicine, like a doctor, but with the care and compassion that often comes with a midwife. Call me an idealist, but I believe that if people want to continue giving healthy natural birth that we should have doctors who actually care about their patients. Even though this new form of doctor/midwife has a position similar to that of the standard doctor, the patient should be kept as an important role in the birth process and not treated like a leper.
Just as we educate teens about practicing safe sex, I believe we should educate mothers about birth. Women’s subservience to doctors is largely due to the fact that they have no clue what they are doing. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies get filthy rich off of mothers who haven’t been properly advised of the many basics of birth. Doctors have, according to the video, tricked women into believing the lithotomy position is the best to give birth in, that they shouldn’t move around, and that they should take drugs like pitocin, and darvon to aid them in giving birth. Women need to be able to see through the “cascade of interventions,” and make the right decisions for themselves; if you don’t care about the birth process and just want your baby, then give birth in a hospital, but if you do care you should be informed enough to be able to make such a decision.
I would have to argue that ignorance to the process of giving birth devalues the entire life of ones child for birth is one of the most important experiences of one’s child’s life. Doctors merely interfere with the mothers organic flow of emotion and physical sensations and end up turning the birth process into an artificial, and impersonal experience just as the Monty Python skit portrayed. Within the first few moments after giving birth, the mom and her baby are attached to one another through this “cocktail of love hormones,” and without them there is a divorce between mother and baby. Doctors simply haven’t been given the training necessary to view birth from a natural perspective thus perpetuating the current method. Any mother who cares about their child would have as loving and natural a birth as possible.
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