easy prey

Years are fleeting and distractions are numerous. Commerce is persuasive. Debilitating chemical dependencies have become easily obtained in the form of casual prescription or performance drinks. School and work are lengthy and taxing. Recreation is spent in the clamor of competition. Food is neither satisfying nor nourishing. Inflation doesn’t sleep. Entertainment is escapist. Peers apply the pressure of beauty myth. The pace of fashion leaves us contemptibly clothed within a single season. Real estate ‘values’ escalate while our ability to maintain a dwelling dwindles. Deadlines are a parched driving rain. Traffic is enraging, routine exhausting.
We know that we are vulnerable; fleshy bags of blood and plasma mounted on a fracture susceptible skeleton, the whole encased in semi-permeable film offering little resistance to puncture or to chemical and radioactive destroyers, wired with dendrites and dreams, pulsating with passions, aspiring to cosmic significance, on a determinate course toward dissolution. We are easy prey.
“Can I keep up?” is easily answered with a dose of commercials served up within an hour of television. “You lack energy, you lack “drive”, you’re balding, you’re fat, you don’t sleep well, your hair is the wrong color, your lips are too thin, you’re hairy in the wrong places. Your life is boring, hassled and mediocre. You’re a lousy parent. You need a vacation and a prescription.” To heed this council is to cultivate clinical depression; to ignore it is to be out of fashion, out of touch. Styles come and styles go, fashion keeps us shopping. Commerce leaves everyone in its wake contemptible and scrambling to acquire.
Advertising is more cunning still. Ads for housing display happy families or children, but omit the house. Pills promise relief. Male enhancement products taut satisfied wives. Insurance proffers security. Investments intone satisfying leisure. What is this bill of goods? Can it be delivered or are we victim and accomplice to fraudulent scheming? These are not things, but emotions. This is nothing but false advertising! There can be no delivery.
But we are working and we are spending. We are spending big, sacrificing our lives and making some very rich, in the hopes of enjoying a few trickle down crumbs of privilege pie. We are entirely engaged in keeping up, distracted from more enduring endeavors. We are paying the tab and the goods are not being delivered, even when the stuff is. It will never be sufficient, even when supplied in excess.
We are both victim and perpetrator in a mental framework that excuses what the market will bear. We are burning up our atmosphere, setting up great weather related devastations, filling our earth with plastic, turning a blind eye to the growing economic disparity of our own society and basically frittering away our resources and lives playing out an attitude of compulsory servitude. Why? Are the options really so limited? Is this a problem of perception or imagination?
Green solutions in health, in foods and in general have begun to emerge. Though they are the same ilk of typical commercialism; elitist self-congratulatory pricey green advice directed toward the over privileged; such as how to remodel your home with “green materials”, meanwhile, dumping all sorts of perfectly fine, though no longer fashionable materials into the landfill. Succumbing to commercial and social pressure to buy a ‘greener car’, still puts a whole new vehicle into circulation, replete with newly mined and minted resources. ‘Natural beauty care’ comes in plastic containers, containing ingredients that sound suspiciously chemical. ‘Natural foods’ are often so processed that they are downright industrial, swathed in layers of plastic packaging, they have traveled every bit as far as their counterpart self-indulgent industrial convenience foods.
Can we rely on free market forces to adapt? We have accepted the label ‘consumer’ and allowed vested interests to advise us in every aspect of life. We as a society are commercially educated. Any research or solution funded by commercial interests is most certainly tainted by profit motive. But that doesn’t keep them from caching in on such research. Products have washed their packaging in green advertising, but very little change has been realized. Companies boast thinking outside the box, but cannot think against their own interest of profits: Social behaviors that contribute to pollution, global warming, disposable society, mounting waste, to disease and war continue to be very profitable. The very survival of corporations is imbedded in perpetuating our self-destructive behaviors. We would be daft to look to commerce for real solutions.
We can’t hope for government to fix this problem! A politician’s only concern is re-election funds provided by “interests”(ie. companies willing to donate to campaigns in exchange for legislative favoritism and privileges) and taxable expenditures. Which puts our survival back into the hands of the corporations and into their pocket alongside the politicians.
The problem is that real solutions aren’t all that glamorous. Hence, they just aren’t marketable or profitable: Quit driving so much, prepare your own food, eat simply, shop locally, buy in bulk, buy less stuff- for God’s sake, avoid the pitch and toss of fashion, live in a smaller house, dress for the season instead of relying so on central air, reduce the water you run down the drain, grow some food and plant anything but grass! Such advice smacks of deprivation.
In truth it is liberating! Using my hands and creativity to prepare food is to embrace the sensual life. Home is a sanctuary from the pervasive message of inadequacy and need for relentless scheduling. Just having less money can be a refuge from commercialism, when I am of the right mind. When dressing for the season, old clothes become new and heighten awareness of weather’s small pleasures; the tingle of radiant sun at the end of a glum winter or a cool breeze of evening couched in a relentless summer. Living in a smaller house leaves me less to clean. Simple alterations to clothes can amplify style or reinvigorate worn ones without leaving me at the recent whim of designers. Oh and growing food… there is no limit to the satisfaction of harvesting even a single zucchini. It begs me to pause and wonder at the skies and soil and endless bounty, the benevolence of the marvelously wrought universe replicating eternally within the very marrow of a vegetable. Freely given it is gratefully received.
Today, this moment, I stand my ground, raise my fist and declare my sovereignty.

simple freedoms

Today is a windy, snowy, snuggle into the moonchair and read spring Sunday. Yesterday was a warm, bright, daffodil blooming, manure flinging, fennel planting spring Saturday. Yesterday was a time for action, today is for reflection. This is the third nudge I've had from the universe this week to take up the pen.
I love to read, but feel insignificant when set before the blank page. Hence, often when I write it takes the form of defensive egotistical ranting if not self effacing over divulgence. So anyway, now you are warned, here goes..
This week I am suffering from yet another bout of internet research induced feelings of betrayal by our industrial information based society.
We as a family have been eating mostly whole grains for at least 15 years. True, it did offer some improvement in our health once we began grinding grain immediately before cooking. However, I just kept feeling like I wasn't getting the nutrition I needed. I've been through all kinds of ideologies; macrobiotic; we were vegetarian for a couple of years, blood type (which for a household of differing parents and the ensuing possible combination of eight offspring is chaotic at best), ayurvedic dabblings, Dr. Christopher studies, sugar free (for a few months), acid- alkaline balance, raw-sprouting additions, weed eating, tea drinking, supplement taking and even a quasi paleo-diet. One might think we were bound to encounter the spring of eternal youth with all this crap. I kept thinking it shouldn't be this complicated to nourish our bodies.
As usual each ideology offered something of benefit, none could deliver the panacea that ideologies are wont to. It could be argued that I was not rigorous enough or that I did not stick with one long enough, but how long do you have to stand in quicksand to know that your situation isn't improving?
The health food and 'science' industries echo a New Yorker article I read recently about Madoff and the Ponzi Scheme-'too good to be true'
We yearn to be on the side of genius, cheat the order of the natural world, fly with the wings of Icharus or in vampirism drink blood to seize upon ever elusive immortality.
The myriad cults of diet have similar earmarks of scheming. We are susceptible fools. And why are we so susceptible? Because we do not know what an honest apple or tomato is supposed to taste like and so have no comparison. We are pale and wan, bleary of sight, wandering in mind and know not who or what to blame. We have been nourished based on maxims of 'maximize profits, minimize expenses' and 'always improve the bottom line'. It is the grandest ponzi scheme of all. Cheat the masses out of substance and soak their money in the process. Churned out from board rooms, concocted in labs, packaged with convenience and stamped and marketed with celebrity. Yes, there is product, but substance is drained more every year.
There is nary an honest tomato (or apple) to blow the whistle and we are accomplice to our own defrauding.
So finally to the point of my betrayal for this week. It seems that I have not been getting enough nutrition from my food, mainly in the forms of calcium, magnesium, zinc and iron; all deficiencies that I have noted over the years, and hence supplemented for. The reason is that whole grains, while containing these vital elements at the same time, contain phytic acid, or phytates, that bind up the nutrients, making them bio-unavailable. The purpose of the phytates is to hold the seed in stasis until it encounters favorable conditions for growth.
While sprouting for quite a while as a way of feeding our beloved troupe on leaner times, I have noted that when I eat my sprouts my body seems to utilize calcium more effectively (less muscle cramps, less tooth sensitivity, less joint pain or cracking, fewer craving for sweets
etc.).
This is at least partially because I have become leery of information that I cannot personally verify. I can afford very little chasing of ideologies at this point in my life. I must have substance and results.
I have encountered this phylate conundrum previously, though I had not encountered a viable solution. Our diet is built around whole grains for economic reasons and health reasons, taste, convenience and simplicity. The solution came from How to eat grains.

A debate about homeschool regulation was on the Diane Rhem show today. It is coming, regulation is coming. My public educator husband predicted that it would be only a matter of time. I feel sick at heart. Why should I? What is the fear?
Regulators don't know when to stop. The dysfunctional public school system is the result of regulation and more regulation to try and fix the dysfunction of regulation. I was disappointed with the defenders of homeschools when the question of testing came up. They replied with an appeasing, 'oh my kids have been tested and surpassed the average'.
The problem with testing is STANDARDIZATION of the individual and who should decide upon that standard, but other individuals. and who will they be? A few publically educated, collectively minded, suit wearing, statistic slinging, status seeking, industrial economy worshiping, conformists. They are just human beings. They don't know the future ant more than you do. Well I will grant that they have an educated guess. But how many times are those overturned and a new one is put into place as the current educated guess? And now we have a few jokers who are out to standardize the rebels who want to make their own educated guess for their own children.
And do you know what your children are in their eyes? Well Ill help you out. They are a mass of human flesh, the workings of our economic and political system that has served so well as to put them on top of the heap in the position of determining what everyone else should be managed by statistics and posturing oh and did I mention the penal system. The US has more person per capita in prison than any other country.

It seems that equality is a non issue at this point in history. No one cares. Everyone wants the government to sanction their platform of privilege, whether it be religious, ethical or just plain monetary. Personally, I want my privilege of cheap iceburg lettuce to keep coming to me through all seasons at a rock bottom price. But when I burrow into the thousands of exploitations and insults to life, liberty and and the earth that are required to sustain this privilege, I despair of life in this wretched schema where I have to slice from my soul the sinew of ideals that hold it together. I have to do this in order to just eat for a day. My husband thinks we're crazy. What is that popular definition of insanity 'to keep expecting something different in the face of other such evidence' or something like that? Couldn't that also be a definition of hope?
I suppose humanity has always struggled for equality. The declaration of independence invokes the self evident truth that all men are created equal, yet this country supported a tradition of slavery for eighty-nine years and it was a bloody mess to uproot.
It seems to me that where there is a lust for leisure there is also a bent for exploitation. The first requires the second. We as a society worship leisure. I don't want to grow my own iceburg lettuce. Few of us would actively exploit a human being, but most of us tolerate sweatshops, illegal workers, unethical corporations, and on and on because we want our stuff.
I am timid about prying at the sensitive heart of capitalism; the right to amass and horde more than one could ever use. I know the benefits of capitalism: It creates industry, invention, incentive, and competition eventually it turns to the proliferation of stuff and more useless stuff at the cost of individuals and society.
I don't pretend to have an alternative. I just think we need to think about it. It seems to me that the accumulation of fortune gives one greater power than another. Could it be that this system of capitalism undermines the ideal of equality in ways similar to the system of slavery? People were born into slavery. Everyone is born naked, but to different circumstances and these make all the difference. Economic circumstances have the same detrimental effect today. Slavery wasn't everyone's problem. It was a problem for the slaves. The slaves had no power so the institution of slavery was not threatened. Slavery became a problem to the non participating northern states, because of economics. They could not compete. That is when equality became an issue.
Americans can't compete in the marketplace now. We can't compete because we have laws that protected the poor and weak from the rich and powerful. Laws about work hours and pay. Laws about safety and bigotry. We just can't compete with the countries who ignore such issues, but we don't mind.
Our jobs are being shifted elsewhere because we can't compete, but we don't mind because we have 'investment'. Leisure money that sustains the unethical industries, but since these are in someone else's backyard we don't have to see the havoc they wreak on people's lives. 'We are helping them, they wouldn't have jobs at all if it weren't for us', is our excuse for complicit tolerance of their living and working conditions. We just aren't willing to sacrifice some of our leisure or convenience, we want our stuff to keep coming. Or maybe we just don't think about it, who has the time and energy to connect up the dots of self incrimination?

Do your post and then...

Doesn't 'feral' have two r's?

Here's your first post, dear one!

We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Now we like underwear so much more!