So it does appear that each of us has some underlying reasons and some practical reasons for what we do. I find this so interesting because if you think about it, we are a subset of a very interesting group of People. Yes, we are all individuals and come from somewhat different backgrounds and different surroundings, but the beauty is that we do in some grand way, share some very interesting commonality. We love the land and how it makes us feel. We love to have some control and input as to what we eat and where it comes from. We tend to be independent minded, both politically and spiritually. We care about the husbandry of animals that help us provide our sustenance as well as contribute to our survival as mortal beings. We appreciate the beauty of the earth and sky and what wisdom it provides us with when we study it in earnest.
We also admit that we have some concerns. Some may resort to calling them fears but the in the end analysis, they are essentially the same issue. We are not very trusting of all the folks who have managed to gain control of the system we call "The Economy".
While I was not a Bill Clinton fan during his tenure in the White House, there was at least one thing that he seemed to have learned and it was emblazoned on a sign that he kept near him which said "It's the Economy, Stupid". I don't know who said that to him or where it came from but the value of that statement cannot be underestimated. Back then some folks were already working toward being SS because there were signs that the economy was faltering. They also had very little with which to work and so they looked for ways to back away from a system that was becoming more difficult to "trust". They also looked for ways to feed themselves well and shelter themselves and their family using the rather meager resources they possessed. They as did we, learn from their parents and grandparents about "The Great Depression" where every thing had value because you never knew when you would need that again. The Second World War caused people to sacrifice and "make do" with things because so much material and natural resources were needed for the 'war effort'.
Now, we spend and spend at the "economy management level" because everyone wants things that are brand new and not misused by someone else before they got it. We don't all buy new cars but some do. We don't all buy used things because we want something that is ours and not someone else's. Where we got that (and I use WE in the global sense rather than a more personal sense of the readers here) mentality may have come from some of our ancestors who came here from other countries and wanted to "BE Americans" and start all over with everything new. I know that many folks came to this side of the world (and please don't think I am not including Canada in this discussion because that isn't the point here) carrying very little of anything; sometimes nothing. They may have been forced out of their homes or villages and managed to escape with the clothes on their back and their lives. They escaped persecution as well as physical threat. Some were able to bring "steamer chests" with some mementos of their lives in the "old country" but only after they felt safe did they bring those things out to let others see. But in any case, they decided that they wanted to integrate and be part of the NEW world, having left the "old country behind. Some did it for economic opportunity. One of my favorite movies was "Far and Away" with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman because the purpose of the entire story was to come to a new place and have land to own and work and be for all intents and purposes, Free and self-sufficient.
Then we come to the generation after the Second World War to which many of us belong. Young men came home from a war in a place they knew nothing about and fought hard to help folks remain free of the most horrible oppression the world had seen in a very long time. Each generation which is given new technology seems to also generate a group of folks who believe they are in some way superior to the rest of the souls on this planet and find some way to attempt to "cleanse" the earth of the ones that these folks decide are "undesirable". Hence we have seen the results of that cause war in many locations.
Now these young men who went away, came home, started families and worked hard, hoping I am sure, that the generation they bring to the earth will NOT have to endure the trials they did in war. Did that work? Nope. We are still doing it. Nothing has changed in a sense except that now with the advent of so much greater technology on the earth, we have once again seen the rise of some form of "elite" group of folks who because of extreme wealth and arrogance, have decided that the earth has too many "undesirables" on it once again and the only solution for that is war. The other solutions known well in history were pestilence, disease and famine. In my country, we appear to have conquered much of those three so war is the only remaining method for "reducing the population". Malthus described this long ago.
So where do we go with this? One of the more interesting questions is "how did WE, the folks on this Forum" become "associated? Is it by chance or is there some other force that brings us together and binds us in a group of like-mindedness? We all have our reasons and we all have our methods, but the "prime directive" deep in our consciousness is to in some way, revert to a form of living that will NOT be disturbed by any change in the overarching control of the technological world in which we currently live.
I read some posts where folks want to learn to render fat to make candles. I know plenty of folks (including myself) who have bees that will make wax for candles. But the question that I keep asking and admit that I am obviously NOT getting worded well seems to be, "to what extent are we able to revert to a less technologically intense life style, without giving it up completely?" Many of us know that the advent of electricity separates us from the age when energy was almost unheard of at the individual level. People did things with HUMAN POWER rather than ELECTRIC power. The gasoline engine seemed to take over our world and now we appear to find ourselves almost enslaved by it. We spend huge amounts of our resources simply to support our "car habit"...cost of car, cost of maintenance, cost of insurance, cost of fuel (which keeps changing), cost of human life by misuse of the car, cost of time and cost of nearly everything because it is related to our dependence on the gasoline engine.
Currently, there is a "revolution" going on to preserve the gasoline engine as "KING" by the folks who benefit most from that huge group of "costs" that they manage to REAP. The oil companies are at the top of that list. The knowledge of how to use a reciprocating engine with some other energy source has existed for many years, but the patents had been purchased by the owners of the oil companies who realized that such competition would put them out of business, and very quickly. One of the things I noticed was the sudden significant increase in the cost of fuel, (diesel being the most egregious of offenders) coincided with a very interesting date. That date was the end of the patent protection for the things that the oil companies had worked so hard to suppress. They also knew that the original explanation for the decision NOT to use hydrogen as a fuel was faulty and only recently proven completely erroneous. The story of the Hindenburg was shown to be caused by the paint that covered the aircraft which is now used as rocket fuel, RATHER than the hydrogen with which the aircraft was lifted. By claiming that hydrogen was dangerous because it was "explosive" tended to negate the properties of gasoline when atomized, mixed with air and compressed inside a gas tight cylinder. OK, so that explosion is DIFFERENT from putting hydrogen in the same place? Not to my way of thinking. (But I digress).
Given those issues, what then can we do to minimize having our resources drained by magnitudes of order? (And I mean that quite literally when we talk about the cost of goods and services that we have experienced in this country since I was a boy). What are we willing to give up, but still maintain our sense of "self-control" and self-sufficiency" in the grand scheme of things? This then is our true basic question. Many of us have made a multitude of attempts to get along with either less of one thing or another but the truth is we want to get along with less dependence on not only foreign oil, but also other people outside our immediate environment.
We don't want to go back to the stone age and realistically can't given the population and the effect of that many people and the small amounts of space left on the earth for nature to dominate. We keep killing off populations of living things because their habitat interferes with "progress". Quite frankly, I think we have made way more progress than we really need to be healthy and happy and not destroy any more of the earth to make room for MORE progress which translates to MORE PROGRESS USING PEOPLE.
How are we going to do this? No one really knows. But the first thing is we as a subset of the human race, further divided into the subset that understands these inconsistencies, have to decide what OUR personal threshold for living on the earth truly is without adding to the already huge demand for things we don't have but WANT. A trip to town to get a bottle of milk just doesn't make sense. A trip to town to buy a month's supplies, however, does make sense. The difference is how we manage our resources and that appears to be the deep question to all of the questions I have been examining.
We SS'ers are doing what we can to diminish our "carbon footprint" and demand for things that are produced at great expense to the earth. We all are hoping to avoid the fact that with an economy that is forever increasing in demand and decreasing in reward for our efforts, the time will come when we will not be able to afford to have anything to eat because we won't have the cash to buy it. How do we respond?
We grow gardens. We live on plots of land (regardless of how large) and make every effort to produce the human needs we have on our own so that the cost of them will not exceed our resources. Anyone who has a "yard" in this world can actually grow almost enough food to supply themselves for an entire year, given proper management. While many do not possess the knowledge to do it currently, the truth is that this knowledge is available and can be learned, assuming the desire to learn it exists in the individual.
That knowledge alone would go a long way to diminish the demand on the resources of the world in general and provide for increased peace and happiness EVERYWHERE in the world. There are really only very few places that will NOT sustain some form of agriculture and even that is being conquered by research. The real issue is do we as a "HUMAN RACE" have the will to do our own work and be self-sufficient" rather than expect others to work and we just buy what they produce? That is an answer many folks really don't want to give because they are not willing to do the work to survive. They have been acculturated to think that our form of gubmint is responsible to provide for them in every way. The end result of that is that the number of that type of mentality is growing to such a degree that we can see changes in our chances for comfortable survival till the end of our lives because of the cost of contributing to the "common good" by the folks who WILL work to feed and clothe and supply those who WON'T work.
I think the time has come to examine our Constitution and realize that it has been so mis-interpreted and mis-used as to become in no way the document it truly is. People have always been poor in society regardless of what society. People have always been unable to do for themselves. It is well documented in the Bible and elsewhere in written history. But, the number of people who claim to be this way is so staggering and unmanageable as to cause everyone and everything to be harder to obtain and more difficult to manage.
I believe we need to allow the Constitution to do its job and stop being misused by those who profit by that misuse. Controlling the entire country and its people from one central location has destroyed the purpose of the structure of the Constitution which in article 10 clearly indicates that the central governing body needs to do the job called for by the Constitution and leave the rest of the management of life to the individual states.
Boy, this one has really gotten long but it appears to me that this is something we as SS'ers need to feel that we are "in control" of our destiny and stop letting a few, ill-mannered, greedy and weak individuals make decisions for our lives without our consent. While I am NOT a member of any "political party" and do NOT subscribe to any specific political "platform" I do believe in my country and what it stands for and what its founding fathers were doing when they set it up. They were certainly SS'ers in the most concrete form of the words and gave us a document that provided the ability for us to be SS'ers for the entire span of our natural lives.
I for one, would like that privilege returned to me because presently, it has been taken away in so many ways as to make me deeply concerned for the lives of my unborn grandchildren.
YMMV
Trim sends
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//BT//
I mean "invest" in that game. I have wondered all my life why anyone with a drop of common sense would want to give away their hard earned money to the already wealthy.( It reminds me of when my sister said "lets put our allowance together then we will have more money, and I will hold it for you, and since I'm the one that is holding it I get a new pair of jeans first and then the next time we get some money then it's your turn." 
