I've always been drawn to the homesteading way of life, or at least a modernly feasible form of it. I like making my own, whether this be my own beer or my own house. I'm not sure where this yearning comes from, but here's a thought.
To go into the wild and live is to re-found society and make it our own. We play by our own rules and laws and form a way of life that usurps our current modern way. Out of the struggle of the rat race, at last we win!
So, is the desire to go into the wild (to be self-reliant, to be undisturbed by the vicissitudes of modernity and neighbors, to be on our own) a result of a lackluster experience with modern society?
What is wrong with the society and civilization I want to exit? An examination of the aspects of homesteading I value most might reveal what is wrong with society. A great thing about homesteading is the ability of a homesteader to be unaffected by the outside - to be able to not read the news, not obey laws we think distasteful, and to not care about greener grass. Strife - in whatever form - is stressful even to be seen. Hearing of the new horrible laws and new "acts of God" and the affect they have on people's happiness is stressful. Is the stress of solitariness greater than viewing these?
All work and striving begins with envy. Whether we want the food, property, or anything else that belongs to someone else, the reason we work is so that we can have what they do. A homesteader doesn't have to look at others every day, and doesn't envy their property. The homesteader is less motivated to work, and though he may spend more hours than average toiling, demands less return from his labor.
Is not playing the only way to win the rat race?
It is said that "You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game". If this is true of the rat race, it is hopeless to exit via self-reliance or homesteading.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Urban Dictionary on Education
Everyday, millions of children march to school with drudgery and resistance. As young children, they go in open-hearted and free -- at night, they imagine that their tiny hands can reach up and touch the birds. The entire world is a new place and the fascination of beauty never subsides. But as older adolescents leaving their high school, they go close-minded and bondaged -- at night, they drink themselves into passing out and talk about the most popular thing to come, under obligation. The boys worry about their sexual conquests. The girls worry about their sexual appearance. Both worry about being social in a society that has made a weakness of kindness and an insult of emotion. Such a great change occurs between those who enter school and those who leave it.
Just think of the sheer idiocy of compulsary education. We threaten these children with imprisonment if they do not appear in class. Once in class, they spend their time either sleeping or completing tasks that are completely irrelevant to them. By giving them no option in their schooling, what have we taught them? The first lesson they learn is to detest learning. Take any man, put him in chains, and force him to recite poetry, or force him to play an instrument, or force him to farm the land -- and once he becomes a free man, do you think he will want to engage in that activity that was forced upon him? The scars on a slaves hands from working the fields, the memories of abuse of a house servant; given the right to do as they wish in the world, is it likely to think that they will return to that work which they were forced to do? And then consider schools. We force children to sit and overfeed them erroneous facts, faulty logic, damaged reasoning, concealed under the guise of "schooling." Once the mental faculties of these children are damaged, their heart grows an animosity towards learning, towards books, towards facts and knowledge. It is the greatest folly to make children hate learning, and the greatest danger to a real, living Democracy in any nation.
Because when the Red Sox win a baseball game, five universities in the state of Massachussetts riot. But when the United States regime supports a South American dictator known for slaughtering his own people, it's a whisper lost in the wind.
Our ignorance is their power.
Real knowledge is acquired by learning what interests you, through reading, investigation, practice, or any other desirable method. To become intelligent, you must engage in activity with the idea that are you learning because you want to, because knowledge is a goal. The path to conformity varies greatly from this. First, you engage in nothing, but allow cultural standards and social obligations to control you. Second, the idea of learning is to memorize random, perhaps unrelated and blatant facts -- true or untrue -- so that they may be recited upon command. Third, the goal is not knowledge, but a passing grade; they learn to for the sake of knowledge, but rather for the sake of social acceptance.
Take two children. Give the first freedom and liberty, give him a wealth of books and movies, give him teachers to aid him upon his request and a place that encourages art, creativity, and independence. Then take away the freedom and liberty of the second, require his presence in a classroom in front of a teacher, threaten him with a jail sentence if he does not go to his school. Give each of them ten or fifteen years, and check the development of each of them after this amount of time. The only forced to endure slavery may be able to stand in a lecture hall and he might be able to say to you, "George Washington was born in 1732 and died in 1799. In 1776, the Revolutionary War began where he acted as general. In 1783, it ended. In 1789, he was elected president a first time, and in 1792, he was elected president a second time." You are given dates and events, surely, it is true history. But take the child who was given freedom to do as he pleased, and he might be able to stand in a lecture hall and tell you, "In the sixteenth century, in Europe, a Spanish physician by the name of Michael Servetus was convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. Fleeing from his oppressors, he made it to Geneva, where the vindictive John Calvin had absolute authority. In earlier years, Servetus expressed his doubt on Calvin's protestant religion. Once captured by the authorities, Servetus was burned to death at the orders of John Calvin in 1533. They had him wear a hat of sulphur and used slow-burning wood, that the crowd could listen to screams for mercy for the duration of a half hour. One year after the death of this man, Calvin published a list of insults of his former enemy."
Be a rebel. Because being a conformist means admitting that the parts of you that matter are already dead.
But if that's the case, what does matter? The emotions that run rampant through our head, the thoughts that we tumble and toss over in our minds constantly -- sexual fantasies to memories of our friends and family, thoughts and ideas about our future, wishes and desires for our current life with those who are close to us. The idea of a living freedom, knowing that what you wish to do believe with your mind is unrestricted and what you wish to do with your body, so long as you harm none, is unlimited. Life matters to us because we make it matter; if we never told a lover we would miss them upon our departure for a long voyage, if we never told a family member that we dream of a time when oppression ended, if we never wrote a poem and hoped to give it to a friend whose face we haven't seen in years -- if we never cared about life, then life wouldn't matter. What matters is what we make matter. So in a few years, all the kids who graduate from high school will know that their grades never mattered, because even though so young, they already know that it won't be the grades they got that they think about upon their death bed.
Twenty years ago the textbooks used in history class just began to cover some of the issues of the four hundred years of oppression of the African race in this country.
Children who are forced into a school and forced to complete erroneous assignments learn only one thing: to hate education. I clearly demonstrated this truth earlier, but there is more to be learned from it. Take a slave. It could be a slave from any society, whether an African in colonial America or a Plebeian in the Roman Empire. For the entirety of their life, they labor. Their sweat, their tears, their blood, the biproducts of their toil seep into the ground and their garments. All they produce goes to the one who did not labor. Inside every slave, there will be a growing hatred of their activity as a servant, a farmer, a manufacturer -- they will learn to hate what has been forced upon them without their consent. But inside some of them, there will be the kindling of hope for a dream. One day, they will hope to produce for themselves, knowing that what their hands reap will be what fills their stomach, and not the stomach belonging to idle hands. So, too, it is with our compulsary education. The more we are forced into schools and our minds filled with useless facts, the stronger our thirst grows for real education, for real knowledge. Few are like this, but we exist. Others simply remain politically and emotionally sedated, as the focus of their mind is the next test or the next prom, and not children enslaved in southeast asia or the meaning of life.
To every student who must endure the excuse of an education system that we have, I can only offer these words of hope... Educate yourself, not with school teachers, but with the books they wanted to ban. Teach yourself, learn, grow, and develop. Learn that the greatest asset education can offer is that of independence.
"If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense.
A Quote:
"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him, as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other."
-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 5, Chapter I, Part 3, Article II.
Just think of the sheer idiocy of compulsary education. We threaten these children with imprisonment if they do not appear in class. Once in class, they spend their time either sleeping or completing tasks that are completely irrelevant to them. By giving them no option in their schooling, what have we taught them? The first lesson they learn is to detest learning. Take any man, put him in chains, and force him to recite poetry, or force him to play an instrument, or force him to farm the land -- and once he becomes a free man, do you think he will want to engage in that activity that was forced upon him? The scars on a slaves hands from working the fields, the memories of abuse of a house servant; given the right to do as they wish in the world, is it likely to think that they will return to that work which they were forced to do? And then consider schools. We force children to sit and overfeed them erroneous facts, faulty logic, damaged reasoning, concealed under the guise of "schooling." Once the mental faculties of these children are damaged, their heart grows an animosity towards learning, towards books, towards facts and knowledge. It is the greatest folly to make children hate learning, and the greatest danger to a real, living Democracy in any nation.
Because when the Red Sox win a baseball game, five universities in the state of Massachussetts riot. But when the United States regime supports a South American dictator known for slaughtering his own people, it's a whisper lost in the wind.
Our ignorance is their power.
Real knowledge is acquired by learning what interests you, through reading, investigation, practice, or any other desirable method. To become intelligent, you must engage in activity with the idea that are you learning because you want to, because knowledge is a goal. The path to conformity varies greatly from this. First, you engage in nothing, but allow cultural standards and social obligations to control you. Second, the idea of learning is to memorize random, perhaps unrelated and blatant facts -- true or untrue -- so that they may be recited upon command. Third, the goal is not knowledge, but a passing grade; they learn to for the sake of knowledge, but rather for the sake of social acceptance.
Take two children. Give the first freedom and liberty, give him a wealth of books and movies, give him teachers to aid him upon his request and a place that encourages art, creativity, and independence. Then take away the freedom and liberty of the second, require his presence in a classroom in front of a teacher, threaten him with a jail sentence if he does not go to his school. Give each of them ten or fifteen years, and check the development of each of them after this amount of time. The only forced to endure slavery may be able to stand in a lecture hall and he might be able to say to you, "George Washington was born in 1732 and died in 1799. In 1776, the Revolutionary War began where he acted as general. In 1783, it ended. In 1789, he was elected president a first time, and in 1792, he was elected president a second time." You are given dates and events, surely, it is true history. But take the child who was given freedom to do as he pleased, and he might be able to stand in a lecture hall and tell you, "In the sixteenth century, in Europe, a Spanish physician by the name of Michael Servetus was convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. Fleeing from his oppressors, he made it to Geneva, where the vindictive John Calvin had absolute authority. In earlier years, Servetus expressed his doubt on Calvin's protestant religion. Once captured by the authorities, Servetus was burned to death at the orders of John Calvin in 1533. They had him wear a hat of sulphur and used slow-burning wood, that the crowd could listen to screams for mercy for the duration of a half hour. One year after the death of this man, Calvin published a list of insults of his former enemy."
Be a rebel. Because being a conformist means admitting that the parts of you that matter are already dead.
But if that's the case, what does matter? The emotions that run rampant through our head, the thoughts that we tumble and toss over in our minds constantly -- sexual fantasies to memories of our friends and family, thoughts and ideas about our future, wishes and desires for our current life with those who are close to us. The idea of a living freedom, knowing that what you wish to do believe with your mind is unrestricted and what you wish to do with your body, so long as you harm none, is unlimited. Life matters to us because we make it matter; if we never told a lover we would miss them upon our departure for a long voyage, if we never told a family member that we dream of a time when oppression ended, if we never wrote a poem and hoped to give it to a friend whose face we haven't seen in years -- if we never cared about life, then life wouldn't matter. What matters is what we make matter. So in a few years, all the kids who graduate from high school will know that their grades never mattered, because even though so young, they already know that it won't be the grades they got that they think about upon their death bed.
Twenty years ago the textbooks used in history class just began to cover some of the issues of the four hundred years of oppression of the African race in this country.
Children who are forced into a school and forced to complete erroneous assignments learn only one thing: to hate education. I clearly demonstrated this truth earlier, but there is more to be learned from it. Take a slave. It could be a slave from any society, whether an African in colonial America or a Plebeian in the Roman Empire. For the entirety of their life, they labor. Their sweat, their tears, their blood, the biproducts of their toil seep into the ground and their garments. All they produce goes to the one who did not labor. Inside every slave, there will be a growing hatred of their activity as a servant, a farmer, a manufacturer -- they will learn to hate what has been forced upon them without their consent. But inside some of them, there will be the kindling of hope for a dream. One day, they will hope to produce for themselves, knowing that what their hands reap will be what fills their stomach, and not the stomach belonging to idle hands. So, too, it is with our compulsary education. The more we are forced into schools and our minds filled with useless facts, the stronger our thirst grows for real education, for real knowledge. Few are like this, but we exist. Others simply remain politically and emotionally sedated, as the focus of their mind is the next test or the next prom, and not children enslaved in southeast asia or the meaning of life.
To every student who must endure the excuse of an education system that we have, I can only offer these words of hope... Educate yourself, not with school teachers, but with the books they wanted to ban. Teach yourself, learn, grow, and develop. Learn that the greatest asset education can offer is that of independence.
"If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense.
A Quote:
"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him, as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other."
-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 5, Chapter I, Part 3, Article II.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Lotsa Questions
(A growing list)
- Can caffeine be produced commercially by agrobacterium-changed microorganisms?
- Is Fire a black-body emitter, like the sun?
- Can salvaged American Chestnut "barnboard" lumber be spalted? Is it resistant? Can only freshly dead wood be spalted?
- Could Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) be crossed with Ebony (Diospyros ebenum or Diospyros crassiflora) to make a tree which
- (1) produces tasty, seedless persimmons,
- (2) grows well in the range of the american persimmon,
- (3) produces, at a faster-than-average rate, quality wood having the qualities of the lumber species, and
- (4) is not too susceptible to what pests may attack persimmon on the american continent?
- How much land does a man need?
- What are the aspects of a human-life-sustaining landscape? The goal is to make a permanent, self-sustaining, human-suited, beautiful landscape.
- What is absolutely necessary to ensure human happiness as far as landscape goes?
- What is the optimal set-up for such a site? Food and Shelter must be permanently available.
- What is the best climate for human life?
- Is it better to be famous for fifteen minutes or famous to fifteen people?
- How do underwater-flowering plants work?
- What causes curly, quilt, and birdseye figure in maple wood?
- Why should I post this? The throngs crowding this pixel of the interblagowebz might leave this post as just the top of an infinite stream of comments, each answering all these questions with theories and new knowledge.
- Nah, that'll never happen.
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