Let’s Talk ‘Quality of Life’

I understand it’s different for everyone. Not only that, but it’s different for any one individual in different times and at different stages in life.

What’s considered a high quality of life at age 19, differs greatly from one of 49. Or at least, we can hold out hope.

As one example, in the past I said I wouldn’t ever want livestock beyond chickens, for a couple reasons that seemed very significant to me at the time—I was scared of the responsibility of life and death for these precious creatures, and I didn’t want to feel ‘a prisoner’ here.

Now I am fully on board with the responsibility, and I can rarely whip up a desire to leave our wee compound. My notion of who is the actual prisoner has shifted significantly.

When I hear criticisms—and there are plenty—aimed at the growing number of homesteaders, survivalists, preppers, back-to-the-landers, I’m not bothered. They can slur us with their derogatory terms like Luddites, subsistence farmers, backwards, selfish, hoarder, bitter clinger, extremist, even, violent extremist.

They don’t know. How could they? I can forgive them their ignorance. For as long as I believe it to be genuine ignorance. Those who are genuinely ignorant are thankful when presented with an opportunity to learn.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States [that] has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” – ~Isaac Asimov

My definition of a high quality of life changed significantly over time, and I can hold out hope for them as well.

That is, until their powerless slurs become serious impediments. My choice of a quality lifestyle does not harm them in any way. However, their definition of one severely hampers mine which, over time, makes mine quite impossible.

And that really pisses me off.

Their quenchless thirst for cheap thrills and consumable crap and loot, plunder and pillage of all that’s precious to me is intolerable. More specifically, the tolerance of the majority for abuse of themselves, their environment, the future generations, is outrageous and inexcusable.

“The fecundity and flourishing diversity of the North American continent led the earliest European explorers to speak of this terrain as a primeval and unsettled wilderness—yet this continent had been continuously inhabited by human cultures for at least ten thousand years. That indigenous peoples can have gathered, hunted, fished, and settled these lands for such a tremendous span of time without severely degrading the continent’s wild integrity readily confounds the notion that humans are innately bound to ravage their earthly surroundings. In a few centuries of European settlement, however, much of the native abundance of this continet has been lost—its broad animal population decimated, its many-voiced forests over cut and its prairies overgrazed, its rich soils depleted, its tumbling clear waters now undrinkable.” (The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, p. 94)

Unforgettably Unforgivable

While our personal definitions concerning quality of life is unique to the individual and may shift, even quite considerably, over a lifetime, there remain constants.

For example, I doubt there’s a significant number of folks whose idea of a high quality of life includes having their health, wealth or well-being routinely stolen from them.

Yet, we are living in a society where that is exactly what happens and few will lift even a pinkie finger to change it. Few can be bothered even to wag their tongue for one-half minute at the proper authorities for leading them to exactly that wretched level of life: A life fully resigned to blindly accepting the experts and authorities who routinely betray them.

Invariably at some point these folks become so numerous and so delusional and so negatively impactful, that one simply must turn their back on them, for one’s own sanity and the well-being of an entire culture.

I hear far too often how ‘good’ people are just trying to get by and they are powerless against the system and they mean well and on and on and on. Here’s what I sincerely think when I hear these constant excuses: “You don’t know what ‘good’ means!

If the majority of folks were good, we would not be in this mess!

To not be evil, to not be actively committing evil acts, does not make someone good. It makes one not evil, that is all. There’s a big, long, wide gap between not evil, and good.

Contrary to popular opinion, harmless does not equal good!

This becomes even more apparent in a society where a tiny class of untouchable elites consider themselves to be beyond good and evil.

To be good in such a system requires something of you. It’s not your automatic birthright.

You cannot be serving such a system— one that maintains itself by destroying the health, wealth, well-being and environment of the vast majority in order to serve your own self-interest or that of your corrupted masters—- and still call yourself good.

As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is always subordinated ultimately to the interests of the structure. Therefore, it has a natural tendency to disengage itself from reality, to create a world of appearances, to become ritual.

Vaclav Havel — The Power of the Powerless

And you can’t call your friends, family, government, society ‘good’ if serving the corrupt system is still what they are doing.

It’s the System, Stupid

To me this entire story positively reeks of stagecraft. But, even if we take it at face value it demonstrates how screwed up our food system really is.

MONDAY, JAN. 26, 2015 PHOTO In this Monday, Jan. 26, 2015 photo, cows are milked on one of the carousels in a milking parlor on the Fair Oaks Farms in Fair Oaks, Ind. Fairlife, which is rolling out nationally in coming weeks, is the product of a joint venture between Select Milk Producers, a dairy cooperative, and Coca-Cola. The product is filtered to have more protein and less sugar than regular milk. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Here’s the story in tiny nutshell: The McCloskeys were sued for animal cruelty at their dairy farm following an undercover employee’s secretly videotaping several instances with four workers involved. Now a settlement has been reached:

Completely denatured milk sold as natural, tasty and healthy

The Fairlife ads, cartoon milk dresses.
Classy.

A $21 million Settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit filed against Defendants The Coca-Cola Company (“TCCC”), fairlife, LLC (“fairlife”), Fair Oaks Farms, LLC (“FOF”), Mike McCloskey and Sue McCloskey (“the McCloskeys”), and Select Milk Producers, Inc. (“Select”), relating to fairlife and FOF Milk Products. The lawsuit alleges that Defendants falsely labeled and marketed certain dairy products produced using milk from cows that were allegedly not treated humanely. Defendants deny all allegations and have settled this lawsuit to avoid further litigation.

The Court has not decided who is right.You may submit a Claim Form to receive 25% of the average retail purchase price, up to $100, for your purchases of fairlife Milk Products and FOF Milk Products, if the products were purchased for personal use and not for resale, and were purchased on or before April 27, 2022. Claim Forms submitted without Valid Proof of Purchase will be capped at a Cash Award of up to $20 and Claim Forms submitted with Valid Proof of Purchase will be capped at a Cash Award of up to $80, subject to certain adjustments (upward and downward) depending on the number of claims submitted.

So, there’s video evidence, but the Court has not decided who is right. Must be so confusing, poor kids.

But you get some money anyway if you can come up with your milk purchase receipt, potentially from 2015. Brilliant.

In an interview the McCloskeys talk about all the fantastic improvements they’ve made to garner public trust once again in their dairy products since the video’s release, and the broad coverage of ‘the scandal’ by MSM (I do believe they neglected to mention the product line was owned by Coca-Cola, but I may have missed that part and really do not care to re-listen. It was annoying enough the first time listening to Mike Rowe pander to these creeps).

What I did hear in the interview was how proud the McCloskeys are now of their complete video surveillance system, how they are well on the road to becoming ‘Net Zero’ so that they can help curb climate change as responsible business owners, and how very excited they were to see the gleam in the eye of the school children who came there to tour their facilities and were so thrilled to see cows being milked by carousel machine.

Now they might grow up to become mechanical engineers, Mrs. McCloskey beamed!

I’m so excited for our Green future too, aren’t you?!

Fostering Dependency

I remember well the first time I heard the expression ‘learned helplessness’. My mom used the term and I didn’t understand it. I asked her to explain, which went something like, “As if a man is actually incapable of doing the laundry.”

Some time later I heard it used again, only this time in reference to a woman who wouldn’t dream of changing a tire because she might break a freshly manicured nail.

These are benign examples of a much more serious issue. A little co-dependency amongst family and friends can be a very good thing. It reminds us we need each other, and it’s nice to be needed, as long as it’s not too needy. 🙂

But there is a much more nefarious kind of learned helplessness that is proliferating in our society and because it’s being sold by some very slick salesmen it goes on, continually championed by those who should know better. US.

This is the kind of dependency that fosters anxiety and dis-ease, because it promotes frustration, alienation, victimhood, powerlessness. Under the guise of convenience, comfort, safety, and even fun, we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on criminals, sociopaths, martyrs, tyrants dressed up as experts and beneficent leaders and stars.

Food, water, shelter, health, energy, entertainment, protection. These are all crucial aspects of human life we’ve willingly outsourced to others. Gone are the days for the vast majority who cooked from their own gardens, played and sang tunes around the fire pit, cared for their own ill, built their own homes. How many generations must we go back to know a time before politicians were household names and stock markets dealt only in livestock?

How many folks believe we have it so much better in our ultra-civilized modern world because they’ve bought the propaganda of their oppressors, those who actively promote and celebrate our dependency as progress?

There is a wellspring of peace of mind knowing that if you ever dare say “Take this job and shove it” you won’t end up homeless and hungry.

If you could do one thing in the new year to release the yoke of dependency just a bit, or a bit more, what would you do?

Happy New Year from the wee homestead, y’all,
thanks for reading!

From Lightbulbs to . . .

I remember the good ole days, from like, a decade ago. There was suddenly the mandate that everyone change their lightbulbs for some ‘common good’ reasons that escape me now.

What doesn’t escape me is at the time I thought, WTF?! I’ve longed considered ‘the government’ just a euphemism for ‘the mafia’, but surely, with this sort of escapade, now it will be obvious to everyone. Same tactics, only ‘legal’: Extortion, bribery, coercion, racketeering. Not to mention the ‘soft’ tactics.

Where will it end? Come on folks! I ventured forth on my social media quest. I was still on Fakebook back then. To the response of yawns and crickets and eye rolls and unfriending and the usual. Everyone clamored about to get their lightbulbs installed.

Now, here we are. As the old Virginia Slim ad boasted: You’ve come a long way, Baby!

No boobs, hmmm . …

It’s baffling, but I am far from surrendering to the mobsters and their minions. And in my own little way, I’ve come a long way, too. It’s very encouraging and refreshing for me to find like-minds in places I’d never have thought to look before. 🙂

Bruce Charlton’s Notions: Compliance is spiritual Dane-Geld

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

“We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

Rudyard Kipling – 1911

In other words: Give the devil a finger . . .

Cheers to Zombie Apocalypse Survival Homestead for the share.

Photo by Duanu00e9 Viljoen on Pexels.com

When Money Is Your Master 

 When money is your master you create this

Photo by Anuj Yadav on Pexels.com

Instead of this

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

When money is your master you attract her

Photo by Luis Fernandes on Pexels.com

Instead of her

Photo by Elina Fairytale on Pexels.com

When money is your master you cherish 

Photo by Bob Ward on Pexels.com

Over

Photo by Josh Willink on Pexels.com

You believe swindlers, just because they’re rich

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

You obey tyrants, just because they’re rich

You idolize fools, just because they’re rich

You worship at the twin alters of Ignorance and Superfluous 

**********

I read a story decades ago when I was in the Peace Corps that was a well-known parable, but was new to me.  I repeat it now hoping it will land for the first time on someone new to its moral and ring true in their heart for as long as it has in mine.

A rich man went to vacation on a beautiful island and sat in his beach chair under a sun umbrella reading a novel and looking out over the beautiful sea.  He felt marvelous and relaxed and drank in the scenery with great satisfaction.  He loved the experience so much he went back again the following year for his vacation, and again the year after that.

This third year, feeling again very happy and even magnanimous, he noticed the fisherman on the beach that he had seen during each of his vacations.  He liked watching the man, who was very agile with his line and very patient for the five fish he caught each day.  His bucket held the fish perfectly and he spent every morning on the beach until he filled his bucket and then he left. 

One morning the vacationing man decided to strike up a conversation with the fisherman and they shared some pleasant small talk, so the next few days they stood together on the beach while the fisherman caught his five fish. 

The vacationing man said, “I see you here every day and you always catch five fish and then leave.”

“Yes, that’s true.  I have a wife and three children and my wife cooks up the fish for us each day when I return home.”

“But why do you always catch five fish every day?”

“Because that’s what we eat and that’s all I can carry home in this pail.”

“Well, if you caught more fish, you could sell them, and then you’d have enough to buy a bigger pail and even a wagon, so you could bring home more fish.”

“Oh yes, a wagon would be nice. With a wagon I could bring home many more fish, and sell some at the market.”

“That’s right.  And then you could save some, so you could buy a boat, and then you could really get a lot of fish!”

“For sure that’s true, I could get a lot more fish with a boat,” he agreed.

“No doubt.  And with all that money, you could afford to go on a vacation.”

“Oh, a vacation!  I’ve never been on a vacation before, that sounds fun.”

“So, what do you think you’d like to do on your vacation?”

“I think I’d like very much to go fishing on the beach.”

a man when fishing on a beach at sunset

%d bloggers like this: