Let's slow down

Of all the difficulties and amazing opportunities we're presented with at this moment in history, to me the one blessing/challenge that seems central has to do with the soil. Knowing what real, healthy soil feels and smells like, I am never satisfied until I get it going in the garden area I'm working in. It's not easy. And it takes time.

People often think growing your own food, with all the effort it takes, is a waste of time when you can just go to a store and buy something to eat. But they're not thinking wholistically. If you look at the big picture - healthier food, enjoying exercise out in Nature, freedom from grocery store price increases - growing some of your own food is worth every bit of the extra effort it entails. And (if our society ever gets in sync with good sense and locally-grown food becomes the normal), gardening will become a lot less labor-intensive since everyone will be cooperating to recycle organic sectors of our waste biomass to soil. Working together with nature and with other people is a lot easier than what we're doing at present - working in competition with each other and treating nature as if it's an enemy needing to be conquered. I'm not anti-capitalist, but you have to start figuring something's wrong with our system when we think we have to import garlic many thousands of miles from China rather than it growing it fresh in our own yards.

Life wasn't meant to be as difficult as we human beings have been making it. If we opened our eyes and hearts to each other and to all the other living things on the planet - as difficult and impractical as that may seem - we would find (seemingly miraculously) that all our terrible troubles can be solved. The problems result from the simple limits to our present vision, and are neither our fault nor anyone else's. There are no bad people on the planet, only blind and confused people who see us as enemies. And - to the extent we ourselves see others as enemies - we ourselves are also blind and confused. The world I live in is a no-fault world. I no longer have to look for the bad in myself or anyone else. If I don't see the reason someone is doing something, and it is in conflict with what I think is good, I step back from myself and try to see more to the picture than just what's here and now and obvious.

If you automatically believe what comes through the tv set you're in sad shape for sure. Reality has been twisted all out of whack by the profit motive. Here are some examples:

Chocolate is good for you, right? No it's not, not after the processors get done messing with it. Naturally processed unsweetened chocolate might be good for you in moderation, but that beautifully wrapped stuff you pay an arm and a leg for does not usually fit that category, I'm sorry.
In our helter-skelter society, where making money has become an end in itself regardless of the consequences of HOW you make that money, many consumer products (and not just food) actually do more harm than good to the buyer.

Bananas keep better outside the refrigerator, right? Wrong, that's a piece of nonsense the Chiquita banana company sold us in order to sell more bananas. Think I'm a conspiracy theorist? Planned obsolescence has a long history in the United States, from light bulbs that they purposely build to burn out sooner to car tires that they could (but don't) make last longer to cars that don't need gasoline (all of which would threaten profits). The proof about bananas is that there are banana refrigeration facilities all along the supply chain from the country they're grown in to where people buy them - because the companies know that bananas keep better under refrigeration. So, for those who remember the ad where Chiquita said "...And don't put your bananas in the refrigerator" - don't believe her.

Lecithin is an "artificial emulsifier" sounds pretty bad on an ingredient label, right? Lecithin is a naturally-occurring nutrient complex which exists in eggs and seeds such as the soybean, and it's good for you. Living in Upside Down World as we do - with financial interests and their lobbyists having a long history of distorting reality in pursuit of profit, some nutrients have gotten a bad wrap, while other nutrients are not allowed to be advertised as good for you. There is a phrase - the "disease establishment" that highlights how so many healthy things - such as raw milk - have become verboten because some pharmaceutical company or other medical corporation would be financially better off if you DIDN'T know what's good for you. In a simpler world, in which we weren't constantly being beaten with advertising messages meant to keep us from thinking (in other words if we could see our way clear to sometimes turn off all the tv and other communication tech and slow down enough to hear ourselves think), we would be making more natural simple decisions like gardening. Being outside growing food is healthy, enjoyable, and profitable (by saving money rather than by making it).

What is able to be purchased with EBT food stamp cards has been unduly influenced by corporate lobbyists to include things that aren't really food - processed junk "food", coffee, candy, "bread" that isn't really bread. We Americans are so separated from the Earth that we've forgotten what bread is. Bread is not that stuff that sits on a shelf without refrigeration. If it doesn't require refrigeration it's not bread. Health has been sacrificed at the altar of convenience. Real bread has all the nutrients the original wheat or rye or barley or whatever seed it was made from still in it, not refined out so that it doesn't need refrigerated. And it doesn't have preservatives. What we need in Hazelwood is a REAL bakery - one that takes the wheat and other seeds, grinds them up right here, makes the bread, and sells it right here locally to people that are close enough to walk to the bakery. And we could even grow some of that wheat and other grain right here.

Most people say they don't have time to garden. But slow down and think what you're doing with your day. You go to work to make money to afford a vehicle so you can run across town to buy food. Well, in this time of high unemployment, increasing food and transportation costs, and weather instability, do you really want to stay addicted to these huge supermarkets that couldn't care less about you and your loved ones?

Oh, I know, we'll never be able to grow all our food locally. There will always be grocery stores. But we shouldn't have only big box groceries that we have to travel to to get to. One of the many wonderful things that could be done with the former Hazelwood Presbyterian Church building should it get turned into a community center, is that top quality fresh produce can be made available at reasonable prices via a community-owned grocery.

As hard as it is, we need to find the sweet spots, the hidden silver linings, in all our current environmental and financial difficulties. One clear message I think I'm getting is that we need to slow down and think about what we're doing. If you don't really have the money, don't spend the money. Be realistic, despite all the advertisements on television and elsewhere that keep wanting you to buy (or go into debt for) their products and services. Your money will travel a lot farther if you take the time to let yourself imagine all the different things you could do with it before you spend it.

So an unexpected sweet spot in the unemployment mess we're in is that we can stand back and look at all the non-productive ways we have been making money. And we can slow down and stop doing the harmful things. No more junk mail to clean up, which in its making is destroying forests - we don't need to cut down trees to make paper advertisements that are just thrown away. With the digital media, we already are getting away from environmentally destructive paper. We can stop mowing our lawns and cutting down trees except where absolutely necessary - the waste of labor, gasoline to destroy Earth's oxygen-providing and weather-moderating services is just dumb. We can relax and smell the flowers that grow rather than beat ourselves financially trying to keep up with the Joneses with neater lawns. With less need to make money to afford things that are only artificial symbols for status (such as clothes that are the latest fashion because clothing companies want us to always throw away old clothes and buy new fashions), we'll have more time to work together to solve the REAL problems on Earth - hunger, war, disease, injustice,... The system we're a part of now has hindered progress in the name of profit. We should be grateful that world events are putting a stop to that, and use this worldwide crisis to build a saner, more sustainable Ecosystem Earth.