Archive for February, 2010

Slow Food Movement

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

I was eating my breakfast today (a bowl of cereal) and it took me nearly an hour to finish it along with my 2 cups of coffee and it brought back memories of the Slow Food movement. What is the Slow Food movement? It is a way of eating based on the principle that the slower you eat, the more enjoyable your food will be and the less you will eat. The more your savor each and every bite, the more value you will get out of each bite and you will become full faster because it takes 15 minutes for the food, once eaten, to make you feel full.

Ever since I’ve started working the night shift, I find I eat meals much slower than before, unless I’m very, very hungry.  I have found I eat much less and feel fuller after eating less.  Is this a good thing?  I suppose.  It is certainly a good thing for those who are overweight.  For myself, that is not the case.  If anything, I am nearing the precipice of becoming underweight.  But I am still in the normal range, which is higher than it ever was before when it comes to BMI.  Is 6′0″ and 170 lbs. truly underweight?  According to the BMI chart, I register around 22.5, which is actually in the middle range and towards the top of the middle range and yet I look thin as a rail, except in my stomach area, which isn’t completely flat, but is certainly getting there.  I probably have muscles in my legs that make myself weigh more because my legs are anything but thin, but they display hardly any fat.  My arms are extremely thin and have very little muscle mass, although I am not weak by any standards.

The Slow Food movement results in a reduction of calories consumed by the average person and will lead to weight loss and  a sense of better well-being taken the foods you are eating are beneficial to human health and not processed and denatured foods.  Your food is easier to digest the more you chew it, so it is much more beneficial when it comes to energy metabolism to chew thoroughly.  I remember an episode of the Simpsons where everyone finds out that Ned Flanders is 60 and looks so young and they ask what his secret is and he responds by saying “The 3 C’s.  Clean living, chewing thoroughly, and a daily dose of Vitamin Church.”  I whole-heartedly agree with the first two of his three statements.  And the third can simply apply to your spiritual beliefs, not simply Church.

I find you can learn a lot from researching Slow Food and at least giving it a shot.  Sure, there may be some unintended consequences, such as your hot food getting cold too fast, but you can always reheat your food (but not in a microwave).  You may be the last person at the table still eating your food, but you are also the person enjoying it the most and getting the most benefit out of it.  While everyone else is tired due to the extensive process of digestion, you will be halfway there before you even get up from the table.  Remember that digestion begins in the mouth.  And it is much easier to chew a little while longer than it is for your stomach to break down a large piece of steak for 4-6 hours.  And your jaw will get some much-needed exercise in the process.

The only real investment you might need to make if you adopt this lifestyle is a plate-warmer.  I’m sure they have them available somewhere.  It’s kind of like a mug warmer, but bigger.  That way, no matter how long it takes you to finish your meal, at least it will be hot.  Until next time, chew slowly and enjoy your food.  At least that way, you may not end up 100 lbs overweight.  It’s certainly healthier than gorging yourself until your stomach is about to burst.

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Posted in Food/Health Related, Theories | No Comments »

Laws Gone Wild

Friday, February 19th, 2010

I was doing some research on different laws after reading about government and corporate oppression and came to a stunning conclusion:  I have never participated in making a law.  Every law on the face of the Earth was created without my input or consent.  Whether or not I agree with the law doesn’t matter.  It simply exists because someone else thought it was a good idea.  But we have to follow all the laws or risk being thrown in jail.  But we didn’t have a say in creating these laws, so why should we be compelled to follow them?

There used to be laws saying a black person could not marry a white person.  This was in the last half-century.  Was the law just?  No way.  But did everyone still have to follow it?  You bet.  Martin Luther King said something like to resist and unjust law is doing your patriotic duty, but it comes at great cost.  MLK was thrown in jail many times for resisting the racist laws of his time.  It took a whole Civil Rights Movement just to get blacks and whites on equal terms with each other.  That is just one example of laws gone wild.

I believe we should take our own initiative when it comes to laws.  If we do not agree with a certain law, then we don’t follow it.  If a law is unjust, then following it is  only perpetuating the wrongfulness of the law.  We know the difference between right and wrong and there are hundreds, possibly thousands of laws that just don’t make sense or are there purposely to oppress those who are not rich, white, powerful, or straight.  People being thrown in jail for possessing the plant marijuana.  Two people unable to marry because they are of the same sex.  People sit in jail accused of a crime they didn’t commit because they cannot afford the bail.  Most times, they are forced to plead guilty to a lesser charge just to get out of jail.  People who are in possession of hard drugs are thrown in jail for years when in reality what they need is drug rehab.

People always act as if everyone who breaks the law should be thrown in jail, no matter how silly the law is.  But does jail or prison really help these minor offenders who simply had some drugs on them or were simply the wrong color and matched some general description?  Jail does not rehabilitate.  Minor offenders go into jail and come out worse criminals than they went in as.  All kinds of abuse take place in jail.  People are psychologically and physically scarred there.  It is not a place that facilitates growth and renewal towards a better future.  Look at how many people spend recurrent terms in jail/prison.  Is it really the best place to put most of these people?  Isn’t there a better way?

Now I’m not saying murderers and rapists don’t deserve to be put in jail.  I’m not saying con artists and thieves don’t belong in jail.  I’m just saying that this police state world has made everything imaginable a crime to create a prison population that is so overcrowded and full of minor offenders that it seems like a complete waste of resources.  There doesn’t have to be a war on drugs or a war on parking tickets.  We need to think awfully hard about the people we are sending away to the same place where murderers and rapists also inhabit.  Jail wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for all the violence.  It’s just a place where they lump all the criminals into one big section and call it even.  Is it fair that a shoplifter has to share a cell with a serial killer?

What I’m getting at here is the justice system needs to be revamped.  We need to distinguish between real crimes and fabricated ones.  Let people live their lives, as long as they are not being violent.  The government should not be spying on everyone so closely.  You don’t see any other species in the world that have laws and prisons.  The only laws they have are the laws of nature.  They are born free and only have their freedom taken away if us humans get involved (such as factory farming and fir trapping).

We are born free and then most of our freedoms are taken away and every year we lose a little more.  We have lost 99% of our privacy.  We can’t just live anymore because we have to adhere to millions of laws and regulations that just constrict us more and more because the ruling class’s only method is to keep tightening their grip on the rest of the world.  It’s easier to squeeze tighter than it is to let go.  But who says they have the right to tell us how to live?  Who gave them that right?  Aren’t they the descendants of people who killed millions of Native Americans and stole all their land?  I guess there is no justice on stolen land after all.  Whoever has benefited from the mass extermination of the Native Americans should be put in prison for genocide.  But those kind of laws only apply to those who are not in the ruling class.

Dick Cheney can shoot his friend in the face while quail hunting and get away with it.  Imagine if a black kid did the same thing.  He’d be looking at 25 to life.  Not only are the laws silly, they are also unfair.  Those who have money can afford a better defense if they are accused.  They also can afford bail.  And you wonder why the poor make up a very large percentage of the prison population.  They weren’t born with a sliver enema up their ass that allows them to work the justice system to their advantage.  But so it goes.

I don’t know if there will ever be a time where all humans are seen as equals.  Sure, we’re not all equal, but under the law we certainly should be.  There should be no special treatment for those who can simply buy the verdict they want.  And certain ethnic groups should not be targeted in a discriminatory way just because statistics show that they are less likely to be able to afford a good defense attorney and end up having to spend time in jail.  Not only that, but the fact that even now there are laws specifically in place to oppress those who have nothing and to build up those that have everything.  It is a ridiculous paradigm, but will things ever change for the better?

It is up to us as a species to answer this question.

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Posted in Anarcho-primitivism, Anti-establishment, Rants, Theories | 1 Comment »

The Human World is Going to Hell

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

The human world is going to hell and it is taking the rest of the natural world with it.  We’ve poisoned everything in sight for our own selfish “progress.”  We’ve even poisoned ourselves.  Try finding tap water without chlorine and fluoride in it.  Things seem to keep getting worse, too.  We are nearing the collapse of at least the USA, and possibly the global economy as we know it.  America will no doubt become a third world country.  This is, of course, due to our behavior as a species.  The United States makes up 5% of the population and uses over 25% of the world’s resources.  If that isn’t unsustainable, I don’t know what is.  Americans don’t even produce hardly anything anymore, yet another sign we are headed down the road of becoming the other, the nondominant nation.  And it is entirely our own faults.

When the settlers first arrived here in America, the landbase was pristine, a paradise.  Now it has become the United Malls of America.  We have destroyed this entire continent and called it progress.  We have drained the land of every natural resource we could think of and had a misguided assumption that they would last forever.  God forbid we would think ahead.  I have the most dreadful feeling that in the next 50 years, this whole planet will become nothing more than a stinking ball of garbage and radioactive materials.  And we’ll have 15 billion people if some plague or virus doesn’t wipe out half the population.  I already feel overcrowded with just almost 7 billion people on this little rock.  Imagine how fucked up this world will be if double the people live on it.

Lucky for us, the current way of life is unsustainable, so we probably will never see 15 billion people.  And if we do, it will be a tipping point that will lead to the complete destruction of civilization.  There will be some kind of crash this century and I would argue that we are already in it.  The economy is destroyed.  Most of our food supply is created in a lab.  People either have no job or a job that doesn’t allow them to cover their expenses.  There are millions of rivers of money going from the poor to the rich and the Federal Reserve has our country by the balls, quite literally.  The future looks bleak, and there is little we can do about it but pull up a chair to watch everything crash and burn.  I’m sure the television news will put on quite a show.  And we’ve all got a front-row seat.  Sure, it will be a biased report, but you can’t argue with the facts of what is going on.

People are suffering today worse than ever before due to our psychotic and domineering society and culture.  We are told there is only one way to live and we either live that way (the exact way that is getting us into so much trouble in the first place) or be phased out with violence or simple assimilation.  Just ask the Native Americans about how compassionate civilized humans are.  We are all victims of this culture.  We didn’t ask to be born into a world where 1% of the people control something like 50% of the wealth.  The game is rigged, the scales are tilted and we are all in the dark–intentionally.  Nobody at the top will tell you that you’re getting fucked and have been getting fucked since you started your first day of school.  We are only taught what we are meant to be taught to keep us docile, compliant, and subordinate.  We are taught to never question authority and to accept that rules are rules and laws are laws no matter how ridiculous some of them may be.

So here we have a population of people who are completely devoid of critical thinking.  Sure, there are some people who are resilient enough to break out of the propaganda, but for the most part people just take what they see and hear at face value and believe it, especially if it comes from a trusted media outlet.  The news is the main tool of propaganda, and this is exactly why there are 24-hour news channels.  The powers that be want us to be exposed to their manifestos at all hours of the day and night to keep us thinking the way they want us to think. Here’s a link to Bill Hicks’s JFK assassination joke that shows how the totalitarian media tells you what to think and distracts you with meaningless entertainment.  Even shows that are supposedly entertainment express these same views through the characters’ values and ways of life.  Their main messages are that buying things will make you happy, your government always knows what is best, and that we as a people are entitled to whatever we want, no matter the cost (financial or ecological).  We are told that to challenge authority is a big no-no and to think for yourself makes you a radical.  To propose ideas that are not widely accepted by the brainwashed masses and those who are doing the brainwashing is grounds to get you assassinated (at least some of the time).

It is a mad, mad world out there and a self-destructive one at that.  We are literally biting off the hand that feeds us and it is only going to end one way and at this point I do not believe there is any way to stop the crash.  We are already in it.  Things will get a lot worse before they get better and people will die.  When we run out of the fuel that sustains us, what will we have left to keep up this standard of living and to support this many people?  Hell, even our own crops are grown with fertilizer derived from oil.  Us humans may have been smart enough to control the world, but to do it in a way that will allow us to do it forever is beyond our reach.  We extend our power beyond our understanding and beyond our empathy to the point where we even hurt ourselves in the process.  Can we ever recover from this type of behavior?

I think time will tell whether or not we can overcome this pathological death cycle we are caught in right now.  Of course, after we have a major crash, there will be someone next in line to assume power and control, but only it will be much harder to control an entire population without all those natural resources.  I hope that one day we can start living from the land, not exploiting it, but I very much doubt I will see this in my lifetime because people are so resistant to change, especially one of this order of magnitude.  And if we do form a society without guns and exploitation, what is to stop another neighboring tribe from doing the opposite and overtaking us, much like every culture that exists today once did?  Perhaps the Earth is better off without humans altogether, but try pushing that idea on people.  Not going to happen.

I have faith that one day perhaps we will realize the folly of our ways and revert back to our hunter-gatherer real selves.  How we get there is unknown to me, but once we realize that it is more intelligent to live in balance as a whole species and retain that species consciousness without being seduced by fancy new tools that increase our power at a hidden cost, then it will be a possibility.  I’m just hoping that eventually we can live the way we are supposed to once again, the way nature intended.

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Posted in Anarcho-primitivism, Anti-establishment, Nature, Simplicity, Theories | 5 Comments »