The Mundane Details of Daily Life

[dweebus]

 

There is an old saying: “When Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.” Thus, when the washing machine went on the fritz this week and I found a reconditioned washing machine and a re-conned dishwasher at the store, I killed two birds with one stone. When we were first married, we didn't have two dimes to rub together, a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of. Mrs. Dweebus had an antique washboard she hung on the wall as a conversation piece (it was her great grandma's). The washing machine died and we couldn't afford a replacement, so the washboard came off the wall and we did laundry in the bathtub. It was a full day affair, once a week, and it involved Mrs. Dweebus, myself, and my brother-in-law. Of course, we had the benefit of a water heater and prepackaged laundry detergent.

 

Recently, I noticed several posts lamenting the lack of traditional skills. The most recent episode with the washing machine got me to thinking. How many of you have actually done laundry by hand? How many of us, even the most ardent environmentalists, gladly use washing machines, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, self-cleaning ovens, lawn mowers and so on? Is it realistic to expect families in the West to forego these conveniences voluntarily? Is it realistic to expect families in the developing world to forego acquiring the same level of convenience? Is it realistic to expect the corporate world to sacrifice monopoly and profit and allow for such things as a distributed grid?

 

So, have we crossed the event horizon?

[Pamela Joy King]

Hi Wolfbird,

 

Magnificent creatures!  And yes, quite some time ago, we did not realize the power in those legs.  However, I love the way they lift their heads up quickly and stare you right in the eye.

 

I have not heard of Rheas.  I will investigate.  Thanks for the pic!

Pam

wolfbird said:

 

Hi Pam,

 

Ostriches ? They can kill you with a kick, so you need a license in this country to own them. Rheas are nicer, IMO.

 

[dweebus]

Hi Pam,

Your Waterworld comment made me think..."the Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green Kenmore Heavy Duty Series 70 Extra-Capacity." I like this site too. I cannot stand forum flameouts, and that seems to be at a minimum here. As far as the poets and artists, maybe they figure they can speak to the heart and soul, speaking to the head sure as hell hasn't worked. I dig the visual arts, but have no gift there whatsoever. My daughter inherited that gene, though I do play with poetry and fiction.

I hadn't heard of Rheas either, although I did meet a guy once who raised emus on his ranch outside of Douglas, WY.

Regards,

Dweebus

[Malcolm Ramsay]

Thanks for the replies, Wolfbird. I've found it hard knowing what to say to some of it.

I asked "Have you really spent so much time thinking about how all those tools might be improved, that you have considered every possible way in which those jobs might be done? "

You replied "Yes, of course I have."
 
Thanks for making that clear; you have considered every possible way in which every job in agriculture might be done - I'm impressed.

"I can tell you after five minutes of using any tool or device, whether it's likely to be any good or not, and after half an hour or so, I can tell exactly what's right and wrong about it, what should stay the same, and what should be changed and improved."

At one time I'd have thought that a rare talent, but my impression is it's fairly common. I certainly met a few people (in a previous life) who could see straightaway how a bit of equipment worked, and if it wasn't working quite right they could tell you immediately what was wrong, and how the thing ought to have been designed. With that kind of talent they could easily have got well-paid jobs designing equipment, but for some reason they seemed to prefer low-paid jobs as farm labourers. There seem to be people with that kind of talent in pretty well every field, but my impression is that they don't go in for jobs which actually involve designing things - I suppose they think it's not enough of a challenge.

"Getting food from the land, from nature, isn't about 'creative processes' at all. That's art, that's poetry."

I don't know why, but I'd got it into my head that there was some creativity involved in creating practical things, like tools and machinery, which have never been made before. Thanks for putting me right on that, Wolfbird.

"You don't have the luxury of "most of which turn out not to lead anywhere"  because where that leads is into coffins."

Unfortunately those of us who don't have the talent for going straight to the solution have to do it that way. Sometimes you make something new and it doesn't work as you'd hoped, so you discard it and try something else. More often, you start to draw something and then realise that the wotsit is going to foul the thingummyjig, so you discard that idea before it even gets made. More often still, you spend some time thinking about some particular way of doing something and discard it without even trying to draw it. You may regard that process as a luxury, but I think that's how most of the world's technology has been developed.

As for "where that leads is into coffins", we may reach a point where none of us have any time at all for anything except keeping ourselves alive for now, but in Britain we're nowhere near that point yet, and I very much doubt we will be even in fifteen or twenty years time. It certainly has no immediate relevance.

"Gardening, horticulture, agriculture is a practical matter, physical jobs, the application of energy to tasks. So the design problem has to start from solving a particular practical matter."

Try planning a journey that way; start from the destination and work out a route without any regard for a starting point - you won't come up with a viable travel plan. You can plan a viable journey just from a starting point - but only if you don't care where you end up. The sensible way to do it, is to look for a route which links the starting point to the destination, and it doesn't matter too much which end you do it from - usually it seems to be best to work from both ends at the same time. In this context - the application of human energy to particular tasks - that means giving due consideration to the constraints of the human body.

The inherent inefficiency in pulling earth-working equipment comes from additional weight in having separate frameworks for the traction and the tool, and also from the fact that you're compacting the earth which you're just about to work. Pushing from behind has similar inefficiencies. As far as I can see the optimal way of applying human energy is by arranging for the weight of the body simply to bear down on something, either directly or through levers. Ideally the load transfer point would be in the bottom of the furrow (although subsoil compaction is also a consideration because I believe it can reduce drought tolerance). But, as I said, earth-working equipment hasn't been a primary focus for me - I think there are easier gains to be made in other applications.

But then I don't have your talent for understanding things, so perhaps you're right that there are no possible improvements which can be made to any human-powered tools.

Malcolm

[Malcolm Ramsay]

Hi Dweebus,

I'm not growing my own food yet, apart from some fruit, but I have a couple of acres - mostly grass or trees - and I've certainly done enough digging to appreciate what's required.

As I said, earth-working hasn't been a primary focus for me; precisely because it's intrinsically energy intensive - so it's the application which is least likely to offer significant gains. More promising are things where fuel is used to overcome other constraints, such as only having two hands, limitations on the kinds of movements we're able to make, limited reach, etcetera. So human-powered equipment which allows cutting or raking a wider swathe, for example, would save fuel which would then be available for applications which positively need it.

I didn't mean to get into this stuff either - it was just a peripheral comment - but Wolfbird picked it up and suggested it that if it couldn't contribute anything to the heavy stuff, there wasn't any value in it.

"[....] we need to address the bottom line, which is a family to support, a home mortgage, payments on a tractor, combine, semi-trailer, 300 acres to farm, yields to maintain, and just him to do it"

I don't think I agree with you there. I think we need to forget about that model - because, long-term, the fuel simply won't be available for it - and start building a system where 300 acres has 100 people working on it. Let him carry on as long as he feels his way is viable - more important, I'd say, is to get the people who are already concerned moving to something sustainable. It's the barriers to that which I think we need to focus on.

I'm off to the festival now, so I won't be on the internet for a few days.

Regards

Malcolm

[Pamela Joy King]

Hi Wolfbird,

Okay, ain't no laundry gonna get done with me hanging on these words you guys are writing.  Thing is, I have such an urban upbringing that wilderness for me is my back yard.  Not that I haven't camped and hiked and all.  But you actually live side by side with those beautiful creatures, the Rheas.  I feel as if I have become cemented to this city life.  Inside of me is a person who loves the wilderness but all the tugs have led me to this place in my life.  I listen to the hum of the city at night and I am ashamed to admit that I find it soothing.  It is all I have ever known and it fascinates me.  When I read the manifesto and got to the part that takes about us dying from civilization, I felt like crying.  In my heart, I have always known it to be true.  How long do we have, I don't know.  From my studies, it seems that 2050 will be a telling time.  Last night I was reading the manifesto again and just trying to absorb it.  I am so drawn to this way of thinking.  I had a thought that I now have a choice.  For some time in the 90's, I was a kind of doomsday person but kept it to myself because of other people's reactions.  Environmental studies opened up the whole thing to me and I read both sides of the discussion.  One day, I pictured the giant Earth ball, our home, our mother, (or father), being sick with cancer and I cried and cried.  After that, I got so darn depressed that I began to sink.  It reminded me of my days when I became steeped in Existentialism in the 70's.  Not to go on in such a personal way but I guess I just decided to put my head in the sand and be an ostrich for awhile in order to stay alive.  And it was not as hard to do as I imagined.  I just avoided anything to do with the environment or weather.  My point is, I felt I had two choices:  to allow what I believe to be a reality in my life while being surrounded by friends and family who had no interest whatsoever in the topic and looked upon me as some kind of unstable scaredy cat; or to go la la la la la and pretend (which I am pretty good at I found out.)  But then, I discover this site - to me a third choice.   More later....gotta go....thanks for listening to my rant....

 

Pam
wolfbird said:

 

Hi Pam,

 

Yes, rheas are great. I've had them for about twelve years.

 

One of the first tricks that humans learned, about this 'energy in/food out' problem, was to use animals in more ways than just eating them. Let the animals do the work. Use the animals to manage the vegetation. That was learned many thousands of years ago, but how many members of the general public understand ? The country side and hillscapes look the way the do ( in UK ) because animals manage the land surface, as proxies for people.

 

I mean, if you look at that photo, which was taken last winter, just beyond the pond, there is a slope going down into a valley. That slope was traditionally a hay meadow, when hay making was done by hand, but it's too steep for modern machines. When I came here, about twenty years ago, the brambles, rushes, nettles, scrub, began to encroach onto the grass, from the woodland below. For a few years, I fought back, cutting down the vegetation with hand tools, but I was losing the battle, and spending time when I could have been doing something else. So I devoted thought to solutions.

 

There's plenty of animals to choose from that would work at keeping the scrub at bay, 24 hours a day - ponies, calves, pigs, goats, sheep, alpacas, etc, - but I've kept a lot of those, and they all have disadvantages of one kind or another.

 

One morning I had a flash of inspiration. Rheas. So I got some. Young ones. Several died at first, which was heart-breaking. I researched as much as I could, but there was very little good info available on rheas. But I learned, and bred them successfully. I'm extremely fond of them. However, they are wild birds, not domesticated, and easily spooked. 

One of the most interesting thing I learned, is that they have what might be called culture. The first imported generation didn't settle nearly as well as subsequent generations, born and raised here.

 

Anyway, these birds eat grass and browse most other vegetation, so they are excellent to keep the vegetation in check. They look after themselves. I give them a few handfulls of pellets twice a day, just to keep them tame and friendly. They provide masses of huge eggs, and can be eaten, although I've never eaten one myself.

Pamela Joy King said:

Hi Wolfbird,

 

Magnificent creatures!  And yes, quite some time ago, we did not realize the power in those legs.  However, I love the way they lift their heads up quickly and stare you right in the eye.

 

I have not heard of Rheas.  I will investigate.  Thanks for the pic!

Pam

 

[Pamela Joy King]

PS Wolfbird,

Do you think you might try one of the eggs? 

Pam

Pamela Joy King said:

Hi Wolfbird,

Okay, ain't no laundry gonna get done with me hanging on these words you guys are writing.  Thing is, I have such an urban upbringing that wilderness for me is my back yard.  Not that I haven't camped and hiked and all.  But you actually live side by side with those beautiful creatures, the Rheas.  I feel as if I have become cemented to this city life.  Inside of me is a person who loves the wilderness but all the tugs have led me to this place in my life.  I listen to the hum of the city at night and I am ashamed to admit that I find it soothing.  It is all I have ever known and it fascinates me.  When I read the manifesto and got to the part that takes about us dying from civilization, I felt like crying.  In my heart, I have always known it to be true.  How long do we have, I don't know.  From my studies, it seems that 2050 will be a telling time.  Last night I was reading the manifesto again and just trying to absorb it.  I am so drawn to this way of thinking.  I had a thought that I now have a choice.  For some time in the 90's, I was a kind of doomsday person but kept it to myself because of other people's reactions.  Environmental studies opened up the whole thing to me and I read both sides of the discussion.  One day, I pictured the giant Earth ball, our home, our mother, (or father), being sick with cancer and I cried and cried.  After that, I got so darn depressed that I began to sink.  It reminded me of my days when I became steeped in Existentialism in the 70's.  Not to go on in such a personal way but I guess I just decided to put my head in the sand and be an ostrich for awhile in order to stay alive.  And it was not as hard to do as I imagined.  I just avoided anything to do with the environment or weather.  My point is, I felt I had two choices:  to allow what I believe to be a reality in my life while being surrounded by friends and family who had no interest whatsoever in the topic and looked upon me as some kind of unstable scaredy cat; or to go la la la la la and pretend (which I am pretty good at I found out.)  But then, I discover this site - to me a third choice.   More later....gotta go....thanks for listening to my rant....

 

Pam
wolfbird said:

 

Hi Pam,

 

Yes, rheas are great. I've had them for about twelve years.

 

One of the first tricks that humans learned, about this 'energy in/food out' problem, was to use animals in more ways than just eating them. Let the animals do the work. Use the animals to manage the vegetation. That was learned many thousands of years ago, but how many members of the general public understand ? The country side and hillscapes look the way the do ( in UK ) because animals manage the land surface, as proxies for people.

 

I mean, if you look at that photo, which was taken last winter, just beyond the pond, there is a slope going down into a valley. That slope was traditionally a hay meadow, when hay making was done by hand, but it's too steep for modern machines. When I came here, about twenty years ago, the brambles, rushes, nettles, scrub, began to encroach onto the grass, from the woodland below. For a few years, I fought back, cutting down the vegetation with hand tools, but I was losing the battle, and spending time when I could have been doing something else. So I devoted thought to solutions.

 

There's plenty of animals to choose from that would work at keeping the scrub at bay, 24 hours a day - ponies, calves, pigs, goats, sheep, alpacas, etc, - but I've kept a lot of those, and they all have disadvantages of one kind or another.

 

One morning I had a flash of inspiration. Rheas. So I got some. Young ones. Several died at first, which was heart-breaking. I researched as much as I could, but there was very little good info available on rheas. But I learned, and bred them successfully. I'm extremely fond of them. However, they are wild birds, not domesticated, and easily spooked. 

One of the most interesting thing I learned, is that they have what might be called culture. The first imported generation didn't settle nearly as well as subsequent generations, born and raised here.

 

Anyway, these birds eat grass and browse most other vegetation, so they are excellent to keep the vegetation in check. They look after themselves. I give them a few handfulls of pellets twice a day, just to keep them tame and friendly. They provide masses of huge eggs, and can be eaten, although I've never eaten one myself.

Pamela Joy King said:

Hi Wolfbird,

 

Magnificent creatures!  And yes, quite some time ago, we did not realize the power in those legs.  However, I love the way they lift their heads up quickly and stare you right in the eye.

 

I have not heard of Rheas.  I will investigate.  Thanks for the pic!

Pam

 

[dweebus]

Hi Pam,

 

If I may interject...

 

 Inside of me is a person who loves the wilderness but all the tugs have led me to this place in my life.  I listen to the hum of the city at night and I am ashamed to admit that I find it soothing.

 

Don't be.  we are all who we are because of where we came for.  The city has many things going for it.  My small town for example has a library that is one room.  The collection is geared to children and adults with a median age of 70.  Generally speaking, I have to have them order a book.  Their sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, or poetry collection is abyssmal.  However if you want a murder mystery or a romance you are in business.  There is a library in the small city north of us, and the collection is better, but still.  If I want to see a movie, or a play, or a muscial, well thats a 1/2 hour - 2 hr drive on the highway.

 

I work with a fella who was born and raised in Montreal.  He moved here because of his wife's work.  He laments the loss of a vibrant social life, sidewalk cafe's, playing chess at the coffee shop while drinking strong coffee, smoking strong cigarettes and talking strong politics.  I can dig it.

 

I am a lucky man.  I have my feet in both worlds.  I was born and raised in the city on the front range in CO.  You could go to the downtown coffe shop or jazz bar or drive and hour or two and be in the midst of an endless prairie or in the mountains.

 

I lived ten years in WY and that killed my affinity for the big city.  Within 15-mins or 1/2 and hour you could be in the banks of the North Platte surrounded by sagebrush and shortgrass pairire with not a soul in sight.  Did you know you can "read" a river.  By watching the current and ripples you can determine a hole where that trout may be hiding, behind a snag or a boulder.  After that I have no desire to live in the city, but that's just me.

 

Again, economics dictated a move to the Midwest.  (those dang kids do eat ad they wanna see the doc when they're sick), but even here, given the first opportunity, I skedaddled to the country.  Different strokes and all that.

 

In my heart, I have always known it to be true.  How long do we have, I don't know.  From my studies, it seems that 2050 will be a telling time.

 

I think that most people, when you talk to them quietly, know in their heart of hearts that this cannot continue.  However, our propensity for willful ignorance seems boundless.  I am a little more pessimistic on the 2050 timeline.  It occurs to me that no matter the issue, the evironment, finance and debt, population,  you shake the old magic 8-ball and it keeps coming up "outlook not so good."

 

The way I see it, we may have 10 years or so to put the pieces in places to engineer a soft landing.  Barring that, a variety of feedbacks and pressures will come into play (and may be already...financial crash anyone)and will dictate the new rules of the game and severely limit our options.  In the past year I have noticed a marked change from "stopping" or "reversing" to "mitigation" and "apaption".  Meanwhile leaders like Obama (who are supposedly our allies) do shit like open thousands more acres in the Powder River Basin to coal exploration and entertain a tar sands pipeline. Of course it's all about creating jobs.  Can you imagine the reception a environmetal initiative would get in the tea soaked house?

 

Assuming we are in for a hard landing, all we can do is to try and give our children the skills necessary to negotiate a much tougher world.  This is where things like alternative currencies, guerilla gardening, electric tractors, rain barrels, and such come in.  Meanwhile, keep the pressure on the powers that be.

 

 One day, I pictured the giant Earth ball, our home, our mother, (or father), being sick with cancer and I cried and cried.  After that, I got so darn depressed that I began to sink.

 

Richard Duncan writes that he became deeply depressed after formulating the Olduvai Theory.

 

http://dieoff.org/page125.htm

 

I think that is a normal reaction, and one I struggle with.   All we can do is to keeps fighting and make preparations in our own communities in the event that it starts to come apart.

 

As to the stories that we tell, I firmly believe that there is a fundamental overemphasis on the dominion theology of Genesis 1 and a de-emphasis of the dependancy theology of Gen 2.  This has become ingrained in Western (particularly fndamentalist) thinking.  That is one place the arts come into play in my mind.

 

     "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living."

                                                        -Mother Jones

 

Regards,

 

Dweebus

 

[dweebus]

Hey Wolfbird,

 

With all this talk of gardening, farming and so on, I'm curious.  Have you heard of the Ogallala aquifer?  It is the biggest freshwater aquifer in the world and we are managing to pump her dry.  I wonder what will happen to world food prices if we have to abandon High Plains farming.  Of course there is talk of no-till farming, better sprinklers on center pivots and even drip systems but this just forestalls the inevitible.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8359076/US-farmers-fear-the-return...

http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115CH18miningwater.html

http://hrd.apec.org/index.php/The_Ogallala_Aquifer_and_Its_Role_as_...

 

Regards,

 

Dweebus

[Pamela Joy King]

Hi Wolfbird,

 

How could anything be more beautiful than that?  I have popped your Rhea pic up on my desktop just to say hello to her when I am on my computer.  My lineage is from Great Britain but I have never been there, sadly.  Maybe one day if I get mega-rich from one of my occasional lotto tickets eh?  Speaking of birds, my daughter just left for college and I only have one egg left in my nest.  Life carries on....

 

So true what you say about facing the future objectively.  I try to imagine how we could change things.  Like traffic lights that get added only after someone gets killed, I foresee much of the concrete jungle being abandoned when the issue is forced by necessity.  As things unfold, people will begin to see life differently.  My hope is that they will begin to realize that bigger and faster does not always work.  Everything will unravel as it will in time.  There are days when I drive myself crazy thinking about how everything is connected and that even the smallest thing we do has all these implications. 

 

That is quite interesting about the killing and cooking of the Rhea.  Even if I could never do that myself, I don't mind it at all because it seems a fair thing to do between species.  Not like hunting for your meat in the grocery story at all eh?

 

Pam

wolfbird said:

 

Hi Pam,

 

Yes, I live as far away from urban centres as I was able to get, on this crowded little island called Great Britain.

If it was possible, if I was mega-rich, I'd buy up all the land in every direction around me and let it all return to wilderness, in whatever way that it wished. Fortunately for me, there are already substantial areas like that, so I don't need the money and responsibilities to do that, but the greater portion is farmed, interspersed with cottages, hamlets, villages.

 

I think most people find it very difficult, if not impossible, to face the future objectively. They want to foresee a future that they would like, one which conforms with their desires. 

 

Oh, I've eaten Rhea eggs. I meant i have not eaten the birds themselves. For one thing, there's the tricky problem as to how one would kill them. They are as tall as I am, and very strong, and there are laws regarding humane slaughter. And then there is the problem of how to butcher the carcase and how to deal with the meat. The whole business is fraught with trauma and messiness which isn't very appealing. As I understand it, the South American indians used to catch them by throwing a bolus, a piece of rope with heavy balls at each end, which would wind around their legs, so they could then be captured and killed. They'd put the body in a hole in the ground lined with glowing charcoal, and cover with more charcoal and then soil, and leave like that until cooked. Apparently, the first Welsh colonisers of Patagonia would have starved to death, if it were not for the indian children teaching the immigrant children how to catch the Rheas. Here's another pic.

 

 

[Pamela Joy King]

Hi Dweebus,

 

Thanks for your message and I am gonna check out that link.  I will be back with more words soon....

 

Pam

dweebus said:

Hi Pam,

 

If I may interject...

 

 Inside of me is a person who loves the wilderness but all the tugs have led me to this place in my life.  I listen to the hum of the city at night and I am ashamed to admit that I find it soothing.

 

Don't be.  we are all who we are because of where we came for.  The city has many things going for it.  My small town for example has a library that is one room.  The collection is geared to children and adults with a median age of 70.  Generally speaking, I have to have them order a book.  Their sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, or poetry collection is abyssmal.  However if you want a murder mystery or a romance you are in business.  There is a library in the small city north of us, and the collection is better, but still.  If I want to see a movie, or a play, or a muscial, well thats a 1/2 hour - 2 hr drive on the highway.

 

I work with a fella who was born and raised in Montreal.  He moved here because of his wife's work.  He laments the loss of a vibrant social life, sidewalk cafe's, playing chess at the coffee shop while drinking strong coffee, smoking strong cigarettes and talking strong politics.  I can dig it.

 

I am a lucky man.  I have my feet in both worlds.  I was born and raised in the city on the front range in CO.  You could go to the downtown coffe shop or jazz bar or drive and hour or two and be in the midst of an endless prairie or in the mountains.

 

I lived ten years in WY and that killed my affinity for the big city.  Within 15-mins or 1/2 and hour you could be in the banks of the North Platte surrounded by sagebrush and shortgrass pairire with not a soul in sight.  Did you know you can "read" a river.  By watching the current and ripples you can determine a hole where that trout may be hiding, behind a snag or a boulder.  After that I have no desire to live in the city, but that's just me.

 

Again, economics dictated a move to the Midwest.  (those dang kids do eat ad they wanna see the doc when they're sick), but even here, given the first opportunity, I skedaddled to the country.  Different strokes and all that.

 

In my heart, I have always known it to be true.  How long do we have, I don't know.  From my studies, it seems that 2050 will be a telling time.

 

I think that most people, when you talk to them quietly, know in their heart of hearts that this cannot continue.  However, our propensity for willful ignorance seems boundless.  I am a little more pessimistic on the 2050 timeline.  It occurs to me that no matter the issue, the evironment, finance and debt, population,  you shake the old magic 8-ball and it keeps coming up "outlook not so good."

 

The way I see it, we may have 10 years or so to put the pieces in places to engineer a soft landing.  Barring that, a variety of feedbacks and pressures will come into play (and may be already...financial crash anyone)and will dictate the new rules of the game and severely limit our options.  In the past year I have noticed a marked change from "stopping" or "reversing" to "mitigation" and "apaption".  Meanwhile leaders like Obama (who are supposedly our allies) do shit like open thousands more acres in the Powder River Basin to coal exploration and entertain a tar sands pipeline. Of course it's all about creating jobs.  Can you imagine the reception a environmetal initiative would get in the tea soaked house?

 

Assuming we are in for a hard landing, all we can do is to try and give our children the skills necessary to negotiate a much tougher world.  This is where things like alternative currencies, guerilla gardening, electric tractors, rain barrels, and such come in.  Meanwhile, keep the pressure on the powers that be.

 

 One day, I pictured the giant Earth ball, our home, our mother, (or father), being sick with cancer and I cried and cried.  After that, I got so darn depressed that I began to sink.

 

Richard Duncan writes that he became deeply depressed after formulating the Olduvai Theory.

 

http://dieoff.org/page125.htm

 

I think that is a normal reaction, and one I struggle with.   All we can do is to keeps fighting and make preparations in our own communities in the event that it starts to come apart.

 

As to the stories that we tell, I firmly believe that there is a fundamental overemphasis on the dominion theology of Genesis 1 and a de-emphasis of the dependancy theology of Gen 2.  This has become ingrained in Western (particularly fndamentalist) thinking.  That is one place the arts come into play in my mind.

 

     "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living."

                                                        -Mother Jones

 

Regards,

 

Dweebus

 

[Malcolm Ramsay]

 

Yes, Wolfbird, I was indeed being facetious; there aren't a great many options available when you're responding to something you can't take seriously, and that one seemed to me to be the most appropriate.

But perhaps I was too subtle with it in the 'well-paid jobs' paragraph - you seem to have taken that at face value. When I said that it seemed to be a fairly common talent, what I meant is that the village know-all is as common as the village idiot. Sometimes he's the same person, more often he's just someone who thinks he knows far more than he actually does. In some cases, however, he's someone who genuinely is more knowledgeable, and probably more intelligent, than the people around him, but who makes the mistake of comparing the extent of his knowledge to theirs - instead of comparing it to the extent of his own ignorance.

It's understandable enough - it's the easier option, and it reinforces his high opinion of himself - but it does tend to lead to a self-satisfied disdain for others. The harder option involves immersing yourself in what you don't know, and, if you do it with any commitment, generally leads you to doubt even the ground you're standing on. But to do it you have to make extensive use of your imagination - from what I've seen of your posts in the forum over the last few months, that's a tool you don't use much. As you illustrate with this statement:

"Of course not, because to do that I'd have had to visit every country and every museum on the planet"

No, Wolfbird, doing that wouldn't even bring you close to considering every possible way in which every job in agriculture might be done. All you would find in museums are things which have already been made - you wouldn't find any of the things which are going to be made in the future, but which haven't yet been thought of. For that you'd have to engage your imagination and venture into the realm of speculation.

"you're starting by proposing an answer, when you don't yet know what the question is"

Where do you think I've proposed an answer? As I recall all I've said is that I think it might be useful to explore a particular avenue - that's how new things get developed. Of course, sometimes an avenue which you think is promising turns out not to be, so the time you've spent on it turns out to be wasted  - but that's how it works. And what makes you think I don't know what the question is? I don't know what your question is - and I don't know all the details of my own - but I do know the broad outlines of what I'm hoping for, and at the stage I'm at, that's all that matters.

"You think that you can improve on a handsaw or a hammer or an adze or whatever ?"

Wherever did I say anything to suggest that? What I think is that there is potential for more complex tools which, though they won't have the versatility of the basic tools, will be able to do much of the drudge work faster and with less effort.

"Doesn't matter about the route, so long as you arrive at the destination"

That's only true at the two ends of the spectrum; where life is so hard that all you can do is take whatever opportunity presents itself; or where it's so easy that any route at all will give you everything you might want. But if you're unable to do things you want to do, because you're spending most of the day, every day, doing things which could in fact be done in half the time, then the route most certainly does matter.

"My approach would be to start from perfection. What would a perfect answer be like ? "

Yes - that's my approach too. In other circumstances I'd be happy to say what I'd regard as a perfect answer, but in view of the tone of our exchanges I don't think it would be worthwhile. That tone, incidentally, was initiated by your response to my first post.

You describe my last post as irresponsible - do you ever look critically at your own? In my initial post to this thread I wrote something which apparently conjured in your mind a ridiculous picture of someone pulling a plough with a bicycle. Instead of thinking about how else what I'd said might be interpreted, you fired off a patronising response, demolishing a strawman, before coming out with this: "I keep meeting people who think that 'farming' is easy, all it needs is enthusiasm and some fresh ideas.... sigh." When I explained that the picture you'd painted wasn't what I was thinking of, did you acknowledge that you had misunderstood? No. You came out with "It's fantasy, isn't it?".

Is that what you consider to be a responsible way to engage with people on a public forum? As far as I'm concerned, if someone says something which seems to be ridiculous, the responsible reaction is to assume that you haven't understood it in the way it was intended, and either to think about it until you can see some sense in it, or to ask them to clarify it. What is clearly irresponsible, to my mind, is to respond to something you haven't taken the trouble to think about, with comments which are quite obviously going to be contentious.

The phrase in my initial post which triggered this side-track was: "I think there's still plenty of scope for improvement in man-powered (particularly pedal-powered) agricultural tools". You replied with "I keep meeting people who think that 'farming' is easy, all it needs is enthusiasm and some fresh ideas.... sigh". Please, tell me how you concluded, from what I said, that I think farming is easy.

[Malcolm Ramsay]

Perhaps you're right, Wolfbird, but in that case I probably ought to get some kind of award. It would be quite something if I managed to spend twenty years working in, then running, a small agricutural engineering company - even one as specialised as the one I was in - without developing any understanding at all of the work involved in farming.

I can see that you are intelligent, and knowledgeable, but in view of how silly some of what you've said has been, I don't think I'll lose any sleep over your poor opinion of me.


wolfbird said:

 

Malcolm, 

 

My interest in you is in proportion to whether you have anything worthwhile to offer, and whether you actually know anything about the subject you are talking about. There's nothing in your reply that suggests to me that you know anything at all about the practical work involved with getting food from the land to feed people.