Archive for the ‘Corporate Control’ Category

What We Think We Know

25 October 2021

How do we know what we think we know? We have our direct experiences, the 2nd- to nth-hand stories we accept as truth, and what we, using our intellect, derive from those.

But there are problems with every part of that answer. We may or may not correctly understand our direct experiences. Believing what we hear from others is always chancy. And no matter how smart we think we are, our intellect doesn’t always come up with the right answer.

I think what we know is a lot more nebulous than most of us acknowledge. One should always question the validity of their worldview and be open to revising what they think they know, but that’s not common, especially as people get older.

But what, then, should be the basis of our actions? What can we do other than accept the vague mass of inchoate thoughts, half-formed concepts, and class, racial, and religious prejudices inside all of us as the basis of our worldview and our actions? After all, nothing says that we have to be right all the time or make the correct choices all the time. To be human is to be fallible, to be wrong sometimes, and to make bad choices.

One alternative is to abandon our reason and accept the dictates of those we consider to be our political or social or religious leaders as the gospel truth and let them tell us what to think and do. That’s the strategy adopted, consciously or not, by many. It’s painless, easy, and shoves the responsibility for our decisions onto others.

Posted in Climate Change, Corporate Control, Politics | Leave a Comment »

I Do Love My Country

9 May 2010

In case, based on recent posts, anyone is wondering.

But we’re on the wrong path. For us to be the kind of people we can and should be:

  • We have to get away from the senseless consumerism that drives the lives of so many of us.
  • We have to start making things here again.
  • We have to remember that money really does have value and the world is not going to keep loaning it to us forever for no reason just so we can buy more jet skis.
  • We have to remember why we exist as a nation in the first place, which is to give each of us the freedom to live our lives in liberty and to pursue happiness. And excessive taxation to satisfy the greed of others takes away freedom just the same as a police state does.
  • We can be poor as long as we have standards and ideals and rise above the level of dumb beasts. No doubt there have always been both kinds of poor people in this country, but one gets the impression that few of us, no matter how much money we happen to have, live our lives based on ideals any more.

I think the financial sector of the economy has taken over the country and is treating us as if we don’t care about anything more than we care about money. If we have become that people, then we need to un-become that people if we are not to become slaves as well. If we are not yet that people, we have to act as if ideals matter more than money.

Posted in Corporate Control, Money, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Being Right

7 December 2009

Finally, and for the first time in a long time, I feel as if my understanding of the world is correct and that it’s time for everyone else to come around to what I think instead of the other way around. Specifically:

  • We cannot continue spending money we don’t have, as individuals, as states, or as a nation.
  • Farming is one of the most important activities anyone can engage in, and being a farmer who takes care of his land and everything else under his care is one of the most honorable things anyone can do.
  • We all need to grow as much of our own food as possible.
  • We all need to be responsible for our own health to the greatest extent possible. That means exercising every day, not eating trashfood, and not burning the candle at both ends.
  • We all need to be independent, both as individuals and as families. You only rely on others when you absolutely have to. That does not diminish the importance of community.
  • Debt is bad.
  • Engaging in foreign wars should be avoided at all costs.

Posted in Corporate Control, Family, Financial Meltdown, Food, Gardening, Politics | Leave a Comment »

No, not “pissy”!

15 October 2009

This is from an email to a friend. It seems quite pithy now that I reread it.

I do think that our opportunity to choose between two corporate fascists every 4 years serves no purpose other than perpetuating the myth that we live in a democracy. But if you give most Americans that myth, along with cheap food and gas, they seem to be quite content to go on supporting whatever our government has to do (war, torture, environmental destruction) to maintain the status quo for one more day. What’s it going to take to rouse people out of their apathy? How do we convince people that life should be about more than NASCAR and cheap big macs?

Posted in Corporate Control, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Contextualizing Local vs Corporate Solutions

20 September 2009

If you have to call someone you don’t know to get it done, that’s a corporate solution.

We believe in the illusion of reality manufactured by corporations, and most Americans have been doing so for generations. It’s no wonder that breaking free of that illusion is difficult.

I’m trying to break free of the corporate illusion of reality and find true reality. That is my life-long fascination with the basics: where food comes from, where our waste goes, how do we keep ourselves warm in the winter, what are the minimum and essential requirements of life — the fundamental truths of life. I’m at a point in my life when my beliefs are less flexible, and I’m returning to some of the things I recognized as truth 30 years ago.

For humans, part of our reality is language, written and spoken.

These days, virtually every human problem has both a local and a corporate solution. The local solution solves the problem for you. The main purpose of the corporate solution is to profit the corporation. It may also solve the problem for you, but will probably create other problems for you, for other humans, and for the planet.

All of us need to recognize that corporate solutions always create problems, and all of us need to go as far as we can towards solving our problems without any corporate involvement and as locally as we can. It’s not easy, it’s not something you learn how to do overnight, and it’s not something you put into effect overnight, but we all have to start. Corporate solutions always create problems, sometimes for you and sometimes for others. Choosing the corporate solution is always wrong.

What I mean by contextualizing the local solution is the process of incorporating local solutions into your everyday life and your every waking thought. I mean to destroy and abandon the corporate illusion of reality.

When you shop online, you are inevitably participating in the corporate illusion.

Think about satisfying your basic needs. You can always do that with local solutions. Consider the possibility that needs that can’t be satisfied locally are not really needs, but wants created in you by your participation in the corporate illusion of reality. It’s likely that satisfying those wants will not make you feel better, but will just lead you to more wants.

Prepping is finding a sustainable, local, non-corporate solution to the problem of survival for yourself and your family.

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