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  • From: "clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] SEF
  • Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 17:56:11 -0500





Tvo once pronounced James to be eloquent, but I don't see it. Somehow even his posts on homesteading manage to alienate people.

They don't alienate people, Bill, they only alienate those with serious self-doubts.

Of all the people on this list, perhaps I understand best what he's trying to say (I think), but even I end up feeling belittled.

It's a one car accident, that, Bill. You alone are responsible for how you feel.

It all comes out sounding like "y'all better git yer butts a-scythin' if ye want to be as good as I".

When actually it's "Y'all better git yer butts a-scythin' if ye want the benefits of scythin'" Why it is taken otherwise by the ilk of yourself is easily explained: There's been much talk here on what sort of investment or business would best ensure a supply of homestead money. I discovered long ago a product that people will buy at any cost at any time, well, not all people, just people like yourself and the ones (alas, not in evidence) to whom you allude. The product is SEF (Someone Else's Fault) marketed under various names but refered to generically as Non-Mea-Culpa. I never had the stomach to deal in it, although it is perfectly legal and most consider it to be "respectable". But I could have made a lot of money with it. Since you don't seem to have a problem with it, Bill, I give the whole business to you and you could become quite wealthy with this.

SEF is the markenting of anything that allows people to believe that the troubles in their lives are not their fault, there is nothing they could have done. People will pay anything to get SEF and do anything, even harm themselves and harm their children. The motivation is that high and the market is infinite. I first encountered SEF working in schools where a parent who just about abandoned their child to daycare, social obligations, put their own problems before their child, and then faced the fact that their child was having academic and social problems. They wanted desperately to believe it wasn't their fault, there was nothing they could have done differently that would have made any difference. You saw the same look in their eyes when they were handed a diagnosis of LD or OCD or some such as you see in the eyes of a junkie who has just gotten his next fix. Not my fault!

SEF extends to all sorts of things: people who ruin themselves financially, make disasterous personal decisions, wreck their health ... etc. People pay the most of their income and most of their life's strength just for one good dose of SEF ... tell me it wasn't my fault!

That's why people like you bubble over with hatred for people like me who do NOT blame other people or circumstances or luck for our failures. Like Billy Bones (in Treasure Island) when he saw Pew coming to talk with him and the author says, "the rum went out of him". Just like that, those seeking to blame all their problems on someone or something else, and having spent so much time and resources on that illusion, do NOT want to be reminded that by and large, in the main, their lot is their own making. We who do not look outside ourselves to find the source of the fault within our lives and our undertakings are an ugly and unpleasant reminder that the SEF does not bear scutiny. That's why the vehemence and hatred. That;s why every reference to a self-reliant way of conducting one's affairs is seen as "telling people what to do" or "belittling people."

I do not take it upon myself to timidly tiptoe around earnest homestead topics because you, Bill, are prone to having the rum go out of you when you are faced with reminders that we all determine our destinies through our choices.

I don't peddle SEF anymore.


James






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