Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

In a message dated 2/17/2005 8:32:23 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
lurine AT softcom.net writes:


> Nah, James, your problem, or at least one of them, is due to the Round Up
> fumes you insist aren't harmful or maybe you're making your martinis from
> them?
> 
If I compare the data about the results of an idle life or the results of 
daily consumption of RoundUp, I'd certainly have to take the latter.

> So, James, how come your kids aren't going to public school?  I mean, you do
> rant, rave and harp on about "one-size-fits-all" with everything else on
> earth so logically then public schooling should fit all.

Lynda, you confuse 'one-size-fits-all' with counter indicating the presently 
popular 'one-size-big-enough-for-six-people'.  The Bozos that go on about 
this 
probably really don't know any better and really can't think any farther.  Do 
you really want to be included in such company?    It comes from a thorough 
public school indoctrination which conditions people to view anything said 
about anything (not necessarily said about them) as telling them what to do 
or 
what to think.  They are indoctrinated to fear it and react to it.  So when 
someone points out, for example as TVO's article did, that high cholesterol 
is most 
often a result of diet choices, they clutch their garments about them and 
say, "You can't say that, it's like you're saying that I'm bad because I have 
high cholesterol.  Therefore you are obligated to pretend as though it isn't 
true, diet doesn't affect cholesterol -  ever, for anyone!!"   This gut 
reaction 
works well to cause people to do what government and industry tells them to 
do. 
 We don't watch much TV and don't listen to radio much except for following 
the occasional local news story.  When you're away from advertisement, 
especially the moronic advertising on radio and TV, and you then hear it 
again after a 
hiatus, you can't help but think "Who is idiotic enough to be influenced by 
this drivel??"  The answer is, those who have had the complete dose of 
indoctrination from public shcooling.  Its main purpose is to condition a 
person to 
react to such ridiculous stimuli.  Buy this, vote for this, what other people 
think about you is life and death, etc.   The indocrinated people have taken 
this exhortation to heart:  "Get surreal!"  Pointing out that a farm CAN be 
run 
without borrowing money is seen as saying that they are evil or stupid 
because 
they are in debt.  Discussing the healthful effects of good diet and exercise 
(as in the present case) cannot be done because there might be one person in 
10,000 for whom diet nor exercise would imporve their condition [so you can't 
discuss it at all].  

Fortunately some people have avoided this indoctrination (for example, the 
homeschooled) and some come to shake their heads to clear it of the 
surrealism 
and get a good view of reality.  You'll find that a useful guide:  whether 
the 
person is dealing with reality or not.  Imagined illnesses, imagined business 
enterprises that some how don't ever seem to pan out, alternate energy 
systems 
that are contrary to physics,  all my problems are because Bush is in office 
and someone just like Bush is managing the local WalMart and that's why they 
wouldn't give me a job, etc. etc.  

Wandering about in a surreal headspace is very useful to people who aim to 
exploit you.    

But I suppose I digress ... concerning my children going to public school ... 
it's not 'one-size-fits-all'  - rather it's 
'one-size-that-doesn't-fit-anyone'.    And so the public school question is 
still apropos - Which of us acts as 
if we were still under the indoctrinal conditioning of PS?  

But for the 'rant and rave' and 'one size fits all' blathering, maybe you 
could explain this one to me.  Do you recall a character in Al Capp's  Li'l 
Abner 
comic strip called  "Joe Btfspkl"??  He was the one who always had a dark 
cloud over his head and wherever he went disasters took place.  Through 
various 
connections I've kept up from time to time with what's going on with various 
of 
the people who like you would blather about "you're telling me what to do", 
"you're saying one size fits all", "you rant and rave", etc. .... it's going 
on 
now more than ten years that many of these people have reported what's going 
on with them and yet they never seem to get a break.  Always in debt, always 
sick, always can't get a job or lose a job, always broke, have to sell off 
their livestock, have to mortgage their property, this project went sour, 
that 
plan didn't work.  They appear just like Joe Btfspkl with a black cloud over 
them 
to the point that (in many cases) in ten years nothing has gone right for 
them.  Now, I would have to say that this is not the case with us.  We've 
takens 
some pretty good knocks on the chin in our homesteading life but every year 
has seens us just a little farther ahead, or as the poet put it "Let us act 
that 
each tomorrow find us farther than today."    And private correspondence with 
a number of homesteaders on this list and on others tells me we are very far 
from alone, many people are succeeding at homesteading.  Now, Lynda, if it is 
all just a random toss of the dice, and as so many of the blatherers have 
said, we are just lucky and think that "one size fits all"; how is it that 
*randomly* they never seem to get a break and yet *randomly* the sun shines 
perpetually on us??  

Or is it just possible that it is our choices and their choices that make the 
difference?

James