Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> I see 
> little I can do about the Monsanto Monster and its ilk.

There is little any of us can do.  Globally at any rate.  In our own little 
lives ('and rounded with a sleep') though we can do more.  Or as the person 
I'm 
in a mood to quote today (John Seymour) said:

" I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do I will 
do!"
(see:  http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/articles/healing.htm)

Do you remember the SiFi flick "Silent Running" where all the biomes of Earth 
were being maintained on pods in space until the Earth could be replanted?  
The protagonist was the only one, only human being, who had actually eaten 
real 
food.  When he comes into the ship's galley with a canteloupe and cuts it 
open, the rest of the crew say "Whew, get that thing out of here, it stinks!" 




> 
> An article in the May-June 2005 issue of Utne Reader gave pause. The title 
> is HUMANITY: The Remix; Is building a better human the key to utopia--or 
> the world's most dangerous idea? The author is Alyssa Ford. While the 
> article is about transhumanism, the parallel with food crop bioengineering 
> is apparent.



> "Today human intelligence, in the form of technology, is about to make 
> possible the elimination of pain and lives filled with unimaginable 
> pleasure and contentment,

Hmmm.  Haven't we heard all this before?  We are much more along this path 
that we were decades ago.  Are we more content, more filled with pleasure, 
freer 
of pain?  This vision disregards one important human trait:  We jade to 
things very rapidly.  Whatever pleasure one experiences in overabundace 
becomes the 
base line ... losing it looms as the most tragic and miserable of 
circumstances but maintaining it means nothing.  We are hard wired to 
identify and 
address things that threaten us.  Eliminate all those and we begin to become 
morose 
and invent things to be threatened by.


> What's more, with 
> our contact lenses, artificial heart valves, and cell phones, we are 
> cyborgs already. Smallpox vaccine and anesthetics for childbirth pain were 
> once both renounced as insults to God. 

Now we are finding out that anesthetics during childbirth compromise the 
child's health, often permanently.  Technology has always been a two-edged 
sword.  
When we discount the part of our lives where technology is only cleaning up 
its own messes, what it offers is very greatly reduced.

James