Homestead mailing list

[Bevanron <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Lynda wrote:

> And, do you really think you can guide the sheople to do anything 
> that makes sense and isn't handed to them on a platter?
>
> Until the SHTF or something near to that, you aren't going to get 
> them to do anything except play the Keep Up With The Jones game.

Amen to that!
And then, when SHTF, they will want to take what we have worked long and
hard for instead of doing for themselves.  This is a consumerist world,
and homesteaders and those who are more self sufficient than 90% of the
population will be "consumed" and disposed of as if they were a Big Mac.
 I'll never forget how during one of the early episodes of Survivor the
contestants were given like 4 hens and a rooster and they ate the hens
instead of eating the rooster and collecting the eggs.  Most people have
no knowledge whatsoever-even what we would consider basic knowledge-of
anything rural.
This is a touchy subject for this list, I know, but I have survivalist
tendencies that can't be stopped<g>.  When I first got online years ago,
I read how you need to be so many days of walking distance from the
nearest city, etc. just in case the sheeples and mass hoards came came
looking for food.  Now that I have lived out in the boonies for a while,
I realize two things.  First, most people these days are too lazy to
walk 200 feet from the back of a Walmart parking lot to the front
door-they fight over the handicap spots....grrr.... Secondly, it is
amazing to me how many people are afraid of the dark.  Many urbanites
are so used to the orange haze of a polluted night sky that when they
get out under the stars they are as scared as I would be in the jungles
of South America.  They are wayyyy out of their comfort zones.  So,
ironically, the rural nature of our lives might actually have benefits
other than those we can see "on the surface".

Having said all of that, I do think more and more people are waking up
to the fact that life as they know it is tenuous at best.  Anything can
and will happen.  I don't think that people are willing to give up their
 lifestyles of convenience for a lot of hard work just yet, however.
James (or was it Denise) made a good point that as soon as something
becomes marketable, it becomes scarce.  Right now, biodiesel is kind of
trendy, as is "organic" food, regardless of how you define it.  Ten or
15 years from now, people will be happily buying that Petri-dish pork
from Wallyworld and there will be a glut of compost again.  Before y2k,
you could not find a water catchment tank under $100, now they are
easily had for $20, if not free for the asking.  The drought continues,
but the sheeples still sleep.  They will wake up eventually, but when
nothing happens for a while, they will go back to sleep again.  It's
cyclic.  People will move to the country to escape the city, then move
back to the city to work "easier".
To a lot of people, eating all organic equates to having world peace.
It's a great idea, but it's just not going to happen.  It's like
morbidly obese people at a salad bar, loading up their salads with
Hidden Valley Ranch dressing...LOL...  They try, but when it gets tough,
they run right back to their comfort zone.  If gasoline prices ever go
done, making biodiesel will go the way of making moonshine.
OMG, did I just make an opinionated post or what?!

Bev.... :)


--
erthnsky AT bellsouth.net  BevanRon of EarthNSky Farm      NW Georgia USDA Zone 7
34.498N 85.076W