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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] American manufacturing
  • Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:52:46 -0500


On Apr 21, 2008, at 12:02 PM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:



We know what most humans want and what most Americans want. Want
deprived becomes pain. Pain demands political help. Politicians want
votes so they acquiesce as much as they can. So how to change human
nature? Inevitability. Until a problem is hitting us over the head we
Americans will not make meaningful changes. We will, as a society,
strive for what we perceive is the best life for us and our children.
For the majority, that means a paycheck. A paycheck means a job. I do
not see a viable alternative.


This is all true.

Well, that's why I said perhaps we might best just focus on jobs and income, however it comes. It may be intellectual idiocy but what else works? If the masses feel enough pain, whoo hoo, stand back.

But recall the primary message of the Buddha. Human suffering does not arise
because we don't have things, but rather because we want them.

I think of it as:
SUCCESS is getting what you want.
HAPPINESS is wanting what you get.

To wit: to
my querries to my parents and grandparents as to why the Great Depression was
so bad, they answered, "Becuse no one had any money." But when I asked my
great-grandmother, she said "Lord, child, no body in these hollers ever had any
money!" Her view was that the depression caused problems for her folk not
because it kept them from having money, but rather it convinced them that they
OUGHT to have money.

Ignorance is bliss? The scenario occurs when the kids go see the bright lights. How many come back happy to live a homestead life? And even to do as you have done requires a certain amount of money for land, vehicle, tools, well, septic, electric, building materials, taxes. I presume you earned wages to get those dollars.

Like that you had the Enron employee/investors wringing their hands that they
had lost half a million dollars when the company collapsed. Turns out they
had only invested $5000, the rest was fake inflation of the value of that
investment. Their unhappiness wasn't because they had actually lost half a million
dollars, it was because the BELIEVED that they had money which didn't exist
in the first place.

The people who turned their stock into big cash before the company collapsed might take issue with that perspective. Call it wisdom or chance or fate or luck, ugh, but some few have huge bank accounts and others are still working past their retirement dates.

And like that the people who told us we who did not have a mortgage on our
property were jealous because the home-debtor was making money hand over fist
from their appreciating houses are not now unhappy because their houses have
lost value, but rather because they imagined they were wealthy with dollar bills
oozing out of the light sockets and spigots because their house was increasing
in value.

James, those who bought high are hurting. Those of us who bought earlier still have nice equities in spite of the, what, 12 percent? average decline in prices across the country.

We imagine that it is our God given right to leap into the saddle and go
wherever we will and that should only cost us 5% or so of our income, and we can
all take few community college courses and all become Supervisors of
Muckification and Coordinators of Drivel and make the big bucks. We will not suffer
because we don't have those things, but rather because we desire them.

Okay, getting down to the nitty gritty here, shall we not blame the parents? Ourselves? It's fun to rant at the idiocy of politicians but we all make our own decisions from the time we leave our parents' houses.





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