Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

They say recession is when your neighbor loses her job; depression is when
you lose your job. Along that line, we already have millions in this
country feeling the ill effects of modern estrangement from the land. And
to them the breakdown has already come. Processed food lacking sufficient
nutrition comes to mind. Millions eat those awful commodities from the USDA
program. Millions more live on fast food and grocery junk food. Much of our
population rarely sees the outdoors or enjoys sunlight. And from all this -
plus unnatural pollution and thousands of chemicals in everything - we have
the highest rate of chronic illness, mental illness, and degenerative
diseases on the planet, and pay far more for health care - so called - than
any other country. We also work longer hours, suffer more stress, and miss
more sleep than other industrialized countries. To make a long story short,
the further we get from the natural ways of living on the land, the sicker
we get. Breakdown is a gradual degrading of our lives sneaking up on us
from all directions. Protecting ourselves is also a gradual process as we
relearn how to live on the land. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 11/7/2007 at 7:58 PM Johnny Stansell wrote:

>Paul:
>   
>    I think you are right we are heading for a break down, but where will
>it lead?  If all goes completly wrong and worse case 3/4 of the USA
>population is lost, it may not be a small population left to learn and get
>it right this time.  Usually a country that's weak is taken over by the
>powerful. So we lucky people left would not only have to struggle for
>survival, but maybe suffer from some other power that may or may not allow
>us to live.  We live in interesting times.
>   
>  Regards,
>  Johnny Stansell
>
>
> 
>
> 
>
>  My own view on the oil thing is far worse than yours, mostly because of 
> the  convergence of looming freshwater scarcity, topsoil loss, the
>natural   gas  cliff that's coming, climate change, and last but not least
>the   suicidal  economic juggernaut paying for war on borrowed money and
>risking  hyperinflation. However I do not find this depressing at all. In
>the   long  view civilizations rise and fall, glaciers form and recede,
>all empires  fail, and everywhere people learn to adapt, move, or perish.
>There is a  theory, if that's the word, that Gaia - the Earth - either
>acts like or   is  a living organism and reacts to threats. Since the
>beginning of the  Industrial Revolution, massive changes by human
>societies have had   serious  unintended consequences.     Doing what we
>can to be constructive and less a part of the problem is  something we can
>take pride in. There is safety in our ability to coax   good  food from
>soil, conserve our water and forest, and network
> and   encourage  others nearby to find refuge in simpler ways of living.
>I definitely am   not  obsessed with mauruding hordes stealing our
>supplies; unlike the  survivalists I'm more concerned with not being one
>of them.    paul tradingpost@lobo.net  
>
>