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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, openpermaculture <permaculture@openpermaculture.org>, BPG <bloomingtonpermacultureguild@lists.riseup.net>
  • Subject: [permaculture] "At the end of the rat race...we're still rats". Lily Tomlin
  • Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:29:59 -0400

If we take a clear, unflinching look at our exceedingly bizarre contemporary connections to food, we'll see in microcosm how very far we have fallen as a species--and how very unsustainable and unstable modern "civilization" truly is.

Indeed, if you ever find yourself questioning how American society can be so very blessed and yet so very messed-up, you probably need gaze no further than into your bowl of Corn Flakes...

"/Another unpublished experiment was carried out in the 1960s.
Researchers at Ann Arbor University were given 18 laboratory rats.
They were divided into three groups: one group received corn flakes
and water; a second group was given the cardboard box that the corn
flakes came in and water; the control group received rat chow and
water. The rats in the control group remained in good health
throughout the experiment. The rats eating the box became lethargic
and eventually died of malnutrition. But the rats receiving the corn
flakes and water died before the rats that were eating the box! (The
last corn flake rat died the day the first box rat died.) But before
death, the corn flake rats developed schizophrenic behavior, threw
fits, bit each other and finally went into convulsions. The
startling conclusion of this study is that there was more
nourishment in the box than there was in the corn flakes. /

/This experiment was actually designed as a joke, but the results
were far from funny. The results were never published and similar
studies have not been conducted./"

The rest of the story:
http://deconsumption.typepad.com/deconsumption/

--
Keith Johnson
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 5516
Bloomington, IN 47408
(812) 335-0383
http://www.permacultureactivist.net
also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
also APPLE-Bloomington (Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy)
It's a small world after oil.



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  • [permaculture] "At the end of the rat race...we're still rats". Lily Tomlin, Keith Johnson, 10/10/2006

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