Thanks to OC115 for the call to guest host this weekly diary.
(I love you girl.) Happy St. Patrick's Day-after, Kosian Freakazoids!
It's about how what we eat impacts who we are.
We are what we eat.
We don't need to ellaborate on this. Let's skip ahead.
We've got maybe three continuums to consider, as far as food goes.
And let me say right up front, I don't care what you eat. Spotted owl, baked, boiled or fried. F*kin do it. Just, give it a little bit of thought. That's about all I'm capable of, anyway, after last night.
If, and it's a big if, we dare open to this investigation, we can pretty directly get to how our dietary habits impact the evolution of consciousness. Is that heavy enough? It was for me about (1968) thirty-nine years ago, when I became a vegetarian.
That was my entire motivation. Get higher by what I chose to eat.
Jimi. Grateful Dead. Califia. It was a lovely time.
And it sucked too, (nam, nixon) if you were there.
Skipping ahead....
The deal, at that time as now, is to wake up.
Human consciousness, damn, it's such a blessing and a gift.
And the impulse to minimize suffering? Is that hard to fathom?
Golden rule?
Anyway, barkeep, one baked owl and a guinness, please...
Three continuums:
health
politics
karma (physics, action/reaction: as you sow, so shall you reap)
So if you want to get all judgemental, just don't. About anyone else's dietary choices, or political choices. Example is better than precept.
so, then:
health, this is pretty obvious.
politics, francis moore lappe first opened my eyes to the real differences in food production efficiency. Ten times the energy to produce a pound of meat as a pound of grain. That has some sustainability implications. And you owe it to yourself to check her recent work. Profound.
karma (physics, action/reaction: as you sow, so shall you reap). This is why I became a vegetarian. How has it worked out for me you ask? I'm still doing it, so it works for me, but... I totally subscribe to a cause-and-effect universe. Not everyone believes all that. And even then, I cut myself slack. ("Bob" Dobbs alert.) But watching Bushco unravel this last several months? Priceless. Man, I love karma.
Anyway, point? Well, it's this: first we look inside ourselves for stability and compass. Then, make it congruent. Line all that with the rest of the world (animals and plants too) is the —to me— biggest challenge we have in this lifetime:
Cause a minimum of suffering.
Then, guess what? That's good for your health. Bonus!
And...you don't reap as much adverse Karmic/political/ dude??? what the f*k were you thinkin???/reaction.
Sure, corporate, mainstream capitalist politics is a devolutionary vector. Wouldn't be if "it" could get that we're all in this together. And that would be... enough people involved in said vector looking at the world in just that slightly different way. All One. Here Comes Everybody. (In honor of St. Patrick's Day, a quote from Joyce.)
Or as Steve Earle says, the revolution starts now, where you lay your money down.
Local, small is beautiful for food and anything else. That's important. Sure you know this. Or, I assume you do. It's 40 miles before us Deer Isle Mainers hit a stop light... Bucky Fuller used to live here in the summer. I loved his spaceship earth premise. He had tremendous influence on Stewart Brand as Brand concocted his precursor-to-the-internet Whole Earth Catalog. Later Brand and crew took a more small-is-beautiful approach.
The Whole Earth Catalog.
Toward the end of the 1960s, Stanford-educated Brand — a biologist with strong artistic and social interests — believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially-just lines....
Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to Google in his June 2005 Stanford University Commencement Speech. "When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions."
Now we have Worldchanging, the bright green environmental formulation. It's different from the dark green approach, in which maybe you could class the Nearings, Helen and Scott. Progressives, striving for minimal footprint. The difference is about doing without, or embracing a technological fix.
In my own little back-to-the-land mid-coast Maine bioregion, the Nearings, Bucky Fuller, Eliot Coleman and Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (it's the oldest in the US) all play significant roles in conceptualizing a sane, sustainable approach to 21st century life. And internal debates are hot and strong. Practicality versus idealism. But that's an economics diary for another time.
This is U R what U eat, and it's over, OK?
Bioregions are cool, web of life is actual and...
we are one people
we are one
here on spaceship earth.
thanks OC 115.
Please, talk amongst yourselves
peace&love y'all