Monday, January 30, 2012

Peronal Empowerment

Before I write this posting any farther, I feel that I must first apologize to the mass number of people, who seem to be more narrow minded, uninformed or misinformed. As they tend to think that some of my writings may be considered as being controversial. Also they may view some of my topics as being insulting and/or revolting to their way of being. Since they may in turn not see the humor and wit and informative information, that I try to weave into all of my presentations. My intention you see is to suggest ideas and offer information, with witticism, guile and humor to everyone who wants to be informed and inspired. That having been said, please read on ...

There seems to be a general shift in thinking by some factions, towards the ability to empower ones' self. Even though it really a catch 22. Let me explain ... If you follow all of those glitzy advertisements for personal empowerment, Then your coin purse will be rather empty. Where as if you go at it alone and on your own, to save some of your hard earned coins. Then you could also be risking your good name, as those in power might label you as being subversive. I would bet that there is a information monitoring computer or two somewhere that is going "bleep-a-da-bleep" with most of my postings, even though I am new to this blogging game.

Yes we all are being classified as being subversive if and when we talk about building our own transportation, or our housing alternative ideas, or trying to live as cheaply as possible, or raising a garden, or trying to "live under the radar", or preparing to survive future disasters all on our own. While saving some of our hard earned coins in the process. With out big governments' help, or big business' help. Remember New Orleans after Katrina hit? They are still trying to rebuild. Wait ... What!?!?!? Raising a garden is being classified, as being subversive?!?!?!

Some of you may know me, so you can expect this. To everyone else, after hearing that raising a garden is being classified as being subversive, I had to dig deeper. It seems that the general idea is, that if we are not contributing to big government and its' taxes and/or to big business' coffers ~ who both like to claim that our best interests, they take to heart. However what they really take to heart is the lack of our coins in their coffers, so they label us as being subversive.

Let me explain a little further ... According to Roger Doiron, the Director of Kitchen Gardens International, who gave a lecture at the famous TED symposium a few months ago. Where he pointed out, that growing your own food has the potential "to alter the delicate balance of power, not just in our own country, but the entire world". As reported in the 2012/1/26 emailing of http://www.offthegridnews.com/

You see that when we grow our own foods, we take back power into our own hands. Reclaiming our rightful power over our own diets, our health and our wallets. You tend to take back your natural self interests and away from the big industrialized agra-businesses, the giant chemical companies, institutionalized medicine and even from the big pharmaceutical companies. Did anyone ever even think, that we as a whole had that much power?

Doiron further pointed out that gardening is considered "a gateway drug, to other forms of food freedoms". As you will soon be relearning how to cook, more of your own meals from scratch. Instead of buying those chemical-ladened, sugar-laced, over priced prepackaged meals, on your way home from work. You may even relearn how simple it is, to preserve your gardens' produce ~ by canning or freezing or by making fresh homemade jams and jellies. Instead of relying on industrial complexes that use cans lined with dangerous-to-consume chemicals like BPA.

Doiron also points out that home gardens will become an absolute necessity in the not to distant future. Since it has been pointed out that by the end of the 21st century, the worlds' population is predicted to hit 10 billion (that is Billion, with a B). How will it even be possible to feed that kind of a population (when today it is estimated that around 900 million people go hungry each and every year) without having home gardens?

Personally I do not trust that technology will help to feed us all in the years to come. Case in point; in an article published in 2007 in the Guardian magazine stated that to keep up with population growth, our world will have to be able to produce more food in the next 50 years than it has in the last 10,000 years all put together.

I am not trying to scare anyone here just informing, but here are some sobering facts. As to why the Industrial Food System is doomed to failure. Industrial Agra-Business simply is not sustainable, because that for every 10 calories of fossil fuel energy used, only 1 calorie of food energy is yielded. To make matters worse yet ... Drought, over development and desertification are consuming farm lands at an alarming rate. Not to mention that genetic diversity is vanishing even more quickly. As some experts believe that about 90% of all vegetable varieties went extinct in the 20th century.

Genetically modified foods were supposed to be a god-send and increase yields. It had the opposite effect, with crop failures and pollen drift into neighboring fields of healthy crops being contaminated by cross pollination. Leading to an increase of allergies, autoimmune disorders and infertility to name a few. Also DO NOT believe in the "variety" that is seen on grocery store shelves. Now the average grocery store sports an average assortment of over 30,000 items from which to choose from in most industrialized countries. But please read the labels very carefully, on those brightly illustrated boxes, bags and cans. It is not really real food that they contain, or for that matter genetic diversity either. The vast majority of prepackaged foods obtain one of 3 ingredients; wheat, corn or soy, with most of it being genetically modified. Ironically food manufactures rearrange the same few ingredients and recombine them with artificial chemicals, to give the illusion of variety, flavor and appearance of real foods. So out of personal curiosity how much of the ingredient listing can you pronounce, let alone know and understand what they are? It is no wonder that with over 30,000 items on the grocery store shelves from which to choose, that we as an industrialized nation are now fatter and sicker than ever before.

Now do you see the importance of growing our own foods? Also how growing our own foods can save us some of our hard earned coins? I for one agree with Roger Doiron, that a backyard garden free of pesticides and genetic engineering will aid in our survival. Also gardening is another way to reclaim some of the power of self, that has been leaching away from the citizenry for the last several decades.

Gardening just may be the salvation, for the future of all of mankind ...

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