A rant of sorts
If you are not in the mood to hear me rant and rave and perhaps go off on random tangents that don't make much sense, then stop reading. If you stick around, open a window, I'm going to vent.
It all started about a month ago when I broke a glass jar of almond butter. Shards of glass went flying everywhere and of course, the toddler and the dogs were like awesome, let's go get bloody!! Dogs outside and toddler quarantined, my mom and I began to clean up the mess. As we were cleaning she casually mentioned how broken glass is so rare these days, when she was a kid someone was always breaking and/or cleaning up glass.
For some reason this really struck me and my ever musing brain went on a journey through the past 100+ years and then to modern life. I thought about how different society is today, and how much it will continue to change, I had good thoughts about advances in technology, education, and medicine, but my brain just kept coming back to how much of what is toxic about our world is new. Even just two generations ago, when my mother was a kid, so much of what I worry about for my own child didn't even exist.
There was no such thing as high fructose corn syrup, no GMO's or pink slime chicken nuggets. Fast food restaurants didn't even exist, and neither did hand sanitizer, "heart healthy" vegetable oils, factory farms, video games or even television for that matter. Kids used to play outside, in the dirt, and they weren't dosed in toxic antibacterial goop when they came inside! You guys, food allergies and other inflammatory diseases of the body DID NOT EXIST 100 years ago. Okay, that is a stretch, they existed but they were very rare. 100 years ago immune systems were not destroyed by "food" and "medicine" from birth causing them to attack their own bodies.
Families cooked food, yes, real food, and they didn't waste any either. Sure the variety of produce and other foods wasn't available like it is today, but none the less, there was cooking happening AT HOME. Adults were cooking real food and children were learning to cook real food. A precious life skill that is rapidly disappearing was being passed down to the next generation. People don't even know how to cook anymore! And while this may sound like a minor thing, cooking at home, from scratch is SO IMPORTANT! I don't care if you can buy the same thing pre-made at the store, it is not and will never be the same.
Everything from baby bottles to bleach came in glass jars. Sure there was broken glass, but there weren't toxins from plastics leaching into their foods and there wasn't a huge strain of fossil fuels to make a ton of throw away plastic shit that we don't even need! Oh, and there probably wasn't a giant vortex of plastic bags and water bottles swirling around the ocean. I know it is shocking, but even as little as 25 years ago people survived withOUT plastic water bottles! Crazy, right? And people saved things!! They reused their glass bottles over and over again, they bought things once and actually took care of them.
It used to be that you purchased a big ticket item one time and it lasted you for a life time, or at least a very long time. You saved your hard earned money and didn't buy a big ticket item until you could actually afford to pay for it. Yeah, no credit cards, and guess what, if it broke, you fixed it because repair shops existed, people knew how to fix things, and you wanted to fix this expensive item because it was likely that you couldn't afford a new one. Now you can put that 80" television that you can't afford on your credit card that you may or may not pay off some day, maybe, in 20 years...and show if off to all your friends; you have arrived. That is of course until the new television that you can fucking TALK TO comes out six months later, then you just throw that "old" one away and buy a new one, right? And modern people have the audacity to complain that our ancestors were wasteful and didn't recycle!?
And who needs to interact with real people when you have the internet, text messages and video games. You guys, we are losing the ability to converse with one another. People are losing the ability to speak proper English!! I'm not even trying to be funny, I'm very serious. I am terrified of technology and the impact it has on children. YOUR children, MY children, the future leaders and workers of our world, the fabric of our society. They are losing the ability to empathize, the feeling of community, the feeling of human touch and interaction. Young children are wasting hours of their lives playing violent video games where nobody actually gets hurt. You get to brutally murder people, beat up women, rob gas stations, and then just turn it off! You can not tell me that this isn't negatively affecting our children!
Fifty years ago, heck, even 20 years ago, 328903 baby gadgets didn't exist. There wasn't a stuffed animal to keep a pacifier in the babies mouth so mom wouldn't have to get up and put it back in through the night. There weren't removable car seats allowing multiple errands to be run all without touching the baby. There was no such thing as "educational television" for a kid to camp out watching while mom cooked or took a shower. People held their babies and KIDS WERE ALLOWED TO BE BORED! Actually an amazing gift to children! Yes, let your children be bored! You will be amazed at what they might come up with to entertain themselves! Many amazing inventions have been born from boredom!
Another thing, never has the medical field been more advanced than it is today, yet people are sicker than they have ever been before! We are prescribed a slough of medications that are deemed safe by the FDA so they must be okay, right? That is until the FDA recalls them and pays people millions of dollars because they were never safe to begin with!! People are walking around with perceived health! They think that because they take a pill they are okay, not true! Everyone wants a quick fix for their problems, why would we want to work at something. Give me a pill to lose weight, a pill so I won't die today, a pill so my skin isn't inflamed, a pill so I can have an erection. But nobody wants to know WHY they have these problems! We are spending to much time on the cure and not nearly enough time researching the CAUSE!
And let's stop blaming doctors. I know there are a lot of bad ones out there who dismiss their patients with a pill and a smile, but I also think there are a lot of really sad doctors out there who genuinely want to help their patients. An impossible feat when they don't first want to help themselves!
Sigh...
As I am writing this my non-stop brain is scanning my house and taking inventory of my modern day luxuries, things that I really like quite frankly. I love my washer and dryer, my high speed blender, my central heater, my computer/internet, television and iPhone. I like to fantasize about living like my great great grandmother and the simplicity of it all, but I also know that it wasn't a life that I could just go back to now and be all smiles. I don't want to kill and pluck my own chicken, make my own clothes and wash them by hand, or die from now easily curable infections, but I also don't like living in a world where big corporations think it is okay to add poison to our food and water, treat animals like garbage, and use human beings as science experiments.
I have read and re-read this like 20 times over the past few days trying to edit it for posting, but I just can't get it right. I feel like it doesn't flow, like I don't make very strong points and like I don't really know what I am talking about. Do I have a lot of research about some of the claims I have made, yes, but I don't want this to turn into a lecture. This is honestly just my brains processing things about our world and the way I see it. I don't claim to fully understand life generations before my own, but I also can't say that I really understand it now, and I'm right here living it.
Basically this blog post could go on and on and I could bring up much more of what bothers me out our disconnected society. I could, but I won't. I won't because I feel deep down that we are moving toward change. I think many people have had enough and want to go back to basics as it were. I think people are realizing that the fast paced, blow through life and make money mentality isn't healthy for anyone. I think, or at least I hope this is true. And until it is, I will continue to do my part to reconnect with the earth, my food, my child and my fellow man.
It all started about a month ago when I broke a glass jar of almond butter. Shards of glass went flying everywhere and of course, the toddler and the dogs were like awesome, let's go get bloody!! Dogs outside and toddler quarantined, my mom and I began to clean up the mess. As we were cleaning she casually mentioned how broken glass is so rare these days, when she was a kid someone was always breaking and/or cleaning up glass.
For some reason this really struck me and my ever musing brain went on a journey through the past 100+ years and then to modern life. I thought about how different society is today, and how much it will continue to change, I had good thoughts about advances in technology, education, and medicine, but my brain just kept coming back to how much of what is toxic about our world is new. Even just two generations ago, when my mother was a kid, so much of what I worry about for my own child didn't even exist.
There was no such thing as high fructose corn syrup, no GMO's or pink slime chicken nuggets. Fast food restaurants didn't even exist, and neither did hand sanitizer, "heart healthy" vegetable oils, factory farms, video games or even television for that matter. Kids used to play outside, in the dirt, and they weren't dosed in toxic antibacterial goop when they came inside! You guys, food allergies and other inflammatory diseases of the body DID NOT EXIST 100 years ago. Okay, that is a stretch, they existed but they were very rare. 100 years ago immune systems were not destroyed by "food" and "medicine" from birth causing them to attack their own bodies.
Families cooked food, yes, real food, and they didn't waste any either. Sure the variety of produce and other foods wasn't available like it is today, but none the less, there was cooking happening AT HOME. Adults were cooking real food and children were learning to cook real food. A precious life skill that is rapidly disappearing was being passed down to the next generation. People don't even know how to cook anymore! And while this may sound like a minor thing, cooking at home, from scratch is SO IMPORTANT! I don't care if you can buy the same thing pre-made at the store, it is not and will never be the same.
Everything from baby bottles to bleach came in glass jars. Sure there was broken glass, but there weren't toxins from plastics leaching into their foods and there wasn't a huge strain of fossil fuels to make a ton of throw away plastic shit that we don't even need! Oh, and there probably wasn't a giant vortex of plastic bags and water bottles swirling around the ocean. I know it is shocking, but even as little as 25 years ago people survived withOUT plastic water bottles! Crazy, right? And people saved things!! They reused their glass bottles over and over again, they bought things once and actually took care of them.
It used to be that you purchased a big ticket item one time and it lasted you for a life time, or at least a very long time. You saved your hard earned money and didn't buy a big ticket item until you could actually afford to pay for it. Yeah, no credit cards, and guess what, if it broke, you fixed it because repair shops existed, people knew how to fix things, and you wanted to fix this expensive item because it was likely that you couldn't afford a new one. Now you can put that 80" television that you can't afford on your credit card that you may or may not pay off some day, maybe, in 20 years...and show if off to all your friends; you have arrived. That is of course until the new television that you can fucking TALK TO comes out six months later, then you just throw that "old" one away and buy a new one, right? And modern people have the audacity to complain that our ancestors were wasteful and didn't recycle!?
And who needs to interact with real people when you have the internet, text messages and video games. You guys, we are losing the ability to converse with one another. People are losing the ability to speak proper English!! I'm not even trying to be funny, I'm very serious. I am terrified of technology and the impact it has on children. YOUR children, MY children, the future leaders and workers of our world, the fabric of our society. They are losing the ability to empathize, the feeling of community, the feeling of human touch and interaction. Young children are wasting hours of their lives playing violent video games where nobody actually gets hurt. You get to brutally murder people, beat up women, rob gas stations, and then just turn it off! You can not tell me that this isn't negatively affecting our children!
Fifty years ago, heck, even 20 years ago, 328903 baby gadgets didn't exist. There wasn't a stuffed animal to keep a pacifier in the babies mouth so mom wouldn't have to get up and put it back in through the night. There weren't removable car seats allowing multiple errands to be run all without touching the baby. There was no such thing as "educational television" for a kid to camp out watching while mom cooked or took a shower. People held their babies and KIDS WERE ALLOWED TO BE BORED! Actually an amazing gift to children! Yes, let your children be bored! You will be amazed at what they might come up with to entertain themselves! Many amazing inventions have been born from boredom!
Another thing, never has the medical field been more advanced than it is today, yet people are sicker than they have ever been before! We are prescribed a slough of medications that are deemed safe by the FDA so they must be okay, right? That is until the FDA recalls them and pays people millions of dollars because they were never safe to begin with!! People are walking around with perceived health! They think that because they take a pill they are okay, not true! Everyone wants a quick fix for their problems, why would we want to work at something. Give me a pill to lose weight, a pill so I won't die today, a pill so my skin isn't inflamed, a pill so I can have an erection. But nobody wants to know WHY they have these problems! We are spending to much time on the cure and not nearly enough time researching the CAUSE!
And let's stop blaming doctors. I know there are a lot of bad ones out there who dismiss their patients with a pill and a smile, but I also think there are a lot of really sad doctors out there who genuinely want to help their patients. An impossible feat when they don't first want to help themselves!
Sigh...
As I am writing this my non-stop brain is scanning my house and taking inventory of my modern day luxuries, things that I really like quite frankly. I love my washer and dryer, my high speed blender, my central heater, my computer/internet, television and iPhone. I like to fantasize about living like my great great grandmother and the simplicity of it all, but I also know that it wasn't a life that I could just go back to now and be all smiles. I don't want to kill and pluck my own chicken, make my own clothes and wash them by hand, or die from now easily curable infections, but I also don't like living in a world where big corporations think it is okay to add poison to our food and water, treat animals like garbage, and use human beings as science experiments.
I have read and re-read this like 20 times over the past few days trying to edit it for posting, but I just can't get it right. I feel like it doesn't flow, like I don't make very strong points and like I don't really know what I am talking about. Do I have a lot of research about some of the claims I have made, yes, but I don't want this to turn into a lecture. This is honestly just my brains processing things about our world and the way I see it. I don't claim to fully understand life generations before my own, but I also can't say that I really understand it now, and I'm right here living it.
Basically this blog post could go on and on and I could bring up much more of what bothers me out our disconnected society. I could, but I won't. I won't because I feel deep down that we are moving toward change. I think many people have had enough and want to go back to basics as it were. I think people are realizing that the fast paced, blow through life and make money mentality isn't healthy for anyone. I think, or at least I hope this is true. And until it is, I will continue to do my part to reconnect with the earth, my food, my child and my fellow man.
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