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The Fatted Pig
If you haven’t already, check out this great post over at Cryptogon about the author’s first experience of slaughtering a pig for food. Actually, it sounds like he didn’t do the actual slaughtering, but he still came away with a powerful experience and insights such as those below which I find myself agreeing with more and more:
Talking about how everyone, the government, or the person or group of your choice should behave, waving signs about it, making websites about it, selling t-shirts with pithy comments… That’s a waste of time.
[…] All the talk about living a sustainable lifestyle, preparing for the crash, re-visioning the future etc. etc. is mostly a waste of time. By engaging in this sort of endless babble, all you’re doing is postponing the acceptance of the hard—and sometimes ugly—realities involved with practicing what you preach.
[…] The people who supposedly “get it” are taking classes on everything from permaculture to biodiesel, they’re attending feel-good-me-too Peak Oil meetings, they’re making websites, they’re waving signs, they’re writing books, they’re buying books, they’re selling books. Don’t forget the endless DVDs and bumperstickers… and underwear, baseball caps and pins. It’s nonsense!
Of course, these thoughts come from somebody who makes a website (well two somebodies, if you include me in the chain), and who goes on to salivate over the rising price of gold. In any case, I don’t point that out to pick on Kevin. It’s something I’ve been struggling with a lot myself lately which is why I was excited to see somebody else coming to the same realization. Only problem is, of course, once you reach that point - what happens to your website? Can you still write in it daily and engage in conversations about this stuff without being a total hypocrite?
- Monkeys & Pig go on a rampage
- Functional Stoneware & Handmade Pottery For Friends
- A short hiatus
- The Dude Question
- Wart-hog or War-thog?
- Prev: Lockdown
- Next: The Seven Vessels
April 18th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Everyones a hypocrite tim and half the battle is realising that i think and its those who dont have this self realisation that are trapped within there own presumptious prison. If this realisation was brought about by you writing then it was that same process that awoke this dawn so maybe its just part of the journey. If it makes you happy or broadens youre horizons then wheres the harm?
April 18th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
I thought you wrote “where’s the ham?” cause that’s what I want to know.
I think there’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying though, about acknowledging within yourself that the basis of your life is *not* a logical consistency. That there’s something else to your core which you can be true and consistent to, without getting caught in weird traps of recursive logic….
April 18th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
I don’t think I really understand your point, here. Are you talking about the pointlessness of “blogging,” contemporary activism, something like that?
If so: Don’t think about it so much. Ultimately, from a certain perspective, *everything* is pointless. Nothing you do will ever work out how you expected it to. At the same time, you really never know the long-term effects of any of your actions. In the final reckoning, it may be the Unintended Consequences of the things you do that have the largest impact on the world you leave behind.
Furthermore, we may all be tools of one or more invisible space-alien gods. That sounds like a joke, but on some level it’s kind of serious. Who really knows the forces that guide our lives? There is no way to be positive that the minutia of our day-to-day existence does not have some import to the machinations of an invisible larger plan… be it good or evil.
To sum up, any existential malaise you feel at any given time is unsubstantiated. We never know the whole story. Too much faith is sinful, but a tiny pinch can be a great tonic against the chilling effects of too much doubt.
-z
April 18th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
I get caught in those traps all the time but i also think that rather than traps they are a basic survival tool(so to speak), change is a difficult thing and realising that who we are is based upon a self perception that in reality is probably flawed could undermine that most definate self that we all cling to so dearly. I would love to be that person who observes ‘all’ knowing that all possibilities are viable and just enjoying the ride.
p.s. “The ham” is breathing fire all over the networks.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
WELL if you’re living in a society which can sell you TAP WATER back to you for $5 a pop, what more do you really expect? And the people who are more advanced in terms of preparation/thought/etc. in regards to the crash of society will not need to make posts or write books on the subject; they will be living their lives as such and have no need to read up on it or generally be involved.
So, these are useful tools for those still in the beginning stages of preparation, who are still used to living their lives based on a certain pattern. Hopefully these tools, once developed, will allow them to break off the need for tools after a certain point. Just be happy you’re able to provide such a role to those who are seeking actual change…
April 18th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
I find it strange all the people preparing for the crash because killing pigs is going to be the least of your worries. As Alive shows when the choice is starving we can dig deep and do what is need to survive.
The big issue is going to be killing other people.
Its not going to be a case of just shrugging about the fact we won’t have all our technological toys and heading off to set up a nice little farm. At least here in the UK (and I imagine in most developed countries) the population is only sustainable through intensive agriculture. After the crash the number of people will have to “stablise” at a lower level and that means millions of people starving. However, they aren’t going die quietly - they are going to kill for land and those with land are going to have to kill them to keep it.
Also as we’ve used up the easily available natural resources if we slip down the development ladder it may be that we aren’t going to be able to make it back up again. So it won’t be a case of braving it out and rebuilding again - we will be straight back to the Dark Ages for good.
Perhaps people would be better off spending their time trying to make sure the crash doesn’t happen in the first place. If people are doing that then they need to get organised and… set up blogs, write books and even make T shirts with pithy comments on them.
April 18th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
There are already millions of people starving in Africa. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/AMMF-6NYC9F?OpenDocument
Military analysts predict civil war to occur for control of the scarce water in the region.
Today Oil is at over 71$ a barrel, the US economy will take a hit which in turn will hit the world’s economy.
China continues to grow exponently, stretching the demand for .
I always had Mad Max fantasies as a child- but I don’t want them to come true. I remember I went without food for 35 hours and I felt terrible. I can only imagine the horror of a human being starving to death.
Is capitalism the enemy? Maybe the world needs a New Deal. Lastly in order to eat the bacon somebody has to kill the pig. Imagine having to slaughter pigs to make your living?
April 18th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
I don’t think you are a hypocrite (period) There isn’t an instruction manual for people to follow here. Maybe we can live like indians and appreciate the Great Spirit and have the Coyote trickster have his revenge.
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/41666
A person by the name ZachsMind sums up Tim’s approach “he doesn’t seem to be looking for answers so much as having fun exploring the questions.”
— noted- funny that the URL ends in 666.
How do you link something without having to copy the entire thing out? My computer ignorance is profound.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Honestly, although there’s nothing wrong with learning some ‘real world’ skills, I don’t see any reason to go chicken little and run off toi prepare for the end of the world. The reality of the situation is, there is NO way to really be prepared for the future, because we can only guess at what it will bring- and so neglecting to learn and use skills that keep us alive and fed in the here and now (ie, our websites and whatnot) in favor of preparing for a “chop wood, carry water” future that may or may not happen is not being pragmatic, it’s ridiculous. In the event of catastrophe, it’s the people who can adapt and learn and adjust to hardship that are going to do well- just how many years in advance of an improbable future are we to be expected to learn to make biodeisel, anyhow?
April 18th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Emperor, people are not going to kill for food. That is a lie. We are socially conditioned to starve to death before killing for food. It has rarely, if ever, happened in the past in times of a famine, so I doubt that it will happen in the future.
Also, it is too late for us to try to prevent the crash, not that those in power would let that happen anyway (for it would involve them not having so much power and control).
So, IMO, learning to kill pigs for ourselves is exactly what we need to do.
April 19th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
A lot of these arguements about food are kind of idiotic really. Most everyone in the western world has no clue how much food you really need. You can easily last a month or more on nothing but water. If you’re prepared to chew grass, and eat berries, you can go on basicly forever. Unless you live in the desert, the worst thing that’ll happen to you is learning to live without three comfort meals a day to numb you to the fact you hate your life and are so bored the only way you can pay attention to it is to get high on sugar and comatose when you crash.
as for hypocracy, it’s hardly a new issue. socrates was talking about moral consistancy in ancient greece. human beings aren’t machines. we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we’re here and not only can we not always justify ourselves, but that the need for justification is a fiction in the first place.
Uncle terrence once said; where is it writ in adamantine that a bunch of talking monkeys should have any relationship to truth whatsoever?