The War We've Been Through

I’m starting here with a confession. 

And, well, a list of ingredients: CORN SYRUP, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WHEAT FLOUR, SUGAR, CITRIC ACID, MALIC ACID, TARTARIC ACID, GLYCERYL MONOSTEARATE, GLYCERIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, COLOR ADDED RED 40. 

Can you guess what garish monstrosity of the modern era this delightful mix of ingredients creates? I’ll give you a hint, I was in high school, and I would eat it frequently for lunch—not in the lunchroom, but in the library while doing homework.  Sold for $1 in the school spirit store, circa early 2000’s.

Strawberry sour punch straws. 

What was I thinking? Was I being fifteen? This was an era where the food currency was a calorie, and all calories were created equal.  It was an era where skinny was good and, for me at least, rebellion was not open.  Most often, I would skip lunch, but if I was really hungry, sour punch straws were how I got through a day.  A day riddled with anxiety, depression, lack of focus, and an extreme tendency to daydream.

I’m going to begin first with our food culture, but my overall contention here is that this is a vivid picture of warfare.  A kind of spiritual warfare that has had profound impacts on our day to day lives in terms of happiness, relationships, politics, wellness, productivity, fertility, and ultimately, our humanity.

Food

So, I think we’ve all woken up on this.  Collectively, we are all searching for health, and perhaps we always have been.  But our eyes were on calories and completely neglecting Minerals. We were busy, so we bought ultra-processed food instead of food prepared using Wise Traditions.  A large and valiant campaign against germs almost defeated us through anti-biotics, hand sanitizer, and a total lack of lacto-fermented foods.  But here we are, kimchi and sauerkraut buffs, making sourdough, and embracing raw dairy.  Given the rises in the auto-immune conditions, eczema in our babies, dementia in our elderly, we want the toxins out. We are even trying to get the 10,000 food additive list…researched instead of labeled as GRAS.

Diaspora

By the time I was that fifteen year old eating sour punch straws in a library, our family had had four houses and I had gone to nine different schools.  I consider this about average.  And then, I went to multiple schools for college and probably changed apartments ten times.  Again, common!  But what is given up in our modern era when children grow up and move across the country, divorces pull families into literal pieces, grandparents downsize or move to Florida?  Rootedness. History.  Culture. A place under the stars.  Meet the Anastasia Foundation and browse their designs, as you build your homesteads, your kitchen gardens—as you build your families and your legacies.

Industrial Revolution

The anti-farm sentiment in our country is perhaps the most glaring, obvious example of a people at war against itself.  Where does food come from? Farms.  Farming and growing food should be viewed as the divine, glorious occupation of a free, wise, loving people.  Instead, consumerism drove factories to take over our mentality, causing us to view cities as the Promised Land and view the natural as dirty, stinky, and backward.  But the war is more than one of propaganda, it goes down to the food being a weapon between nations against the health of children.  Moms across America is taking on glyphosate. RFK is taking on food additives. Oh, and there is a Homestead Tsunami. 

Public School

John Taylor Gatto was two time teacher of the year in New York State.  He worked for thirty years in public school, and—allowing for the true, kind intentions of those handful of sweet, life-changing teachers and friendships—we have mostly all been through the public school system, and would find it hard not to agree with his assessments.  Here are a few of his quotes:

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.”

― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”

― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Debt

What a lie! Debt slavery steals the peace and joy and freedom of any human being that calls on its name. And when my generation was coming of age, farming was not on the horizon as an option, the trades were disparaged and called dirty, and factory work was considered beneath the worth of every American.  Instead?  What was commanded of us by the overlords of our generation?  College.  Bought dearly with a borrowed future.  This debt hangs over us and influences voting, family choices, ability to buy houses, and ultimately sets us on a backward treadmill, derailing dignity and mental health.

Television, Social Media, Screen Addiction

Turn if off.  All of it. Anyway you can.  Every way you can. But probably you went to school for decades, so see above quotes for understanding how you got here. We are all in this together, trying to see our way out.

Sun, Water, Air…and EMF

What is the human being’s natural environment?  So much is being studied about circadian rhythm, structured water, toxic air, and the ever-present dread EMF. Personally, I'm a novice in these areas so I don't feel ready to write about them. Again, we are all in this together, trying to see our way out.

God

What is the human being’s purpose in life? Is there a reason to return to faith, and what will we find there? How can a Good God let Evil exist... and what about The Problem of Pain?

Pandemic

Pearl Harbor woke America up and we joined in World War II, ultimately winning the war and changing the course of nations. Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto wrote “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”  The pandemic woke up many, moms in particular, who were looking for a way to give to the next generation a healthy, hopeful world.  It was a wake-up call. Look at what is going on in your town, in your home. It is warfare, and it has taken so much. No more. Beat your spears into plowshares, dig your hands in your own dirt, and grow your own food under your own stars. 

This is a place and time to start being human again.