Technology addicts

[The2ndWheel]

Before anyone brings it up...I'm pretty sure most, if not all of my clothes are made by a 7 year old in SE Asia, I am completely dependent on the supermarket, I do(obviously) use a computer/internet, and provide my fair share of waste that helps pollute the habitat. I am part of the problem. I am a complex, hypocritical at times, part of the problem. I wish I had more courage not to be a part of the problem. I'm filled with self-doubt. I'm almost 29, and trying to work on it, but not always sure where, when, why, or how to go. So with that, enjoy the article. Or don't.

http://www.energybulletin.net/34095.html

When I was a child, Saturday was my favorite day of the week. On Saturday, all of the networks ran cartoons from early morning until noon. All morning, I would veg out while watching my favorite shows, with occasional breaks to bounce around the room pretending I was some superhero.

One day I was strolling along the shore of one of the Great Lakes with my father and my Grandfather. Somehow I must have brought up the subject of Saturday morning cartoons. My dad told me that when he was a kid, they did not have televisions. My Grandfather took it one step farther, stating that when he was my age, they did not even have radios. I thought about this for a moment, then I turned to my Grandfather and asked, "What did you do on Cartoon Day?"

My Grandfather was born right after the turn of the century, at the beginning of the technological explosion that was the Twentieth Century. When he was a child, they had no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no phone. He lived on a farm where they produced almost everything they needed, or they went without. There were no superstores, no convenience stores, and no strip malls. Every few weeks they went to town for supplies. Otherwise, they made do with what they had.

If they wanted to go somewhere, they walked. Or they hitched up the horse to the wagon. If they needed to travel more than 20 miles, they boarded a train. For the most part, however, everything they needed could be found at home, or within a five mile radius.

[Warpy]

1. My grandparents were born 1870-1881

They told my parents they felt more of a kinship to me because on cartoon day, I'd be sitting with my nose in a book while my cousins watched the set that someone had given them.

If they wanted music, they went to the piano and played it. Instead of CDs and sound systems, they had a music store that sold sheet music. News came from the newspapers, and each city had several. There were a few restaurants around, but if they wanted to eat, they grew it and cooked it themselves. School lunches were either at home or out of a sack. Lunches downtown involved street food. There was no presliced bread, although bakeries did exist for women who had more money than baking talent.

Chores included cleaning the ashes out of the floor of the coal furnace that provided heat by convection, shining shoes, feeding chickens and collecting eggs, weeding the garden, beating rugs, and generally helping parents out around the house with whatever needed to be done.

Both sides of my family were well off, so everybody got to go to high school rather than to work in a mill or on a farm. However, that didn't mean they were off the hook. The boys did paper routes, swept floors, sold things. The girls did childcare, worked with seamstresses, sold things.

The major difference between then and now isn't the cartoons on the tube, it's that children were essential parts of a home's economy. Their labor was necessary to the running of an efficient home.

[kestrel91316]

2. Similar story about my family. My grandfather, born and raised in a remote

valley in Eastern NV, lived his whole life on a ranch with no electricity or indoor plumbing. He died in 1970. They did have a house in town (60 miles away) with amenities, where they lived for a few years when my dad was in high school, but then went right back to the ranch when he left home.

Grandma finally got power and water in 1972 when they brought electricity into the valley, but I have many years of memories as a child of going to her outhouse and pumping water for her to bring into the kitchen from the red-handled pump out back. She sure enjoyed her bathtub and kitchen faucet and TEEVEE (became a soap opera addict, lol) after that.

When my dad's much older brothers were kids they NEVER went into town. They got all their clothes and shoes by mail order, and the two-room schoolhouse in Baker, NV went all the way through high school back then. They produced all their own meat (cattle ranch with some sheep, too; chickens and eggs; occasional pig; deer every fall) and fruits (small orchard) and veggies (big vegetable garden). Grandma was a good Mormon so she canned and preserved EVERYTHING she came across. They did have a propane fridge dating from the 1930s, IIRC, but it was small.

My dad grew up playing out in the sagebrush by himself, and his few toys were homemade for the most part. Didn't hurt him much to do without material possessions - he put himself through college by working HARD, and had quite the career in the USAF where he finished up with lots of fruit salad to show for it. He flew an F-4 over the ranch one summer (at less than 100 ft, lol) to give Grandma a thrill, and the whole valley came out of their houses to watch their native son play hotshot.

We only THINK we have to have all the goodies we've got these days. It is possible to have a rich life of great rewards and pleasures without "stuff". I'd give my eyeteeth to be able to live on that ranch now, and I'd cut the ties to the grid (plenty of sun and wind there for the little electricity I'd need).

[mikita]

3. kudos to you for

at least figuring it out before you're 30! Took me far longer. Thanks for posting this article.

[kestrel91316]

4. EXCELLENT article, BTW.

[Trillo]

5. Isn't it amazing?

"He lived on a farm where they produced almost everything they needed, or they went without."

I'm still angry that city folks like me weren't trained in school to survive without enriching another entity. There's some historical basis for that lack of education: when industrial-age education was first getting started, most kids lived on farms, and learned farming 'survival' by doing it at home. I've read that's the main reason we have, or used to have, summer vacation, so the kids could help with harvest.

I believe that today the corporatist has insured that kids in school do not know how to survive without the manic and magic consumption that characterizes our society, that future survival is instead predicated upon job seeking and holding, further, that individual's education includes daily doses of TV in various formats, including cartoon formats that hook the children into lifetime viewership.

Our ancestors knew how to do survive on their own, but that knowledge, and cultural heritage, has largely been lost -- and educators failed both to preserve it and pass it on to the great masses.

Today most farms are corporatist, and they only care about maximizing profit. They don't give a damn about neighbors or community or culture or humans pursuit of happiness, their only concern is their pursuit of profit.

~~~~~~~

In fairness, the Department of Agriculture and related universities do offer much agricultural knowledge for those adults who seek it. Curiously, some of this knowledge is not the organic knowledge our ancestors had, but a modern, corporate form of knowledge that helps to sell corporates' fertilizers.

[Ready4Change]

6. Yep.

And the worlds population in 1900 was about 1.5 billion. Less than one fourth what it is today.