Final paper Blog Comments (in progress)

Gavin's Blog

I enjoyed the paper because it was very personal and heartfelt, however I think your title "How to avoid a meaningless life" doesn't fit with your paper, your essay, you list ways that long-boarding helps improve your life, which is something more personal to you. I'd like to see how you can apply the ideas you had in your paper to everyone since not everyone long-boards, and extend those ideas to the masses

 

Good and Meaningful Life Final Essay

A good and meaningful life can be studied from various angles, as it is a very prominent topic among things that live, obviously we don't want bad lives.  Naturally there will be someone to tell you how to live, either out of genuine care for you like your parents (in most cases) or just to control you in the case of governments and religions (in most cases).  Buts its important to sift through those messages, find parts you like and don't like about those lifestyles and synthesize and break down these ways of life to find something that works for you, no one completely knows who you are so no one can choose your life for you.

We've learned from different cultures how to live, each with different messages sometimes contradictory or illogical, but all the same we must consider and think about these messages.  Specifically I've learned from my grandmother, a representative of both an older generation and of a different country (Cuba to be specific), to value honesty and to be grateful for what you have.  I definitely agree with these teachings, for one these are just values so there are no demands from me, these are just ideas to think about.  My grandmother values a simple life with simple values and few conditions.

We've learned from animals, who I personally believe have good lives (in the case of wild animals, although it is debatable) to be more spontaneous.  As humans we've ignored our roots as primates and as animals.  For one humans need to accept that they are animals, secondly we need to accept that we are primates.  We as primates need to run around and play and climb on things and interact with people, which in our "boxed-in" society we don't get a chance to.  We as animals need to accept our bodies as well, while we shouldn't go around naked and ignore all thought, but we should accept our bodies, meaning we should understand our own bodies (since we are all different) and acknowledge that we are our bodies.  I definitely agree with these values, from my own experience I am happier when I play, when I say play I mean running around to run around, not just to lose weight or fill my quota of exercise, being at peace with your body will solve many different health problems and make you happier in return, we can see this in small children.

While studying health, physical, mental and emotional, we've learned that keeping yourself healthy will result in a better life, my own personal definition of health is the ability to do things, if you're sick you can't do much if you're mentally unhealthy you can't think as well etc.  Health comes from knowing your own body, the health nuts who follow fads, follow diets and training regiments that work for other people, when they should experiment with their bodies and find out what works for them.  Mental health and Emotional health can be measured by what the appropriate response is to a situation, to be emotionally healthy means to accept your emotions, hiding your anger when you're mad isn't healthy and neither is covering up sadness as we've all been trained to do (men at least).

The main moral I've taken from all of these studies is to accept yourself.  People are unhealthy and unhappy because they accept whatever is given to them.  To live a good life you must know your body, your mind, your animal heritage etc.  To accept yourself you must know yourself and to know yourself you need to know where you came from, which means knowing your immediate ancestors, parents grandparents, extended family etc. and further ancestors such as our evolutionary predecessors.  We can't just cover things up about ourselves, while I know its impossible to learn everything about ourselves (a discussion for another time) we can live better lives by learning more about ourselves.  People need to recognize that they are different and that we all have to potential to do great things if we accept ourselves for what we are.  A good life of health and happiness can lead to a meaningful life, once people learn to accept themselves they can go on to do great things.  This all boils down to knowledge, knowing and understanding yourself may uncover many weaknesses that were hidden, but knowing yourself will also uncover hidden potential.                 

Collapse Essay

Our modern society is based on Oil, an ever decreasing resource, when the oil reserves of the world are depleted we will have a collapsed society.  The collapse probably won't happen at the very last drops of oil, most likely our society will collapse due to the economic strains of not having oil, all of the other side effects of not having oil will kill us before the actual absence of oil sets in.

However we are blessed with knowledge, knowing that we will eventually run out of oil will help us to learn to use new sources of fuel and end our dependence on oil.  While that may seem unlikely we have started using solar panels and other forms of power.  While these power sources depend on oil, in solar panel production and delivery, and to turn the turbines in electrical power.  We can still research new ways of obtaining power, we, unlike many other societies, can see our demise coming.  Sadly, people will deny collapse until it's already happened and by then it's too late.

While it is also likely that something other than oil will destroy our society, peak oil has placed a death sentence on our way of life.  Unless we figure out ways to release our dependence on oil our society will collapse either close to the time we run out of oil, or randomly any time between then and now.  While peak oil predicts that we'll still have oil for at least another 30 years, now would be the time to start researching other power sources, sadly our government is more concerned with other things, which logically speaking it should tackle the more immediate issues, however our dependence on oil won't be something that can be quickly solved we should gradually within the next 30-40 years, ween ourselves off of oil, this way our society won't collapse, it will merely change its foundation, and once a structure has re-enforced its foundation it becomes much stronger.

While I don't think Americans should start stock piling food, we should be aware of what the absence of oil will do to our society and spend more time doing now, than wishing later.  The best way to keep from collapsing is to acknowledge your foundations and recognize their limitations, we're dependent on oil, therefore we should knowhow much is left and how much we really depend on it.  Aside from that spontaneous collapse is unavoidable, we can't predict whether some aliens will kill us all or anything like that.  We can only prolong our society from its immediate collapse, without a collapse there can be no improvement, "You must make the mistake before you can learn from it"          

Easter Island Reaction

Easter Island is an interesting case of collapse since it's an isolated community, until it's later years.  Easter Island was a fairly wealthy island in terms resources, until the Islanders became obsessed in competition with other clans.  To show off their resources they spent massive amounts of stone, trees and time to make several large statues.  In the process of making these statues they cut down full forests of trees to roll the statues into place.  The lack of trees made the soil loose and unhealthy, little could grow on it anymore.  Without trees the Islanders couldn't make canoes and fish for food, without any food they turned to cannibalism.  At the very end of all of this the Europeans came and claimed easter island as their own.

There are several important "clues" that hint at collapse that I've seen here.  Ignoring or forgetting your dependence on a resource, the Islanders cut down massive amounts of trees forgetting how much they needed them.  The Islanders also fought among themselves and competed, inner competition or division can also collapse a society.  In most societies I've studied that have collapsed almost got too advanced for their own good.  When a society becomes too advanced or too rich they tend to expand, physically in the case of the Roman Empire, Aesthetically in the case of Easter Island and its statues.  These expansions often lead that particular society's foundation to fail.  Metaphorically if you build a tower of blocks too high or branch out too much it will collapse, to sustain more blocks you must force re-enforce the base, and to do that you must dismantle the whole structure and start again.

America shows many of these signs in early forms, we're losing oil that we depend on, we fight internally on social levels (not nearly as violently as the Eater Islanders but enough to aid in a collapse), and we've expanded too much for our own good.  These are early signs of collapse, we may lose our dependence on foreign oil and use cleaner energies and learn to manufacture materials without crude oils.  Things like that can slow down a collapse but not stop it, we will eventually collapse like every society will.  However it is extremely hard to tell when a collapse will happen because while we may collapse on our own, it's far more likely that an outside source will destroy us.    

Industrial Food Essay

Most Americans wouldn't know exactly how their food is produced.  The only real reference most Americans have is the song "Old McDonald" where they just know what's and the farm and what it's there for.  They probably couldn't tell you the living conditions of the animals or their heath.  The sad reality is that most animals are kept as biological factories, churning out meat, eggs or milk at an efficient yet un-natural and un-healthy rate.  Crops are genetically engineered to yield more seeds and grow faster and provide more nutrients.  To make enough food to feed our nation we have to play god.

"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", an article by Jared Diamond says that agriculture in itself is flawed and is only used to sustain larger civilizations.  He describes it in a sort of "last-resort" tone, relating the agricultural lifestyle to a quantitative existence opposite to qualitative lifestyle of our ancestors.  Hunter/Gatherers were able to live well without the social burdens of laziness and political struggle over resources within that civilization.  Hunter/Gatherer societies were small enough that there was very little social order, at most there was a chief or leader who was chosen based on skill, not lineage.  Hunter/Gatherer societies also didn't have to deal with "dead-weight" citizens, the entire tribe worked except for the children, who learned how to hunt and gather from the elderly members of the group.  It's easy to see the qualitative aspects of Hunter/Gatherer society, in these groups true communism can exist and the population remains healthy due to their varied diets and active lifestyles.

I agree with the fact that Hunter/Gatherer society lacks many of the problems that we have in our world today, the only reason why that lifestyle seems worse than agricultural lifestyles is that Hunter/Gatherers depend on the agricultural societies for invention and things like art and entertainment.  Modern Hunter/Gatherer societies use guns and other modern tools to find food, things which they couldn't make on their own due to their lack of free time.  Unless that group of hunters was exceptionally good they wouldn't be able to develop as fast as an agricultural society.  While it isn't totally true that Hunter/Gatherers didn't invent anything (the spear, axe, bow and arrow are examples of this) they wouldn't be able to create advanced technologies at the rate we do now, and with that advanced technology they would create machines to hunt for them or breed their prey to kill it later, bringing us full circle to our flawed society.

Naturally we lived as Hunter/Gatherers, because humans are naturally omnivores so we can eat meat and vegetables, living as Hunter/Gatherers can be more efficient in terms of a varied diet.  In the kids film about farming, "VVVRRROOOOOOMM!!!" the farms grew massive quantities of a couple of vegetables, whereas Hunter/Gatherers can hunt many different kinds of animals outside of just pigs, cows and chickens, and can gather many kinds of wild grasses and roots that we would just call weeds and dismiss as food.  In out modern Agricultural society we use hormones and chemicals derived from these animals and plants we depend on, as Michael Pollan said in his book "The Omnivores Dilemma" "It's like eating corn with your corn".  We don't see food as a once living thing anymore, we view it as a string of proteins or sugars that we break down.  Using these words scientifically helps distance ourselves from the truth... what we ate was living (including vegetables) and had feelings and a personality (in the case of animals).  As Hunter/Gatherers we become closer to our food and actually come to terms with the food and accept the cycle of life for what it is.

In the movie "Our Daily Bread and Butter" animals are treated horribly and given hormones to grow faster and are kept in small confined spaces.  These animals don't really get a chance to live, they just sort of exist and die.  Our way of killing animals makes them stressed and unhealthy, so it makes sense that as we eat them we become unhealthy.  While I don't disagree with farm raised animals, I think they should be happy and have room to move and get a chance at life.  If not for the moral conflict than for the health aspect, eating an animal that's naturally raised will be healthier.  There's one scene in the movie where a crop duster kills a field of sunflowers to harvest the seeds, this illustrates that as we grow more and more food we have exponentially more waste.  As Hunter/Gatherers we had little to no animal waste, and whatever waste we had was eaten by scavengers or composted, agricultural society encourages surplus, which encourages waste.

Sadly Hunter/Gatherer society works mainly in small scale or small divisions of a large culture as the Native Americans demonstrated.  While not impossible, it's very unlikely that most people will accept an active fuller lifestyle over the luxurious lifestyle we have today.  There are small pockets of Hunter/Gatherers left who have much better food cultures than we do. My investigation of Hunter/Gatherer societies has reinforced my argument of "Natural is better" animals tend to survive better when they don't actively evolve and let nature do its work. As humans who have actively interfered with our natural processes like hunting eating and mating we alter our evolution, but thats a larger discussion for another time. In short, we need to keep to our roots, while Hunter/Gatherer society isn't accepted by larger civilizations I do think it is a better way of life and should be considered as an alternative to those who hate our agricultural society.

Response to Industrial Food Production

The internet flash cartoon "The Meatrix" addresses many different reasons for why industrial food production is wrong, mainly on the part of animal cruelty or health.  They bring up valid points about pollution in farms due to the bad hygiene of the animals.  They also address certain health problems that can come from artificially created hormones that they ween their cows with which can cause health problems for the animals and the consumer.  While these facts are true I don't have a strong hatred for these farm owners, the farm owners are wrong for what they're doing but our society is spoiled on food.  Stopping this mass production wouldn't be supported by the majority of America (the fat people who don't care about animals outnumber the skinny educated people who do care).  I see mass production farms as necessary only to our fattened culture, we can't change our farms until we learn to appreciate animals and live on less food.

Michael Pollan, writer of "The Omnivores Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food" was interviewed by Stephen Colbert.  In this interview Stephen Colbert jokingly asked Pollan if he let his son eat cocoa pebbles, which would be deemed as unhealthy, to which he responded yes but he clarified that we should enjoy certain foods in moderation.  The lesson to be learned from this is that we should be responsible for our own health, letting someone tell us how to eat doesn't make sense because they don't understand our health.  He brought up a point about how humans can't process high fructose corn syrup as well as natural substances, which seems logical.  This leads to health problems that we all suffer from since HFCS is in most of what we eat.        

Comments on Food Blogs

I like the idea of "Pushing" foods on shoppers to influence them to buy them. Do you think that every company tries to "Push" for customers in this way and some just shine brighter than others? or is this a more organized and deliberate way for someone to push food items on us?

-commented on Ian's blog 

I like how you distinguish between "American" foods which are few and fatty, and other foods which aren't american. I would like to see what your opinion is on "Americanized foods" how do we alter foreign foods to fit our American lifestyle?

-Commented on Henry's blog