here is crap for you. a confused and canceled version of a paper that hopefully you will hate because it sucks.
yay!
OBVIOUS LESSONS
i might go so far as to say that life is entirely composed of obvious lessons. unfortunately the reverse would then also be obviously true, that life itself is also a lesson that is exactly as difficult as the universe is big. in this "personal statement" i will attempt to provide supporting evidence for this idea, which, though it could never be proven, might still be true.
i read ishmael when i was sixteen, in my junior year of highschool. i didn't notice it at all. perhaps i didn't even read it. ecology was just another class, and back then school was just what was forced upon me, so i ignored as much of it as i could, mostly out of spite. some years later in college i read ishmael again, and found in it the very first sensible explanation of "how the world came to be this way" that i'd ever heard. that reading (and the several subsequent readings) changed my life. there is an obvious lesson exemplified here. it is simply: nothing is ever real to you until it is real to you. in high school, for my first experience with the telepathic gorilla, i'd barely come to terms with the fact that modern life didn't make much sense. mostly i was too caught up in being pissed off about it to even look for a solution, frequently so angry that i wouldn't listen at all.
that transformation involved much more than any one book. suddenly i was going to meetings, and just beginning to understand the world had previously only vexed me. i think i already knew that everything i had been told was a lie, but i was beginning to see what was real. i was exposed to many different and novel points of view, and started hearing some of the story behind the news. unfortunately what i began to learn from my new channels was mostly that i had no buisness in college, as at that time i had no use for it. i quickly dropped out once i realized that i was wasting valuable time (and money) simply by having no idea what i wanted to learn.
it is difficult to describe or define what had changed between my two experiences of Daniel Quinn's book that caused them to be so different for me. perhaps it was simply that in that interim, ecology had become real for me, instead of being a member of the class of the unreal and unimportant. the link between who i am now and who i was before i became, essentially, "green" is so strangely tenuous, the two lives are so fundamentally different in purpose and perspective, i sit and wonder often on the causal link between them. to an extent, i blame it all on a head injury that occured in the spring of my freshman year at santa cruz.
however, that obvious lesson, "nothing is ever real to you until it is real to you," has been repeated many times for me. there is much about the natural world that is never integrated into the anyone raised as in the modern surburbanites world, and many obvious lessons are late learned by people escaping the land of the inactive mind. and though the two classes, that of "what is" and also that of the "real to you" can never entirely overlap, it has always appeared to me that every obvious lesson i've learned about living on the land has been another poignant reminder of the bizarre world of lies and propoganda that suburbanites are members of and are subject to every day.
you can be told anything any number of times and agree (or not) that it is sensible and that it follows (or not) from your limited experience. however, any aphorism is devoid of emotional value, which is to say meaningless and more importantly without influence upon your actions, until, suddenly, it becomes part of you, and is integrated into your thinking. only then has it become part of your view of the world, and thus also a part of your considered interactions with the world, on either side of any interchange. i was dragged to church every sunday for eighteen years. "god" never became real to me. after reading paul and anne erlich's population bomb for a class that spring, armageddon became real to me.
if the tautology that nothing is true to you until it is true to you is itself true, it might follow that everything which is true to you is also obvious
after leaving UCSC in 1998 i started wwoofing, and essentially became a migrant farm-worker. i'd seen how lacking my education had been in teaching me anything whatsoever of any utility. i'd seen also that i'd lacked in my life any experience or understanding of nature and the non-human world, not to mention a total lack of usefull skills. so i went wandering, looking for a place i could fit in and learn how to do something. mostly, over the next two years, i found that figuring out all my new choices was about as difficult as anything been, and that nothing in my life had prepared me for the course i had found myself on, that i was far over my head. indeed much of what i had become accustomed to in my suburban upbringing, such as my eating habits, work ethic and cynicism have been nothing but a liability since trying to escape that life.
i learned more than how hard it
immediately following this realization was the cognitive consequence: i'm not going to be a farmer. while i hold famers in the highest respect, second only to designers, once i had integrated "plants like to grow," i knew that being a Farmer wasn't my path. once i could step back and see that growing food is mostly just an amalgamation of knowledge and techniques, combined with a willingness to work, it had lost it's mystery, and i knew that i'd have to keep looking. it was disappointing to me, because i knew that i could really have spent lifetimes working with plants without ever reaching an end, and possibly without even getting bored.
there are several clarifications i need to make on this statement. one: i intend to always have a garden and grow some portion of my own food. two: i hope to integrate plants and living systems into anything i design or build. i intend to continue practicing skills relating to food production, from cooking to fermentation. i learned not that to be a farmer was not what i wanted, but that it was not what i wanted primarily
again, these are obvious lessons. see also the fact that i've seen what it takes to live off of market gardening, and i know it would stretch my abilities for work to ever attempt it. i'm not-so-secretly a lazy person, which is one reason design appeals to me: i want to make things work better.
obvious lesson #3:
you don't always have a choice.
in my experience, i've always had a choice. posed with minor dillemas, from what to eat to where to live and what to do, there has always been a choice. i've always felt free to choose the high road or the low road in most any situation, having never felt any affinity for any classical moral system, not god nor country.
i've found, however, that there are some choices that aren't really choices at all. when my girlfriend told me that she was pregnant, and that i could be the father, or pay for an abortion and never see her again, i accused her of not giving me a choice at all. which isn't actually as difficult to deal with as i'd always imagined. ironically, the lack of choice has given me freedom from excessive deliberation, which is my response to most of the insanely complicated situations i've come across.
obvious lesson #4:
if you're not mature enough to use protection EVERY TIME, you're not mature enough to have sex.
this one is sufficiently obvious not to need any further explanation.
obvious lesson #5:
life isn't fair
as a child, for years my most annoying habit was to complain "that's not fair." more recently, i've become more able to distinguish between fairness, justice and other similar ideas. the non-choice i was given may not have been fair, but considering my actions and my mistakes, it wasn't unjust.
corrollary to #5: you can't ask for more than one chance
to clarify what i mean by this one would be TMI, but i've left it in for accuracy's sake.
yay!
OBVIOUS LESSONS
i might go so far as to say that life is entirely composed of obvious lessons. unfortunately the reverse would then also be obviously true, that life itself is also a lesson that is exactly as difficult as the universe is big. in this "personal statement" i will attempt to provide supporting evidence for this idea, which, though it could never be proven, might still be true.
i read ishmael when i was sixteen, in my junior year of highschool. i didn't notice it at all. perhaps i didn't even read it. ecology was just another class, and back then school was just what was forced upon me, so i ignored as much of it as i could, mostly out of spite. some years later in college i read ishmael again, and found in it the very first sensible explanation of "how the world came to be this way" that i'd ever heard. that reading (and the several subsequent readings) changed my life. there is an obvious lesson exemplified here. it is simply: nothing is ever real to you until it is real to you. in high school, for my first experience with the telepathic gorilla, i'd barely come to terms with the fact that modern life didn't make much sense. mostly i was too caught up in being pissed off about it to even look for a solution, frequently so angry that i wouldn't listen at all.
that transformation involved much more than any one book. suddenly i was going to meetings, and just beginning to understand the world had previously only vexed me. i think i already knew that everything i had been told was a lie, but i was beginning to see what was real. i was exposed to many different and novel points of view, and started hearing some of the story behind the news. unfortunately what i began to learn from my new channels was mostly that i had no buisness in college, as at that time i had no use for it. i quickly dropped out once i realized that i was wasting valuable time (and money) simply by having no idea what i wanted to learn.
it is difficult to describe or define what had changed between my two experiences of Daniel Quinn's book that caused them to be so different for me. perhaps it was simply that in that interim, ecology had become real for me, instead of being a member of the class of the unreal and unimportant. the link between who i am now and who i was before i became, essentially, "green" is so strangely tenuous, the two lives are so fundamentally different in purpose and perspective, i sit and wonder often on the causal link between them. to an extent, i blame it all on a head injury that occured in the spring of my freshman year at santa cruz.
however, that obvious lesson, "nothing is ever real to you until it is real to you," has been repeated many times for me. there is much about the natural world that is never integrated into the anyone raised as in the modern surburbanites world, and many obvious lessons are late learned by people escaping the land of the inactive mind. and though the two classes, that of "what is" and also that of the "real to you" can never entirely overlap, it has always appeared to me that every obvious lesson i've learned about living on the land has been another poignant reminder of the bizarre world of lies and propoganda that suburbanites are members of and are subject to every day.
you can be told anything any number of times and agree (or not) that it is sensible and that it follows (or not) from your limited experience. however, any aphorism is devoid of emotional value, which is to say meaningless and more importantly without influence upon your actions, until, suddenly, it becomes part of you, and is integrated into your thinking. only then has it become part of your view of the world, and thus also a part of your considered interactions with the world, on either side of any interchange. i was dragged to church every sunday for eighteen years. "god" never became real to me. after reading paul and anne erlich's population bomb for a class that spring, armageddon became real to me.
if the tautology that nothing is true to you until it is true to you is itself true, it might follow that everything which is true to you is also obvious
after leaving UCSC in 1998 i started wwoofing, and essentially became a migrant farm-worker. i'd seen how lacking my education had been in teaching me anything whatsoever of any utility. i'd seen also that i'd lacked in my life any experience or understanding of nature and the non-human world, not to mention a total lack of usefull skills. so i went wandering, looking for a place i could fit in and learn how to do something. mostly, over the next two years, i found that figuring out all my new choices was about as difficult as anything been, and that nothing in my life had prepared me for the course i had found myself on, that i was far over my head. indeed much of what i had become accustomed to in my suburban upbringing, such as my eating habits, work ethic and cynicism have been nothing but a liability since trying to escape that life.
i learned more than how hard it
immediately following this realization was the cognitive consequence: i'm not going to be a farmer. while i hold famers in the highest respect, second only to designers, once i had integrated "plants like to grow," i knew that being a Farmer wasn't my path. once i could step back and see that growing food is mostly just an amalgamation of knowledge and techniques, combined with a willingness to work, it had lost it's mystery, and i knew that i'd have to keep looking. it was disappointing to me, because i knew that i could really have spent lifetimes working with plants without ever reaching an end, and possibly without even getting bored.
there are several clarifications i need to make on this statement. one: i intend to always have a garden and grow some portion of my own food. two: i hope to integrate plants and living systems into anything i design or build. i intend to continue practicing skills relating to food production, from cooking to fermentation. i learned not that to be a farmer was not what i wanted, but that it was not what i wanted primarily
again, these are obvious lessons. see also the fact that i've seen what it takes to live off of market gardening, and i know it would stretch my abilities for work to ever attempt it. i'm not-so-secretly a lazy person, which is one reason design appeals to me: i want to make things work better.
obvious lesson #3:
you don't always have a choice.
in my experience, i've always had a choice. posed with minor dillemas, from what to eat to where to live and what to do, there has always been a choice. i've always felt free to choose the high road or the low road in most any situation, having never felt any affinity for any classical moral system, not god nor country.
i've found, however, that there are some choices that aren't really choices at all. when my girlfriend told me that she was pregnant, and that i could be the father, or pay for an abortion and never see her again, i accused her of not giving me a choice at all. which isn't actually as difficult to deal with as i'd always imagined. ironically, the lack of choice has given me freedom from excessive deliberation, which is my response to most of the insanely complicated situations i've come across.
obvious lesson #4:
if you're not mature enough to use protection EVERY TIME, you're not mature enough to have sex.
this one is sufficiently obvious not to need any further explanation.
obvious lesson #5:
life isn't fair
as a child, for years my most annoying habit was to complain "that's not fair." more recently, i've become more able to distinguish between fairness, justice and other similar ideas. the non-choice i was given may not have been fair, but considering my actions and my mistakes, it wasn't unjust.
corrollary to #5: you can't ask for more than one chance
to clarify what i mean by this one would be TMI, but i've left it in for accuracy's sake.