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| thanks to Billonions |
Nutritious Imperial Garbage
By Aaron McCarty
(special to Collapsenet)
I recently sent my resignation into the Matrix and subsequently I'm in the middle of moving to a new town. My wife and I are downsizing our life so as to reduce the dependance we have on the Matrix. That requires that we do a few things that at first glance seem irresponsible, degrading, and dirty. To be clear, it only appears that way when viewed through the consciousness that the matrix and American Hologram provide to you. I'm beginning to realize that the Matrix operates under an Orwellian dialectic.
Orwell made this process clear in 1984 with the crafting of double speak as defined by the New Speak Dictionary. The process of double speak is pernicious because we use language to communicate what we mean and believe in reality, and more importantly we use it to decide on what is real and what is fake. Dictionaries are an important anchor where understanding one another is concerned...especially where electronic communication such as this is concerned. In fact, the protagonist, Winston Smith, works for the "Ministry of Truth" where he spends his day re-writing published newspaper articles so as to stay congruent with the Party propaganda of the day. Double Speak makes the "Ministry of Truth" make sense to the inner party members. The Ministry of Truth is actually the Ministry of Lies. In our time, the "Ministry of Truth" is Main Stream Media (MSM). It has gotten to the point where nothing that is seen on television should be believed as true. What you see on the television should be taken as propaganda as a matter of course. The internet is hardly better and in many cases worse. With the consumer grade software that is available for image and video manipulation there is nothing digital that should be believed. I believe what I read on Collapsenet because I have vetted Michael Ruppert by reading Crossing the Rubicon and Collapse. MCR has proven his trustworthiness as a news source to me by his work.
Double Think works by degrees. In the beginning of 1984 there is a scene where a character is bragging about how short the next Newspeak Dictionary is going to be. There is no place for nuance in Newspeak. Each word removed from our language decreases the amount of nuance available for expression. If we cannot express nuance than we become much more obtuse intellectually. The process of shortening a language is designed to dumb us down. Without nuance we can't tell why we feel like shit, because we cannot express why, even to ourselves. We just know that something is off, but nobody else can explain it, so it must just be something wrong with us. This process ends with an exponential growth in bureaucratic bull shit and a nation taking nearly 2/3rd of the anti-depressant's consumed in the world. Let me repeat that, we are a nation that takes nearly 2/3rd of the anti-depressants consumed in the world. We are a nation that prescribes neuron altering frankenchemicals to children who are barely old enough to talk. Why is this considered acceptable?
I recently witnessed something so horrifying that it made my soul wretch and cough. I found myself in a local organic food store in order to acquire some very well made boxes for free (apple boxes are great if you are moving..very high quality). The manager of the store told me last week that he would save me some boxes and to come back on Wednesday, and so that's what I did. On my way out of the store with my two free apple boxes I happened across a scene that struck me as off. There was a produce employee pitching avocados into a cart as fast as he could pitch them. He had to, because my best guestimation would be that he had about 280 left to go. He looked like he was ready to kill himself (due to his status in the Matrix I'm sure). Next to the cart was another cart with four boxes full of avocados.
"Are you throwing those avocados away?" I asked incredulously.
"Yeah, their too mushy. See.." as he handed me one to test for myself.
"This avocado is perfectly ripe right now...doesn't get any better than this."
"Yeah, I know, but we can't sell them like this, they want them to be like this one." He hands me an avocado from one of the boxes he's making room for. It's hard as a rock.
"This avocado won't be worth eating for at least a week!"
"I know."
"So you're just going to throw them away huh?"
"Yep, it's what they want us to do."
"Well can I have some of them then?"
"I can let you take them home but you have to promise to use them today if I let you take them"
"No problem man, I'll just go home and make a huge batch of guacamole and my family well be crappin' green for a few days." He didn't think my joke was funny.
So I opened one of my apple boxes and made to start pitching 20 or 30 avocados into it when he quickly said, "I can't let you have them for free!"
"You can't? But you are going to throw them in a dumpster?"
"I know, it's terrible, but it's what they want us to do." Alright, this is a corporate store, I get it. I'm a reasonable man. Avocados are ridiculously expensive in South Carolina this time of year (I wonder why?) and so I figure I can score some Avocados for dirt cheap. The store can at least get their money back...it's win win.
"So can you sell them to me at a discount?"
"I'm not authorized to do that, you'll have to talk to the manager."
"Alright, thanks brother." I should have talked to the manager, but I didn't. I had my hands full with the two large apple boxes, and I had a house located in the Matrix that I had to pack up. I left the store without rescuing the Avocados, and with my head marinating in the rich metaphorical symbolism. I had just witnessed one of the most nutritious fruits on the planet being made into waste. Nothing explains this better than doublethink. How is this not doublethink? What else explains it?
This is a perfect example of the disease that America has been sickened with. Over the last week I have found myself behind shopping malls opening dumpsters in search of boxes. Go to any moving company's website and see how much money you can urinate away buying moving boxes. I've scored all of 300 dollars worth of boxes and all I needed was a packing tape dispenser and 10 dollars worth of packing tape. I opened up a dumpster behind a grocery store the other day and almost started crying. Inside the dumpster was probably 50 pounds of saran wrapped cow steaks, a clear trash bag full of broccoli, and another one full of leaf lettuce. Behind a Dollar General, I found three small balls made of petroleum with characters from the "Cars" film printed on them. They were still in the plastic wrapped and hermetically sealed petroleum container that they were displayed in. What was wrong with this 10 dollar item you ask? One of the balls needed some air. I rescued the package and my wife sold it online for 7 buck after my 20 month old toddler, Ayden Zen, had his fun with them.
We are a nation that is drowning in our own depravity. We bomb nations full of innocent people for petroleum so that we can ship avocados, raise cattle, and make our kids toys just so that we can send it all to the nations dumpster. It doesn't end there, because once all of this perfectly good food (and all other manner of petroleum) gets to the dump, it ends up contributing to the green house gases in our atmosphere. I could have grilled 50 pounds of steak, served a nice salad, and had some perfect guacamole for free. I could have fed a neighborhood with our "waste." I didn't, but next time, I will. In fact, my resignation from the Matrix has allowed me to see more clearly. I'm not afraid to be looked down upon by those still in the Matrix, as they surely will do upon seeing me peruse through a dumpster.
How much money do you think those stores would have sold nearly 300 organic avocados, 50 pounds of steak, 30 pounds of broccoli, and 10 pounds of leaf lettuce for? It would have retailed at nearly 1000 dollars. But this is not the most egregious aspect of this anecdote of mine. There are millions, probably nearly a billion, of starving people on this Earth. America is so sick that it would rather contribute to the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere than feed the starving. If nothing else, this all could have at least been composted and used to add nutrition, health, to edible plants, and therefore people. You would have never caught me in a dumpster before I told the Matrix to dig a hole and get in it. I had too much pride. Now I see the "Zombies," as we call them here on collapsenet, as zombie robots enchanted by imperial doublethink propaganda. So what do I care if they see my ass hangin' out of a dumpster in pursuit of perfectly edible petroleum that they would have bought 12 hours before for nearly 1000 dollars. If you still have not liberated yourself from the Matrix. I promise you that you can get by without it. After all, there is an obscenely disgusting amount of wealth in our imperial dumpsters...and a lot of people have died to put it there.
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12 comments:
I've eaten out of a dumpster in Sedona AZ and Bozeman MT. I built a greenhouse and a raised-bed poly hot house for my last girlfriend, almost entirely from scrap I hauled from dumpsters. During the housing boom, I probably could have built an entire house, with material pulled from dumpsters. If garbage is a form of negative karma, Americans are accumulating lifetimes of payment.
www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com
Oh man, you should have headed back for the dumpster those avocados ended up in later that evening. I wouldn't mind crapping green for a week via guacamole consumption. I love the stuff, love making it from scratch, but it's expensive when the avocados are organic. As it should be, I suppose, when you live in the northwest.
I actually have never done any dumpster diving, though I've been the recipient of food from other people's dumpster divings. It's quite the sport in Portland. To the point that some stores have separate dumpsters for stuff that's still good, or will leave it purposefully by the side, and other stores put their dumpsters under lock and key to keep people out. I think it's even become a challenge to find a dumpster that's not already being actively dived, particularly if there's often good stuff in it.
I believe it was Ginger, who owns the farm I'm living on, who told me the story of one day checking out on a whim the dumpster behind a chocolate factory. Sure enough, it was filled with blocks of wrapped chocolate--I think she noted that they were perhaps a bit irregular, so maybe hadn't been cut right or something. Either way, they found themselves with pounds of excellent, dark chocolate. Best score they ever made.
My work on farms has shown how much waste there can be in the field, as well, even before the possibility of store-level waste comes in. It hasn't been too bad on the farms I've been on, but I've seen it in the fields of nearby, more industrialized farms. It's crazy how much perfectly good food gets discarded because it has some ticky-tack imperfection. At least when it's left in the field, though, it has a chance to rot back into the soil or feed a wide variety of other creatures. It's insane when we throw it into a dumpster, heading for the local landfill, often to be capped and rot into slime, deprived even of oxygen for proper decomposition. We're an insane culture indeed.
Joel
Of The Hands
what is it that JMG calls the next economy? The "scavenge economy?" I think that's correct, my copy of ecotechnic future's in a box in a POD right now.
My wife and I fully intend to run a business from scavenging. There is so much wealth in America that you can make a living dumpster diving, and a good one at that. Like I said in the blog, I don't care what people think about me diving in a dumpster. Around here it's not something that is accepted like it is in Portland. Where are you located in Oregon Joel. My dad has some property on "Bly" mountain I believe. We almost moved there but I didn't think I'd be able to garden much. The property is about 5000 ft in elevation. Do you know anything about the area?
I wouldn't worry about the elevation, Sepp Holzer raises lemon trees in the Austrian Alps. It's all about creating microclimates.
Joel, in Biblical times, Israelite farmers were only allowed to harvest their fields once. After the field had been harvested, anyone was allowed to come and "glean" what was left. This was their form of welfare, and much like dumpster diving, it was mostly the poor who did it, so it was looked down upon.
I believe JMG calls it the "scarcity economy"...but I think I like the "scavenge economy" better.
He calls our current times "scarcity industrialism" and then talks about a "salvage economy," I believe, which would be the next step. I think I have that right, anyway. I remember when I first read that blog post, it sort of blew my mind. Seems old hat now, but I was talking to a WWOOFer about it a few days after I read it, trying to blow his mind, as well.
I imagine there'll be plenty of salvage/scavenging businesses in the not-too-distant future. Hell, there's plenty now. I remember putting up a post on Craigslist about a year ago for someone to come haul away an old BBQ from my apartment--they could have it free, so long as they came and picked it up. It hadn't been up more than a couple minutes and I was getting emails from multiple people. The guy who came and got it was asking about other items made out of metal while he was there.
That was in Portland. Now I'm on the coast, toward the north. Specifically, I'm around the Nehalem/Manzanita area, though that probably doesn't mean anything to you.
I'm not familiar with Bly Mountain, but I looked it up and it seems it's over a bit east of Klamath Falls. That's in the southern part of the state and toward the middle. Just went through that area by train last week--it's really beautiful, forested. Perhaps a bit drier, though it's not too far east. I really don't know much about how the climate would be out there, but I imagine you could do plenty of things, especially if you're clever about it. As John notes, you can do a lot to create favorable conditions.
Thanks for the information, John. That seems a good practice, even if it was looked down upon. The first farm I worked at donated some occasional produce to the local food bank and also would call over there to let them know when there was a bed with veggies left in it that weren't going to be harvested (string beans, for instance.) Sometimes they would come out and do some gleaning before we pulled the crop to get ready for the next planting.
One of my plans for the garden this year is to plant a little extra to take to the food bank. Of course, the first step in that is a successful garden. We'll see how it turns out.
I think you are correct about JMG's labels.
Ok so what you said had me thinking...
"America is so sick that it would rather contribute to the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere than feed the starving. If nothing else, this all could have at least been composted and used to add nutrition, health, to edible plants, and therefore people"
Why don't you figure out a way to start up an association called "composted greenhouse gasses" or "Nutritious Imperial Garbage" Create this association or whatever and go to these stores these places just wasting the perfectly good foods and have them sign a contract with you so you can collect this food that you can either eat or compost. You collect sort through make the compost and sell to local farmers. Sounds like an idea to me =o)
Angela, that's a great idea! One I've had before. Unfortunately American law doesn't agree. Those stores throw that food away because they don't want to be sued. They know it's still edible, but it's a way of limiting liabilities. So anything corporate would be out.
You might be able to find an owner operated restaurant that would maybe sign a contract with you. I know you can get coffee grounds from certain coffee houses. But that's not edible and so liability is next to nothing.
So pending you could find enough places to supply you with the food...you'd still have challenges. Neighbors would complain if you didn't have enough land to keep it hidden. You could keep the smell next to nothing by composting properly, but it would be an eye soar. If you had enough land, you could get around that. Next you would have to have at least a bobcat to rotate the heaps to keep them composting aerobically. Now you're talking about needing investment capital...say 20,000 to start. That's doable cause I have good credit.
However, the insurmountable problem that I would have would be a lack of clientele. I'm sure I could find people interested for gardening purposes, but around here people just typically don't give a shit about "green". Like any business, it would be a risk. If I were going to attempt to go into business for myself I would get into vermicomposting. I'm just not a business man. It requires putting yourself out there and talking to a lot of people. It requires marketing (which Wendy could do).
At any rate, I don't have enough land to do something like that.
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