The death of knowledge about self-sufficiency

[Beetlegeuse]

This highlights why I scoff at people who think making the compromises necessary to survive "in the Big City" is somehow laudable. The truth is they're the least self-sufficient people on the planet, which IMHO leaves them in a sorry state.


REAL AMERICA

The death of knowledge about self-sufficiency

Exclusive: Patrice Lewis notes how we've forgotten 5,000 years' worth of skills in 100 years

By Patrice Lewis
Published April 24, 2020 at 7:36pm

When I was a young teen, I read a sobering statement – that most Americans would starve to death standing next to a cow in a field of ripe wheat. In other words, most people don't have the faintest idea how to obtain food from elemental sources.

In the age of coronavirus, this statement is coming back to haunt me. The pandemic has caused an interruption in supply lines, and for the first time in decades, Americans may face shortages. We're not used to seeing empty shelves at the supermarket. How secure is our food supply?

For 5,000-plus years of civilization, mankind has honed thousands of survival skills. How to build a home from raw materials. How to make a fire without matches. How to hunt animals with only the most primitive of tools. How to make those primitive tools. How to raise crops, harvest them and preserve them through the upcoming year.

And here's what bothers me: We've forgotten 5,000 years' worth of skills in one hundred years.

A century ago, many of our forebears still lived on farms without electricity. They knew how to get through a year without depending on too many external sources for their everyday needs. The survival skills children learned at their parents' knees were still being handed down.

Those skills are mostly lost in our modern times – a tragic loss, in my opinion, because recapturing them is so difficult.

When old-timers die, they take their combined wisdom and knowledge with them unless the younger generation takes the time to learn it. The older generation may be willing to pass on their skills and experiences, but what if the younger generation doesn't want to learn those skills because technology has replaced it? The wisdom is lost.

Make no mistake, there's a reason modern technology has replaced old-fashioned methods. It's better, faster, cleaner, easier and more efficient. But if modern technology should disappear, what then?

Four months ago, many people would assume this was an irrational line of thinking. Now, not so much.

In first-world countries like America, technology has allowed us to ignore or work around nature. In the last hundred years or so, the age-old human necessity of working with the cycle of reaping and sowing – and preparing for lean times – has fallen into disfavor and even ridicule.

We no longer have to be self-sufficient. We no longer have to store our harvest to tide us over lean times. As a result, we've forgotten how. Improvements in farming techniques, coupled with the ease of importing foods from all over the world, has made food supplies so cheap and abundant that no one bothers stocking up any longer. Just-in-time (JIT) deliveries keep our store shelves full. E-commerce offers near-instant gratification. China manufactures everything we want.

And for decades, we've gotten away with it. Everything was abundant. So abundant, in fact, that Americans have forgotten what it's like not to have everything. This complacency has result in many of the time-tested methods of food preservation, husbandry, building, sewing, metal working, carpentry and other basic self-reliance skills being forgotten by everyone but a few dedicated specialists.

These mega-corporate experts provide us with genetically modified foods and prepackaged meals full of unpronounceable ingredients, year after year, decade after decade. It's gotten to the point where there are entire generations of people who have no idea where eggs and meat come from, who are suspicious when they see a dusting of dirt on a potato (if they even buy a potato in the first place over frozen French fries) and who think raw milk will kill them. These are the people who would starve to death standing next to a cow in a field of ripe wheat. These are the people whose eyes widen with wonder the first time they taste homemade bread or pick a sun-warmed strawberry … because they've never had REAL food before.

And this makes us intensely weak and vulnerable. As we're finding out, it just takes a burp in the smooth flow of goods and services to remind us how helpless we truly are without those antiquated skills that allowed our forefathers to survive. We've allowed ourselves to get too comfortable and too dependent on outside sources, and we no longer have to obtain life's necessities through our own personal efforts.

Contemporary society has specialized beyond that, with experts assuring us modern technology superseded old methods in every respect. And they're right. Billions of people have clean water, abundant food and life-saving medical treatment thanks to modern technology.

But at what price? What have we lost as a result of this ease and comfort? What happens when a society is so acclimated to convenience that it is unable to survive its absence?

At a preparedness expo I attended several years ago, I sat in on a packed gardening seminar. The speaker said something that startled me: "Humans are the only species on the planet too ignorant to feed themselves."

He's right. Every living thing on the planet knows what it takes to get food. If they don't, they die. But we've "evolved" past the need to grow or raise anything we consume. Many of us have become too civilized to be caught with our hands in the soil or our feet in a cow patty. Let someone else do the dirty work. We're too smart to feed ourselves. (A hat tip to Michael Bloomberg for voicing that exact sentiment.)

Look, I enjoy modern comforts and conveniences as much as the next person. I'm not writing this column with a quill and oak-gall ink. But if conveniences disappear, then what? That's a question very few people are eager to answer.

But now, suddenly, people are realizing how vulnerable we are. Suddenly people are eager to bridge the gap between old and new. Rural properties are sizzling. Victory Gardens are exploding. Chickens are the hottest new thing.

I urge everyone to embrace some aspect of self-sufficiency, even if it's starting a windowsill herb garden or watching YouTube videos on how to grow food or raise livestock. Don't be the kind of person who would starve to death standing next to a cow in a field of ripe wheat.

Don't let knowledge die.

[C27H40O3]

great post, and great observation.

[Chicagotarsier]

This is a rant that was put to the test by John B Calhoun and his result finding of the Behavioral Sink. Basically he put rats in a 4 zone cage with unlimited food medical etc and watched what happened. Exact thing that happens in our society. A small percentage become too pretty to be around others and go off and do not have sex but groom themselves all day. The rest break down into gays and violent mobs (yes he proved a living being is not born gay) The society collapse and is completely gone in 4-5 generations. A very good read and sums up everything we see today in the world.

I personally went back to agriculture and farming. Have the largest hydroponic farms in the Philippines. Raise my own meat and food. It is a good feeling. Yeah, the cell phone put the library of Alexandria at our fingertips..people are just too dumb to critical think.