I, Pencil

Whew... sorry I haven't posted in a while!
I heard this poem or story a little while ago, and found it simply profound. It has been on my mind quite a bit lately, and I thought it was kind of a good run up to my "Story of Stuff" post.
It is pretty long but here it is:

I, Pencil
My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.*

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."


I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.


Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.


Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power!

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this "wood-clinched" sandwich.

My "lead" itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!

Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.

Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as "the plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rape-seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn't a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.

No Master Mind

There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.

It has been said that "only God can make a tree." Why do we agree with this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is there among men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.

The above is what I meant when writing, "If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing." For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive masterminding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.

Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental "master-minding."

Testimony Galore

If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith would have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it's all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things. Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.

It really just makes me realize how utterly disconnected we are from everything we have and from each other. That seems to be one of our huge modern tragedies: disconnection.

Disconnection from:

~People: This is the age of... ipods and cell phones, where you walk on any street and almost everybody is holding up some device to their ears, cutting of any opportunity for real human interaction; of vehicles whizzing past you and your house, and not a clue or care as to who is in them; of computers and televisions and many other machines that replace real human interactions and experiences, real culture and life with some cyber and psuedo reality.

~Nature: I know how often for myself I can drive quickly by the same thing on our street hundreds of times and never notice anything for I am not going slowly enough to notice the beauty, then walk or ride my bike past the exact same things and notice so many beautiful or interesting little things I had never noticed before. How often this happens, and how much beauty and how many little kisses from the Creator am I missing out on just because I am so distracted and so disconnected from nature and ultimately God.

~Necessities/Belongings/Food: If you read the above poem and think, "wow all that just went into that pencil that I used a second ago," then think how much more goes into everything else we own. The clothes on your back, how many people were involved in creating your shirt and getting it to you so that you can wear it today? The chair you are sitting in, how many little pieces are in that thing and how much energy, how many resources, how much labor was used in the production of it? The computer that I am typing this on. This object that I take so much for granted, is marked by how many peoples sweat and labors? Or food! If you open your refrigerator and pull something off the shelf, how many other peoples hands touched it? If you had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, how many lives were involved to get that to your table, so that you could then eat it. First there is the milk, where are the cow/s that produced that milk and who do they belong to? Who milked them? And who ran the machines to process the milk? Then there is the cereal if you have wheat in your cereal, who owned the land? Who planted, and harvested and processed the wheat? Who transported the wheat? Nuts, where and who grew the nuts, who processed them, who transported them from place to place? Oil, who grew the nut, bean, etc. to make the oil from, who was involved in the making and transporting of it. The list goes on with EVERY other ingredient in the cereal. Then finally the combining of all of those ingredients and all of those peoples' labors in to a box ( which people are also involved with,) and then the transportation (which of course uses gas which people had to work for to get out of the ground and processed, and the metal and all the other parts of the vehicle,) to get it to the store at which point you could buy it. Imagine that, all the hundreds, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people involved in just one bite of cereal.
And yet how often do we actually care or think about it and them, all those people who exist somewhere in the world right now.
It is very difficult for me to put my mind around all this, and not feel a pang of guilt. Is it really right for me to eat the cereal when all those people, the running of all those factories and therefore pollution, and all those resources, etc. were all used just so I could eat it for breakfast without even acknowledging their existence and labors??? Sure they are paid, but are those nut growers in Brazil, or wheat farmers, or cow milkers really getting paid enough for what they worked hard for, when I only pay a buck and a half for that box of cereal? I honestly don't know! And it just goes to show how truly disconnected we have become from the very things that feed and keep us alive.

~God: Really I think ultimately the worst thing is that it makes us more disconnected from God. The farther away we step from the natural order, and the way He created things to be, the more disconnected we are from Him.

I don't really understand this (which is precisely why I posted, helps me to sort my thoughts I guess, :) and I don't expect anyone, myself included to never eat cereal again, or use a pencil, but I do find that poem very interesting, and I do think this is worth thinking about because it does make us realize our dependence on the sweat of other people and it makes me more grateful for what I do have.
I must say though there is quite an appeal to try and buy things more local. Imagine if your entire bowl of cereal could be traced within a 30-60 mile radius of your house. And because you make your own cereal, you get the wheat from a farmer friend down the road, the nuts from your local almond and pecan orchard, your honey from the beehive a friend has, the oil from melted butter that you got from your local dairy, where you also got your milk. Right, I know this is imaginary thinking, but it does seem so much nobler a breakfast, than that of the one with ingredients from all over the world, produced by people who we had no clue existed.
In the past it was always this way. If the family or person didn't milk the cow, and grow the wheat themselves, they would get it from friends or from the local store that got it from the local people. Before machines there was no way to transport things such far distances as we do now. And people either made it themselves (and therefore had a completely direct connection with it) or got it locally, with the exception of maybe sugar, which was probably extremely expensive anyways.
Why is our culture so completely different now and should it be this way? It all connects back up with disconnection. :)

Stuff...

My family and I just watched the little movie "The Story of Stuff" at the website in the picture above. (If you want your thoughts to be provoked and you have 20 minutes I recommend you watch it too, it was really good.) And it really got me thinking (uh oh, there she goes again :)...So where does all this stuff come from?
Currently I am sitting in a mostly plastic chair, where did the plastic come from, who owned the factory where it was manufactured, who and where are the people who were involved in all the of the different steps involved in the making and getting the chair to me now, where I am sitting in it? I don't know...and part of the problem is, up until this point I didn't care. Just look around you now, do you know where half the things around you came from? Not only that but have we ever thought about all the energy, effort, and people who were behind each little object and possession of ours, all our JUNK??!
With everything we have now coming from big factories or imported from other countries, we have been trained to become so detached and separated from the things we buy and own and where or who they came from. There is no longer a connection between maker and buyer.
And the big corps probably want it to be that way too. Kind of the way they want you to be with God, just enjoy and use and waste all of this creation and beauty that God gave us, but never even stop to think about who it came from and why he gave it to us; it is yours so now you can use and trash it as you wish. What is the most sad thing is that just as we trash nature, we trash the stuff we have, and thereby trashing the effort that went into them. Statistics show that 99% of the stuff we buy is thrown out within the first 6 months of owning it. Not only is that unsustainable physically, it is unsustainable morally. What kind of moral character is being promoted and practiced. I like to say that we are a throw away nation, if something is ugly, if you don't like it or want it, if it is outdated, or old, even if there is a small fixable problem, what do we do... THROW IT AWAY!
I remember reading Farmer Boy, written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, about her husband's childhood. One thing that distinctly popped out in my brain was that each child had ONE, (not 2 not 5 not 10, ) 1 pair of shoes that they wore and used. Then if they were worn or they had grown out of them by the end of the year, the cobbler would stop by their house on his yearly rounds and measure and specially fit a new pair of shoes for the children. In fact he was a family friend and the family always looked forward to his yearly visit, to share meals, tell stories. And sometimes if the parents didn't have enough money, they would trade something they had in exchange for the shoes. Now what kind of a different mindset, what kind of different moral character does that show? The kids knew how to take care of their stuff, they knew where it came from, and saw with their own eyes the effort their cobbler friend put into them. They couldn't or wouldn't trash those shoes. Look at the huge contrast between then and now, that was less than 150 years ago. How could things have changed so much and so drastically?
At times like this I just feel hopeless, I feel like nothing will last and there is nothing we can do to help such a gargantuan problem. Then I have a speck of hope and think that half the work is acknowledging the problem and taking little steps every day to try and fix it. It all starts in the heart with the decision to value the things we have and the effort behind them, and once we have that perspective we can change a whole lot of things. Where there's a will there's a way!

(P.S.) I would love to know what your thoughts are on this, if I am absolutely crazy to you or what. :) More and more things have been sprouting up in my brain as a result of this, I am already formulating a whole new post in my brain, that is kind of an off shoot of this one. So let me know what you think! :)

The New Agrarianism

This is what I have been reading and what I have been thinking a lot about lately, so I thought I would share it with you.
This is from the book The New Agrarianism, Land, Culture, and the Community of Life; a collection of essays from various modern agrarians, including Wendell Berry and Gene Lodgson, with an intro be Eric T. Freyfogle.


Introduction:

" With no fanfare, and indeed with hardly much public notice, agrarianism is again on the rise. In small corners and pockets, in ways for the most part unobtrusive, people are reinvigorating their ties to the land, both in their practical modes of living and in the way they think about themselves, their communities, and the good life. Agrarianism, broadly conceived,reaches beyond food production and rural living to include a wide constellation of ideas, loyalties, sentiments and hopes. It is a temperament and a moral orientation as well as a suite of economic practices, all arising out of the insistent truth that people everywhere are part of a land community, just as dependent as other life on the land's fertility and just as shaped by it's mysteries and possibilities. Agrarian comes from the Latin word agrarius, "pertaining to the land," and it is the land--as place, home, and living community-- that anchors the agrarian scale of values.
For contemporary adherents, in cities as well as rural areas, agrarian traditions have provided a diverse set of tools for fashioning more satisfying modes of life. And as the writings here reveal, they are making extensive use of those tools, to strengthen families and local communities, to shape critiques of modern culture, and in various ways and settings to mold their lives to their chosen natural homes.

As a collection of practices, agrarianism has enjoyed a long and curious history in recorded western life, from Ancient Greece to the present. Prominent in that, of course, have been the methods of gaining food from the fields,forests, and waters. Just as important though have been the ways that farm life has figured in a people's social and moral imagination. Agrarianism's central image has long been (to use Southern writer Andrew Lytle's term) the livelihood farm-- the well-run farmstead provides the locus and cultural center of a family's life, the place where young are socialized and taught, where stories arise and are passed down, where leisure is enjoyed, where the tasks of daily living are performed, and where various economic enterprises take place, in garden, orchard, kitchen, woodlot, toolshed, and yard.
Such farmstead, diverse in crops and livestock, has stood in the the agrarian mind as the incubator of virtue and healthy families. It has exemplified the traditions and possibilities of essential work, well done, in familiar settings. It as linked humankind to other forms of life, to soil to rains, and to cycles of birth, death, decay, and rebirth.
In it's independence, it has provided both a haven from corrosive cultural values and much needed ballast to stabilize civil states. Generation upon generation, people have retreated to such farms in times of strife, figuratively if not figuratively, in order to heal, regroup and set out anew.
Given the history, it is unsurprising as it is heartening that agrarian ways and virtues are re-surging in American culture, prompted by a wide range of public and private ills. To the degradation of the modern age, a New Agrarian is quietly rising to offer remedies and defenses, not just to the noise, vulgarity, and congestion that have long affronted urban dwellers but to the various assaults on land, family, relious sensibilities, and communal life that have tended everywhere to breed alienation and despair.

Evidence of the New Agrarianism appears today all across the country, in the lives and work of individuals, families, and community groups:
~In the community-supported agriculture group that links loal food buyers and food growers into a partnership, one that sustains farmers, economically, promotes ecologically sound farming practices, and gives city dwellers a known source of wholesome food.
~In the individual family, rural or suburban, that mets its food needs largely through gardens and orchards, on its own land or on shared neighbor plots.
~In the family--urban, suburban, or rural--that embraces new modes of living to reduce its overall consumption, to integrate its work its work and leisure in harmonious ways, and to add substance to its ties with neighbors.
~ In the faith-driven religious group that takes seriously, in practical ways, its duty to nourish and care for its natural inheritance.
~In the motivated citizens everywhere who, alone and in concert, work to build stable, sustainable urban neighborhoods, to repair blighted ditches, and to stimulate government practices hat conserve land and enhance lives; and in dozens of other ways to translate agrarian values into daily life.
Many worries and hopes lie behind this welling up of interest in land-centered practices and virtues. The degradation of nature--problems such as water pollution, soil loss, resource consumption, and the radical disruption of plant and other wildlife populations--is everywhere a core concern. Other concerns center on food--its nutritional value, safety freshness, and taste, and on the radical disconnection today, in miles and knowledge, between typical citezens and their sources of sustenance. Then there are the broader anxieties, vaguely understood yet powerfully felt by many, about the declining sense of community; blighted landscapes; the separation of work and leisure; the shoddiness of mass-produced goods; the heightened sense of rootlessness and anxiety; the decline of the household economy; the fragmentation of families, neighborhoods, and communities; and the simple lack of fresh air, physical exercise, and the satisfaction of honest, useful, work. Permeating these overlapping concerns is a gnawing dissatisfaction with the core aspects of modern culture, the hedonistic, self-centered values and perspectives that now wield such power.
The New Agrarianism of the past has pruned key elements from older agrarian ways while nourishing other shoots and stimulating new ones. Gone entirely is the old slave-based, plantation strand of agrarians; a regional variant to begin with, it deviated markedly from family-based homestead ideal. Much strengthened, too, has been the New Agrarian challenge to materialism and the dominance of the market in so many aspects of life. And yet, even with its new shapes and manifestations, agrarianism today remains as centeredas ever on its core concerns, the land, natural fertility, healthy families and the maitenence of durable links between people and place.
Agrarianism is very much alive and flourishing in America today, in ways both new and old and in diverse vocations and avocations. One could not call it a major element of contemporary culture, yet once aware of agrarianism, one stumbles on its outcroppings at many a turn. Within the conservation movement, the New Agrarianism offers useful guiding images of humans living and working on the land in ways that can last. In related reform movements, it can supply ideas to help rebuild communities and foster greater virtue. In all settings, agrarian practices can stimulate hope for more joyful living, healthier families, and more contented, centered lives."

This is a very interesting topic, it is far from being finished here, I plan on posting more of the book and more of my own thoughts, but for now this is enough to get your brain ruminating. :-)
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, a discussion would be great, I want to know where your opinions lie on this. If you want to read the whole book, it is on Amazon, or I found mine at the library, it is well worth the time and/or money. This is a very important thing both for me and for every other individual and family. I hope that this will just be the beginning of a great search for us all. So like I said before, what are your thoughts?

The Saturday Sketch

I chose this picture because I have been thinking a lot about foreign countries lately. Not just the countries, but especially the children in foreign countries where extreme poverty is very prevalent. As I was washing my hands or something the other day, I suddenly stopped and looked at the water and thought, "Some poor, thirsty, little child could be drinking a cup of much needed water right now, if I weren't wasting all this."
Now I am not saying that we should never wash our hands, just because of that, but it is very sad how that consumerist, individualist, point of view and world view, has not only become normal but good in America today. It is for that materialist, "get as much as I can" perspective, that so many innocent children starve everyday. Everyday I try and pray for all those who will die that day, but to think that they are adorable, hungry, little babies, (and I'm not even talking about abortion) and that maybe I could have prevented it or done something to help, by living in a simpler more sparing and sharing way. This isn't just in foreign countries, it is happening in our own country everyday also, and we fellow citizens and dwellers of this world, can sit in our expensive houses, eating our expensive gourmet meals, and waste everything from food to electricity, while we don't think one snit about the poor, starving, cold, and homeless out there. I will leave you with a favorite quote of mine, said and believed by many good people, "Live simply so that others may simply live."

Crunchy Cons

I have been reading the book Crunchy Cons, and found this passage very interesting and inspirational.

"By it's very nature, television technology teaches us to experience the world as a series of fragmentary images. It trains us to prize emotion and stimulation over logic and abstract thought.We are conditioned to expect quick resolutions to problems, and to develop evanescently short attention spans. We expect the world to be entertaining if ti is to hold our attention: eventually we learn to judge the world by essentially aesthetic criteria. For the man who gets his metaphysics from television, boredom is the root of all evil. As media critic Mercer Schuchardt told me, "Morality today is very point-and-click; life is completely about image and surface texture now...
The television medium is by its very nature a force against tradition, against continuity, against permanence and stability.
Schudardt, a former student of Postman's who when I spoke with him taught media theory at Marymount Manhattan College, in raising his six kids without a television. His students find their crunchy-con professor's TV-less existence hard to accept.
"They'll say things like 'What do you mean you don't have TV?' - almost like they think it's illegal." he said. "Part of it is people feel almost embarrassed not to have a TV. When they ask, 'How will I stay informed?' I tell them you'll find that you can't turn of the television, even when you get out of your house. It's on everywhere you go. You can't escape it. You'll still know what's happening, but you'll have four more hours in your day to use creatively.
The number one advice that I give my students is to be a culture creator, not a culture consumer," he continued. "You have to have time to create, and to create, you have to get rid of those things that steal your time. TV is the great time stealer in American life."
I used to be a TV critic, actually. and finally got so bored with it that I quit my job and moved to a country house down south to put myself through the media detox and figure out what to do with my life. I spent the fall and winter of 1993 living virtually alone, with no television, no newspaper, and no Internet ( I did ave a radio, and got my news from NPR). All i had was books, silence, and solitude.
The withdrawal was difficult. I was jittery and easily distracted. The monastic quiet unnerved me. But gradually i reconciled myself to it, and came to love it. There was no buzzing in my head anymore. I found I could write long letters, and sit for lengthy stretches reading novels. Prayer became easier. I started living by the rhythm of the day, awakening at daylight, and going to sleep not long after the sun went down. I began to feel, well, normal. I discovered how to be alone with my thoughts, and in turn to think in a sustained way. Had I ever known how to do that?
By the end of the four months at the house, I felt vastly less anxious, restored to myself, and had I learned to listen for life's quieter, deeper sounds drowned out by the daily media cacophony. That was a decade and a half ago and many times since then I have wished I could pack up my family and move to a place like that, where we could live the tranquility of a media-free existence.
...the goal is not to get rid of technology, but to limit its use "to restore a more integrated life, were you have the physical, the social, the mental, and the aesthetic aspects of life blending seamlessly as possible. When you make your technological selection, you have this one question in your head: does this enhance integration, or does it undercut it?"

I found this very inspiring and showing me that I'm not in this battle alone. That there are so many other people out there with the same questions, frustrations, and beliefs. I really recommend this book Crunchy Cons, written by Rod Dreher. Although I am not yet finished with it, what I have read so far has been amazing.

Our Trumanistic Lifestyles Contd.

I am going to start back up with the quote I left off with, so we can get back into the idea of it better. "We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented, it's as simple as that." Isn't that so true of our lives today, that would describe perfectly the reason why the American culture has become so corrupt, surreal and artificial. Things such as the internet, television, and the media, have obviously caused an increase in problems such as divorce, teen issues, the dissipation of family life, immodesty, language and violence. We accept them because they are the world with which we are presented. Nobody doubts the goodness or benefits or normality of the individualistic, materialistic, and selfish reality of what technology has to offer. I am not the only one out there who is worried about the state of things. American Psychiatric Assoc. is noticing the effects of technology like TV, when they said, " By the time a child graduates he or she will have witnessed 200,000 violent acts including 16,000 simulated murders." That is just to list one of the many examples, not only that but Ted Turner, founder of CNN shows concern saying, "Television is the single most significant factor contributing to violence in America." Is that bad or what? Violence is not the only bad influence the media has had on America. Think about immodesty and immorality. I have really been experiencing this on a personal level. I was reading the Readers Digest the other day, which is one of my favorite magazines, and as I was scrolling through the pages I flipped open to a page with an ad for Dove lotion or shampoo or something, and it was a completely stark naked middle aged lady, sitting there showing off her "shiny" skin to the world. I looked at it and quickly turned the page and didn't even think twice. I remembered that experience as I was writing this and I thought to myself "You are pathetic, you are absolutely ridiculous, that you could see a picture of a naked woman and merely turn the page, block it of from your thoughts as if it were the most normal thing in the world." I realized from my reaction that I too am falling into the trap of thinking that disrespecting a woman and her body for the sake of an ad is not a completely wrong, perverted, corrupt and sick thing to do. But what is even more sad is that people, all people Christians or non Christians are being so demoralized that we would not think twice about the immorality that is being shown to a woman and to the human race. This is the case in movies, magazines, internet and television. How many of us have favorite movies that contain language, sex, violence or any other immorality in it. We justify it though because it is cute or sweet or good. Even 50 years ago an average person would've been shocked to have seen a woman in a modern bikini walking around or on a billboard or magazine. Just as they have slipped in violence and language into our modern lives and made them perfectly normal, so they have done with immodesty, (or should I say nudity) and immorality. The signs are all around us, google it the evidence is there whether we search for it or not. Are we going to sit here and accept the circumstances and effects of the anti god of technology, the way that Truman could have accepted the anti god of Cristoph? Oh it is much easier to stay and enjoy it all, Truman could have stayed in Sea Haven, life was easy there, no problems to face with other people, perfect scenarios every day and so on, but he wanted truth and reality, he wanted to walk away from the pre-created, pre-planned, controlled life that he was in. Yes, it was hard, but he did it. Not only was it hard but it was a choice that had to be made only by him, it was a personal conviction between two lifestyles. He could not live in between, he had to choose one or the other, just as we must choose for ourselves. Are we going to accept the world of lies and fake happiness that consumes America, or are we going to choose to walk away from that little world of pleasure and ease and search for the truth of a media free, violence free, lifestyle. Are we going to be the Truman who came to the end of the wall and walked through the door to the truth, or are we going to stay in our little technology haven. That is what it all comes down to for you to decide, which Truman are you?

Our Trumanistic Lifestyles

I just recently watched the movie The Truman Show, and added it to my profile favorites, because of the eye opening message that unavoidably captures your mind and makes it analyze every aspect of your lifestyle, and twist and turn the meaning of life. I don't know if you have seen it so I will give a short summary of the movie before I try and tell you my thoughts on it.

Basically it starts out in this perfect town, with a 30 yr. old man living out a typical day of his life. To the viewer things seem different than a normal world, things seem surreal and fake, put on and overdone.The strange thing is that it is perfectly normal to him, Truman. The same people, in the same places, everyday. The perfect streets and buildings and town. And then as the movie progresses, he encounters some mind boggling things, such as seeing his father (who had drowned in the ocean when he was a boy,)and 2 people came out of nowhere and dragged the dad away, or the radio in his car geting messed up, with the man was saying everything he was doing, every street he was turning on, etc. All these happenings one after another seemed to undermine his very mindset and lifestyle and the fabric of his home, Seahaven. Even out of stress and confusion, brought to mind, a strange event in High school with a girl who said she wasn't allowed to talk to him, whose very character was a mystery, and who said to him that his life was fake, and that even the sand they stood on was also. She warned him, as she was being taken away, that his life was being watched. This is the whole turning point of the movie where it all makes sense, and where he starts to discover the truth. After that you realize that his whole life was controlled and and monitored and watched by millions of people around the world as a reality TV show. His life was a billion dollar business. The owner of the show spent his life controlling and watching another's. Truman had no privacy and nothing real, his life was a game, a mere thing that was disregarded for the sake of entertainment. As soon as Truman realizes the reality of his life, he is put into a twirl of confusion. He tries to leave but he can't because of a lifelong fear of the ocean (since his fathers death,) he can't get past the edge of the island. Then finally he does it, he conquers his fear and leaves. He is missing, and not a single one of the 5,ooo cameras could find him. The creator of the show, Cristoph, is put into panic, his fortune maker is missing. Until he realizes that not even a human life is controllable. Cristoph has taken for granted the fact that Truman would never doubt the reality of his surroundings. Just as any human would, he accepted the life with which he was given. He had no other reality to compare it to and therefore he thought it was the only. Even Cristoph admits it in the movie, when asked why Truman hadn't doubted anything before, " We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented, it's as simple as that."

I am going to stop here and continue on another day, but I want you to think about it. Why would our American lifestyles be similar to Truman's? I will post later explaining my reason, but until then I hope that your mind turns this around the way it did for me.

Americanism

I have decided to make my blog more serious. There are a lot of problems and issues out there in the great big world, and I intend to think and talk about them, and my blog is just the place to do it. Basically I am going to start a new subject: Americanism. That would include all the problems and issues that we are facing in America right now. Politics, moral issues, and my belief about the lifestyle of Americans today. It will be happy, it will be sad, and it will be from me. You don't have to like it if you don't want to. I am putting it out there in the cold, whether or not people want me to. I feel like this blog is too mediocre, I don't really post anything important and I don't really post anything stupid. I just want it to be something. I will continue with the Saturday Sketch, but I will also try to do more. Check back tomorrow and I will post my first "radical post" I guess you could call it. I just need to work on it a little bit. We shall see where this takes us, but all of life is an adventure right?