What does that mean? It means that, yes, the economy is fake and unsustainable. It will collapse. The next downturn will be worse than the last, and the last was pretty spectacular. It took us to the brink. Will the corporatist facade survive the next crash, or will the house of cards come crashing down on all of us? Either outcome will be painful. Yes, the industrial food machine is full of chemicals that are designed to make you sick, fat, stupid and weak. Yes, they are permanently defacing the genetic fabric of the planet with their GMOs, and creating horrific environmental destruction with their petrochemical fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides. Yes, this food is toxic and devoid of nutritional value due to depletion of the soil over generations. Where people panic, where they lose hope - and I was victim to this once - is they believe someone else has to come along to save them from it all, to fix things for them and put everything right. That's not how this works, my friends.
Once it became apparent that inside the paradigm I describe above I am helpless and doomed, I stepped out of that paradigm and decided that taking control of my life was the only way to save myself. There is simply no better or more effective manner of unplugging from the "Matrix" than to start a homestead. People can make all the excuses they want about why it isn't feasible or practical for them, but the fact is if you really wanted to change you would simply do it, and let nothing stop you.
I grew up in New Jersey, which is the most densely populated state in the country. There are more people living there per square mile than any other state. What's horrifying about this fact is that one-fifth of the state is a protected national forest known as the Pine Barrens where almost nobody lives. The entire rest of the state is one giant city and suburb crammed between New York City and Philadelphia. My family is there, including my two children. All of my friends (at the time) were there. I had a job of almost 15 years. Everything I've ever known for the first 36 years of my life was there. I had every reason to say, "It's hopeless. I'm stuck here." But I knew that if I stayed, I was dead. I knew that in the event of an economic collapse, those people are going to eat each other alive. And New Jersey's economy, due to it's government's disastrous policies which also makes New Jersey, probably just behind California, the number one state people are fleeing from, is worse off than most. We have to have the courage to create "Plan B" and enact it.
Seven years later, I have a home on two acres. I spend far less on food because I grow my own vegetables, raise chickens for my eggs, and raise rabbits for meat. I grow my own fertilizer (compost), which is the only additive to my gardens besides water and seed. My chickens free range and I supplement with organic layer feed. A good amount of my food is produced on site and I know exactly what was done to it, and what was not done to it. It is nutritionally superior. Due in large part to this, my health is superior. At 43 I am in the best health of my life. And in the event of economic collapse, while I don't have all the resources available to thrive solely off my own production, I wouldn't starve, and I certainly wouldn't have to pillage and loot just to eat. There'll be no waiting in a bread line.
These actions seem extreme in a society where people have been indoctrinated for generations to forget that depressions happen and the only ones who survive are those who are resourceful, industrious, and independent. For generations we've been taught to be helpless, that government is in control of these things and we can leave all this to them while we obsess over distraction and trivium. Tragically, only a tiny minority of us have the courage to look reality in the eye and take direct action to bring our lives under some semblance of control. This cannot happen at the ballot box. What has happened at the ballot box is the situation I've been describing: we think this is order, but this is the chaos we are told would occur in the absence of this violent, coercive, inept authority. Everything we fear would happen without government controlling every aspect of our lives already occurs, and government is typically the perpetrator of that disorder.
In future entries I'll document what I've accomplished here over the past 6 years, as well as my failures so that you can learn from them. Some of this is easy. Chickens...EASY. Growing vegetables...not easy. At all. Especially in challenging climates like this. But that's for another talk.
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