This is an important read: 'The "Fast Food" Moment'. (Society becomes machine)

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0208-28.htm

Our industrial society "replaces all value with efficiency and all action with the one best way". That is so right on. Don't miss the second paragraph.

Pollan illuminates the origins of the fast food holy trinity – Burger, Fries, and Cola – with the help of a mass spectrometer! The carbon isotopes reveal that over fifty percent of this meal was derived from corn! Corn makes the beef (indirectly) as well as the fillers and stabilizers in the patty. The high-fructose corn syrup in the cola accounts for 99% of the drink’s calories and the syrup is in the bun and condiments too. Even a big chunk of the French fries’ calories come from the beef-tallow flavored corn oil used to fry them. Talk about children of the corn! These facts came as a bit of a surprise for this omnivore. After taking all this information in, I reflected again on my own ‘fast food moments’ hoping to explain my own eating behaviors to myself.

snip

I’ve come to realize that this meal, this emblem of our age, exemplifies what the French sociologist Jacques Ellul called simply “technique” in his important book The Technological Society. The relentless pursuit of an absolute efficiency of means for achieving some narrowly defined purpose characterizes technique. It involves transforming what was unconscious, spontaneous, and natural into what is fully conscious and completely calculated. Technique creates itself as a self-augmenting system of necessary linkages of means and it remakes everything it touches in this image. In short, technique replaces all value with efficiency and all action with the one best way.

snip

This absolute efficiency is, however, a hollow achievement precisely because it systematically displaces all other possible relationships that humans might have with food or one another for that matter. Pollan points out that the supermarket has become, in essence, only an extension of the drive-thru. This system relieves us of the need to bake our daily bread or “meet our meat” and, thus, alienates us from our most basic life activity and from the sharing of this activity with others.

My burger reflects the deeper logic of its creation – the desacralized mechanism of the one best way endemic in our culture. The same mentality behind the creation of our industrial food system also makes possible industrial production, industrial education, industrial religion and industrial war. This mentality is enacted in mass-production and planned obsolescence. Our education system, having industrialized, has largely given up on the crucial project of the transmission of culture in favor of baby-sitting, job skills and football teams. Fundamentalism is the industrial form of religion. The formulaic salvation of the born-again reduces life’s mystery to the certainty of the machine. The TV and the mega-church allow our contemporary charlatans to take advantage of economies of scale in the salvation of souls. The efficiency in killing other humans achieved in the 20th century through the complete industrialization of war is unprecedented in human history. The machine gun and the smart bomb both exemplify the calculating rationality of technique through the economy of effort by which they achieve their macabre goal. Not so long ago we had to endure the blood stain of the vanquished. Now that we’ve discovered the one best way to kill each other, it is possible to imagine self-induced extinction!

By replacing natural efficiencies with artificial ones, the industrialization of agriculture diminishes and destroys our basic relationship with the land, plants, and animals that nourish our bodies as well as the cultural relationships that make eating a sacred activity and thereby nourish our souls. Every bite of that burger is an act that turns away from the ancient mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, of revering the miracles of bread and wine. These mysteries lie at the heart of the human condition. While that burger may satisfy me, it will never sustain us.

Just look at Pol Pot's Cambodia.

This isn't about industrial agriculture. It's about industrialized society.

think everyone else is too dumb to spot them. Maybe that has something to do with those with whom they usually associate.

How old are you?

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Like I said, straw man.

Show me where Chaska says "Everything about industrialized society is bad. I oppose it."

Your remarks about what Chaska is saying amount to your objection to a stereotype that you assume Chaska applies to industrialization and yet your characterization of Chaska's position is stereotypical.

If you can demonstrate that you actually understand what Chaska is saying, someone might take you seriously.

I'll spare you.

The world is not so black and white, all or nothing, as you would suppose, Crandor. You assume too much.

See message #15.

:sarcasm:

Look at Americain the 60's.

Yeah, people starving everywhere.

The last paragraph is a bit melodramatic but I agree that artificiality has taken over our food chain. Maybe that's why I like the mediterranean diet. It is tied to the land and is natural.

Much of what we eat these days is artificial. That's why we see so many health problems in my opinion.

If you're older than that, you can thank our "artificial" lifestyle.

and short life span as it is, in 3rd world nations. You know, Darfur, Ethiopia etc.

We're lucky only if we compare ourselves to the abject poverty that our life style creates for others.

I suppose you're saying the average lifespan throughout "human history" is 20 years...but now it's what, 75...

Anyway I am of the opinion that the increasing use of artificial stuff and chemicals in our food supply is for the most part detrimental to our health. How do you explain why so many folks in Italy and Greece, for example, rarely (or not at all) have to see the doctor?

Maybe you can explain your position...I'm confused by it.

From your logic, breathing exhaust from cars is good for one's health.

industrial agriculture creating a food surplus and thus allowing many more people to have occupations outside the food production sector.

I was made of meat and veggies that were bought at the supermarket. And it was healthy, unlike what the OP wrote about.

You keep mixing things.

By the way, I have nothing against industrial agriculture, but it didn't cause scientific progress. It was the other way around. People who "have occupations outside the food production sector" have existed since the dawn of civilization, and those did tend to be the ones who fostered progress. (Think ancient Greek philosophers-scientists)

Do you work in the agricultural sector perchance?

It's been over 20 years since my undergraduate lit degree in which the late Victorians were my "major period", but folks like Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin looked at the products of the Industrial Revolution at that point and extrapolated what was headed our way. I recall Ruskin, in particular, saying this was the result of the loss of Craftsmanship amonst other things. And then there was Tennyson who suffered great depressions for which he had to be institutionalized occassionally, but who was largely regarded as a Romantic. If one get's just a little familiar with his work, you can see the existential angst.

Most people think the whole period was about Robert Browning (who did write some very insightful monologues) and Elizabeth Barret Browning. Not so, there really was quite a bit more going on. The Romantics were starting to look like fools and the educated classes were having to deal with advances in astronomy (re our solar system) and other sciences that under-cut their assumptions about who and what we are.

on Mother Earth and her creations.

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What rule was broken that resulted in the deletion of the message (#20) to which you are replying here? Do you know? I read the message and didn't notice anything really terrible about it. I don't mean to dispute the deletion or anything. Just curious about the rules.

spend generations carving stone with beautiful and sometimes nightmarish nature images for cathedrals. The low classes used to make things in those days, weaving, metalsmithing, cabinetry etc.

We should try to get that back somehow.

After a certain point, the passive nature of sitting and absorbing information without expressing our own Self means we need some outlet for that energy.

Watching TV and playing video games represses our creativity can lead to violent outbursts.And that's no matter the program.

Combine this with huge amount of fat in our modern diets which aggravates our Liver.. Oy.

For without the Feudal System, you don't get any "lowly Peasants" to do all that lovely craftwork.

:sarcasm: (Or did you forget this tag yourself?)

It seems there are tremendous amounts of sloppy thought on this topic as well as caricature-type assignments to indigenous agriculture. Perhaps our nation is in need of a massive deprogramming.

Read "Lessons from Ladakh" by Helena Norberg-Hodge folks and definitely read some anthropolgical studies.

K&R

Have you that recommended it before? Somebody here did.

My point with this thread is about how we are all becoming machines. We are slaves to a time clock. We are slaves to the scripts we have to recite when we answer the phone, the greetings at the checkout counter, the I don't give a shit how bad your burger is, shut up and eat it approach to quality. All value (spontaneity, naturalness, honesty, everything real and good) has been, or is being, replaced with efficiency.

Something has gone seriously wrong with us.

Keep singing your song.

Industrial society destroys the mind and the environment.

http://www.culturechange.org/industrial_mind.html

Breaking civilization's spell:

Spell Breaker - breaking civilisation's spell
"All hypnosis is basically self-hypnosis. It is the subjects' belief and conviction that the hypnotist posseses the mysterious power to hypnotise people which in great measure invests him with this power.
If the subject doubted the hypnotists ability it is very unlikely he would be hypnotised."

- The Theory and Practice of Hypnotism - William J. Ousby.





We have been hypnotised by civilisation's myths.

We have confidence in its power.

We believe its lies.

It's time to break the spell, to begin to awaken from our slumber.
Spell Breaker

Slowly now, I'll count backwards from ten and by then you will have opened your eyes and be fully awake.

Fully conscious.

So here we go, just relax and count backwards with me...

TEN...

http://www.eco-action.org/spellbreaker/

I just discovered this one: http://prorev.com/sustain.htm.

I'll check yours out tonight.

brainwash yourself into thinking that you would somehow be better off living in the way that people have spent about a million years trying to get away from.

Are you an "extremist", bouncing between poles?

Reverse color blindness? You apparently can't see shades of gray.

I don't think you really grasp the subject at hand, but
your dogged conviction that any technologically advanced
society HAS TO BE exactly like ours, that no other way
can ever possibly exist, is a clear product of the
"technique" outlook mentioned in paragraph 2 of the OP.

The existence of advanced technology DOES NOT dictate
that it's possessors must inevitably become a heartless hive-society
where dollars are held in higher esteem than the happiness
and well-being of its members.

GREED and CALLOUSNESS, not tecnology, steer a society down that road.

:applause:

"Industrial society destroys the mind and the environment." Those are not the words of someone who just wants to get rid of greed and callousness.

You do not understand the term "Industrial Society" as
it is being used here, and seem to have confused it with
the term "advanced technology". They are certainly NOT
the same thing, nor are they necessarily even directly related.

This is not a discussion about MACHINES or commodities.
It's about the IDEA of treating PEOPLE like machines and commodities.

And you've lived in, or collected more than anecdotal evidence on, exactly how many other types of civilization?

Wow. Talk about being anti-reason. You speak in nothing but cliches.

Come on now, how old are you?

Hypnotized by civilization's ability to rescue man, the weakest and most defenseless of animals, from the law of the jungle. Civilization, which freed us from the starvation that used to haunt us as ragged little bands of hunter-gatherers, that killed us off as easily as it still does to a herd of deer or any other animal when they reach the "carrying capacity" of their own little piece of the world. I choose to remain under the spell of Civilization, which gave human beings the ability to live into old age rather than die worn out in our early thirties, and which has made it possible for us to cure the weak, the sick and the lame, or if not to cure them, to enable them to live even though weak or sick or lame. That's made it possible for me, for example, to see what I'm writing here right now (I've always needed glasses or contacts.) No, I choose to remain under the sway of Civilization, which has enabled us to learn about the world and everything in it and to express ourselves in the great works of every art. Shucks, I'm just an ol' Enlightenment-loving, progressive-believing honest-to-god Humanist. Sorry if that seems a little silly to you sitting there by your own little portal into the Internets.

Or as Voltaire wrote, in 1775, to Rousseau after reading a copy of Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (where Rousseau introduces the concept of the "noble savage" to the world):

"The horrors of that human society — from which in our feebleness and ignorance we expect so many consolations — have never been painted in more striking colors. No one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes. To read your book makes one long to go on all fours. Since, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it: I leave this natural habit to those more fit for it than are you and I. Nor can I set sail to discover the aborigines of Canada. In the first place because my ill-health ties me to the side of the greatest doctor in Europe, and I should not find the same professional assistance among the Missouris: and secondly because a war is going on in that country, and the example of the civilized nations has made the barbarians almost as wicked as we are ourselves. I must confine myself to being a peaceful savage in the retreat I have chosen—close to your country, where you yourself should be."

you can't grow healthy food in unhealthy soil, and you can't makesoil healthy by dumping tons of petrochemical poisons and toxins on it. and animals raised in the inhumane and artificial conditions that essentially amount to torture that is the norm at today's CAFOs where those burgers come from come at a cost much higher than what you're paying outta pocket at the counter. as micheal pollan puts it else where, and i'm paraphrasing, 'eat food, real food. things your grandmother and greatgrandmother could identify as food. mostly vegetables and grains, but some meat is ok, but mostly vegetables. but make it realfood.' join a CSA, shop at farmer's markets, buy your meat from a local butcher that buys from local producers. quit the chain grocery stores. get to know the people that make your food and what's involved. stop eating crap that been soaked with poison and is poisoning your air and water and the people who grow it and you and your family. and has been trucked in from halfway across the country, wasting even more petrochemicals.

Buy Local
Buy Organic
Buy Fair Trade

My favorite market is a small local farm market that is open on Saturdays from 10-12. They have the most wonderful diverse fresh picked seasonal produce. They grind their own flour to bake bread and muffins in a great big stone outdoor oven. It might cost a bit more but the food is produced with love and care, and its alive.

There is no comparison with the monocultures offered in the grocery store which have been mass produced in depleted soil, sprayed, waxed and irradiated to remain fresh looking after being shipped for 2-3 weeks. And this is the good stuff in the grocery store. The fast food joints are even worse.

comments that at least attempt to get folks to look into the matter more critically. Very interesting that those who simply state "You just want us to go back to...." in a knee jerk fashion are the ones who truly curtail serious discourse about this very serious matter AND accuse those who are interested in looking at the matter in-depth as being close-minded.

It is rather astounding given the current state of our many global crises that folks wouldn't at least be raising a few questions about this project called "civilization."

Well at least the accusation of "Luddite" hasn't come up yet. So maybe we are making "Progress?" LOL

Learning from Ladakh

Why is the world teetering from one crisis to another? Has it always been like this? Were things worse in the past? Or better? Experiences over more than sixteen years in Ladakh, an ancient culture on the Tibetan Plateau, have dramatically changed my response to these questions. I have come to see my own industrial culture in a very different light.

Before I went to Ladakh, I used to assume that the direction of "progress" was somehow inevitable, not to be questioned. As a consequence, I passively accepted a new road through the middle of the park, a steel-and-glass bank where the two-hundred year old church had stood, a supermarket instead of the corner shop, and the fact that life seemed to get harder and faster with each day. I do not any more. Ladakh has convinced me that there is more than one path into the future and given me tremendous strength and hope.

<snip>

It was not strange that I thought the way I did. Even though I had lived in many different countries, they had all been industrial cultures. My travels in less "developed" parts of the world, though fairly extensive, had not been enough to afford me an inside view. Some intellectual travels, like reading Aldous Huxley and Erich Fromm, had opened a few doors, but I was essentially a product of industrial society; educated with the sort of blinders that every culture employs in order to perpetuate itself. My values, my understanding of history, my thought patterns all reflected the world view of homo industrialis.

Mainstream Western thinkers from Adam Smith to Freud and today's academics tend to universalize what is in fact Western or industrial experience. Explicitly or implicitly, they assume that the traits they describe are a manifestation of human nature, rather than a product of industrial culture. This tendency to generalize from Western experience becomes almost inevitable as Western culture reaches out from Europe and North America to influence all the earth's people. Every society tends to place itself at the center of the universe and to view other cultures through its own colored lenses. What distinguishes Western culture is that it has grown so widespread and so powerful that it has lost a perspective on itself; there is no "other" with which to compare itself. It is assumed that everyone either is like us or wants to be.

<snip>

http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/rt/printerFriendly/361/566

And that may seem like a small, harmless assumption to some,
but it clearly is neither small nor benign.

link?

and many of US wouldn't even be here.

count me as HUGELY in favour of industrialized agriculture.

We won't live forever -- and I don't know if too many liberal Democrats believe that every unborn, unconcieved child has a right to life.

Unfortunately, there are a LOT of affluent Westerners who believe that they have a right to A life that includes 2.5 kids and a 2 car garage, and that necessitates the population explosion that has occurred in the past 100 years (throughout periods where, even though most people in the US were doing O.K. with less resources than you and I have now, population explosion AND an arms-race of conspicuous consumption was allowed to go unchecked.)

people here always complain about chickenhawks that are pro-war, but don't believe in serving themselves-

same situation here- if you think that the planet is overpopulated- instead of talking about it- take matters into your own hands and do something about it.

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, mid-1950's.

Perhaps we should address this stuff without falling into bizarre ritual nostalgia?

Thanks much for posting this. K & R.

K&R


whoops!!! to late

I wish I could write nearly so well...

I work in broadcasting. We use an automated system for playing the music.

The computer can't do segues as good as a human being running a mixing board can. But it can insure (when voice-tracking gets added into the mix) that the DJ won't go off the playlist the Program Director (or Music Dir) tweaked on a computer.

For that matter, if you've got a person running that music program who's never done a live air-shift, with CD players (or even turntables) you're pretty much guaranteed to have a number of what we, in the biz, call "train-wrecks." To remedy that, you put an ID inbetween every song, bringing the flow of music to a screeching halt every 3 1/2 minutes.

Meanwhile, the PD is so busy running various comps, sifting through 200 pieces of email a day, doing various research, overseeing "imaging" production and more, they've got no time to aircheck the kids. It's just as well they're voice tracking, so they can perfect each boring break.

And then the National Association of Broadcasters whines that ownership restrictions need to be relaxed because of radio's declining listenership, which they blame on cable tv and the internet.