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Re: Biotechnology, demons, and sustainability



Hi Ignaccio:

the reason I "appologized" for introducing spiritual considerations was
rehtorical. I wanted to keep the skeptics around for the parts of the message
that they WOULD accept.  I see that my strategy backfired.  I'll try being
blunt as usual from now on.

While I am answering your post, I have to say that if one works for Monsanto
one knowes s/he is participating in a destructive enterprise and, excepting
those few people who are basically evil, has sold out.  If push comes to
shove, I'm going to say just that.  In my view, however, most
English-speaking North Americans are too far gone to bother drawing their
attention to their moral seduction to the "dark side."  And once in a while,
someone musters enough courage to say "enough" and trys to change.  If they
try to change things from within the corporate structure, they are probably
doomed to self-destruction in another way.  If they try to change themselves,
only, they have a chance.  Surely we should be ready to support such folks as
much or more than we are ready to support one another.

By way of example, some years ago around Christmas time, I went to buy
something in Northampton, Massachusetts, at my favorite hardware store.
(Everything I asked for was covered with dust and had the original, 1930s
price.) It had been replaced by The Eider Down Shop (or something like that),
wherein everything, as I verified by asking the clerk, was stuffed with Eider
down.  "Do you know where the down comes from?" I asked.  No, was the
hesitant reply.  I then proceeded in merciless detail to describe the removal
of down from around goslings subject to Arctic climate. "I don't want to hear
this,"  the clerk screamed.  "I have to have this job to survive!"
Unfortunately without thinking, I replied, "If it is between you and the
goslings, I vote for the geese."  Well that was honest and I still feel that
way.  But on the way home I questioned myself about what I could have done
that was constructive.  We had a bedroom in our house that this person could
have used.  We could have offered her sanctuary from the system.  We had (and
still have) more than enough permaculture work for her to earn her keep while
we supported her in changing her approach to livlihood.  While I knew that
the idea that she could not survive withought an evil job was crap, she did
not.  

So I encourage everyone on this list, especially folks with large farmhouses
with too many rooms, to consider offering sanctuary to people who want to get
out of the more evil parts of our global economy.  (Many posts on this list
are about trying to get into that economy, of course.) I'm not talking about
a haven for dead beats and druggies, though if you are strong enough you may
do some good there too.  I'm talking about creating a network so that people
who think that they HAVE to work for Monsanto will learn that they don't.
 Personally, I think that people in such sanctuary should more than earn
their keep.  I've been putting out this idea since that December in 1985 and
so far, to my knowledge, no takers.  If we are going to bitch about what
people do working for the dark side, lets at least give them an option that
they can recognize as one.  There is no purpose to giving a lost blind person
a map.  But if you lead him/her by the hand once, s/he may readily find their
way back thenceforth.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now permaculture
correspondence training with an email classroom. Copyright, 1996, Dan &
Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478 2052. YankeePerm@aol.com  

If its not in our food chain, we're not thinking.




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