Why Is Food A Commodity?

Back to reading "My Ishmael" with my teenage son this morning. Right now this is probably one of the highlights of my day. I take great pleasure in doing this. Out of all the things I can pass on to him Ishmael's teachings are probably one of the most important.

After reading two chapters with him today I have to ask: What guy came up with the bright idea to make a food a commodity? I remember first watching Daniel Quinn's "Food Production and Population Growth" video and him making the comment about doctors being paid to deliver babies. His point went was doctors don't get paid by the pound to deliver a baby. Likewise, why do farmers have to get paid by the pound to produce food. Can't their services fall under the category of service? I had the hardest time with that point when I first heard it, and I still do to this day. Having been conditioned for close to 25 years to imagine there is no other way to be paid for food production, is a hard habit to break out even if it is only an act of imagination.

Unschooling The World With My Teenage Son

Started off my morning reading "My Ishmael" with my 15 year old son. We managed to get a chapter read before the house became to chaotic. That chapter's title was: "Unschooling the World." It's still as fresh and vital as it was when I read it back in my mid-twenties (I'm going to be 40 in a couple of months!) This time there isn't as much hope, though. There is a lot more grief this time around. Why? I imagine it's because things just haven't changed fast enough. 15 years after I first read it we value buisness over people to an even greater degree than we did at the turn of the century. If this wasn't the case corporations would not have free speech rights and be allowed to flood political campaigns with money. Scott Walker wouldn't be touring the central part of Wisconsin thanking God and glaciers for all of the jobs created by the frac-sand they left us.

Waking The Dead

Rumi writes: "Those of you whose work it is to wake the dead, get up, this is a work day." (Pg.106, A Year With Rumi)

Me: We're up and out of bed. My son and I will be reading "My Ishmael" to each other in a few minutes. Doing what we can do to step out of the Great Forgetting into the The Great Remembering, Rumi.

Beyond The Playground Fence

"Schooling of any kind is unnecessary and counterproductive in human children." Daniel Quinn, Pg. 166

My sister recently inspired me to go back and reread the chapter titled, Unschooling The World out of "My Ishmael." That chapter helped me understand why as a boy I always wondered what was beyond the fence that surrounded South Beaver Dam school's playground. And why I entertained the fantasy of me and a few friends packing up a some clothes, matches, and primitive weapons and spending a couple of nights next to a campfire under the stars. Perhaps James Hillman is right, the heart imagines its way out of things

Children and History

"I do endorse the teaching of everything, because everything is what children want to know. What children very deeply want to know of history is HOW THINGS GOT TO BE THIS WAY--but no one in your culture would think of teaching them that. Instead they're overwhelmed with ten million names, dates, and facts they 'should' know, but that vanish from their heads the moment they're no longer needed to pass a test. It's like handing a thousand-page medical text to a four-year old who wants to know where babies come from." -- Daniel Quinn, pg.148, My Ishmael

Quinn Quote of The Week

“The people of your culture are in the process of rendering this planet uninhabitable to yourselves and millions of other species. If you succeed in doing this, life will certainly continue, but at levels you (in your lofty way) would undoubtedly consider more primitive.”

“When you and I speak of saving the world, we mean saving the world roughly as we know it now- a world populated by elephants, gorillas, kangaroos, bison, elk, eagles, seals, whales, and so on…”

“There are only two ways to save the world in this sense. One of them is to destroy you immediately- not to wait for you to render the world uninhabitable for yourselves…”

“The only other way to save the world is to save you. Is to show you how to get the things you so desperately need- instead of destroying the world.”

“…the people of your culture are destroying the world not because they’re vicious or stupid, as Mother Culture teaches, but because they’re terribly, terribly deprived- of things that humans absolutely must have, simply cannot go on living without year after year and generation after generation…”

“…given a choice between destroying the world and having the things they really, deeply want, they’ll choose the latter. But before they can make that choice, they must see that choice.”

-Ishmael, from My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Quinn Quote Saturday: Utopia

"What do you call a system that will only work if the people in it are better than people have ever been? ... What do you call a system that's built on the presumption that people in this system will be better than people have ever been before? Everyone in this system is going to be kind and generous and considerate and selfless and obedient and compassionate and peaceable. What kind of system is that?"

"Utopian?"

"Utopian is right, Julie. Every one of your systems is a utopian system. Democracy would be heaven-- if people would just be better than people have ever been. Of course, Soviet communism was supposed to have been heaven too ... Your justice system would work perfectly if people would just be better than people have ever been. And of course your schools would work perfectly under the same conditions."--Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael

Blind Spots

"Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you. If a thing falls outside the range of people's curiosity, then they simply cannot make enquiries about it. It constitutes a blind spot--a spot of blindness that you can't even know is there until someone draws your attention to it." My Ishmael

Children and Mythological Thinking

"What children very deeply want to know of history is how things got to be this way--but no one in your culture would think of teaching them that. Instead they're overwhelmed with ten million names, dates, and facts they 'should' know, but that vanish from their heads the moment they're no longer needed to pass a test. It's like handing a thousand-page medical text to a four-year old who wants to know where babies come from."--[Daniel Quinn, pg.148, My Ishmael]

Children and School

More on parenting, with some schooling weaved in.

These quotes, and the section that it was pulled from, changed the way I parent and how I percieve my schooling experience. Plainly put it was dull. Of course that was thirty years ago, but from what I see things haven't changed much.

"Children don't need schooling. They need access to what they want to learn--and that means they need access to the world outside the home." [Daniel Quinn, Pg. 166, My Ishmael]

"But, of course, having your children underfoot in the workplace would seriously reduce efficiency and productivity. Even though sending them to educational detention centers is terrible for children, it's unquestionably wonderful for buisness. The system I've outlined here will never be implemented among the people of your culture as long as you value buisness over people." [Daniel Quinn, pg. 165, My Ishmael]

I especially like the part about valuing "buisness over people." I've liked it ever since I read it over a decade ago. It's clear, to me at least, that our current political and economic systems(Which schooling gets us ready for) value products over human and nonhuman life.