Let's Be More Like the Pilgrims . . .
In this day and age we might want to stop and see how we might be more like the pilgrims . . . self-sufficient and reliant only on the shared knowledge and generosity of their neighbors, the Indians (Native Americans for the PC).
The pilgrims didn't get off the Mayflower with their resumes in hand in hopes of getting a "job". They came prepared to do-it-themselves (early American DIYers). They traded their skills (carpentry, blacksmithing, etc.), crafts, services, and food produce. There certainly wasn't a supermarket around the corner.
If you think of Europe or America, traditionally, most people had a trade or business of some sort, on top of being DIYers. The concept of a "secure job" and unbridled consumerism is a relatively new concept-- look especially at the period of 1860-1960. Furthermore, you can blame the industrial revolution and the period just after World War II.
Additionally, I am sure they didn't waste a thing . . . they couldn't afford to waste a thing (The original simple and green living advocates). I see waste all around me, but then again I look for it-- it is easy not to see it if you turn a blind eye to it.
If you don't want to be like the pilgrims, be like the Indians (again Native Americans for the PC)-- they where doing the self-sufficient lifestyle long before the pilgrims showed up.
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Categories: Gardening, Homesteading, Self Sufficiency, DIY, Green Living, Simple Living
Tags: Gardening Homesteading Self Sufficiency DIY Green Living Simple Living
DDFD:
You have a lot of good ideas and thought-provoking comments on this site, and this has to be one of the most thought-provoking for me.
The pilgrims had a rough go of it to say the least. Jamestown made it - just barely. It was a serious time for all involved, and it was sink or swim. Many sank.
Compared with today's pop culture Americans, so many can't swim, and they insist on riding along in someone else's boat - a government boat.
When you think of where we were back then, and where we are today, it is like two different planets. Our instant, drive-through, scratch-off, overnight, remote control, point to the pictures on the menu, credit card, boob tube, hat backwards, wait for government instruction and permission mentality is crippling us. We used to herd sheep for survival - now most of us are sheep being herded by others.
The challenges of the past built character. Now, the best characters we have are part of the screen actors guild. It's pathetic, and we are getting exactly what we deserve.
We can look back on years gone by and marvel at what the pilgrims, colonists and settlers went through to build a nation for themselves and future generations. What would they have thought of us if they could have looked into the future to see who they were building it for?
Clair
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Clair,
We've lost something along the way to becoming fat and happy . . . we had better start getting it back before it all slips away-- too many people are fiddling while Rome burns.
We have had many warnings, the most startling was the failure of federal, state, and local government in the wake of Katrina. When will we learn? Or maybe, I should be asking when will "they" learn?
-DDFD
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I have a slightly different view from Clair who said: “Our instant, drive-through, scratch-off, overnight, remote control, point to the pictures on the menu, credit card, boob tube, hat backwards, wait for government instruction and permission mentality is crippling us.” I’m not quibbling about the last three, but the first eight are about technologies that we invented. That is, we invented technologies and implemented conveniences based on them. We only say “boob tube” because of the way we use television. Although I don’t use it in my own house, the capability of live viewing something remotely displaced is a technological marvel, and one which allows us to achieve things that were out of reach before. So, I think we need to put more emphasis on creating the technologies, and less on consumption of them. For my part, I spent several years designing and implementing industrial robotics; keyboard testers, for example, that could exercise a computer keyboard faster than humanly possible and yet check after each keystroke to see if the proper electronic code was generated.
Before we could easily connect to mainframes remotely, I used to do computer troubleshooting by having tapes shipped to me overnight.
The drive-through means I only need to be off the highway five minutes to get a cup of coffee instead of fifteen or twenty. The next customer down the line is happy I got there faster, and so is my boss.
It’s hard to draw a line and say one technology is decadent while another is not. Was it the switch from horses and buggies to automobiles? Or was it when they put radios in the cars? Over recent centuries technologies have steadily advanced, and now are accelerating.
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You are almost touching upon one of my favorite topics-- the dumbing down of America and its citizens.
My wife and I were just talking about how the cash registers at fast food restaurants have the names of items, because the employees are not skilled enough to enter monetary amounts.
It is iust extremely disgraceful, the slide this country is taking-- especially when you think about the fact that we put a man on the moon . . .
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The problem seems to be that each high-tech advance produced by a knowledge worker means that some other job is made dumber. I also worked on software for those cash registers that read barcodes so the cashier doesn’t have to key in the price. On the one hand it’s more accurate and much faster (and allows for inventory management, and tracking the success of promotions, and avoids sweetheart deals where the cashier lets her boyfriend have the goods for half price, etc etc), while on the other it means that minimum wage is justified for the teenagers working the checkout. It’s not so much that the cashier is dumb, as that investment in the employee can be avoided or minimized.
Recently I heard that McDonalds and such in Los Angeles were unable to find native speakers of English to handle drive-up orders for the minimum wage. The solution was to have native speakers in North Dakota take the orders and key them onto computer screens which were then visible in LA. I don’t know which minimum wage the girls in Fargo are getting paid.
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Don't feel bad. If I were charged with the cashier/register project-- as a realist, I would have to do the same thing. My point of view is that it is just shameful that this is what it has come to. It's only going to get worse . . .
Most of the employees I meet in my day aren't the sharpest tools in the shed-- the biggest short coming these days is good old fashioned horse (common) sense . . .
I hadn't heard the one about the remote order takers, but I am not surprised in the least.
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I agree with the underlying sentiments, but have to quibble with some of the statements. In point of fact, certainly some early Americans (not necessarily, nor only, the Pilgrims) were wasteful; trees from land that was cleared for farming were not necessarily used either for building OR neatly stacked for use as firewood - sometimes it was a variant on what is still known as "slash-and-burn" farming, which is not a 20th century technique. Remember the passenger pigeons? Rather, remember reading about them? Because you can't remember them. They used to darken the skies for minutes at a time as they migrated. They were easy to shoot, and they were wiped out (although not in the 17th century). By the 19th century, buffalo were slaughtered by the thousand for the hide only; the bodies were left to rot. Tourists would fire at buffalo from trains. It was encouraged, because if the buffalo - the base of the Plains Indian economy - was destroyed, buh-bye Indians. And the Indians, before they had rifles, would often hunt buffalo by stampeding a herd off a cliff - safer for the hunters, but not necessarily the best use of the resources.
And how can you say the Pilgrims didn't get off the ships, resumes in hand? That's exactly what they did. Carpenters, lady's maid, tailors - how do you differ between a "trade" and a "job"? Yes, people undoubtedly pitched in and did more work and other jobs than they would have in England - but not because it was their goal. A lot of those folks were urbanites who would have preferred to make a living back home - if the wood hadn't run out, if they could worship they way they wanted to. I gather you're leaning towards the Northeastern settlers, not the Southern ones, since quite a few of the Jamestown folk listed their occupation as "gentleman" - no trade, no job.
There was certainly much to admire, and much to imitate, in many of our predecessors in America - but it wasn't all admirable, or worth imitating. Religious hysteria and land greed played a part in the deaths of folk in Massachusetts under the guise of witch hunting - and a lot of it WAS greed. Jamestown was riddled with dissent from within, including people who were probably in the pay of the Spanish. Murder as well as misfortune plagued that early colony.
And if the Pilgrims themselves had been so thrifty, there wouldn't have been the endless series of fines for the folks found guilty of violating the sumptuary laws - for dressing "above their station."
I'd say that there was probably the same proportion of greed and thrift that there is nowadays; goodness knows there certainly were plenty of sermons on the subject of greed. But there was debt back then, too, which is why debtors' prisons existed. If you screwed up badly enough, you starved to death, too bad for you and yours.
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I think you need to look more to the underlying sentiments . . . I am extremely disappointed with were this country seems to be headed.
Our forefathers all had their bad habits, vices, and faults, but I look for the positives. While I am a big fan of our founding fathers, many were slave owners . . . a fact I don't forget.
I was aware of the train shooting of buffalo and the strategy of wiping out the Indians' food supply.
As for the resume comment, I view entrepreneurs, tradesman, and craftsman with higher esteem than some of these newly minted college grads with resumes in hand hoping to be a cog in the wheel, while being paid a small fortune in their daydreams (Look at my posts More on Child Worship . . . and An MBA Degree Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be . . .). I admire hard work and self sufficiency traits . . .
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