The Loss of Common Knowledge (Part 2)

So yesterday, after writing the first article on this topic, Kevin and I had a conversation. It was very revealing – one of those where you start thinking about things in a way you have not thought about them before. There is a second part to this topic. One just as important as the first. Homeschoolers… you are gonna like this!

When a person decides to plant a garden, or raise chickens, there is a good chance they won’t remember having done so with their parents. They’ll be completely groundless as to where to start. Perhaps they have a neighbor or friend to point them in the right direction. Or perhaps they go to books or the internet to find out how to do it.

Centuries ago, we learned gardening and animal husbandry from our parents, by being involved in those tasks throughout our childhood. We were taught by DOING, not by TELLING. Nobody knew the microscopic details of photosynthesis or the exact scientific processes of seed germination, or the genus and species and molecular and DNA lineage of their chickens. Those things did not matter. Results mattered. Getting the work done each day, in an efficient manner, so that the essentials were done, mattered.

The twentieth century changed all that. We went from a nation that DID things, to a nation that STUDIED things. We went from PRODUCERS, to CONSUMERS. Each person became a cog in the wheel, taking our place on the assembly-line of human production. We went from EDUCATORS, to BELIEVERS. We no longer taught our children ourselves, we let someone else teach them, and we began to lose our confidence in our own ability to make a choice without professional advice. Pediatricians began dispensing child rearing advice. Schools began overseeing parenting. Industrial ag became the “experts” on farming and food production. Science became a subject at school, where each thing was dissected and discussed, but where nothing was produced.

So now, you want to garden, and you realize that all you did in school, was plant a seed to study germination. You did not actually GROW anything. You did not follow it through to PRODUCE anything. Science in the schools is a disjointed thing with little connection to day to day activities and life around us. We are taught to observe, but not to DO. And when science gets involved in industrial agriculture, it then tries to scale those concepts down for the home grower, and they NEVER scale down, they just over-complicate the whole thing. The government is also involved in telling us how to do it, and they are the experts at overcomplicating, NOT the experts at actually DOING a thing well (after all, the government does not actually FARM… they just tell people HOW do to it… how backward is that?).

You may have had a pet when you grew up, but you never raised anything that gave something back to you. Raising an animal to produce something is an entirely different equation. Science and the government are again involved, and they have thoroughly mucked things up, making raising chickens sound like it requires a college course and a hefty budget, scientifically formulated feeds, and a veterinary on retainer! Your great-great grandmother knew better.

Chickens were economical then, gardens were grown to SAVE, not to SPEND,  and they can be now, if we can regain what great-great grandma knew.

The first thing you need to realize is that government produced information has infiltrated everything about your life. If you try to do anything “self-sufficient”, chances are there is a government pamphlet out there that the source you are using is relying on, either first or second hand. They have muddied the waters and injected false information in every area – raising animals, growing food, preserving food, cooking food, making clothes, building a barn, growing a mushroom, storing food, creating a 72 hour kit, etc. Somehow, we think that our government is the “final authority” on all of these topics! Our government whose goal is dependency, not independence, whose aims are of encouraging purchases not self-sufficiency, and who produces laws that stop us from doing the very things they are trying to tell us they know how to do better than we do.

Here’s the wake-up call – More than HALF of the information they produce on DOING things, is WRONG. Because they don’t DO things. Their information is completely disconnected from the reality of having to make things economically feasible, and manageable on a small scale (or even a large one). The people telling you how to create a growing bed in your garden have NEVER had to do that on a restricted budget, with two toddlers running around trying to eat dirt, a crock pot of stew simmering in the kitchen, and in a climate where only a few things grow well. They’ve NEVER done it! Are you honestly going to believe that they are the best source to tell YOU how to do it?

They are never going to tell you that if you just dig, manure, seed, and water, chances are, the things you planted will grow, and produce just as well as if you followed their instructions. They’ll never tell you that a few weeds in the garden are actually a helpful thing, or that planting things closer together helps them thrive. They’ll never tell you that there are ways to save time and cut the work by 75% or more, and still end up with the same, or even BETTER yields. You see, they don’t study home gardens. They study industrial ag.

We live in a world of “experts” who all want us to believe that they ARE the expert. This means they can NEVER really empower you – if they do, they are no longer the authority, everyone shares the knowledge. In order to perpetuate their elevated status, they must diminish YOUR status. We’ve been accepting that so long we are now a nation of people who do not trust their own ability to make logical and reasoned decisions about anything! As a consequence, we are being lead where someone else wants us to go, without us even realizing we are being lead – we think we are being given “scientific” or “valid” information, when in fact, we are not. We are living in a world where much of what we accept as “fact”, is in fact, fallacy.

The only way we can ever relearn truth, is by DOING. We can’t just talk about it, pontificate, study and watch. We have to DO. We have to go out and dig a hole and stick something in it and see if it grows, because someone else telling you that it will or will not is NOT truth! What happens when you do it is truth. We have to mix our ingredients, and see if it tastes good, because it does not matter if someone else likes it, what matters is if YOU like it. We have to roll up our sleeves and get to work and produce things for ourselves. Miracles happen when we do!

Homeschoolers have an advantage. They can help their children learn by doing. Even they must realize though, that a lot of what they are teaching comes straight from the government in one form or another, and learn to question, and trust their own judgment.

This is what I’d like people to know…

When you are trying to learn how to do something, and all you can think is, “There’s gotta be an easier way than this!”, trust that thought! It is RIGHT! Twentieth century instructions are NOT what allowed humans to survive for thousands of years! Before that, it was MUCH simpler. It was WORK, but it was not COMPLICATED work.

When things just do not sound logical, trust that feeling! Dig a little deeper. Try it another way! Have the courage to resist being herded into a box that does not fit, and will never fit, because it was constructed wrong in every respect right from the start! Build your own container and make it any shape you like!

If we are to throw off the yolk of bondage, we must learn to do things ourselves, and to develop our own expertise in enough things to be an asset to others who are trying to do the same thing. Thankfully, the internet not only brings us the party line, it also brings us the radicals – Back to Eden gardening, Hugelkultur, Crowded Gardening, Feeding Chickens and Rabbits on things you grow, and other work saving and health enhancing techniques which the government is completely silent about.

You don’t have to pick up arms to start a revolution. You just have to dig in the dirt a little, and make something grow!