Self sustenance culture of life and health: Everyone must and can maintain their own health. Health/wellness is the natural state of being. Ants, mice, dogs, cows, horses, deer, pigs all do it naturally and yet the “modern” human finds it terribly difficult. Why? Because throughout our history and without really noticing it, we have been persuaded that disease is something that exists, and that to take care of ourselves we must put the upkeep of our health in the hands of others. We consider that health can only be reached by using certain methods and that health is not inherent. With just a small shift in our outlook we can realize that life unfolds in a free, independent and spontaneous way.

If you do not know how to take care of yourself where is freedom?

Where is independence?

If both the mind and the organism are not able to respond to an emergency, what use is so much talk about the concept of freedom?

Food: People are starving because of politics/centralization, not because there is not enough food in the world. 

We have plenty of food in the world, tons of it rots in ports every year. Anyone who thinks people are starving because there is not enough food is just simply ignore-ant.

Growing food, saving seeds and plant breeding are the common inheritance of humanity. Illiterate plant breeders brought us every crop we now grow (that hasn’t been hybridized or genetically modified). The seed keepers didn’t read or write, and they didn’t know about genes. Without book learning they collaborated cooperatively (in Ayni) with each other, with their local ecosystems and their inhabitants to give us wonderful food. The work the “simple, uncivilized, uneducated” people did to give us corn, beans, squash and grain, and more is the most sophisticated and important thing humanity has accomplished. It hides in plain sight dwarfing the achievement of the greatest temples in the world. About 60 years ago an industrial model of growing food began to separate us from traditional food growing methods. Far away “experts” replaced people’s own understanding and insight. We have since stopped growing our own food and seeds to become cogs in a global corporate machine. We have disturbed the perfect balance of nature and then have to fight against “pests”, and “weeds” for which we have only ourselves to blame.

Where is the freedom?

Growing our own food in harmony with mother nature is an incredibly powerful way to change our world. If we are not able to grow our own food, what use is so much talk about the concept of freedom?

Centralization is the biggest problem. A centralized food system is inherently problematic. It concentrates animals, and that automatically causes sanitation, husbandry and manure problems. It also causes huge transportation costs. It takes roughly 15 calories of energy to put 1 calorie of food on the table. Of those 15 calories, 4 are for transportation. The average T-bone steak you look at in your local supermarket has traveled 2,000 miles to get to you!

Water: is the foundation of all life and is fundamental to our survival. Water is sacred and she flows through all life here on our mother. She was given a job to do. Without water plants, trees, all life perishes. Without her nourishing presence, soil organic matter oxidizes, literally burning away in the sun’s radiation. Without water, the living green skin of our mother turns brown and blows away, taking civilization with it, not matter how “developed” civilization is. If water is slowed down, and brought to the location of a drain to be conveyed safely away before she can do her nourishing job, the drought actually becomes worse. The USDA”s “expert” soil and water conservation practices actually make drought worse! With a keen observation of the shape of our land, and how that shape interacts with water, we can give water her job again, and enjoy plenty of water for all. In a global sense, we are all downstream from someone else in the world’s water cycle. We must consider both our role and responsibility of allowing water to do her job properly once again so that ALL of life thrives.

If we are without water, what use is so much talk about the concept of freedom?

If we allow experts that actually make things worse to “manage” our water, where is the freedom?

Where is the independence?

Energy: We inherently have the right to define for ourselves the parameters of energy generation, distribution and consumption, without impacting others negatively. Incorporating local traditional knowledge and seeks to work in harmony with the natural world, causing the least amount of harm possible. Energy self sustainability allows each dehesa/community to determine what its energy needs are and to find the path to meeting those needs in ways that benefits the entire ecological system, rather than simply benefitting only the human population.

Educational: Learning is a circular endeavor rather than the linear process we have all been domesticated by. In the circular endeavor we find that everyone has something unique to share with us. No one shares eyes with another human being, or ears, or a heart, so we all see, hear and feel differently. So everyone has a unique perspective to offer, and recognizing that they have something to offer gives each of us a different perspective. In our standardized education system, the pupil, regardless of age is “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. Our imaginations have been “schooled” to accept the service of the “teacher” rather than the value of what is being taught. Obligatory schooling inevitably polarizes a society, and grades the nations of the world according to an international caste system. Where is the freedom? Most learning happens casually, outside of school, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction. Everyone learns how to live outside of school, we learn to speak, think, love, feel, play, curse, to politick and even work without interference from a teacher. The pupil has been schooled for selective service among the rich of the world. Everywhere the school system has the same structure, and everywhere its hidden curriculum has the same effect. Invariably it shapes the consumer who values institutional commodities above the “nonprofessional” ministration of a neighbor. Every where this same curriculum instills in the pupil the myth that increased production will provide a better life.

Where is the freedom?

Where is the independence?

A child on the streets of any city in the world never touches anything which has not been scientifically developed, engineered, planned and sold to to some one.

If we allow institutions to dictate our “learning” what is the use of all the talk of freedom?

The alternative to dependence on schools is the creation of a new style of educational relationship between man and his/her environment.

Educational self sustenance starts with the question what kinds of things and people might learners want to be in contact with in order to learn?

Economic: Money is an abstraction, at most symbols on a piece of paper, more usually today bits in a computer. It’s a made-up thing. People in pre-money societies were largely self-sufficient. They killed, or grew, or found their food in community, and they made their own stuff. Money is a system of social agreements, meanings and symbols that develops over time. In a word, it is a story that we can change anytime. Today’s economic system rewards selfishness and greed. Money is an agent of scarcity, the mentality of control. Where is the freedom? In the beginning was the Gift. Our lives are GIVEN to us, so our default state is gratitude. Ancient religious thinkers said that God made the world and gave it to us. Humility knows that this gift is beyond our ability to master. Gratitude know that we honor or dishonor the giver of a gift by how we use it. In a gift economy more for you is also more for me because those who have give to those who need. Gifts cement the mystical realization of participation in something greater than oneself, which is not separate from oneself.