Primary Industry, Conservation & The Environment

(in the Process of being Edited)

 

Despite all the dishonest and self-serving claims made by most of those involved in primary industry (farming, logging and forestry, fishing, hunting and mining), in business & industry, in government and even in many so-called ‘conservation’ groups, the overall state of the global environment is rapidly deteriorating in every single important respect. Only a blind and naive fool, an aged emotional infant with childish fantasies about reality or a greedy, destructive deviate would deny that an enormous amount of totally unnecessary and fully preventable, senseless damage has been done and is still being done to the natural environment, increasingly on a global scale. The only pleasures of these uncivilised savages are to be derived from making money whilst destroying the richness, diversity and natural beauty of the earth and they will only be content when:

- all of the planet is levelled, burned, fenced and planted in man-made, ‘plastic’ species of grass or nursery-reared, genetically engineered hybrid plants (often infertile)

- all the rivers blocked with dams and confined within concrete drainage ditches, pipes and canals

- all wildlife propagated by artificially insemination, reared with hand feeding, totally dependant upon human intervention and confined in cages, zoos, reserves, national parks and other regimentally controlled environments

- every vista is criss-crossed with unsightly pipes, electricity wires, roads and other ugly evidence of man’s ignorance, stupidity and destructive blundering.

 

The perspective of these self-styled experts, though false, contrived, narrow, closed and incredibly superficial, allows them to continue to maintain their persistent but unfounded delusions about reality and their relentless obsession with short-term considerations of financial expediency and profit. Their opinions are completely without useful value and relevance and they are even ignorant of even the simplest and most basic aspects of life; what constitutes real work and what is responsible environmental concern and realistic, practical and sustainable conservation and natural resource management. Typically, they never learn from their past mistakes, make light of or completely overlook their own considerable culpability, disclaim any and all responsibility for their actions and are well practised at blaming someone or something else. Alternatively they squander millions of dollars trying to find more convenient, palatable yet implausible explanations for the inevitable consequent catastrophes they cause. Certainly most should never, ever be put in charge of or allowed to advise about the overall care of the environment and their opinions and theories should be treated with the contempt and ridicule they so justly deserve.

 

Many of those making money in all the primary industries today are descended from and in substance no different to previous generations of colonialists who with casual indifference and off-handed contempt conspired to extort the maximum amount out of the countries they settled whilst putting back the absolute minimum, the same freeloading opportunists and unwelcome interlopers motivated by exactly the same thinly disguised greed, evasion of responsibilities, emotional dishonesty, cowardice and hypocrisy. They continue to lay waste and plunder the natural environment without any attempt to be careful and considerate of the needs of future generations or to restore present and past damage. After their forbears appalling example they short-sightedly see the whole world as something that exists solely for their own greedy self-gratification and short term profit, show no restraint whatsoever, are incensed with the idea that any land be left untouched and imply that all potential land, forests, lakes, wildlife species, minerals and other natural resources are there to be exploited as soon as possible, not just 95% or even 99%. If it were not for the little that a few concerned individuals have managed with great difficulty to have set aside, there would be nothing at all left undisturbed. Most of these deranged delinquents support cruel and disastrous activities like monoculture farming, battery poultry rearing, clear felling and over-fishing and refuse to face the awful truth about their ancestors. Their own activities are equally self-interested, ill-conceived, misguided, wasteful, arbitrary and perverse and most are only able to survive at enormous cost to the environment (a crippling legacy for future generations), to their unfortunate, abused and exploited stock and other wildlife and finally because farming, fishing, forestry, hunting and mining of the generally accepted standard today is so basic, simple and easy, requiring no real skill, dedication or ability - activities whose ‘success’ is measured solely in financial terms.

 

Many are actually attracted to these profiteering occupations because they provide an unsupervised opportunity to misuse entrusted power and behave as a law unto themselves without fear of prosecution, censure or concern for the consequences, human and environmental. Also the artificial, isolated environments in which they are often employed give a completely false sense of security and a convenient excuse to live and behave like savages and avoid growing up. Jobs in primary industries are typically misused:-

- as a convenient excuse to get away from their families and so evade their primary responsibilities as adults, spouses and parents.

- to try (unsuccessfully) to feel manly, in charge, capable, important and successful (the motivation still for chopping down large trees and catching big fish)

- to focus their unresolved and unacknowledged lethal emotional agendas (all the repressed feelings of guilt, anger, pain and fear that they haven't the decency, courage and integrity to deal with in their own lives) against themselves, their families, their employees, their tenants, their neighbours, their stock, any and all available wildlife and the landscape itself. In particular many demonstrate a sadistic enjoyment of violence of all kinds, of chopping down, burning, poisoning, caging and fencing, making noise, killing, distressing, disturbing, terrorising, tormenting, interfering with, damaging, defacing, laying waste and destroying anything vulnerable, defenceless, sensitive, growing, unspoiled, natural, untouched, beautiful, growing, untamed, wild, individual, spontaneous and free.

- to fill their lives with constant external distractions and satisfy their unrestrained idle curiosity so as to avoid looking in any depth at their own behaviour or their own feelings or the truth about their own parents, schooling, childhoods and present relationships.

 

The general standard of fathering and mothering in rural areas is obviously disgracefully poor and country children today are amongst the most deprived, terrified, neglected, brutalised, abused, molested, roughly handled, ill-fed and oppressed alive. Physical and emotional abuse of children is clearly so much a part of family and school life in these communities and violence in all its forms is not only accepted but is approved of and even encouraged. However to avoid coming to terms with the appalling truth most fabricate implausible excuses and invent explanations, justifications and rationalisations about their childhoods and about their parents, they refuse to be even slightly open, completely deny how they really feel and so carry a potentially lethal, repressed emotional overload. This is the underlying reason as to why males today affect a completely false ‘macho’ pretence of being "men", why they demean, misuse and mistreat females as sexual objects, why they drink far too much, smoke cigarettes, drive recklessly and too fast, shoot guns and enjoy being cruel to and killing living creatures, cutting down trees (especially large, tall ones), why they spend so much time catching fish (especially the larger ones), why they make so much noise and are so hard, rough, tough, brutal, coarse, violent and competitive. All this is to compensate for their emotional ‘castration’, to try (unsuccessfully) to feel manly and in control and to offset their real inner feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, insecurity and impotence. Most males today really hate, are scared of and feel uneasy around females because of how they were treated as children. The more terrified they are by their true feelings of repressed, murderous rage, the more desperate is their denial of how they really feel, the greater is their pretence of devotion to their mothers and the more they indulge and fantasise about all the females around them. It is certainly time that males stopped allowing and encouraging misleading delusions about how ‘caring’, ‘competent’, ‘involved’ and ‘committed’ most females are today with children and do something real about their inexcusable but largely unrebuked violence which embarrasses and absolutely infuriates boys especially.

 

Most rural males, like their urban counter-parts, are absolutely useless with females, either bullying, intimidating and being hard towards them on the one hand or being ineffectual, useless, wimpish, absent and abdicated on the other. They have none of the real strength of spirit, firmness, gentleness, directness, unselfishness and patience of a real man, are totally shut-off to, ignorant about and unaware of their own true feelings and needs (and consequently of those of their wives and children) and are fully determined to stay that way - they are totally untrustable with anything or anyone young, sensitive, vulnerable and defenceless.

 

A real man is a clean, tidy, organised, slim, quiet, peaceful, firm, gentle, patient, relaxed, unobtrusive, aware, direct, kind, honest, open, helpful and practical person, have a full head of hair, reasonable eyesight (without needing glasses) and their own teeth and a strong, sound marriage - their wives and children will be similarly healthy. He will be healthy and free of disease, live somewhere clean, tidy, unpolluted, quiet and peaceful around natural beauty and will make an active, unselfish and meaningful contribution to this world. It is only on such a foundation without hypocrisy that someone is able to care for living creatures, for the land itself or to advise and help others in this regard.

 

Many of the marauding menaces in the primary industries are hard, lazy, noisy, dirty, untidy, disorganised, arrogant, cruel and even depraved, show no mastery or understanding of their own bodies and spirits, the first and most basic aspect of being a real adult. Consequently they know nothing of value about themselves, about other people, about animals, birds, fish, trees or about the land itself. Ancient trees, precious minerals, outstanding wildlife, the land itself and surrounding seas are seen solely in terms of the money to be made out of them and these emotionally retarded cripples are blind to the intrinsic beauty, peace, stature, age and other obvious amenity attributes and value. This is the dangerous, delusional and fundamentally flawed perspective of abused, deprived, neglected, molested and invalidated aged infants whose lethal, unresolved emotional agendas pre-empt and preclude them ever being placed in any position of responsibility, decision making or trust over anything or anyone, ever.

 

These are the real introduced pests, vermin and savages of countries like Australia and New Zealand and it would be a great blessing if they went back to where they really belong, somewhere desolate, ugly, noisy, harsh, man-made and artificial. Without them this world would certainly be considerably better place in which to live and bring up children in every single respect and in a sane and just society they would be deported. They haven’t the courage or manliness to grow up and behave with proper care, concern, consideration, honesty, patience, strength of spirit and gentleness. In truth they don’t care about anything but their own self-centered, trivial, essentially meaningless and emotionally impoverished existences and there is no unity, order, organisation, balance, care or purpose in anything they do. They pose a real danger to themselves, their own families, to anyone else unfortunate to be in their power and to the planet as a whole. Traditionally the worst have been small spirited males (and females) with little absolute significance, importance or relevance in this world yet they have been allowed to fill far too large a space and exercise far too much authority and control. Motivated by well-developed delusions of grandeur, they presume to meddle in matters far beyond their useful limits of competence, ability, experience and knowledge and their opinions and actions should be resolutely ignored or at least treated with contempt and derision.

 

Most farmers, loggers, foresters, fishermen, hunters and miners have no real appreciation for the beauty and potential serenity of rural or coastal living and their approach, attitudes and behaviour effectively spoils everything that could be peaceful, fulfilling, meaningful, productive, balanced, self-supporting and healthy about life away from the madness of modern cities. Primary producing has degenerated into rural factory production turning out animal, fish & shellfish products, cereal & vegetable crops, timber and mineral commodities, no different to their secondary industry counterpart. Most jobs have as a consequence been demeaned into a kind of rigorous, enforced slavery and joyless drudgery, a succession of endless, repetitive tasks instead of an immensely satisfying, varied, learning and joyful way of life. The original owners of the land in colonized countries all over the world, misled, gullible and cheated native populations, at least showed a modicum of respect for the environment, valued it in a much more truly civilised way and the simple and primitive nature of their cultures minimised the impact made. It is however fair to say many were different in degree, not in kind to the European invaders.

 

Most primary industry enterprises have chosen to become totally dependent upon dirty, dangerous, noisy, smelly, costly, ugly, intrusive, expensive-to-run, impractical and completely unnecessary machinery, mechanical contraptions and devices and other ‘children’s toys’ requiring no real ability, understanding or humanity which completely destroy the peace, disturb people and animals and spoil the potential fulfillment to be had from active, physical effort. Machinery now does all the real work while those operating it stoically sit, robotic extensions of their silly tractors, bulldozers, trucks, trawlers, motorbikes, quads, chain saws, brush cutters, harvesters, crop dusters, completely oblivious to everything around them, often wearing ear muffs or headphones. Dead and unfeeling machines invariably create more problems than they solve, predictably break down when most needed, always leave a mess and, worst of all, have done away with the wonderful, mutually beneficial, reciprocal and co-operative, satisfying, trusting and living relationships with farm animals and with natural forms of transport like sailing craft.

 

Oxen, donkeys, horses and draught horses are delightful, beautiful, trusting, gentle, obliging, long suffering creatures that require real patience, dedication and skill. These magnificent creatures are self-propagating, pollution free, user friendly in every single respect, practical in fundamental terms, provide obvious benefits to the farmer and to the land and are a real pleasure to work with for any real adult, a vital and integral part of any and all real farming. Instead they have now been largely demeaned into show-piece curiosities and historic oddities and those that do own these animals do so to gratify unhealthy, unnatural and unacknowledged motives. They invariably talk to, treat and handle their animals totally inappropriately, misusing and parasitically living off their spirits, everything done as a performance to get attention. Horses are bred and misused either as toys and playthings to gratify the attention seeking of young girls especially or something to indulge the infantile, competitive games, fantasies and avariciousness of aged preschoolers with their various equestrian contests - show jumping, trotting, horse racing aand polo is a cruel demeaning trivialisation of the role of these fine, useful animals. Similar infantile behaviour motivates all game fishing, most prospecting and the cutting down of large trees.

 

Properties in the country today bear absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to real farms and stock are exploited, abused and mistreated like uniform, unfeeling units in fibre, meat, milk, egg and skins breeding factories and production lines. Using machines, for example to milk dairy cows is absolutely disgusting and even depraved - it demeans the value and importance of these fine animals which clearly detest the experience and trudge forlornly and dejectedly back to the paddocks afterward. Farmers fail to respond to most of their stocks' reasonable needs and have completely destroyed the mutual inter-dependency and enjoyment of caring for productive animals - both the quality and fulfilment of rural life have in the process been degraded enormously. If they really looked after their sheep properly, for example, they would not need to sever their tales so savagely in docking, they would not get fly-blown, not need to be drenched and animals would never, ever die from exposure or in floods, droughts or blizzards. Modern stocking rates are far too high for long term sustainability when all factors are considered, especially the land’s capacity to recover and regenerate naturally even after extended drought and the parasite infestation that occurs with the present grossly excessive stocking levels.

 

All primary industry today has an absurdly narrow and specialised focus to its activities which is not only wasteful and imbalanced but gives least satisfaction, fulfilment and breadth and depth of experience. Farmers concentrate on stocking sheep, goats, cattle or deer only or cultivate a single crop (monoculture), fishermen pursue a single marine species, miners extract one mineral and foresters grow and harvest species like radiata pines almost exclusively. The paramount consideration is always profit and all the important factors about quality of life are minimised, demeaned or totally ignored. For example, most farm requisites are now bought in and farms are producing less and less of their own needs, all of which is easy, suits farmers’ true laziness, basic incompetence and superficiality of focus, limited span of attention and intolerance for detail, maximises short term monetary gain and requires least real understanding and effort. Tragically this approach ignores a basic fact of life - human beings only really value, appreciate and care for the things they work for directly, not the things they can so easily buy. The so-called time and labour-saving, efficiency philosophy may be financially expedient and intellectually defensible in a very limited way in the short term but it is hopelessly impractical, expensive, inefficient and senseless overall. Most people in the industrialised, developed countries have shown themselves to be totally unable and unfit to responsibly cope with and productively use the increased wealth and leisure time made available anyway - life is becoming increasingly characterised by periods of frantic activity which cannot be truthfully described as real work followed by lots of sitting and talking and/or wasting life on pointless, childish and self-indulgent escapist distractions.

 

In general, primary industry has completely lost touch with sensible, sane, humane and practical methods and routines and works against (rather than in harmony with) the natural order of things. Farmers, for example impose a completely artificial regimen upon the land with their unsustainable cropping and grazing practices and effectively wage war upon their stock and upon the land as a whole in a vain attempt to oppress, control and confine - all of this is more an indication of what was done to them as children than what is really needed. This enormously expensive and pointless campaign which they can never win in the process destroys all balance, order and cohesion and kills all life leaving dead fields, eroded, soil with no natural condition, no birds to control pests, no insects to feed the birds, no bees for natural pollination, no worms to condition and improve the soil and no native animals, useful or otherwise. In fact, in every single thing that farmers do their approach and methods guarantee that they will be confronted with increasingly difficult problems that require further artificial, contrived, time consuming and expensive solutions and interventions - in a sense, they reap exactly what theey sow! In truth, most farms have never, ever been managed humanely, effectively, realistically, sensitively, properly or in accordance with common sense, simple environmental responsibility, practical long-term sustainability and financial viability.

 

In real terms, farming has gone backwards in the last 200 years or so and even their own ancestors would have scorned or at least expressed serious reservations about modern farming methods and been horrified and dismayed at much of what is done today. Because most farmers have borrowed so much money out of simple acquisitive greed, everything is reduced to considerations of quantity and monetary units in order to service the interest burden and debt repayments, yet these factors are largely irrelevant for a real farmer. It is reasonable to conclude that many of them couldn’t survive and make a good living from their farms without all their man-made gadgets, devices and lethal chemicals - machinery, pesticides, herbicides, drenches, fertilisers. Even the supposedly efficient, organised and tidy enterprises that are at least outwardly run on clinical business principles of short term financial expediency and the least possible physical effort and concern ignore the most important considerations of true long term viability, quality of life, the enjoyment of real work and natural cohesion, balance and harmony.

 

Many properties and businesses have also been established in harsh, desolate, arid and isolated parts of the world which in absolute terms are less than marginal, unfit for human habitation (especially for women and children) and are obviously unsuitable when all factors are considered - notably the climate, the general difficulties in living, aspects of safety and health, the availability of a decent water supply (hot, hard bore water is not satisfactory), the cost of subsidising support services (especially medical), the financial returns and the suitability and vulnerability of the environment itself to erosion and general degradation. At best these areas might be suitable for seasonal grazing a few months of the year under the supervision of unmarried stockmen without families.

 

Farmers maraud around their properties in their unrestrained desperation and dementia, often with no genuine rational purpose or logical cause, wandering aimlessly from paddock to paddock, arbitrarily moving their stock, making work for themselves along with a great deal of unnecessary noise and other environmental damage, expecting other people and animals to guess what they are about and get out of their way and finally, deliberately avoiding all the really essential work such as planting trees. They create major disasters and crises out of relatively minor incidents and difficulties with their usual clumsy and inept intrusions and floods, droughts and localised climatic extremes are so much worse now because of their mistreatment of the land. The worst farms are eroded, treeless, ugly wastelands whose water courses are silted up and their soil dried out and compacted with no tree cover, leached by over-cropping and over-grazing, poisoned by fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and other dangerous and unnecessary substances and salinated and soured by excessive irrigation and irresponsible clearing. Some are obvious health hazards littered with unburied, dead animals, often left to decompose in rivers and streams from which drinking water is sometimes drawn. It is extraordinarily shortsighted, foolish, incompetent and unhygienic that stock should ever be allowed unrestricted access to watercourses anyway - often this is even denied to the public for recreation purposes.

 

Most farmers hate things to be tidy, organised, natural, cohesive and beautiful and the truth about them is easily confirmed by looking at the disgraceful state of their houses, sheds, fields and families. Like their wives, they are well practices at giving untruthful self-justifications, implausible excuses and deceitful platitudes for all this mess, waste and confusion as well as for their own frequent mistakes, inadequacies and evidence of incompetence. They spread their ugly, hoarded, rusty rubbish, wire, machinery, implements and other dangerous litter wherever it suits their own laziness, selfish convenience and disordered thinking, as though they have the right to do whatever they like on their own land with no thought for nor concern about other people, especially their own children. Many properties are unsightly, chaotic, mismanaged and filthy wastelands that unpleasantly offend, affront and assail the senses. Most farmers have completely lost the ability to really care for and value things and are ungrateful and unappreciative of all that they have been blessed with.

 

There is an enormous amount of deliberate, unrebuked and unacknowledged cruelty towards animals on all farms today, none of which can be legitimately justified or defended upon any reasonable grounds whatsoever. Stock are literally deprived, neglected, abused and completely uncared for in every conceivable respect and cruelty is considered to be not only acceptable and condoned but even necessary and unavoidable. Many farmers clearly enjoy distressing defenceless animals to fulfil their own depraved callous brutality and the explanations and excuses given are always unbelievable, untruthful, related to monetary profit, selfish convenience, laziness and the deliberate refusal to act and behave with proper care, responsibility, patience and gentleness. Their idea of farming is to distance themselves from any emotional involvement whatsoever with their stock, to deny any humane responsibility and to simply let them loose into the paddocks entirely at their own devices and only check on them when they want something from them or when they are going to further terrorise or torment them.

 

Animals are starved, forced to eat grass polluted with their own droppings due to greedy overstocking and strip grazing and are commonly denied proper shade and shelter from the wind, rain, snow, sun and extremes in temperature - whether they suffer hardship or not (euphemistically referred to as "stress") is irrelevant to most farmers, the only criterion or concern is that they survive no matter what the cost! Consistent with their own insane priorities in life, preoccupation with and obsession about food and gluttonous personal habits, farmers’ sole concerns for animals in extremely cold conditions is whether or not they have feed. They are so obtuse, stupid and perverse that they stubbornly refuse to learn from experience and will not review or change their shearing and/or lambing times, for example, even in the year immediately following heavy stock loses during the preceding harsh winter or late Spring. They merely continue to lamely mutter their usual lies and try to off-load their own guilt and culpability by putting the blame onto anyone else, notably the bureau of meteorology. They are too blind to see that planting trees and providing adequate shelter would overcome most of these problems simply, easily and effectively - sheep able to shelter under trees nearly all survived the severe snow storm in August 1992 in Canterbury New Zealand - they had shelter and a source of feed. There was no excuse for this anyway as it happened in the last month of winter in a country where the weather is unpredictable and can change suddenly, where snow at this time of the year is by no means unusual. This so-called ‘natural’ disaster was completely avoidable with an absolute minimum amount of care, sensible farming and practical common sense.

 

Stock are branded, have identification tags punched into their ears, are incessantly drenched, are not given adequate access to clean drinking water, not groomed, washed or have their hooves trimmed and are often forced to endure hostile or inappropriate surroundings contrary to their basic natures and original purposes. They are denied necessary attention for injuries and ailments, are separated into artificial groups of one age or sex, are disturbed for no good or proper reason and are left fly blown and unshorn or are shorn at the wrong time of the year. Female animals giving birth are rarely provided with clean, dry comfortable straw bedding indoors when obviously needed. Finally, the usual way stock are transported in trucks, trains and ships and generally handled onto and off the farm and in sale yards is an absolute disgrace and extremely cruel.

 

All those associated with farming can never leave anything alone irregardless of the distress and suffering this may cause in both the short and long term or the financial cost involved and they literally interfere with, torment, torture and experiment upon animals in their infantile pursuit of recognition, their unfeeling idle curiosity and their indefensible greed. Contrived breeding programs, often using the disgusting techniques of artificial insemination have selectively produced bizarre mutant species of animals with inherent, inbred short-comings and distorted and imbalanced instincts and which emphasise a single ‘desirable characteristic’ at the expense of other balanced attributes vital for easy maintenance, natural survival and general stamina. Breeding programs are carried out at a frantic rate obsessively preoccupied with very minor improvements in characteristics instead of the sensible evolution and improvement gradually introduced over decades, even generations.

 

The worst example of their intrusions however is the outrageous and inexcusable mistreatment of breeding and pregnant female stock and newborn animals perpetrated as usual against the most vulnerable and defenceless. The modern obsession with examining and probing animals’ genital areas and reproductive organs for whatever reason is clearly a twisted and deviate perversion, again no better than a form of bestiality and an extraordinary intrusion especially during pregnancy and labour. All those who interfere with and intrude upon the privacy and intimacy of birth do so for a whole range of motives which are depraved and sadistic and which have nothing to do with providing necessary assistance. Most of this is completely unnecessary and unavoidable anyway as the problems animals encounter during pregnancy are always a reasonable a preventable response to the inconsideration, abuse, neglect and invasive mistreatment by farmers and vets themselves who rarely help animals in any substantial way. In fact their approach and behaviour invariably gives rise to the very problems during pregnancy and labour that they so marvelously purport to cure and solve and in most cases the animals would do much better if left completely alone. It is certainly important to be clean tidy, organised, quiet, peaceful, patient, gentle, unobtrusive, aware and become involved only if absolutely necessary with animals in labour who should always be provided with some form of shelter and most often with straw or similar on which to lie. Most males and females on and around farms today are the exact opposite of this and the females in particular only pretend to be concerned with their busy, “efficient” interference - most have no idea what they are doing and invent bizarre explanations and implausible justifications for their actions and interventions. Small, even tiny newborn animals are extremely sensitive and completely defenceless and it is an outrage what most lambs, kids, calves and chicks are obliged to endure on farms today. Again, all those who refuse to face the truth about their own pregnancies, births and early childhood will be driven to impose a worse version upon their own children and upon any other living creatures unfortunate enough to be under their control. Animals from birth are literally assaulted, brutalised, neglected and deprived of their simple needs, obstructed from proper natural growth and development. Farmers and their wives and employee and all those who give them advice and support in any way are directly responsible for the unnecessary suffering and preventable deaths of so many young creatures every single year.

 

In fact, every single contact stock have with their owners and with other people is an unpleasant, distressing and painful experience. Animals have their spirits broken and are forced to comply with farmers' insane expectations, unhealthy rigidity and unnatural requirements of them, an approach which is cruel, completely unnecessary and enormously expensive to maintain. Along with farmers' own lives, animals' existences are becoming more controlled, more rigid, more contrived and artificial, more contained and less in harmony with their natural behaviour, needs and instincts, all of which farmers now actively work against. Only a sick and twisted deviate could engineer and impose an existence upon animals or birds such as those that battery hens and pigs have to endure, for example, and naturally highly strung and active farm dogs are regularly caged for days and even weeks without needed exercise, often in disgusting conditions.

 

Farmers in general have dependent, unnatural, sick and even deviant relationships with their dogs (cats, caged birds and other pets) which at times are a twisted version of bestiality based on disgraceful brutality. They in effect misuse their pets as a target for all their own unresolved childhood feelings and the feelings they will not deal with about their relationships with their wives, other relations, friends and acquaintances - increasingly farmers cannot go anywhere without their dogs and set them up as a sort of comforting, pseudo-companion and security blanket. The only people who lock up, cage, restrain or fence in any living creature to suit their own unsavoury agendas are those who are emotionally ‘imprisoned’, hardened, closed and shut-off inside themselves.

 

Despite all the plausible and impressive justifications given, the widespread mistreatment of animals on farms can only be properly understood and appreciated when it is realised that farmers treat their stock in precisely the same ways that they were themselves emotionally and physically abused as babies and young children. This is why young animals are separated from their mothers at far too early an age shortly after birth and then forced to endure the deprivation of artificial, bottle feeding - farmers and vets are too stupid to see that the ensuing "scours", sicknesses and deaths are always a result of the fear the animals feel and a reaction to the inappropriate nourishment and often appalling bad standards of hygiene. If they survive this abuse, the male animals are summarily castrated and have their tails severed and it is no surprise that they immediately learn to hate and fear their owners - they only ever reluctantly come near for food, something farmers misrepresent as trust and affection. The sinister hidden emotional agenda behind all castration is obvious - farmers are literally emotionally castrated/emasculated themselves by their mothers, wives and the other females around them and many farmers behave just like the steers, wethers and geldings they so mistreat.

 

In general animals are treated with no respect or dignity, as if they were worthless and had no rights or feelings and anyone who knows anything sensible about living creatures will recognise the subsequent implications of this attitude, the self-fulfilling prophecy which is directly responsible for turning farm and domestic animals into wild, uncontrollable, terrified, and even dangerous, feral creatures. This approach also creates strife and conflict between animals that then inappropriately discharge their anger against one another in much the same way as uncared-for children and inmates in institutions do. Much abused animals also become violent towards farmers as a reasonable expression of fully justifiable retaliation fairly directed against their tormentors. Their efforts to escape these preventable consequences of their own brutality simply cause more long-term problems, expense and distress. Farmers, who are then scared of them, castrate and/or poll the horns of young bulls, goats, rams, stags and stallions or try to breed more compliant species. Stock become difficult to handle and understandably run away terrified when approached by any human being and increasingly need such unnecessary and even dangerous restraints like barbed wire and electric internal fencing and dogs to control and round them up - farmers even flaunt this stupidity, iggnorance and incompetence by having televised, competitive trials for sheep dogs!

 

The only times that animals are given even the pretence of care is when farmers make a pretence for public show (just as they do with themselves and their families), when they wish to impress other people or compete for approval and childish prizes at agricultural shows or field days. These events are most characterised by rural ignoramuses standing around pompously airing their valueless opinions about farming in conversations that are largely about money. As usual the worst who claim to be experts have the gall, audacity and impertinence to hold open days on their own farms at which times they self-importantly show other people around, misusing them to fulfil their own pathetic needs for attention and to feel important, capable and knowledgeable. They enjoy sitting, pontificating, expressing opinions and passing opinions about matters about which they know very little of any value - self-opinionated, unimportant and insignificant little upstarts, well beyond their useful limits of ability, knowledge and experience.

 

No-one sets real limits for farmers or gives them any effective direction and they are indulged shamefully by being allowed and encouraged to behave in ways that are clearly detrimental to the health and well-being of their stock, the land and the environment as a whole. At best vets, so-called rural experts and others associated with the farming sector mutter ineffectual platitudes of feigned concern and at worst they also enjoy taking their own pain out on vulnerable and defenceless creatures, either directly or by default. In action everyone supports farmers with the destruction and distress they cause and abdicates their legal and moral responsibilities to vehemently disapprove of and rebuke this violence - they are literally accessories both before and after the fact to an enormous amount of disgusting cruelty to animals and environmental vandalism. This means that they will continue to parasitically profit from the unrelieved suffering and avoidable distress of animals and that farmers will be obliged to increasingly rely and depend unnecessarily upon artificial intrusions and interference. It also guarantees that vets’ grossly excessive and undeserved incomes and status in rural society will be maintained and that a large number of people associated with the farming sector (especially public servants and scientists) will continue to make money in jobs that are completely unnecessary. Even their academic qualifications are substantially theoretical and worthless, gained by years of essentially unhealthy and imbalanced living and study out of books which required a complete denial and repression of their real needs and feelings and the memorising of vast amounts of information largely irrelevant to and even obstructive of a proper understanding of managing a real farm in harmony with the environment. Academic studies completely overlook the crucial fact that all living creatures are both body and spirit and have feelings at least on some basic level. Anyone who denies this or who does not fully understand the implications of it is dangerously deluded and totally ill-equipped and unfit to be in any position of trust or responsibility. Academic achievement is itself the worst possible basis upon which to assess ability and competence to make sound decisions about stock and land management. It is little wonder that farmers, academics and bureaucrats today with their “precious” college and university degrees creates such chaos based on financial expediency and are guilty of such cruelty and immorality.

 

The way in which most farmers treat themselves, their wives, children, tenants and subordinates is absolutely disgraceful, often illegal, and they place an intolerable physical and emotional burden upon their families in particular. Understandably their wives and children soon become coarse, rough, hardened and angry themselves, in many ways worse than those who inhabit city slums, and all females who grow up, live and are employed on rural properties quickly have everything soft, gentle, open and womanly abut their true essences completely destroyed. Some of the poorest excuses for human beings live in rural areas, some of the worst males and females, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, real child abusers.

 

Wives direct their consequent outrage back against themselves, at their children and especially at their humiliated and intimidated sons who then grow up to become farmers who mistreat their own families, stock and the land, one generation worse. In particular farmers horribly mistreat their hands, using them like mechanical extensions to their machinery, handling hazardous and corrosive substances and abrasive, dangerous, hard, cold and hot materials and metals without proper protective gloves - this is essentially childish irresponsibility and cowardly masochism. As a consequence their hands become ugly, swollen and hardened ‘killers’ hands’ totally unfit to touch or handle anything soft or gentle (notably babies, children and women) or to do anything creative or requiring care, gentleness and true manliness. In fact, with typical obtuse perversity, the harsher, more rigorous and severe the climate and conditions are, the more most farmers deny the reality of the situation as to how much more careful and patient they need to be with themselves, their families, their employees and their animals. ^m They either dress like derelicts at home with no pride, care or respect or like scrubbed-up school boys when going in to town.

 

Most farmers are so blind, rigid, closed, predisposed and biased that they do not see or even wish to see the much easier, less expensive, more profitable (in the long term) and in many ways more appropriate opportunities that exist to farm native species or introduced animals that have already adapted well to the local environment. Instead of wasting millions of dollars and man hours trying unsuccessfully to eradicate or control so called pests (kangaroos rabbits, possums, deer, foxes, goats, ferrets etc.), they can be productively used together with sheep ad cattle for meat, skins, fur, hides and milk. Goat meat (chevon) is in fact more widely eaten than lamb or beef world wide, yet obdurate farmers in both Australia and New Zealand stupidly persecuted goats remorselessly without real cause for years - even worse, the conservation departments now shoot this entirely useful, productive animal rather than capturing it for constructive farming purposes. In fact eradication by shooting is often justified by using deceitful, completely fabricated pretexts just because these emotionally crippled individuals really enjoy killing living creatures and it is no surprise to see the strong influence still exerted by the farming and logging communities within government conservation departments. Kangaroo is yet another healthy, viable alternative to beef, pork and lamb and their hides makes excellent clothing, rugs and leather. In general large animals like cattle are grazed because they are traditional, easy, profitable and require little care or supervision but this attitude is short-sighted and ignores more important considerations. Cattle foul water courses with their tracks and solid and liquid waste, cause major problems with erosion on all but the flattest country, do incredible damage to the pasture on boggy ground, compact the soil, produce meat and milk in far too large quantities for small farming families to use themselves and are physically demanding and too difficult to manage for women and children.

 

In contrast competent and caring farmers easily control their stock and have nothing to fear from them and surplus young male animals need not be castrated but can be continuously culled and used for meat when young in order to maintain balanced numbers in herds and flocks. Sheep (and goats) are splendid, intelligent, trusting creatures that by nature and by instinct clearly need to rely upon and follow their owner/shepherd if he cares for them and shows himself to be trustable. The only people that find sheep to be stupid, disobedient and uncooperative are themselves stupid, disobedient and uncooperative ignoramuses.

 

In fact all the unpleasant, critical and insulting things that farmers say about others, about their unfortunate stock, working dogs and about other animals and birds are really true of themselves, a reflection of their own considerable guilt and an insight into their own behaviour and true natures - also how their parents, relatives and teachers treated and spoke to them as children. Convicted by their own words, it is they who are stupid, boring, vicious, destructive, disobedient, silly beggars, lazy devils, greedy pigs, who need to do as they are told, get behind and not argue - they certainly know what they are doing and where the hell do they think they are going? In particular the way they shout at their dogs and stock is not only cruel but also embarrassing, deranged and a real disturbance of the peace. Possums are called diseased killers in New Zealand, when it is really those that stupidly introduce this animal that merit this description along with those who are responsible for the introduction and spread of tuberculosis because of their appalling standards of hygiene as well as those who are able to do something real about this enormous problem yet who fail to act.

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There are numerous examples of beautiful, beneficial and harmless creatures that have been nearly wiped out by farmers who had in effect deceitfully fabricated reasons that gave them a convenient excuse to do this. In fact many farmers victimise often innocent targets of their own anger and pain with such extraordinary zeal and over-react quite insanely in the pursuit of their unfounded, vindictive, spiteful and malicious vendettas.

They relentlessly pursue and shoot birds and animals because they won't grow up and deal with their feelings like real men and are so twisted, sadistic and depraved that they not only enjoy killing but encourage their children to learn the same destructive ways of avoiding and indirectly expressing their anger and pain. Unlike them, these native creatures are beautiful, natural, useful and productive who do more for this country just by being alive than their persecutors have ever done in their entire miserable, selfish, meaningless and emotionally impoverished lives.

 

Farmers have lost all intuitive insight into and instinctual understanding about the weather and about caring for animals and the land and have unsuccessfully tried to compensate for this crucial deficiency with a quite bizarre obsession and foolish preoccupation with so-called scientific methods and management. Weights, measures and monetary considerations are aspects of assessment which are largely irrelevant, misleading and which provide almost no useful information about the true well being of stock, health of the land or long term viability of the farm. Like the medical and nursing professions, farmers, veterinarians, agricultural bureaucrats and other so-called rural experts know absolutely nothing about how real care maintains the natural resistance of all living creatures to sickness, disease and parasite infestation without exception and irregardless of age and this care when reintroduced properly will heal any present afflictions. Consequently the opinions expressed, the advice offered, the suggestions made and the action recommended by all those involved with farming today are understandably inaccurate, inappropriate, misleading, physically and emotionally damaging and over-reactive. Veterinarians in particular behave exactly like the medical profession does with human patients in their own mistreatment of animals and the land, confusing, working against and obstructing natural recuperative processes with their clumsy, brutal, painful, confusing, arbitrary, perverse and inept intrusions and the plethora of side effects they cause. They give totally damaging and counter-productive advice, prescribe and use unnecessary drugs, dangerous poisons and chemicals (instead of the most obvious simple, practical, sensible and inexpensive measures) and their ‘successes’ are at best the correction of damage caused by previous misguided meddling and misinformed mismanagement but are usually just cleverly disguised failures.

 

Typically their ‘cures’ merely artificially suppress one set of relatively simple symptoms to do with an acute crisis that then invariably later gives rise to much more serious, distressing and expensive chronic illnesses and other long term problems. They are in action dedicated to the furthering of suffering, they never treat the actual underlying causes and they are responsible for the proliferation in the number, type and severity of so many virulent and difficult to cure diseases, plagues, infestations and other difficulties for both stock and crops, more today than in the entire history of mankind and especially in the so-called civilised, industrialised nations which are supposed to be so scientifically and technologically advanced.

 

Farmers’ behaviour is just not simple irresponsibility, ignorance and carelessness but is often deliberately dangerous, vindictive and literally illegal.­ In particular, their actions with hazardous and potentially lethal chemicals are appallingly negligent and show a reckless disregard and deplorable disinterest for their own and other peoples’ welfare and safety and for the land itself. It is difficult to believe the casual indifference with which they ignore manufacturers’ recommendations, product instructions, government regulations and the dictates of simple common sense and proper farming practices when handling and applying such dangerous substances. In fact, they have no legal right whatsoever to impose one molecule of such poisonous chemicals onto other people, onto their land, onto their houses, into their water supply, the air they breathe or onto their stock and their actions in this regard are indefensibly and inexcusable, in legal terms no different to an assault with a deadly weapon causing grievous bodily harm. It is absolutely incredible that such criminal misbehaviour is still so widely accepted and offhandedly excused in countries with such an overt display of a commitment to environmental responsibility. Although everyone is well aware of what is going on with the euphemistically described ‘spray drift’ there is no effective or fair community or governmental restraint of such cavalier and delinquent responsibility ad callous disregard - in fact those so attacked are treated as the criminals. Farmers’ behaviour with firearms is no better and over-all it is completely unrealistic to expect most of those in rural areas to behave like responsible, emotional adults in any regard - they certainly need to be closely regulated, supervised and monitored.

 

Although many farmers profess to be concerned about ‘cleaning up’ their land, this is usually an obsession with external cosmetic appearances and reflects their own inner guilt about the emotional mess within their own lives that is in so desperate need of cleaning up. There is rarely, if ever a genuine concern for waste or order but often cleaning up means simple clearing every vestige of vegetation except grass, turning their paddocks into extremely vulnerable, bare wastelands. Most farmers have no idea or awareness of personal space and intentionally intrude by making as much noise as possible, by shouting and talking inconsiderately at the top of their voices especially early in the morning, kicking and slamming doors and gates, swearing and generally causing the maximum amount of disturbance and disruption, especially with machinery. They also really enjoy making a mess, destroying any care around them, getting themselves unnecessarily filthy and putting their grubby hands on anything that is clean, new or untouched and delight in the rural wastelands, machinery dumps, fly factories and other vermin breeding grounds they have created out of pristine wilderness. They never clean up after themselves and leave pieces of wire, plastic baling twine and other litter wherever they go.

 

Typical of people who in real terms do so little, who enjoy such undeserved and unearned privilege of position and who have so much to hide and be ashamed of, they (like their wives) incessantly complain about how hard life is and say how busy they are (when much of what they do is either totally unnecessary, an avoidable consequence of ignorance, impatience and incompetence or are activities only invented to keep themselves occupied).

 

It is certainly time to debunk the myth that these people work or are gainfully employed - vandalising and plundering the environment is nothing whatsoever to do with work. Most have no idea of what constitutes real work and have never done an honest day’s work in their entire lives. Real work is making an active, constructive and meaningful contribution to the world as a whole and by this definition a great deal of what is done today is bludging parasitism and opportunism. All the nonsense they have to say about the unemployed or about members of parliament, for example is really true of themselves, the usual deceitful attempt to offload their own considerable guilt onto convenient, defenceless targets - at least those on welfare do considerably less overall damage to the world and cost less in total expense both in the short and long term.

 

Condoning, for example off-handedly cutting down trees that are over a thousand years old (euphemistically referred to as “over-mature”) for a little short term profit or destroying entire river systems to generate electricity is incredibly short-sighted, stupid, impertinent, presumptuous and morally and legally wrong. Mankind has done nothing to create these magnificent resources in the first place, has done nothing to maintain their long term viability and survival nor attempted to restore, replace or replenish them. Consequently no-one has the moral or legal right to make decisions about them which would adversely affect their appreciation and use by the generations to come who are unable to have their opinions considered now. Despite the popular trend, the world is not some “cash’n’carry” supermarket stocked with disposable products for thieves to randomly pillage at will nor is it a preschool playground in which aged infants outrageously indulge themselves with all their silly, boring, childish, noisy, dangerous and expensive toys and pastimes.

 

Typically their standards of personal cleanliness, hygiene and order are appalling negligent and all they own and use (houses, holiday homes, offices, caravans, boats, schools etc.) are dirty, untidy, disorganised, crammed with possessions and reflect no real care. At best the wealthier ones employ someone else to do the cleaning they themselves would never do but most pose a real health risk to themselves and their unfortunate children. Their cupboards are a chaotic disgrace full of clothing that is rarely if ever worn, food that is stored unnecessarily, tasteless and ugly ornaments that clutter and fulfill no practical or worthwhile purpose and gadgets, appliances and assorted possessions that are acquired for all the wrong reasons, which are never appreciated or valued and often left in disuse and disrepair. When the carefully practised, wordy pretence is stripped away, they are seen either as grossly overindulged, greedy and wasteful or more rarely, self-indulgent masochistics who inappropriately and unnecessarily impose a miserly rigour of self-denial, hardship and frugality of existence upon themselves and upon their families - or a combination of both.

 

The present ‘conservation/environmental’ movement is however itself enormous hypocrisy and those involved often live in dirty, untidy, polluted, environmentally messy and cluttered houses with no real regard for the resources they themselves are wasting and misusing in their own lives. The ‘alternative’ lifestyle, which has now become the norm, is no real alternative at all, just another excuse for laziness, selfishness and childish irresponsibility. Typically those claiming to be conservationists demonstrate indefensible double standards and implausible inconsistencies in their own lives - they buy daily newspapers and print huge quantities of expensive brochures, leaflets and magasines while protesting about the chopping down of native forests. They rarely try to limit their consumption of or use sensible alternatives to electricity and gas (such as wood, candles and oil lamps) for hot water, general heating and clothes drying and candles for lighting in their own homes whilst objecting to carbon dioxide emissions and protesting the building of dams. They also show no care with nor take any responsibility for their own domestic water supply needs using rainwater tanks, wells and streams or the disposal of rubbish or sewerage. Most efforts with recycling are superficial pretence and yet another excuse for hoarding and not cleaning up. Because they refuse to face the truth about themselves they are unable to be really straight, direct and honest and express their reasonable verbal and written outrage at those whose activities they justifiably oppose. As a consequence, their protests are ineffectual, misguided, misdirected, achieve very little in proportion to the effort expended, are clearly counterproductive, ridiculous, embarrassing and invariably involve numbers of masculine, raucous females and useless, balding ineffectual males, pleasure pilgrims who refuse to grow up and behave like adults.

 

Much of the conservation movement is also dishonest deceit motivated by more sinister, underlying motives that have nothing whatsoever to do with real environmental concern, essentially no different to the very people they are objecting to. Not surprisingly, following a life of environmental destruction and/or casual disinterest, many primary producers themselves subsequently affect a pretence of environmental concern, notably farmers, foresters and senior bureaucrats. Those involved in ‘socially acceptable’ and ‘fashionable’ causes like Greenpeace commonly do so because it provides a convenient excuse to avoid their primary responsibilities as adults, spouses and parents, a focus for their unfaced emotional agenda at an external target and a way of making a great outward show and fraudulent pretence of concern for wild life and conservation. Of course the effort inappropriately expended in saving whales or dolphins would never be devoted to caring for their own children. They also misuse their environmental activities to off-load guilt, disguise their hypocrisy, to hide the distress and damage they both cause and allow to themselves, their own families, to get unmerited respect and attention and because these activities provide an opportunity to interfere and meddle in things they neither understand (nor really enjoy). These pseudo-environmental frauds typically show no genuine regard for the resources they are themselves duplicating, hoarding, wasting and failing to share in their own lives. It is no wonder that the modern conservation movement espouses such impractical and contrived nonsense, overlooks the most obvious and simplest explanations and solutions and creates such impossibly difficult predicaments and dilemmas. Even those in government conservation departments seem to have more in common with farmers, hunters and foresters - they also look for any excuse to kill wildlife (possums), cut down trees (pines) and use pesticides and herbicides. 

 

In fact neither side of the conservation debate really works, whether they are on unemployment benefits or bludging off the environment itself - what they all need to do is stop talking and arguing, start planting native trees, clean up the mess in their own region and country and learn to live simply but well. Most important of all, everyone needs to appropriately express their indignation about what is happening everywhere in the world, loudly if necessary but certainly not passively or violently. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem and there are no acceptable or workable compromises and no room for “fence-sitting” reasonableness - the future of the entire planet is in grave danger, today.

 

The majority of those involved in conservation today have no real personal commitment to their own physical, emotional and spiritual health nor have any understanding or control over their own spirits, the first essential step towards learning how to understand, care for and make decisions about anything living. Consequently the advice offered, theories proposed and the management techniques developed are understandably inappropriate, damaging and over-reactive and give rise to much more serious, distressing, expensive, chronic long term problems. These ‘stop-gap’, ‘ad hoc’ measures are invariably undertaken for all the wrong reasons, always too little, too late, the usual obsession with treating symptoms whilst ignoring the actual underlying causes. In fact their ill-advised efforts often work against ecological balance and obstruct processes of natural selection and recuperation with their clumsy, confusing, perverse and inept intrusions and the plethora of side effects they cause - their "successes" are at best correcting the damage caused by previous misguided meddling and misinformed mismanagement but are usually just cleverly disguised failures. They congratulate themselves on maintaining species survival irregardless of the ridiculous financial cost and human effort required or the long term disruption, distress and suffering this may cause living creatures - they often literally torment, torture and experiment upon wildlife in their infantile pursuit of recognition and their unfeeling idle curiosity. They intrude where they don’t belong, interfere in things they don’t understand, draw conclusions which are based on flawed reasoning and assumptions and generally further disturb much abused animals, birds and other creatures and plants which just need to be left alone in peace. When wildlife somehow survive yet another threat by mankind, they dishonestly take all the credit. Despite their carefully rehearsed, nice-sounding and reassuring words, they demonstrate just another version of environmental vandalism and sadism, worse because of their inherent hypocrisy, deceit and pretence.

 

The management techniques and research methods used by modern conservationists reflect the same silly approach and artificial perspective as the medical profession which deny the importance of intuitive insight and instinctual understanding and unsuccessfully tries to compensate for this crucial deficiency with a bizarre obsession and foolish preoccupation with weighing, measuring, counting, banding and other absurd monitoring activities like radio telemetry. These aspects of assessment are in fact largely irrelevant and totally misleading and provide almost no useful information about the overall well-being of the environment nor about a particular species or its capacity for recovery and survival. In fact their enormously expensive and totally unnecessary interventions create long term dependency requiring constant intervention with little possibility of natural recovery, convenient excuses misused by the foolish and misinformed for further intrusions which invariably cause more distress and damage in the long term. They try to replace the proper careful, patient and unobtrusive observation gained over many years in the natural course of normal, useful, balanced and productive daily lifestyle - never a completely separated exercise or project. Their academic qualifications are understandably worthless, largely gained by memorising vast amounts of theoretical information and complex scientific jargon largely irrelevant to and even obstructive of the appreciation and management of the environment - nothing works because it is all for show, an impractical, poorly planned, piece-meal, confused, uncoordinated and overdone chaos.

 

Like farmers, they predictably, they disturb creatures at their most vulnerable and intimate moments, especially females and young, at nesting, during mating, brooding or giving birth, the very times they should be left completely alone in peace. They separate males from females, females from young, play around with fertilisation, the placement of eggs and captive breeding procedures - not surprisingly this reflects exactly how they themselves were mistreated, abused, interfered with and intruded upon when they were young as babies, before, during and after birth. This again is the only basis upon which their behaviour can be understood.

 

Any able, informed person with a minimum of common sense knows what is wrong and what needs to be done with the global environment. For example, the underlying cause for the decline in any and all endangered species is that it has been driven by man to take refuge in the harshest, most marginal habitat where its survival is increasingly difficult if not impossible, often adversely affected by pollution of some sort even there. Mankind obviously needs to severely curtail all its activities worldwide, immediately, especially by the developed nations that need to reverse their unrealistic dependence on technology and industrial production. Any realistic, intelligent and practical person knows that this wasteful and destructive self-indulgence is depleting and destroying our planet at an alarming rate, is absolutely unsustainable in the long term and cannot be justified on any rational grounds whatsoever.

 

Science and technology has in fact enormously debased the true standard of living as measured by any and all sensible criteria (which does not include money) and has added nothing of enduring value to this world. Quite the reverse it has in fact created far more difficulties than it has solved and has caused the very problems it so proudly boasts that it has solved. It is no exaggeration to view so-called ‘progress’ as a decline in real terms, one step forward and two steps (or more) backward. Since the industrial revolution, all the scientific and technological developments and inventions of man have tangibly degraded the enjoyment and fulfilment of life for all living species, have inappropriately indulged irresponsible and immature man on an incomprehensible scale, have directly and indirectly caused an incredible amount of poverty, misery, injustice, inequity, suffering, conflict, death, injury and disease worldwide and are responsible for more environmental degradation, depletion, misuse and waste in the last hundred years or so than in the entire previous history of the planet.

 

Mankind has been provided with the capability of totally destroying the earth or rendering it completely uninhabitable in a matter of minutes - typically the madmen who support, justify and control these weapons of mass destruction are the very people who are totally unfit to be in any position of responsibility or trust over them. Without having demonstrated any prior responsibility, thought or restraint, lazy, greedy and violent men using ugly, dirty, dangerous, noisy and expensive machinery and equipment of enormous destructive power and size are able to wreak irreversible damage on a scale which defies reason, logic and description. Industry also produces more dangerous chemicals, poisons, radioactive substances and gas emissions that inevitably pollute the air, soil and water everywhere, often intentionally.

 

Even the poorest people in the industrialised nations today are rich in absolute terms and most people have lost sight of how blessed (and unaware of how indulged) they are. Instead of being grateful for and enjoying what they already have, they are totally preoccupied with trying to get more money and bigger and better possessions in a desperate but vain attempt to compensate for the lack of real love or care in their lives. Running water, hot showers and baths, flush toilets, instant heating, lighting and power, wardrobes full of clothing, clean, dry, soft, warm and comfortable bedding, the variety and abundance of food and the absurd size of the average suburban dwelling are examples of real indulgence not enjoyed even by kings like Solomon! However, the capacity to provide comfort, convenience and even luxury for everyone in the world has been available to mankind for hundreds if not thousands of years without any input needed from modern science or technology, providing there was proper sharing. Instead there is a callous indifference to, and no shame about the inexcusable and indefensible inequality and gross imbalance in the ways in which wealth and resources are apportioned worldwide, the unjustifiable differences between the standard of living enjoyed by the rich when compared to that endured by the poor, both individuals and nations.

 

Billions of dollars are wasted insanely on warfare or to send fools to the moon while tens of thousands of children are dying or living in abject squalour for the lack of a fraction of this expenditure. Apart from these inexcusable inconsistencies, advancing scientific development and research has also meant cluttering up mans’ consciousness and educational curriculums with even more essentially trivial, unnecessarily complex and fantasised detail and fictional information and further wastes his precious life by outrageously indulging and encouraging his idle and intrusive curiosity.

 

Most people today have very convenient, expedient, regressive and naive ideas about the viability and sustainability of modern civilisation, especially those living in the wealthier developed countries in urban areas. In particular they refuse to take any responsibility or make provision for so many of their own important, fundamental individual and collective needs including supplying their own household water, heating and lighting, disposing of sewerage and rubbish, growing, harvesting and preserving food and drink, preparing and presenting meals, making clothing, bedding and other essential household items like paper, candles, furniture, rugs, utensils, crockery and leather goods, building homes, educating children, caring for the sick, disabled and elderly, burying the dead, providing their own means of transport, maintaining local roads, looking after local law and order and the dispensation of justice and the protection, preservation and restoration of the environment. This essential irresponsibility and laziness has been absolutely disastrous for the maturity, personal development, growth, useful knowledge and overall well-being of most people alive, especially in industrialised nations - they have become ridiculously narrow and specialised in both abilities and perspective, totally reliant on production by factories and on external services bought so easily with money and have lost all the skills and talents vital for an active, balanced and varied adult lifestyle.

 

It needs to be recognised that since the industrial revolution, science and technology has debased our quality of life immeasurably, has done nothing to improve our standard of living as measured by any and all sensible criteria except in monetary terms, is directly and indirectly responsible for an incredible amount of human suffering, conflict, death and disease worldwide, has allowed the restrained indulgence of irresponsible man on a staggering scale, has unnecessarily made possible the production of dangerous products, pesticides, poisons and pollution on a global scale, has provided mankind with machines and devices of enormous destructive power, has produced lethal weapons capable of destroying the entire planet and is responsible for more misery, injustice, inequity and environmental destruction and wastefulness in the last century than in the entire previous history of the planet.

 

-the message is don’t allow it to happen in the first place yet this still hasn’t got through

-set themselves up to fail especially with planting trees. when they do plant trees, never do it properly of carefully, never right species, in right numbers, in right places and never organised. Experiment unnecessary and non-complementary species, don’t clear away the grass, mulch, put guards or shelter around especially for young trees, water properly, set themselves up to fail and the trees to die - an excuse for doing less in future.

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Farming has become an enormously expensive, unnecessarily complicated and confusing business with almost no relevance to the proper productive care of animals, crops and the land and most people within this essentially corrupt system have significant vested interests (both financial and emotional) in the continuation of this highly unsatisfactory inefficient and unethical situation. Just like the judiciary, the legal and medical professions, senior public servants, politicians, the churches’ hierarchy and other privileged but unprincipled and indecently ambitious groups in society with over-inflated (if not extortionate) incomes and unmerited, undeserved power, the whole farming community has improperly extended its unhealthy, backward, closed, prejudiced, self-centred, parochial, short-sighted, obstructive, perverse and reactionary influence throughout the political system and government bureaucracy in order to maintain its artificially inflated social and economic positions and to avoid any truthful exposure or long over-due limitation or restraint of its activities. They have become very skilled indeed at convincing a gullible and misinformed public, most of whom are themselves ‘lost to food’, that they are under-rewarded, over-worked, efficient, effective, indispensable and vital for food production globally. They in action certainly have no altruistic concern whatsoever about feeding the world’s starving millions and their real activities and efforts contrast markedly with their carefully contrived and completely deceitful public image. They do just enough apparent good and achieve sufficient apparent success to disguise their ulterior motives whilst hoarding, mis-using, wasting and degrading much of the resources at their disposal in achieving a fraction of what a really competent and genuinely committed farming community could achieve. Any informed person reasonably has the most profound contempt and disgust for most farmers today and they thoroughly deserve all the difficulties, problems, ‘accidents’ diseases, illnesses, infestations, plagues and “natural” disasters that so justly and frequently beset them - they indeed reap exactly what they sow!

Typical of those with so much to be ashamed of and to hide, when confronted by the truth about their own behaviour they predictably take the usual easy recourse of all thugs, bullies and cowards - lies, the introduction of obscure irrelevancies, deceit, offloading the blame onto others, foul language, abuse, intimidation and physical violence, bribery and the malicious attempt to discredit their accusers. If they were reasonable adults who had made a genuine mistake, they could of course be approached directly and any disagreements or conflict resolved amicably and constructively. However, past experience invariably shows that their actions were never casual carelessness, simple irresponsibility, inexperience, inability or the result of a lack of education. Rather these difficult, stubborn, demanding, indulged and erratic individuals are totally unreasonable and lacking in any true manliness and they behave with deliberate, deplorable recklessness and casual disregard for peoples' health, safety and welfare. Very, very few indeed will ever come to their hardened senses and as a consequence, direct action and intervention is always necessary accompanied by the most stringent controls over their activities - they certainly need constant monitoring and the closest possible supervision to restrain them. To accede to the ransom demands of these environmental blackmailers as have so many in government both then and now is craven cowardice, criminal conspiracy and complicit collusion, the improper misuse of public funds and an abdication and betrayal of paid responsibility which merely encourages further devastation and extortion in the future.

 

Proper Farming In stark contrast to modern rural properties, a real farm is a largely self-sustaining, balanced community that encompasses a full range and variety of activities necessary to support an extended family or several families. It will minimise the generation of rubbish, productively utilise and dispose of all its own waste, cause no real air, soil, water or visual pollution, put back more overall than it uses up in all natural resources and will be in harmony with (rather than be imposed upon) the environment as a whole.

 

Most research and experimentation with animals, insects, marine life and other creatures in the name of conservation and preservation of species is itself a contrived, expensive and totally unnecessary performance. The reasons which underlie the decline and extinction of any wildlife are obvious and self-evident to any but the most obtuse and blind observer - mans’ destructive intrusions, both physical and chemical. Instead of individuals first learning to become really careful within their own lives and then upon this basis lacking in hypocrisy convincing others, conservation has become an enormously wasteful, superficial, externalised business which is itself responsible for a great deal of totally unnecessary pollution and waste of time and other resources. Something simple, easy and effective has been debased into an artificial, complicated, intellectualised nightmare that adds to the problem and does little of enduring value to help. They construct artificial and unnecessary environments for species rather than actively restrain mans’ rampages and in action enjoy caging, imprisoning and controlling living creatures just as they themselves were treated as children. They don’t really want things to be natural, wild, free but create an unrelieved dependency on man which fulfills their own emotional agenda and actively works against nature. They are unbelievably intrusive with all their silly and contrived devices and techniques (tranquillising darts, radio transmitters, the usual insane obsession with weighing and measuring, blood sampling etc.), all of which replaces proper, careful observation and patience, critical aspects of dealing with any aspect of the environment. Not surprisingly, they exhibit an unhealthy, even depraved obsession with prodding and poking genital areas and with sexual behaviour and like the worst doctors and nurses, they interfere where they have no business in being, in things they do not understand, fabricate excuses for their intrusions which are simple deceit and deception.

 

Everything is now concentrated into artificial groups or areas, housing, business, parks, recreation, which is unnatural, unsustainable and which encourages irresponsibility and ridiculously narrow specialisation. The generalised and widespread abdication of adult responsibilities has also inappropriately concentrated all of societys’ problems and difficulties under centralised government control, the worst possible scenario with obviously disastrous consequences, allowing and encouraging individual citizens to increasingly indulge themselves and abuse and evade their responsibilies to one another. The essential problem is not the population explosion and those who focus so short-sightedly on this peripheral issue are wasting both their time and energy - there is abundance for all. Crowding should in fact motivate decentralization and give rise to people learning to use less space, exercising more care and discretion with all resources, ensuring that these are replenished and shared fairly and justly in accordance with need, the stringent setting of priorities humanely (no competitive sport or domestic pets ever), behaving with more consideration, quietness and gentleness, learning better to deal with feelings constructively and non-violently and focusing these against those who need and deserve this, holding parents and grandparents more responsible and severely disapproving of and doing away with indulgent and greedy behaviour.

 

To live generously provided for, free of disease and accidents with a rich and varied quality of life is a simple, realistic and easily attainable goal in life without any reliance upon the complicated inventions and crude intrusions of technology and industry. All that any reasonable adult needs is a generous supply of good fresh food, clean water for drinking, washing, swimming and for stock, comfortable, bedding and clothing appropriate to the weather and climate made from natural materials and compact, snug, weatherproof, warm and airy dwellings built from materials locally available in uncrowded and spread-out towns and villages with ready access to agricultural land and natural wilderness nearby. This requires an active, diligent and dedicated effort by all concerned and anything else is wasteful and boring excess and selfishness. All resources, especially farmland must be shared fairly, people should show real consideration for personal space and individual needs and the most vulnerable and defenceless in society would be given the most support and protection. By these sensible and realistic standards, the simpler and more basic cultures and countries of the world are obviously much closer to an ideal, sane and sustainable way of life when compared to the crudity, greed, acquisitiveness and savagery of the so-called “developed” countries. Despite this they are looked down upon with characteristic ignorant arrogance by the foolish and unlearned as “banana republics” with subsistence living.

 

In stark contrast to the simplistic and superficial pretence of environmentalism affected today by so many members of popular, fashionable and socially acceptable conservation groups, true conservationists are adults who emphasise individual responsibility and accountability and who demonstrate a real concern for and awareness of the appalling state of the world in ways that are obvious in every aspect of their lives. Anyone who claims to value and appreciate the environment as a whole without hypocrisy must first learn to care for themselves, for their own bodies and spirits, without indulgence and will be slim, healthy, open, careful, direct and honest. True environmentalists are adults who appreciate the priceless value of the gift of life itself and never waste precious time on anything that in absolute terms is trivial, unimportant, irrelevant or of no enduring value or worth. They live simply but well with regard for waste, duplication, the unfair allocation of resources and for pollution, in action and not just in words. Real conservationists are careful with everything they use, they own only two or three changes of clothing made from natural fibres that require no industry production (no polyesters, rayons or nylons), produce, buy and store just sufficient food for immediate need, use as little plastics, steel, aluminium and processed, frozen and canned goods as possible, buy most items like cars, caravans, boats, TVs and radios secondhand wherever possible, rent accomodation already abundantly available (rather than buying or building) and never buy books, newspapers or magazines - there are plenty of these available if you are only patient and willing to share or borrow out of libraries. They do not encourage industrial production or its inevitable pollution of all kinds, minimise, recycle, productively use and take responsibility for their own waste and rubbish, take advantage of products and resources already available that might otherwise be wasted or allowed to decay (recover, restore and salvage rather than scavenge, scrounge and hoard) - nothing is left idle, unused and uncared for. In fact any real adult/conservationist would be delighted to live without the noise, expense, intrusion, danger, ugliness and real inconvenience of electricity, without the appliances and lighting that are powered by it and without cars, planes and all the other technological contraptions that have so debased the quality of modern living into a kind of complex, primitive, backward, subsistence existence. At the same time they of course accept that this is simply not going to happen but this fact does not limit their determination to live and support such a position.

 

The sad and disgraceful truth is that there are ten thousand times the resources necessary to abundantly feed, clothe and shelter all the poor and needy everywhere in the world today but this is deliberately not done only due to the disgusting corruption, greed, hoarding, duplication, misuse and waste of these resources especially by those who live in all the industrialised countries. GOD gave man dominion over HIS magnificent and beautiful Creation, the earth, the seas, the air and all the creatures and plants therein, to use wisely and with care and to be enjoyed and shared forever, not just for the benefit of the first people that happen to come across them.

 

Conservationists avoid living in cities as they are crowded, polluted, dangerous, angry, unhealthy, noisy, ugly and expensive environments, totally unfit and inappropriate for human habitation. Cities reflect and indulge the worst of man's fears, greed, blind foolishness, stubborn obtuseness and his desperation to escape reality and avoid spending time on his own - they merely provide financial wealth, numerous boring distractions and an entirely false and unreal sense of security. Modern cities are extraordinarily inefficient in physical, emotional, financial and infrastructure terms and place an intolerable burden upon the entire environment, especially on the surrounding countryside - urban living is essentially parasitic. There is never any peace and no realistic way to escape all the intrusions and invasions of space so distressing and infuriating to real adults - artificial lighting, visual pollution, the incessant sound of noisy, dangerous and childish toys like cars, trucks, lawn mowers, chain saws, power tools, motor bikes, bulldozers, planes, trains, buses, trams and helicopters and the smell of exhaust gases and other chemical pollutants. Finally there is no practical way to become even remotely self-sufficient, to take responsibility for basic needs and waste disposal and there is little opportunity to undertake really healthy, active, productive and fulfilling work. Even the largest cities several thousand years ago only had populations of approximately 100,000 people spread over an area about the size of present day Sydney (which has a population in excess of 5 million!), all of whom had ready access to surrounding fields, forests, lakes, rivers and beaches where available.

 

Sensible, concerned adults live together in extended families and community groups of both sexes and all ages, the only natural, realistic, efficient, manageable and effective way, sharing responsibilities and many of their possessions - families are becoming increasingly fragmented only because children have so much unexpressed anger, fear and pain about their childhoods and parents and cannot live with them without conflict. They set a personal example of care for themselves and others, show real concern for the environment and make as many of the simple, necessary, practical household items of real value and worth as practicable. They educate themselves and their children properly in the natural course of a varied and balanced lifestyle and learn and refine the skills necessary for responsible living and sensible self-sufficiency. They stay out of debt and are content with what they have - borrowing money encourages unrealistic expectations, selfishness, narrow specialisation, acquisitive greed, excess, duplication, the disintegration of families and parasitism, discourages openness, flexibility, personal initiative and growth, true independence and sharing and creates long term dependency on and contractual obligations to essentially usurous organisations. Adults make real homes for themselves and their families wherever they live, ask for what they need without guilt, use any resources given to them with care and discretion and always make an appropriate contribution in return. The sad and disgraceful truth is that there are one thousand times the resources necessary to abundantly feed, clothe, shelter and transport all the poor and needy everywhere in the world today but this is not being done only due to the deliberate disgusting corruption, greed, hoarding, misuse and waste of these resources by those in charge of them. Land should be shared out equitably among families and tribes according to need and their demonstrated responsibility, irrespective of wealth, influence or fame, on fairly apportioned, appropriate sized properties which allow space for reasonable self-sufficiency. There are obvious lessons to be learned about enlightened land reform from historical experience, for example from what happened in Japan after World War II.

 

Each property should be large enough for several separated dwellings, allow room for livestock, crops and vegetables, trees for fruit, oil, timber and firewood, hives for honey and wax, an adequate water supply and proper waste disposal - and this is a realistic and attainable goal. The land would all be properly looked after by the owners themselves and everyone would be gainfully and actively employed, in many cases on a seasonally itinerant basis where appropriate. A nomadic lifestyle (traveling, not holidaying), when undertaken sensibly and carefully, is a healthy, varied, stimulating, balanced, learning, active, meaningful, unparalleled way of life which is only criticised by spiteful, jealous, obtuse and perverse aged delinquents who lack the courage to grow up, learn to value and appreciate the true value of life itself, understand the variety, spontaneity and purpose to a proper lifestyle and confront their fears in the real world.

 

Adults and especially those with wives and children would never live anywhere that is essentially uninhabitable in absolute terms, being harsh, ugly, impractical and difficult due to isolation, climatic extremes, dependency on expensive and artificial support services or without access to good quality fresh water. Everyone would live around and have access to natural beauty and all land would be someone’s responsibility - there would of course be no need for the artificial, contrived and unworkable absurdity of National Parks. These short term measures are not the answer, are increasingly encroached upon and under threat from man, will never work in the long term, they lull everyone into a false sense of security, give them an easy way to avoid being responsible and aware themselves and obstruct a thorough examination of the real issues of land apportioning and responsibility, who should be allowed access) for continuous viability, problems with excessive usage, wildlife escape into adjacent areas, effects of surrounding interfaces, expensive to maintain.

 

Land should be settled and cleared slowly and carefully over many, many generations, allowing the terrain, plants and animals adequate time and space to adjust and recover and to reduce the overall impact on the environment and minimising the disturbance to it - man may even improve the habitat by his productive changes. Generous margins of trees and bush should always be left around the property boundaries and along all watercourses and roads. Steep hillside country is never cleared nor is any sensitive or vulnerable land subject to erosion and slips due to the instability of soil, high rainfall etc.. Clear felling is never contemplated, not even plantations of introduced trees and large trees are left within fields and along ridge tops for natural regeneration by self-seeding. All the fields would be fallowed regularly, notable species of trees planted (the single most important activity for a real conservationist) or given the space in which to regenerate, noxious weeds and introduced pests soon brought under control and eradicated and all previous environmental degradation restored, crops rotated and no machinery of any kind is used or needed, replaced by diligent human effort with the help of farm animals like draught horses and bullocks.  Farming is labour intensive so more and more people live and work on their own land. Natural manures and composting are used and all chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides avoided - it is amazing that such a cavalier attitude about the use of such dangerous and potent chemicals is so accepted in countries with such an overt display (pretence!) of commitment to environmental responsibility.

 

 Appropriate amounts of land are left around houses for privacy and to minimise any disturbance to women, babies and children.

 

  - incessantly dig and clear out creeks, ditches, channells and gutters by roadsides and through fields and use poisons to kill grass and weeds rather than treat the problem - plant trees to shade out! They do not want to fix the problem as it provides them with a lifetime opportunity to live off public money -allow motorbikes, motorboats, jetskis, helicopters, trucks etc into National Parks and Marine Reserves - there is nowhere for the responsible, quiet, careful, appreciate, non-polluting to take refuge unintruded upon in some way.

 

 -nature and scientific reserves, access made difficult except as exclusive domain of scientists and conservation department employees

-only able now to preserve native habitats on the basis of the threat to endangered species, not for the inherent value of untouched wilderness

- make an enormous performance about relatively minor issues and problems (genetic purity of Pohutukawa seed, saddle-back (Big South Cape), yellow-eyed penguin, Kakapo, Black Robin, weta on Mahurangi) whilst overlooking, ignoring and doing nothing about gross problems like gorse This work should be the concern of young men before marriage without responsibilities of a wife or children

- no balance or consistency in their lives, inherent hypocrisy - hoard, restrict and won’t share areas set aside for their own use and enjoyment, essentail greed and hoarding

- very like “Mother” Teresa/Gandhi

- masochists who never tackle real problem but spend/waste their lives taking easy way out, avoiding confronting the real issues and getting appropriately outraged

-very closed, controlling and defensive "experts" in a parochial, insular and closetted domain who are antagonistic towards and resent outsiders, anyone with a fresh perspective untainted by their own rigidity, professional bias and absurdly narrow focus

-resent, obstruct, delay and do not producttively use volunteers, excuse used of safety etc, arbitary, off-handed, ungrateful and spurious, gloomy, doomsday pessimism, discouraging (certainly not encouraging), argumentative, self-opinionated knowalls, claim to be busy as an excuse but don't do anything poductive to allieviate this, resources are already there, double messages, can't win,

-shoot goats and horses, criminal waste, don't look at alternatives like tranquillising (would lift them out with helicopters if they wanted to and justify the expense), love shooting things, puts them down as menaces (other species of trees like pines as well

- never prune o cared for, always the least approp and needed solution like pruning), goats are excellent when cared for, grazed approp, tethered, usual blanket, generalised, imbalanced, extreme, ill-informed nonsense and prejudicial statements, blame goats etc instaed of the people who do not control them, contain and look after them, people like themselves, don't capitalise on existing situation and resources, fake purists (genetically pure Pohutukawa seeds) who make a great fuss about unimportant things (insects like wetas

- overlook the obvious

- rats spontaneously off Mahurangi Island

-reserves/national parks often within sight of cleared, burnt, logged and otherwise destroyed land, spoils the view/vista and appreciation with constant reminders of what has been done and still is being done when compared to what it was like.

Communities of genuinely concerned conservationists recognise the vital importance of proper child care and the way this shapes attitudes and behaviour. Children of these responsible adults are always born at home around family and relatives only, they are breast fed and never subject to the abuse and neglect of bottle feeding, held and carried in arms and never wheeled around in stupid prams and strollers and in general child care is shared by everyone, especially the immediate family. This is the only way to give hope for the future as all major problems now confronting society are pre-empted. Greed, whether in food, drink, possessions, money or power, violence of all kinds, addictive and obsessive behaviour and even sickness and disease can be avoided on an individual, family, community, country and global basis by startingwith the basics of proper, reponsible child care, especially fathering and mothering. All other theories, proposals and propositions are superficial, conveniently expedient nonsense doomed to failure.

 

work not occupation

- recreation, nothing artificial, never competitive, natural course of active, healthy life

-care with water - washing and washing up

-natural, not artificial beauty, staining not painting, no dyeing -no obsession with quickness and speed In the process everyone would be able to enjoy an unparalleled healthy, varied, stimulating, spontaneous, active, balanced lifestyle with little reliance (and expenditure) on central government, a way of living only criticised by spiteful, jealous, obtuse and perverse people who themselves lack the courage to grow up, value and appreciate the true value and purpose of life and confront their fears in the real world. There would be no time for game playing, trouble making, idle speculating, chattering or gossiping, reading, lazing about or playing competitive sports. They would certainly not live like the uncivilised primitives and savages typical of the wealthy, “developed” nations today but have a quiet, unhurried life of real quality, richness and variety which contributes enormously to the well-being of this planet whilst using as little materially as is absolutely necessary. In this sense, the so-called “underdeveloped” countries with subsistence lifestyles are much closer to the sustainable ideal and have a much saner, decentralised population distribution. Most western countries have absurd population distributions motivated solely by the self-interest and greed of those with wealth and power and completely contrary to the well-being and health of most of the people.

-lawns

-useful trees just burnt for clearing There are far too many grazing animals like sheep, goats and cattle in many countries (notably Australia and New Zealand) and too little land farmed for crops, especially cereals. This inefficient misuse of land is unsustainable, motivated as it is by profit considerations only - feeding cereals to meat animals is a disgusting indulgence. Eating too much red meat reflects poor habits learned from childhood and is both wasteful, greedy and unhealthy. Ridiculously farm animals get better access to streams and rivers and even beaches than humans and animals should never be allowed direct access to watercourses, no matter how minor - all creek, stream and river water should be fit to drink by humans.

 

-death in droughts can be avoided and would never happen

 -to do something realistic about greenhouse gases (CO2, NH4, CH$, N2O, CFC) - -don’t burn forests -plant notable trees - every birthday and Xmas et-care with fossil fuel use for cooking and heating - no cars etc.

 - use rubbish productively - composts, no land fills - reduce total all industrial and electricity production by 5% pa for at least 40 years - Electricity consumption - cooking 14%,, appliances and lights 26%, heating 20%, hot water 40%, madness and waste of cooking without water heating at same time -electric lighting, reading at night, difficult and dangerous - 1 glass bottle requires 0.4 KWH of electricity and 1 tonne of aluminium needs 66,000 KWH.

 - no newspapers, magazines etc 180million tonnes of paper/pulp produced per annum. USA, Japan, Canada, USSR. -1 metre stack of newspapers recycled equals 1 tree, 1 tonne of recycled paper saves 17 trees and recycling 50% of world paper would free 8 million hectares of forests.

 - graze less and cultivate more - use animal, bird and compost manures and not artificial fertilisers - no borrowing - look at excess and waste that is a directt result of childhood abuse, neglect, deprivation and invalidation and the attendant emotional repression, denial and indulgence - USA drinks 43 gallons of soft drink per person pa in addition to tea, coffee, wine, beer - $35 billion spent on soft drinks world wide, most of which is considerably less than essential, Japanese spend about $20 billion on car accessories - care with water useage and purity - Africans may only use 3 litres per day per person even given the climate. Westerners in cities use 200 litres for personal comsumption each day, up to 2000 litres per day when industrial consumption is added - ridiculous amount! Agriculture uses 80% of all water, 40% of food production uses irrigation. WHO says that 80% of disease can be traced to unclean water.

 - simplify packaging of food and drink - packaging comprises 30% of weight and 50% of volume of household waste. 50% of all paper, 75% of glass, 40% of aluminium and 30% of plastic is used to wrap, decorate and contain consumer products - overall make life a question of survival of the most diligent and responsible, fair and sharing - societies values are all wrong - recognise that all decisions based solely or largely upon considerations of financial gain are invariably wrong -allemansratten - everyman’s right of access, no vandalism, no noise, no theft, no litter, no fire danger -lagom - appropriateness, not too much, not too little -trygghet - safety, security, consensus, predictability and absence of unpleasantness and discomfort.

 

To the degree that we accept this behaviour without complaint or protest, that we allow their destruction of our natural environment without rebuke, that we conspire with them in their dealings and activities, that we buy their products, that we allow them to run our lives and dictate our movements, that we allow them to condition our children and impose their ignorance upon them in schools, we become accessories to their corruption and to the distress and damage they cause. Such however with very, very few exceptions is what all parents do today.

 

 They have deliberately conspired together to lie to us and mislead us as to what is really happening around us, for encouraging us to escape into an unreal world of convenient fantasy because they lack the courage and integrity to face the reality of their own lives and change -when faced with opposition, they always resort to deceit, dishonesty, lying, misinformation, personal invective anything etc to justify their indefensible actions, just like the pro-smoking lobby representing the cigarette manufacturers - apathetic disinterest and sullen resentfulness -minimal, ineffectual and largely counterprroductive help & support eked out begrudgingly and sullenly and resentfully though morally deserved and legally entitled - contrast to legitimacy of how we feel compared to what they feel about us and do to us

-in Ukraine, 11,600 acres supported 1,200 families of balanced farming - used horses ie 10 acres per family. Elsewhere in Europe, 50 acres could support an extended family for generations for all their needs just about - things that distract and detract from reality rather than enhance and add to it - not sure where to put this?

-”creative” is really destructive of reality -science and art are essentially barbarous, superstitious, uncivilised nonsense

- no painting only natural finishes like oils

 

 --appreciate the night sky, disapprove of absurd street lighting that does not just light up the street but intrudes -!

- creatures like dolphins and whales are patted, prodded, poked and generally mistreated like bathtub toys. Real adults of course enjoy these beautiful creatures in peace, quiet and consideration, at an appropriate, respectful distance.

The key to the whole philosophy of a generalised realistic self-sufficiency is to recognise a number of important basic facts. First, to give people a tangible incentive, a motivation and purpose for personal commitment and the opportunity to display initiative, everyone need to have some share in the ownership of the property as individuals, families, extended families or in tribal, community or other groups drawn together by a common purpose, bond or belief. Second, it is totally unrealistic and pointless to even try to value in market terms or labour rates the hourly input of those involved. However, the share in and pride of ownership, quality of life and healthly lifestyle, diversity of skills, richness of experience and fulfillment will more than sufficiently compensate for any reduced monetary gains for those who are willing and able to look at and explore their own needs sensible and maturely and grow. It needs to be recognised that sensible, responsible self-sufficiency is not an excuse for idleness, a weird, self-indulgent alternative way of living in filth and chaos and especially not a hard, harsh, rigorous subsistence existence as is so stupidly implied by those blind, misguided fools who measure life in monetary terms only.  Thirdly, whether starting a farm from scratch by taking over land previously unused or by buying an existing property, it is crucially important that any and all changes are introduced slowly and carefully to allow everyone (and the environment itself) sufficient time to adjust and cope with the new approach with undue shock. This also gives people the space to learn new skills and adapt at a pace they can handle without undue physical, emotional or spiritual stress, change must be at a rate that all those involved can deal with and accept comfortably. It must be a slow, gradual process of learning and change, a weaning onto new routines, habits, work practices and methods and a balanced way of doing things while slowly relinquishing old, unhealthy dependancies and reliance on unproductive products and services. It is very important to start by setting a realistic order of priorities, what can be done straight away with existing skills and knowledge, what needs to be done to introduce other change, what needs to be learned, not ask too much and not allow unreasonable expectations to accelerate the process - it is supposed to be hard work but fun, aan enjoyable experience.

 

Movement into cities especially by young people, so-called urban drift, pretence of choice, variety, excitement, stimulation in cities, essentially just an obsession with money, greedy, self-indulgent excess and childish distractions strenuously disapproved of and assiduously avoided by all emotionally mature adults. Why is this attractive to rural youth - no satisfaction, fulfilment, care, love, variety in the country, oppressed and violated.

 

Consistent with this approach, governments seriously interested in doing something effective about unemployment, urban dissatisfaction and disillusionment especially amongst youth, should look at subsidising this as a policy. Funding for say 2 years on U/B, land grants or investment backing to buy the land at a low rate of interest subject to strict guidelines and requirements, capital repayments once established, inspections of progress

Existing properties would need to be subdivided to a size that can be viably managed using manual labour and working animals only. This will require considerable sensitivity, thought and effort

-          redrawn boundaries need to follow natural contours and share out key resources like water sources, hill country, flats and virgin or regrowth forest as equitably as possible.

As part of a government strategy, this policy would have several important advantages: it would firstly encourage decentralisation nationally and so reduce the strain on the overloaded urban centres as well as greatly reducing all the attendant problems of unemployment (and the many associated problems), idleness, ignorance, waste, crime, disenchantment, disease and sickness and pollution.

Land would be shared out much more fairly into much smaller, more realistically sized and easier managed properties, as a natural consequence it would be valued more highly and cared for much better and a great deal of resentment and anger about resource inequity defused in the process. The same size farm would productively support many more people - traditionally where land is fertile (or potentially so) and there is enough rainfall, a farm of 25-50 acres will comfortably and successfully support 3 generations of one family, supplying most of the needs of 10-15 people of all ages.

 

Obviously the land would be need to farmed more intensively and produce a far wider range of produce as it has done in many parts of the world for hundreds, even thousands of years. This would give everyone involved a much healthier and varied lifestyle as they would need to be much more careful with their methods and approach, learn a far greater range of skills, become more self-reliant yet more mutually cooperative and sharing, emphasise money far less, show genuine respect for the land, focus on long term sustainability and enjoy an immeasurably improved quality of life in the process. The abundance of available manual labour would allow rapid environmental restoration and regeneration and the effective, ongoing simple physical control of weeds and pests without the use of poisons, herbicides, pesticides or virus controls. Anyone who knows anything of value about land management knows that killing weeds like gorse with sprays makes them harder to deal with - dead gorse is worse than live.  There would be no reliance on petroleum or electrical based machinery that would be a great blessing in itself although old, recycled machinery could be used for some years while the necessary adjustments and learning is undertaken. A car may be needed to go to town - a horse drawn cart may be impractical or even unsafe to use on the roads.

The key is to not try to generate as much income as possible but to control costs and minimise the need for money to buy in requisites from outside. Petroleum products, for example are presently an enormous financial burden for all farming enterprises. Wherever possible, exchange or bartering is preferred to payment.

It is reasonale and realistic to expect a typical farm to produce all or most of its vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains like wheat, barley, triticale, rye, oats, corn or rice, meat, dairy products, honey and/or sugar, oils and beeswax, wool, cotton, flax or some other natural fibre, skins, leather, timber, stone, iron/copper/brass for tools, implements and pots and pans, clay/metal crockery, compost/fertiliser

Cook and present all meals, dry, bottle and preserve its own produce, make all its own soap, candles, oil lighting, clothing, for yarn, clothing, firewood for heating, cooking and drying, fencing, building, clothing and harnesses, bedding and rugs, wood for buildings, furniture, carts, drays and fences

-$ only needed for flour, sugar and salt and petrol sheep & goats, chickens and other birds, house cow & horses relationship with animals based on respect, kindness and awareness of their needs

-farms a range of crops, vegetables, timber, animals, fruit, honey etc in order to provide a balanced system in which everything is productively used and works in  harmony -immediately begins to wean his property off using any and all machinery and equipment that requires the use of electricity, petrol, oil, diesel and other petroleum products and reintroduces slowly and gradually working animals to replace this -by patient, gentle and trustable handling and consideration of stock, develops herds of animals which rely upon and trust his contact with them

-uses stock rotation, organic farming methods and fallowing of the land -orders his family’s and his own lives in aaccordance with their real needs and the needs of the farm itself so that there are no rigid and fixed, time-scheduled daily routines. This pattern of activity will change naturally through the seasons.

 - use community based labour instead of machinery, herbicides, pesticides etc

-sensible ways of living with appropriate amount of land around houses minimises impact on the environment. Settling slowly and carefully does not disturb species unduly and allows them to adjust without hardship and may even improve habitat by productive changes by man.

 - money is irrelevant to this whole philosophy and the trade-offs typically made and comparisons between money and time miss the whole point -encourage animals, birds and insects -real criteria of health for land and stock -few fences on boundaries (natural hedges or stone or attached to trees) -boundaries of the properties and the internal paddocks aligned along natural features, ridge lines, contours, streams/creeks, gullies -no stock access to creeks etc -stock routes to market, absurdity (let alone cruelty) of trucking four footed beasts to market -utilise all species available - Animal feeding should always be natural (like free range chickens) supplemented by hay gown

- share their equipment

 

-A real farmer cares for the land and leaves wide shelter belts of native trees along all water courses and roads, screens around all paddocks and wherever the land is prone to erosion. He treats every day differently depending on the season, climate and his family's needs and could never stick to the usual rigid routine.

 

-everyones’ home can have areas of natural, pristine, unspoiled beauty – much less need for extensive, artificial national parks? 40% of current concentration after the sensible provision for wide shelter belts of trees along all watercourses, on all steep land, down all valleys, along all paddocks, roads and boundaries.

 

- trees around sheds, barns and especially around unsightly machinery, wire etc -plants or retains wide shelter belts along all boundaries, between fields, along water courses and gullies and leaves the vegetation untouched (or replants) any steep, boggy or sensitive land -real farming costs so little, is healthy and active in a beneficial way, minimal disturbance to the land, work with nature’s balance and animals’ needs and instincts, productive use of idle labour so abundantly available, coordinates and brings together the community and family - IIt is for example absolute insanity and unjustifiable indulgence upon any reasonable basis to grow cereal grain to feed out to animals. Quite apart from the inherent inefficiencies involved (3kgs of grain for each kilo of chicken produced or 10kgs for 1kg of beef), this practice is a gross misuse of land and food when there are so many people starving worldwide.

-Cereals/grains, tea, coffee, spices, tropical fruit, petrol and oil, electricity?

- the secret is in community/communal effort, a sensible balance and non-indulgence

- consider the ethical, moral and sustainable aspects and questions

- privacy and peace are important aspects of the physical separation

- interdependance.co-operation and co-operative effort versus independence

- wood for water heating and cooking during winter, late autumn and early spring, wood stoves are excellent, much nicer and better to use than the electric stove (for a real cook like Mary) but of course this takes care and patience, commodities so obviously absent in this house before our arrival.

-Mowing lawns is sheeps' work and no real adult would even contemplate using anything as dirty, noisy, dangerous and totally unnecessary as a petrol mower.

 

Proper farming is an honest, needed, active, healthy, respectable, exacting, demanding and at times difficult honourable vocation requiring care, wisdom, restraint, patience, firmness, gentleness, devotion to the welfare of animals and the land, an awareness of the balance of nature and climate, common sense, intelligence, self-awareness, physical strength and a wide variety of skills. Self-sufficiency does not mean complete separation or isolation but rather a responsible approach to providing for own needs wherever sensibly possible, living in comfort with a rich quality of life, fulfillment through a wide range of skills and activities, a sense of achievement and pleasure in all that we do, never seeing actiivities as “chores”, never imposing rigor or hardship or deprivation especially on children and women, recognizing and accepting but not being significantly compromised by the limitations imposed by the outside world (for example, horse and cart).

 

Farmers today however know as little about the land and how to really farm and care for it as do doctors about health and the treatment and cure of illness. Farmers today mismanage rural factories and every decision is made to maximise income. They actively enjoy destroying the natural beauty of the environment, interfering with, brutalising and distressing their stock and making an enormous amount of unnecessary noise with their expensive, dirty and dangerous machinery and equipment. They are so fond of putting down city people and life when they themselves live much the same demeaning, monotonous and dreary existences. Except in words they do not really enjoy nor appreciate the peace, the beauty and the real potential quality of country living. Some of the worst hard, rough, noisy, dirty, untidy, savage, cowardly, thuggish and child-abusing males and females live and make money on the land.

 

 

Michael Israel †