On food systems and propagating harm
Mar. 28th, 2023 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormFragments from a counseling session as I work through this:
This is how I love the world.
Some of my friends are starting to make really a lot of money, and the more money they make the more worried about it they become.
You do not escape the game of capitalism by winning it. You will not feel better when you have enough toys.
It's not even that people deserve food. It's that food falls out of the ground. That's how it's given to me. That's how the world gives it to me.
A system causes harm when it inflicts scarcity that doesn't exist.
When you get a group of people at a table and they're sharing, say, a chicken and there's not much to go around and everyone takes a little less so everyone else can have some, that feels very different than the price of chicken going up so most people can afford less. It's a giving feeling instead of a taken-away-from feeling.
I'm the kind of person who would prefer to drop a present on someone's back porch with no name associated. I don't want the social part of feeding people. I just want them to be fed.
Ideally folks would have the feeling that I do about food: that it can just come out of the ground.
Honestly it's not just food: meat, soap, seeds, everything that comes from the land. It's less weird to give people a packet of seeds free than it is to give them free meat though, and if no one knows I've given away a literal thousand packets of seed then I can even just seem friendly. But it's not about being friendly, or social.
I live in this system where I need to work, and I need to work in a way that harms me to ensure my safety. The system tells me that if I have more money I will feel safer. I've been above poverty line for six years now total? The safety I feel comes not from making a couple more dollars but from having people who are willing to step in and help when I need help.
I live in a system where I accept this constant low-level harm. I do what I love, which is farm stuff. Those two things aren't related. No matter what I loved to do, I'd still work and pay for hobby things.
This hobby can be pretty expensive, the feed portion of it, but that's ok. People are allowed to like expensive stuff.
I neither have to, nor want to, pass on the harm of the system in which I live.
The idea that a couple hundred or even a couple thousand dollars return on the things I love will meaningfully make me feel safer is a lie. I know people making as much in a year as I will make in the rest of my working lifetime and they worry about money. They justify not tending to their own needs in the service of long-term security from money. Charging for what comes from me doesn't get me close to in that league.
Propagating the forced exchange of food for money makes my whole soul wither and fold up.
I am not the only person doing this: Jacob Beaton at Tea Creek has a farm based on a free give-away method.
I'm always going to have to work. I won't escape it for a couple thousand dollars a year. I won't end up in the position that Jacob's in, where he can do this with his whole life.
I am not really doing this as charity or for other people. I'm doing it to maintain my sense of internal morality, in order to maintain my soul and my feeling of reciprocity with the world. With the world, where food falls out of the ground and seeds multiply until they take over the laundry room.
When something happens I do think wistfully of the money that could have been from that stuff. When someone helps me with something financially, I do feel guilty for not selling my stuff instead of accepting help. If I had sold those seeds instead of giving them away?
But I don't resent my past self. I don't think I made the wrong choice.
And yes, I'd love to be able to get more apple trees this year, and a greenhouse. It would bring me joy. But that joy would be countered with a weight.
I never want to think about the relative monetary value of a perfect squash vs a very nice neck roast.
This is how I love the world.
Some of my friends are starting to make really a lot of money, and the more money they make the more worried about it they become.
You do not escape the game of capitalism by winning it. You will not feel better when you have enough toys.
It's not even that people deserve food. It's that food falls out of the ground. That's how it's given to me. That's how the world gives it to me.
A system causes harm when it inflicts scarcity that doesn't exist.
When you get a group of people at a table and they're sharing, say, a chicken and there's not much to go around and everyone takes a little less so everyone else can have some, that feels very different than the price of chicken going up so most people can afford less. It's a giving feeling instead of a taken-away-from feeling.
I'm the kind of person who would prefer to drop a present on someone's back porch with no name associated. I don't want the social part of feeding people. I just want them to be fed.
Ideally folks would have the feeling that I do about food: that it can just come out of the ground.
Honestly it's not just food: meat, soap, seeds, everything that comes from the land. It's less weird to give people a packet of seeds free than it is to give them free meat though, and if no one knows I've given away a literal thousand packets of seed then I can even just seem friendly. But it's not about being friendly, or social.
I live in this system where I need to work, and I need to work in a way that harms me to ensure my safety. The system tells me that if I have more money I will feel safer. I've been above poverty line for six years now total? The safety I feel comes not from making a couple more dollars but from having people who are willing to step in and help when I need help.
I live in a system where I accept this constant low-level harm. I do what I love, which is farm stuff. Those two things aren't related. No matter what I loved to do, I'd still work and pay for hobby things.
This hobby can be pretty expensive, the feed portion of it, but that's ok. People are allowed to like expensive stuff.
I neither have to, nor want to, pass on the harm of the system in which I live.
The idea that a couple hundred or even a couple thousand dollars return on the things I love will meaningfully make me feel safer is a lie. I know people making as much in a year as I will make in the rest of my working lifetime and they worry about money. They justify not tending to their own needs in the service of long-term security from money. Charging for what comes from me doesn't get me close to in that league.
Propagating the forced exchange of food for money makes my whole soul wither and fold up.
I am not the only person doing this: Jacob Beaton at Tea Creek has a farm based on a free give-away method.
I'm always going to have to work. I won't escape it for a couple thousand dollars a year. I won't end up in the position that Jacob's in, where he can do this with his whole life.
I am not really doing this as charity or for other people. I'm doing it to maintain my sense of internal morality, in order to maintain my soul and my feeling of reciprocity with the world. With the world, where food falls out of the ground and seeds multiply until they take over the laundry room.
When something happens I do think wistfully of the money that could have been from that stuff. When someone helps me with something financially, I do feel guilty for not selling my stuff instead of accepting help. If I had sold those seeds instead of giving them away?
But I don't resent my past self. I don't think I made the wrong choice.
And yes, I'd love to be able to get more apple trees this year, and a greenhouse. It would bring me joy. But that joy would be countered with a weight.
I never want to think about the relative monetary value of a perfect squash vs a very nice neck roast.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 10:08 pm (UTC)This. Oh very much this. I spent so much of my working life knowing that I was alone, and I was never going to be enough on my own to feel safe. Only now that I have a core chosen family, I'm finally relaxing a bit. I wish I hadn't had to spend so much of my life knowing I was alone, but not being allowed to admit it.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-30 02:59 pm (UTC)