ONE OF THE MORE MYSTERIOUS and problematic elements of human nature is our tendency to be obedient; to look for external authorities to tell us what to do with our lives. The Latin root of the word is obediere, “to obey, to be submissive.” When soldiers are told to by some purported authority to march off to war, they almost invariably obey. When taxpayers are told to stuff money into […]
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Erich Fromm | Obedience as a psychological and moral problem
FOR CENTURIES kings, priests, feudal lords, industrial bosses and parents have insisted that obedience is a virtue and that disobedience is a vice. In order to introduce another point of view, let us set against this position the following statement: human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be, terminated by an act of obedience. Human history was ushered in by an […]
Joel Salatin | Folks, this ain’t normal
NO CIVILIZATION has ever been in this state of environmental ignorance. In previous eras, people who lived in an area had to be intimately aware of their surroundings and viscerally involved in rearing and preparing food for the table. But in recent decades, in our culture, putting food on the table has not required any knowledge or involvement except how to scan a credit card, open a plastic bag, and […]
Nick Johnson | A modern proposition
MORE THAN ONE-THIRD of adults in the United States (78.6 million people) can be considered obese, defined as at least thirty pounds overweight. As of 2009 not a single state could meet the rather modest goal of an obesity rate of only fifteen percent. Current projections say that by 2018 obesity-related health problems will cost the American healthcare system around 344 billion dollars every year, and that by 2020 the obesity […]
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