Back to hippie roots....sort of.
I'm noticing an interesting personal development. For quite a few years, I threw all my "hippie" stuff to the wind and stopped caring about what I ate or bought, where it came from, and how it affects anything. I just kind of got really disillusioned with the vast pile of bullshit that must be filtered through in the psuedo-scientific new age, holistic and "green" movements. Sustainability is important to me, but too many people are all too willing to buy into whatever fluffy-sounding crap issues from the mouth of anyone who wears dreads, uses lots of hippie lingo, and looks like leather, as if that makes them an authority.
I'm mellowing out, and I think the past few years have been beneficial in some respects. I now seek evidence to verify people's claims rather than being eager to believe them because they comfort me or support what I'd like to believe. I've gone from being gullible to overly skeptical, and now am going from being too skeptical to healthily so.
Now, I'm starting to care again about how my actions, decisions, purchases, etc. affect things and am starting over in researching things so that I may make more conscientious choices, but wish to avoid becoming preachy and annoying about it. I like veggies, but when I see people eating veggie stuff while preaching the evils of meat, I just want to burn my ears out. I guess I got really annoyed with the hypocrisy of folks who wear leather Birkenstocks and smoke cigarettes while espousing "Ahimsa".
There are a lot of unfounded claims about superfoods and whatnot, and when people grasp at faintly scientific sounding jargon and spout it in a kind of smug superiority over the "ignorant and un-evolved" it just rubs me the wrong way big time. I find uber-liebral militant vegans just as bad as right-wing creationists. Dogma and bullshit is dogma and bullshit whether it wears tie-dyes or crosses.
All this is bringing me to a strange struggle as I seek to re-acclimate into conscientiousness and sustainability, but wish to avoid the culture of it. Hard to explain. I want to know what nutrients are in food, not what chakra it makes glow. I want to know how people and the earth are affected by a particular farming practice, not about how it messes with ley lines or makes Gaia sad. I want to communicate with people about how we can collectively make wiser choices, not bang drums in a haze of patchouli and pot.
Maybe I'm becoming a science hippie. I don't know what to call it. All I know is I want to combine compassion and science and reduce fluff and psuedo-science. The problem now is finding valid research that is devoid of the woo-woo stuff.
I'm mellowing out, and I think the past few years have been beneficial in some respects. I now seek evidence to verify people's claims rather than being eager to believe them because they comfort me or support what I'd like to believe. I've gone from being gullible to overly skeptical, and now am going from being too skeptical to healthily so.
Now, I'm starting to care again about how my actions, decisions, purchases, etc. affect things and am starting over in researching things so that I may make more conscientious choices, but wish to avoid becoming preachy and annoying about it. I like veggies, but when I see people eating veggie stuff while preaching the evils of meat, I just want to burn my ears out. I guess I got really annoyed with the hypocrisy of folks who wear leather Birkenstocks and smoke cigarettes while espousing "Ahimsa".
There are a lot of unfounded claims about superfoods and whatnot, and when people grasp at faintly scientific sounding jargon and spout it in a kind of smug superiority over the "ignorant and un-evolved" it just rubs me the wrong way big time. I find uber-liebral militant vegans just as bad as right-wing creationists. Dogma and bullshit is dogma and bullshit whether it wears tie-dyes or crosses.
All this is bringing me to a strange struggle as I seek to re-acclimate into conscientiousness and sustainability, but wish to avoid the culture of it. Hard to explain. I want to know what nutrients are in food, not what chakra it makes glow. I want to know how people and the earth are affected by a particular farming practice, not about how it messes with ley lines or makes Gaia sad. I want to communicate with people about how we can collectively make wiser choices, not bang drums in a haze of patchouli and pot.
Maybe I'm becoming a science hippie. I don't know what to call it. All I know is I want to combine compassion and science and reduce fluff and psuedo-science. The problem now is finding valid research that is devoid of the woo-woo stuff.