Back to basics

When I think of all of the knowledge that has been lost in the last 100 years it makes me really sad. Technology has damaged us in almost every aspect of our lives, from the food we eat to the way we raise our children.

100 years ago, most people lived in the country, had a few acres and a house, maybe a few chickens, a garden, and if they were lucky, a cow or a couple of pigs. The lady of the house worked the garden, raised the kids, cooked, cleaned, sewed all of the clothing for the family, preserved the produce for the winter, washed clothes by hand then hung them up to dry, cleaned and swept the entire house, and if she had any time left in the day, would then do any handcraft that suited her like knitting, embroidery, crochet, carding wool or cotton, spinning, weaving, etc. Anything that might make a few coins in town or for personal use.

The man of the house would spend the majority of the day working the land or animals, felling trees to build a new barn, digging stumps out of a new field, repairing equipment, chopping wood for the wood stove or fireplace, and any other heavy work that needed to be done.

When night fell and it was too dark to work outside, the inside work would begin. Helping the children ( and there were many) with schoolwork, washing dishes, and reading from the Bible as a family. And an early bedtime for everyone because the day started at dawn.

Now that we don't have to worry about preserving enough food for the winter, fixing the leak in the roof, or making sure that no wolves get into the chicken house, we have more time to sit around and be bored. So we find things to keep us busy. Like watching TV. Or running to the mall.

Our kids are getting arrested because we as parents do not keep the kids busy enough to stay out of trouble. When we are not taking them to soccer practice, music lessons, tai kwon do, or putting them into pageants, we let them set in their rooms on the computer.

So, in a nutshell, we buy all of our food over processed and over salted (read as unhealthy), buy all of our meat from mass production farms where they are fed altered grains and processed feed from who knows where (read Mad Cow disease), have so little physical activity in our daily lives that we have to go to the gym to work our muscles (sedentary lifestyle with rapid bursts of activity that will only over activate the adrenal gland), kids who are not held accountable for their own actions (because they don't know what responsibility means), and a national epidemic of heart disease and other stress related disorders.

Doctors are telling us to eat healthier fresh foods, get more exercise, and do things to reduce stress in our lives.

It is amazing to me that our grandparents and great grand parents died of old age yet our children will have to worry about dying of cholesterol poisoning by the time they are 40. There is just something wrong with our way of thinking if we can actually make ourselves believe we are better off because of technology.