Poll Of The Month : The 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝗼𝗳𝗳. 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝘁𝘆. 𝗚𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗱𝗿𝘆. What will you do?

This month's poll in the Mirrors For The Mind, Heart and Soul series + the results of all past polls

Hey everyone, this month I am hoping for us to explore a hypothetical situation in the interest of taking an honest inventory of how many universally applicable skillsets, forms of knowledge and gifts we have cultivated that one could can share with fellow community members in the context of a gift economy (in a SHTF scenario).

Yes I know these multiple choice formats are limiting and there should be other potentials and/or the ability to choose multiple options. I am just doing what I can with the Substack poll framework to keep with the theme of this series, but please feel free to choose multiple options and/or to add other options via the “none of the above (plz explain) option and elaborate in a comment.

---

Part of my motivation for this month’s poll is how I have been observing an increase in people who talk about how important using food as medicine and natural medicine/herbalism is, promoting lab made and/or imported supplements, monoculture grown extracts and ecologically undiscerning consumerism (promoting buying things based on their medicinal benefits for the human body alone, with zero consideration for where the ingredients are sourced from and how their extraction/cultivation impacts their native ecology). I have been noticing how some people woke up to the scams and dangers which are inherent in the big pharma dominated industrial allopathic medicine system but now they have fallen for a different kind of trap and dependency.

Today’s instant quick fix, consumeristic, centralized technological infrastructure dependent dominant western culture wants to convince you that you can maintain optimal health from the comfort of your computer chair, one amazon purchase and herbal pill supplement at a time. Authors write about the healing properties of plants and fungi as products purchasable from profitable companies and yet they say nothing about the healing properties (for the heart, mind and spirit) of learning to cultivate those plant and fungal medicines ourselves and/or interact with them reciprocally in their native ecosystems.

As I stated in my article on Spike Protein Detox and Cardio-Protective foods, I have a strong belief that depending on flimsy shipping supply lines to remain healthy is a precarious position to take. I also think that lab made/isolated supplement forms of plant and fungal medicines often have weak levels of bioavailability when compared to over all increased synergistic benefits of whole food sources. Those are concerns based on self-interest as a human being and they do not even begin to account for how our purchases can impact the ecology of the biosphere and the living conditions/quality of life of non-human beings that we share this world with.

I also think it is worth pointing out that here in the modern western world we are used to money (in the US and here in Canada) having a reasonably stable value and I think that as a result we have developed a kind of misplaced confidence in that perceived stability continuing because it is all we have known in our lifetime. But both history and current events tell us a different story.. and with so much of our fiat currency economy being tied into computers now, a stock market crash (due to a scamdemic or some other psyop the plutocrats have up their sleeve) or hyperinflation are not the only possible causes that could render our respective units of currency practically worthless in a very short amount of time. Not only are our computer systems and power grids dependent on unsustainable and finite resources, they are also vulnerable to being irreparably damaged / rendered unusable by both manmade and natural events (EMP-s, CME-s, hacking etc) which means that the numbers in our bank accounts could be wiped from existence (or rendered inaccessible to us for long periods of time) without warning.

We are also living in a time in which people had their bank accounts frozen for donating their hard earned dollars to support a peaceful human rights protest and/or for expressing views that oligarchs and their puppets in government did not like and a time in which the mechanisms are being put in place to make those types of overtly totalitarian measures a permanent facet of governance/law enforcement systems.

Thus, whether you want to look at purely pragmatic / self-interested being resilient for emergencies/prepping practical reasons and/or you want to strive to live in a way that honors the sacredness of all life (accessing food/medicine in a way that also gives back to the Earth that provides that food and medicine), or both, learning to grow some of our own food and medicine at home, respectfully forage for and/or source out from local regenerative farmers is of paramount importance.

I was inspired by my friend John VanDeusen Edwards (Founder and President at Food is Free Project) and my other friend Riley Waggaman to create the extended thought experiment i`ll share below in the interest of inviting each of you to honestly assess what you would do in a similar situation and plan for how you might make choices in the present so that you can improve your preparedness (while also increasing your quality of life at the same time).

---

Let's conduct an adapted/extended thought experiment of the above poll:

You have decided to leave your current living area because…

𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝗼𝗳𝗳. 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝘁𝘆. 𝗚𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗱𝗿𝘆.

If you and your family come across an off-grid functioning homestead community and are granted access only if you have a skill or trade that would benefit said community.

What’s your skill or trade that would make you capable of pulling your own weight/enriching said community which would increase the likelihood of your being accepted as part of the community?

Doing a multiple choice question for this aspect of the post would be very limiting so I will invite you to please share your response to the hypothetical/thought experiment question above in the form of a comment.

This should be fun and interesting! :)

---

The purpose of this thought experiment is to highlight the reality that choosing to intentionally take on the infantilizing role of being purely an industrial food system dependent consumer means that when economic, political, ecological or technologic aspects of our industrial civilization are disrupted, one is at the mercy of those people who have prepared/developed skills, and who may take pity on you when those systems collapse or/are seriously destabilized.

Many in modern western civilization have been conditioned into adopting a pervasive fallacious belief system that relates to their associating the act of gardening or working with one’s hands in the soil in the garden or as a farmer as some kind of lowly, archaic, savage, unpleasant, “toiling”, dirty and ‘uncivilized’ activity which should be avoided by ‘respectable’ and ‘advanced’ intellectuals that have ‘moved beyond such things’ in their more ‘modern and civilized pursuits’.

Refusing to educate oneself about the ecosystem we depend on to survive and refusing to develop one’s pattern recognition skills through working closely with plants in the garden (as our ancestors did) means one is allowing significant portions of one’s brain to atrophy and it means one is stunting oneself from being able to achieve one’s true potential as a human being. Making the decision to remain in 'plant knowledge poverty' (lacking botanical literacy) represents a choice that gives one a significant handicap in life (which no amount of money can fix).

As I explored in the latter half of my recent article on covert front yard gardening, there are methods that even people living in balcony-less apartments in the concrete jungle can use to begin to cultivate some of their own food, medicine and learn about helpful skills like plant identification. Everyone can participate and every step on that journey of learning and skill development is meaningful.

Developing your own unique gifts in a way that enriches and supports the resilience of your local community (whether through art, teaching, story telling, caring for those that cannot care for themselves, ecosystem regeneration/land healing, preparing nutritious food or any other number of expressions of your gifts that enrich human communities in a way that also honors the more than human community you are a part of) enriches good will in both your human community as well as the brooders non-human communities of which you are a part. Both these forms of good will help increase your quality of life in the now and prepare you to be resilient in emergency situations.

"What survives collapse? What survives crisis? Community. What ever you give and contribute into your community and you generate that goodwill, and you generate those structures of taking care of each other and reciprocal (gift) relationships... that is an investment. That is a savings account that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal.

The best investment you can make is generosity, for only thing that cannot be taken from you is that which you give." - Charles Eisenstein (source video)

Growing your own food and sharing the resulting abundance with your neighbors and friends nourishes community connections and builds good will in your community. When the sh*t hits the fan and one way or another, it eventually will, it is going to be that good will and the universally applicable knowledge and skillsets (such as plant identification, cultivation and preservation) that retail their value and determine whether one will thrive, barely survive or perhaps not make it.

While it is understandable that many people are coming up with a whole range of different excuses to justify their complacency in not taking action to grow some of their own food at home it is certainly not logical nor more "civilized" nor "advanced" to do so. Most of the excuses I hear seem to be rooted in either fear, laziness or delusional superiority complex based worldviews and while they may sound great to those that would avoid having to get their hands dirty by any means possible, all these excuses really do is impede people’s growth and potential as human beings (leaving them with a significant handicap as they consciously choose to stagnate in the infantilizing role of being an industrial food system dependent consumer).

Whether one makes the choice to deem taking action to cultivate skills and knowledge related to food cultivation (wild plant/fungi identification) and preservation as “unacceptable” (in other words, something they would rather not do) because they have chosen to mistakenly associate the act of cultivating and preserving one’s own food as some “lower class”, “dirty”, “peasant-like” activity that people in the past did (or just out of laziness) or whether one musters the courage to step outside their comfort zone and excuses to take responsibility for their future through growing some of their own food (and also learning to identify native plants) may decide whether they and their loved ones survive the storm ahead.

Thus, I attempt to help people realize this truth before it is too late through posing questions such as I did above.

---

I did not realize that the past poll’s voting results were not visible to other people until recently, so in the future I will announce the poll results in a separate post the next month.

Here are links to all the past monthly poll posts with a screenshot of their results below each for anyone who is curious and/or for anyone who wants to go back and vote/interact in discussions:

poll results

poll results

poll results

poll results part 1

poll results part 2

poll results

---

Thank you to all those who have participated in past polls and thanks in advance for taking the time to contemplate this month’s poll and thought experiment.

Please elaborate on your choice in the poll above in the comments section to promote constructive discussion and solutions based conversation.

---

PS - i`ll share the results of the Book Club poll for April next week ;)