The Dogpatch story begins in early 1999, with the decision to purchase an old abandoned farm house in the woods of northwestern Wisconsin. I will structure this blog as a journal, begining in March 1999, with journal entries posted as the story progresses. I'm actually starting this blog eight years later, in 2007, and will simply transfer entries from my original spiral notebook journal a little at a time, so that the entries will still tell the unfolding story, albeit at a somewhat accelerated pace, until I catch up to the present.
Motivation
My personal motivation for this endeavor has been highly ideological, stemming from the recognition that legalized abortion is an unmitigated travesty, the moral equivalent - at least - to the Nazi Holocaust, and far surpassing that piece of genocide in sheer scope.
Tax resistance
One of the significant components fueling this crime is U.S. taxes, spent on Title X abortions, funding of Planned Parenthood, and support for U.N. programs of abortion, sterilization, and population control. More recent is the added Frankensteinian movement to fund scientific experiments on these sacred human lives.
To willingly pay taxes thus makes one a willing cooperator and indirect participant in the crimes. Conversely, the decision to not participate materially in the Holocaust becomes a decision to avoid paying U.S. taxes, as much as possible. Hence the idea of a self-subsistent way of life that is not dependent upon taxable income. This is a way to address the moral dilemma without breaking the law nor violating the Scriptural mandate to 'render to Caesar'.
You can read more of my thoughts on this principle in my other Dogpatch blog, especially the two posts entitled "Strike Three!" and "What makes Jerry run?".
Consumerism
It is within the industrial model for economy and human activity that the word 'consumer' is commonly employed today. To be a consumer is to use stuff up, one link in the linear chain of modern industrial activity. Here's the whole linear process:
raw material -> process -> process -> consume -> waste
We stupidly measure our standard of living by how much we are consuming, and by how many jobs are being created by all the processes involved. But we cannot ignore the hard fact that there are problems with both ends of this linear method. We consume stuff that is often scarce and is not replenished, and we generate waste that is often toxic and is not neutralized.
The 'ism' part of consumerism is when this becomes our belief system, when we even more stupidly assume that this is the only way we can live, that human life must by definition be toxic and wasteful. And if we think this way, even subconsciously, we will begin to loathe our very lives, and we will begin to assume a collective death wish.
Herein lies the connection to the Culture of Death. We secretly cringe at the news of another baby (another hungry consumer), and we secretly rejoice at decisions to abort or to engage in sterile sex. Contraception, abortion, sterilization and population control measures are accepted because, deep down, we believe human life is the problem.
This, then, became a second motivation for me: to see if I could live in a non-consumerist way, and so test for myself whether the principle underlying the Culture of Death could be dismissed.
Again, there is more on this in my other Dogpatch blog, especially the two posts "Thanatos" and "Thanatos antidote".
High tech, Low tech
The irony has been noted: A man who gardens with hand tools, burns hand-chopped wood, bicycles 7 miles to church, and has his own Internet blog (actually two blogs and another site, but who's counting?)
The simple response is, I never set out to be a Luddite, but, in emulation of the Amish and Mennonites, to carefully select only technological advances that are truly helpful. I intend to be the master of the tools I use, not a slave to whatever is in vogue. I desire to tread lightly, and to aim for true economy, not merely to accumulate money. Some technology is constructive toward these ends, and some is not.
The Industrial Revolution has been erosive to the fabric of society, but not because of technological advances. Man would have continued to advance in science and technology in any case. The pity of the Industrial Revolution is in the way it has torn people from their homes, and made us into wasteful consumers. The typical working adult spends the prime hours of his day during the prime years of his life away from the people he loves the most, and spends many exhausting hours operating a fossil-fueled contraption over thousands of miles to enable him to do so. And this, supposedly, is the mark of progress.
Interestingly, the personal computer and the Internet may be key elements in helping us to return, if we want, to a home-based economy.
Blog navigation
As with most blogs, the latest journal entries are at the top, the earlier ones below, when accessing multiple entries at one time. Each journal entry also has its own url, enabling you to access one entry at a time. To read it this way, click on any entry's numeric header or on the archive tree item (left side items) to jump to that journal entry's url. Then click on 'Next' or 'Previous' to move forward or backward. Alternatively, you could access a month's entries at a time by clicking on any calendar month in the archive tree. If you bookmark the last journal entry you read, you can pick up later where you left off. Click here to start at March 6, 1999, the first journal entry.
You may post comments to me at any point along the way, if you wish.
