A New Way of Living : Part 3 - Health Advantages

To read Part 1, click here.

To read Part 2, click here.

This post discusses an organic way of life. If you're interested in learning more about natural diets and healthy living, visit my friend's blog, Healthy 411.

Organic & Natural Advantages

Eco-friendly products have been all the rage for several decades, stemming from environmental rumors like global warming, disintegration of the ozone layer, talk of nonrenewable energy resources, and more. I don’t know if any of these are false or true, nor do I want to take the time to find out. Growing my own garden and cooking everything from close to raw form is just plain healthier. Large corporations like fast food restaurants and frozen meal providers stuff their foods with chemicals and preservatives. No, I haven’t researched this myself, but this is a basic, commonsense business strategy. The longer the food lasts, the more opportunity it has to get sold. A burger patty can be crammed with preservatives and frozen, to be reheated and eaten weeks later in a restaurant. Because this society demands everything to be available to everyone on a whim, produce from a local grocery store could have been ripe long ago, but it was genetically modified to last longer between picking and selling. After thinking about it, I realize that most of the things we buy in grocery stores are grown somewhere far away, and have been modified to survive the long delivery process. Businesses that sell to grocery stores also want their product to be the best tasting product, so of course they stuff their foods with sugar and chemicals to make it the sweetest, or the best. They don’t use natural sweeteners, they use chemicals like fructose, because it’s cheaper. With applied thinking skills, we can conclude that most of what you buy in today’s store is probably modified by unhealthy and unnatural methods, and is overall unhealthy to eat.

A New Way of Living : Part 2 - America Runs On Money

To read Part 1, click here.

Money, just like clothes, or toaster ovens, or computers, is a valuable object in today’s society. America runs on money. Without it, most people can’t eat, can’t buy clothes, can’t rent or own any kind of shelter, and most importantly, cannot live. This is an unhealthy trait of our society. We are 100% dependent on these small slips of paper and coins that are not even valuable by themselves. Through an old-fashioned thought process, it represents gold that is hidden away in a federally protected building, untouchable and unreal for most people. We now have a digital version of our money, in credit cards, and banks. We almost never touch it, and it really doesn’t exist, but our entire lives are supported by this precariously large amount of binary numbers that only exist in a server farm owned by our banks. On top of this, we have the corrupt banking bureaucracy that has complete control over our money, our housing lends, car loans, budgets, salaries, and they own the trust of almost every citizen in America. Keeping in mind that all of this money is either hidden in digital binary code, a number on a sheet of paper, or is a representation of gold that’s hidden in a U.S. Vault, and really doesn’t exist, do you see the absurd ridiculousness in our monetary system?

A New Way of Living : Part 1 - Preface

About a year ago, I became interested in "a new way of living." For about a week, I decided I wanted to live that way. I did research on it, cost and budget analysis, and completed a long breakdown of my conclusion in an essay format. Although I don't really have an interest in doing this anymore, many of the concepts still affect my way of thinking. And, hell! I put a lot of writing effort into it for it to just sit on my hardrive!

I'm going to publish this in 3 parts, one for each (useful) section of the essay. In total, it became 15 pages long, so I'll cut out the more personal-application stuff.

A Revolution

Why does America live the way we do? Why do we all have singular occupations that consume our time, our interests, our entire lives? Many people in today’s working class have similar life paths, including graduating high school, getting a degree in something that may or may not interest them, then searching for that one job that will allow them financial success, an upward trend in salary, and a good future. They might have hopes of marrying, having a family, and they hope that they will eventually get to a point of living that meets the standards of a normal, or abnormal, lifestyle, depending on the person’s wishes and dreams. Many others still have wants of having less financially viable occupations, such as an artist, or a pastor. Although these hopes are passionate and honest, they may not provide the future many people want. They either settle for a less enjoyable option, or they find their life hitting rock-bottom the minute they begin. The former person, although admirable for achieving or trying to achieve, are still unhappy and find themselves trapped in a circle. The latter will usually find themselves unhappy, unless they are able to come across that one-in-a-million opportunity of success. There are, of course, exceptions to these stereotypes; the stay-at-home-mom that crafts on the weekends, or the deranged nerd who has dreamt of working day to day in a tiny cubicle since he was a little tyke, but most fit into an unhappy category of some sort.

Independence

Again, a past school assignment. :)

by R Jazz Biel, 9/28/11

Money makes America go around. We all use money every day, from bills and groceries, to our TVs, computers, clothes, and more. Americans and our modern lifestyle has become 100% dependent on money, and this an unhealthy place to be. At the rate our government has spent our tax dollars, the American dollar has declined in value in the international market, which means our money is almost insignificant in trading with other countries. Currently, our absurd system of money barely supports the majority of our population, and without it, life as we know it would cease to exist.

The Problem with Power: Corruption in the Christian Church

This is an open-ended English assignment that encouraged me to discuss a situation having to do with power.

(Ananias Receives Saul, St. Mary’s Cathedral)

Power is all around us everyday. The government, by definition, embodies power. The media, which holds the ear of most of the population, has control over the supply and demand of the entire economy. Everywhere you go, there are signs of greed and power. There are innumerable examples of power in our society, and, as is human nature, countless examples of power abuse.