I produce about half of my own food, and hope to get that to 100% within the next five years - but for that I have to wait for trees to grow. I deride nobody -

I produce about half of my own food, and hope to get that to 100% within the next five years - but for that I have to wait for trees to grow. I deride nobody - I feel great empathy for those walking the well trodden industrial path, as I too was born into it, and I too saw it as The Path. I understand your anger at my position - it is quite an affront to have someone say that your existence may as well have been manufactured on a production line. What you see as society is, in my view (and of many, many philosophers - see Baudrillard, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, for starters) a gigantic mill, spiralling in on itself, self referential and crippled through the reification of concepts introduced in 18th century Britain. We are so deeply inured to the ideas that industrialisation bought that we are mostly blind to the idea that there are other paths to tread, other goals to seek. Our entire value system has been harnessed by a mindless machine of capital, with no human or humanity at the helm - it is a pattern, self sustaining through humans’ tendency to do as others do, and fear of social ostracism. This indolent peasant decided to go back to the land, rather than to continue to toil in a dark, satanic mill. I am ostracised for it, and that’s quite alright.