Thank you Batsheva . I loved reading your comment.
 
Shirley in SE TN

 
"Take this trouble for me: Make sure my shepherd dog remains a working dog, for I have struggled all my life long for that aim". Max v. Stephanitz
 
"Efficiency for work must count for more with the shepherd dog breeder than the honours of the Show Ring.
The Queen of the Ball-Room is generally not a good mother." 
~Max v. Stephanitz
 

________________________________
 From: Batsheva <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2011 4:53 PM
Subject: Re: Crops and morality
 
Opening day of deer season here in NY state, and we got a  8 point buck.  We gutted him, and realized that the bullet shattered his stomach.  As soon as we made the first cut into his organ cavity to spill his guts (sorry if this is too graphic, but hey, I'm among fellow paleo's...we thrive on this stuff, right?), I saw the dreaded sight - undigested whole dried corn kernels, and a wad of green masticated leaves.   Man can't leave nature to itself.  The neighbors bait the deer with trails of corn, and then fire away.  Some would say man is ingenious.  But from my perspective, man is screwing up my  venison and making wild game closer and closer to grain fed meat.  
 
So, back to the morality issue.......I find the closer people live and depend on the land, the stronger the moral fabric.  Maybe this is sentimental on my part, but I also happen to live not too far away from a strong Amish community.  They grow their own food, hunt with bow and arrow (some can use guns, just depends on the church they attend), use unbelievable ingenuity to tap into gravity, springs and wood/stone  to devise artesian wells,  use their Belgian and Percherand Horses instead of tractors, and their farms are neat as a pin.  No rusty rotting machinary anywhere.   Thrifty, moral people who leave almost zero carbon footprint.  Their handshake is their contract.   They are an agrarian, farming people, but they live more of a paleo lifestyle than many "paleos" who shop at whole food and run around in 5 finger shoes.....they cache their food/meats for the winter, cut ice off their ponds and devise ice houses instead of needing freezers,
and survive with no indoor plumbing.   Their clothing is handmade, and always clean.
 
Sorry if this is off the topic, but it was a good day on the land today!
 
Batsheva

________________________________
From: Kenneth Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 5:18 PM
Subject: Re: Crops and morality

Material conditions—differences in the environment and food sources---do
not alone create cultural changes. That would be Marxism. Cultural changes
also take place by diffusion (borrowing) and inventions by individual
leaders (like Ray with Neanderthin)

Sociobiology says, for example, that religious ethics, such as mutual love
and self-sacrifice, were created because they helped the group be
successful in survival and reproduction. Without these ethics groups tended
to fall apart. When it came to food, people ate what was available, or what
they could invent, or copy, to help them survive successfully. Grains,
though perhaps necessary for survival for some people at some point, turned
out to be unhealthy for humans.

Now it's become a very crowded planet and grass fed meat is hard to come by
for all, so grains continue, unhealthy as they are. How to we get around
this problem? Do we have to accept unequal-in-health food conditions?....A
variety of people and food is natural, I suppose.

Ken