4-2-9 It's in the history of metal-working that evolved over millennium to where machinery-making came, and then the further societal evolutions as each new innovation came along. The effect of the spread of railroads, combined with the upset of the civil war, began the larger processes-of-devolution from our ten-thousand year long agrarian existence and its accumulated body of good common sense wisdoms and evolved societal stabilities that have now played such a major role in leading us to this space wherein none of those old-time smarts seem to 'work' anymore.
Of necessity, agrarians had to behave with a toughness, a sternness that we of this century seem to no longer be able or willing to tolerate in the behaviors of others, anymore. Especially the men, due to having to manage beasts-of-burden often outweighing them by six or more times. And who had to always be on the push to get fields plowed, fences kept reliable to keep large bovines and equines out of, and get the harvests in on time before the weather turned. And who, by and large, were responsible for firearm maintenance and judicious use of in procuring meat for the table; with all the associated necessity of having to deal with all the blood & guts issues. The womenfolk of that era were also driven to a toughness and durability of the same necessity—of helping to provide for the common weal in the age of no nearby stores and almost always next-to-no money, anyway. Keeping the gardening managed and foodstuffs stored, meals forthcoming, breads made, wild foods harvested when in season and prepared for storage; cow milked, butter made, cloth spun, woven, and made into clothing. Poultry kept safe. Lots of kids was a necessity, there was so much to cover and get done, day-to-day, year in and year out. Junior, who'd just been allowed his first firearm was then posted to oversee the garden and shoot any critters that might render the garden truck lost. And if he got bored, he could scrounge the nearby perimeters for any stray critter he could pop. Each less critter meant a fuller guarantee of garden security. And for the older boys, who'd already graduated to being allowed to ride their own horses, firearm use involved keeping the larger critters at bay from devouring the cattle or sheep; and had to ride horseback a lot in keeping herds in a general containment. Girls, by and large, helped mama in accomplishing the multitude of tasks intimate with all the chores of wifery. Some of the more tomboy types took to firearm usage and horse/ cowboy work; most, however, stayed in a domestic capacity of what today's women would surely define as bondage—and to a degree, I can agree with this point-of-view, while in the same moment containing a clear mind's eye of the collective of a full grasp of the scope of the chores before the age electricity, automobiles, and supermarkets sprung all phases of the agrarian ethic out of whack and left us all groping and fumbling for enough 'sense' in all that today confronts (in my case it's attempts to confront, because attempt is all it is and ever will be for me, because I am impervious to all attempted manipulative thrusts-from-outside my own spirit; and it is that spirit's full blessing to be (or feel) able to see behind the facades' attempted obfuscations and hard sell ideology, to the very-flawed rationale behind the messages trying to propagate themselves into my brain? Goodness! No! My spirit, who guides my every instant, instinct, and intuition, 'sees' otherwise. Not the least bit interested in acting out all of those instinctual urges that still well up within me to shoot guns, kill, butcher, beat on large animals to make them get to work, and etcetera, left over from ten-thousand years' worth of conditioning this human brain that lives within my head and feeds my heart and tells my body what to do every second—I try to avoid those darker aspects of that agrarian mindset that still tries to function.
The pure physicality of the labor intensive necessities of agrarian life created in their stead, a toughness and durability and patience-to-endure factor that I see (at times) too often lacking in the bodies and minds of today's now 95% the other way, urban populations. Soft, whiter-than-withe, afraid of the sun, flabby bodies and, if anything, even flabbier brains to go along with their out-of-shape bodies. This I see and it bothers me because I know how it made me who I was—not who I am now.
Okay: So they were tough, and . . ? Well: Had I been conditioned to that level of durability and patience to persevere, would I have acted so errantly as I did as a much younger man? I think not. This is why I keep harping on the facts of everything I've ever done not really, in its essences, being any of my fault. Nor do I deserve blame for being so retarded. That the retardations of generations before me gave me this defect—and now has passed it on to into your life through me—does not give you or anyone cause or justification to describe me using such disparaging terms—nor me you, either.
With the advent of the world of time and energy-saver appliances into every home, we all started to lose that toughness factor as all the chores got easier and easier over the earlier part of the 20th century. The disconnect from horses left a vast empty hole in the male psyche, as did the eventual disconnect from the garden as the main focus in women's lives. More and more motor cars and more and more highways further bled the lifeblood of agrarianisms'' soul out of our consciousnesses; not to mention the breakup of familial integrity and continuity so vital to our basic survival throughout all of recorded history, and I would venture a guess that this sort of conditioning stems from the time our very first steps upon earth.
I claim that my behaviors, through up until about my mid-fifties, were about as virtually involuntary as they could be, and therefore really do not deserve the types of wanton criticisms and overblown derogatory comments aimed at me. My own sense of an interior criticizer slams me around pretty severely on its own terms, which I assure you are more direct and cutting than you will ever use to try to put me down when it is you who are, in this process, only putting yourself down. I hope that you can take this critical staement in the spirit it is intended and not get too defensive and shut down, just because I wrote something here that may, in some way, (& probably will, if I know you) unsettle your basic spiritual divinity that tries so hard to keep you and your emotional being on an even and well-grounded keel. It is a lesser self who strikes out like you do, and beneath you, if I say so myself. Beneath the Fourman sense of dignity, honor, and grace: The attempted or real practice of which is uppermost of the three. For all of my uncouth unruly inappropriate outbursts, the Fourman's prime directive, if you will, was to assert positive and respectable respectful attitudes in both speech and behavior. This was the example they set in the household in which I grew up in; and the example they kept harping away on when in discussion with this wayward son of theirs who just was not listening during those times; except that I absorbed the the nth degree, everything they believed to be righteous and upper-middle class. That I was born from a thousand generations of agrarian conditioning into such a hoity-toity situation pretty much explains why I never fit, couldn't fit, and wouldn't fit, ever, no matter how much or hard I tried. The stark truth of this evidence staring me in my face, circa my mid-twenties, began the turn-around processes toward settling me more into a life-style more suited my nature. This has been the rest-of-my-life's struggle: To get closer to an environment that feeds my spirit and doesn't gobble it up—or try to, at least. This urge has outdistanced all other considerations about to do with who did what and to whom a third of a century ago. My own personal self-preservation instinct has no time for the pettinesses of fools, women who feel that they have been battered or otherwise disrespected, and all the overly-educated who, because of their over-education, think that they know it all about how I am to behave and why I am supposed to behave this way or that, while they sit in their ivory towers and don't hardly do a stitch of real physical work for a living. Sure, what they do makes enough sort of a sense to other overly-educated or overly-paid lower class types who will gladly accept the premise that: By paying some shrink literally tons-of-money-per-hour to lay this psychobabbling bunch of drivel (my feeling about its descriptive word) gobbldy gook on them seems rather outrageous to a guy like me, whose never had the kind of 'discretionary' funds to even contemplate enlisting the services of one of them brain-doctor types' overly-complex so-called supposed services. You can believe this or not when I tell you that my own little brain in here is my very own best possible annalist. It serves me way better than any incoming attempts could possibly match. Much of the good and decent common-sense sense of sensibility residuals from my agrarian era ancestors' ways of thinking and doing remain to inform me of this and these things, thoughts, moods, and feelings I have about why I feel that it is okay for me to ignore all attempted laying of blame and angry insulting words of dysfunctionality-on-parade by anyone, including those to whom this letter is directed. I can ignore the petty peevishnesses that are obviously motivated from too many erroneous assumptions as to give them any credibility or waste large amounts of time on trying to rebut. You are not wrong and neither am I: It is the system and its enthusiastic ogres who have done this abomination upon our souls and spirits and you must get past your misplaced target—me--and try to re-focus your anger and hostility and frustration and pathetic sadness, despair, and depression, disappointment, all of those hostile urgings toward the people who've endorsed the mentality-of-greed and have done this dirt on us for centuries and centuries of in-humane wrongheadednesses in their misguided suppositions and population-control successes. Now that I can get angry about. Engaging in argument over what I or Fran or Jerit or you did to who and why and when, and all the seamy details of a life that no longer is or ever will be again, it seems, is a fool's choice—and I am not that much of a fool; believe me.
And do you know what? I've a dozen more pages on this very subject yet to type and for this effort, my back is fast yelling at me to quit before it seizes up again from sitting and typing away here at the mega-difficult job of attempting to portray what I feel to be stronger truths than seem to jell with any one else, and therefore so: Probably ought to just quit this and cease entirely evermore--again!-- to beat my head against this brick wall of stubborn neurosis infecting you guys, but I must insist: Not me. And with that: I will close this writing. Thank you & g'nite
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