Living off the land was rebranded as living off the government. Greed was rebranded as the other party stealing.
Before pricetags were placed between us and everything sacred, including relationships… we flourished within the abundant gifts of nature. Obtaining food was exercise, open eyes meditation, travel, all in one.
Our food sources were scared off and replaced with fenced in animals.
Post ww2 zoning put most of our homes far away from our natural food sources and our daily lives. The Lenape had an agricultural system that grew with the population, no excess. No toxic chemicals to produce those excesses. No wishes for excess.
The Lenape of whom gifted welcoming peace & friendship to the Europeans, promising to share the land were eventually forced out, and now that land and the people that reside within it, are being heavily taxed, while the Lenape were pressured into a land void of the healing plants and food sources they grew symbiotically. As we seen in Gaza, removing food sources is a primary tactic of soft genocide.
We see the same within governments that claim to protect us, attempting to take away food sources once again, this time for those that don’t submit to a modern culture of destruction. To obtain those food sources, they’re attempting to force life into corporations that have no care for the collective, only what they can collect. Empowering things like “throwing away nearly as much food as they sell in a day, as giving it away would fulfill freely, lower their earnings.” Things like, “never recycling as it’s not ‘a great business plan.'” Those are the first systems to be fueled when efforts are put forth to fuel “the economy.” Just like with modern medicine: stuck tending to symptoms instead of healing the roots. Let’s fuel wellbeing and see what miracles grow.
living off the land vs. living off the government is more than a rebrand, it’s a cultural inversion. Abundance was pathologized and dependence institutionalized. Though as nothing is permanent and society is young, the pitfalls of today’s society are only steppingstones to something much greater. The government isn’t some evil entity, but surely has room to grow, of which we all do. We have each other to heal our blind spots.