Boilitarian

[Guest guest]

i propose a new term this.

 

as vegan is to colestoral free

boilitarian is to acrylamide free and also vegan and the only

safe steb beyond raw.

 

 

i am looking for response to my proposed meme. even interesting new

recipies ideas;)

 

warlmy callz

[Guest guest]

It sounds like you only eat boils - yuck!

 

If you do need a name for this, how about boilist?

 

Personally, I've always disliked anything boiled. How much acrylamide does steaming produce?

 

MV

 

-

c4ll7

Saturday, July 02, 2005 6:50 PM

Boilitarian

i propose a new term this.as vegan is to colestoral freeboilitarian is to acrylamide free and also vegan and the onlysafe steb beyond raw.i am looking for response to my proposed meme. even interesting newrecipies ;)warlmy callz

[Guest guest]

I guess not being a vegan, I don't get this, would you mind explaining

it to me?

 

Thanks!

 

, " c4ll7 " <j1o2n3a4s5@g...>

wrote:

> i propose a new term this.

>

> as vegan is to colestoral free

> boilitarian is to acrylamide free and also vegan and the only

> safe steb beyond raw.

>

>

> i am looking for response to my proposed meme. even interesting new

> recipies ideas;)

>

> warlmy callz

[Guest guest]

I heard an interesting term this past week. I was at a gallery

opening in NYC and someone mentioned " freegans " . These are people who

are vegans unless the food is free :-).

 

Gallery openings: cheese cubes and cheap wine for all! Huzzah!

 

- Gene

[Guest guest]

yeah I was even told that some people go into the trash at grocery stores and

what have you. Look at this article online that I found.

------------------

 

What is Freeganism?

Freegans are people who are concerned so deeply with the social and ecological

impact of economic over-consumption that they choose to buy and work as little

as possible and, instead, to live directly off the massive waste created by our

modern society. Freegans avoid contributing labor or wealth to an economy based

on materialism, explotation, greed and waste by refusing to participate in it.

Instead of producing their own waste, Freegans sustain themselves off the

already existing waste thereby curtailing garbage and pollution and lessening

the over-all volume in the waste stream.

 

Because so much is trashed in our society, a freegan lifestyle can be one of

great abundance -- food, books, magazines, comic books, newspapers, videos,

music (CDs, cassettes, records, etc.), carpets, musical instruments, clothing,

rollerblades, scooters, furniture, vitamins, electronics, pet care products,

games, toys, bicycles, artwork, and just about any other type of consumer good

can be found in the discards of retailers, institutions, and individuals simply

by rummaging through their trash bins, dumpsters, and trash bags. Many of these

items are entirely useable, clean, and safe in perfect or near-perfect

condition. Lots of used items can also be found for free on websites like

freecycle.org and in the free section of your local craigslist.org. To dispose

of useful materials check out the EPA's Materials and Waste Exchanges directory.

Of course, freegans are as happy to give for free as to take for free. When

freegans do need to buy, they buy second-hand goods which reduces production and

supports reusing and reducing what would have been wasted.

 

Some freegans also extend their commitment of non-participation to include

transportation (via trainhopping, hitchhiking, walking, skating, and biking) and

housing (via establishing communities to rehabilitate and inhabit abandoned

buildings -- a.k.a squatting). Many freegans are part of communities of like

minded people who collect resources together and share with others. They believe

in the philosophy of mutual aid over competition and advocate sharing wealth

with all instead of hoarding private property.

 

 

" Freegan " is a play on the word " vegan " . While a vegan only sees harm in and

avoids products from animal sources or products tested on animals, a freegan

sees harm in all industrial products. A freegan restricts further her purchasing

by choosing to monetarily consume nothing so as to give no economic power to the

capitalist-consumer machine which inevitably hurts living beings and the Earth.

 

For additional definitions of freeganism,

 

Freegan Visions

Civilization and particularly Capitalism have reduced all things to commodities

to be bought and sold. Civilization has reduced people, animals, and the Earth

to solely economic terms, assessing their value as they relate to profit margins

without appreciating their intrinsic and interdependent value beyond monetary

worth.

 

Our civilization is in a collective state of denial to the unavoidable reality

that it is dooming itself and much of the rest of life on the planet. We laud

mass over-consumption as " economic growth " and the destruction of wilderness as

" progress " . As we come closer and closer to reaching the carrying capacity of

this planet, our assumption that the Earth has unlimited resources and can take

unlimited pollution is choking the life out of everything. Already millions of

humans die of starvation. Already countless animals die as a result of the

destruction of their native ecosystems -- forests cleared for timber or

cattle-grazing land, mighty rivers dammed, fertile plains turned to deserts

through punishing agriculture. Already people set the Earth and her inhabitants

of all species ablaze as oil barons and their pawns in government seek to expand

their hegemony through imperialist wars.

 

Already animals are treated as machines in factory farms -- not chickens, but

" egg-laying units " . They are statistics on a balance sheet viewed little

differently than the workers who handle them, usually poor people who enjoy a

species privilege allowing them to not be the slaves, but, lacking class and

often race and gender privileges they are nonetheless subjected to miserable

conditions, poor wages, long hours, sexual harassment, and weak job security.

The most miserably exploited of workers are the poor people of color, reviled

and scorned by the white working class who enjoy one degree more privilege than

they and who are fed a diet of right-wing propaganda by their masters, taught to

not question the master, but to blame immigrant workers and mothers of color for

their economic hardship and the emptiness of their lives.

 

It is that very emptiness that the charlatans called televangelists and

pornographers and marketing executives and military recruiters and racist and

anti-gay hate mongers seek to exploit, offering sex and control and power and

toys and rage and someone to blame. But their remedy is like sugar candy -- it

may look good on the surface, it may taste sweet, but it offers no real

fulfillment. With this emptiness, shared even by those at the upper strata of

political and economic power, is the emptiness of an animal far from home,

separated from family and community, detached from a history of eons as beings

who lived as kin with all life, as part of an ancient and eternal tapestry of

life. We hear faintly the call of that which we were part of, of that which we

were, and maybe can be again. But rather than answering it, we seek to silence

it, drugged or boob-tubed into a stupor, perverting our interactions with the

wild as dominance rituals like hunting, trapping, and fishing, and relishing and

suspiciously guarding our own privilege and status by applying the boot fiercely

to the next one down -- the Irish cop who brutalizes Latino youth, the son of a

Holocaust survivor who orders the bombing of a Palestinian home, the immigrant

worker who finds entertainment in cockfighting.

 

Freegans say enough of this. We want no part. We reject it all -- the drive for

status, the lust for wealth, the sense of power and accomplishment from the

purchase of needless commodities. We provide for our needs without feeding the

monster. In a system inextricable from oppression, our jobs will ultimately harm

others, the money we spend will be cycled into an economy that harms others.

This is inevitable because it is this cutting of corners, the lack of

consideration for others, this margin sliced out of equal sharing to provide for

need that defines profit and that fuels this economic system.

 

We view the commodities being marketed to us and see them for what they are --

misery and suffering with a clean coat of paint. In the most seemingly innocuous

things we see dark and unspoken and unremembered truths. A pair of leather Nike

shoes is a terrified cow, nostrils filled with the acrid stench of blood, dying

helpless in the knowledge that she is next. It is a terrified teenage sweatshop

worker who knows that standing up for basic dignity, challenging the toil and

cruelty and starvation will mean being fired into an even greater starvation and

hardship.

 

We look askance even at those products sold to us as " socially responsible " .

While others look at a tofu hot dog and view it as " guilt-free " because it does

not contain the flesh of animals, we recognize that a product is not made

profitable from only one form of oppression. Capitalism NEVER considers the

impact of its heavy hand; conservative in the cutting of economic cost, the

corporation NEVER seeks to reign in its social and ecological cost -- unless

there's money in it. And so, the freegan goes further than the vegan, noticing

the plastic the tofu hot dogs are wrapped in, and thinking of fish and birds

asphyxiating in slicks of oil in seas turned black with spilled crude. The

freegan sees the card stock wrapper of the tofu hot dog and things of the serene

forest that stood, home to multitudes of living beings, erased from the future

through economically efficient " liquidation logging " . The freegan looks at the

white color of the card stock and thinks of the millions of tons of carcinogenic

organochlorides invading waterways, contaminating living flesh after their

chlorine component has served its function as bleach. The freegan remembers the

deer shot, and the insect poisoned for having the audacity to eat crops growing

on lands that used to be their habitat, crops that will be transformed into the

product's " natural ingredients " . The freegan remembers the snake and worm and

vole crushed by the machinery that makes industrial agriculture efficient and

profitable. The freegan remembers the fish choking to death in deoxygenated

water in a lake where nitrogen fertilizer runoff from the farm has caused an

algal bloom. The freegan remembers the farm worker, underpaid and overworked,

sending funds home to a country impoverished through imperialism by a government

serving the interests of the wealthy corporate elite who guard their earnings as

they consider acquiring a mid-sized company making tofu hot dogs. The freegan

remembers the forest that once stood on lands now controlled to only grow

soybeans to feed our suffering animal slaves.

 

And the freegan knows this system cannot be shaken at its roots if we spend our

dollars in one store or another, buy one product or the next, or vote for one

corporate-backed political candidate over the other.

 

No, the infection runs too deep; the sickness is as old as civilization itself

-- as old as the first group of men who chose to assert dominance and power and

violent control through the ritual of the hunt, as old as the control and

domination and shaping of lives through husbandry and agriculture, as old as the

idea that anything on this Earth can be owned by one rather than shared by many,

as old as the idea that living beings and sections of the Earth can be owned at

all.

 

We want no part of this civilization other than to take part in its destruction,

to tear down the barbed wire of its laws, the stone edifices of its economic

precepts, and to break the chains of its ideologies.

 

We harken back to older ways, ways where people lived as foragers off the bounty

of the Earth; as participants, not masters in the continuum of life. We remember

our nomadic foraging ancestors. Living in the cities and suburbs that have

replaced the wild, we, too, forage, recovering the massive quantities of usable

goods wasted by a profligate society that values artifice and image over

substance and value, a culture that views the massive over-production of waste

as merely another opportunity for profit through the garbage disposal business.

 

So the freegan rescues Capitalism's castoffs from the jaws of the garbage truck

compactor: defying Capitalism's definitions of what is valuable and what is

worthless and refusing to let price tags and shelving displays fool her into

overlooking the castoff bounty. While the freegan can enjoy the liberty of

indulgence in these goods, she is also mindful to never be too charmed by their

allure. She knows the history of what she consumes and always remembers the

ravages of the culture that produced them. The freegan is mindful to avoid

developing a lust for commodities-acquisition even though the goods are salvaged

and therefore do not support the destruction behind the market.

 

As freegans we liberate not only goods but also the moments of our lives. Hours

not spent carrying out the hollow directives of bosses are instead spent free

for we need not make money to acquire goods that we won't buy. Our time is

instead spent directly acquiring the things we need, enjoying our time, or

working to create a better world.

 

We believe ultimately that our consumption practices, while important and even

revolutionary if practiced en masse, must only be one small thread as we weave

the fabric of a new society and mend the garment of the old.

 

We envision and strive to create a world where humanity recognizes that all

sentient beings have the right to live their lives on their own terms in

appropriate ecosystems. We work to create a world where we, as people, recognize

our kinship and solidarity with all life. We recognize that the Earth is a home

we share with a complex web of life and it must be respected and allowed to work

in the benefit of all of its inhabitants. We envision a world where people

reject the arbitrary boundaries that have been used as justifications for

oppressions. Regardless of our species, race, gender, sexual orientation, age,

or any other constructed boundary, we are all one.

 

We believe another world is possible because another world is necessary --

because too much suffering has transpired for too long, and more awaits unless

we change course. While we may not know the specific series of steps that can

create this kind of change, we seek still to live consistent with our beliefs of

minimizing harm to others while seeking to help, heal, and enrich lives wherever

we can.

 

In truth, freeganism is seeing beauty and value in that which is ignored, seeing

horror behind the lies of the powerful, and seeing an enduring vision of hope

for a world alive, flourishing, and free.

 

Free the trash!

 

" albany1100 " <albany1101 wrote:

 

>I heard an interesting term this past week.  I was at a gallery

>opening in NYC and someone mentioned " freegans " .  These are people who

>are vegans unless the food is free :-).

>

>Gallery openings: cheese cubes and cheap wine for all!  Huzzah!

>

>              - Gene

>

>

>

>

>

 

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