I'm writing a PhD about the wild food scene in Brazil, and I'm especially interested in the reasons have for foraging and the role that that serves in their lives. I think for urbanites an activity like foraging can have a lot of value in creating a "relationship" between themselves and the natural environment. It's an alternative to mindless consumerism, and yes, as you say, a lot of people are worried and with good reason that people are losing the skills and knowledge necessary to make it if the "system" breaks down. Certainly it has very much entered into the collective imagination through post-apocalyptic genres. A lot of people are waking up to what is being lost and are making the decisions in their own lives that bring us closer to nature and closer to ourselves.
Jeez, just reread that, how rambley and pretentious, he he.
Hahaha no worries (: I loved it!
your side of things is not going unheard!
I'm going to go ahead a follow you!
Mindless consumerism is such a great way to put it into words.
I think it's really interesting the psychology behind consumerism and also commodification (when something that used to not involve money is transformed into a commodity that you can buy). Like it's interesting the whole wild foods thing. These are things that people have gone out and collected no doubt since humans weren't even humans. Along with tracking animals it's one of our most ancient and time-honoured skills that we have as the human race. At it's heart it is consistently linked with notions of freedom from commercial logic. Yet as it becomes more and more popular people are increasingly interested in buying and selling. Since the 80s conservationists have been harping on about the potential of commercialising wild forest products in order to motivate people to preserve and conserve wild areas instead of liquidating them into immediate monetary assets via a chainsaw and truck. Yet if you impose the capitalist monetary values onto things that you used to value for their contribution to your diet, as being a leisurely activity, as being an opportunity to spend time outside in nature with your family, as being a sacred/spiritul activity etc etc. Is that simply an extra way of valuing these things that coexists and sits beside those other values, or does it oust all those other fluffy values to the side and force you to become solely focused on the money element? It seems like the modern human is obsessed with putting a price tag on everything, as though if you can't put a monetary price on it then it doesn't matter. But it seems like at the end of the day you end up with a society that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
These are things I sit thinking about!