Putting Oneself First (or taking care of yourself before trying to take care of others)

There is a great conflict in my mind over putting my needs before those of other people (where the other people are actually in need, not just in the queue for the toilet or something). For the longest time I’ve struggled to reconcile the idea that a person needs to take care of themselves before they will be fit to take care of others. In the past I’ve tried to fight this notion, or rather truth. Consequently I agreed to be a part of organisations and take on roles that were beyond my capacity, in that I didn’t really have the energy or time to dedicate to them but blundered on forward convincing myself I would be OK giving a little more time here and there. They just wound up eating into my sorely needed down time. In the end, I was more of a hindrance to these groups than a help, but I always told myself I would definitely be OK doing these things because they were for other people and not for me.

As things currently stand, because I didn’t give myself enough time to get well and didn’t acknowledge my limitations, I graduated from university with a degree class far below what I should have obtained. Now that degree is quite a big obstacle to my ultimate dream of becoming a doctor, rather than the boost it should have been. Despite recognising that I direly need to get myself sorted out and do absolutely everything I can to overcome and (as much as is possible) control my depression, I am refusing to stop trying to move forward. In less than two weeks I will be sending off applications to various universities to study to become a paramedic. Classes wouldn’t start until September, so I’ve nine months to make some good progress with my state of mind, and I shall be talking with admissions officers to determine if I can defer a year should I not feel ready when September rolls around.

Even to me, this seems like it is probably a little mad, but I think the fail-safe of having another year to take off to get well justifies the decision. The thing is, I simply cannot stand the idea of stagnating. Of course recovering from illness is not standing still, but it is just so hard to convince myself to focus solely on that when in my day to day activities such as going to the supermarket, taking care of household stuff aren’t too badly affected. I feel like I ought to be out there making myself useful to others right now. Like I ought to be moving towards my aim of helping people in emergencies and taking care of others.

Part of why I feel the need to study and help people professionally is that I know there are so many places around the world where people need help. It irks me to know I live so comfortably while so many go without basic requirements and medical care. Sure I can donate a little money to various charities, but I so desperately want to give time and my (future) skills to those who need them. I know that unless I can get myself to a place where I can function well enough to become competent in my chosen field, I am useless to these people. This is why it is important to put oneself first. *

Yesterday I said today would be an outline of my grand master plan for 2012. Obviously this isn't it, but I felt it was necessary to talk about this first, because, considering that this is a blog** about ethics, humanity and making the world a better place, my grand master plan for the year might seem a little self-centred without context. Of course it’s entirely possible I’m just paranoid because I have this concept that my life will be without value if I am not in service to others and felt the need to justify having plans for the year that include learning to play the guitar.

*Even parents, who are their children’s life line and support, need to take some time off occasionally to recuperate. Luckily we invented babysitters.

 **Blogger's spellcheck was trying to convince me that 'blog' is not a real thing. Never have I known a website to be self-loathing. 

Ethics of Homesteading (or will the world fall into chaos if I grow my own food?)

WARNING: LACK OF COHESION AHEAD. THIS POST MAY CAUSE HEADACHES AND DIZZINESS.

I would just like to point out that I am fully intending to homestead one day and the point of this post is to explore the ethics behind my decision. I am not ragging on homesteading. :)

I’m big on society. Splitting all our essential tasks up and divvying them out between us so that each task is performed by specialists such as farmers, power companies, builders, engineers etc. has allowed humanity to develop into the flourishing, creative and high achieving species that we are today. The formation of societies wherein individuals work together for more than just protection has freed up the time of many to perform non-essential tasks. I guess I should clarify what I mean by essential and non-essential.

Essential tasks are those which cater for our most basic needs. I’m sure most people know what their basic needs for existence are but I’m going to use Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs to illustrate my point:



So according to Maslow, our basic needs are: food, air, drink, shelter, warmth, sleep and sex. While I guess sex is an important biological need, it’s not vital to individual survival so I’m going to ignore it for now. (Although I guess societies have a specialised group of people to cater to that need too).

Straight away it’s easy to see how societies have people to cater for our basic needs. Though initially I was a bit uncertain of how society provides air, I think it’s fair to say that government pollution regulations are now providing that in a sense. Catering for our basic biological needs doesn’t require the whole of the population which frees up plenty of people to fulfil our higher needs, from safety through to self-actualisation. And that’s what makes society so friggin’ awesome.
My issue with homesteading stems from the idea of removing one’s self from society. While I believe people should be able to ‘opt out’ of society, would it be right to do so?

Now I know that many homesteading families have at least one member still in employment and so are still contributing to society in that fashion. However, I question the effect of their reduced economic input. Spending less money on food, which is often a reasonably significant portion of their expenses, means less cash flow. How negative is the impact this would have? Probably not very at all.
But what if a large number of the population decided to homestead? Perhaps the cash flow would simply shift; rather than going to supermarkets and corporations it would move through local markets and farmers, growers and breeders. But it would never be as much as if all food were to be purchased through the supermarkets, due to the nature of homesteading, i.e., seed-saving and breeding your live stock to replenish those slaughtered.

Of course the reality is that only a tiny fraction of the population homesteads, or has the desire to, so the overall economic impact is tiny. Even if there were vast numbers of people looking to homestead, there’s a natural limit due to land availability. Although there is more than enough land for every family to own an acre in the UK, and a few acres in the US, not all of that land is farmable. Even if it were that would deprive us of the space and man power needed to sustain society as we know it, full of the luxuries and benefits that we enjoy and are hardly likely to give up.

Thankfully that’s not going to happen.


So what was the point of this post? Well, it is an introduction to the big-picture impact of homesteading. In coming articles I am going to address aspects of homesteading that include: a more detailed look at economics, energy, responsibility to the less fortunate, responsibility to society, and society’s responsibility to homesteaders.

I apologise for the weird flow and lack of focus in this post, I’ll probably write a more coherent revised version in the future, but for now this will do.