Smarty Pants

I have been told that homesteaders are a stupid bunch of people. Too simple in mind to do anything else. Oh, you haven't heard that? Try writing a homesteading article for an ezine that doesn't have a simple living theme, only the editor is really interested in it, and see what kind of comments you get back. What I find ironic, is that their "intelligence" narrows their thoughts and experiences into a very simple, straight line of thinking. I use to run with that "intellectual" group. We were some bad mo fo's, I tell you what. We disrupt entire coffee shops arguing over the evolution of the female breast, thank you Mr. Piers Anthony! We use to roam the streets of downtown, theorising US Governmental dictatorships, and get all knackered drinking expensive wines and playing trivia pursuit. Yep, I was that girl that you wouldn't bring home to mommy.

Then I met a genius. No, really. All those standard tests we took as children, all those college exams, said so. He wasn't merely above average, no this guys score shot him up to the 1%ers. He has something he calls the Bionic eye, he sees everything in straight lines and circles. Universities offered him free rides to help him on his path to receive his doctorate. But he didn't want it, he wanted a simple life. He didn't use large words to show his intelligence, when small words were readily available. He fell in love with the art of engineering, and the life that homesteading grants you. This man can do anything he sees. Not merely a jack of all trades, but a master of most. He taught me more than my "intellectual" cronies could ever do. He does suffer the consequences of choosing a life with little money, but he does it stoically.

And since I became a homesteader, I have learned that we instill a hatred in others. Being different, even though I have always been a little odd, changes when people no longer view you as being "smart". I use to be eccentric, but now I am a hill billy. (even though these people should be intelligent enough to realize that the term hill billy can not be used when describing me. If you wish to inflict accurate emotional bruising you need to use the correct topological terminology, I am a flat lander, or hick.) I have noticed that even if you sport many degrees, you are not worth much in the eyes of the masses. But you know what? It really doesn't matter. We are not better than them, they are not better than use. We use our skills differently.

More and more people have been stopping by, looking for ways to save themselves in another time of a Great Depression. Those people that called me names, compared me to Hitler (although Stalin would have been more accurate, he was big on the back to land movement, but for different reasons than I am) are asking me, their intellectual inferior, what steps they should take. I tell them, use your skills differently, apply the things you know to earn money, into skills you can do to live. I don't fear a Great Depression, I fear the desperate people that will come from a Depression. I worry about what they will do, what steps they will take to insure their survival. No longer would they use their intelligence to work out problems, but become feral instead. I will also state for the record that I do not believe another Depression is coming now, I know there will be one in the future, but the signs are not all there for one now.

This post is nothing more than my thinking out loud. I guess being a year older makes me think about a time when I was looked up to, and now find myself looked down upon. One would think it would bother me more than it does. But I have just about everything I want, no pity party here today. Yet there are times I miss hanging out with those bad mo fo's.