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The Salt Mind
The Salt Mind
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Want to further explore Cog's 'Salt Mind'? Stop by TwoIceFloes and check out the latest by Mr. and Mrs. Cog.
The plan was always for me to return to ‘work’, aka gainful employment, after finishing several major sustainability improvement projects to our mountain top homestead. After nearly two years of continuous work on over a dozen undertakings large and small, several months ago the time finally arrived. Of course, the plan always assumed local and national financial conditions were such that a job was available for me to fill. If not…..well, that was precisely why we had improved our ability to self sustain in the face of national (or global) economic disaster.
So for those of you who have been wondering where the hell Cog is………now you know. Cog has been willingly laboring away at the local (assuming anything twenty four miles away can be termed ‘local’) big box retail salt mine. And no, I am not a Wal-Mart greeter……yet. Suffice to say I work in a physically demanding retail sales environment as an hourly wage slave working swing shifts any day or evening of the week including holidays and weekends. At least it comes with full benefits, though I don’t think I will be joining the 401(k) ‘retirement’ plan or the company discount stock purchase plan anytime soon.
Combine nine hour work days with an hour and a half of commute, add in the physical exhaustion experienced as I return to fighting shape and my weight of thirty plus years ago, sprinkle on top the occasional errand while visiting civilization, the time spent on daily prep for work as well as the unwind when returning home (one does not go directly to sleep after getting home at midnight) and clearly my writing has suffered.
Mrs. Cog, to her credit and my relief, has been quite supportive, picking up much of the daily homestead work load while packing dynamite lunches/suppers filled with yummy healthy food and love notes galore. It just doesn’t get any better than this. My biggest regret is not being able to devote as much time as I wish to the love of my life. Mrs. Cog and I have been inseparable over the last four years, so clearly the last two months have been a shock to the family unit. Thankfully our relationship has never been stronger and is based upon clear lines of communication, mutual respect and understanding and, most importantly, a deep and lasting love.
A surprisingly significant, though not in the least unexpected, change within me has been the partial metamorphosis from independent thinker and sovereign individual to punch card corporate drone who is no longer master of his universe. It has been utterly fascinating observing firsthand over the last two months the at times subtle, at times monumental, changes to my mindset. Who says you cannot be reinserted into the Matrix because the steak is quite ‘real’ and tastes great to boot.
For more than ten years I have been either self employed or just plain old unemployed, though most certainly I have been hard at work during my self-imposed hiatus from a corporately structured ‘work’ environment. Such is no longer the case and I have been genuinely shocked how easy it has been to slip back into the ‘Salt Mind’ while laboring away at the salt mine. The sad reality is the ‘real’ world is structured first and foremost by the ‘work’ environment, and then firmly cemented in place by the fictional world of fiat and its associated debt. I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.
Let me count the ways my ‘Salt Mind’ is slowly subverted even as I am fully aware not only of the effects, but the underlying subjugating process. It all seems so natural, normal even, warm and fuzzy and oh so familiar. Like riding a bike or driving a car after a long absence, the natural born skills of the slave mind bred from birth eagerly springs to the surface when willingly summoned from the depths. The sweet smell and comforting familiarity of my indentured servitude is a powerful aphrodisiac and comes complete with mind numbing tunnel vision and powerful natural pain killers.
Being the type of personality who enjoys interacting with my fellow man, I have quickly bonded with my ‘teammates’ as we put our noses to the grind stone and our backs into the oars as we row, row, row our retail boat in circles. Yesterday’s sales were great…..but what have you done for me lately? There is nothing quite like the narrow perspective and near total mental blackout imposed by the corporate sales treadmill.
With just enough carrot and plenty of beating stick, it doesn’t take much to spur me and my fellow peons on as we row the Imperial Roman galley ever onward. Technology may change the mode of operation, but the mindset remains the same. Battle speed! Attack speed! Ramming speed! Number forty one, you’d better pick up the slack or you’ll taste my lash. Another day of rowing to the mind numbing beat of the corporate sales drum.
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Of course slave ‘working’ conditions have greatly improved since the days of Ben Hur, though I would strenuously argue the ‘Salt Mind’ has greatly degraded under the guise of so called free will, self rule aka ‘democracy’, consumerism and the accompanying self will run riot. The only thing more impenetrable than an addicted mind is the co-dependent ‘Salt Mind’. I’ll gladly accept pitiful wages two Friday’s hence for a meaningless day’s work today. For those who scoff at this analogy just wait and see how disastrously co-dependent the ‘Salt Mind’ becomes when they abolish cash/currency and economic marginalization is just a despot’s computer click away.
Those who warn of a disastrous dystopian future coming around the bend are hopelessly blind to the obviousness of the ‘Dystopian Now’. It is not a matter of if or even when, but rather of depth and degree. Anyone who thinks the lives we live are ‘natural’ doesn’t understand the power of alternative reality creation and deep seated generational human conditioning. We are what we think more so than what we eat.
Our own imagination, creativity and adaptability, the root power of our sovereignty and individuality, is brilliantly leveraged against us in the name of the common good and personal sustenance. The belly growls daily and our minds become increasingly desperate and narrow the longer we go between meals. Bottom line, as long as my meager porridge bowl is filled on a daily basis I ain’t gonna stop rowing. God forbid they don’t fill it again tomorrow.
I haven’t punched a time clock in nearly thirty five years, having either worked for myself since I was 23 or in a corporate sales environment where I was strictly commission compensated, therefore I determined my own hours and working conditions. If I didn’t sell, I didn’t eat, greatly simplifying for me (and my ‘employer’) when, where and how I was to actually ‘work’. No need for the lash since my hungry belly punched its own time clock. A self regulating slave is so much more profitable and efficient for the master.
So it has been with growing shock and awe that I have watched myself willingly, even gratefully, arrange my life, and to a great extent that of my family, around the corporate schedule handed down each Wednesday via internet delivered stone tablets. This is where I shall be when I am told to be, so help me God. There is even a helpful drop down box used to request special dispensation from the corporate Gods when I must attend personal, medical or legal appointments. Thank you Sir, may I have another. The corporate lashing isn’t so bad if you can dull the pain and discomfort. The mind numbing relief afforded by the glowing idiot box makes more sense to me now, though I continue to resist that dead end.
The Cog household soldiers on primarily because my employment is temporary in nature and for the most part voluntary. It affords us the means and opportunity to further our goal of increasing our independence and sustainability. Several weeks in the salt mine means another row of solar panels will be added to the growing roof top array. Several months fighting the ‘Salt Mind’ will put us that much closer to a new tractor or other needed power equipment. More efficient windows are sorely needed and a third alternative heating source is on the drawing board. And of course the new greenhouse is that much closer to fruition.
Sadly for the vast majority of my fellow laborers the ultimate goal is the failed and fictitious American Dream, that of a prosperous and productive working life followed by ‘retirement’, meaning the ceasing of manual labor and the total pursuit of self centered happiness. Walk into any retail store or big box outlet these days and carefully study the attending staff. Chances are you will find the majority sporting gray hair and an old age shuffle. There’s your retirement in glorious full frontal nudity.
A surprisingly large proportion of my fellow wage slaves were at one time small business men and women who were pushed out of their chosen (self-employed) occupation for any of a hundred reasons, most of which have to do with the continuing economic slowdown (I would argue reversal) and the crowding out of their means of independence by abusive taxes and regulations, corporate elbowing and political disadvantages. Small fish in big ponds usually get assimilated or eaten.
At some future date I shall explore more thoroughly the prevailing characteristics of the ‘Salt Mind’ from the first person point of view. Stay tuned as I continue my self-lobotomization.
05-28-2015
Cognitive Dissonance
No need to leave the 'Salt Mind' for entertainment.
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Even with zero debt it's astonishing how much living a minimalist lifestyle costs.
There has been a lot of talk lately about banning cash. I can hear the spin from MSM already. "Do we really need cash?" The talking heads in DC will agree that too many people who "work hard" and "play by the rules" are harmed by improper use of cash. Everybody with an SS# will receive a tax form stating the date they are required to get any cash they have back in the matrix. Only those that acknowledge the date will receive a federal cash license until that date.
After that date, the license will expire, and it will be a crime to posess cash for any reason. Naturally, big brother's cash license never expires. Sound's crazy huh? I think it's going to come sooner that we think... maybe even in TPP.
Why else does this thing have to be secret and have to be on a "fast-track"?
Even if you avoid personal debt, those who 'represent' you will try to impose it upon you.
For your own good, of course.
Fast track = move it so fast it's done before anyone can oppose it. 100% deliberate. Secrecy helps enormously, too.
I missed your input very much. I hope you are having fun working it goes faster if you are having fun.
Sigh...having to pay the bills is a bitch. Some of us have found work which (mostly) does not harm others, and where we can be ethical, honest, and earn a decent wage. I am sorry that you have had to take such a "Joe job" as it strikes me your intellect deserves more. It does remind me of stories from a great aunt of mine (Greek Jew) who when she arrived in NYC, had to work in assembly line manufacturing, irrespective of the fact that she was a generally brilliant woman. But she had a family to raise, so she focused on the small things at work - how to do her task a little bit faster - so as to keep her mind from completely numbing out.
It does become a challenge how to balance idealism with putting food on the table, and those in charge know this. Being "off the grid" completely is very hard and the first world has had it very easy since the second world war (at the expense of a whole lot of second and third world countries). Well our chickens are coming home to roost, and our children will not have the opportunities or living standard that we did. But in our place, 10x or 100x other will be lifted out of poverty. We have to remember this as we are one earth and one species of humans.
Love your articles. Hope you find time to keep writing.
John
"But in our place, 10x or 100x other will be lifted out of poverty. We have to remember this as we are one earth and one species of humans."
Gotta disagree on both points. NO ONE will be lifted out of poverty because our standard of living drops - the extra freed up will be absorbed by corruption, fraud, decay and abuse, and probably never leave these shores. We are not one earth - we are not one anything, I have more in common with a professional engineer in Germany than an inner-city crackhead downtown in my own city, and I don't speak fluent German nor have ever visited there. I wonder if we are indeed one species - horses and donkeys can interbreed to produce mules, can they not? The mental development, social attitudes and daily behavior of many Americans make me wonder if we are the same genus, let alone species.
You are of course free to believe as you like - but I believe the current crop of sociopathic liars-in-power need guillotines, firing squads and lethal injections before anything gets better, and the traitors at the Fed, GS and all their cronies should be first in line.
Yes - I don't disagree that corruption and governments prevent sharing of our wealth (so to speak). But I did read a statistic that worldwide those suffering from hunger has in fact dropped quite a bit over the last number of years (and no, I don't have the link currently...I think it was a UN study). So no one is a little extreme - and certainly with less corruption more would be, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. In fact, don't throw the baby out at all - but rather the sociopathic liars-in power :-)
I totally agree Andy. If you're not having fun being a slave to the clock, then you're doing something awfully wrong. I myself find that if I produce consistant good results for my slave masters, owners if you will, then and only then will they allow me have fun being a slave to the clock. It's awesome!!!
I like to play this song at work and it's so fitting for the article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBmCJEehYtU
Nobody's Safe,
Say what you will, but there are plenty of others out there who would be GLAD to just have a job. Here in the oil patch, even those with 18 years or more on the job are getting pink slips. You can live on something but you can't live on nothing which is about what unemployment pays.
Hi sweet cheeks, sorry to hear about your misfourtune. I've been there a few times myself and I know it sucks. Keep looking and you'll find something.
Back to what I wrote, which by the way is 100% truth. I never said I liked or disliked my job, you made an assumption that fit your narative. I'm glad that I have to sell MOAR shit than anyone esle so that my masters will let me have fun at work.
Now where the fuck is that carrot I've been chasing. Back to work!!!
If you dont mind me asking? What kind of work do you do?
VWAndy
I sell shit and a lot of it for the same company, same job for 30%-50% less pay because my masters and owners changed the rules duing the game. Being that they own your ass, cock and balls if you have them, they can and will do that whenever they feel the need to knock your ass down a few notches. I wasn't alone they felt like knocking down 50K other people also. But we still have our jobs, we just do it for less now.
I've always lived well below my means and will continue that way for the remaider of my life. When I took that pay cut it didn't affect me at all. That happened two years ago and that's why I put having fun above these blood thirsty parasititic infections of society before I produce one fucking dime for them.
And it makes the day go faster..
Sorry if I came off as being cold. I have had a suckass job or two so I should know better. My first real boss had issues. In a pinch he would ask for impossible things. Normally this cat was sharp as a razor. Taught me how to trouble shoot GOOD! Lets just say he was pretty good at panicing it was actually a skill in his case.
Wow. Your job sucks!
Having no job sucks even more, VW Andy.
I just cant get through these fricking cog dis things. I assume he stops talking about himself eventually??
blah blah blah stuff about me blah blah blah more stuff about me blah blah blah...wtf are these on ZH?
If you took that stick out of your ass you might be more comfortable. Though I agree it greatly improves your posture.
wha
I'm going to jump on the "beat up on Cog-dis" bandwagon for a minute.
You got a corporate job to buy solar panels and a new tractor???
WTF? That's fucking consumerism, not homesteading.
I own two tractors, a series of solar panels, three hay balers, a bale wagon, a swather and a half, two hay rakes, two seed drills, three trailer-mounted welders, and three trailers. I didn't pay a cent for any of it.
All of the above was salvaged and repaired. I farm hay and sunflowers. I make 13,000 a year, I have zero debt, and I don't have a corporate job. I live ten times farther into the boonies than you do. Why don't you fix up your old tractor? Why don't you steal some solar panels from a government agency? Why don't you learn to farm with horses? I have some horse-drawn farm equipment I'll sell you, cheap. Oh, I didn't pay anything for it, either.
Are you living the dream Cog-dis, or the fantasy? Because the dream is free, but the fantasy requires a continual cash input. The trust fund babies that drift in and out of this place always pack it in when the checks run out.
OK, I'm done with the rant. Look, you're doing better than 99%. Your wife hasn't bailed out, back to the bright lights. Yet. You have that going for you. You actually did leave the city, and I'm sure you're already very skilled in lots and lots of prcatical ways. Good on ya. So, to be encouraging, please heed my advice: Every kuntry-livin' problem is a teaching moment. If your tractor's busted, go get a maintenance manual for it and fix the damn thing. If that fixing requires certain skills, (welding, engine-building, machining, etc,) then go find an old-timer and bug him to teach you. He will not want to do it, but he won't say no if you are persistent. It's a free education that's priceless. The next best teacher is yourself. Whatever the equipment is, it's already broken and useless, so if you tear into it, you can't make it any worse, and maybe you can make it workable again, what do you have to lose? Only your freedom and your soul if you go work for the Man.
Your next door neighbor, the one with the alcoholic breath and sixteen coon dogs? That inbred fucker is a wealth of information just waiting to be mined, all for the price of a bottle of Jack Daniels or Maker's Mark. He'll tell you all about ginseng, pot farming, hog-slaughtering and shadetree mechanicking, plus invaluable information about old feuds, bad land deals, and past floods and fires that will come in very handy when you think about buying that piece of property with the prescriptive easement no-one else knew about.
You're working a corporate job to make MONEY(?) when you could be learning how to live poor, ie without money, or much of it??? Damn. That tells me you're not really committed. Start learning that poor people have poor ways, and see how your wife likes them bright lights then.
@CD: this. Be real, you're still living/thinking/behaving like a consumer. Adjust your mentality and you genuinely won't need what you think you need; adjust it further and it won't even feel like a sacrifice.
You made so many erroneous assumptions, it isn't worth takeing the time to address them. Clearly whatever hard core purpose you think Cog should be committed to isn't the case. Cog's commitment has never waivered and neither has mine. Perhaps you could spend some time reading what his purpose is since he has taken the time to eloquently explain it so well.
Just for the record, I was closer to the trust fund baby description you so poorly summarized above and I would live in a cardboard box to be with Cog if necessary.
What about you McCormick? Living that "dream"? Because you sound pretty angry for a guy who has it all figured out.
"I would live in a cardboard box to be with Cog if necessary."
That is very cool to see/hear. I think he is accurately questioning the necessity of the salt mining, particularly given our shared knowledge of how much it sucks. Mind you, the vast majority of us "have to" salt mine too, yours truly included. I think we're just really rooting for you guys, and some of that comes in the form of criticism, which is really just a call for self-editing. As he noted, ya'll are doing this better than 99%. Keep at it.
While the salt minditations may suck, in our eyes it would suck much more to go back into debt for more high end solar and the like (for long term self-sufficiency) after all our efforts to clear prior debt.
I started reading Cog's work here on ZH more than 5 years ago and became self-appointed president of his fan club. The "kidnap your favorite ZH contributor plan" before the world really goes to hell is working out quite well on all fronts. Thanks for the encouragement. :-)
You'll poke your eye out!
huh
CD-
http://twoicefloes.com/zero-hedge-a-maturing-fight-club-community-or-jus...
Simply excellent. Thank you.
P.S. "Besides, we are the machine."
An oldie but goodie.
I suspect he is secretly Puddles from www.puddlespityparty.com
Nah, He is no Big Mike Geier, who I know from my music biz days in Atlanta many years ago. His version of "Royals" is sublime.
How ya been Cog?
Jump! You Fuckers!