Welcome to the Jungle!

Over the past several weeks, I've been dealing with a growing annoyance. It started with something simple enough: apple sauce. It was a simple craving for a random food. So, at the grocery store, I attempted to find my mark. Unfortunately, this happened after I started reading labels.

Every apple sauce jar at the store had the same flaw: High Fructose Corn Syrup. Now, in general, I'm not an anti-HFCS Nazi. After all, several of my favorite foods contain HFCS. But what annoyed me most here is that I prefer my apple sauce, unsweetened. You wouldn't expect unsweetened apple sauce, just apple's with preservative, to be hard to find.

You'd be wrong.

I mentioned this at the office, and the general reply I got was, well unsweetened applesauce sucks. When it comes right down to it, adding corn syrup to applesauce is the cheapest way to sweeten it so the most number of people enjoy it.

When it comes down to it though, the annoyance for me was the lack of choice. A lack of choice created by the faster-better-cheaper mentality. We look at our modern world as something purely progressing, and don't stop to think if choices we eliminate have value. It's a curious thing to me, how few people stop to look at what's been done, what can be done, and the possibilities of the world around them.

And in general, I'm convinced, this forstagnation is being subtly encouraged by things we view as beyond question - public education, religion, technological advances, capitalism. All hold intrinsic value, but so often ideas and systems tied to concepts we hold dear are not challenged out of fear for challenging the concept itself.

This blog will be about an ongoing attempt to adopt a lifestyle which values choice, personal freedom, honesty, and individuality. And, it's not just me here writing about this point of view, my partner in crime, Fin, will be updating too.