Facebook removes photo of butchering and homesteading12thFebruary
The following article is about Facebook removing the above image of skinning and butchering a sheep. It was posted by TrackersNW. This article is NOT intended as a complaint or protest against Facebook, nor an inditement of the individual who reported it without choosing to understand what it meant. Instead it is an account of our culture's failure to develop responsibility, awareness and reverence for what dies to give it life. It is a testimonial to why Trackers and other organizations of like mind continue to hold the line in reclaiming our humanity and connection to life around us.
by Tony Deis
On February 10, 2009 I received the following message from Facebook about what we believe was the image above...
You uploaded a photo that violates our Terms of Use, and this photo has been removed. Facebook does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence, or other violations of the Terms of Use. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children who use the site.
It was disconcerting. I am very conscitenous about what I post in both photos and video. As a educator and a person responsible for the welfare and livelihood of many individuals, I cannot afford unnecessary drama or controversy. I immediately combed through my photographs and looked for the one that might be missing. I came to believe that it was the one above. I soon learned Facebook is not able to tell you what photographs they removed. From Facebook's help center...
Unfortunately, for technical and security reasons, users cannot view the removed content.
I actually understand Facebook's issues on several points...
1) It is a large website, so it would be difficult to respond to every request to find out which picture was banned
2) they are simply a business and they get to make whatever choices they deem healthy for their organization (they have people that need to take home a paycheck to feed their kids)
3) frankly it is better than MySpace
4) most software developers are pretty cool, they are under a lot of pressure from multiple users (similar to running a wilderness school)So again, I'm not concerned with freedom of speech. They could delete my account tomorrow and that is well within their auspices. There are more important things to pine about than Facebook. I will attest to my right for clean air, free space, healthy local food and place to feed those I love. I will not cry out for the righteousness of social networking online. Gees, how lame could we get.
This is what this letter is testimony to: TrackersNW will always err on the side of working with local organic farmers, permaculturists, land owners and ranchers. The Port Orford rancher who sold us the sheep deeply cared about his flock. It was his family's land, he tended to the animals he raised, he showed unique and stoic remorse at their death with a competency and reality that few in our modern and sheltered world understand. How people that live close to land relate to death is invariably different than those raised in our modern world of anthropomorphic Disney movies and pre-packaged factory farmed foods. Its not perfect, far from it, yet it feels to us a hell of a lot better than plastic wrapped meat. It definitely trumps soybeans and wheat from midwest monster fields and a razed Amazon rainforest. We say store bought tofu is more violent then butchering your own meat.
Our REAL concern is with the values inherent in our culture, not the person that reported the image as a violation or especially the coders and service agents at major internet social networking sites. Instead we take issue with a world that shuns real connection with the land and community in the first place. Trackers supports local relationships and we support real family care to the best of our ability. Do we do it perfectly? Hell no. And anyone that claims they do through a curriculum, philosophy or spiritual path is really "selling something."
Let's look at what else is not considered "appropriate" on social networking. The other images constantly banned on Facebook are women breast feeding their children. The value of other women seeing and hearing the story of feeding their babies by natural methods are to important. Lets not dilute the gift of healthfully feeding our children in debates and assertions of free speech on Facebook. While we believe Facebook should let these mothers use their network as form of communication, we also laud this resource, this technology for letting you find us.
It is up to us to assert the next steps and take the actual learning elsewhere. In handshakes with real hands and eye with real tears. Anything else is cop out. And it must not stop on this webpage, or even in the limits of our programs (we are just a program after all). This is the conversation and future of our families. It is about how we are connected to the land and one another beyond a world wide web.
Some may ask, "Why show butchering on the internet. Are you sensationalizing it?" We are artists and this time we will cry free expression. But not simply for intellectual ideas, instead it is about passions and real visceral experience we hope to share. We don't "teach" in our programs. We feel that is a trap. We are people that have something we passionately and deeply care for. We are storytellers with real experience to express. And we work our butts off at the job we do and we don't get much time to explore our art elsewhere than in our "marketing" (and our marketing is unique in being real).
In the world of TrackersNW we are about to make a stand. We won't give into views of either vegetarianism or moderate. We won't incline ourselves as liberal or conservative. We will not be religious, agnostic or even a benign form of spiritual. Instead we choose something invariably more controversial and realistic. A collaborative conversation with one another as intelligent human beings. We eat meat, we eat plants. Our soul gravely and greatly changes when anything alive dies in our stead, with leaves or with legs. We do the best we can to care for our families and we are not here to play politics. We try to lessen the impact of factory farms and work to support local farmers and ranchers. We eat meat, lets all get over it. Does that mean you have to do it when you are with us, of course not. It also means people do not get to judge us. The ideal option would have been for the person who reported the image to not bother looking in our photo albums. They need to look at someone else's Facebook page and take their nosey busy body habits to another place (hopefully the person that reported the image reads this).
While we teach some values of permaculture, we are not permaculture designers. Though we stem from the world of environmental education, we are clearly not environmental educators. As we work in the field of sustainability, we do not believe the answers to sustainability are so trite as "green collar" jobs. We are a wilderness school yet we're not simplistic about human relationships to the land and we certainly draw no quarter with the fast and loose cultural co-option so prevalent in many nature school circles. Instead we are people connected to the Earth, torn between doing what we believe and the harsh realities of experience. We are flawed from the eyes of those who think about right and wrong and we are always doing our best to stay competent and honest. Our dialogue is a real and rich conversation with all life around us. Hunter-gatherer is a poor measure born from anthropology. No, instead we are people constantly shaped and reshaped by how we are fed by the wilderness, by our realistic concern for the state of the world, by how how healthy our children live, by how our family thrives beyond today and our value of the many generations of the future.
So please, support slow foods and forge real relationships by buying local. And eat animals and plants with a intense regard for the life they give. (then post all the pictures and videos on the internet)
