Finding What you Value: Is it Dumbshit?

Since the end of World War II, the United States has enjoyed a 75-year reign of global supremacy. This dominance has been based on the mobilization of industry, labor, labor unions, resources, as well as knowledge and production methods. One of the things this period of prosperity has brought about is a huge change in our value system. If you talk to anyone from the WWII generation, they will talk about the values of simple times and living. Let us not confuse those times with being easy! It is not called “The Greatest Generation” for nothing.  People still wanted for pleasurable things like a television, a car and a family vacation.

What you will find is that many of those same families also had agriculture roots and had gardens to help feed their families. During the war years, people were encouraged to have gardens often called “Victory Gardens”.  During the post WWII boom and migration to the suburbs the commitment to growing your own food faded. It was with the migration to “suburbia living” where we started to see the value system shift quite expectedly away simple living and saving for “the bling” if you will, toward one of bigger paychecks and ever larger wants and desires. For example, no longer was it a single car family, both parents had cars.  

In the last 20 years we have had two financial crisis- one around 2008 with the subprime, and our current COVID-19 pandemic. Personally, this is when we started Temple Terroir Urban Garden at our home as a way to offset and supplement our food needs reminisce of a long-forgotten time in our country’s history. If my 50-year-old self told my 20-year-old self: “one day you’re going to be a master gardener,” I would have laughed and said you are out of your mind! We made it through the sub-prime crisis but kept Temple Terroir growing food year and around, canning, pickling and giving our abundance away to those who needed and wanted fresh food. This became a part of our values that we hold dear today. Even since then, when one of our two cars needed to be “replaced”, we decided to try it with one car and have not yet purchased a second car.

Interestingly the COVID-19 pandemic caused the supply chains to be disrupted as companies physically distanced and even shut down. There is this this crazy phenomenon of people hoarding. This is where I recognized a heavy imbalance of our values. You can’t feed your family with the mansion, the Gulfstream G700, the red diamond or yacht no matter how many you have. You cannot hoard enough to feel like you have enough.

We all need food, water, sleep, shelter and sex. We all need to feel loved, valued and appreciated. Ron Finley the OG Gangsta Gardener from LA said it best “People have been valuing dumbshit, and now they see how valuable food is. The pandemic has hit the values-system rest button.” At least temporarily.

Trust me, I am not wanting demonize materiality and the pursuit of material things. My wife and I started our home-based network marketing business because we want more freedom and flexibility. And we only get that through building wealth, not by punching a time clock to collect a paycheck. When I think of resetting the value system, I think of bringing balance back to the system. Now is the time to establish that balance. Now is a great time to ask what you really value? Time with family and friends? Flexibility to travel or learn new things? Maybe just grow your own food like we do?

Many are missing that check right now during that shelter-in place even to the point of protesting but why not replace that check with an investment in yourself and values that truly matter? Now is the time to start your own business and victory garden. You can still have the grandiose car, house and vacation all bankrolled with your effort both in the business as well as the victory garden. Build health and wealth, and change the lives of those you love. Then the next financial crisis you will be in balance and ok. We’d love to have you work with us if this resonates for you.