Here's another excerpt from the very fine collection of essays, The Essential Agrarian Reader, which I have mentioned of late. This essay is from Wendell Berry and it echoes a bit of Barbara Kingsolver's introduction, where she states:
I'm tired of the presumption of a nation divided between rural and urban populations whose interests are permanently at odds, whose votes will always be cast different ways, whose hearts and minds share no common ground. This is as wrong as blight, a useless way of thinking, similar to the propaganda warning us that any environmentalist program will necessarily be anti-human.
[When asked to write an article about this supposed divide, Kingsolver replied:] Sorry, but I'm the wrong person to ask: I live in red, tend to think blue, and mostly vote green. If you're looking for oversimplification, skip me...
Berry's excerpt below touches on this, in that he points out it's not a Democrat vs Republican issue, not an urban/rural issue, not liberal/conservative. Rather, it's an Industrial vs Holistic, a Centralized vs Decentralized debate. Or, at least that is how I'm reading it. What do you think?
To the corporate and political and academic servants of global industrialism, the small family farm and the small farming community are not known, not imaginable, and therefore, unthinkable, except as damaging stereotypes. The people of "the cutting edge" in science, business, education, and politics have no patience with local love, local loyalty, and local knowledge that make people truly native to their places and therefore good caretakers of their places.
This is why one of the primary principles of industrialism has always been to get the worker away from home... The office or the factory is the place for work...
The industrial mind is an organizational mind, and I think this mind is deeply disturbed and threatened by the existence of people who have no boss...
The industrial contempt for anything small, rural, or natural translates into contempt for uncentralized economic systems, any sort of local self-sufficiency in foor or other necessities. The industrial "solution" for such systems is to increase the scale of work and trade. It is to bring Big Ideas, Big Money, and Big Technology into small rural communities, economies and ecosystems...
The result is that problems correctable on a small scale are replaced by large-scale problems for which there are no large-scale corrections. Meanwhile, the large-scale enterprise has reduced or destroyed the possibility of small-scale corrections. This exactly describes our present agriculture.
Forcing all agriculture localities to conform to economic conditions imposed from afar by a few large corporations has caused problems of the largest possible scale, such as soil loss, genetic impoverishment, and groundwater pollution, which are correctable only by an agriculture of locally adapted, solar-powered, diversified small farms - a correction that, after a half century of industrial agriculture, will be difficult to achieve.
The industrial economy thus is inherently violent. It impoverishes one place in order to be extravagant to another, true to its colonialist ambition. A part of the "externalized" cost of this is war after war.
9 comments:
The Photo....
Rain barrels are cool. This one is ugly. Trust me, being green-minded doesn't have to be so damned ugly.
I'm all for doing my part and asking the nation to do the same. However. I'm not for anything that stifles commerce or transportation.
"Progress" is moving forward. Returning to bikes and horses because we don't want to drill for oil is moving backwards... the antithesis of Progress.
There has to be another way. And that way should and must include drilling for oil/CNG until technology can catch up to the vision of new technology. We have a vision for the future, but technology isn't there yet. In the mean time....
We must move forward. Which means drilling.... among other things.
Rain barrels can save a lot of money on your energy bill, but they won't get you to work on time.
"Progress" is moving forward. Returning to bikes and horses because we don't want to drill for oil is moving backwards... the antithesis of Progress.
Says who? Why are horses and bikes - MUCH more efficient forms of transportation than cars - not considered progress to you?
And why must "progress" include drilling for oil when we know that that is not the way of the future but the way of the past? Isn't that more aptly named "regress" and, at least in this case, a less desirable action?
We must move forward. Which includes drilling... among other things.
I do not suggest drilling as the "end all-be all". It is, as Pickens himself states, merely the beginning. There is no technology currently available capable of getting us off oil now, or even close to available within ten, fifteen, or twenty years. In the meantime, without gas we move backward-- technologically speaking. We allow the rest of the world to continue polluting the planet and advancing their own economies while we flounder and regress. We cease to be strong. We invite economic and political invasion. We cease to be the moderately safe and secure nation we now live it.
How is this a good plan for the future?
I don't entirely disagree with the idea of adopting a more agrarian system of living, but not at the expense of technology capable of keeping us at or near the top of the world's political food chain.
I'm not sure I understand why? WHY must we "move forward"? What if "moving forward" causes financial collapse and mass sorrow? How is that moving forward?
To paraphrase someone: If you're heading in the wrong direction, moving forward is not a good thing.
Is there any historical examples of a society of any kind that took a step back and survived?
There are plenty of examples of societies that failed to advance and were wiped out.
When Cuba was cut off from oil due to the US embargo 20 years ago, they had to remake their society into one that was not wholly dependent upon oil.
They did and did so very well. They certainly have their problems, but they can serve a role model for how to get by without oil.
See here.
There have also been civilizations who have failed to live sustainably and utterly failed and disappeared. We don't really have a choice as to whether or not we'll learn to live without oil. The question is how soon we'll realize it and how many people will suffer and/or die because of delay.
And again, Edwin, I question the use of the word, "advance." I'm saying I don't think "advance" is the right word for creating a society more and more dependent upon a finite resource. That is bound to regress sooner or later, when that finite resource goes away.
By all means, advance. But destroying ourselves is no advance.
Learning to live sustainably, THAT would be an advancement. Wouldn't you agree?
We Americans are the last holdouts of the idea that "progress" equals technical innovation equals social security of some form or another. Western Europeans realized how silly that idea was when they destroyed themselves in two war in the first half of the 20th century. They opted for reducing the potential of social unrest and increased socio-economic disparity for a more congenial, socially and politically secure state. Americans scoff at them, yet how many of us would prefer the relative peace and comfort of knowing our healthcare is provided, our jobs are secure at a living wage, and should tragedy strike there are public resources available to keep us from utter failure?
As to the issue of "rural" versus "urban" or "industrial" (to use Berry's formulation) values, I think he is correct to an extent. I also think it is far too easy to fall in to that trap. Ideologically, I think a reversion to a certain set of values known as "rural" is impossible, barring some kind of world-wide travesty. Yet, there is a need to move beyond the kind of cultural divide that reifies certain values as inherent in only certain social and cultural contexts.
As for "moving forward", I have to agree with you, Dan. Who says it's necessary? I will go a step further and ask a really hereticaly question - Why is it necessary for the US to be some kind of social, economic, and cultural behemoth? I think it would be far better for the greater part of the world if we faded in to the sunset and let other countries take the part of global hegemon for a while.
"I think it would be far better for the greater part of the world if we faded..."
That's where we're headed, Geoff. That's exactly where we're headed.
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