We can still learn

Sorry for the lateness I forgot to hit publish yesterday.

This week we have been discussing Living the Sabbath and most of us have been pointing out the problems with Wirzba's ideas. While there is nothing wrong with scrutinizing his writing this way we sometimes miss the big idea and possibly miss out on the point he is trying to get across. Wirzba wants us to realize that our society is not very godly and christians should try to be more like God. We may not agree with the methods he wants us to use but this point is still valid. Most of his ideas are extremes and are probably not the end all be all of his ideology. Because of this many of us see him as an ideologue who isn't open to compromise and is telling us to be the same way. I would say that he wants us to discuss his ideas and find the middle ground that works for each of us individually rather than taking his points at face value. Sometimes my scrutinization is the polar opposite of Wirzba's points and it may seem that I don't think he has anything valid to say. My points are usually so extreme in the opposite direction because he writes in this extreme style. So instead of dealing in shades of grey I just take the black to his white, then we can find the grey in group discussions.

It can also be difficult for our class to identify with what Wirzba is saying because some of us are exactly what he seems to be railing against. Personally I'm the type of person who pushes myself to greater heights because I want to. I always want to do better than I did before so I was never satisfied with a B. Not because of the "rat race" or because of societal pressure but because of me. I wanted that A sure my parents did too but I wanted it, so I got it. The same would be true if I was a part of the business world, I wouldn't be trying to make more money so I could go out and buy stuff but because its how that world measures success. If I was a runningback I'd want to get the most running yards possible, a baseball player the most home runs. The reason that people like Bill Gates keep making more money isn't because their not satisfied with how much they have and want more its because they love to succeed. Wirzba talks about how we are less happy than we have been in the past because we are always striving for the top that is impossible. Well what about the people who enjoy striving? Most mountain climbers don't just climb one mountain and then say DONE! One's enough! Time to rest. No they love climbing mountains to they go climb another one. Maybe Gates just loves trying to make money and so he keeps doing it, maybe he doesn't care about the prize so much as the race (he gives most of it away after all). Maybe Wirzba never intended his book for the small percentage of people who find satisfaction and joy in work but the fact remains that those of us who do are going to find it hard to identify with what he is trying to say.

I'll get off now.

                                                 

Week.......Whatever Week it is Response

I lost track. Sue me.

Ideal vs. Practicality 

In both of the chapters that my group read it seemed that Dr. Wirzba has been dealing in ideal situations and not talking about any issues that could arise from the plans he puts forth. Of course most people who put forth ideas give the ideal, but perhaps with a little less irony. The irony comes after spending most of chapter one telling us how we have lost our way and how we should change and then saying that we are turning to professionals and others to tell us what to think, what to do, and how to live. What is he then?

 

Now on to More Serious Things

Let me be perfectly clear. This irony does not invalidate what Dr. Wirzba has to say, not at all. He has some good things to say and his base ideas are really good one.

On paper.

Wirzba suffers from the same thing that almost every writer who discusses philosophy or economic theory suffers from. Idealism. We love to deal with ideals and try and tell our side like its the best one and won't have any problems whatsoever. Wirzba has a less sever case of idealism than most as he acknowledges the issues with his ideology and the benefits of his 'opponents.' For instance, unlike some authors we have read that have written on agrarian ideology he admits that not all of our food (maybe even most of it) will still need to be store-bought but that growing some of our food will help us connect more with it. Which is completely true. The salsa we make with the peppers grown on our porch is tastes better to us because we grew it and we made it in our own home. However we cannot take care of our own cow for milk so we need to buy it. Wirzba appears to me to be more open to compromise than many of the others we have read. I think that if someone could show Wirzba that they are living a Sabbath lifestyle within the current system he would be interested in hearing how they compromised and pulled it off. 

Decline of Delight?

The beginning of chapter five is all about how our entertainment industry today is removing the delight from our everyday lives. I have to disagree with him because I'm not sure if we can say this is a new phenomenon its been going on since humans could talk. We've always told stories about fantastical worlds and have always imagined new things. Why? Its not because we don't believe that the Earth is ugly or can't delight in it but because sometimes we want something new and different. Lets look at it another way, you can't eat fried chicken for every meal and not get tired of it. That doesn't mean you all of a sudden hate fried chicken and it may even be your favorite meal you simply want something different every now and then. Its why people travel to different places, when you see the same thing every day you get kinda numb to its grandeur. That doesn't mean its not there and you don't think it's beautiful you just don't think about it all the time. One could argue, and Wirzba does, that we should always be thinking about how beautiful our surroundings are because it was created by God. However, that's not really very practical because we can't constantly be marveling at something and function in every day society. This is one of the symptoms of Wirzba's idealism. We physically CAN'T do some of the things he wants us to. 

Success...or Nah?

The rest of chapter five makes the case that our thirst for success is distancing ourselves from God and that it is one of the major factors causing the breakdown of our society. Our drive for success is driving our families apart and destroying our environment. Or is it? We didn't destroy our environment on purpose we did it because that was the only way we could go about it. Once we found out what we were doing it was corporations who lead the fight to heal the environment. Maybe not the same companies that were the ones responsible for the destruction in the first place but companies nonetheless. In fact environmentalism is big business and is projected to expand to nearly 4.5 trillion dollars by 2020, http://cleantechnica.com/2012/09/17/global-cleantech-market-expected-to-expand-to-e4-trillion-by-2020s-germany-to-capitalize/. This type of growth doesn't come without a thirst for success. So maybe it is destroying our environment, but it's also saving it. It seems to me that Dr. Wirzba is mistaking the means for the end. Its not the want for success that is destroying our environment, driving a wedge between our families, and generally leading to the disintegration of our society but rather why we want to succeed. Many people don't try to succeed to do a good job or to create something great but do get a lot of money. This is where we begin to see a lot of what Wirzba is describing. When people focus on nothing but getting more stuff they start to not care about people or anything else. When people focus on succeeding because they feel fulfilled when they create something great or do a good job we see people who care about the environment and other people. For instance Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, gives away the net worth of most companies to AIDs research every year. Why can he do this? Because he had the drive to succeed but didn't make getting money the only thing he cared about. He succeeded, made money, and cares about people. We don't need to tell people to stop trying to get to the "top of the pyramid" or that working hard to gain wealth is bad. We need to tell them that it shouldn't be what our entire life is all about and to not forget that many times our success hinges on cooperating with other people. That our relationships with other people is what gives us the ability to deal with the stress that comes from trying to be successful. 

Photo Blog

So watch this video I made and everything will make sense. Promise

Or copy and paste this into your browser mmkay?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rro7j1z20obgtod/Photo%20Blog.pptx?dl=0

No Turning Back

In our readings in the past few weeks we have read about how land should be more about place rather than price and that putting price on land somehow devalues it's inherent use. Does monetary value and sentimental value need to be two mutually exclusive things? No. Land is priced based on its value to the general man but certain sentimental aspects can, and do, affect the price. Take an old house of example if something of import happened in that house and plot of land the price goes up. If someone is reluctant to sell their farm because it has been in the family for a long time the price goes up (farmland doesn't come up for sale very often so you can charge a lot for it.) Land value reflects a great many things and not just the value it has for use. The reason we monetize land (and anything really) isn't because we are greedy or no longer see it as important it's because its an easy way to trade. What if we didn't see land as something to be bought and sold with money but rather traded for? That's well and good until my acre of farmland is worth one and a half cows to you.

However many of the authors we have read seem to want land to be passed down from father to son and mother to daughter. Let's look back to history where that system was prevalent the feudal ages. Back then very few people owned the majority of the land (sound familiar?) and anyone who didn't own land couldn't hope to acquire any unless they somehow married into a family with land. The gap between the haves and the have-nots was astronomical and could not hope to be closed. But when we decided that people shouldn't only be able to acquire land through inheritance and maybe purchase some from someone who has too much to work by themselves we see the gap shrink. Now almost anyone who wants to (e.g. the organic farmer who came to our class) can buy some land if they are willing to risk it. People have choice and can begin to farm however they please not how the landed gentry tell them to. Why would we want to go to a system with less choice and really more divisiveness? One people fought against so long ago? We can say that maybe we would do it better and maybe our version wouldn't be so bad and that we have learned from past mistakes. We can say maybe sometimes taking a step back is the best way forward.

Not this time. We cannot take an old economic system and make it work for mainstream society because our values have changed. We want to be connected to EVERYONE in the entire world not just our small community. What about the Amish, we ask, they make it work. The Amish are the exception, not the rule. They are a small, dedicated group who started from that view point and that perspective and there's nothing wrong with that. We are not. We started from the perspective of Mac computers and Starbucks. We can't simply give those things up because we don't want to. Most of us would say that it'd be cool to live more simply but five minutes later we're back to posting on our blogs and tweeting. We have gone too far down the rabbit hole of technology and can't get back out now.

There's nothing wrong with that either. Sure our want for tech has caused most of our problems but they are fixable. Not by going backwards or thinking about how people did things a thousand years ago but looking for new, better, greener technology that will help us fix the damage done and prevent future damage. We need new, greener ways of producing electricity not to do away with it. We need new better, greener ways of farming, not going back to the Amish way of life that could not hope to support our huge population.

Face it. We NEED factory farms. We NEED GMOs and huge farms that can produces millions of bushels of corn. We NEED nuclear and solar power plants to produce the electricity we use everyday. Most of us could not survive without these things. How many people in America today can start a fire from nothing? Hunt, kill, and gut a deer? Tell at a glance which plants are safe and which are poisonous? We can learn. From what? A book printed on a industrial sized printing press? Or maybe from a website on our Macs? We can't go back now. We would like to sure because it would be much easier than trying to find new ways of doing things. They're already there and they worked back then with different people and in a different time but we could probably make it work. We would only need to change it a little bit to make it work for us right? Perhaps, but how will we fix the problems that this system brings with it? By going back even further? Or maybe we will go back to the current system because those problems are fixed and we forgot the ones we have now. The reason we have our current system is because we saw problems with the old ways and fixed them. In doing so we created new problems however and now we will need yet another new system to fix these problems. Then another one and another one. Each time improving upon what came before. This way we are always moving forward increasing yields and decreasing our impact on the Earth.

There is no going back. We can't simply trade our current problems with the old problems and tell ourselves that everything is better. It's not better and it's not worse, only different.

The Root of All Evil May be Found in the Roots

The Root of All Evil May be found in the Roots.

In chapter 6 Davis describes all of the negative (and only negative) consequences of industrialized agriculture which range from all war to the Oklahoma City bombing. They also give some pretty startling stats about the productivity of small farms vs. industrial farms which are pretty hard to believe, 200-1000% more productive? Yeah okay. I’m going to break down each claim and see how well it stands up to some scrutiny.          TO GOOGLE! AWAY!

 Militarized Entities (sooooo....everyone?)

Let’s start with the idea that militarized entities are more concerned with the political sovereignty of land rather than the care of land. No dip Sherlock. Of course the military is more concerned with the control of land rather than the care of it. That’s the military’s job just like the care of land is the farmer’s job. This is a nonpoint, it neither helps nor harms their argument and is technically true. Sure you can say that “militarized entities” refers to nations and not the military but the same can be said about that as well. The whole point of governments and militaries is to protect the land so it can be cared for. Small farming communities could not defend themselves against invasions or large armies so we form governments to create large armies to protect us. That’s their job, just like it’s the farmer’s job to care for that protected land. Otherwise anyone who could get a group of 1000 people would be able to take your land away from you. Thus making it impossible for a self-contained community like Shipshewana to exist in the first place.

 War...What is it Good for?

Keeping with the military theme we move on to the next assertion they make, that all war could be avoided if everyone were agrarian. How to even begin? Wars are fought for many reasons and not solely for the control of land. They are fought for religious reasons, economic reasons (like access to the sea) and even for ideological reason (unification of all Germanic speaking people). How can the agrarian system prevent war? Well the quote from the chapter states that it would present less cause for war, more nations would be self-sufficient causing less fighting over resources. This implies that EVERY war EVER fought was fought SOLELY for resources. Yes resources are almost always involved (oil in the Middle East) but often this is not the sole reason. We go to war because other nations ask for help, because we are attacked, and because a certain dictator is violating international human rights laws and the UN asks (forces) us to. Even if we consider resources the root of every war ever fought agrarian ideals don’t account for it. Most recent wars were not fought over farmland when they were fought purely for resources. They were fought over oil fields, mines, refineries, and ports. This was the motivation for Iraq to invade Kuwait and was the reason 34 nations needed to protect it. We needed oil and our source was being threatened. If we, as the author states, become more independent internationally we wouldn’t have taken action. Kuwait would be a part of Iraq and many nations who do not have a lot of oil within their borders would essentially be controlled by Iraq. We can’t just ignore the rest of the world because we can supply all of our own needs, we have more oil, more fertile land, and more natural gas than most of the world, because many places in the world simply cannot. We in America have the luxury of living in a nation that covers more than 3.8 million square miles and has every biome on Earth, from jungles to tundra to plains to deserts. We have unequalled access to a unmatched variety of resources within our borders. Sometimes we tend to forget that the rest of the world is not like this and must look outside of themselves for these resources, sometimes to us. We cannot simply say “every nation should become more self-efficient” and expect all international conflict to disappear. It won’t. This issue is so much bigger than any agricultural system.

 Math is Complicated...

Let’s move on to some of the more dubious, c’mon 1000%?, stats given by the author. I did a google search for “small farms more productive” and every source on the front page was an agrarian website. Now this in of itself doesn’t mean that this stat is wrong but it is telling that the authors seem to constantly reference themselves. I repeated the search on Google Scholar and got much the same result with titles like “the Journal of Organic Farming” etc. However I came across another article titled Mis-specification in Farm Productivity Analysis that contends that the idea that small farms are more productive than large ones is because the researchers fail to control for farmland quality. It shows that the productivity difference shrinks, and in some cases disappears, when the quality of farmland is controlled for (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2663254?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents). Since I don’t own the book (and since it’s, somewhat ironically, 30-40$ on Amazon I won’t any time soon) I cannot check out the referenced used in the actual chapter. I point this out to show that this productivity is not the consensus of every researcher and it may be a misrepresentation of statistics. 1000% more anything is difficult to believe and deserves scrutiny.

 Divide and Conquer...or Not.

After this the author goes on to discuss the idea that large farms don’t take care of their land. …Okay? So large farms don’t want to mitigate their impact on the land so they can continue to farm and profit? They seem to blame the farmer’s themselves, seem to not sure if they actually are, and not the sheer size of their farms. I would like to know how, exactly, dividing farmland into many smaller farms without eliminating acres of farmland would eliminate the environmental impact. Eliminating the use of synthetic chemical herbicides, pesticides, GMOs, and fertilizers would go towards that goal but that isn’t necessarily an agrarian ideal. Many industrial farms are moving towards this system now that technology is being developed to let them do this (this is purely an observation of most of the farmers around my area when discussing new farming techniques). One of the largest environmental impacts of large scale farming is the harm to the water table. Dividing a large industrial farm into many smaller farms ran by small families isn’t going to remove that harm. It may seem to, because each farmer will be responsible for less harm. Let’s look at it another way, if every person contributes 1000 lbs of carbon dioxide daily from driving a car because they each own a single car and that’s how much a single car contributes daily. Now let’s say we give ten people that car and each drives it the same amount and that car still produces the same amount of carbon dioxide. Now each person contributes 100lbs a day instead of 1000. It seems like we are reducing our impact on the earth but really we aren’t. The same applies to dividing up farmland, it will still draw the same amount of water from the water table because the amount of farmland was not reduced.

 Let's Wrap it up Shall We?

This chapter isn’t outright wrong in what they say, the reduction on international dependence on large farms may actually reduce the amount of war, and perhaps smaller farms would pollute less. They simply take it too far, you cannot claim that there would be no more war or that pollution would be greatly reduced if everyone was agrarian because that grossly oversimplifies the issue. Chapter 6 overextends itself into realms that are not necessarily greatly affected by farming ideologies. One could claim that agrarian thought extends far beyond simple farming, and it does, but I would counter that extrapolating it to international relations, war, and beyond is not valid. The agrarian ideology stresses smaller, interdependent communities rather than a national and international scale, keeping the wealth in the small farming communities rather than sending it out into the world. Many agrarians would contend that large, industrial farms put too much wealth in the hands of too few. However these farms provide the raw materials required to fuel our other industries, cotton for clothes, milk for ice cream, and many others. These industries then make it possible for artisans, politicians, teacher, scientists, and philosophers to exist in the large numbers they do today. Our universities would be microscopic compared to what we have today, most people would have no more than an 8^th grade education. Industrial farming has led to many problems and negative consequences, which are being worked on, but it has also led to many positives and have enriched our lives tremendously at the same time. It seems to me that we, in this class and society at large, focus too much on the negatives and ignore the positives. Either that or we focus only on the positives (Fair Oaks) and ignore the negatives completely. Most of the time this leads us to take a stance on one side or the other and hinders meaningful discussion on this issue. The answer isn’t dividing up all farmland and doing away with industrial farming and it’s not putting control of farming into the hands of only a few people. It’s somewhere in the middle. 

It takes one of these to solve problems.