Agrarianism and ERE

[7Wannabe5]

I am reading "The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings" by Wendell Berry, and I was struck by the way his 11 point list, offering characteristics of the Agrarian ideal, conforms and contrasts with the philosophy of ERE.

5. Fear and contempt of waste of every kind and its ultimate consequence in land exhaustion. Waste is understood as human folly, an insult to nature, a sin against the given world and its life.

6. From that to a preference for saving rather than spending as the basis of the economy of a household or a government.

7. An assumption of the need for subsistence or household economy, so as to live so far as possible from one's place.

I am not an active Christian agrarian, but I think he makes a valid point with (7) and a couple other points in his total list of 11, which I was too lazy to type in entirety, due to the fact that you can't truly know that a human system is sustainable to the extent that it is not directly tied to land exhaustion and food production.

[daylen]

I'll bite.

.. due to the fact that you can't truly know that a human system is sustainable to the extent that it is not directly tied to land exhaustion and food production.

That shouldn't stop an individual from pursuing a more detailed account of their own personal sustainability based on their current environment and not some ideal. Perhaps the biggest difference is this realization?

[Jason]

Well, since he's Christian, he's not looking (or at least should not be looking) at it as a human system but as a divine system with humans as mere stewards. So its implied that the system is inexhaustible and sustainable until God decides to end it. He just wants people to respect the created world as an expression of God's grace and provision until that time.

I guess jotting down his bullet points can help the non-Christian as far it goes, but to throughly understand the underpinnings of his viewpoints, you have to assume that's what he thinks and therefore at the deeper level, especially if you try to lay his ideas on a foundation of human sustainability, you are in deep disagreement with him. The Amish do not worry about human sustainability as they click clock about in their horse drawn carriages trying to replicate life in a pre-fall Garden (hence the overtones of communism as there was no private property until the serpent seduced Eve, which is a whole other bunch of theological bananas). It's all about God as the source of provisions and their faithfulness and obedience to that basic belief.

[jennypenny]

He's looking at it more through the lens of economics. I think he discussed it in detail in this talk (I watched it a while ago so I hope I'm remembering it correctly) ... https://youtu.be/hstD5UPkWQM?t=14m54s

[Jason]

I'm not saying that he's not concerned with economics, social concerns, environmental concerns et al. I'm just saying that underneath it, if he is a Christian, his greatest and most profound concern is that the current system wars against responsible stewardship of a divinely created order. He doesn't have to say it, and from a point of influencing the greatest amount of people, he's probably better off not saying it. You can mobilize people at varying levels and vectors of concerns. A non-Christian and a Christian can both be greatly concerned about the environment. But underneath it all, they can have a profound disagreement on why they need to be concerned. It's just a strange bedfellow issue.

[7Wannabe5]

That shouldn't stop an individual from pursuing a more detailed account of their own personal sustainability based on their current environment and not some ideal. Perhaps the biggest difference is this realization?

True, but I am often struck by how much detailed information about reality is lost when conversion to $$$ is applied towards efficiency or simplicity. Another Wendell Berry essay I read years ago has stuck with me because he wrote about how it wasn't proper to equate or measure the value of agriculture with the money economy, or even the energy economy, because farmer's feed people, and, therefore, are engaged in God's economy.

You don't have to be religious to agree with the basic premise, because it's pretty clear how an individual whose net worth consisted of $1,000,000 worth of shares in a plastic widget corporation located 2000 miles distant, might fare differently in various situations than an individual whose net worth consisted of $1,000,000 worth of productive homestead in which he was literally centered in skills and knowledge. The first is better situated for flight, as long as the crisis is local, and the larger market remains functional. The second is better situated for "fight", or maybe "endurance", if the crisis is general. But, "fight vs. flight" just speaks to survivability, not sustainability; although it might be the case that passing along a recipe for sourdough starter would be more useful than passing along the actual starter. Depends.

@Jason:

I'm not sure if I agree with your premise. Perhaps I have been unduly influenced by my reading of "How the West Really Lost God" and my brief reversion to Islam, but it seems to me that it is not entirely clear what constitutes first cause in modern declaration of religious affiliation. For instance, there is good evidence that individuals who want to have large families choose to join religions, rather than vice-versa. Another example would be people who very much want to overcome substance addiction choosing to submit, ergo believe, in a higher power. So, this could also be true of a strong desire to adhere to an agrarian lifestyle. It's not at all coincidental that Islam came into being just as the people of the region were adopting an economic basis that more directly linked them with members of other mono-theistic traditions. One and only one God = Same God. Jehovah=reserve currency of all major religions in region.

That said, I agree that there is a bit of "strange bedfellows" that goes on whenever "pre" meets/agrees with "post" in regard to any "ism." In this case, the common enemy would be something like rigid-mid-20th-century-scientific-management-practices-applied-to-agriculture, inclusive of the "science" of economics. IOW, in many preferred practices somebody who believes that he should be an active steward of God's creation will have much in common with somebody who believes in systems analysis. For instance, I was on the same team as a Catholic nun in opposition to increased storage of hazardous waste in a facility located within walking distance from a very low income area urban elementary school filled with children whose parents could perhaps not read enough English to voice informed protest. When the government scientists offered statistics related to risk, I just said "Yes, but does it make sense to place this risk in a site that is crowded with humans functioning with low resources in decayed infrastructure, where the possibility that anything that could go wrong will go wrong is greatly multiplied?" while other people shouted out stuff like "How can you sleep at night?!?!" I mean, shitting on poor people (almost literally in this instance) just might be simultaneously Stupid and not Christian behavior, but starving out farmers is almost certainly Stupid and not Christian behavior.

@jennypenny: Thanks for the link. He covers much of the same ground in this book. I was thinking that the book might be of particular interest to Riggerjack and ffj, because he defends himself against a ridiculous charge of racism somebody made against him based pretty much only on the basis that he was a white Southern male agrarian.

[Jason]

If the dude is a real Christian, he believes that man is the steward of a divinely created order. It's a basic tenet of the religion of which a denial kicks him out of any legitimate expression of the faith within Christendom.

As to the "why" someone becomes a Christian, that is a primary/secondary cause issue that Christians debate extensively i.e. Calvinism vs. peliaganism vs. semi-peligiansim but has no impact on the basic belief that God created the universe and man is the steward. It's an entirely different issue that deals with the "how" someone came to that belief i.e. a monergistic act of God (Calvinism) a synergistic act between man and God (semi-Pelagianism) or a decision by man (Peligaianism).

You are complicating the shit out of a very basic premise. I'm just talking of the underlying belief system of a Christian agrarian which is (if he is truly a Christian and truly an agrarian) that God created the universe and all concerns ie. environmental, sociological, economical derive from that basic belief. People who don't believe creationism can still agree with him on issues, but it's merely coincidental.

I believe that's why he says its a "Sin" against the world and nature in #5. It's a hedge against saying its a sin against God. It's water downed Christianity so as not to completely offend the pantheistists so they will still come to his barnyard lectures.

[7Wannabe5]

I believe that's why he says its a "Sin" against the world and nature in #5. It's a hedge against saying its a sin against God. It's water downed Christianity so as not to completely offend the pantheistists so they will still come to his barnyard lectures.

You may be right in this instance, but I know of many individuals (granted, mostly Episcopalian readers of Borg, Kung and maybe Lewis-lol), who might suggest that what you are referring to as "watered down" Christianity from their perspective is "refined" Christianity. For example, acceptance of much of the Bible as allegory, enhances rather than detracts from essential Truth, in the same manner that comprehending a(b+c) =ab +ac is more refined of the arbitrary than simply comprehending that 2(3+4) =14.

I mean, it is obviously also the case that liberal Western secular humanism could be dismissed as "watered-down" Christianity, but not by me I would say it was emergent of Christianity. Every individual human can be valued on the basis of unique complexity rather than possession of a soul. A particular wetlands ecosystem can be valued on the basis of unique complexity, or what a neo-pantheist (not me!)might refer to as its soul. Neither can be accurately valued simply by efficient decomposition to marketable parts. Of course, this also implies that the unique complexity of the Anabaptist faith can't be accurately valued by decomposition into parts easily marketable to a Sufi practitioner at a convention hosted by the Unitarian Universalists, but this also does not prove that Unitarian Universalists are hypocrites, which seems to me to be kind of what you are arguing.

[jennypenny]

I think Berry deliberately tries to use inclusive language to avoid tripping over semantics wrt religion, and not just with non-religious folks (his Christianity is very different from mine). He also shifts the focus to the action and not the offended ... we can all agree on what actions qualify as sinful even if we don't agree on who we're sinning against.

I thought of Berry when I was listening to the Haidt/Peterson discussion I posted a link to in the other thread. They warn against the use of 'religious thinking' and how it has lead to SJW overload. Berry would probably argue that religious thinking is exactly what's needed to get the rank and file on board with many big issues. Marshall touched on the same thing in "Don't Even Think About It". Interesting conundrum.

Sorry to interject ... especially if I'm misunderstanding the gist of the conversation.

[Jason]

(@) 7W5

What you are referring to is what Christians commonly call "the higher critical method" which is the imposition of generally accepted critical (academic) analysis on the Bible i.e. they treat the Bible as just another book. This dates back to the 16th century with Spinoza but really refers to 18th century Christian scholarship which absorbed German philosophy (specifically idealism) and its critical methodologies with Kant being the primary villain. However, a non-negotiable in Protestantism as well as Roman Catholism is that the bible is not just another book but is divinely inspired and has to be read through that prism, not as another book in a comparative literature class. And I don't want to get into a debate about it, as its not relevant to your topic and will take us down a bunny hole neither of us wants to go.

I read Berry's bio and I do believe he is a creationist but as an active environmentalist he knows its not a prerequisite for expounding on his concerns and will in actuality, be an impediment to maximizing a coalition. If you had said "agrarianism" as opposed to Christian agrarianism, it would be a whole other story. But I think Christian agrarianism is historically conditioned to mean "creationist agrarians" not "Kungian agrarians. This includes the Amish, the Mennonites, and obviously the Southern Baptists who went to fucking war to protect their erroneous belief that human beings are also included in their God given right to own property. But that's a whole other story. For purposes of this discussion, stick to the pacifist Amish, plowing fields, making tasty pies and sturdy furniture, educating their kids until they are 14 and who will forgive you if you drive your car into their horse drawn buggy and kill their entire family. Just don't cut their fucking beards.

I would be interested in hearing Berry's response if you asked him about sustainability issues in in a public setting because that's where the theological rubber hits the activist road. My guess is he would address the issue on your terms as he is (1) outside a church setting and (2) there are probably more non-creationists than creationists willing to sit in straw and shit and listen to him talk about these things. Ironically, those without a religious commitment informing them of their view of the universe tend to get more pentecostal about it's abuse.

[7Wannabe5]

He also shifts the focus to the action and not the offended ... we can all agree on what actions qualify as sinful even if we don't agree on who we're sinning against.

I might water this down further to something like "we can all agree on what constitutes waste, even if we're not all on board with the acceptance of the notion of sin."

I think I meant to provoke a discussion on the topic of the glorification of the agrarian lifestyle vs. the glorification of the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, but it goes where it goes-lol.

@Jason:

Yes, let's avoid that bunny-hole for the time being. I typed Christian agrarian because the passage I quoted made Berry's identification as both Christian and agrarian clear. I hope I don't come off as Pentecostal (I used to frequently drive down a very rural highway with that name. Skeeved me out a bit.) rather than Puzzle-poser. I am in the habit of collecting contrary perspectives, and one of Berry's takes that tickles me is his blatant disregard for the preservation of wilderness areas over rural farming communities. He pretty much goes so far as to argue that this is a sign of abandonment of democratic ideals.

My belief is that you can't isolate issues related to land use from issues related to population demographics and technology and politics and economy and even religion, but the level or perspective of the science (not the politics often associated!) of ecological biology is most interesting. For instance, right around the time of the enclosure movement, the style of landscape gardening favored by the affluent in Britain altered from a style which included walls to hold back the wilderness, to a style that sought to include a vision (often artificially constructed) of the distant wilderness in a rolling perspective viewed from the manor hall windows.

When a small band of humans cuts a trail, or when a technologically advanced society builds a highway, this highly energy intensive suppression of life, simultaneously, necessarily also creates a margin of chaotic growth, where sunlight is available to weeds and lack of supervision is available to teenagers bearing cans of spray paint. Similarly, a rural landscape that is constructed of massive micro-managed mono-crops right smack up against "wilderness" zones, is kind of like a socio-economic system that does not have a middle-class.

Everybody is part of the ecosystem whether they want to be or not, just like everybody is part of the economic system whether they want to be or not. However, most people in our culture recognize many more corporate trademarks than plants native to their region. Most people know how to get to the nearest mall. Most people do not know how to get to the nearest source of fresh water. Think about how very, very weird that would seem to most of the humans who have ever lived.

[jennypenny]

@7W5 -- I think one of Berry's main points is a good one ... that people who are completely disconnected from the land lose sight of where their food and other resources come from. With the shift from rural to urban, the majority of people now fall into the disconnected category. I don't think people don't need to be farmers or homesteaders to have a healthy level of interaction with nature though. Studies also show that mental health is better when people spend time 'in nature' so it's in everyone's best interest to figure out how to bridge the gap for urban dwellers (and I think stuff like factory farming and Monsanto nonsense can only happen when there are so few eyes on our food production).

Personally, I don't feel the need to glorify either H/G or agrarian lifestyles. I do tend to agree with Berry's longing for the days when communities were more stable and people stayed in one place longer. I know we've had that argument several times on the forum and economics always wins out ... still, a sense of place and belonging is healthy.

[7Wannabe5]

Personally, I don't feel the need to glorify either H/G or agrarian lifestyles. I do tend to agree with Berry's longing for the days when communities were more stable and people stayed in one place longer. I know we've had that argument several times on the forum and economics always wins out ... still, a sense of place and belonging is healthy.

I've been reading a good deal of new non-fiction lately, and it has come to my attention that this is an active debate. For instance, Vaclav Smil, in "Energy and Civilization" comes down on the side of it's pretty much bullshit to glorify the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, and James C. Scott, in "Against the Grain" comes down pretty solid on bullshit to glorify agrarian lifestyle. It's kind of funny that this debate is going on with intended audience being members of a culture in which hardly anybody leads either an agrarian or a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. So, it is likely the case that something else is really being debated.

Hunter-gatherers theoretically had lower standard of living (reduced consumption), but more leisure time than moderns. Agrarians did not have more leisure time, but they theoretically had higher quality of life (as opposed to standard of living) than moderns. Our current levels of consumption are generally understood to be unsustainable by both those who glorify agrarian and hunter/gather lifestyle. ERE is obviously inclusive of both of these models for reduced consumption, because a minimal-efficient passive income represents return to Eden where meals were relatively free for the picking, and skill acquisition towards reduced use of money = increased home-based production as in subsistence agrarian lifestyle. The philosophy/practice of perma-culture can be simply understood as the attempt to create small models of something approaching literal Eden, small gardens or large homesteads, where the production of edible crops is maximized while the toil and waste inherent in conventional agricultural practices is minimized. My other core reference is "Discards: Your Way to Wealth" which offers a simple, very generalized schemata for how humans can function as decomposers and thereby profit by intervening in the economic production/consumption/waste cycle. Obviously, living off of the value still obtainable in the waste generated by other humans is inherently not even as sustainable as hunter-gatherer lifestyle at current population levels, but it is the most efficient way to reduce consumption of primary resources in highly affluent and wasteful setting.

[Jason]

Most people know how to get to the nearest mall. Most people do not know how to get to the nearest source of fresh water. Think about how very, very weird that would seem to most of the humans who have ever lived.

Taking the perspective that this thread is as an 1875 South Dakota mountain stream and that I am a grubby, drunken panhandler, this piece of gold should be worth at least 48 hours of whores and laudanum at the Gem Theatre. And based on the amount of work I put in to dig it out, I think I deserve it.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jason: lol. Maybe I should make edit towards clarity when writing one of my 2018 resolutions?

In addition to coming out against Wilderness Preservation, Berry takes on the promotion of the "knowledge" economy and STEM education as being faddish. He totally cracks me up.

This is the so-called STEM curriculum, dear to the hearts of our several too expensive, overadministered, underfunded, and ravenous state universities. And STEM is promoted by slurs, coming from the highest offices of state government, against such studies as literature and history...
Maybe someday the people living here will have a fine, affluent Scientific, Technological, Engineered, and Mathematized Future to live in. Or, of course, maybe not.

It's very interesting to me how Berry's take seems to be 50% very strongly in alignment with this forum, and 50% very strongly not in alignment. He is focused on the concept of "provision" in the present time and the present place, and highly skeptical about any projection into the future. IOW, he would recommend expanding functioning out so far as one's region in the present, before making extensive financial provision for unknown future of individual. This actually makes pretty good sense systemically, because What I Need In This Moment would be the firstmost in both models, but is it really easier to accurately guess/guage what future-you will need in the future, than what the people and place around you needs in the present?

[Jason]

RE: Berry

This does not surprise me at all. Provision i.e. "God provides" is basic Christian economics (although at times highly fucking platitudinous). "Provision" in the present time and the present place is merely "Give us our daily bread." For the basis of his opposition to extensive financial provision for unknown future read Luke 12:13-12 - the parable of the rich foolish farmer.

I don't need to go into why he is opposed to STEM, that's obvious and perennial.

I would bet my bible that he is versed in what is referred to as two-kingdom theology. His coalition of believers and non-believers is found in the Noahic covenant when God promised to bring both rain and sun to all humankind despite all their blasphemous bullshit. That's why he feels its a universal mankind concern.

RE: Clarity - I just read your dissertation on masculine and feminine energies in THF's "I spent $60 and didn't get laid" thread. I would focus on a resolution with at least a sliver of hope.

[fiby41]

Related to the direction this thread has taken

BBC One - Country file episode dated 18 May 2008

[Riggerjack]

I was thinking that the book might be of particular interest to Riggerjack and ffj, because he defends himself against a ridiculous charge of racism somebody made against him based pretty much only on the basis that he was a white Southern male agrarian.

Funny, in my whole life, I've been accused of racism in only two places. In the army, for posting the regulations concerning English and duty responsibilities on the door to the supply room, and here on ERE, a few times. Each accusation had about the same legitimacy.

I have come to accept that racist has changed in meaning over the years. There was the Boomer definition, one who would behave differently depending on racial presence. And the GenX definition, one who thinks differently based on racial presence. And the newest definition, which seems to be a white male who fails to signal compliance in thought and deed to progressive doctrine, seemingly completely independent of any racial component.

I don't believe I am racist by the first two definitions, but I'm clearly guilty of the last. Since my presented options seem to be guilt or compliance, I choose non-compliance and nonguilt, which really just translates to self isolation from people who think in these terms. I have no friends who think I am racist, though I have friends that I think are racist. And that's a solution I am comfortable with, anyway.

[7Wannabe5]

@Riggerjack:

Well, the whole world is going pretty much cuckoo-bananas, so not worst strategy.

I am doing an online course entitled "Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems: The Nexus Between Water, Energy and Food" and the term "the delirium of the urban elites" is introduced, because continued economic growth is pinned to technologies such as those implemented to produce Facebook while the technologies used to produce food and the energy required to produce food are basically the same as they were 100 years ago. Depletion of non-renewable stocks, degradation of renewable funds, and dangerous dependence on external inputs are result of delirium. In good part, it comes down to the fact that nobody wants to be a near subsistence farmer anymore, but it actually is not the case that any long-term viable alternative has been devised.

[Riggerjack]

Well, the whole world is going pretty much cuckoo-bananas, so not worst strategy

Eh, the world has always been cookoo-bannanas, so I just try to point out the cuckoo when I see it. Some people catch themselves and recheck their assumptions, and some don't. All I can do is point out the contradictions, and let people resolve that however they choose.

While the last election seems to have activated sleeper cells of crazy, looking closely at the crazies shows that they are more vocal, not more crazy, nor are there more crazies. Just more vocal. Calling crazies out on being crazy does nothing to convince them, but it innoculates bystanders to that crazy. So, that's what I do.

Which seems to make me a racist. And also amused.