Every inch of me resists the doom-and-gloomers.
I think it's because I get the sense that this syllogism drives them: doomers are serious. Serious people should rule. Therefore, doomers should rule.
At the very least, doomers think they should tell other people what to do. Doomers, after all, are weighty people, highly thoughtful and considered in things that matter, so they're in a position to tell the rest of us what to do. Like, “Wear a mask!” while you're walking outside and the UV light is killing the aerosol COVID.
“The urge to save humanity,” noted H.L. Mencken, “is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”
But I walk with the doomers in one area: farming and agriculture.
The doomers say modern farming techniques kill the soil, lead to obesity, give us diabetes and cancer, and render us poor stewards of creation. Though they haven't yet made the connection that modern farming techniques give us poor food, which leads to poor health, which then makes us more susceptible to COVID (that would hurt the vaccine narrative), I tend to agree with them.
The difference between them and me?
I take my beliefs into my garden and wage my war there. Albert Jay Nock counseled his readers to improve society by improving just one person. Likewise, I'm trying to improve food by improving one plot of land.
I'm so absorbed in the effort, in fact, that I feel no compulsion to berate the folks at the McDonald's drive-through. I don't have enough energy left at the end of the day. Besides, that was me in the drive-through just ten years ago. Heck, it's me now after I've had too much to drink (a Spartan of consistency, I'm not).
So, anyway, if you're interested in the agricultural doomsayers but are interested in what one man is doing to stop it by improving his own land (but also doing a fair amount of preaching . . . sigh . . . though I appear to agree with his sermons), check out this WaPo article.
"47-year-old Rebanks is by turns rapturous, frustrated, hopeful and angry. He cannot fathom that the planet, and his little corner of it, has been so messed up. He also cannot make up his mind whether we are doomed or just might pull through, a feeling that resonates with many.
"He wrote two books about all this, both international bestsellers. The latest, published to stellar reviews this month in the United States, is “Pastoral Song: A Farmer's Journey.”
"On one level, the book is about how cheap food culture, globalization and super-efficient, hyper-mechanized, highly productive modern farms (giant monocultures of beets, wheat, corn) are terrible for nature (insects, rivers, climate) and our health (obesity, diabetes) and our farmers (indebted, pesticide-dependent, stressed).
"On a deeper level, though, the pages are about healing, about how one farmer in Cumbria is trying very hard to turn his landscape into a sustainable, profitable little Eden by deploying both ancient and cutting-edge techniques."
