I had an incredible day at work yesterday. I would like to preface my experience with a thought. I recently finished the book by Wendell Berry titled, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. I would like to write much more about this book later, but for now I will highlight one idea that I am using to think about daily life and the future. I am conceiving of a world that functions not on competition, as it does in this society to the fullest extent, but on cooperation. This may seem like a very simple or possibly idyllic and Utopian concept at first glance. However, you can really delve into this very deeply upon further reflection. It takes a minute to recognize the true and complete saturation of competition into every level of our society, from the individual to the Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, corporate giants and the government.
The ideal of society is very clearly, more, more, more. As individuals, no matter how much we wish our lives, interests, goals and self worth to be separate from our money, we are judged and judge ourselves based upon the ideal of self-sufficiency. Directly, this correlates to, among other things, our savings account. We grow up monetarily dependent upon our parents. We go to college, in middle class and up range of people generally, to specialize and to gain a career which will earn us monetary security and a "worthy" position we are proud of. There is rarely a time when a person on this path willingly decides to do without income for some time, because there are always more "needs" (a new dishwasher, new carpeting, stereo, etc.) and more expensive things to be had (car, television, house, couch, family requiring food, children wanting further education, phones, etc). The goal is an unreachable one, gain more money and higher status until you can no more or until you have built enough security to retire. It is beyond most of us, that this is a cultural assumption, not a given. There is a way to be centered upon the idea of enough as opposed to ever more.
Entangled in the principle of enough is the value of community and not self sufficiency, but acknowledging and respecting our mutual dependences. Our dependencies on each other, on the land, plants, animals, sun, and entire surrounding community. Instead of recognizing these direct, supportive and mutually beneficial relationships around us, we are increasingly separated from our Connection. The word "dependence" in this time and place, carries negative connotations. We don't want to be "dependent" on anyone or anything, which is a direct contradiction to life. The irony here? As our society's aims guide us away from our healthy connections with people and the land, the goal of ever more, which has led to the creation of corporate giants who want to make the most profit with the cheapest labor, create for us a slew of new dependencies governed by them. We are dependent upon pharmaceutical creations with almost half the people you know on some kind of prescription; upon our closest, biggest grocery store, which is dependent upon the petro-chemical industry to create cheapened food products meant to last as long as possible, which leads to monocultures, which are dependent upon ever more chemical fertilizers, which requires synthesis in labs, which requires energy and waste, and on and on the list of dependencies goes. And don't forget about possibly the single biggest, overarching dependence on the limited resource of petroleum. Even ignoring every other aspect of cultural dependence, this one should be evident to all. Every single aspect of every single industry and life here and now is dependent upon this diminishing resource. You can ignore my assertions that society needs to shift from values of competition to cooperation, but you cannot ignore the fact that this society, if for no other reason than petroleum dependence (and there are actually so many more reasons than that), is at some point, going to have to be completely reformed. Not kind of, not just on the edges, but an utter, total and in an absolute core way, this society will change. It simply cannot be maintained on any level.
Back to my great day at work. The woman who supplies the co-op with our local, organic wheat flour, popcorn, flax and wheatberries came in Saturday evening to drop off some of those items. This was the second time I had met her. I liked her the first time I met her, because we were able to have an engaging, though somewhat brief, conversation. Again, we got to chatting about basically everything I just wrote about above and more. When I asked if she would be open for volunteer help, she was, well, nearly ecstatic and that was what led us into our conversations about cooperation, community, connection, sustainability, diversification, the complexity of farming and the future of America and agriculture. She opened her arms to me, excited to teach and to see a young person understanding these issues of imminent importance. There are tons of projects going on at the her farm and it is a year round effort utilizing as many reusable energy sources and practices as possible. She offered me delicious meals that her friend (who was also with her and conversing with us) cooks regularly. And food of all sorts- walnuts, soybeans, wheat, corn, cajun red beans, pinto beans, black beans, and many other crops including fruits and vegetables. It seems that among a small group of close knit friends she has, they work together to provide for each other in various ways. Her friend has a quaint cottage overlooking a small lake, which she gladly offered for me to stay in as I pleased, with my friends too if anyone wanted to come with me. The lake is good for fishing and they are trying to incorporate that into their system of sustainable agriculture. I think we were both equally enthusiastic about the idea. I am happy to say I am starting to live what I believe in, with understanding Connection at the core.
Here is the link to the farm!
http://fieldsofagape.com/
Another non-monetary and exciting exchange I am partaking in is with a new friend from Mexico. We are both fascinated with languages. She is tutoring me in Spanish in exchange for being tutored by me in Japanese. We are meeting twice a week, once for Spanish and once for Japanese. It's a fantastic set up. She speaks English and Spanish, but has also studied 4 years of Latin, some Japanese (but apparently the teacher was horrible so we are starting from square one), and she can understand anything in French, Portuguese and Creole, though she says she has a more difficult time with the speaking aspect. Beyond this even, we are both fascinated by every tangent of language, every overlap between language, culture, philosophy, behavior, society and so on. She is considering starting a blog on these topics exactly and I very much hope that she does!
Life in Richmond is turning out to be quite rewarding indeed. It's all coming together...
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