Social

Essays on society and social change, political systems, and cultural movements

Nature Knows Best

I woke up this morning and enjoyed my morning coffee as I do every morning. It was early and the dew was still on the plants. The bees were not very busy yet; it was silent which is why I like early mornings. I took my usual garden walk, coffee in hand, and I noticed a few of my tomato plants had yellowing leaves on the bottom. All at once my morning was no longer peaceful. I wondered about that.

My garden is not doing so well this year (I think), and that worries me as well. I’m not sure why? Is it because I want to be perceived as a good gardener or is it because I want to be a good gardener? Maybe it’s the soil, the plants? My father-in-law chuckled at my worries. He’s been a farmer for some sixty years. His only advice: “it happens sometimes.”

That was not good enough for me. I knew better; better than a man who had spent his life growing things! That’s the thing with nature: it does not care what we want or why we want it. It simply is. I understand this even when I take my morning walk with my coffee: it only seems to me as if nature is pleasing. But nature knows best.

I don’t understand how my father-in-law is so nonchalant about something he has spent a lifetime doing. I tell him this and he brings back a conversation about nature that we had many years ago concerning the nature of, well, nature. He reminds me that nature does what nature does best: exist; this coming from a farmer of sixty years. After that, he adds, it’s pretty much guesswork and we don’t have much say so in the matter.

I don’t know why, but I can’t accept that explanation. It is not because it is not an answer, but because there are reasons for everything, even if we do not know what those reasons are. Also, I must admit, I expect a little more from a lifetime of experience in farming, which is what this man has. He seems to recognize my disappointment and chuckles again. I think he realizes that it is because of his experience and not in spite of it that he can laugh.

Killing Chickens

I killed a chicken today. I say “killed” because I did not “take its life”; it did not “pass on”. I took a knife and I slit its throat. To kill and animal ought to be an act of respect, and I hope that I do the bird justice when I eventually put her in a pot and make chicken and dumplings with her. She was a nice looking bird if not a bit old. She’d had a good life, which is important.

I also think that it is important for everyone that eats meat to kill their own food at least once. It is never a pleasant experience until after the act of killing when it is easy to differentiate the food aspect from the living creature aspect. Somehow in that split second it is easy to understand how fragile all life really is and the cost that is paid for living. This is perhaps one of the greatest personal motivations that I have for trying to become self-sufficient.

I’ve killed a number of animals over the years, all of which I’ve put in my freezer and eaten, except for a few sheep that I helped someone kill in order to put in their own freezer. Death is certainly part of life, and is no doubt a part of becoming self-sufficient: we have to eat. Self-sufficiency is in some ways self-realization and in the bigger scheme of things, the realization that we are part of a greater cycle which will continue with or without us.

I thought about that I was a part of; the cycle that would begin with the death of the old bird. The owner of the chicken had bought four new pullets to replace the doomed chicken. I would eat the chicken and eventually the cycle would come full circle with my own death. This is not morbid or odd; it is beautiful actually.

More and more, as the realization of what it is to become self-sufficent grows along with my skill-set, I realize the beauty in the idea of self-sufficiency whether it is through my new found love for “Bee TV” (pulling up a chair with a cup of coffee and watching the bees fly to and from their hive), growing a garden, carpentry, mechanics, putting up drywall (I did that last week, one of my lesser favorite skills) or killing a chicken for a friend.

I thought about it and concluded that it would not show the respect due the old chicken had I simply referred to her death as a “passing”, or that I “ sent her to a better place”. I killed a chicken, simply put. But her death symbolizes something greater than can be described, pronounced or understood.

Box of Bugs: Chapter 2

It’s been two months since I became a beekeeper, and yesterday I ended my stint as a beekeeper. I still have the bees, make no mistake, but yesterday I decided to quit feeding them. You see, in the beginning when you buy a package of bees they have nothing but the box you give them. To give them a head start, you feed them sugar water. Yesterday I took the feeder off the hive since they have grown significantly. Now they forage for their own food as bees should. It was difficult: becoming a bee-watcher rather than a beekeeper. I worry about them. I know that I shouldn’t because they are bugs that forage for food; that’s what bees do.

But nevertheless, my mind won’t let go. They are “my” bees after all. It seems that I have a relationship with each of the 30,000 or so bees that must live in the two-deep hive that they have made home. Although I know that it is impossible, I still can’t get around the hope that they know me. The have no such thoughts, I know. All of this anthropomorphism is tiring, and yet I know that when I am done writing this I will go out back to visit them.

Yesterday they bearded the front of the box as it was hot, and as bees are apt to do; and yesterday I worried and fretted. This morning I sat in my chair outside the hive with coffee and watched as the hive came to life. Perhaps this is the life of that which I have become. It is true that it is simply a box of bugs as I have written previously, but it is a box of bugs that is full of mystery and muster a fascination that I have not had in a while. I want us to understand each other, but realistically they are barely aware of me. They do what bees do and I, well I watch what bees do.

When I open the hive see the amazing amount of work that they do, both as individuals and as a hive I am dumfounded and they continue to work. Work defines the bee. I cannot help but be a little envious of such a life: doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, for no other reason than it needs to be done. What simplicity. What directed significance; and all in six weeks or so during the summer. And now I step back and let them be what they are naturally. It is nothing to them and a major step for me.

In my determined trek to be self-sufficient I am finding that I am the most dependent of all creatures when a simple bug can teach me freedom by doing nothing more than that which it does so flawlessly. Maybe I am worried not about the bees and my feeding them, but about myself as I slowly strip away the false sense of independence replacing it with the very real sense of awareness that it is me that needs to learn to do what needs to be done, when it needs to done, for no other reason than it needs to be done. I continue to learn from a box of bugs, and am humbled to do so.

Homeward Bound

When I received my first package of bees I was intent on giving them a good home, replete with ample room and plentiful food. I worked hard several week prior to their arrival to set up the hive “just right”, and plant flowers that would bloom at different times during the summer. Of course, the bees were not aware of my preparation work nor were they aware that the newly situated place they had found themselves in was home. But they had one, and their home made me happy.

The idea of home is not as simple as a place, however. Rather, home is (perhaps) a feeling of comfort, a point when you can let your guard down, and “stay awhile” as it were. Fast food is out of place, advertisement is unwelcome and the smell of cooking is prevalent; home is welcoming and not too fancy. Home is intimate and it affords a feeling of intimacy when we are there. Home is quiet and warmth, love and friendship. Home is comforting.

Home is the past: the memories that we cherish and the love of our parents when we were small. Home is the smell of cooking, welcoming intimacy, quiet, warmth, love and friendship and it can be found anywhere. Most creatures want a home, but most creatures (such as bees) do not belong to a specific place or even time; having a home is similar: it is not specifically defined.

Being raised by loving parents, making friends, finding someone that you love and that loves you back, having experiences, adventures, learning, losing, loving, laughing. All of these things and so much more make up our homes. A home is often a process of building memories. In fact, memories may be the only building blocks of a home, much more than the brick and mortar, the wood and nails that we often find solace in.

A home cannot be bought and sold but it is not free. We must create our homes and live in them as best we can. We must accept the homes we have built and know that we can build a new one if need be. Having a home is remembering why we are who we are, and planning who we want to be. Home is comfort in the knowledge that we are self-sufficient, that we made choices and took responsibility for them. Home is that quality of happiness that is rare and often fleeting; it is that feeling that we do not belong, but not because we are outcasts, but only because that is the nature of the human house.

Everyone and everything needs a home. It is the ultimate goal. We all belong to the human household, but not all of us have built a home. Somehow, my bees have reminded me of this, and the chickens that I will soon get; the vegetable garden and the fruit trees. The memories of long past times, and the achievements and failures that linger, and the wishful dreams of times to come; this is in essence what makes a house a home. I wish you luck in building your own.

Ever Changing

As the seasons change they remind me that time does undeniably pass us by. In the past few weeks I’ve seen the tiny seedlings that I started indoors grow leaps and bounds. I’ve seen the parsnip poke its miniature shoots out of the soil covered in dead leaves and compost that itself has stood the test of time. I see the kale and the carrots beginning to show out of the earth itself. The weather is getting warmer and as it does our new bees begin to become more and more active. We did our first hive check this weekend, and “my girls” are doing fine.

“My girls” indeed! As I watch them busily about their business it dawns on me that these “girls” will not be the girls that my family meets when they come to visit later this summer; these “girls” will not be the ones that I take honey from (if at all) later this summer. This hive will not be the same hive at all. They will all have passed their jobs on to their sisters that they so diligently raise as I watch them fly in and out of their new home. It saddens me…at first. I realize, once again, that this is the nature of the seasons, is the nature of the years that have passed me by and continue to do so. Change is the nature of life itself.

I watch as my parents get older and my nephews and nieces begin anew, with wonder in their eye: young and not thinking about time at all. Like the hive I call my own we are not the same people we were a mere seven or eight years ago, literally or figuratively. The cities we live in change; the landscape, the people, our friends, our jobs, our plans, our goals, our desires.

In fact, change is the only consistent. As I complicate my life (to eventually simplify it) I realize more and more that this aphorism rings true. As I see the very ground in my garden go from unfertilized lawn, to newly dug soil, to composted mulch full of worms and life I realize that I did not start this cycle of evolution in my garden; that this cycle never had a beginning nor will it have an end. I watch the plants come up excited in anticipation just as I was last spring and will be in the springs to come.

Perhaps adding to my newfound goal of complicating my life, I must realize that I have a choice: to act with or react to the nature of life and the living. As a gardener and now a keeper of bees, I try to be a steward but I am really an audience member to the grand change this is life. But life, our lives, is short with no intermission, no stage, no actors, and no scenery. I started out a suburban gardener, but I slowly realize that the garden has always been there and that I am only reacting to it.

The Box of Bugs

I awoke excited about the day. The bees were in this morning and I was to pick them up soon: my first package of bees! I bought them from a local supplier and they had spent the night traveling the four hours from their previous home to the pick-up location. Already they were “my girls”. The pick-up was uneventful, the way they should be, but I had to introduce my girls to their new home, a hive that I had built by hand and placed in the large backyard of my home. The fifteen minute ride home, bees in the backseat, was filled with even more excitement both from the backseat and the front.

Readying my tools for the introduction, I brought out the food that I had mixed up the night before (sugar water in short). Setting the bees down next to the hive, I removed four or five frames from the hive and set them aside. I then pulled the small feeding can from the package and grabbed the queen cage putting it in my pocket to keep the queen inside warm and replacing the can with a small cover to keep most of the bees in the package. A few bees flew out and the package was hurriedly coming to life. I thumped the package lightly down to shake the bees to the bottom of the package and then turned the package over the hive dumping thousands of bees into (hopefully) their new home. I hung the queen cage on a frame a bit off to the side, set the few frames taken out back in, set the feeder and the top on and then pulled up a chair and poured some coffee. My work was done for the time being.

The entire event was filled with child-like excitement, hope, and worry, not lasting for more than ten minutes or so. I felt the responsibility of thousands of lives begin to weigh down on me. I watched as bees flurried about coming in and out of the hive. I heard the excitement around and in the hive itself. I watched as something that I had built from a living thing came to life in a whole different way. I could not help wondering if the new hive was busily making the place its new home much in the same way a family might make a new house theirs. I couldn’t help wondering if they would be safe, be warm, secure in their new surroundings. I had readied the hive and our ½ acre of yard for the bees to the best of my ability. I had looked forward to this day for the months that I had waited for the package to come. I was nervously ecstatic, I was unbearably happy; I was fifty years old!

I was fifty years old with the glee of a small child. I have owned a small business, have a career and held a job my whole life and yet these bees were one of the most exciting events that I could remember. I must admit that the reason for getting bees in the first place was that I had found an old honey extractor from the 1920’s for a reasonable price and simply thought it to be an interesting piece of equipment. But what is a honey extractor without bees to make honey? The following months of avid reading about bees and beekeeping hurriedly changed my attitude: I was taking on the responsibility of a society of animals.

The first day of being a beekeeper and I already owed the bugs a nod of gratitude! The day that I dumped the package into the hive I realized that the bees were much more than honey or even pollination of the garden, but they were the realization of a greater thing, a greater idea, a symbol of an ideal life. The bees reminded me that I was responsible for myself and in being responsible for myself, I was responsible for them. There are not many better lessons to learn, and what better way to learn such lessons than from a box of bugs!

Soliloquy on Shortcuts

I’m not sure about this, but it would be my guess that human beings have been looking for easier ways to do things since the dawning of human intelligence. I can almost imagine the ideas trickling into the head of Homo habilis’ as they foraged and hunted.However, I’m not sure that our early ancestors looked for shortcuts per say to their daily required chores and tasks. There is a difference between making life easier and taking shortcuts, that is. Again, I’m not sure about this, this is an informal blog after all, but it seems that making life easier transformed into taking shortcuts some time in the recent past.

The differences between making life easier and taking shortcuts at first glance seems little. But consider it for a while. First, taking a shortcut to make your life easier implies the loss of something integral to who you are, what you can be, your integrity, perhaps your honesty. Secondly, a shortcut is negative and does not help and actually hinders in the long run. Lastly, taking shortcuts by no means makes your life easier. Making your life easier, on the other hand, by taking a shortcut does not necessarily imply the loss of anything, but actually can add to knowledge, add to who you are, what you can be, is not negative, and finally does not hinder you in the long run.

Often we take shortcuts because we think they will lead us more quickly to ease and comfort. Consider what acting on the belief that ease and comfort are innately good has gotten us today: industrial food, global economies, degrees for jobs, divorce, employment rather than careers, luxury but empty moralities, and the latest and greatest (fill in the blank). On the other hand growing your own food, buying locally, going to school to really learn something, sticking out hard times with someone you love, starting up a business based upon something you love to do, not supporting businesses that you know to be immoral, and bucking fads are all very difficult to do but they are well worth the effort; these are not shortcuts but complications. Sometimes comfort is your enemy and easy is not best; it is important to know the difference.

Shortcuts are either realizations or illusions. Taking a shortcut in order to make your life easier is creating something imaginary, something that really does not exist; making your life easier by taking a short cut is noticing reality and using it to your advantage. The first asks nothing of you and gives you nothing in return. The latter asks that you notice your surroundings and understand them. The first is motivated by ease and comfort for their own sakes, the latter is motivated by intelligence, curiosity and efficiency. The first tries to cheat reality while the latter tries to understand it.

There is an old moral adage that states that once we have knowledge of our wrong-doing then we also have the duty to change how we act. Taking a shortcut to make your life easier is somewhat different than this old adage. It, in essence, states: once we have knowledge, disregard what we know and act in any way we see fit. But I do not believe that is possible without lying to ourselves.

Unfortunately, lying to ourselves is precisely what most of us are doing as a society. We all do it and we all take shortcuts to make our lives easier. This is short-term gain at the cost of long-term happiness. I believe we know this too, and yet we continue hoping that somehow this short-cut that we have created will lead us back to the original path, the path that we ought to have never left. It will not I am afraid lead us anywhere until we being to realize that making our lives easier is really not what we want at all but rather we want to make our lives more meaningful; and there is no shortcut to that.

The Revolution of Food

The word revolution conjures up scenes of violence and mayhem, but as history has shown us violent and political revolution often leads societies backwards towards the historical reasons for the revolution rather than forwards towards a better, more progressive approach to the original problem. The French revolted, and the original problems of the time still exist today. In America much is the same after the American Revolution. While the ruling class is not longer the British, oligarchy still reigns over this country. This oligarchical control is not governmental, however, but corporate.

Perhaps it is the nature of revolutionary acts to be cyclical? Perhaps it is the nature of human beings that we must make the necessary mistakes, take the necessary shortcuts in order to learn that mistakes only count if we actually do learn from them, or that shortcuts are illusionary? But we must learn from them, and understand that shortcuts are only as good as our reasons for taking them. If revolution in all its forms is cyclical, then the ethical perspective relies upon the intention that instigates the revolution in the first place rather than the consequences of the acts themselves.

It is typically the intention of military revolutions to overthrow a government and the implication of that act is for the revolutionaries to become the governing body. The intention, it can be said, is to govern and thus the cycle is complete. The corporate food industry claims that its’ intention is to feed the world, because (it claims) more traditional methods fail to do so. It has “overthrown” traditional methods and thus the cycle is complete. However, like the military revolutionaries that become dictators, the industrial food complex has become the very problem that is proposed to solve because it has not acted honestly and with the right intentions. Revolution fails if the intentions are not honest, and are not honestly come by.

Consider the reasons behind the corporate food revolution of the 40’s and 50’s: surplus chemicals from the Second World War; the surplus of corn because of technological advances, and the need for the government to create jobs, summed up in the Nixon administration by Earl Butz and his constituents. Food ceased to be a human necessity and became an economic opportunity.

There is Truth in food and it must be the intention of those that revolt to turn from the shortcuts and mistakes made in the name of the almighty dollar and define themselves and their actions by the natural limitations that exist. The comfort of Supermarket shopping and packaged goods and the ease of “just add water; makes it own sauce” mentalities must change and will change. The question is how? Will these changes come at our intentional beckoning or will they come in the form of catastrophic damages as a result of fuzzy thinking, lazy attitudes, greed and avarice?

The present food revolution leads us towards a place that we have visited before: the agrarian lifestyle, but we can only hope that unlike the military and political revolutions, we are the prodigal sons realizing our mistakes and hopefully learning from the corporate shortcuts that we have chosen to follow. The food revolution is ironically progressive, ironic because it forces us to realize that the sustainable lifestyles lead to greater happiness because they are natural, not in lieu of being natural. We must revolt, but we must do so quietly, concertedly and with the right intention. But, most of all we must do so honestly.

The Garden

This time of year is difficult for the gardener. It is that time when the first seeds are put into trays and put under lights to “extend the season” as we say around here. I am no different. I have my onion sets, my kale, hyssop and lemon mint (for the bees) already going. I just put up trays of peppers and tomatoes in my workshop where they are protected from the cold-swings outside. This time of year reminds me of something that I typically don’t like to be reminded of: that I have no patience.

But patience is what it takes to succeed. Patience to remember because “All good human work remembers its history” as Wendell Berry writes, and patience to realize that all that we desire will not be fulfilled. Gardening, and all that it stands for is a pleasant but often stern reminder that we lack the very thing that we need the most; that is, the patience to truly understand that it is not necessary to always get what we want. Philosophy is an endeavor that is very closely related to gardening.

Philosophy is directly translated as “ philo-sophia: the love of wisdom”, and wisdom takes patience just as growing food takes patience. There are those that understand this such as John Seymour, Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry and others. But in doing philosophy, one soon comes to understand that the first step in being a philosopher is to recognize one’s own limitations, called ignorance. The gardener soon comes to realize their ignorance by recognizing microclimates, soil and the plants themselves among many other things. This process of recognizing and further more accepting one’s own ignorance takes patience whether that is with regard to gardening or to understanding philosophical concepts. The trick is to recognize our limitations, overcome our ignorance and have the curiosity to realize that doing so is important. That takes patience.

To become patient takes discipline. Berry writes, “Correct discipline cannot be hurried, for it is both the knowledge of what ought [italics mine] to be done, and the willingness to do it.” (People, Land, and Community) There is an “ought” to the correct discipline, and it is in this aspect that we have lost our way. We “ought” not take advantage of each other and we “ought” not treat the environment as a source of raw material and a place to cast our trash. We can and we do, but we ought not to.

We have lost our way but in doing so, we become aware that we have lost our way. From this point it will take time, and with that cost comes the necessity of correct discipline and patience to adjust ourselves to the ignorance that has engrossed us. Our curiosity has led us down paths unimaginable. We have created environments and introduced changes that were far beyond most people’s wildest dreams a mere fifty years ago. Our curiosity alone, however, has proven to be problematic because we have not had the patience to learn how to use it. A garden can put your curiosity back on track; it can teach us what we ought to do with the time that we have.

Rather than a philosopher that happens to garden, my garden has become a simple reminder of what it takes to be a philosopher: correct discipline, correct curiosity and the patience to tell the difference. It reminds me that I have limitations that I must live within or pay the price for not doing so. It reminds me that I am dependent upon people that I do not know and processes that I am not aware of nor have control over, and that I have a choice to change these problematic realities. My garden reminds me that I have yet to gain the patience that I need in order to gain the knowledge that I must have. My garden reminds me that I have time that I must take, that I must be patient to do so, and that I must take the time to realize that.

Grow Like a Tree, Not a Fire

There seems to be much anger in our society today. It is prevalent on the streets and highways and in the stores where we shop. Sometimes it is outright and sometimes a bit more subtle, but ubiquitous in the end. This anger, I believe, is a result of the slow realization that we are not who we want to be, but who we have been told to be. We have found that there are no shortcuts to being who we want to be, but in realizing this we also realize that we have taken one.

Barreling towards more ease, more consumption, more and more, and more… and calling it progress is the justification that our societies continue to use to steal, destroy and decimate other countries, other people, but most of all the land itself, the places that we live. We call economic progress freedom, and we call luxuries the necessity of that progress. Many of us pride ourselves on being independent, but in the back of our minds we know there really is no such thing. Religions preach to us that we are special, but we are not. Our governments tell us that there are political answers, but these are lies. We tell ourselves that “it’s not as bad as all that…” but it is. We have been sold down the river, and continue to sell ourselves as so much product. As the present, living societies we have a choice: to buy back that which our forefathers and ourselves have sold for cold hard cash, or perish.

Wendell Berry writes: It is foolish to assume that we will save ourselves from any fate that we have made possible simply because we have the conceit to call ourselves homo sapiens.” (Common Places) It is that conceit that has taken what actually does make us special: the ability to think. We have become proud of our ignorance. Rather than think we react, we demand, we press and desire. We cannot continue in this fashion! Our conceit leads us to believe that we can continue to take without giving back. Our conceit leads us to believe that we have a right, a duty, to reap benefits economically at the cost of environmental degradation.

What did our forefathers sell in order to reap economic benefits? What was the priceless thing they sold for the pittance they received? It was an idea. They sold the idea that abundance was not endless; and that we belonged to a place, rather than being the owner of a place. The ideas that they sold, however, are facts and they sold them for wishful thinking and on faith. For a handful of dollar bills we continue to sell our future to a few that still remain in the trance of greed and the belief in endless abundance and rights as defined by economy rather than responsibility. With the lie that abundance is endless, we have been taught that to work with nature is to be a slave and to use nature is to master it. They were wrong, and we are wrong for continually accepting their errors.

The callouses on your hands and the sweat under your hat that are gifts from working with nature are signs that you are free, not the ability to buy and sell nature as nothing more than a commodity. The knowledge that you are responsibly effective even at the cost of industrial efficiency is a sign that you are free: the craftsman rather than the conveyor belt. The realization that the “smell of money” is the same as rotting flesh, but the smell of fresh grass and pasture is the smell of life. These things and that desire is not need are the starts of actualizing freedom. The freedom to fail, and doing so honestly is the freedom to learn and that is the start of progress, and eventual freedom.

I believe that we are angry because we have been sold a bill of goods that are worthless, that make life worthless, that make us worthless. We have been sold the rotten idea that the land and the animals around us are there to be used and diminished at our will. We are angry because as we do, we have realized that we continue to wilfully diminish ourselves. We have been sold the shiny penny of an idea that ease is freedom, but it is not: it is entrapment. We have been sold that our sole motive in life is to make our lives easier, but ease is usury that must be paid back with the difficulty that is reality. We must realize that in laying down the cash for things that we have no right to buy or to sell is to redefine who we are, who we become, but not who we want to be. We will die by credit, but live by work. We will die in ignorance or learn to respect the very thing that gives us life In order to quell the anger that will eventually subsume us, “We must learn to grow like a tree, not like a fire.” (Common Places)