Conventional wisdom or the error of our ways
Economic theory for the masses
More is not better
The real value of education
Education doesn't stop when you leave school
Ambition – the top
Common sense
Doing without thinking
Thinking without doing
What being rich really means
Diminishing returns kick in early
All in the mind
Alienation isn’t just for the poor
Hierarchies – life
Education for now – based upon a model of 19th century industry
Education for tomorrow
The cult of the individual – desirable states and propaganda
The group
Groups and communities
The good life – a fallacy
If we go under, everybody goes under!
Work and pay and democracy and human rights
More ……
Robert L. Fielding
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Rule 1
1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.
Robert L. Fielding: I think we should talk first about what the word ‘wealth’ means and then the meaning of the phrase ‘our common wealth’, don’t you?
Bert Thornley: Yes, I do. First, I think we should widen our definition of the meaning of ‘wealth’; if we do not, we are liable to make some fundamental errors.
RLF: As well as leaving out some fundamental notions.
BT: Right. Let’s think about what we generally mean when we speak of wealth. What do we mean?
RLF: I think we are generally referring to having a lot of money – the wealthy being rich in money.
BT: You say that as if you think you can be rich in ways other than financially. Do you think you can be wealthy without being rich in money?
RLF: I would say that for most people, being wealthy means being rich – well off, loaded – all those ways of saying rich. Wealth equals having lots of money.
BT: And so it is for countries as well as for individuals. A wealthy country is defined as such by the amount of money it has.
RFL: And by how much an individual in that country can usually earn every year – GDP per capita.
BT: With those countries in which the GDP per capita is highest being thought of as the wealthiest countries – USA, UK, UAE, Japan – what are termed Western countries.
RLF: And yet that number – GDP per capita might hide a multitude of cases of people living in poverty.
BT: As it is with countries, so it is with communities, with groups, families and individuals.
RLF: How can that be? How can a feature of a nation state be applied to a community, a group or family, or an individual?
BT: I am not comparing those entities per se, but rather am saying that the word ‘wealthy’ applied to those same entities – the nation, the community, the group or family or the individual is a misnomer – a red herring, if you prefer – in our ways of thinking about how people live.
Yet, despite this sort of blanket meaning of wealth, we each aspire to it as though it is the Holy Grail, if you like, held up to all as the most divine state – to have lots of money – without really knowing what such a life with money may actually be like.
RLF: Exactly right. We imagine it is like saying to the hungry, lots and lots of food with solve all your problems, when, in actual fact, what we should mean is that some food will solve one of your problems, albeit, at the moment, your most pressing one.
BT: And thinking about wealth using that analogy – of giving the hungry lots and lots of food..
RLF: Overfeeding, if you like.
BT: That’s good, by overfeeding the hungry, we remove, at a stroke, all of the problems of that hungry person, but all we do by overfeeding him, is to give him a different set of problems. By overfeeding him – overcompensating for his hunger, if you will, we make him overweight, with all the attendant problems that go with that condition.
RLF: So, what is really beneficial for him is enough food, rather than too much.
BT: And, as food is perishable, if we give him too much of it, a lot will be wasted.
RLF: And worse, will go uneaten by those who are still hungry. And although the first grace is to eat, as someone once said, overeating brings on its many ill effects.
BT: Do you think we can learn anything about we can learn anything about the distribution of wealth from this?
RLF: Yes, we can, but, alternative theories of how wealth should be distributed are at the heart of politics.
BT: And you are in trouble right away as soon as you use the words, ‘should be distributed’.
RLF: Why?
BT: Because when we talk about how things should be, we usually mean how we think they should be.
RLF: And what is the matter with saying that?
BT: The problem is that my way – my ‘should’ may not be the same as yours. It is in the deciding whose way prevails, that we account ourselves democratic.
RLF: And democracy is the Holy Grail of politics, is it not?
BT: It certainly is, and yet there is a problem with that concept.
RLF: What is it?
BT: It is this; that many, many varied systems of governance attribute the adjective democratic to their systems.
RLF: How so?
BT: One may think of one party states.
RLF: Yes, well what of them? Surely they are not democratic, are they?
BT: Their proponents and adherents would tell you that they are.
RLF: How can that possibly be right? How can a state in which there is no choice of ruling party possibly call itself democratic? What choice do people have in such a system?
BT: But just suppose that all in are accord with the tenets and ideals of that one party, would you still quibble at it being called democratic?
We might look at what we think are outwardly democratic states and yet question whether they are really democratic.
RLF: How can you question a system in which every adult citizen gets the chance to vote for the party of their choice?
BT: Well, to begin with; what if no one party fits one person’s ideal choice? What then? Is such a system of governance democratic or not?
RLF: But political parties seek to appeal to the majority of voters, don’t they?
BT: Certainly, and to do otherwise would be probably to commit political suicide at the polls, wouldn’t it?
But although a party might appeal to a majority of voters, it still might not appeal to a minority.
RLF: But what can they do but appeal to the majority?
BT: Would you say that if you were always in that minority?
RLF: I see what you mean – most probably not.
BT: If you were always discriminated against at the polls on the grounds that you were not a member of the majority, and the majority always elected a government to enact laws that favoured that same majority, even at the expense of the minority of which you were a member – would you still call such a system democratic?
RLF: I most certainly would not.
BT: Then what would you call it?
RLF: A system that tyrannized the minority, in the name of the majority.
BT: Exactly, and you would be right.
RLF: Then how can we proceed? There are always going to be majorities and minorities, aren’t there? How can any system hope to govern fairly, under those conditions?
BT: By not infringing the rights of individuals in that minority, by making rights trump cards, to be used to defeat or remove the effects of decisions that were instrumental in demeaning the rights of minorities. We call specific systems democratic ones despite their infringing upon people’s human and civil rights.
RLF: Point taken. Let us return to the distribution of wealth. As we stated earlier, it is the possibility of someone calling the shots, as it were, in saying who should get what that we generally object to as free men.
We in the West have come to regard the ‘fairness’ of the free market as the best arbiter of who gets what – who becomes wealthy and who doesn’t.
BT: And are you then saying that allowing the distribution of wealth to be dictated by liberal free market economics is fairer?
RLF: That is the general feeling, yes.
BT: And who, may I ask, are this system’s most ardent advocates – the wealthy, or those less so?
RLF: Generally the more affluent in society are in favour of fee market economics.
BT: And these are the same people that are the chief beneficiaries of such a system, aren't they?
RLF: Yes, they are.
BT: So it’s really no accident that the system they opt for favours them, is it?
RLF: No, it isn’t. But we should return to the vexed question - What is wealth? – shouldn’t we?
BT: Yes, let’s do that. We said that if we didn’t, we would get bogged down in discussions that took us way from the more important ones, didn’t we?
RLF: Yes, we did, so let’s return to the subject at hand. Is wealth not the abundance of money? What else could the word refer to?
BT: We usually think in terms of money when we speak of wealth and the wealthy, but I think we are wrong, or at least not wholly right.
RLF: You will have to elaborate – illustrate what you mean, won’t you?
BT: Yes, I will. First a question: What is the most important thing in life?
RLF: I would have to say happiness, and health, of course.
BT: And which would you put first, health or happiness?
RLF: I would say that health should come first.
BT: Why do you say that?
RLF: Because if you are not healthy, it is probable that you are not entirely happy either, whereas if you are healthy, you have a fair chance of being happy, other things being equal, as we say.
BT: So health is number one, is it?
RLF: I should say so, yes.
BT: And then happiness?
RLF: Yes.
BT: And where would you place wealth – having an abundance of money? Would you put it third, after health and happiness?
RLF: That’s a good question.
Robert L. Fielding
Robert L. Fielding: I think we should talk first about what the word ‘wealth’ means and then the meaning of the phrase ‘our common wealth’, don’t you?
Bert Thornley: Yes, I do. First, I think we should widen our definition of the meaning of ‘wealth’; if we do not, we are liable to make some fundamental errors.
RLF: As well as leaving out some fundamental notions.
BT: Right. Let’s think about what we generally mean when we speak of wealth. What do we mean?
RLF: I think we are generally referring to having a lot of money – the wealthy being rich in money.
BT: You say that as if you think you can be rich in ways other than financially. Do you think you can be wealthy without being rich in money?
RLF: I would say that for most people, being wealthy means being rich – well off, loaded – all those ways of saying rich. Wealth equals having lots of money.
BT: And so it is for countries as well as for individuals. A wealthy country is defined as such by the amount of money it has.
RFL: And by how much an individual in that country can usually earn every year – GDP per capita.
BT: With those countries in which the GDP per capita is highest being thought of as the wealthiest countries – USA, UK, UAE, Japan – what are termed Western countries.
RLF: And yet that number – GDP per capita might hide a multitude of cases of people living in poverty.
BT: As it is with countries, so it is with communities, with groups, families and individuals.
RLF: How can that be? How can a feature of a nation state be applied to a community, a group or family, or an individual?
BT: I am not comparing those entities per se, but rather am saying that the word ‘wealthy’ applied to those same entities – the nation, the community, the group or family or the individual is a misnomer – a red herring, if you prefer – in our ways of thinking about how people live.
Yet, despite this sort of blanket meaning of wealth, we each aspire to it as though it is the Holy Grail, if you like, held up to all as the most divine state – to have lots of money – without really knowing what such a life with money may actually be like.
RLF: Exactly right. We imagine it is like saying to the hungry, lots and lots of food with solve all your problems, when, in actual fact, what we should mean is that some food will solve one of your problems, albeit, at the moment, your most pressing one.
BT: And thinking about wealth using that analogy – of giving the hungry lots and lots of food..
RLF: Overfeeding, if you like.
BT: That’s good, by overfeeding the hungry, we remove, at a stroke, all of the problems of that hungry person, but all we do by overfeeding him, is to give him a different set of problems. By overfeeding him – overcompensating for his hunger, if you will, we make him overweight, with all the attendant problems that go with that condition.
RLF: So, what is really beneficial for him is enough food, rather than too much.
BT: And, as food is perishable, if we give him too much of it, a lot will be wasted.
RLF: And worse, will go uneaten by those who are still hungry. And although the first grace is to eat, as someone once said, overeating brings on its many ill effects.
BT: Do you think we can learn anything about we can learn anything about the distribution of wealth from this?
RLF: Yes, we can, but, alternative theories of how wealth should be distributed are at the heart of politics.
BT: And you are in trouble right away as soon as you use the words, ‘should be distributed’.
RLF: Why?
BT: Because when we talk about how things should be, we usually mean how we think they should be.
RLF: And what is the matter with saying that?
BT: The problem is that my way – my ‘should’ may not be the same as yours. It is in the deciding whose way prevails, that we account ourselves democratic.
RLF: And democracy is the Holy Grail of politics, is it not?
BT: It certainly is, and yet there is a problem with that concept.
RLF: What is it?
BT: It is this; that many, many varied systems of governance attribute the adjective democratic to their systems.
RLF: How so?
BT: One may think of one party states.
RLF: Yes, well what of them? Surely they are not democratic, are they?
BT: Their proponents and adherents would tell you that they are.
RLF: How can that possibly be right? How can a state in which there is no choice of ruling party possibly call itself democratic? What choice do people have in such a system?
BT: But just suppose that all in are accord with the tenets and ideals of that one party, would you still quibble at it being called democratic?
We might look at what we think are outwardly democratic states and yet question whether they are really democratic.
RLF: How can you question a system in which every adult citizen gets the chance to vote for the party of their choice?
BT: Well, to begin with; what if no one party fits one person’s ideal choice? What then? Is such a system of governance democratic or not?
RLF: But political parties seek to appeal to the majority of voters, don’t they?
BT: Certainly, and to do otherwise would be probably to commit political suicide at the polls, wouldn’t it?
But although a party might appeal to a majority of voters, it still might not appeal to a minority.
RLF: But what can they do but appeal to the majority?
BT: Would you say that if you were always in that minority?
RLF: I see what you mean – most probably not.
BT: If you were always discriminated against at the polls on the grounds that you were not a member of the majority, and the majority always elected a government to enact laws that favoured that same majority, even at the expense of the minority of which you were a member – would you still call such a system democratic?
RLF: I most certainly would not.
BT: Then what would you call it?
RLF: A system that tyrannized the minority, in the name of the majority.
BT: Exactly, and you would be right.
RLF: Then how can we proceed? There are always going to be majorities and minorities, aren’t there? How can any system hope to govern fairly, under those conditions?
BT: By not infringing the rights of individuals in that minority, by making rights trump cards, to be used to defeat or remove the effects of decisions that were instrumental in demeaning the rights of minorities. We call specific systems democratic ones despite their infringing upon people’s human and civil rights.
RLF: Point taken. Let us return to the distribution of wealth. As we stated earlier, it is the possibility of someone calling the shots, as it were, in saying who should get what that we generally object to as free men.
We in the West have come to regard the ‘fairness’ of the free market as the best arbiter of who gets what – who becomes wealthy and who doesn’t.
BT: And are you then saying that allowing the distribution of wealth to be dictated by liberal free market economics is fairer?
RLF: That is the general feeling, yes.
BT: And who, may I ask, are this system’s most ardent advocates – the wealthy, or those less so?
RLF: Generally the more affluent in society are in favour of fee market economics.
BT: And these are the same people that are the chief beneficiaries of such a system, aren't they?
RLF: Yes, they are.
BT: So it’s really no accident that the system they opt for favours them, is it?
RLF: No, it isn’t. But we should return to the vexed question - What is wealth? – shouldn’t we?
BT: Yes, let’s do that. We said that if we didn’t, we would get bogged down in discussions that took us way from the more important ones, didn’t we?
RLF: Yes, we did, so let’s return to the subject at hand. Is wealth not the abundance of money? What else could the word refer to?
BT: We usually think in terms of money when we speak of wealth and the wealthy, but I think we are wrong, or at least not wholly right.
RLF: You will have to elaborate – illustrate what you mean, won’t you?
BT: Yes, I will. First a question: What is the most important thing in life?
RLF: I would have to say happiness, and health, of course.
BT: And which would you put first, health or happiness?
RLF: I would say that health should come first.
BT: Why do you say that?
RLF: Because if you are not healthy, it is probable that you are not entirely happy either, whereas if you are healthy, you have a fair chance of being happy, other things being equal, as we say.
BT: So health is number one, is it?
RLF: I should say so, yes.
BT: And then happiness?
RLF: Yes.
BT: And where would you place wealth – having an abundance of money? Would you put it third, after health and happiness?
RLF: That’s a good question.
Robert L. Fielding
Rule 2
2. Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.
Robert L. Fielding: Whenever people plan to change things within their community, it is usual to take people into account. Only rarely are water resources, land, the air we breathe or the living creatures that roam around us also taken into account.
Bert Thornley: Why do you think that is so?
RLF: That’s difficult to say; there are probably a variety of reasons.
BT: Yes, but I think the main one is that these resources do not have a voice when things are being planned. Who will speak up for the air, for example?
RLF: Well, people should, they have to breathe it; their children have to breathe it.
BT: The water companies may well speak up for the resources they manage; farmers may speak up for the land they own, but what about the rest of the biosphere; plants, animals, insects and fishes – who is going to speak for them?
RLF: Well, of course, there are bodies who do speak out for the way animals are treated; the RSPCA, for example, but they usually confine their protests to how pets are treated.
That is probably one of the roots of the problem; that because we only rarely interact with animals – mainly domestic and farm animals, most of us probably regard the rest of them – wild animals – as pests.
BT: I agree. Take the fox, for example; it is traditionally regarded as either the prey of packs of hounds, or a killer of chickens. If any animal so much as touches anything we say belongs to us, we kill it, and yet the fox is a beautiful animal that graces our wilder places, and has a right to live.
RLF: It’s easy to defend a beautiful animal like the fox, but what about the brown rat – has that animal a right to live?
BT: Such animals are called vermin and as such are both objects of derision and attempts to eradicate them.
RLF: But we probably do so without much idea about what rats actually do – whether they prey on other creatures that constitute a greater threat to human health. Rats are subject to what you might term historical prejudice – they carried the viruses that started the Great Plague, it is thought, and so we think of them as pests – dangerous pests – to be killed.
BT: Whereas I should say that very few of us know anything at all about the life of rats – only a sort of anecdotal knowledge.
RLF: And so it is with what we know of most living creatures that live around us and share our space in the communities in which we live. We know very little and yet are willing to dismiss them as a nuisance, even as dangerous.
BT: I once heard of a scheme in China to remove all the birds in one particular grain growing region of that huge country because they were eating the grain there.
RLF: What happened?
BT: Well, birds were persecuted and killed, and people thought they had done a good thing in removing the birds that were eating the grain they had been growing.
RLF: So they were right to cull the birds, were they?
BT: Not at all. From the moment birds started to be decimated, swarms of insects started to appear, insects flourished in the absence of the birds. You see, the people’s solution to the problem of stopping their grain from being eaten by birds did not solve for pattern.
Dealing with one aspect of a problem in isolation; disregarding other factors, means that other problems will appear – some far worse than the original one.
RLF: I see, so that is why all aspects of a community must be taken into account before any action is taken.
BT: Yes, I should say that is probably the main reason for taking everything into account.
RLF: But that would mean comprehensive studies undertaken by bodies with expertise.
BT: Whereas what usually happens is that only so called ‘vested interests’ decide what action to take. Many of those interests are financial ones.
RLF: And those groups – corporations, companies take a far too narrow look at anything – particularly at communities that include plants and animals as well as people.
BT: And they define their goals too narrowly too.
RLF: What do you mean?
BT: Corporations exist to maximize profits.
RLF: Often at the expense of anything and anybody?
BT: Precisely; and if that is done, and communities overlooked, disastrous consequences invariably ensue.
RLF: So what is the answer?
BT: Well, to begin with, we should realize that looking for, ‘the right answer’ – the one and the only one, is planning for failure; that there is nothing of the sort. Better solutions are reached by more knowledge, not by conveniently ignoring variables that get in the way of quick fixes. Economics treats these as what it calls exogenous variables – those either to be ignored or at best factored in rudimentary, simplistic ways for convenience and this impatience of ours to get things moving at all costs.
RLF: That is well said – “at all costs” – in fact, that is just what is never done. All costs must be what they mean – costs of everything to all.
BT: Rather than only those costs that can easily and readily be quantified.
RLF: Precisely; taking into account only what can be quantified is a corporation’s way of progressing. That concept – 'what is quantifiable’ is at the root of all our problems.
BT: Well, most of them, let’s say. But why do you think that is so?
RLF: The old adage, ‘Time is money’ has something to do with it. This obsession with action – immediate action – the more immediate the better - this is at the root of our problems.
In our headlong dash to act, to get money flowing, we systematically ignore factors that, when compounded, destroy what is left after this rushed action.
BT: When are we going to learn that the world – our world, our environment – the ecosystems that support life – all life – including ours, is not organized along the same lines as those we suppose – those systems we impose upon ourselves and then on the rest of the world around us – the natural world.
RLF: Of which we are also a part; let’s not forget that.
Robert L. Fielding
Robert L. Fielding: Whenever people plan to change things within their community, it is usual to take people into account. Only rarely are water resources, land, the air we breathe or the living creatures that roam around us also taken into account.
Bert Thornley: Why do you think that is so?
RLF: That’s difficult to say; there are probably a variety of reasons.
BT: Yes, but I think the main one is that these resources do not have a voice when things are being planned. Who will speak up for the air, for example?
RLF: Well, people should, they have to breathe it; their children have to breathe it.
BT: The water companies may well speak up for the resources they manage; farmers may speak up for the land they own, but what about the rest of the biosphere; plants, animals, insects and fishes – who is going to speak for them?
RLF: Well, of course, there are bodies who do speak out for the way animals are treated; the RSPCA, for example, but they usually confine their protests to how pets are treated.
That is probably one of the roots of the problem; that because we only rarely interact with animals – mainly domestic and farm animals, most of us probably regard the rest of them – wild animals – as pests.
BT: I agree. Take the fox, for example; it is traditionally regarded as either the prey of packs of hounds, or a killer of chickens. If any animal so much as touches anything we say belongs to us, we kill it, and yet the fox is a beautiful animal that graces our wilder places, and has a right to live.
RLF: It’s easy to defend a beautiful animal like the fox, but what about the brown rat – has that animal a right to live?
BT: Such animals are called vermin and as such are both objects of derision and attempts to eradicate them.
RLF: But we probably do so without much idea about what rats actually do – whether they prey on other creatures that constitute a greater threat to human health. Rats are subject to what you might term historical prejudice – they carried the viruses that started the Great Plague, it is thought, and so we think of them as pests – dangerous pests – to be killed.
BT: Whereas I should say that very few of us know anything at all about the life of rats – only a sort of anecdotal knowledge.
RLF: And so it is with what we know of most living creatures that live around us and share our space in the communities in which we live. We know very little and yet are willing to dismiss them as a nuisance, even as dangerous.
BT: I once heard of a scheme in China to remove all the birds in one particular grain growing region of that huge country because they were eating the grain there.
RLF: What happened?
BT: Well, birds were persecuted and killed, and people thought they had done a good thing in removing the birds that were eating the grain they had been growing.
RLF: So they were right to cull the birds, were they?
BT: Not at all. From the moment birds started to be decimated, swarms of insects started to appear, insects flourished in the absence of the birds. You see, the people’s solution to the problem of stopping their grain from being eaten by birds did not solve for pattern.
Dealing with one aspect of a problem in isolation; disregarding other factors, means that other problems will appear – some far worse than the original one.
RLF: I see, so that is why all aspects of a community must be taken into account before any action is taken.
BT: Yes, I should say that is probably the main reason for taking everything into account.
RLF: But that would mean comprehensive studies undertaken by bodies with expertise.
BT: Whereas what usually happens is that only so called ‘vested interests’ decide what action to take. Many of those interests are financial ones.
RLF: And those groups – corporations, companies take a far too narrow look at anything – particularly at communities that include plants and animals as well as people.
BT: And they define their goals too narrowly too.
RLF: What do you mean?
BT: Corporations exist to maximize profits.
RLF: Often at the expense of anything and anybody?
BT: Precisely; and if that is done, and communities overlooked, disastrous consequences invariably ensue.
RLF: So what is the answer?
BT: Well, to begin with, we should realize that looking for, ‘the right answer’ – the one and the only one, is planning for failure; that there is nothing of the sort. Better solutions are reached by more knowledge, not by conveniently ignoring variables that get in the way of quick fixes. Economics treats these as what it calls exogenous variables – those either to be ignored or at best factored in rudimentary, simplistic ways for convenience and this impatience of ours to get things moving at all costs.
RLF: That is well said – “at all costs” – in fact, that is just what is never done. All costs must be what they mean – costs of everything to all.
BT: Rather than only those costs that can easily and readily be quantified.
RLF: Precisely; taking into account only what can be quantified is a corporation’s way of progressing. That concept – 'what is quantifiable’ is at the root of all our problems.
BT: Well, most of them, let’s say. But why do you think that is so?
RLF: The old adage, ‘Time is money’ has something to do with it. This obsession with action – immediate action – the more immediate the better - this is at the root of our problems.
In our headlong dash to act, to get money flowing, we systematically ignore factors that, when compounded, destroy what is left after this rushed action.
BT: When are we going to learn that the world – our world, our environment – the ecosystems that support life – all life – including ours, is not organized along the same lines as those we suppose – those systems we impose upon ourselves and then on the rest of the world around us – the natural world.
RLF: Of which we are also a part; let’s not forget that.
Robert L. Fielding
Rule 3
3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.
Robert Leslie Fielding: Whenever beginning a scheme to produce anything we should always try to get supplies locally, before resorting to going further afield, and we should help each other.
Bert Thornley: Why do you think we should have what is needed locally supplied locally?
RLF: Well, I should say that the first reason, and possibly the best one is that those living in any particular community will know best what their needs are.
BT: But there are other good reasons, surely, for ensuring that local needs are met by local producers?
RLF: Of course, I should say that communities grow stronger if each helps – doing what they can to help others.
BT: Do you think there are any material benefits of locals supplying for local needs?
RLF: Surely. Those farmers, let’s say, who farm locally will understand what is beneficial and what isn’t; what can be done without disadvantages and what can’t.
BT: Good, let’s deal with the first of these; people living within a community are best placed to know what the real needs of the community are likely to be.
RLF: With the corollary being that the views of those remote from that community will be less well placed to know what those needs are.
BT: We had better be careful, in thinking that, to allow for the fact that there are often experts in practically every field. Shouldn’t their views and their professional advice sometimes be taken into consideration?
RLF: Yes, they should. I am not suggesting that in our efforts to meet local needs we isolate ourselves from sources of knowledge and expertise outside the community, but rather that informed decisions are made by those who have to live any with changes that are made.
A farmer advised to increase the size of his herd of sheep to numbers that cannot be sustained by other resources is asking for trouble.
BT: But surely he would be well aware of that, wouldn’t he?
RLF: He would, but people who find themselves either needing to increase their income or else who are advised to take actions solely on the basis of increasing profits can sometimes be persuaded – often are persuaded – to do things that go against what we might refer to as ‘best practices’.
BT: What might those be?
RLF: Well, returning to our first proposition; members of local communities know what those are; what suits the land and the farmer. Interested parties from outside the community may well be unaware of this, or may actually encourage farmers to ignore such considerations in favour of just a single aim – to increase income.
BT: Isn’t increasing income what farming is all about?
RLF: It is certainly true that farmers have to earn a living, like we all have to do, but my point is that they have to balance resources so that the farm is able to carry on in ways that benefit all; land resources, water resources, animal resources, and human ones, in addition to financial resources – if one is left out of any equation to increase the produce of a farm, others will inevitably suffer and cause problems.
BT: And extending that to the community as a whole, we should include others within that community- other farmers.
RLF: And those that do not farm – everyone has a right to live and make a living, let’s not forget that.
BT: What about local rivalry – even local animosity?
RLF: What do you mean?
BT: If two particular individuals are in competition, how should they proceed? You can’t expect rivals to cooperate when their living is made in similar ways, can you?
RLF: That is how, traditionally, trade is viewed, as competitive.
BT: And is it not?
RLF: It is, but it is something like a self-fulfilling prophesy to say that trade is competitive because that is the way it has always been – competitive between traders – people making something to sell.
BT: And economists speak of equal and unequal competition; the former being something near to the normal position where many produce similar articles, selling to similar customers.
RLF: But I do question whether this competitiveness is the best way to conduct business.
BT: Some would say it is the only way; that it is natural.
RLF: Do you see, that is where we err – we say something is natural when it is nothing of the sort. Natural means of nature, whereas buying and selling is an entirely man made, one might almost say synthetic, arrangement.
A better model in these times in which certain aspects of trade have got out of sync with the environment would be cooperation rather than competition.
BT: Why do you say it would be better – better in what way?
RLF: Competition in trade usually involves different producers making the same product, trying to gain the edge over companies making the same things.
BT: Again, it is natural that one company should try to sell more of its produce than its rival can.
RLF: There you go using that word again. What competitive trade does is duplicate – make the same things regardless of anything but whether the market can stand to have two or more identical products, whereas what I am suggesting is that it would be much less wasteful if one of those identical products was abandoned in favour of something else.
BT: And who would decide who abandoned what? In the present system, the market decides – the consumer decides to buy or not. Could you better that? Could you make an alternative system fair? I think not. Centrally planned economies that have tried to dictate to producers what to produce and what not to produce have traditionally been accused of partiality – of adopting means that are not democratic.
RLF: And that accusation has stopped us from being sensible with our resources, and our needs.
BT: But, again, if you dictate to people what to buy and what not to buy, are you not telling them how to live?
RLF: That's true. We should be educating people how to live rather than, as you say, dictating to them how to live.
Our education systems are predicated on this rivalry, whereas, I am suggesting that they are inappropriate for our survival on a planet with finite resources.
Meeting local needs with locally produced commodities would be one way out of this impasse; educating ourselves to want what is good for all in the community.
BT: But that has always been shunned, philosophically and economically.
RLF: And yet treating everyone as an individual rather that a member of a community is precisely what has led us to our present circumstances – overproducing – wasting – overusing – spoiling.
The new societies that sprang up in the wake of the Industrial Revolution hundreds of years past, had to have dominant ideologies to make people act in certain ways and bring acquiescence.
That is what is needed now, for we are at a point in time in which changes caused by advances in technology, consumer behavior, and marketing, all within the milieu of environmental change, are propelling us towards an uncertain future.
BT: So you think that by concentrating on local needs being met more and more by local suppliers, we can counteract these changes?
RLF: Yes, I do. Local communities focusing, not on commercial rivalries of corporations, but on the real and pressing needs of citizens, would begin to remove this ignorance of ours – an ignorance that has turned into conventional thinking. Treating the world as a place from which we can take and take and never put back is changing our world in bigger and more catastrophic ways than the beginnings of industrialism ever did. Industry is our life – our livelihood even, but, if we are not careful, it will be our undoing too.
Treating the world and its citizens as if we all had the same needs – those foisted upon us by fashion, by conventional ways of viewing the so called good life, is responsible for our predicament.
Treating local needs as real needs rather than the ones we are supposed to desire, but don’t actually need, would go some way towards beating this blindness of ours; it would restore our judgment to our ourselves instead of to corporate ideologies that state financial profit as the one true goal of any activity. That is at the root of our problems.
Robert L. Fielding
Robert Leslie Fielding: Whenever beginning a scheme to produce anything we should always try to get supplies locally, before resorting to going further afield, and we should help each other.
Bert Thornley: Why do you think we should have what is needed locally supplied locally?
RLF: Well, I should say that the first reason, and possibly the best one is that those living in any particular community will know best what their needs are.
BT: But there are other good reasons, surely, for ensuring that local needs are met by local producers?
RLF: Of course, I should say that communities grow stronger if each helps – doing what they can to help others.
BT: Do you think there are any material benefits of locals supplying for local needs?
RLF: Surely. Those farmers, let’s say, who farm locally will understand what is beneficial and what isn’t; what can be done without disadvantages and what can’t.
BT: Good, let’s deal with the first of these; people living within a community are best placed to know what the real needs of the community are likely to be.
RLF: With the corollary being that the views of those remote from that community will be less well placed to know what those needs are.
BT: We had better be careful, in thinking that, to allow for the fact that there are often experts in practically every field. Shouldn’t their views and their professional advice sometimes be taken into consideration?
RLF: Yes, they should. I am not suggesting that in our efforts to meet local needs we isolate ourselves from sources of knowledge and expertise outside the community, but rather that informed decisions are made by those who have to live any with changes that are made.
A farmer advised to increase the size of his herd of sheep to numbers that cannot be sustained by other resources is asking for trouble.
BT: But surely he would be well aware of that, wouldn’t he?
RLF: He would, but people who find themselves either needing to increase their income or else who are advised to take actions solely on the basis of increasing profits can sometimes be persuaded – often are persuaded – to do things that go against what we might refer to as ‘best practices’.
BT: What might those be?
RLF: Well, returning to our first proposition; members of local communities know what those are; what suits the land and the farmer. Interested parties from outside the community may well be unaware of this, or may actually encourage farmers to ignore such considerations in favour of just a single aim – to increase income.
BT: Isn’t increasing income what farming is all about?
RLF: It is certainly true that farmers have to earn a living, like we all have to do, but my point is that they have to balance resources so that the farm is able to carry on in ways that benefit all; land resources, water resources, animal resources, and human ones, in addition to financial resources – if one is left out of any equation to increase the produce of a farm, others will inevitably suffer and cause problems.
BT: And extending that to the community as a whole, we should include others within that community- other farmers.
RLF: And those that do not farm – everyone has a right to live and make a living, let’s not forget that.
BT: What about local rivalry – even local animosity?
RLF: What do you mean?
BT: If two particular individuals are in competition, how should they proceed? You can’t expect rivals to cooperate when their living is made in similar ways, can you?
RLF: That is how, traditionally, trade is viewed, as competitive.
BT: And is it not?
RLF: It is, but it is something like a self-fulfilling prophesy to say that trade is competitive because that is the way it has always been – competitive between traders – people making something to sell.
BT: And economists speak of equal and unequal competition; the former being something near to the normal position where many produce similar articles, selling to similar customers.
RLF: But I do question whether this competitiveness is the best way to conduct business.
BT: Some would say it is the only way; that it is natural.
RLF: Do you see, that is where we err – we say something is natural when it is nothing of the sort. Natural means of nature, whereas buying and selling is an entirely man made, one might almost say synthetic, arrangement.
A better model in these times in which certain aspects of trade have got out of sync with the environment would be cooperation rather than competition.
BT: Why do you say it would be better – better in what way?
RLF: Competition in trade usually involves different producers making the same product, trying to gain the edge over companies making the same things.
BT: Again, it is natural that one company should try to sell more of its produce than its rival can.
RLF: There you go using that word again. What competitive trade does is duplicate – make the same things regardless of anything but whether the market can stand to have two or more identical products, whereas what I am suggesting is that it would be much less wasteful if one of those identical products was abandoned in favour of something else.
BT: And who would decide who abandoned what? In the present system, the market decides – the consumer decides to buy or not. Could you better that? Could you make an alternative system fair? I think not. Centrally planned economies that have tried to dictate to producers what to produce and what not to produce have traditionally been accused of partiality – of adopting means that are not democratic.
RLF: And that accusation has stopped us from being sensible with our resources, and our needs.
BT: But, again, if you dictate to people what to buy and what not to buy, are you not telling them how to live?
RLF: That's true. We should be educating people how to live rather than, as you say, dictating to them how to live.
Our education systems are predicated on this rivalry, whereas, I am suggesting that they are inappropriate for our survival on a planet with finite resources.
Meeting local needs with locally produced commodities would be one way out of this impasse; educating ourselves to want what is good for all in the community.
BT: But that has always been shunned, philosophically and economically.
RLF: And yet treating everyone as an individual rather that a member of a community is precisely what has led us to our present circumstances – overproducing – wasting – overusing – spoiling.
The new societies that sprang up in the wake of the Industrial Revolution hundreds of years past, had to have dominant ideologies to make people act in certain ways and bring acquiescence.
That is what is needed now, for we are at a point in time in which changes caused by advances in technology, consumer behavior, and marketing, all within the milieu of environmental change, are propelling us towards an uncertain future.
BT: So you think that by concentrating on local needs being met more and more by local suppliers, we can counteract these changes?
RLF: Yes, I do. Local communities focusing, not on commercial rivalries of corporations, but on the real and pressing needs of citizens, would begin to remove this ignorance of ours – an ignorance that has turned into conventional thinking. Treating the world as a place from which we can take and take and never put back is changing our world in bigger and more catastrophic ways than the beginnings of industrialism ever did. Industry is our life – our livelihood even, but, if we are not careful, it will be our undoing too.
Treating the world and its citizens as if we all had the same needs – those foisted upon us by fashion, by conventional ways of viewing the so called good life, is responsible for our predicament.
Treating local needs as real needs rather than the ones we are supposed to desire, but don’t actually need, would go some way towards beating this blindness of ours; it would restore our judgment to our ourselves instead of to corporate ideologies that state financial profit as the one true goal of any activity. That is at the root of our problems.
Robert L. Fielding
Rule 4
4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products – first to nearby cities, then to others).
Rule 5
5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labor saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.
Rule 6
6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.
Rule 7
7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.
Rule 9
9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.
Rule 10
10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.
Rule 11
11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.
Rule 12
12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.
Rule 13
13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.
Rule 14
14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.
Rule 15
15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.
Rule 16
16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.
Rule 17
17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.
Wendell Berry's 17 Rules for A Sustainable Economy
Supposing that the members of a local community wanted their community to cohere, to flourish, and to last, they would:
1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.
2. Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.
3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.
4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products – first to nearby cities, then to others).
5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labor saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.
6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.
7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.
8. Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.
9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.
10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.
11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.
12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.
13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.
14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.
15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.
16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.
17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.
1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.
2. Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.
3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.
4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products – first to nearby cities, then to others).
5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labor saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.
6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.
7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.
8. Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.
9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.
10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.
11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.
12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.
13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.
14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.
15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.
16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.
17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Food sovereignty
“Food Sovereignty is the Right of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land policies, which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies.”
http://www.nyeleni.org/IMG/pdf/FoodSovereignityFramework.pdf
Dialogue
The dialogue below is between a local farmer (LF) and a local government officer (LG). The discussion surrounds local issues of food sovereignty.
LG: First of all, we had better say way we mean by food sovereignty, don’t you think?
LF: Yes, of course. Well, I think food sovereignty is the right of everybody, wherever they live and whatever they choose to eat, to be able to say what the policies are towards agriculture – food production, if you prefer.
LG: Can you elaborate – explain more for me?
LF: Well, let’s begin with a family living in India – living in the countryside, growing their own food, rearing a few animals and consuming what they produce, and selling any surplus they may have in local markets to local people – neighbours.
LG: These people have presumably farmed this land for some time?
LF: Yes, for generations and generations – for hundreds of years, maybe even longer. They produce the food they need to live.
LG: So what is the issue?
LF: The trouble starts when someone comes along with deeds they have bought to the land that feeds us.
LG: What kind of trouble?
LF: We are then told we have to either vacate the land or else work on it for a wage.
LG: And what’s so wrong with that? At least you get a job to do?
LF: But we cannot then grow our own food. We must use the land to grow a cash crop – for bio-fuel – something we locals can’t eat – can’t use.
LG: Are there any problems associated with a change in land use?
LF: Certainly. Apart from us being virtually rendered homeless, the land suffers.
LG: How does the land suffer? What does that mean?
LF: It means that whereas when we lived off the land, growing and replenishing, the land could sustain us – sustain our activity, and we made sure it did.
LG: How?
LF: I said earlier that generations and generations of my family have lived on this land, didn’t I?
LG: Yes, you did. What of it?
LF: We know how to treat it as a living thing, rather than something to be used up, like gallon of petrol or a tin of coffee – to be discarded when it’s empty.
LG: But land is not a living thing. Land consists of soil and rock – that’s all. It isn’t a living object.
LF: That’s all you know. Like I said, we live on the land and ensure that we treat it with respect, putting back what we take.
LG: What do you take and what do you put back?
LF: We grow the food we lived on – meat as well as vegetation.
LG: But that is not taking anything from the land. The land is still there after you have reaped what you have sewn, isn’t it?
LF: Where do you think plants get what they need to grow?
LG: From the soil, of course, and from the water you provide.
LF: So, continually taking plants from the land is fine, is it?
LG: Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t it be? Like I said, the land is an inanimate object.
LF: And I tell you that you are wrong. Take a cubic meter of soil and discover what’s in it. You will find all kinds of living creatures, plant and animal, insects too.
LG: So?
LF: So who’s going to look after them – keep them alive, if we don’t?
LG: Who cares about a few earthworms and grubs?
LF: You are showing your ignorance, my friend. Everything – every living creature in the soil has its contribution to the fertility of that soil.
LG: But those creatures will still be there after the crop has been harvested, won’t they?
LF: And how will they live when what they need to survive has been taken?
LG: How has anything been taken?
LF: Do not plants take from the soil that has nourished them?
LG: I don’t know.
LF: Fine, it’s good to admit that you are ignorant – after all, you are not a farmer, you don’t depend on this land for your survival the way we do, the way earthworms and grubs do.
We depend upon the land, so we look after it. To us, it is a living thing – something alive that helps us to live. To you and others like you, it is just something that is there, to be used up, turned into money and then discarded. After all, there is plenty of land on the surface of the Earth, why not use it and then move on?
LG: But what else can businessmen or corporations - do? They can’t waste their time and their money – their resources looking after something that doesn’t pay dividends.
LF: But land always pays dividends, if you care for it like we do.
LG: But you have time to wait, plus you’re not going anywhere either, so you have patience to look after the land that supports you.
LF: And businessmen haven’t the time, is that right?
LG: Of course they haven’t. They have to be doing what they do best.
LF: Which is?
LG: Which is making money – getting the highest returns on their investment, that’s what they do.
LF: No matter what?
LG: How do you mean, no matter what?
LF: That in their calculations, their economic forecasts and their projections, they take no account of people, or land, or animals, earthworms and grubs?
LG: Of course not. How could they factor in such diverse things?
LF: So because they can’t factor certain essentials into their economics, they pretend – sorry – assume they do not exist?
LG: I suppose so, yes. What do you suggest they do?
LF: Scale down their projects – slow them down – until such factors can be considered.
LG: But then the returns would take longer to make. They might even lose money.
LF: And they reckon that losing money is far worse than losing life, do they?
LG: That’s ridiculous. Businessmen and corporations don’t set out to destroy life.
LF: But they do so just the same, don’t they? They buy up land that is not for sale; exploit it until it does not yield returns, and move on to the next piece of land.
They have deadlines to meet, figures to gain, money to make. They are not in what they do for anything else but making money, whereas we local farmers do have to consider things other than money.
LG: Such as what?
LF: Well, we have to consider everyone around us, not just our immediate family, not just our friends, but everyone in our community. Do you see that man playing in the sand over there?
LG: Yes, what about him?
LF: He is thirty something years old, and yet he is still like a little child, in his mind. See, he is playing with empty cans, filling them with sand and setting them out as if he was selling something. He is imitating the shopkeepers hereabouts.
LG: Well, what is your point?
LF: Look at his clothes, are they clean or dirty?
LG: They are spotless, apart from a few spots from the sand he is playing with.
LF: And how do you think he manages to keep his clothes clean like that?
LG: I suppose his mother washes them.
LF: He has no mother or father. They died long ago.
LG: So who looks after him? Who washes his clothes? Who feeds him?
LF: We all do. Everybody in this village has something of his to wash and give him to wear when his clothes get dirty. Everybody feeds him. He sleeps in a bed in someone’s house every night, and wakes up to find clean clothes to put on after he has washed.
LG: But why do you do that? He cannot pay you?
LF: His family paid us when they were alive.
LG: In money?
LF: Not at all, for they had little money – like the rest of us. They paid in being.
LG: In being. What do you mean?
LF: They lived amongst us, in that house over there. They tilled the soil that surrounds their home, and they helped us harvest when the time came. We all helped each other – we all live like that. Obligations go beyond the grave with us.
LG: With obligations to each other?
LF: Exactly, and those obligations were not contractual ones such as those that bind workers to corporations – financial ones grounded in manmade laws, but unspoken obligations, tacit understandings that you cannot put a price on.
LG: Then if they have no price on them, are they not worthless?
LF: Not at all, the opposite is true. Being tacitly understood, they are the more readily accepted, unchallenged, and being so are binding in ways that contractual obligations like the ones you speak of can never be.
LG: But if someone doesn’t conform to his contractual obligations, he loses is living, his job.
LF: You say that if he doesn’t conform – in our world, that is not a possibility. We are born into the system in our neighbourhoods. We know what we need to do for ourselves, and we know what there is to be done for others. What we do for others, they do for us. Now tell me that our way is less binding than the way of the corporations and those they employ.
LG: But what has this to do with the land that sustains you?
LF: We have an unwritten obligation to it – to look after it – to nourish it so that
it will continue to nourish and feed us. If we default on our obligations to the land, we suffer, and the land suffers too. The earthworms and the grubs suffer, and we suffer more. We know the value of everything, not just in terms of notes and coins – money, but in something far deeper, far more significant than mere spending stuff. We know the real value of the land we farm, and everything in it too. Most people round here can pick up a handful of soil and tell you in a minute how that soil is – whether it is healthy soil or whether it needs something – to be left fallow for a season, perhaps – to be allowed to recover, like someone who is sick needs rest to recover from an illness.
We know the land, we care for the land, and it is our right to continue caring for it. No piece of paper drawn up in an office in a city a thousand miles away, in another country, by people who have never so much as set one foot on our land, can, with justice and right, deny us our rights to farm it, live off it and nurture it as we would one of our children. It looks after us so we look after it. That is something more lasting, more binding than a contract with a bottom line of so much money.
Robert L. Fielding
http://www.nyeleni.org/IMG/pdf/FoodSovereignityFramework.pdf
Dialogue
The dialogue below is between a local farmer (LF) and a local government officer (LG). The discussion surrounds local issues of food sovereignty.
LG: First of all, we had better say way we mean by food sovereignty, don’t you think?
LF: Yes, of course. Well, I think food sovereignty is the right of everybody, wherever they live and whatever they choose to eat, to be able to say what the policies are towards agriculture – food production, if you prefer.
LG: Can you elaborate – explain more for me?
LF: Well, let’s begin with a family living in India – living in the countryside, growing their own food, rearing a few animals and consuming what they produce, and selling any surplus they may have in local markets to local people – neighbours.
LG: These people have presumably farmed this land for some time?
LF: Yes, for generations and generations – for hundreds of years, maybe even longer. They produce the food they need to live.
LG: So what is the issue?
LF: The trouble starts when someone comes along with deeds they have bought to the land that feeds us.
LG: What kind of trouble?
LF: We are then told we have to either vacate the land or else work on it for a wage.
LG: And what’s so wrong with that? At least you get a job to do?
LF: But we cannot then grow our own food. We must use the land to grow a cash crop – for bio-fuel – something we locals can’t eat – can’t use.
LG: Are there any problems associated with a change in land use?
LF: Certainly. Apart from us being virtually rendered homeless, the land suffers.
LG: How does the land suffer? What does that mean?
LF: It means that whereas when we lived off the land, growing and replenishing, the land could sustain us – sustain our activity, and we made sure it did.
LG: How?
LF: I said earlier that generations and generations of my family have lived on this land, didn’t I?
LG: Yes, you did. What of it?
LF: We know how to treat it as a living thing, rather than something to be used up, like gallon of petrol or a tin of coffee – to be discarded when it’s empty.
LG: But land is not a living thing. Land consists of soil and rock – that’s all. It isn’t a living object.
LF: That’s all you know. Like I said, we live on the land and ensure that we treat it with respect, putting back what we take.
LG: What do you take and what do you put back?
LF: We grow the food we lived on – meat as well as vegetation.
LG: But that is not taking anything from the land. The land is still there after you have reaped what you have sewn, isn’t it?
LF: Where do you think plants get what they need to grow?
LG: From the soil, of course, and from the water you provide.
LF: So, continually taking plants from the land is fine, is it?
LG: Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t it be? Like I said, the land is an inanimate object.
LF: And I tell you that you are wrong. Take a cubic meter of soil and discover what’s in it. You will find all kinds of living creatures, plant and animal, insects too.
LG: So?
LF: So who’s going to look after them – keep them alive, if we don’t?
LG: Who cares about a few earthworms and grubs?
LF: You are showing your ignorance, my friend. Everything – every living creature in the soil has its contribution to the fertility of that soil.
LG: But those creatures will still be there after the crop has been harvested, won’t they?
LF: And how will they live when what they need to survive has been taken?
LG: How has anything been taken?
LF: Do not plants take from the soil that has nourished them?
LG: I don’t know.
LF: Fine, it’s good to admit that you are ignorant – after all, you are not a farmer, you don’t depend on this land for your survival the way we do, the way earthworms and grubs do.
We depend upon the land, so we look after it. To us, it is a living thing – something alive that helps us to live. To you and others like you, it is just something that is there, to be used up, turned into money and then discarded. After all, there is plenty of land on the surface of the Earth, why not use it and then move on?
LG: But what else can businessmen or corporations - do? They can’t waste their time and their money – their resources looking after something that doesn’t pay dividends.
LF: But land always pays dividends, if you care for it like we do.
LG: But you have time to wait, plus you’re not going anywhere either, so you have patience to look after the land that supports you.
LF: And businessmen haven’t the time, is that right?
LG: Of course they haven’t. They have to be doing what they do best.
LF: Which is?
LG: Which is making money – getting the highest returns on their investment, that’s what they do.
LF: No matter what?
LG: How do you mean, no matter what?
LF: That in their calculations, their economic forecasts and their projections, they take no account of people, or land, or animals, earthworms and grubs?
LG: Of course not. How could they factor in such diverse things?
LF: So because they can’t factor certain essentials into their economics, they pretend – sorry – assume they do not exist?
LG: I suppose so, yes. What do you suggest they do?
LF: Scale down their projects – slow them down – until such factors can be considered.
LG: But then the returns would take longer to make. They might even lose money.
LF: And they reckon that losing money is far worse than losing life, do they?
LG: That’s ridiculous. Businessmen and corporations don’t set out to destroy life.
LF: But they do so just the same, don’t they? They buy up land that is not for sale; exploit it until it does not yield returns, and move on to the next piece of land.
They have deadlines to meet, figures to gain, money to make. They are not in what they do for anything else but making money, whereas we local farmers do have to consider things other than money.
LG: Such as what?
LF: Well, we have to consider everyone around us, not just our immediate family, not just our friends, but everyone in our community. Do you see that man playing in the sand over there?
LG: Yes, what about him?
LF: He is thirty something years old, and yet he is still like a little child, in his mind. See, he is playing with empty cans, filling them with sand and setting them out as if he was selling something. He is imitating the shopkeepers hereabouts.
LG: Well, what is your point?
LF: Look at his clothes, are they clean or dirty?
LG: They are spotless, apart from a few spots from the sand he is playing with.
LF: And how do you think he manages to keep his clothes clean like that?
LG: I suppose his mother washes them.
LF: He has no mother or father. They died long ago.
LG: So who looks after him? Who washes his clothes? Who feeds him?
LF: We all do. Everybody in this village has something of his to wash and give him to wear when his clothes get dirty. Everybody feeds him. He sleeps in a bed in someone’s house every night, and wakes up to find clean clothes to put on after he has washed.
LG: But why do you do that? He cannot pay you?
LF: His family paid us when they were alive.
LG: In money?
LF: Not at all, for they had little money – like the rest of us. They paid in being.
LG: In being. What do you mean?
LF: They lived amongst us, in that house over there. They tilled the soil that surrounds their home, and they helped us harvest when the time came. We all helped each other – we all live like that. Obligations go beyond the grave with us.
LG: With obligations to each other?
LF: Exactly, and those obligations were not contractual ones such as those that bind workers to corporations – financial ones grounded in manmade laws, but unspoken obligations, tacit understandings that you cannot put a price on.
LG: Then if they have no price on them, are they not worthless?
LF: Not at all, the opposite is true. Being tacitly understood, they are the more readily accepted, unchallenged, and being so are binding in ways that contractual obligations like the ones you speak of can never be.
LG: But if someone doesn’t conform to his contractual obligations, he loses is living, his job.
LF: You say that if he doesn’t conform – in our world, that is not a possibility. We are born into the system in our neighbourhoods. We know what we need to do for ourselves, and we know what there is to be done for others. What we do for others, they do for us. Now tell me that our way is less binding than the way of the corporations and those they employ.
LG: But what has this to do with the land that sustains you?
LF: We have an unwritten obligation to it – to look after it – to nourish it so that
it will continue to nourish and feed us. If we default on our obligations to the land, we suffer, and the land suffers too. The earthworms and the grubs suffer, and we suffer more. We know the value of everything, not just in terms of notes and coins – money, but in something far deeper, far more significant than mere spending stuff. We know the real value of the land we farm, and everything in it too. Most people round here can pick up a handful of soil and tell you in a minute how that soil is – whether it is healthy soil or whether it needs something – to be left fallow for a season, perhaps – to be allowed to recover, like someone who is sick needs rest to recover from an illness.
We know the land, we care for the land, and it is our right to continue caring for it. No piece of paper drawn up in an office in a city a thousand miles away, in another country, by people who have never so much as set one foot on our land, can, with justice and right, deny us our rights to farm it, live off it and nurture it as we would one of our children. It looks after us so we look after it. That is something more lasting, more binding than a contract with a bottom line of so much money.
Robert L. Fielding
Thursday, April 14, 2011
To get things going
Collective learning – dialogue – dead ends – ways forward – needs must – look to the larger – global imperatives
This is a conversation between a teacher (Robert L. Fielding) and a student (R) about the collective learning that has taken place since man took his first step on Earth.
R: You say man and his first step, but you could have said woman and her first step, couldn’t you?
RLF: Certainly, it’s just that it’s more usual to use the masculine.
R: So it’s a habit?
RLF: More than a habit, a convention, I would say.
R: Which is little more than calling it a habitual habit – one that most people conform to. Would you say that is nearer?
RLF: Yes, I suppose I would.
R: Isn’t it curious that we should begin that way, with something most of us do, almost without thinking?
RLF: I can’t see that it is really curious, no.
R: If you think about what we said we were going to talk about – collective learning – then do you now see that it is a curious, almost coincidental way to begin.
RLF: Would you like to elaborate?
R: Yes. Well, when you referred to humankind’s steps as man’s steps, it struck me that much of what we do in the course of our daily lives – things we could say we have learned from each other, we do almost without thinking.
RLF: I see what you mean. Yes, it is curious, now that you come to mention it.
R: We should look at those things we say we have ‘learned’ and those things we have merely imitated, shouldn’t we?
RLF: What would be the purpose in doing that, do you think?
R: Well, it seems to me that humankind is in a fix.
RLF: What do you mean by that?
R: Look around you – our planet – the planet that supports all of us, is endangered, chiefly by our actions, and yet we insist that we are the only form of life on Earth that consciously learns and passes on what we have learned to successive generations.
RLF: What have we done? Where did we go wrong?
R: Well, to begin with, I don’t think apportioning blame is too important – the important thing is learning where we erred and how, and when, and then seeing if we can either put things right by relearning, or seeing if we can repair the damage we have wreaked on our planet.
RLF: Where should we start? What can we use to begin?
R: Funnily enough, I would begin in the kitchen.
RLF: In the kitchen, why there?
R: To look at a few things there. To begin with, let’s look at the fridge – the refrigerator, if you prefer.
RLF: What significance can you find in a fridge?
R: To me, the fridge illustrates such a lot about humankind.
RLF: How?
R: That fridge is more or less like millions of other fridges, isn’t it?
RLF: Very similar, yes, but what’s your point?
R: Well, it illustrates how we have come to mass produce goods, doesn’t it?
RLF: Yes, it does, and I think it also illustrates how science and technology have changed our lives too, doesn’t it?
R: It certainly does. A fridge is basically a heat exchange mechanism, taking heat out of the food we put into it – similar to an air-conditioning system, if you like, which removes heat from a room and replaces it with cooler air.
But the fridge illustrates so much more than technology, although it certainly does that well.
RLF: What else does it illustrate? You will have to say what you mean.
R: The fridge stores food so that what we eat remains fresh, even though we bought the food a week ago or more.
RLF: That’s obvious, yes, but what of it?
R: Don’t you see, it illustrates what we have become.
RLF: I’m not sure I understand you.
R: Before the fridge was invented, before electricity was invented to power the fridge, what did we do with our meat?
RLF: Well, I remember my mother having to buy meat on a daily basis – she bought the meat she cooked later that day.
R: Why?
RLF: Because she had no means of keeping it fresh from one day to the next.
R: But you lived in a country with a cool, temperate climate, didn’t you?
RLF: Yes, we lived in England, which can be very cool.
R: And yet your mother bought the meat you ate every day?
RLF: Yes, that’s right, she did.
R: Like everyone else?
RLF: Yes, like everyone else.
R: Your mother had to buy meat, didn’t she?
RLF: Yes, from the butcher’s shop.
R: Like everyone else?
RLF: Yes, like most people, I should say.
R: Who would not have to buy meat?
RLF: I suppose those who kept animals – farmers and smallholders.
R: People who reared animals, and then slaughtered them for their meat?
RLF: Yes, or kept them for the milk they produced.
R: And if one family slaughtered a beast – say a sheep – did they eat it all at once, or did they manage to keep it fresh to be eaten later?
RLF: I think people used to preserve meat by salting it – covering it in salt to stop it from getting infected.
R: But not all meat was treated this way, I think I am right in saying.
RLF Right, yes. Most would have to be either sold on or eaten.
R: And if some was sold on, as you say, someone must have bought it.
RLF: Bought it, yes, or exchanged something for it, in the absence of any coinage.
R: We have a saying, that the best place to keep meat fresh is in the belly of a neighbor.
RLF: What does that mean? How can that be possible?
R: Think about it. One farmer slaughters a sheep, which is clearly too much for the plates of his own family table.
RLF: So?
R: He invites all his neighbours round and they eat it all together.
R: Yes, and then when someone else slaughters a beast for the table, they have an obligation to invite the folks they dined with the other night over to eat, and so on.
RLF: Yes, I see now. Meat is never wasted, that way.
R: No, but now we have the fridge – what does that signify – the changes in how men and women lived?
RLF: That way of saving meat would soon become unwieldy – you would have to remember whose food you had eaten, when you had eaten it and so on. It would become too complicated to continue that way, wouldn’t it?
R: Probably not while folk lived in small, isolated communities – hamlets, if you like. It would be easy at such times.
RLF: But still, it would be wasteful too. I mean, if there weren’t enough of you in the hamlet to eat a whole beast every time one was slaughtered, what would happen?
R: Then people would have surpluses of food that they needed to exchange food for
things – tools and such, and they would make contact with people from other communities close by.
RLF: And so soon, animals would be slaughtered and then distributed – sold – to neighbours.
R: Who in their turn would have items to exchange. Don’t you see now how the fridge illustrates how far we have moved from those early days when we ate whatever we slew.
RLF: As society grew more functionally complicated, it would no longer be possible to sell as soon as a beast was slaughtered. Fridges, when they arrived, gave us some breathing space, between slaughtering and eating.
R: And more than that. Once we had refrigeration, we could accumulate meat as a commodity to be sold when the price was higher, or when there was more demand.
RLF: And when demand rises…
R: So do prices. The birth of what we call economics.
RLF: And you got all that from looking at a fridge in your kitchen?
R: What I got was a way of looking at the subject of our discussion – collective learning. A lot of it, even most of what we learned, probably came out of necessity.
RLF: Or if not absolute necessity, then out of the way things were at the time.
R: Exactly. No man or woman ever woke up one morning and said to themselves, ‘I know what we’ll do today, we’ll invent a fridge!” The way we do things is a product of the conditions that prevail at the time.
RLF: Sure, and in the same way, nobody says, ‘Gee, I wish we had electricity, then we could have some means of keeping meat fresh so that we wouldn’t have to eat next door every night of our lives.' But do you think we have always learned that way, from necessity?
R: As life grew more and more complex; as more and more people did things other than produce food for consumption – as money started to be the medium of exchange instead of goods – food, tools and such, so that link between stomach and head would be broken.
RLF: Which link do you mean?
R: The link between hunger and producing food – that link. As that link weakened, and let’s face it, that link has never been as weak as it has become. A teacher doesn’t add up her hours of work in one week and think about how much food she can buy, does she?
RLF: Maybe not, but she knows what she can do with her salary – how far it will go – what she can do with it, or get with it if you prefer.
But where does this get us? What can we say about our subject; collective learning, and where it might have gone awry, does it?
R: I’m not sure. I think we’ve made a good start. We have gone from producing – growing and rearing – what was vital for life – food – to producing stuff that is plainly unnecessary for life, strictly speaking.
RLF: I’m not sure you are right there. I think you’re going off at a tangent – in a sort of ‘back to Nature’ sense. Mankind can’t freeze in the dark just because we have left some Utopian agrarian paradise. We have learned, and what is learned cannot be unlearned.
R: I agree. We cannot ignore progress, can we?
RLF: We can’t, but we can bring more rationality to what we do – to how we prosper.
R: How?
RLF: By considering what effects some of the things we do would have on where we live and how we live.
R: But if we couldn’t see that back then, how can we see it any clearer today?
RLF: We probably couldn’t then because the things we did would not have had the same impact as they do today.
R: This argument seems to be taking A Malthusian leaning to it, don’t you think?
RLF: How?
R: By our realization that as population soars, so do the demands made upon the soil beneath our feet.
RLF: Do you mean that our problems stem from our burgeoning population?
R: In part, yes, but also in part due to other factors besides the number of mouths to feed.
RLF: What other factors?
R: Well, look around you. What do you see? Look out of the window – what do you see?
RLF: Nothing much, the street is full of parked cars.
R: Exactly, and, like the fridge in our kitchens, the automobile illustrates another level of our development. What did we do before the internal combustion engine was invented?
RLF: Before the infernal combustion engine, as my father used to call it? Why, we walked, of course, or rode horses.
R: Or we did neither.
RLF: What do you mean?
R: We stayed home. We worked locally – in the home, in the village or hamlet.
RLF: But then that couldn’t last, could it? I mean, as populations increased, people would be forced to look elsewhere to earn their living.
R: Until we get to the point where we are today. But, as you say, there’s no turning back, no unlearning. We move around a lot more than we did even when I was a kid. It’s so noticeable that we travel further.
RLF: Why?
R: Because we can, that’s why!
Robert L. Fielding
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