I am baffled by the fact that people are so disengaged from the food that they eat. It has been my goal for some time now, almost two decades, to grow as much of my own food as possible. I have achieved this by growing more, and eating less. by adapting my taste to the foods I can coax out of the ground, and by pushing the limits of what I had been told were foods I could produce for myself.
Above is the answer I provided when asked why I would labor so hard, and remain tethered to so much, by leading the lifestyle I do.
It seems for generations we have as a people striven to achieve the maximum amount of leisure. We have developed lawns in place of gardens, and tended them with more and more elaborate chemicals and tools, in an effort to simplify our lives.
I think sometimes about my grandmother, who in her childhood, plucked vegetables from vines in the backyard to prepare a meal. Then in her final decades, she served me food from a tin can. I do not blame her or direct any of my frustration toward her, but I do wonder how she was convinced to do this.
I have concluded at least two things. One of them is that people are easily persuaded to take the path of least resistance. If they are offered a simpler and less demanding option, they really require very little convincing. Another is that people are afraid. They are afraid of death most of all, and second to death they are afraid of life.
What I mean by this is that they are afraid of being human. Being human means being a beast, an animal. Being an animal means having to eat, and having to cultivate and kill. When we eat industrially prepared food, that bears only a sort of resemblance to its natural origin, we demonstrate to ourselves on some level that we are above nature, and we are no beasts at all.
The deep desire within a human being to escape death, does not mean simply that death must be denied, but that life too, life as a beast be denied. The ideas of life after death, and even better rapture, capture this desire perfectly. One can become so terrified of life and death, that its very nature must be denied. Whole belief structures are developed around this expression of fear.
If the great accomplishments of society are to persist into the coming generations, this must be recognized. There are several elements of this that I think are important. One is the persuasion element, and this is the great problem of both capitalism and democracy. In both, whatever people can be convinced of, becomes the reality. As we all know, the empirical truth has often been crushed by both.
Another element is the acceptance of death, and the embracing of life. This is what is achieved through an agrarian lifestyle. When you realize that a passing day cannot be simply signified with a numeral, but literally is a passing opportunity to invest in the world, the miracle of existence is revealed. The time and effort taken to press a small seed into the warming soil, so that months later the fruits of the vine can be collected. Or the attentive urgency of the breeding season, later realized in the glistening eyes of a newborn kid, and finally celebrated when the pails are full of a mother's milk. Or the daily labors in feeding and watering and observing an animal, mortally punctuated with its slaughter, so that its vital meat can contribute to and enable your own life.
For me it has not been a question of whether I would choose to live a lifestyle that emphasizes this kind of self sufficiency, but to what degree it would be possible for me to do so. I have been blessed with the opportunity that I now enjoy, and work as hard as I can so that it will continue to be available to me. What may be more important than this though, is that the life I lead is not built upon a fear of being human, nor of being a beast. The agrarian lifestyle, as it seeks to perfect itself, has the potential to enable an understanding of life and death and what it means to be human. It is a lifestyle that, at its best, rejects fear and denial, as it struggles to engage fruitfully with nature.
From my perspective, the question is not why would one choose to live an agrarian lifestyle. I honestly believe that it is the most responsible and deeply human lifestyle one can lead. The question that concerns me is, how can we make it possible for more people to choose this lifestyle.