floors, for example? Sure you do not “need” anything at all. All services, tasks, spaces, all is outsourced, all belongs to responsibility of an external company, and thereby you know nobody. The more you are there, the less friends, any exchange or helping you have. You are lonely.
By contrast, in the villages, it keeps being a daily rule, a fact that can be repeated every season, and a need where see to others, talk to others, agree with others, and share tasks with others, is the daily bread. There is also a rubbing for many reasons, but almost always are somehow solved. In those places, there are not need of community programs, there are not need of create reasons to share the space and tasks: the life way and duties that has the nature leads the folks to share many things, bounds are tangible, links are closest, and feelings have an important function, an amazing role: produces cohesion, make the group, make the frame for living. That is an identity that we all need.
The question now is what links are between persons who meet by only economic reasons? Those links will never be the essential (despite to be necessary); there is not other kind of need on this links but the money. I never would prevent that we continue building relationships for economic reasons that would be stupid, but remain poor living in relationships that are not strictly economic: only causes problems in yourself, and in the whole.
The things that fail in one side of the world have been controlled on the other side; the troubles in this one are not there. That is what one day he said, the Beatles guru there in the peak of Mount Abu in India: "You do not come here to learn yoga, you come here to repair your broken links, your broken hearts, your broken heads, fleeing of riots and labor follies, fleeing of your marital fights, of your silences, of your loneliness, of your gambling with life: you need and want to come here because you have lost your children, because you do not know how to talk to them, and things so“.
Wherever you go to live, you will need to be known, the people will not be satisfied only with the size of your purse. People needs be able to trust you.
6. War all-out against weeds! All are suspected enemies!
Magic wands everywhere.
Once you learn something from great books of history, when have passed the facts and you are not exposed to distort the events, becomes easier to see what has taken place quietly. Thus we easy understand what happened with empires, colonization, wars, economies or the health. Even having passed the time, some stories are particularly makeup or forgotten, probably because they are still connected with the present. So, is difficult talk about facts so recent as these ones that are being treated here.
I say that the bigger joke that never was said was the division of plants in the usable ones and the weeds, and is the bigger joke you could tell someone; we will see why. The lies in the tales or jokes can be funny when appear suddenly, you understand the absurdity and laugh; on the reality the lies have not any fun, but are like drugs, artfully and slyly are hidden, and after stumble with them, and accepted the promises that offer, you cannot leave them never. There is no turning back. That is the history of technological agriculture, exception made for Industrial agriculturists, the bigger farmers who will be able to continue their business in the pyramid of agriculture world, but investing forever.
There are no magic wands, are there? Some of those magic wands that were sold worldwide are these ones (pay attention, please, do not miss, it seems have a lot of sense): (1) the human genetic selection that selected species that have needed the help of (2) pesticides that are herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, for kill, set aside arthropods, get rid other specie (as weed), make impossible the presence of microorganisms; all that has leaded to need and be helped by (3) chemical manures or synthesized fertilizers, which are extracted from far places that increased its cost as well; and all this needs the help of (4) a truly important mechanization, with continuous improvements, new tools full of all sort of branches, more weight, more oil consumption, more repairs, but that also now can be improved with new (5) management technologies as the spreading, watering and sowing control by GPS. What do you hope that could come from there?
You can wait the next strange feat: one day will be planted little boxes with all the necessary for each plant along one year of growth, by new machines specialized, with a new mix of growing nutrients, with its water intake included, its own populations of selected bacteria, for each new modified species, and related services of maintaining. Uh, I forgot the last, the new affordable price... for the higher industrialized farmers; unfortunately I must tell you that this is today being developed.
There are other viewpoints for all this. As usual, a path is directed to concentrate benefits on a few companies.
(1) We might have learned a lot from the species that naturally reached to adapt to places where we are cultivating them, and at least keep some of them which have been "bulwark" species, the most resistant and protective than the rest in the community; and we could have combined groups of species that coordinate with the others in their use of space and nutrients, promoting the continuity of soil. This would have conferred more strength to the entire system (not only the farm) as has been tested and proved already in too places, and thereby in consequence, we must deduct that never has been done any truly ecologic selection or evolving adaptation. That has been only an interested simplifying.
(2) It has meant the transformation of extensive estates into brown yellowish layers of dust and mud bricks with dead appearance and missing life. In these lands the natural structure to keep the soil organic matter, the water and productivity has been persistently depleted. Of course, all the carbon in the soil is now somewhere moving in the atmosphere or as energy, but not where is needed. Be partners of the companies which created the Orange Agent, it not means to be warriors or guilty of wars, but means to be stupidly deliverers of coarse inventions as has been the chemical progeny of war chemical compounds, what always showed what corporate culture have led inside those companies. Thus, currently we cannot be surprised by lack of arthropods; even those that we call essentials and friends, like are the bees.
(3) Whoever would be honest, should accept that the manufacturing of chemical manures by taking it from the other side of the world, paying for it miserably, and including the pollutant processes, the consumption of water for it, is pointless barring for manufacturer, which lose nothing, only earn. Furthermore, these magic products have a very impressive complex composition, which have nothing to do with real and natural manure. However, they have persuaded farmers of the magnificent composition (the NPK wizard) and properties of such nasty liquids. They never said more than the 50% is lost in the soil (so it costs twice), and runs down to the subsoil and waters.
(4) As if that is not enough, this is the best opportunity to sell more things: tractors every year more capable and powerful, bigger and more complex, with coolers for the beers, radio, conditioned air, a little TV for the boring time, an average of 12 farming tools since the subsoiler until the drill, with many thousand dollars by the road, repairs, thousand of liters of diesel fuel, assurances, for what? To bring millions of millions of tons of tomatoes, potatoes or corn to the market, as quickly as possible, and sinking the rest of markets in the world by lowering prices? Sometimes, the same rich farmers they get rid from technologies and go they back towards a clever agriculture (like some aware farmer in the US, tired, angry, and willing to recover his life).
(5) Everybody try entering in any purse, by making the difference. This is the new case, the landing of informatics over the farming: assessment, data, positioning, remote control, advise on time, measuring of doses, and saving of costs... by introducing new costs, this costs, changing each year.
Not pretending to be radical, waiting for a new reasonable use of technology, I must say what thinks my deeper soul: if the Ganymedes folks have already come, they could not understand how we can be such cretins.
Do you like a business in the black darkness?
Good: jump and land in Africa. Things seem be so differ
ent!
People do not hope go loaded to the market: think on eat all days, keep the properties, and pay new tools renewing the old and meager goods. Even they feel not to be capable to translate properly the properties and profits that have up 3,000 plants that we call weeds. Shocking, it is not? I told you this some lines earlier, two worlds in one world. People like and is not ashamed to farming, and always they were sure of keep the ownership; when they increase their knowledge they pamper the earth. They are able to learn to share herding, pastures, farming and be careful with use of streams. Their problems are not the ignorance, are that we think they live in a called third world. Africans have a record, are capable to make live a vehicle ten times. They have not much but learn and know how repair; they leverage everything several times, any drop, no piece is lost. When it is possible, when they have the opportunity, they are efficient. But farmers never have been able to take root in armed sites. This is not a Lesson of the farming teaching. And is very sad to see how seeds that come from nobody knows where, and some help, goes in and out, ups and down, changes of hands, acquires a new price, diminishes the sack, and
An Invisible Chain of our Time Page 19