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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The limits of intelligence (was: generating hope)
  • Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:21:16 -0400


I understand the comforting appeal in the idea that we can change the world and manifest whatever our hearts desire by believing that what we want is already true. But unfortunately some of the otherwise most intelligent people I know are stuck in ignorance and denial because of this belief. ~Doug

Taking this thought in a slightly different direction: Being intelligent (and we could throw in well-educated) is no guarantee that one will "get it right" where the Big Questions are concerned. The vast majority of people these days grow up completely divorced from the growth of food, therefore they cannot possibly think correctly about critical issues of agriculture, soil loss, runoff pollution, food quality, on and on--however intelligent they are. Indeed, I will hazard the statement that, so long as one is estranged from the realities of food production and the natural systems in which it takes place, then the *more* intelligent one is, the more likely one will come up with well-intentioned but disastrous solutions to the manifest problems deriving from a misguided and polluting agriculture.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

"How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used."
~Wendell Berry





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