WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

People don’t want to own things. People want to do things.

The other day I overheard a conversation between students. One of them had a new cell phone. It suddenly struck me that the others weren’t interested in the phone, but in what it could DO.

Isn’t that why people buy boats, campers, hot tubs, swimming pools, fishing rods, duck blinds and whatever? People like to do things. They even often enjoy puttering around with cleaning the pool and maintaining the camper. After all, there is no farm to care for.

At first I thought about how people like movies, television, and entertainment. But then I realized that what those things do is make you believe you are doing something. The sounds, visuals, conflict, romance, and even news reports convince us for awhile that we are doing those very things. For a little while, we think we truly matter.

Of course, when the movie ends we discover that we haven’t done anything at all, we feel even more useless than before. That is the danger of modern entertainment.

There was always something to do on the farm. One could do something different every day of the week and still have things to do. But in the urban setting it is much harder to find things to do that are constructive and productive.

I am not sure how to use this insight productively. People need things to do. Do you have any ideas?

GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT (GNP) AS DISEASE INDICATOR

Can a country survive when it is more profitable to be sick or broken than to be well or repaired? Soon the major portion of our Gross National Product will not be about production but about health care. No one can make money out of keeping people healthy, so we are worth more to our country sick and well. What if you stop receiving unemployment benefits? Will the GNP go down because you have nothing to spend. Of course, these ideas are only true if the only measure of value is the economy.

This is true of almost everything. For example, instead of talking about the life of one person, what if we examine the value of one marriage and family. If a husband and wife are united in their goals and committed to their marriage, they will work diligently to purchase a home, care for it properly, raise children, educate them, and try to be productive in the community. They will be of great worth that community as will their children as they grow into responsible adults. But they will not be very worth as much financially to the community because they will be frugal and consume less.

But they will be worth more, financially, to the economy, if they divorce. They will no longer be able to help each other out. There won’t be two people to help with the children and there will have to be two houses instead of one. Instead of producing part of their own food they will have to purchase more because there is no time to garden. They will have to purchase more processed foods because there is less time to cook. They will eat out more often. There will be legal bills, and trips back and forth to share children, and more cell phones so the children can stay in contact. More computers, TV’s, stoves, refrigerators, furniture, cars and such will be needed for two households.

The divorced family is worth so much less to the community generally, but so much more to the financial economy. Could the same thing be said for neighborhoods, communities, counties, states, and countries?

Perhaps the GNP could be used as a measure of just how bad and inefficient our nation is: the higher the GNP the worse off we are in all the things that matter most. Is the GNP a direct predictor of divorce? Could it be used as an indicator of ill health or failing communities? What happens to the GNP when people are paid to not work? I haven’t done the statistics, but it sort of seems like someone ought to look at that.

AGRICULTURE POLICY

In the last fifty years government policy has favored large agriculture which has displaced the population off of the farm and into cities. Now we find:
• the mega-farms in trouble,
• environmental contamination and degradation due to industrial farming practices,
• agricultural subsidies a huge drain on the government money (mostly to large corporate farms)
• increasing difficulty with food safety,
• and a huge regulatory industry on production and processing.

Of course, the displaced farmers all moved to the cities. They went to work in large industrial factories. The result has been:
• crowding in cities,
• expansion of suburbs onto farm land,
• increased demand for city services,
• increased taxes to pay for city services,
• increased land cost as land competed with housing,
• urban decline.
• And, as the economy falters, joblessness.

This change could, only come at the price of cheap energy. For under the US agricultural system for the last fifty or sixty years:
• food had to be produced in mass requiring greater energy and fertilizer,
• food had to be shipped long distances to processing plants,
• often food had to be shipped again for packaging,
• and then shipped again to the consumer
While this was going on:
• the factories required increased energy of operations,
• commuters required increased energy for traveling to work,
• and cities required cheap energy to meet the demands of growth.

Now one of the nation’s greatest concerns is joblessness, and it is the small businesses of the United States that are the greatest employers. Obviously government policy has promoted, even required, these changes, resulting in our present predicament. Yet these policies have destroyed one of the most successful small businesses available to men, the small farm. We now talk about farms and business as if they were separate things. A FARM IS A BUSINESS.

There is no question about whether we will run out of oil. The only debate is about when. If the earth is a hollow ball filled with oil we will run out in several hundred years. If that is not true it will be sooner. Either way, we will not see cheaper energy again. Can the present system, based on available and cheap energy, be maintained? Of course not!

So what kind of government policy could help us move into the future? While it will take many years and enlightened leadership to resist the existing establishment, policy that moved production, processing, packaging, and consumption back into local and regional centers would provide additional small businesses, employment, food, places to live, and use less energy. Present policy makes these changes impossible.

For example, a bill was proposed in the Colorado legislature in the spring of 2011 that would have allowed certain home businesses to sell food products under reduced regulations. These were low risk products such as honey, jellies, and fresh baked goods. The bill was defeated, presumably on public safety grounds. But the major opponents were supported by large agricultural producers, processors, packagers, and retailers.

Yet this bill would have been a step towards relieving financial suffering for many families, especially on the western slope, and would have been a step towards local production, consumption, energy savings and economic stimulus.

I do not wish to return to an earlier day. I would hope that changes in agricultural policy would create a more thriving economy, but one that was decentralized, regionalized, efficient, and economical. America does not need jobs. America needs work: meaningful, productive, satisfying, and rewarding work.

GREAT GRASS MAKES GREAT BEEF

Does American business produce what Americans want, or does American business make Americans want what they produce?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not mad at capitalism. I participate myself in my own small way. The B-B Ranch sells honey, beeswax, bees, solitary bee nests and bee hives. But I also think that a lot of what business does is convince people that they want what they make, instead of making what people want.

I bought a shotgun at Wal-Mart a year or so ago. I couldn’t leave the store until the background check was completed. That turned out to be about three hours. I am now very familiar with the products available in Wal-Mart. I probably don’t need ninety percent of it, and that only on occasion.

Do people want campers, boats, sporting goods, ten pair of shoes, jewelry, musical instruments, new dishes, and on and on? Or do people want close families, good friends, peaceful lives, fulfilling goals, meaningful work, and freedom? How many ads on television make it appear that the way to have the latter is to own the former.

In fact, people seldom own things. Things own people. You may spend a weekend with your family on the boat. But you will spend many hours before and after the outing getting the boat ready, cleaning the boat up, paying for the boat, insuring the boat, buying the boat, repairing the boat, and talking about boats. Most of that won’t be done with your family, but will, instead take you away from your family. You probably could have spent more time with them on a hike, reading together, or playing a game.

If you own a boat don’t be mad at me. The same thing can be said of guitars and mandolins, my personal weaknesses. My point is that people sometimes don’t think very carefully about what they really want to produce. Successful marriages, independent children, strong communities, beautiful farms are all forms of production also.

However, it’s difficult to sell them. Now honey! That will bring you good health and delicious toast.

DIVIDED

We are a divided people. We are no longer Americans. We are Black Americans, Spanish Americans, Italian Americans, and multicultural Americans. How is this different than a group of tribesmen?

But perhaps more importantly, we are divided from our purpose. This began when our living became separated from our work. I noticed this first when I visited rural Kentucky and went in search of a dulcimer. I had wanted to buy a dulcimer to learn to play and had planned an extended trip to shop for one. However, our trip was cut short and I found myself with just one afternoon in which to find a handmade dulcimer. My daughter and I went shopping.

We had the name of a man and an obscure rural address. After driving around for some time, even with a Google map, we had not found the home we were looking for. (Google is not really reliable once you leave paved roads.) There were a few homes along the road and we stopped at several, but no one seemed to know which house we were looking for.

There was an old, small house, back off of the road considerably, that we eventually approached. An elderly woman came out onto the small porch and we told her we were looking for a man who made dulcimers. She went out back and called her husband from a small shed. Mr. James Horn from Finchville, KY came out to visit with us. He eventually brought out some of his dulcimers to the front porch and played for us. His “pride and joy” wasn’t for sale, but I purchased a beautiful instrument from him. His business card said he was the maker of “Handcrafted Mountain Dulcimers”.

But what is important is how his home was set back off the road. I have noticed that in older rural areas, the homes are set back off the road. On modern hobby farms the homes are set close to the road. This, perhaps more than any other characteristic divides America, and it is clear now who is the minority.

You see, when the home is set close to the road it is easier to go to town, but it may take considerable effort to go to the barn or out to the field. But when the home is set back off the road it is easier to go to the barn and work the land. We are divided people.

TIME IS AN ARROW?

Time is an arrow! Or is it? In America, for the last at least fifty years, and perhaps much more, productivity has been defined as larger, more and faster. Economics of scale have been the holy grail of all efforts, from the farm to the retail store. Sales of every quarter must exceed the previous quarter, or the CEO’s position is in danger.

This has been encouraged by government leaders who have believed that this was the way to wealth and power. Leaders who believe in this paradigm set policies that encourage “biggerring and fasterring”. We moved people off the land to live in bigger and bigger cities, so farms could get bigger and bigger. The people worked in factories of ever increasing size that were surrounded by the bigger cities.

In this scenario everything is a straight line to progress. In fact, many government leaders literally called themselves progressives and actively pursued these ideas.

There is nothing wrong with this theory of course, except that it doesn’t reflect the real physical world in which nothing is a straight line. The earth is round, the planets orbit in circular motion which gives rise to circular seasons. The day revolvers and morning differs from night. The heartbeat, probably the first sound a human hears, is marked by systole and diastole and the blood flows in repeating cycles. Youth is followed by four periods of time from birth to death and new generations arise periodically.

When man’s concepts of order are not in agreement with nature, it is always nature that wins. It may take a considerable amount of time, but straight lines never continue upward. Eventually the cycles will turn them down, so those progressive ideas will always eventually lead to decline.

This is why a people who loose site of agriculture and the natural cycles of nature, and who begin to put their time and energy into the straight line progression of industry will always reap what they sow. The lineup will become the line down. Those countries that do not grow their own food, will eventually loose site of the wisdom of nature.

This is not some weird concept of nature worship, it is physics. Chemical reactions never proceed in only one direction. They are reversible under proper conditions, or they trigger yet further chemical reactions which changes the circumstances of the first reaction. The environment selects the plant and animal that survives, but the surviving plant and animals change the environment. Physical laws proceed in one direction only so long as the initial state is maintained. Once the physical world has changed to a new physical state, the laws of physics will change directions.

The problem with modern concepts of business, management, and government is that those teaching and executing the policies have lost sight of the fact that life and the world are cycles, requiring periods of rest between periods of growth and different behaviors during different seasons, all in preparation for the next cycle. If we wish to live at peace and with some kind of understanding, we must accept the concept of death. We must embrace the winters as much as the summers. We must alter our behaviors according to the cycles of our world, the times of our lives, and the periods of the universe.

UNITED

Bees produce. On the average a hive of honey bees can produce sixty pounds of surplus honey a year. But there are numerous kinds of bees, and while they all produce the same things, they don’t all produce the same amount.

All bees produce more bees, and provide pollen and nectar for their offspring. But only honey bees produce pollen and honey beyond the immediate needs of their offspring, because only the honey bee colony lives from year to year. Honey bees must put up stores for the winter. If the stores are inadequate, the colony dies.

Stay with me here. This is about more than bees.

A single bee, like most native bees, lays an egg and provides it with sufficient stores to survive the winter. After provisioning somewhere between ten and thirty eggs, which takes around six weeks, the adult dies and leaves the offspring to their own fate.

A single honey bee lives only about six weeks as well. But it spends its days serving the needs of the hive in various ways and provisioning the hive so that some descendents of the hive can survive the winter. At the peak of summer a beehive may contain 150,000 bees. Even over the winter, the colony will usually contain several thousand bees.

OK, so now we get to the point.

If a solitary bee can only provide for maybe thirty bees, how can a collection of bees in a hive produce and provide for several thousand bees?

They are UNITED! Each bee is programmed to do what it is supposed to do at each time in his or her life. But they all treat the hive as if it were there sole reason for existence, which, in fact, it is. A honeybee without a hive dies. But working together towards the same ends enhances survival of each bee as well as the whole.

An individual person can only accomplish so much. By working together we can produce more. The difference is that humans are not programmed to do only certain tasks. Humans can choose. This makes unity far more rare and difficult to achieve. However, those who accomplish and produce the most find ways of convincing others to unite with them in common, mutually-supportive goals and activities.

In most cases in history, and still in the world today, unity of a country has been achieved by force or accident. But one country has united by voluntary consent of the people. These people embraced a set of common constraints, responsibilities, and commitments called a constitution. They did so for the purpose of uniting because they were convinced that unity would better preserve the peace, protect the citizen, foster economic opportunity and allow individual self-determination.

Each individual gets to choose how carefully he or she adheres to the commitments and responsibilities of the constitution, but we are the first people in history to attempt to live like the bees, united in purpose and support for the good of all.

Bees do not reinterpret their purpose with each generation. They do not renegotiate their responsibilities or opportunities from season to season. It is the stable unity that has allowed them to flourish for thousands of years.

Mankind is not pre-programmed to a life like the bees. But we are programmed to live in groups. The lone survivor is a fascinating subject, but in reality a myth. Humans accomplish more when they are united and cooperative in social groups. The successful business man is able to encourage others in common goals and activities.

The value of the US Constitution is in its planned method of uniting the group for safety, efficiency, and economic benefit while protecting the individual to choose their own goals. It will only be advantageous to the country as a whole when it is treated with respect and as a rigid, only pragmatically flexible, foundation for the good of all mankind.