Life Culture v. Death Culture 234 Robert M. Shelby, 7-30-14. [415 txt wds]

My blog post essay in late November, 2013, was titled, On Changing Ideas. It follows that I should now write on our national illness, a culture of death, a national stagnation caused by fixed ideas, comfortable habits and narrow outlooks. Conservatives and tea-party types should avoid reading this, for they are, and will be, happy in the Hell they are bringing about, until it fries their booties.

More than a deadly agricultural situation, we have a general culture of death by carbon energy suffocation and atmospheric cooking of the planet. The following phrases name the major characteristics of this culture and its results:

Corn & soybean over-production. “Neonic” spraying for insect pests (which also kills honeybees.) Ill-considered genetic meddling by firms with narrow goals that have very widely bad consequence. Note that some big firms have done good work but hide bad results so as to keep profiting from errors. Massive chemical fertilizing. Soil depletion. Surface destruction. Land erosion. Forest clear-cutting. Insufficient field rotation. Environment denaturing. Watershed ruin. Surface water pollution. Air pollution. Deep-well gas fracking. Groundwater pollution. Oceanic acidification. Over-fishing. Cattle feed-lots. Factory production of chickens, eggs, turkeys, milk and hogs. Processed and plastic-packaged foods. Bad nutrition foisted on a public whose taste has long been denatured by glowing claims suggested in advertising for profit only. Over-population.

Add to this list whole classes of professional workers abstracted from concrete sense of things through false perception of wealth as hoarded money and personal property. Add to this the division of people, vertically, into owners, managers, workers and split crossways into producers and consumers, givers and takers. Note that many takers are rich. Add to this list the religious, other-worldly orientations that blind folks to common connection and accurate speech. Note that well-meaning fanatics can do horrible things to others for reasons the perpetrators understand wrongly. Note that good intentions often conceal bad motives.

In short, people have been doing things increasingly wrong for the last two to four generations. It’s time to turn back the clock, not politically as the tea party wishes, but environmentally, through scientifically intelligent management of soil and human behavior. Freedom will prosper, not diminish under such management. Well being will increase dramatically as environment improves. Good management starts with soil.

Counterposed to Death Culture is an already well-rooted Life Culture which needs to be recognized, supported and expanded exponentially. Will it happen soon enough?

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