But subsistence is hard work, even with electric fences to help with rotational grazing and water that runs at the turn of a tap and the ability to grab eggs at the store if the chickens aren't laying. It’s easy to look back and criticize the extraction of others while ignoring our own faults, which are, quite frankly less forgivable, because anyone reading this comment has much easier access to a knowledge of the rapacity of our way of life as well as information on appropriate solutions that could mitigate some of the worst of what we exact upon the world around us.
After particularly difficult days on the farm, such the stress of our favorite goat giving birth to quintuplets or the pain of hayfever while scything a neighbor’s vacant lot full of ryegrass, we repeat to each other the unoptimistic phrase, “Nobody is going to want to do this.” And quite frankly, experience has proven that sentiment correct. This is not to pat ourselves on the back. More so, we're reminding ourselves that we’re just a bit off our rocker to think that we might muster a fight against the burrito-making machine of Chipotle or the endless and predictable (but ultimately sterile) riches of Costco and Trader Joe’s.
But there are moments of hope, as each year, the plant diversity of the pasture increases, the insect noises become louder, and the air fills with new beautiful bird calls. From this work, our children will hopefully have the skills, wisdom, liberty, and vitality to make wiser choices than us. That’s what keeps us going.
Thanks for this, A&R. It's such a helpful, complementary perspective to what I'm saying, and I resonate with your hard-earned knowledge. I subscribed to your Substack and look forward to learning more.
A&R Skabelund, this is a great counterpoint, and I was going to volunteer some similar thoughts.
Jon, when you say the pioneers "could have instead fully integrated into the area by working with the landscape and native people," I want to push back on that somewhat, in a way that I think is subtly acknowledged in your title also. They lacked the wisdom. The cultural clash between native Americans and European settlers was long-standing and fraught with suspicion and violence on both sides. We may always retain some degree of agency, but the options that are open to us depend heavily on our knowledge, and I feel pretty confident that the early pioneer settlers of Utah didn't have the requisite knowledge or culture required to do differently than they did. That's not to say that we shouldn't learn whatever lessons we can from their mistakes, but I think there's a huge benefit in hindsight that isn't being fully acknowledged here.
There is also the reality that we sometimes don't give the pioneers enough credit, and there were many things that they did much better than we do today. If we were trying to live in a manner more integrated with our physical landscapes, we'd still see a place for some of the localized irises, lilacs, roses, hollyhocks, herb and vegetable gardens, alfalfa, and fruit trees they planted, most of which have been ripped out or neglected by their posterity. Many of these plants are even coded fuddy-duddy old lady now. Our generation would rather plant sterile bunch grasses or forgo the living plants all together and replace them with plastic flowers and gravel, even as we supposedly know more about ecology now.
Also worth mentioning is the magnitudes-greater modesty of our grandparents' generation, rooted in the pioneer experience and solidified in the Great Depression. Were some of those habits cultivated through necessity? Sure, but many people held on to those habits even when they had a good nest egg. Our grandparents' big gardens and attitudes about the dishwasher being an "expensive drying rack" will always make us smile fondly. Yet the intelligentsia (both Mormon and secular) smugly pats itself on the back with its enlightened opinions about carbon capture and water conservation and generally looks down on these folks as rubes even as they--the intelligentsia--live far more wasteful, out-of-balance lives.
Probably not quite germane to this discussion, but letting AI write one's work reminds me of an interaction I had some years ago with an online columnist. He was proposing the use of cameras and computers to call balls and strikes in professional baseball. I argued that the judgment of umpires, good and bad, is part of the game and one of the life lessons implicit in baseball; if umps are replaced by automata, why not replace the players with robots? Or, as I read somewhere recently, if AI writes student papers, and professors use AI to grade them, it's only fitting that AI end up with the jobs.
reminds me of Paul to the Corinthians: I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. Putting kids right onto AI is for sure going to lead to a development problem. A bunch of top heavy people who can't stand up straight.
Some great points, tks! With every new emerging technology the experience is the same. I would say that "waiting to be acted upon" is the worst possible response. Sitting idly by, pining for good results is the least wise option of them all. Action in efforts to manage and shape good outcomes is the way. Jump on it early and often!
It's one way to navigate. Invigorating to some (me), boring to others (my wife). I seem to have glossed over your "wise actions" too easily due to the UT examples. You do stress that action in wisdom and temperance is needed. I let that get lost in me with the first reading. I'm a bit apprehensive of AI (old dog new tricks idiom). That and also, new systems and tech bring profits, plagues and promise. Thank you
Thanks for sharing some very valuable insights. I fear most how AI is likely to erode the intellectual development of children.
Good observations on how the decisions of our forefathers hem in and limit the choices available to us.
Having spent the last eight years trying to get a little farm going and trying to get a foot outside of the Industrial Machine, we’ve become much more understanding of those who have gone before. Yes, we’ve mourned the paths not taken, including the decimation of the piscatory riches of Utah Valley (where we both grew up) that kept the early Saints alive during those early hard years. (https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2020/8/10/21358753/guest-opinion-utah-county-tech-centric-future-human-natural-resources-silicon-slopes-farming-desert/) Or the chopping down of the pinons. Or the grubbing out of the mesquite trees. (https://arskabelund.substack.com/p/eat-mesquite)
But subsistence is hard work, even with electric fences to help with rotational grazing and water that runs at the turn of a tap and the ability to grab eggs at the store if the chickens aren't laying. It’s easy to look back and criticize the extraction of others while ignoring our own faults, which are, quite frankly less forgivable, because anyone reading this comment has much easier access to a knowledge of the rapacity of our way of life as well as information on appropriate solutions that could mitigate some of the worst of what we exact upon the world around us.
After particularly difficult days on the farm, such the stress of our favorite goat giving birth to quintuplets or the pain of hayfever while scything a neighbor’s vacant lot full of ryegrass, we repeat to each other the unoptimistic phrase, “Nobody is going to want to do this.” And quite frankly, experience has proven that sentiment correct. This is not to pat ourselves on the back. More so, we're reminding ourselves that we’re just a bit off our rocker to think that we might muster a fight against the burrito-making machine of Chipotle or the endless and predictable (but ultimately sterile) riches of Costco and Trader Joe’s.
But there are moments of hope, as each year, the plant diversity of the pasture increases, the insect noises become louder, and the air fills with new beautiful bird calls. From this work, our children will hopefully have the skills, wisdom, liberty, and vitality to make wiser choices than us. That’s what keeps us going.
Thanks for this, A&R. It's such a helpful, complementary perspective to what I'm saying, and I resonate with your hard-earned knowledge. I subscribed to your Substack and look forward to learning more.
Thanks! Hope you enjoy.
A&R Skabelund, this is a great counterpoint, and I was going to volunteer some similar thoughts.
Jon, when you say the pioneers "could have instead fully integrated into the area by working with the landscape and native people," I want to push back on that somewhat, in a way that I think is subtly acknowledged in your title also. They lacked the wisdom. The cultural clash between native Americans and European settlers was long-standing and fraught with suspicion and violence on both sides. We may always retain some degree of agency, but the options that are open to us depend heavily on our knowledge, and I feel pretty confident that the early pioneer settlers of Utah didn't have the requisite knowledge or culture required to do differently than they did. That's not to say that we shouldn't learn whatever lessons we can from their mistakes, but I think there's a huge benefit in hindsight that isn't being fully acknowledged here.
Yeah, there’s such a huge benefit in hindsight.
The more interesting and pressing question is what *we* will do with the (limited, as always) knowledge we have today
There is also the reality that we sometimes don't give the pioneers enough credit, and there were many things that they did much better than we do today. If we were trying to live in a manner more integrated with our physical landscapes, we'd still see a place for some of the localized irises, lilacs, roses, hollyhocks, herb and vegetable gardens, alfalfa, and fruit trees they planted, most of which have been ripped out or neglected by their posterity. Many of these plants are even coded fuddy-duddy old lady now. Our generation would rather plant sterile bunch grasses or forgo the living plants all together and replace them with plastic flowers and gravel, even as we supposedly know more about ecology now.
Also worth mentioning is the magnitudes-greater modesty of our grandparents' generation, rooted in the pioneer experience and solidified in the Great Depression. Were some of those habits cultivated through necessity? Sure, but many people held on to those habits even when they had a good nest egg. Our grandparents' big gardens and attitudes about the dishwasher being an "expensive drying rack" will always make us smile fondly. Yet the intelligentsia (both Mormon and secular) smugly pats itself on the back with its enlightened opinions about carbon capture and water conservation and generally looks down on these folks as rubes even as they--the intelligentsia--live far more wasteful, out-of-balance lives.
Beautifully written , insightful and frightening all at once!
Can Narcissus even begin to build the "City of God"?
http://beezone.com/adida/narcissus.html
Two related references:
http://beezone.com/current/whatiswisdom.html
http://beezone.com/adida/killing_the_tiger.html
Probably not quite germane to this discussion, but letting AI write one's work reminds me of an interaction I had some years ago with an online columnist. He was proposing the use of cameras and computers to call balls and strikes in professional baseball. I argued that the judgment of umpires, good and bad, is part of the game and one of the life lessons implicit in baseball; if umps are replaced by automata, why not replace the players with robots? Or, as I read somewhere recently, if AI writes student papers, and professors use AI to grade them, it's only fitting that AI end up with the jobs.
reminds me of Paul to the Corinthians: I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. Putting kids right onto AI is for sure going to lead to a development problem. A bunch of top heavy people who can't stand up straight.
Some great points, tks! With every new emerging technology the experience is the same. I would say that "waiting to be acted upon" is the worst possible response. Sitting idly by, pining for good results is the least wise option of them all. Action in efforts to manage and shape good outcomes is the way. Jump on it early and often!
Is sailing — to use the metaphor from the piece — “sitting idly by”? Thanks for reading!
It's one way to navigate. Invigorating to some (me), boring to others (my wife). I seem to have glossed over your "wise actions" too easily due to the UT examples. You do stress that action in wisdom and temperance is needed. I let that get lost in me with the first reading. I'm a bit apprehensive of AI (old dog new tricks idiom). That and also, new systems and tech bring profits, plagues and promise. Thank you