Remember a barrel of oil is equivalent to 25,000 man hours of human labour.

I come from Sub Saharan Africa, where we have real life agrarian communities.
The reality is anything but idyllic… toil, grinding poverty and a short life.

It is no coincidence the region exhibits the highest rate of urbanization in the world as desperate people exchange the squalor of shack settlements near cities for the romantisized attractions of a buccolic existence.

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The impetus of voluntary simplicity is not just because its practitioners find it more aesthetically pleasing. It is also a matter of survival, which Josh sums up quite succinctly when he says “It is impossible for the human economy to grow indefinitely on a finite planet Earth, although economists, politicians and the heads of the Great Corporations are hell bent pursuing policies and strategies for as much growth as possible, as quickly as possible.”

It is not a matter of whether or not people “want” to simplify and practice self-reliance and a stronger sense of community. Rather, we are being forced, by necessity, to return to this lifestyle because we are running out of natural resources. This modern method of civilization is an experiment in our species’ existence and if you were to take the last century and a half of humanity’s “progress”, you’d see that it is only the top sheet of paper on a stack that is 1,250 feet tall. How can the top sheet of paper be right, but that entire towering stack be wrong? Biologically, this makes no sense.

If you’re the kind of person who gets his information better from graphs and diagrams and authoritative sources like economists, bankers and geologists, then I’d like to highly recommend that you visit the “Life After the Oil Crash” site, which you can find here:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

Or, perhaps, like me, you are the kind of person who gets ideas better through pictures and videos. If so, I would like to highly recommend the short video “The Story of Stuff”, which you can find here:

http://www.storyofstuff.com

However, the problem with statements like “If you want to live such a life, all the power to you. Please leave me out of your ‘we’ however” is that we just can’t do that because we’re all connected in the web of this global ecosystem. What one person does affects another, and certainly what one society does affects its neighbors. We live in a globally-connected world where natural resources cross oceans and continents, where citizens immigrate and where many corporations operate on on a multinational level.

How can local farmers, already involved or new to the scene like Josh and myself, hope for peace and prosperity when “civilization” demands more and more land in the name of “imminent domain” to make room for more and more neighborhoods, lumber mills, coal/oil mining operations or growth fields for bio-fuels to power vehicles? How can we hope for peace and prosperity if melting ice caps erode coastal areas, create environmental refugees to compete with us for land to live on and increase the spread of diseases like dengue fever? And how can we hope to find peace and prosperity when international war over resources like cheap petroleum, potable water and precious metals threaten the safety and stability of the world? There is no “I” on this planet, that is only an illusion. There is only a “we”, and an ostrich with its head in the sand on this subject is the same as a sitting duck.

Lastly, there is no “irony” in someone using a computer to tell other computer users that the entire system is unsustainable. It appears that your problem with this method of spreading awareness is that it smacks of hypocrisy, as if the messenger is more important than the message. I suppose we could walk door-to-door and deliver the message by word-of-mouth, but that’s just not very efficient, is it? And all signs indicate that we’re running out of time for anything less than utter efficiency.

No…the computers and networks being used to raise awareness in others could not be created in a self-reliant fashion in the “pseudo-Amish world the author envisions”.

But then again, in that world, there would be no need to warn them in the first place, would there?

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Gary’s comment struck a chord with me too, because I lived in Cambodia for a time and struggled to understand how the massive famines and paranoid repression of the Khmer Rouge times came to pass – the shocking, ugly and inescapable conclusion is that the radicalization of the KR was in direct consequence to the massive, indiscriminate and secret bombing campaign the U.S. unleashed on Cambodia in a desperate attempt to gain a stronger negotiating position with the North Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge rose from blood – just read the lyrics to their national anthem – and that blood was spilled in large part by American bombs and proxy, corrupt, Cambodian forces under Lon Nol that held “power” briefly between the overthrow of King Sihanouk and the ultimate KR victory.

I’m not trying to excuse the KR atrocities. Not at all. I’m only trying to understand the process by which such a tragedy came into being, and recognize my country’s central causative role.

-Tim

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You seem to think Josh is asking for everyone to become Amish, all or nothing, back to woods and goodbye to all mankind’s technological advances. Josh is not suggesting a 100 percent return to a lifestyle of the past, but a lifestyle change that for many could lessen the stress of their lives, and stress on the Earth.

And although “standards of living” may be better than ever, how much longer will the human species be able to live at all if our means of increasing these standards requires the destruction of the planet?

A year ago, I chose to become vegan. Not because I think the entire world could, should or ever will transition to an all or nothing vegan diet… but because it is a way for me to lessen my impact on the earth (with other obvious benefits). I don’t fantasize about some global agricultural revision that would leave livestock roaming freely all over the world.

From what I gathered from Josh’s article, I don’t think he fantasizes about an entire world of modern day people burning down their McMansions and walking into the woods in search of the 18th century. I find his article to be a good wake-up call for many of the members of this profit driven consumer economy who are constantly trying to fill voids in their lives with trips to Best Buy, or to a shrinks office. Life can be much more fulfilling when it is simplified.

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Thanx for the reply on my comment. You have clarified things a lot more. It is always nice to see different perspectives. We are entitled to our opinions and we are entitled to live our lives as we wish. Good on you for taking that step, we are among a select few individuals who realise that life is not a dress rehearsal. I can only hope to get this kind of response to the stuff that I write…
Best of luck with your endeavours and may the sun shine warm on your face and the rain fall softly in your fields

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Reading your comments makes me lament that I am not a clearer writer. It’s apparent from what you write that I have failed to adequately communicate my perspectives, since you seemed to have missed my point on so many things.

Perhaps we can continue the discussion, though I’ll require your patience and assistance in couching my ideas in a format that can remain intact as it travels from me to you.

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I have trouble with people who tell others they are not free and they offer the path to freedom. The last time a society tried a mass movement back to the fields and away from urbanization was when the Khmer Rouge took over in Cambodia and forcibly de-urbanized the country. We all know how that turned out.

I don’t feel trapped because I don’t grow my own food. I doesn’t make me less free to be dependent on other people for goods and services. Global society and the economy are intertwined and that is overall a good thing. I’d much rather live today than 500 years ago. Despite what people thing, almost every measure of human prosperity, health and happiness is better than it has ever been. In the places it is lacking (such as Africa) it is where people are living the life you recommend. There you see the most violence, the most hunger, and the most poverty.

I don’t think you can cherry pick what people specialize in, moreover, no one has that right to tell people what they can or can’t do. You may like brain surgeons, but if the brain surgeon has to take weeks out of every year to do things other could do (like chop wood and grow crops), we are all the worse off for it.

If you want to live in the woods and lead a simple lifestyle, that is certainly your prerogative. I think you forget however, that what makes it possible is the fact that you live in an advanced economy. Take away your truck, the seeds which have been cross bred for generations, the metal in the axes and saws you use, the computer you use to write this article, and material your clothes are made out of, and you are bad winter away from starvation.

I do not question that your life is happier living the way you do. You have every right to live it how you see fit. I don’t challenge your right to advocate it and try to get other people to join you. I do however think naive to think that it is possible without the rest of the civilization you are trying to get away from, or that it would be possible for everyone.

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Thanks for your clear-headed analysis. I won’t try to contradict a word of what you wrote, but to clarify a little more…

I want to make a distinction based on my own research and experiences between what could be called “good farming” and “bad farming.”

Good farming is regenerative of the people, the land, the animals, the soil, the entire local ecosystem. Bad farming degrades these things.

Certainly with most of the farming that is going on now, and has been going on at least since the Green Revolution, constitutes bad farming. With this type of farming the earth cannot support very many people. It is not a cyclic kind of farming that returns nutrients to the soil as it takes; it is more like mining – an extractive industry.

My understanding, based on my research and experiences, as well as a healthy dose of what could only be called religious faith, is that if good farming were to be practiced worldwide then the land could support many more people at a higher quality of life than most now enjoy.

Of course there is some limit to total population, even in the best case scenario of small scale, bio-diverse, organic agriculture for local markets – and I would not even hazard a guess at how many people the earth could support with such an agriculture. But clearly, to change from a destructive industrial agriculture to a regenerative agriculture would greatly reduce humans’ pressure on the biosphere.

Simply meeting local needs first instead of doggedly pursuing export-led growth models for agriculture would drastically reduce the energy requirements (and subsequent pollution due to) our massive transport infrastructure.

For example, the UK flies apples to South Africa to be washed and waxed before they are sent back to stock UK supermarkets.

Clearly this kind of absurdity indicates that there is a lot of fat than can be trimmed from our globalized system with a shift towards the local.

In terms of their farming practices, I do not know the details of what makes for the hardships of the rural communities in Africa that you speak of, so I cannot prescribe any “solutions.” But perhaps there are ways to help them to improve the output and the regenerative potential of their farming. I believe that this as a strategy would be preferable to increasing urbanization and intrusion of “Western market culture.”

Obviously I come from very different circumstances than these folks in rural Africa, and my writing reflects my point of view and perhaps is most relevant to readers with a similar point of view or socio-economic background to my own.

In “our” case, I see a great need for the development and practice of regenerative ways of living – regenerative of ecosystems, social systems, economic systems, and so on. I believe that the agrarian ideas and lifestyle practices I am learning about, attempting to understand and practice, and writing about present possibilities for such regenerative living.

I do not believe they present the only possibilities for regenerative living, and I do not recommend that everyone undertake them. I do recommend that more people undertake them.

The more I elaborate and practice at an agrarian ethic, the more joy and positive energy I find in my life. I want to share this with others who are inclined to find similar joy and positive energy.

Agrarianism is not for everyone, nor should it be. But to those who are interested, let’s continue to think on these issues together and see what we can do.

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Nice pictures Josh

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Greed and vanity are two of the main causes of all the shit that is happening on the planet right now. I will not go in to religion…
I value my live!

I agree – right now, America is running on only 4 fuels: fear, greed, vanity and gasoline.

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