Our Greatest Achievement

When the speculation of Man’s greatest achievement arises, we naturally think of space exploration, medical advances, or some other modern technological wonder. But much of modern technology is essentially without value. It adds nothing to our quest for understanding our own spirituality, which is the principle reason for living on the Earth, and it also threatens the destruction of the planet.

The development of farming is humanity’s greatest achievement. Most hunting and gathering peoples suffer regular times of famine, such as in the winter when stored supplies run short or when game becomes scarce, as it periodically does. With the advent of farming, the food supply is much more predictable and often more plentiful. Farming also allows us to gather in villages so we can be more compassionate toward our old people and those for whom constant travel is a hardship.

The modern U.S. government has encouraged the mechanization of the farm and the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers because elected officials believe that if they can claim to have made food cheap, people will continue to vote for them. As the efficiency of farming techniques has increased, the need for farm labor has decreased. New work has had to be found for the superfluous farm workers. The factories of the industrial revolution supplied many with jobs and the cancerous growth of the governmental bureaucracy provided more. Now America has become an economy of service workers, which means that most of us are simply transferring paper money from hand to hand, with no real production to show for our labor and hence no real psychological reward for our labor.

Human beings must have both monetary and psychological rewards in order to live satisfying lives. We must have sufficient material reward to live in cleanliness and dignity and we must have sufficient psychological reward to live with self-esteem and compassion. The price we pay if either of those is deficient is exacted in hopelessness and the fear-based emotions, which lead to alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, and the disintegration of the family.

The type of farming as practiced prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine is ideal in many ways, although it’s unnecessary to divide farm chores into men’s work and women’s work. Farm life is family-oriented and makes room for the extended family – for the richness of family life that includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, even unrelated persons. Working the soil brings one close to the elements, close to God. It is no accident that church attendance began its decline when people moved from the farms to the cities.

Farming keeps communities small enough for public opinion to have an effect on each individual’s actions. This is a two-edged sword, however, and care must be taken that narrow-mindedness doesn’t blind people to the joys of diversity. Not that narrow-mindedness is limited to small communities. In actuality, it is in the cities that one finds enclaves of the kind of intolerance that kills people for having different hair styles or unfamiliar types of clothing. People in small towns and on farms, being in touch with the Earth, are less fearful and more able to exercise a wide charity and acceptance.

Non-mechanized farming does the minimum damage to the Earth. The plows don’t reach so far into the soil that one windstorm can carry away a foot of topsoil. Organic fertilizers and pest controls obviate the pollution of our water resources.

There is currently a great fear that without mechanized, chemicalized farming, we will starve. There is no reason to cut the amount of food produced. There is a shift in method, not result. We are adding labor, not cutting production.

There is also a great fear that without modern technology our lifestyles will drift back into savagery. What follows is a speech made by a Micmac Indian chief to some French fishing boat captains in Nova Scotia in 1676, quoted by T.C. McLuhan in Touch the Earth, published by Outerbridge & Dienstfrey in 1972:

“…Thou reproachest us very inappropriately, that our country is a little hell on earth in contrast with France, which thou comparest to a terrestrial paradise, inasmuch as it yields thee, so thou sayest every kind of provision in abundance. Thou sayest of us also that we are the most miserable and most unhappy of all men, living without religion, without manners, without honor, without social order, and in a word, without any rules, like the beasts in our woods and forests, lacking bread, wine, and a thousand other comforts, which thou hast in superfluity in Europe. Well, my brothers, if thou doest not yet know the real feelings which our Indians have towards thy Country and towards all thy nation, it is proper that I inform thee at once. I beg thee now to believe that, all miserable as we seem in thy eyes, we consider ourselves nevertheless much happier than thou, in this that we are very content with the little that we have….Thou deceivest thyselves greatly if thou thinkest to persuade us that thy country is better than ours. For if France, as thou sayest, is a little terrestrial paradise, art thou sensible to leave it? And why abandon wives, children, relatives, and friends? Why risk thy life and thy property every year? And why venture thyself with such risk in any season whatsoever, to the storms and tempests of the sea in order to come to a strange and barbarous country which thou considerest the poorest and least fortunate of the world? Besides, since we are wholly convinced to the contrary, we scarcely take the trouble to go to France because we fear with good reason, lest we find little satisfaction there, seeing in our own experience that those who are natives thereof leave it every year in order to enrich themselves on our shores. We believe, further, that you are also incomparably poorer than we, and that you are only simple journeymen, valets, servants, and slaves, all masters and Grand Captains though you may appear, seeing that you glory in our old rags, and in our miserable suits of beaver which can no longer be of use to us, and that you make in these parts, the wherewithall to comfort your misery and the poverty which oppress you….

“We see also that all your people live, as a rule, only upon cod which you catch among us. It is everlastingly nothing but cod – cod in the morning, cod at midday, cod at evening, and always cod, until things come to such a pass that if you wish some good morsels it is at our expense; and you are obliged to have recourse to the Indians, whom you despise so much, and to beg them to go a-hunting that you may be regaled. Now tell me this one little thing, if thou hast any sense, which of these two is the wisest and happiest: he who labors without ceasing and only obtains…with great trouble, enough to live on, or he who rests in comfort and finds all that he needs in the pleasure of hunting and fishing….Learn now, my brothers, once for all, because I must open to thee my heart: there is no Indian who does not consider himself infinitely more happy and more powerful than the French.”

Although the Micmac chief doesn’t mention it, his people practiced agriculture and raised corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and other vegetables. In light of the speech quoted above, we have to believe that he and his people had no need of modern technology and filled their lives with substance rather than the superfluity of the French royal court that the sea captains found so attractive. The European colonists and their descendants used the doctrine of “the highest and best use of the land” to justify stealing it from the Indian tribes. We are just now beginning to realize that the Indians had already put the land to the highest and best use.

All this is not to say that we can return to life as the tribes lived before the Europeans came, or even to life before the industrial revolution. There are more than three hundred million of us now and we are accustomed to electricity, indoor plumbing, supermarkets and all the rest of it. But surely we can look at the things we value and make new judgment calls when we look at the relative merits of life on the farm, life in the factory, and life selling hamburgers to one another.