(A Series in the new Agrarianism) Edited by Bill Vitek and Wes Jackson. The University Press of Kentucky, 2008.The question of the book is this: "Since we're billions of times more ignorant than knowledgeable, why not go with our long suit and have an ignorance-based worldview?" In other words, why not try humility in the face of our incurable ignorance rather than hubris-ic bravado. This is a new-old epistemology, as several of the authors point out--at least as old as Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates and the rest, maybe even as old as the Garden of Eden. The question is pondered, chewed like cud, by a "who's who" of thinkers and garden philosophers from a wide variety of disciplines and professions: Wendell Berry, Robert Perry, Richard D. Lamm, Conn Nugent, Raymond H. Dean, Steve Talbott, Anna L. Peterson, Paul G. Heltne, Charles Marsh, Peter G. Brown, Strachan Donnelley, Robert Root-Bernstein, Marlys Hearst Witte, Peter Crown, Michael Bernas, Charles L. Witte, Herb Thompson, Jon Jensen, Joe Marocco, and Craig Holdrege.
In other words, this is a book of collected essays based on a symposium held in June 2004 in Matfield Green, Kansas, and suffers all of the weaknesses such books incur, especially an unevenness of quality, abrupt changes in the level and focus of the discourse, and a tendency toward successive monologues rather than true dialog.
That having been said, the book's subject is timely and vital. As I write, the Republican standard bearer and Republican VP candidate are priming every audience they meet with chants of "drill, baby, drill"--hardly a humble stance toward the consumption of fossil fuels or the dangers of global warming. Palin, the GOP VP candidate, still doubts the science of global warming. This would be fine if her stance were one of humility and reverence for life (all of life, not merely the unborn individual human life) in the face of her ignorance, but instead she insists on exhausting the natural world now and squandering on the present generation what it took nature "geologic time" to build.
It is also ironic that I am posting this review on the eve of the first operation of the Large Hadron Collider. As the New York Times so cleverly opines: Fingers Crossed, Physicists Are Ready for Collider to Roll. Why "fingers crossed"? Because once again we humans are willing to roll the dice with nature in order to increase our knowledge. We love to open Pandora's box again and again, to eat every now and again of the tree of knowledge--to take a chance on blowing up the world for the sake of a little science. (Collider Article 2, Collider Article 3). The problem with science as it is--with the knowledge-based world view we have inherited--writes Peter G. Brown is "the dictum that moral judgments have no place in science." The question is always whether we can, not whether we should. Without moral judgments and without a basis for such morality in our respect for nature, we cannot ever answer whether we should. In the case of the collider, for example, whether dangerous black holes emerge or not (something you cannot know before you smash a few particles), is it moral to spend $8 billion, not counting the toll on natural resources, to create such a monster for the benefit of rarefied science? Is it? On what moral basis did we decide to act in such blatant disregard for a reverence for life?
The authors of this book urge humility, a recognition that "We do not own the world but are simply voyagers on it along with millions of other species--many extinct, many yet to come--with whom we share both heritage and destiny." (Brown)
If we want to avoid a tumbledown fate for our planet, one that equals the tumbledown state of our farms, we would do well to heed their advice.
I highly recommend this very difficult read, for goodness sake.
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