Incurious Ascendant... submitted by Dave

I read lots of books about farming.   Lots of smart people have applied considerable intellect to the problems of productivity and making a living in a very challenging field.  I also read a lot about the role of community in our lives.  A well written book is a great boon to me, preventing me from making obvious mistakes and those that I might not have been able to predict.   From the experience and knowledge of others I stand a chance of making a go of this endeavor.

Since most books are written by smart people, I wonder about the anti-intellectual strain of our culture.  I don’t understand how intelligent people who have spent significant portions of their lives in pursuit of knowledge are dismissed or their efforts and opinions discounted… particularly in the political arena.  Instead, it seems a lot of us celebrate the incurious.

A year or two ago I had a discussion with a former military commander of high rank.   He possessed impeccable academic credentials, supreme social and command skills and a firm belief in our ability to harness technology to our will.   At some point during conversation I posited that the pace of invention had outstripped our ability to manage or comprehend what we were capable of creating...  put another way that our social skills and social organizations were slower to evolve than our technology.  I wasn’t suggesting that the genie be put back into the bottle.  I don’t think that it can.  A chill crept into the tone of our conversation.  I’m certain that he felt I had betrayed an anti-intellectual, anti-technology perspective. 

Our current financial mess was created by very smart people developing ways of shuffling the promise of future money around in order to spread risk.  This risk was spread far and wide through complex accounting and marketing, but it didn’t go away and now a lot of false value propped up by the perceived safety of shared risk has disappeared.  I’m being generous here.

Our financial markets thrive on the creation of the new.  Our marketing sector thrives on ginning up the perception of need for the new and improved and the intellectual/intelligent/educated people doing the real world work of creating new technologies and inventions want very little in the way of control over their efforts.  Indeed, if controls are placed on them, most will move or be moved by their companies to another country without the impediments.

Intelligent, educated and politically savvy people have always manipulated economic systems to their advantage and in this most recent period of manipulation most of us were content with the bits that fell off the table where this great financial feeding frenzy was taking place.  The apparent level of prosperity rose but an underlying angry theme has been fomented by political factions.  This anger was easy enough to control given that, economically, things were relatively good.   The end of the global expansionist economy isn’t here yet, we’ve still got billions of people who want to buy TVs and eat more meat, but it’s getting closer, and with its demise the financial game becomes zero sum.  Money flows around the globe without concern for political boundaries.  There are winners and losers in a zero sum world.   I warn those who manipulate and those being manipulated to be very careful with the politics of anger.   The cultural revolution in China provides a dramatic example of the end game for anti-intellectualism in the name of political control. 

Maybe the anti-intellectual strain in our culture is understandable in the context of people surrendering control of their lives.  We run ever faster for more and more of what we perceive to be necessities.  While running ourselves ragged, it’s easier to let other people run the show and then blame them for it when things go badly.  

We can step back from the political and financial abyss by strengthening our local communities and economies.  Our political system, democracy, is an ideal but admittedly messy way of governing our communal lives.  Our communities are of a scale that we can understand and a place where the result of our actions are immediately apparent.  The farther we remove ourselves from our natural world and our fellow community members the easier it is to vilify and blame.  Whisper campaigns and outright lies find poorer soil in which to grow when you know the people about whom the lies are told.

Buy local products, barter or trade with neighbors, or come work on my farm and you’ll be surprised how much better you will feel about the human condition.   Try not to fall prey to the fear mongering, anger and anti-intellectual fervor that some will try to pass for patriotism.  I find it more likely that a smart person will understand the forces at work and act in a way worthy of my trust than an incurious person will find a way to solve the problems our society faces.

But right now, it’s late and I’ve got to go milk the cows in the morning.