Choose Your Fighter

devolution vs. gleichschaltung

Farmers and doctors: same journey, same boat.

I wrote recently about a dire warning from Politico:

Oh no, cooperation. Appalling evidence of a governmental failure to provide firm guidelines!

So please read this post from Charles Eisenstein, a discussion of his recent visit to the Fuller Field School in southeastern Kansas — to discuss “regenerative agriculture, which includes intensive rotational grazing and no-till horticulture.” The website for the organization describes it like this: “Back in 2012, long before soil health, regenerative agriculture or carbon farming became cool, farmer Gail Fuller and soil scientist Dr. Jill Clapperton invited a fringe group of farmers, researchers and community leaders to share ideas, innovate, and build relationships. This informal gathering of renegades came to be known as ‘Fuller Field School.’”

Fringe farmers sharing ideas — can a dark-themed Politico feature be far behind?

Compare this to the model adopted in Sri Lanka, or the model emerging in the Netherlands, in which government ministers unilaterally issue broad decrees on the future of agriculture. One cooperates and heals; one issues top-down orders, and destroys.

Sixty miles away from the Fuller Field School (if you’re a bird), the declining small town of Humboldt, Kansas stopped declining because some of the people who lived there decided to start rebuilding, under the rubric of A Bolder Humboldt.

In the face of decline, cooperative models produce new life and social health. In the face of prosperity and comfort, top-down political decrees produce decline. At the moment, the latter model is spreading faster than the former, under the leadership of people who don’t feel it’s valid to notice physical reality. Earlier this month, electric power demand and supply in California looked like this:

But in thirteen years, every car in the state will be electric, and we’ll charge them all with solar and wind power. Because the government says so. It has to work: It’s the law.

We’re healthy from the bottom up, and sick from the top down, and working to expand both models at the same time. “Absent more guidance from the government, physicians are sharing ideas.” Winner TBD, with obvious implications.

The Schism

I hope to get to Humboldt in the near future. More to come.