"Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short."
A few tips of the hat to NRO's Corner, first for pointing out the following New Yorker cartoon:
I'll reiterate that I believe that modern technology brings its own problems, but I think those problems are more manageable: by orders of magnitude, childhood obesity is less of a crisis than is a famine.
The second hat-tip is for pointing out this New Yorker article by Steven Shapin. I took away from the article four things that ought to give crunchy consumers food for thought, if you'll pardon the phrase.
It's a good article, with a lot of substantive criticism for some of the things Rod Dreher seems to advocate. I do wish he would read it and respond to it on his blog.
Of those four points, that last point is perhaps the most interesting for me, philosophically and theologically. Christianity stakes out for itself unusual ground in that, unlike the gnostics, it does not write off the physical universe as unreal or evil, but unlike the hedonists, it also does not embrace the physical universe as purely good. The universe is spoiled by sin -- once good, at least partially tainted and corrupted at present, but waiting for redemption at the end of history. Rod's focus on the physical details of his room and board during his temporary stay on planet Earth may be no less materialistic than the pop culture he rejects.
But let's move from the theological to more mundane matters. Rod Dreher seems to oppose growing meat in a laboratory. (I write "seems to" because Rod quotes a reader of his blog without making entirely clear whether he agrees.)
Okay:
Factory farming. Laboratory farming. Mass starvation.
It may not be that these are our only options, but there are consequences for every choice. Again, the sudden removal or prohibition of synthetic fertilizers could result in the deaths of billions; African farmers are having trouble selling their wares to Europe because Europeans seem to have their own elite sensibility when it comes to food; the prohibition of factory farming would surely make meat less affordable for and less available to the poor, because if organic farming methods were less costly, farmers would have already migrated to those methods en masse.
So, if it came down to those three options, I wonder what Rod Dreher would choose, and why. Is it more important that food be sacramentally grown or that human beings not starve to death?
Or, given his broad pronouncement about beauty being more important than efficiency, do we already know the answer to that?
I'll reiterate that I believe that modern technology brings its own problems, but I think those problems are more manageable: by orders of magnitude, childhood obesity is less of a crisis than is a famine.
The second hat-tip is for pointing out this New Yorker article by Steven Shapin. I took away from the article four things that ought to give crunchy consumers food for thought, if you'll pardon the phrase.
- In the struggle to meet one's nutritional needs, the flight from methods that resulted from the Industrial Revolution could logically lead to a flight from even the Agricultural Revolution. A writer named Michael Pollan seems to define moral eating by shrinking the chain between producer and consumer, and in his book he chronicles his journey to a meal that resulted (mostly) from hunting and foraging for food. Tying the crunchy movement to the New Yorker cartoon above isn't quite hyperbole.
- Concerns about where food comes from can lead to a kind of madness about the details. "What particular bacteria, fungi, and trace elements lurk in the soil of your sustainable community farm? Does your friendly local farmer use a tractor or a horse? If a tractor, does it use fuel made from biomass? If a horse, are the oats it eats organic? If the oats are organic, does the manure with which they were grown come from organically fed animals? How much of this sort of knowledge can you digest?"
- At the macro scale, organic farming may have a human cost. The author points to a study that suggests that the sudden removal of synthetic fertilizers could result in the deaths of billions.
- One can overemphasize the material world: Insisting that the salads we eat reflect a vision of society is "biting off more than most people are able and willing to chew. Cascadian Farm's Gene Kahn, countering the criticism that by growing big he had sold out, volunteered his opinion on the place that food has in the average person's life: 'This is just lunch for most people. Just lunch. We can call it sacred, we can talk about communion, but it's just lunch.'"
It's a good article, with a lot of substantive criticism for some of the things Rod Dreher seems to advocate. I do wish he would read it and respond to it on his blog.
Of those four points, that last point is perhaps the most interesting for me, philosophically and theologically. Christianity stakes out for itself unusual ground in that, unlike the gnostics, it does not write off the physical universe as unreal or evil, but unlike the hedonists, it also does not embrace the physical universe as purely good. The universe is spoiled by sin -- once good, at least partially tainted and corrupted at present, but waiting for redemption at the end of history. Rod's focus on the physical details of his room and board during his temporary stay on planet Earth may be no less materialistic than the pop culture he rejects.
But let's move from the theological to more mundane matters. Rod Dreher seems to oppose growing meat in a laboratory. (I write "seems to" because Rod quotes a reader of his blog without making entirely clear whether he agrees.)
Okay:
Factory farming. Laboratory farming. Mass starvation.
It may not be that these are our only options, but there are consequences for every choice. Again, the sudden removal or prohibition of synthetic fertilizers could result in the deaths of billions; African farmers are having trouble selling their wares to Europe because Europeans seem to have their own elite sensibility when it comes to food; the prohibition of factory farming would surely make meat less affordable for and less available to the poor, because if organic farming methods were less costly, farmers would have already migrated to those methods en masse.
So, if it came down to those three options, I wonder what Rod Dreher would choose, and why. Is it more important that food be sacramentally grown or that human beings not starve to death?
Or, given his broad pronouncement about beauty being more important than efficiency, do we already know the answer to that?
posted by Anonymous at 5:45 AM
3 Comments:
There's another recent New Yorker cartoon that reminded me of Dreher and company:
man sitting at a bar talking to a woman --
"But when I became a man, I put away childish thingees. Thingamabobs. Whatever."
What-cha-ma-call-its. Doo-hickeys.
I guess you folks weren't concerned when industrialized beef farms started feeding beef cuts to their cattle as a source of protein. h well what's a little mad-cow disease. Its just lunch.
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