The worst thing about the “attention economy” is that the most direct rejection of it (intentional obscurity) will, by nature, pass unobserved. This makes rebellion an isolated, individual, and impotent act unless you first embrace the enemy’s terms, which means you lose before you start.
@restlesslens I read Wendell Berry’s 1969 essay “Think Little” today. You may find it encouraging on exactly this point. 🙂
@restlesslens It seems to me you’ve first embraced the “attention economy’s” definition of potency (and success, winning, etc). When I think of potency, the first thing that comes to my mind is a seed.🌱
Maybe this isn’t far from the theme of “Think Little”, linked by @tinyroofnail.
@lzbth oooohhh, I like the seed framing here; going to sit with that a while. And yes, @tinyroofnail caught the same similarity and now I’ve got Berry’s essay right on top of the to-read stack!
@lzbth A good seed analogy is never a bad thing to be reminded of 🙂. I can’t think of a seed without simultaneously picturing a giant oak.
Though I’m sure that the seed analogy is not foreign to Berry, I don’t recall him using it in this piece. He does talk about gardening, but not, in this case, as an analogy at all but as the best possible activity for an individual to practice which, if done organically,
a. actually improves a piece of the earth,
b. increases a healthy sense of independence as well as a real independence from a waste-driven economy,
c. enlarges the person gardening, the meaning of food, and the pleasure of eating,
d. reduces trash.
He also adds: “If you think I’m wandering off the subject, let me remind you that most of the vegetables necessary for a family of four can be grown on a plot of forty by sixty feet.”
The essay is about much more than gardening — more about stepping back and reclaiming what it is we’re so unsuccessfully trying to implement at scale. A personal garden is just his straight-forward recommendation toward the end of the piece. I’m no gardener myself, but I aspire 👨🌾
@tinyroofnail Thanks for taking the time to respond. Yes, I’ve read the WB essay, and I’m pretty sure I like and agree with what it says.🙂 My “real reply” got long (as happens) and I’d like to post it on my blog. That might take a few days. In the meantime, there was one question I arrived at, in process:
If WB believes gardening is “the best possible activity for an individual”, then why isn’t he doing it? Why is he writing and publishing this essay instead?
I believe there are answers hinted at, in the essay itself. But perhaps (either or both of) you have thoughts?
Thanks for planting such a potent provocation, @restlesslens😊🙏🏻
@lzbth Ha, that’s a fair question. Berry may be an idealogue of peace and conservation (wonderful so in my book), but I’ve never known him to be a hypocrite. I think he did try committing himself to writing and traveling, and he taught English in New York City in the early 60s (his late 20s), but by the time he wrote this essay he was back in Kentucky — farming, gardening, and writing. 🙂
@tinyroofnail I agree, not a hypocrite, just nuanced🙂 So… In addition to those you’ve already listed, the final three paragraphs of the essay seem to describe the most wonderful outcome of gardening. WB writes, one might learn “how to know and faithfully occupy” one’s place in the order of creation, resulting in “a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in the face of mystery,” (i.e., humility). This describes a kind of ethics, and moreover, ecological wisdom. Encouraging others on a similar path of gardening-learning, through writing and teaching, might also be (a kind of) gardening-of-people, implicitly a worthy task.
Finally, WB finishes with the pretty amazing words of Black Elk. BE describes the sacred hoop and the “one mighty flowering tree to shelter all,” and his witness that it was holy. In these final thoughts, WB offers a cosmology that might be discovered through direct engagement with nature (as gardening), or is at least in agreement with ecological wisdom.
Then, thinking I’m not too far off here… I don’t mean “a seed” as just an analogy. (Same as Black Elk didn’t mean the hoop, or the one mighty tree, as just an analogy.) I propose “a seed” as a self-incarnating teacher of divine mystery.😊🙏🏻
@lzbth yes, “gardening-learning.” I read WB to be proposing the practice of gardening as a way to understand or embody our inextricable link to the earth and other beings. The act of fostering the seed. Thus, the scale of the garden seems less important than the intention (though in my experience both expand quickly…I’m starting a garden at our new rental house in the next few weeks…this time to green a concrete patio)