The Scarcity of Personal Words

Fifty years ago, most of the words heard by an American were personally spoken to him as an individual, or to somebody standing nearby. Only occasionally did words reach him as the indifferentiated member of a crowd - in the classroom or church, at a rally or circus. Words were mostly like handwritten, sealed letters... Today, words that are directed to one person's attention have become rare.

When Ivan Illich made this observation over thirty years ago, he was pointing out something obvious, but most probably completely unconsidered. I doubt if, for most of us, there is any way back to human communication that is predominantly an expression of membership in particular families, communities and churches, rather than membership in a nation-state, a monolithic dead culture, or a media church.

There has always been an important place for some forms of undifferentiated communication such as sermons, speeches, or public music or drama. The world can't get along without these things, nor would I want to see it try. That doesn't make the poverty of our situation any less obvious or painful, though.

We do this to ourselves and to others consciously but not quite deliberately. My son asked me for an mp3 player. He's seen that earbud hanging out of my ear and known that I was engaged in my curious one way conversation with the wider world that he wants to enter. It's not a world I'm really proud of, where everything including the making of music is left to the professionals catering to their dependents. Mp3 players replaced cd players, which replaced cassette players. . . all of which replaced the guitar - except for the one in the hands of the professional player.


Sitting here with the computer, trying to keep this short, I'm wondering if I'm not the hypocrite right at the moment. But I want to think this through in a conscious and deliberate way and typing it out seems to settle the vagaries of my thought.

We've all become convinced that we need all this media input. The question of how we arrived at such a conception of our needs is not a puzzling question, because we all recognize that in this we've been targets of the marketers. But the sheer volume of it, and the endless nature of it lead me to resonate again with Illich's description of it as "disabling market intensity." Our communication tools, which claim to enable and empower, tend instead to disable us because they are created to standardize our responses as dependants upon market commodities. There is simply no money in private conversations, no way to valuate them in the marketplace.

This pervasive monetizing impulse both captures and appalls us. We don't seem to be able to escape it, though we fear it might be our duty to try. We simply can't speak for very long, or very meaningfully, about those things which ought to be valued in terms other than money. That seems to be some sort of sentimentalism, romanticism, or possibly the domain of religion or mystery, definitely the stuff of very short conversations. The one exception is when advertisers perversely and successfully persuade us to project these non-monetized values onto our purchases. Priceless.

Friendliness, what Illich likes to call conviviality, is not really that when your friend is just feigning pleasant small talk until he can close a sale. The vast majority of all the communications we receive are just like that, as if everyone was in Amway. I think we all know that our modern corporatized market is not based upon friendship or relationships that are real apart from the monetizing of the market itself.

This has a debilitating effect as people attempt to supply one another's needs personally, either in the form of uncompensated labor, or especially in trade. What should be very natural to friends - exchanging value for mutual benefit - has become the domain of the professionals who lie to us daily, telling us they know us, care about us, and want to help us. The offer of personal trade with a friend becomes tainted with the stain of the media-marketers constant lying. We are conditioned to feel the shame that we know they should feel whenever we make offers to personally provide the needs of another. Even words such as this will put some people on guard. But relax, I'm not going to hit the "Monetize" tab on the blogger toolbar.

An active woman who runs a house and brings up children and takes in those of others is distinguished from a woman who 'works', no matter how useless or damaging the product of this work might be. Activity, effort, achievement, or service unmeasured by professional standards threatens a commodity-intensive society.

At the same time, we don't feel very comfortable using our own energy and resources to provide for our own needs and those of our families. We often can't attach a dollar value to this sort of work that justifies it in the eyes of our neighbors. We feel almost guilty not supporting the great machine that provides all this stuff that the great machine has convinced us we need. Making ones own goods can be no more than the occasional curious hobby, and those who engage in any serious attempts at self-provision are regarded as backward isolationists, or subverters of the economy. To the latter I plead guilty.

The disabling of the citizen through professional dominance is completed through the power of illusion.

The people with the microphones and cameras get to define for us, really create for us, both the problem and the solution they wish to either sell to us in the market, or tax us for in the government realm. I doubt anyone can name one "problem" that business or government is engaged in solving that they haven't created through the media. We're made helpless to solve any problem by ourselves, and if we resist the help that is offered, we are alienated, mocked, or even fired or arrested.

So small a thing as restoring personal words seems a powerless response on the surface, but I suspect it is a thing feared more than armies by the people who profit by creating dependance on their words alone. In the world of limited time, the restoration of personal words means that the experts, the problem creator/solvers, the salesmen, and the politicians can't find the equal time they need to activate our response to their created needs.

Speaking directly to people and listening to words directed only at me are skills that are now harder to recover than they should be. My mind is used to wandering as the media blather drones on, and my words often mimic their manipulative speech patterns. But, just as personal words have been sqeezed out of our limited time by the professional mass communicators, re-learning the use of personal words can squeeze mass communication back into it's appropriate space.

I find it hard to imagine a world where that has happened, but I feel sure it is a place I would want to live.

'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"

What's the Church

In light of some other discussions here and there, I thought I'd post my own few thoughts here rather than lengthy comments there.

Baptism is entrance into the church, outside of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. So baptism saves us. This simple and biblical statement bugs a lot of people. It comes down to two simple concepts, visibility and humility. I can see water on the outside of a body. I can't see Jesus in someones heart, however strongly I may wish for such discernment or however many people may claim to have it. Obviously, people who give evidence of open rebellion against God, and who have visible water on them, are lying against the water and what it means, and are in need of discipline. Without membership in the church just what sort of discipline can leaders administer? Those in rebellion must be grateful for the wonderful coincidence that they don't believe much in the church and they pretty much want to do what they want to do. People who seem submissive to God but refuse the water, well, what kind of submission picks and chooses. So, as far as we can see and make any meaningful statement, the saved are all in the church.

Pretending that shelter and warmth are not important seems to be the preferred strategy of people who don't want to accept the household rules. The church is like a family, not like a club or corporation; an organism, not an organization. Some people might leap at such a statement; Aha! So I don't have to join the organization, become a member, agree to the doctrine, etc. Bad move. . . Aha! So I don't have to be a part of the organism, become a member, agree with the head. That makes you not just out, but dead. You're dandruff and fingernail clippings.

Nevertheless the examples of "churches" that seem to be primarily organizational rather than organic presents an unnecessary stumbling block for people. An organism (a body) has a hierarchy, but it's a rather flat one with everyone taking orders from one head through a single central nervous system. This is a statement of an ongoing biological fact, not some sort of ultimate goal for the church. Notice the lack of a detailed pecking order among the members. Notice the noisiness, the messiness and the smells right along with the little flowers, fruit trees and singing birds. Organic. Beautiful.

This doesn't so much leave no room for denominations as it leaves no reason to be overly concerned with them one way or the other; arms, legs, fingers, toes, etc. The schisms Paul is concerned with are divisions in the local church when it comes together. The wider church in his time was already divided into separate jurisdictions simply due to geography. A member of the church in Corinth had less of opportunity to talk to an Ephesian than I have to talk to a Lutheran and the elders of one church did not concern themselves with exercising authority over other churches. This did not rule out providing charity to churches suffering poverty or persecution, nor did it rule out the need for the elders to occasionally convene in councils to resolve disputes and further instruct the elders themselves.

But an organization doesn't have a hierarchy it is a hierarchy. In this model only the leadership really counts, so if no one is present for the mass, no matter, the really important people are doing what they need to do and God is pleased. Nice and tidy, almost mechanical. Need more excitement? We'll manufacture some smells, a bunch of bells, and we've even got an art museum. Things hum right along, regardless of how the congregation is doing. Beautiful, ain't it.

(Now, I'm hardly against art, perfume and music, but the thing to understand is that a painting is not greater than what is painted, nor is it greater than the painter. The painter and the subject of the painting are made by God. And wonder of wonders, the Creator made creators. A painting only "points" to God mediately, backwards through its creator, and backwards also through the creation it attempts to represent. God made a creation to be painted, glory to God. God made a skilled painter of the creation, glory to God. But to pretend that the painting itself is doing the pointing or inspiring the gloria all by itself is idolatry.)

Steep and deep hierarchy tells us we need all these trappings because God does not have an open door policy in Jesus Christ. What he has is handlers, receptionists and automated phone systems. But this is not the church of scripture. The church relates to God as a bride, a body, a flock, all of which God wants to deal with directly and personally. Sure, there is a thin layer of undershepherds who are to work closely with the head shepherd, but not a thick bureaucratic crust of hierarchical excess. The people who hold these sorts of bureaucratic positions don't want to give you easy access because that would be an intolerable diminishment of their power. But Jesus doesn't teach us to view authority or power as central in His governing of the church, although they do play a major role in his war against the unbelieving world he is conquering.

So none of this is an attack on a truly biblical view of authority. God has so ordered the church in love that he has given us elders who rule by loving, feeding, teaching and disciplining the flock. The rulers of the Gentiles do it one way and God's ministers do it a different way. "You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all." Those who think that authority over others is very important should not have it. Those who think that service to others is very important should be given authority over others as well. And those in authority over us should be obeyed.

Dwelling on Cold Mountain

I recently listened to Charles Frazier's audiobook reading of his novel, Cold Mountain while doing some of my work related driving. He tells a great story that doesn't often connect with my faint recollections of the movie version. I was jarred a bit by his portrayal of the main character, Inman, and of the Home Guard, a force that patrolled the countryside rounding up Confederate deserters. Inman seemed to be pretty muched stripped of loyalty to the South, being rather a character wholly loyal only to his native and local mountains (where Cold Mountain is located). The Home Guard are vicious killers, embittered by impending loss, and interested more in retribution on retreating soldiers than in returning them to the battle.

I figured Frazier probably had his history muddled by prejudice, since the Southern armies consisted of State and local militia groups manned by volunteer forces. At least I so assumed. But it turns out this was only true early in the war, before the Confederate Conscription Act of 1862, the first of three conscription acts. The South actually began conscription before the North, much to my dismay. Whether Frazier's portrayal of Southern home guard units is accurate is debatable regarding their brutality, but not their mission, as bounties on deserters were in fact offered by the Confederate government. I'm not exactly a history buff, as my dismay at learning these things reveals, but it causes me to question some of my other assumptions about the South and the confederacy.

The first of these is the idea of a basically unified South, where slave owners, yeoman farmers, and townspeople were united in opposition to the North. This may have held sway early in the first heady days of the war, as people reacted to the threat of invasion, but as the war proceeded, old divisions and animosities apparently rose more and more to the surface. One of those areas of tension was between the wealthy owners of many slaves and the poor white farmers with no slaves. I recently read a statement in a book on Missouri history that sums up the difference in perspective quite nicely. A slaveowner, in persuading others to join the Southern cause makes a remark to the effect that the South needs to fight for freedom and slavery, for no man can be free who must labor for his own bread. Much as I hate industrialism and the de-humanizing factory, I am forced to admit that it is no more an enslaver than the Southern plantation, for in both, the freedom of some is dependant upon the slavery of others. The chief difference is that the factory is able to convincingly propogate the lie that its wage slaves are really free.

The recourse to conscription (government kidnapping and enforced bondage) reveals the true nature of the Confederacy, although the Union was far worse and prevailed, essentially, because it had more slaves in the fight. But, such was the rule historically, as virtually all armies including Napoleon's were conscriped armies. The effectiveness of volunteer forces was considered highly questionable.
In light of this, the situation in the United States during the Viet-Nam war and following is all the more significant. The large scale resistance to the draft and the formation of an all volunteer army on the scale we now have are both unusual and possibly promising. Draft resistance may not have been the decisive factor in bringing about an end to the war, but it made a significant dent in the machine. It proved that the refusal to cross an ocean and kill people could have an effect on the governments ability to wage war. The all volunteer army is now proving something similar, as it is becoming exhausted by prolonged distant conflict.

The question is this: If our government tries to re-instate a draft, how will the people respond? In the aftermath of 911, the government missed it's golden opportunity to restore conscription at a time when few would have objected. Proposals for compulsory national service seem to be everywhere and it seems like military conscription is part of the package, as people would be given the choice between military service and "volunteer" social work. Involuntary servitude is the same whether people are kidnapped and forced to serve soup or kidnapped and handed a rifle. Considering that the U.S. already has one of the highest rates of volunteer service in the world, it's hard not to suspect that the main aim of these calls for national service is to bring back the draft to shore up an exhausted imperial military force.

The simple ability to stay home is almost non-existent in the personal lives of most of us, but it is a discipline we probably should cultivate. We scoot off on the slightest whim to whirl about in our little consumer paradise. But stay home long enough and you'll find some useful, satisfying work that needs to be done, some conversation that needs to be enjoyed, some book that needs to be read, and sometimes just some pipe that needs to be smoked on the front porch. Stay home long enough and rather than scooting out the door in ten different directions, you can plan your steps and shepherd your hours for the most good. Leaving home is sometimes good and has to happen, but staying home more than we do is a pre-requisite for using that time wisely.

Soldiers should want to stay home, too. In the history of wars, whenever one side has been a little closer to being on the right side, its soldiers usually have not had to travel far to get to the war. Since the curse of Cain, violence and wandering have been linked. Even in the life of Abraham, called by God to a rare righteous wandering, transience leads to conflict and violence. Abraham acts out the curse and becomes a man without a home, the grace is all in the fact that he is headed home. If people want to object that our true home is in heaven and all that, all I can do is ask why over-spiritualizing people with a pale concept of an earthly home would flatter themselves that they desire a heavenly home, since they obviously don't know what heaven is like and have neglected to learn what home is like.

On that note, I've found something better to do.

Well, one more and then I'm probably gone for another couple of years. Grandma, the boys, and I got to babysit. Mom and Dad wanted to believe he cried bitter tears when their car drove away. We wanted to believe he'd bawl when they came back for him. But the truth is that he is as jovial a man as any with whom I have been associated, and was quite unruffled throughout.

Not Sure Why I'm Typing

Especially since I just accidentally published half of the title by mis-placing my fat finger.

I thought I'd do a little clean-up on the internet, delete some old blogs, check the mail on some unused email accounts, etc and I got sucked into reading a few blogs again. I'm not ready to delete this one, though, and every once in a while I think I might fire it back up. I chuckled when I saw a draft I saved well over a year ago and never published.

Ive got nothing against blogging or bloggers, far from it. But I stay pretty busy with whatnot and sundry, and that business combined with poor typing skills, overly painstaking care in writing (This is a fault due to pride - I don't want to be exposed as an ignoramus), and wanting to demonstrate Settledness for a bit longer before I go pontificating on it have conspired to protect all of you who don't know any better than not to read this.

But we are all still here on the little farm, a little older due to lack of death, a little fewer due to Micah, a little smarter due to children learning a lot, which outweighs old folks forgetting a lot, a little wiser from failures, and a lot more grateful for the kindness of God, who has given us everything even before we work for it, and who gives us the gift of working for it, too.

Today, I'm going to rent an auger and dig 60 holes for the Apple trees that will arrive today or tomorrow. I'm going to plant 60 or so trees each year for three years and see what comes of it. This is a bigger scale of project than we are used to engaging in, but I can't see a downside to trying it. With livestock, we have to be careful not to overstock, but we've got plenty of room for trees.

I really have no idea what we had going on here the last time I posted, and I'm not going back over the old posts to find out. Right now we've got 15 sets of bovine hooves on the ground, but seven of them are calves from 1 to six months old. Two of those and Marcy the cow are visiting from Micah and Naddy's. Two are holsteins adopted to a nurse cow. That seems to be working much better than our earlier attempts to bottle feed dairy calves (100% failure rate).

We raised pigs for the third year this year and did much better this year on the processing of them. I had in mind to take them up to an Amish fellow who was going to show me how he handled the slaughter, scalding, etc., but work was too busy. I was stressing it, but the boys decided they could handle it without any help from me or an Amishman. So they built a good fire under an old steel tub raised on cinder blocks, attached rope and pulleys to a stout tree branch, attached the lawn tractor to one end and a dead pig to the other and commenced to getting the job done. Two pigs, two days, me at work off the farm. Yup, this farming is hard work. We're still figuring out smoking ham and bacon, but the first attempt at bacon wasn't half bad. I little gristly, probably from improper meat selection and slicing.

I'm looking for a flock guardian for the chickens. I can't bear to see their sad eyes behind chicken wire. Oh, and I hate to buy feed, too. The chicken/egg program is in a bit of disarray right now. We did well for a few years, but over time the hawks have come to rely on us. I'm hoping that what I've heard about a guard dog discouraging even hawks proves true. It's crazy too, but I'm trying to breed my chickens for increased survivability. With the hawks to provide natural selection, if it is at all possible, I should succeed in breeding chickens who walk around constantly looking up into the sky.

I've got some maintenance to do here if I actually post again anytime soon. I've got to restore links to some of the other blogs, after I figure out who's still out here and hasn't gone off the deep end. Not sure what the deep end is yet, but don't assume you've gone off it if I don't link you right away.

Custer and Crazy Horse

[Edited]

Sometimes I’ve thought I needed a separate place to air some thoughts which might not seem to interest most of the readers of this blog. But no, you get the whole package right here.

Anyway the boys have been listening to some old Eddie Arnold music that Frank sent us which includes a song about Little Big Horn. This led to a little encyclopedia reading on Crazy Horse and George Armstrong Custer. When someone read the part in the article where Custer and his command were wiped out, I voiced a calm "three cheers," eliciting wondering and confused stares from all my cowboys. I asked one of them if the government was allowed to come to our door and tell us we had to move away to a place they had chosen to make room for others to live where we lived. I have to say the boy wasn’t too sure, so I figured it was time to quit the encyclopedia, and open the Bible, if I was ever going to explain to the boys why I would ever root for the Indians against the Cowboys.

I read them the story of greedy King Ahab, wicked Jezebel and righteous Naboth and Elijah. Jezebel was an early and unashamed advocate of the might makes right doctrine. And the story is good to show that not only kings, but nobles and elders can be not just wrong, but wickedly wrong. We talked about Naboth’s love for his land, which had been a family possession for generations, and how those with the ability have always been tempted to dispossess others unrighteously. (There is such a thing as righteous dispossession, but that’s not for this post.) I explained that the people we are a part of are very much susceptible to temptations to covetousness and greed, which are a big part of our history.

I then asked who was more likely to be on the right side of a fight: 1) A man fighting in his own country, or 2) A man who traveled a thousand miles to the fight? This seemed easier to get ahold of and I think it’s clear that the army that travels farthest to the war has the greater burden of proof. It’s not that they couldn’t be waging a just war, but they have to prove beyond doubt that they have not only the right but the duty to be there.

I think I need to have these conversations if we are going to continue to live in this country, where shipping young men (and women!) off to distant battlefields has been as much or more a part of our history than that of the Roman Empire, at least so far in our brief history. If we see another major terrorist attack, you can be sure that our government will waste no time in providing for conscription. Better to think things through now.

Of course this is not to say that the Sioux and Cheyenne were superior in every way. I do not believe the myth of peaceful natives living in harmony before the arrival of white people. Neither do I believe in the nonsense of manifest destiny and the unquestioned righteousness of the United States. The unrighteousness of Ahab is a separate issue from the righteousness of Naboth. Had Naboth spent each night drunk on the fruit of his vineyard, Ahab would have been just as wrong. We like to point at the aboriginal people of our country, making much of their primitive and pagan ways, but this is only an attempt to divert attention from our own faults, for which we will be held to a higher standard.

All in all I find the story of the Little Big Horn to be a rare but satisfying defeat of a force bent on government approved thievery. Crazy Horse, notwithstanding the normal native mystical bunk, was an unusual Sioux warrior, quiet and not given to boasting of his accomplishments, in contrast to Custer, a mouthy braggart. I find my sympathies more with those who were fighting on soil they and their fathers had known for generations, than those who were fighting for colonial, imperial aspirations.

On second thought this does not seem so far from the heart of this blog which is, after all, opposed to transience. The need to recognize your home and do your best to stay there applies to armies as well as families.

A Scary Appalachian Running Wild and Free

I'm finding some interesting reading over at How Many Miles from Babylon. I appreciate the emphasis on freedom and a viable example of what that freedom might look like. My thinking about economics and work is definitely moving in the direction he outlines, rather than toward a small commercial farm. Read especially the posts on a Direct Use Economy and this one.

We have been moving toward such an economy since I discovered that with 5 boys my food bill had become the single largest expense in my cash economy. Opting completely out of the Cash Economy is not really an option as long as we have property taxes to pay, or we aren't able (or willing!) to live off the power grid, but there's still a lot of freedom in not spending money, and the less of it you need the more free you can be.

The problem is that living with one foot in a Direct Use Economy and one foot in a Cash Economy, neither one functions very well. The more we can wean ourselves from reliance on cash which requires huge expenditures of time, the more we will have the time needed for production in the Direct Use economy. I'm hoping that we can reduce our cash needs by 20% or so a year for the next couple of years. If we can eventually do with half the cash we now need while increasing our skills to the point where we are producing a surplus of food, particularly beef, milk and veggies, we may be able to cut our ties to the corporate behomoth entirely. Free at last and all that.

Respect for Creation and R.J. Rushdoony

(Deu 22:6-7 NKJV) "If a bird's nest happens to be before you along the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, with the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young; you shall surely let the mother go, and take the young for yourself, that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days.

(Exo 23:19 NKJV) "The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

(Deu 20:19-20 NKJV) "When you besiege a city for a long time, while making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; if you can eat of them, do not cut them down to use in the siege, for the tree of the field is man's food. Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, to build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it is subdued.

(Deu 14:21 NKJV) "You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to the alien who is within your gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

(Lev 22:28 NKJV) "Whether it is a cow or ewe, do not kill both her and her young on the same day.


. . .the commandments clearly require a respect for God’s creation. If God is the creator of all things, then all things have a purpose and are in their created function good. – R.J. Rushdoony

Animals and plants ought to live in accord with their created function. To me this implies chickens living a chickenish life, cows living like bovines, etc. Instead we are trying to make them all into the animal equivalent of apartment dwellers, where they clearly cannot use the tools and predispositions God created them with.

Rushdoony, writing in the early 70's, goes on to make some interesting points that have a bearing on issues such as the continuing unrestrained hybridization of seeds. He is opposed to all hybridization, partly on the rationale that it produces sterility (which strikes me as eminently sound), whereas "God made all plants with their seed ‘in itself.’" Later he comments that "Man’s rash interference with the balance of nature is creating serious problems."

A few more nuggets:

As long as man sees himself as god in an evolving world, he will seek the technological manipulation of that world.

The earth itself must be treated with respect. The foolish destruction of the micro-organisms which are basic to the fertility of the soil is working extensive damage in many areas.

For the creationist, the fertility and the potentiality of the world rest precisely in its vital patterns, in its fixity, whereby man can work productively and with a full assurance of success.