Re: Personal Security vs National Security

[Allan Balliett]

Folks -

I undoubtedly have added to the confusion by my choice of a subject, so I wanted to make a couple of comment before sitting back and letting this conversation run its course.

This is not a freedom of speech issue. This is working consciously towards a 'freedom from Johnsons.' If I remember right, Wm S. Burroughs describes a Johnson as a common American lifeform, one that can never mind it's own business. With this goes judgement and fear that arises when realizing that someone else thinks differently than your Johnson self.

The fact that I meet actual people who tell me that they are uncomfortable posting to BD Now! because they do not want a permanent record of their honest thoughts to be available to persons unknown for reasons unknown tells me that the life of the group may be enhanced if people felt more protected Sophia of LILIPOH told me at one time that by their very nature of openess to the universe, biodynamic farmers need protection. Those of us who operate without it soon come to realize the need for it. I think the list suffers very much if sensitive people do not feel comfortable speaking to this group for reasons that are outside of this group.

Next, I will not labor nor will I sacrifice for the right or ability of non contributors to this list to draw from the information created by this list. This list is open to EVERYONE who has a name and a location. Anyone who wants to share with the list, interrogate this group of farmers and eaters, or who wants to plow the archives or our cumulative sharings is welcome to do that. Someone who wants to take without being part of the group is, well, counter-evolutionary in my book and not deserving of our support.

Furthermore, it is my current sense that BD knowledge without mentoring is potentially worthless. To make the transferance from head work to heart work requires working with someone who actually knows what heart and intuition feel like. To encourage cookbook biodynamics is to encourage the degradation of biodynamics in both the short and the long hauls. For you physical growers out there, it can also be said that it's impossible to work towards good soil structure if noone has shown you what good soil structure is, Otherwise, you are working with your own concept, which has arisen from your own inexperience, etc.

My interest in promoting the security of the discussion here is an interest in overcoming the sort of self-censorship that is obviously chilling the sharing on this list.

Come on folks, if someone with as much to share as glen atkinson says that the archives have a chilling affect on his openess, how can we afford to not move immediately to create the sort of atmosphere that makes sharing comfortable again?

The dangers of the archives were demonstrated recently when some directions for a bd spray were drawn from the archives and reprinted without contacting me or the original author. When I saw the publication, I knew that the practitioner who had created the spray had since moved past that process and would not recommend it to farmers at this time. Just the same, it not only was reprinted out of the context of reality and, if I read correctly, someone is marketing a product based on these 'withdrawn' directions.

NEVER NEVER NEVER has BD Now! been a classic LOOK IN THE ARCHIVES, STUPID! list Instead, in it's own cornstamping way, BD Now! has been a list of real time BD practitioners sharing what they know through ever evolving insights.

As I said: Archives without participation can be counter-productive.

Again - I do not feel that we can protect ourselves from the US Government, nor do I feel that we are saying anything on this list that is or is likely to be illegal in the United States of America. I do believe, however, that things are said on this list that can make a person 'weird behind their back' in the neighborhood, or could, for example, interfere with gaining a Grant or a scholarship, if the right small mind was making the deisions about 'how well you fit in.' Know what I mean?

Did I ever tell you the story about how the elementary school principal's office was telling all the mothers at the school that they should avoid the Ballietts because they are satanists? A true story, one that was resolved by drawing everyone's attention to what I wanted my educational tax dollars spent for but an occurence that I do not think we've ever recovered from and we certainly have never recovered from thinking that we've never recovered from.

None of us need to waste our precious energies in this fashion.

OK. I've said to much.

Back to listening to your ideas.

-Allan