Reading Gav's posting about old artists, a true reactionary came to mind - a man who influenced my life a great deal and died last year at the too-young age of 95.
I'd read Masanobu Fukuoka's Natural Way of Farming years ago, and the incredible quality of his thinking caused me to change the way I thought about farming and relate to my little acre and half. But I hadn't read his book in years and so I thought I'd pick it up and start reading it again. Here's a blurb from the back, just to give you an intro to the man: "Even rarer in this age of fragmented specialization is his grasp on the interrelatedness of all aspects of human society and nature. Acclaimed as "modern day Lao Tzu" by fellow Japanese for his paradoxical wisdom, he reaches back to the source of agrarian traditions to emerge at the vanguard of post-industrial civilization. He stands on the direct realization that culture is agriculture, and overturns preconceptions and rational reductions of the world to show us the roots of a healthy and whole way of life -- and the proof is in his farming!" Health and whole way of life! Sounds good, doesn't it. But what really suprised me was how much of his thought was directly harmonious with the MoQ. By this, I mean the way he attacks reductionism, science and SOM are profound and comprehensive. How does a farmer make the philosophical connection Pirsig made? Observe his thinking: To look at or scrutinize rice does not mean to view rice as the object, to observe or think about rice. One should essentially "put oneself " in the place of the rice. In so doing, the self looking upon the rice plant vanishes. This is what it means to "see and not examine and in *not*examining to know." Although what I am saying here may seem as intangible and difficult to undersand as the words of a Zen priest, I am not borrowing philosophical and Buddhist terms to spout empty theories and principles. I am speaking from raw personal experience of things grounded in reality. Now that last sentence really grabbed me,being profoundly empirical. Here are some more passages I cherry-picked for you all. The state of Quality apprehension in infants: "An infant sees things intuitively. When observed without intellectual discrimination, nature is entire and complete -- a unity. In this non-discriminating view of creation, there is no cause for the slightest doubt or discontent. A baby is satisfied and enjoys peace of mind without having to do anything." Scientific reductionism and SOM: "When man observes and judges, there is only the thing called "man" and the thing being observed. It is this thing called man that verifies and believes in the reality of an object, and it is man who verifies and believes in the existence of this thing called "man" Everything in this world derives from man and he draws all the conclusions. In which case, he need not worry about being God's puppet. But he does run the risk of acting out a drunken role on the stage supported by the crazed subjectivity of his own despotic existence. But who is it that is dreaming? Who is it that is seeing illusions? And the answer to this, can we enjoy true peace of mind? No matter how dep his understanding of the universe, it is man's subjectivity that holds up the stage upon which his knowledge performs. But just what if his subjective view were all wrong? Before laughing at blind faith in God, man should take note of his blind faith in himself." And here where he answers the critics who proclaim the scientific method as the ultimate saviour of mankind: "Yes", persists the scientist, "man observes and makes judgements, so one cannot deny that subjectivity may be at work here. Yet his ability to reason enables man to divest himself of subjectivity and see things objectively as well. Through repeated inductive experimentation and reasoning, man has resolved all things into patterns of association and interaction. The proof that this was no mistake lies about us, in the airplane, automobile, and all the other trappings of modern civilization. But if, on taking a better look at this modern civilization of ours, we find it to be insane, we must conclude that the human intellect which engendered it is also insane. It is the perversity of human subjectivity that gave rise to our ailing modern age." Masanobu Fukuoka <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka>, my guru. Here from the introduction to Natural Way of Farming: "My greatest fear today is that of nature being made the plaything of human intellect. There is also the danger that man will attempt to protect nature through the medium of human knowledge, without noticing that nature can be restored only by abandoning our preoccupation with knowledge and action that has driven it to the wall. All begins by relinquishing human knowledge. Although perhaps just the empty dream of a farmer who has sought in vain to return to nature and the side of God, I wish to become the sower of seed. Nothing would give me more joy than to meet others of the same mind." Thanks Gav, for triggering so much discovery. Thank Henry Valentino Miller, for pointing out the beauty in old men. -- ------------ Doing Good IS Being ------------ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
