Nature Abhors a Garden

Very seldom do we encounter an author who challenges us as much as Thoreau.  You'll note that Myrtle can be reached at a yahoo account named "walden_ponderer", and there is a reason:  in the history of American philosophical inquiry, Thoreau (and to a lesser degree Emerson) is unique in his ability to tie transcendental experience to the experience of being human in nature.

The 20th century Unitarian writers Charles Hartshorne and James Luther Adams did a pretty good job of linking being individual humans to the greater question of being part of the collective unit known as a species, and they extended Reinhold Niebhur's vision of what it means to be "saved" in ways that we at Myrtle's truly appreciate.

But nobody since Thoreau has really taken on the question of how we relate to the plants, animals, and inanimate objects around us, and what are the moral implications of our mere being, until now.  Michael Pollan, in Second Nature: A Gardener's Education writes in gripping detail about the impact of his education as an amateur gardener on his moral standing, and he does so in ways that we would have expected from a westerner, not from an effete eastern urbanite.  New England bullheadedness had been dead, we thought, since the end of the Civil War, at least.

We were wrong.  In particular, the argument between Pollan and Thoreau about whether one has the right to firebomb a woodchuck who is impinging on one's bean crop explains all that is wrong with contemporary religious liberal thought:  namely, the misplaced distrust of one's own power, and one's own place in the world.

Much like the gopher from Caddyshack, all of "Nature" (which really doesn't deserve to be represented as its own entity) stands in opposition to all efforts at self-organizing behavior on the part of cultural development (e.g., memetic reproduction). 

So what does that mean in plain English?  Whenever human beings attempt to do ANYTHING, there are natural forces at work which will tend to the obstruction of those goals.  The value of the goals is inherently independent of the nature of the obstruction.  Or to be even plainer, if you dig up and put borders around a garden plot, there will be weeds in it.  The decision about whether or not to pull up the weeds is NOT, as Emerson and Thoreau would have it, essentially a moral one.  The moral decision was whether to dig the plot in the first place.  Once that was decided, the conflict with weeds was inevitable.  Pulling them is natural and ethical; not pulling them is suicidal, at least as far as the behavior of planting gardens is concerned.

Emerson famously wrote that the difference between weeds and other plants was a defect of human understanding.  He also famously gave his best sermon as a Unitarian preacher at a Harvard comencement; it effectively served as his two-weeks notice, because he quickly gave up preaching.  Brilliant, brilliant man.  Raised a lot of good questions.

But would he help you haul compost?  That is a more open question.

Thoreau asked questions which still need answers.  And he gave some good advice, mixed in with all the wishy-washy nonsense.  But at the end of the day, the conversation is still open.

Anybody want to pick up a shovel and start philosophizing?

Happy farming!