I just finished the One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka and it’s got me fucked up. If you want to try sabotaging any conventional sense of new year motivation, try reading a Japanese farmer’s diatribe about why everything that’s wrong with the world is rooted in human’s desire for progress. Fukuoka is among the influential Asians of the world that I’m kind of peeved that it took me so long to come across. Although I hadn’t heard his name or philosophies mentioned in the Asian and Asian American circles I’m around, he’s one of the instigators of permaculture, and a central source of inspiration for the likes of Michael Pollan.
Some quotes that resounded with me:
“If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature’s productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.” (104)
“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” (119)
“Nature as grasped by scientific knowledge is a nature which has been destroyed; it is a ghost possessing a skeleton, but no soul. Nature as grasped by philosophical knowledge is a theory created out of human speculation, a ghost with a soul, but no structure.” (125)
“Something born from human pride and the quest for pleasure cannot be considered true culture. True culture is born within nature, and is simple, humble, and pure. Lacking true culture, humanity will perish.” (138)
I’m still trying to grasp what it means to strive for human perfection while at the same time not be driven by productivity. These two concepts are abstract and probably impossible in their truest forms, and they’re definitely not one and the same – even though from a distance they can seem to be. Again, the mantra of doing less and being more is echoing in my head.