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https://www.monbiot.com/2023/10/04/the-cruel-fantasies-of-well-fed-people/
The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People
Posted on 4th October 2023
The astonishing story of how a movement’s quest for rural simplicity drifted into a formula for mass death
[long article, won't copy/paste]
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The usual frustrating combination of some well-observed phenomena in the organic/alternative foodie scene with with some outrageous slurs against those, including Chris Smaje (author of 'A Small Farm Future', as well as the critique of Regenesis, 'Saying No to a Farm Free Future') who propose basically undoing the process of enclosure and returning people to rural lives where they attend to their own needs of food, fuel, shelter, clothing etc as humans have done for 99+% of our history. For Monbiot this amounts to a death sentence by starvation for urban populations, and he insists that everything must be done to maintain the quantity of bulk foodstuffs to support these populations. He doesn't seem to understand that if people are allowed to leave the cities and work on the land (as millions still remember how to do, before they were forced off it) they will be producing their own food. Really it's an argument for decentralisation and autonomy, but somehow Monbiot has again ended up on the side of the state, funneling all the resources in from the hinterlands and deskilling everybody to the point where they're in abject dependence on institutions for every aspect of their existence. Scientists growing food-like organisms in a lab is the end point for this process of extreme alienation and specialisation.
Smaje is yet to respond at length - https://nitter.net/csmaje/ but he directs people to this critique of Monbiot's article: https://gardenearth.substack.com/p/the-columnist-in-the-moral-ivory and a long comment thread on his blog here: https://chrissmaje.com/2023/10/the-wholeness-of-the-word-regenesis-as-myth-part-ii/#comment-260567
Apologies for the further time & effort devoted to this man. Somehow it still feels important to make a response - I guess partly because it represents a threat to my livelihood and/or preferred vision for a livable, dignified future for humanity.
cheers,
I
Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously
http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
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