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by Steve Solomon
I prefer to learn by going back to the originators
of a body of knowledge because those who follow in the founders' footsteps
are rarely trailblazers of equivalent depth. Even when the earliest works
in a field contain errors because their authors lacked some bit of data
or had a fact wrong, their books still contain enormous wisdom. If nothing
else, study of older books lets us discover that the conditions that prevail
today aren't the way things always were -- while on some levels, some things
hardly ever change at all.
However, there are powerful tendencies on Earth
causing the foundations of knowledge to be lost in obscurity. That would
be okay if there were better knowledge and wiser wisdoms coming on line
to replace them. But usually the opposite is the case. I have observed
this tendency in every area of study I've taken up seriously: history,
agriculture, natural medicine, even investing.
As the sort of person Sir Albert Howard called "the
laboratory hermit . . . someone who knows more and more about less and
less" increasingly dominates ever-wider areas of scholarship, the focus
of scholarship gets ever narrower and less wise. Here's an example. Despite
all the recent advances of so-called "scientific" agriculture, the nutritional
qualities of our basic foodstuffs have been declining during this century.
That's largely because most agronomists focus on bulk yield and profitability
of the crop, while knowing next to nothing about animal/human nutrition.
However, there's a little-appreciated "law" about
this area: nutritional value usually drops in direct relationship to the
increase in bulk production. Or, in agriculture at any rate, "quality"
seems the opposite of "quantity." Industrial agriculture has also devastated
the self-sufficient, independent lifestyles enjoyed by so many Americans
as recently as one century ago.
In 1870, something like 90 percent of all Americans
lived on free-and-clear farms or in tiny villages. And in consequence,
enjoyed enormously greater personal liberty than we do today. The current
decline in personal rights in America is NOT the result of there being
more people dividing up a fixed and limited amount of total possible liberty
into smaller and smaller slices. It is a consequence of financial insecurity,
financial dependency and wage slavery. Only free persons can forthrightly
demand their liberties. I think what has happened since 1870 was, as the
industrial food system became ever more "efficient" it also made the price
of basic agricultural commodities lower and lower.
Consequently most Americans rejected their self-sufficient-farm
birthright for a paying job in town, and soon became wage-enslaved. Wage
slaves, like all other kinds of slaves, feel insecure and think that they
have to shuck and jive in order to survive. The industrial system's focus
is on efficiency in all areas, including farming, but the apparent cheapness
of economically-rational agriculture does not reflect a true accounting
of costs. Despite the statistical increase in average lifespan, our average
health and feelings of wellness have been declining.
Consider as an example the large proportion of your
neighbors whose mental awareness seems wrapped in fat. Americans especially
are disdained world wide for being hugely obese. Americans spend ever-larger
portions of their productivity on the treatment and cure of disease. This
whole area of "health" care is not really a productive use of effort,
but really constitutes enormous waste, pain, and suffering, whose source
is almost entirely unappreciated. Dr. Isabelle Moser, who spent 25 years
conducting a clinical practice using holistic approaches, told me that
what she termed the "constitution" of her older patients was typically
much stronger than the constitution of her younger ones.
Each generation got a poorer start than the one
before it as each generation built the foundation of their health from
foods produced on ever-more degraded soils grown ever-more "scientifically,"
and more and more consisting of processed, denatured fodder. (For a good
discussion of the concept of "start," read Wrench's Wheel of Health in
the Longevity Library.)
Maybe someone will write in and tell me who the
sage was that so wisely quipped, "if they can stop you from asking the
right questions, you'll never come up with the right answers." In this
library you will encounter individuals who DID ask the right questions
and even came up with some of the answers. I've observed that modern higher
education points people's attention away from the Truth and toward an
ever-increasing confusion created by too much data. In consequence, many
can no longer recognize evil, even when it is in front of their eyes.
So I am making it my personal work to restore the
availability of key books written by amazing individuals, books that offer
major illumination to those who can already see, books that speak the
truth to those who can already hear. How You Can Help If you admire what
is being done here and wish to assist this effort: You can offer to scan/transcribe/error-check
one or more books for inclusion in the Soil and Health Organization's
virtual library. You can suggest titles for inclusion.
You can provide the library with a loan of a clean,
scanable copy of one of the books we are interested in finding and reproducing
(see our bibliographies). The price of mailing the book will be paid both
ways if you ask. Your willingness to loan copies for scanning will be
essential to the growth of this library because I have settled permanently
in a remote part of Australia. The libraries here do not offer much in
the areas this website focuses on. You can make a contribution to help
cover the costs of this site. Expenses are not large, but having a domain
name, offering significant amounts of bytes for free download on the world
wide web, and buying old books do cost. Go to our financial statement.
You can participate in an ongoing discussion about how to continue the
work of this library after its founder passes to the next life. If interested,
click here and find out what provisions have already been made and what
more might be done. The personal involvement of a few remarkable beings
will be needed to keep this library going.
Steve Solomon
P.O. Box 524 Exeter,
Tasmania 7275 Australia
soilandhealth.org
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