The Weeds of our Culture
Too many degrees of separation between our consumables and their production process breeds complacency and an apathetic culture.
It’s pre-Spring which means it’s time to till the earth and add some fertilizer to prep the soil that will in turn nourish the seeds we plant enabling them to grow into those amazing slices of tomato on those cool summer sandwiches.
It’s an amazing process, no doubt, how vegetable plants start from seeds and bloom into edible food producing seeds themselves along the way.
As I started to churn the soil yesterday to begin the seasonal process the sound of those pesky black rats with wings (black birds) caught my attention. They’re scoping out where they’ll be able to build nests in the eaves of my home and drop their waste on our vehicles. All. Summer. Long. Hatching other future destroyers of the peace, cleanliness, and tranquility.
So I got out the pellet air rifle and began defending the homeland by scaring them away hopefully communicating, “this is NO safe place for our nests!”.
Once they were pushed back past neighboring properties I resumed prepping the vegetable beds all the while going through a mental checklist of what needs to be done as well as mentally preparing for the task at hand of providing healthy food for my family. And of course the reality of weeds came right to mind. One has to also mentally prepare for the course ahead, playing out exactly how one will implement their processes.
Not only does a garden get attacked by vermin like squirrels and rabbits and air raids from black birds, they receive an onslaught of frustration literally from within. Without the gardener, there is no hope really to yields conducive to providing for ones family.
This is war.
Gardners are watchmen.
Soldiers, defending the food supply.
Weeds in the garden is a metaphor for what’s going on culturally. Weeds have invaded our country and there seems to be no gardener defending the garden, so we shouldn’t expect much of a healthy harvest so to speak.
What are weeds anyway?
Weeds are those things that inject themselves into the source of sustainability robbing it of nutrients essential to posterity.
They are those things that block out the sun preventing what’s edible and desirable to grow and flourish, literally and metaphorically. Cultural weeds cause spiritual decay. Complacency. Apathy.
Cultural weeds sap us of what it right, what is true, what is truly just. They result in complete ignorance of these virtues to the point objective practices like science becomes subjective and politicalized, or “fluid” as is commonly used. Cultural weeds choke out the light of truth as in, Truth, so we are left in the dark operating under the lie everything is subjective. Even things like gender.
And when we as a culture arrive where science doesn’t matter and can be coined, “misinformation,” it is essential to pull these weeds out with what is true.