Off the Land

Living off the land.  That’s the way “primitive” people live. The way our own “primitive” ancestors lived.  So, then, how is it that we live?  Of course, silly question.  We live off the land too.

So, what’s the difference?  I’ll tell you.  There are two (differences).

First difference:  When we use that expression “Living off the land”, what we mean of course is living directly off the land, rather than indirectly the way we do now.

What this gives you is connection—you see very clearly just where everything comes from:  the stuff that makes your house, the wood (or whatever) you burn to cook with and make you warm, the animals and plants and minerals you stoke your own furnace with.  When you are connected this way you see all (or most) of the causes and effects; you see your impact on your surroundings.

The difference now that we live indirectly off the land is, obviously, not that the effects, the impacts, are now absent or even very much different than they were before, but just that you can no longer see them, and not seeing them, you tend to think they aren’t there.  At least, they don’t hit you right in the face the way they do the other way.  Out of sight, out  of mind.  Disconnection.  Not knowing what effects you have leads to not caring either, and that leads to having more and worse effects than you otherwise might.

Second difference:  The other thing we mean by “living off the land” is living off your land, or at least land that is in your care, or under your control, or however you look at it.  In either case, land that is around you, that you can see.

This is a lot like the other (difference #1) but not quite.

What it implies is another kind of connection, a kind of bond, a kind of kinship or, if you prefer, ownership.  The difference between now and then, i.e. between “living off the land” and not, as we mostly understand it, is that then most of us lived off our own land*, which most often was also our parent’s land and eventually our children’s land.  [People quibble about which is more right and noble:  to hold land in common, that your whole community has access to and full use of, or to own land privately, with access and use only for you and your family.  This is not a very useful argument:  the main problem does not lie here.  Either way, public or private, you can have heaven or you can have hell.  The real differences are 1) direct vs. indirect, and 2) own vs. other.]  Now, most of us—nearly all of us to at least some extent—live off someone else’s land.  This is a very important distinction, because, as anybody will tell you, people care more about their own things (their own family, their own self, their own possessions, their own opinions and beliefs, and their own friends, country, and on and on) than they care about other people’s things.  If you are growing vegetables that will all be shipped off to feed people you will never see or meet or care about, you are going to be a teeny bit less scrupulous about how you grow those vegetables, what you might spray them with, whatever, than if you were growing them for yourself and your own family.  Likewise, if your raw materials or food or whatever is coming from some foreign country you don’t know or care anything about, or if it is grown or dug up or manufactured by distant strangers you don’t know or care about, you aren’t quite as likely to care how much land rape or slave labor produced the stuff as you would be if you or your loved ones were doing the slave labor or if it was your own land being raped.

These are the two main reasons that the natural world and its “natural” cultures, traditions, diversity, beauty are all going to hell.  We have started living indirectly, off each other’s land and labor, instead of directly, off our own land and labor.  We have become cannibals.

*By “our own” read either private/family or communal/tribal