We shape the world and the world shapes us.
The future of the family farm will be based,
in part, on two new interpretations of two familiar
words. The idea of family will no longer be solely
based on, or limited to, outmoded and overly rigid
concepts of marriage and gender relationships, but
rather networks of friendship and shared intention.
And the idea of farming itself will depart radically
from the current trend towards bigger and bigger
monocultures worked unsustainably in every single
regard by fewer and fewer people. Instead, the new
idea of farming will ground itself in the much more
general concept of harvesting energy, whether in
the form of vegetable or animal produce, or the
whole generative spectrum of renewables, but also
energy in the more subtle sense of dialogue, meaning,
community, learning and education, and, ultimately,
the arts, sciences, and spiritual creativity.
All of this will be made possible by the two necessarily
parallel revolutions of Digital and New Energy technologies.
These, in turn, both emerge naturally out of what is
primarily an inward revolution of consciousness, one
which begins with the simple yet enormously powerful
insight that the way of violent force, and it concomitants
of power and control, are everywhere self-destructing
before our eyes, bringing in extraordinarily sharp relief
the clear necessity of the alternative path of nonviolence.
Nonviolence is now the sine qua non of right relationship,
with oneself, with each other, and with the Earth. Which
country will be the first to step forward, and demonstrate
that these principles may both be stimulated and
protected by new limits set by a revised and greatly
simplified constitutional governance and rule of law?