The "Simple" Life

Many people seem to think the whole idea of moving out to the country and becoming more self-sufficient, is somehow part of a desire for a simple life. This whole idea of the "simple life" is exactly the opposite of what an agrarian life is. Nothing could be simpler than working 9-5, buying all your food pre-packaged (or even pre-cooked, having someone else supply you with power, water, and garbage and sewage disposal, and have all your entertainment piped to you electronicly. The art (in the older, fuller sense of the term) of raising food, raising livestock, and managing the cycle of growth, death, and rebirth involved in an agrarian enterprise is anything but simple. If you want a simple life, work a mindless job, eat frozen dinners, and watch TV, not much this side of a coma is simpler than that. The whole reason for escaping modern society and it conveniences is that it is too simple, nothing is connected, or if things are connected they aer on a scale so vast as to render the connection invisible. In reading Wendell Berry he speaks frequently about the fact that someone can make something, and someone else can buy it, and neither party has any idea about the existence of the other. He also points out that those who make the decisions about what forest to clear cut, what mountain to strip mine, and what plant to close, are alost never those who live in the place that decision affects. Part of the point of personal self-sufficiency, and a local economic self-sufficiency is that the people who make the decisions are those who will be affected by the consequences, and this is the essence of proper stewardship.