Vanitas vanitatum

For every action, there is a consequence. For every great discovery, there is a cost. The rate at which technology has been increasing for the last hundred years or so has brought to us many comforts and luxuries which those of previous times could never have dreamt of. We have cool houses in the summertime. We can get our clothes cleaned and dried in a little more than an hour, all whilst we busy ourselves with something else. We can talk to a friend we have not seen in ages, even whilst he is a thousand miles away. We can travel a thousand miles in a day’s journey on land, to say nothing of what we can do via air travel. We can build houses, cut down trees, saw wood, and lay bricks at twenty times the speed of our ancestors. All of these are great things. But as Neil Peart once poignantly described in “Bravado”, that is not the end of the story:

If we burn our wings
Flying too close to the sun
If the moment of glory
Is over before it’s begun
If the dream is won
Though everything is lost
We will pay the price
But we will not count the cost

In our case, we have certainly paid the price, yet we did not count the cost. Or if we did, it was too late. And what have we lost?

Some might argue that we have lost nothing, and only gained. This rapid spike in industry and technology came as a result of capitalism in the West. Along with capitalism came two new virtues: endless production and the accumulation of wealth. All of these new discoveries were supposed to give us more time, so that we would be working less and enjoying creation all the more. But has that actually happened?

Let us compare what we have now to what was possessed a thousand years ago. In the middle ages, a serf was the absolute lowest a person could be on the social and economic totem pole. He was tantamount to a slave. Many people are surprised to learn how much time was he obligated to spend in service to his lord. The answer? Three days a week. The other four were for him and his family. The lord saw to it that the land was kept safe (that is what the knights were for) and that the manor was run civilly and according to common law. The food raised by the peasants was used by all. Each group had its own peculiar function on the manor and each person lived in a symbiotic relationship with others.

Capitalism changed just about all of that. We now have all the luxuries of having most of the peasant’s work done automatically, and yet we work more and more. And most of us have to travel long distances to get to work instead of working in our own gardens. The net result is that we are driving two hours a day to get to a place that was in one time a day’s journey away, and spending two-thirds of our waking hours there. When we return home, we scarcely have time to eat dinner and see the family, when then we must retire for an early rise the next day. And instead of each member of the manor working for the benefit of others, the symbiotic relationship described above has been replaced by a cutthroat approach to economics: competition is seen as the great saviour of mankind, second only to the Almighty Market.

And what, if I may ask, are we working for exactly?

In short, we are working to perpetuate an entire system that exists solely for its own sake. We now have electricity to light up our homes, power our refrigerators, and keep our homes cool in the summer. But we have to pay electric bills. To pay electric bills requires money, so we work at someplace. But we no longer own land, so now we must pay a man for a place to exist. So we work even more at that place. And the job we found is fifty kilometres away, so now we have to have an automobile, and must maintain it, fuel it, insure it, and pay obligatory taxes on it. So we work some more. Still, we have to communicate with the people with whom we now work, so we purchase an internet connection at home so that we can stay in contact with everybody efficiently. And that costs money, of course, so we work more. But then we have to eat. How could we forget about eating? Why, it is practically an afterthought nowadays. After all this work, we forgot that we still have to eat. And we are no longer in our own yards growing our own food – indeed we are rarely even home at all – so we have to pay somebody else to get our food for us.

And so we work some more.

Now we find ourselves working outside of home (and travelling to and from home) fifty or more hours per week to maintain something that would not even be necessary if only we could return to our land, farm it for ourselves, and be left alone. It would be work we would be doing as families, together, for the common good of each other. To be sure, we would have plenty of work with the task of feeding ourselves, but it would be work worth doing.

Indeed, feeding oneself is so central to our existence as human creatures. Part of the survival of man, both as an individual and as a collective, has been his ability to feed himself. Surviving long winters, battling woolly mammoths, learning to grow grain, gather berries, and catch fish is just part of what our ancestors had to do in order for us to be here to-day. So much of the day was spent catching and preparing food. Why? Because food spoils. They did not have either refrigerators or preservatives in those days, so most food had to be caught or gathered fresh.

To be human required a knowledge of food and how to find it and prepare it. It required a respect of the land on which you lived. It required many things that the modern environmentalist movement would recognise as good but for which they will never actually do anything to actualise.

But I want to up the ante here a little bit. Food and eating are not merely physical issues. We do not eat merely to fill a void in our stomach, nor merely to fuel ourselves. We eat socially. We eat to celebrate a good occasion or as an opportunity to get to know somebody. We have entire mating rituals which begin with a fabulously prepared dinner.

We eat spiritually as well. Many of the world’s religions have the consumption of food as some sort of Sacrament. In the pages of the Christian Scriptures we find God talking about eating constantly. Sometimes, there are commands that people eat a certain way, sometimes that they fast, and other times that they feast. God shewed His compassion on the Israelites by showering them with a day’s supply of bread every morning. Jesus Himself claimed to be the Bread from Heaven and instituted the most glorious Eucharist. In the Apocalypse, Christ further claims to stand at the door and knock; His stated motive is none other than to enter into the house and eat with you. If eating is so central to our lives, physically and spiritually, what do you suppose happens to our humanity when eating is taken away from its original context?

Allow me to elaborate here. All of these spiritual analogies to food cease to have the same impact when we are removed from our first callings as people. Penitential seasons and feasting seasons lose a great deal of meaning without the inevitable relationships with the land and livestock that come from living on a farm. Being removed from food production takes away the process of fattening a cow in anticipation for the Paschal feast, or a goose for the Nativity. Conversely, one misses the impact of penances such as relying only on vegetables and water during Lent or fasting during the Ember Days at the change of seasons. There is a whole spiritual dimension to food which is lost when it becomes the output of a factory instead of the result of a man’s gruelling efforts against earth and element.

Most people in our society have nothing to do with the food they consume. Less money is spent on food as well as less time compared to times past. Food, instead of being the focus of so much of what we do in life, has become an afterthought. Something you can pick up in your car. On your way home from work. Maybe you can even eat it whilst talking on your cell phone.

Food has gone from being a central aspect of the human condition to being a necessary evil at worst, or an annoyance at best, in our quest for mammon and electrical toys. Why do families not eat together like they used to? Oftentimes it is because they are glued to the television, a video game system, the internet, or some other hideous diversion. All this extra time we were supposed to have, and how have we spent it? Making better food? Getting to know our children better? No – by finding new and inventive ways of distracting ourselves.

Humans do not need a whole lot for survival above the basics: food, water, shelter, companionship. The mechanised society has given us monstrous foodlike products, fluoridated water, and shelter that we have to pay to use – and all of these are given at the expense of true brotherly companionship which we lose through the endless pursuit of mammon.

Let us review the supposed benefits of technology:

1) Makes life easier.
2) Less work to do so that we can spend more time with leisure.
3) Higher standard of living.
4) Helps us reconnect with friends that are far away.

Now, let us evaluate each one. We now get up early and stay up late, and most of our time is spent away from our families. We actually work many more hours than we would have before and rarely have any time for leisure. In some aspects we certainly do have a higher standard of living, but unfortunately for many, it is at the expense of debt and usury, not actual ownership. And yes, we are able to connect with friends that are far away, but this comes at a great expense to the loss of those who are closest to us – our families. Yes, I do like to be able to send an email to my friend from first grade. I would happily give up that privilege if I could be with my children for the entire day.

So has it really been all worth it? Hard to say, honestly. How many of us would so quickly abandon the monstrosity of a system we have built and return to the land? As much as I would like to do so, I am completely unprepared. I know nothing of farming and the tools required to live off the land. I would need a good apprenticeship at Polyface Farm before I could ever hope to have any sort of success. And to embark on such an adventure, I would have to have a year’s expenses already saved up. And I would only be able to use the knowledge I had gained if I owned land. Which I do not. So that brings me straight back to the self-feeding hive which I have already granted that I want nothing to do with. But in order to survive, I must plug myself back in. Indeed, in order to remove myself from it one day, I have to stay in it for long enough to acquire the necessary raw materials to begin on my own apart from it.

So that is where I stand now: looking to a time in the future where I can happily cut myself off from the insanity of the modern way of life, and return to the land as it was intended to be used. I realise that this is not for everybody. But I have seen through the façade and have no desire to be a part of it any more.

It is the vanity of vanities; striving after wind. We made comfort our end, and wonder why we lost our souls.

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