A Kinship of Agrarian Peoples II

In Anton Chekhov’s 'The Cherry Orchard' we see the beginning of a process that happens often today:  productive agricultural land being sold for the upraising of suburban homes, offices, factories, and the rest of it.  This process is mostly looked upon either indifferently or as a positive good, but it is in fact a great evil.

The characters of 'The Cherry Orchard' help us understand some of the forces at work then and now in this act of beneficent Progress.  The widowed Madame Lubov is the current owner of a large cherry orchard that has been in her family for generations.  But through lack of thrift and the forgetting of her forebears’ wise farming practices, she has fallen deeply in debt.  Her own incompetence in well-managing the orchard is matched by her brother Gaev; and her daughters Varya and Anya seem to have more interest in traveling than in staying on their ancestral land.  The only one who remembers anything about the old ways is the agèd but loyal servant of the family, Fiers: 

FIERS. In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them. . .

...

FIERS. And then we'd send the dried cherries off in carts to Moscow and Kharkov. And money! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy, sweet, and nicely scented. . . They knew the way. . . .

Yet no sooner has he begun to speak than Gaev foolishly admonishes him, ‘Be quiet Fiers.’  And Fiers himself admits he does not know how to do these things:  ‘They’ve forgotten.  Nobody remembers.’ 

So the door is left open for the merchant Lopakhin, who shares his ideas on how the family can pay its debts:

LOPAKHIN. Your estate is only thirteen miles from the town, the railway runs by, and if the cherry orchard and the land by the river are broken up into building lots and are then leased off for villas you'll get at least twenty-five thousand roubles a year profit out of it.

. . .

LOPAKHIN. You will get twenty-five roubles a year for each dessiatin from the leaseholders at the very least, and if you advertise now I'm willing to bet that you won't have a vacant plot left by the autumn; they'll all go. In a word, you're saved. I congratulate you. Only, of course, you'll have to put things straight, and clean up. . . . For instance, you'll have to pull down all the old buildings, this house, which isn't any use to anybody now, and cut down the old cherry orchard. . .

Lubov and Gaev offer a weak protest, mentioning that the cherry orchard is a well-known landmark in the province - but little else. 

When they cannot find sufficient money to pay their bills, an auction is called to settle them.  Lopakhin swoops in, buys the land, and begins to follow through with his plan only a couple of months later.  The family is reduced to a rootless, dispossessed existence, each going his separate way:  Lubov back to an erstwhile lover in Paris who had robbed her; Gaev, to a bureaucrat’s career of boredom in a bank; Varya, 50 miles away to be a housekeeper; and Anya, off to school and then to a job as a wage-slave.  All that is left to be done in the end is to listen to the sound of the axes falling against the cherry trees - hewing, splintering, devouring - and of Fiers lying alone in the abandoned family home, forgotten by everyone, the symbol of a better way of living that is all too easily lost.

Though Lubov and the others (who represent the typical farming family of today) shed many tears over the loss of their orchard, it was their lack of imagination and other virtues (prudence, temperance, and fortitude) that led them to their doom at the hands of Lopakhin (the representative of the modern, distant, urban financier class that owns and ‘develops’ so much of our land).  And here are we, in the South, a century down the road, experiencing all that was described by Chekhov but to an even higher degree:  industrialisation, estrangement from the soil, wage-slavery, debt, centralisation, etc.  All of which is deadly to what remains of our Southern way of living - devotion to the extended family, jealousy of local authority, neighbourliness, hierarchy, Christianity, and such like. 

We are indeed far down the road leading toward cultural oblivion; the Sun in his chariot is racing toward Ocean.  This does not mean that Dawn will not eventually rise, radiant and rose-red, as she always has.  Nevertheless, we have plunged ourselves needlessly into the thick darkness of Night’s embrace. 

And that darkness will be so much the worse if we go on believing our local and national politicians and other leaders who claim they can clear the gloom and murk by adding to their causes:  building larger and more complex networks of highways, factories, shopping centres, and utilitarian public schools that eat away at the social fabric passed down to us from our forefathers.

Works Cited

Chekhov, Anton. ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ Plays. 2^nd series. tr. Julius West.  New York: Scribner’s, 1917.  Accessed 9 May 2012 from http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ac/chorch.htm .

A Ray of Hope II

Nations can become too big for their own good, as Aristotle, Leopold Kohr, Kirkpatrick Sale, and others have told us.  Thankfully, several places in Europe are re-awakening to this truth.  A goodly number in Vermont have as well.  But will enough open their eyes, and is there enough fortitude, to actually bring about the healthy downsizing that is needed in England, Spain, the United States, and elsewhere?  (Again, our thanks to the folks at LewRockwell.com for the link.)

One Million Dead Former Slaves in the South?

So says a new book, Sick from Freedom.  Again we are forced to ask:  Was the War between the States really necessary (or beneficial)?

A Ray of Hope

Kings are being welcomed back and taking on larger roles across Eastern Europe, much to the dismay of the oligarchs who need weak, divided opposition in the form of millions of atomised voters to retain their power and wealth.  Many thanks to LewRockwell.com for posting the link.

A Kinship of Agrarian Peoples

Some similarities between the South and Serbia emerge in this podcast by Father Matthew Raphael Johnson:

http://reasonradionetwork.com/20120419/the-orthodox-nationalist-serbian-philosophy-in-the-19th-and-20th-centuries

Simplicity

We have all perhaps heard that life today has become too complex.  One of the better advocates of simple living is an Englishman of the 19^th century: the Reverend William Barnes, who besides being an Anglican priest was also a linguist, mathematician, farmer, poet, and many things else.  In short, a genius.  His effort to free English speech from thralldom to the tongue of the Norman invaders is worthy of study in and of itself, for language is a more important part of the life of a people than we often credit it.  That effort is evident in the poem below (and in all his poems written in the Dorset dialect).  But more immediately, we should take note of just how content we could be with a very few things that we valued greatly:  good company, a warm fire, a sword, sturdy furnishings.  More will be friendly to this point of view during our self-made economic crisis, but we should remember it well in good times also.

‘The Settle an’ the Girt Wood Vire’

Ah! naïghbour John, since I an' you

Wer youngsters, ev'ry thing is new.

My father's vires wer all o' logs

O' cleft−wood, down upon the dogs

Below our clavy, high, an' brode

Enough to teäke a cart an' lwoad,

Where big an' little all zot down

At bwoth zides, an' bevore, all roun'.

An' when I zot among em, I

Could zee all up ageän the sky

Drough chimney, where our vo'k did hitch

The zalt−box an' the beäcon−vlitch,

An' watch the smoke on out o' vier,

All up an' out o' tun, an' higher.

An' there wer beäcon up on rack,

An' pleätes an' dishes on the tack;

An' roun' the walls wer heärbs a−stowed

In peäpern bags, an' blathers blowed.

An' just above the clavy−bwoard

Wer father's spurs, an' gun, an' sword;

An' there wer then, our girtest pride,

The settle by the vier zide.

Ah! gi'e me, if I wer a squier,

The settle an' the girt wood vier.

But they've a−wall'd up now wi' bricks

The vier pleäce vor dogs an' sticks,

An' only left a little hole

To teäke a little greäte o' coal,

So small that only twos or drees

Can jist push in an' warm their knees.

An' then the carpets they do use,

Ben't fit to tread wi' ouer shoes;

An' chairs an' couches be so neat,

You mussen teäke em vor a seat:

They be so fine, that vo'k mus' pleäce

All over em an' outer ceäse,

An' then the cover, when 'tis on,

Is still too fine to loll upon.

Ah! gi'e me, if I wer a squier,

The settle an' the girt wood vier.

Carpets, indeed! You coulden hurt

The stwone−vloor wi' a little dirt;

Vor what wer brought in doors by men,

The women soon mopp'd out ageän.

Zoo we did come vrom muck an' mire,

An' walk in straïght avore the vier;

But now, a man's a−kept at door

At work a pirty while, avore

He's screäp'd an' rubb'd, an' cleän and fit

To goo in where his wife do zit.

An' then if he should have a whiff

In there, 'twould only breed a miff:

He cant smoke there, vor smoke woon't goo

'Ithin the footy little flue.

Ah! gi'e me, if I wer a squier,

The settle an' the girt wood vier.

A Brief Guide to the Dorset Dialect:

aï=‘ah’ followed by long ‘e’

v=f

eä=long ‘e’ followed by long ‘a’

wo=long ‘o’

z=s

d=th

Settle=high backed wooden bench

Clavy=mantle

Vo’k=folk

All of Rev Barnes’s poems are now part of the public domain.  The best collection of his poems per Father Andrew Phillips, who has written a biography of Rev Barnes, a study of his thought on various subjects, and has examined in detail his attempt to revive the Anglo-Saxon/Wessex form of English (The Rebirth of England and English: the Vision of William Barnes), is the two-volume set The Poems of William Barnes (1962), edited by Bernard Jones.  This version of ‘The Settle an’ the Girt Wood Vire’ comes from this web site:

www.munseys.com/diskfive/podo.pdf

Some changes have been made so that it follows the Jones edition.

Girt=great

Authoritarian Subsidiarity? Roman Catholic Social Theory

By David Rockett

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level. The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, cybernetics, management, military (Mission Command) and, metaphorically, in the distribution of software module responsibilities in object-oriented programming. Subsidiarity is, ideally or in principle, one of the features of federalism, where it asserts the rights of the parts over the whole. (Wikipedia)

John Naisbitt's 1982 best seller Megatrends (http://www.amazon.com/Megatrends-Ten-Directions-Transforming-Lives/dp/0446356816/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336584269&sr=1-1) heralded that one approaching trend upon the world was decentralization. Soon we would be rid of old-stogie, centralised and often heavy-handed corporate structures and institutions. After all, had not anti-trust actions recently broken up AT&T? Nor did IBM seem to be faring well against smaller niche rivals. Perhaps the trend in technological miniaturisation would yield forth Naisbitt's megatrend of institutional fragmentation and decentralisation? To the chagrin of millions, E. F. Schumacher had zealously argued in his own popular Small Is Beautiful, (http://www.amazon.com/Small-Beautiful-Economics-People-Mattered/dp/0060803525/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336584830&sr=1-3) 9 years earlier in 1973.

Of course, size and structure are only two aspects of a social theory. We might first, before delving into the details and interplay of localism and authority (Roman Catholic in particular) be wise to consider setting Social Theory in its cultural context. From where does a Social Theory come? The secularists amongst us will no doubt argue modern societies' social theories, despite their diversity, arise ultimately from the natural rights of man devised in the late European Enlightenment. Of course, this betrays a Western presuppositional posture or world view. It sees the world as having all lived through a class in Western Civilisation, having adopted most if not all its notions of the flow of history, and especially the modern philosophies of progress.

It is likely the very act of parsing out the particular minutia of a social theory is of itself a distinctively if not peculiar western habit. Richard Weaver might say it grew out of our scientific method which insists upon breaking all things down into their particular parts, and thus forever fragmenting the whole unity of a praxis. (Ideas Have Consequences, http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-Have-Consequences-Weaver/dp/1433254654/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336585500&sr=1-2) first published in 1948.

Yet the truth for millions these days is the shocking realisation that much of the world never experience early or Medieval Roman Catholicism, the Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, or what our secularists insist upon calling the West's Age of Reason and Enlightenment.  This is a Medieval European experience and history which certainly Asia, Middle Eastern Byzantium and most of Africa, were content to miss out completely on. Yet adding amazingly to our shock, most of these people experience civilisation, in some form, without them! Considering this comprises the large part of the world, especially in terms of population, we might pause for a strong dose of cultural humility.

Nevertheless, growing out of Greek philosophy, we find a natural if not curious bleed over. How we think about reality, philosophically, will ultimately influence how we think about man, life and society. That the Greek struggled to balance the One and the Many – that is, the Universals with the Particulars – shows up in social theory. If the Universals prevail, the One is likely to swallow up the many particulars. Yet if the Many particulars prevail – the threat of anarchy and losing the centre of unity of things might lead to chaos. So we see at least conceptually, the various threats, and need to balance Unity and Diversity, One and Many, Universals and Particulars.

Though not often set in historic and philosophical context, most students in the west stumble over these issues as they relate to Western democratic theory. How does a society balance authority and liberty – yea Authoritarianism and Libertarianism? In the U.S. this often arises in discussion of the constitutional sharing of powers. We call this Federalism. Certain rights and powers belong rightly to the federal government, then state governments, city and local government – and ultimately to family and self government. We jokingly admit that we don't want to make everything a federal matter or case. Some issues are State and local issues, while others are even more intimate family, if not personal, matters.

Protestants typically will contend that this U.S. Federalism grew out of the Reformation’s respect for Scripture, especially the decentralised Judicial and Tribal divisions modeled in the Old Covenant Law God gave to Israel before they insisted upon a King. From Martin Luther and John Calvin onward, just how the Church was to relate to the State, and the State to the Church, was of supreme importance. We must remember that these discussions (which ultimately lead to numerous wars and thousands of deaths over the next several centuries) occurred within a European context dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, and a dozen or so Monarchies – Kings. It is more difficult than we imagine, to set aside our modernist presuppositions, especially our notions of democracy and Individualism, to consider late medieval Europe at the time of the Reformation and Counter Reformation.

This effort is made far easier for us if we avail ourselves of Robert Nisbet's 1953 classic and invaluable work The Quest For Community, (http://www.amazon.com/The-Quest-Community-Background-Conservative/dp/1935191500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336586024&sr=8-1). Nisbet gives the careful reader an excellent sense of what Medieval societal structure was like – and the disruptive nature of structures in life in that grand transitional century from 1660-1760. This 100 years saw the old Medieval, Monarchical world dominated by Roman Catholicism, yield in most every cultural nook and cranny, to the Modern world of Enlightenment Individualism. This secularization of Life would go on to reach it's crown of Naturalistic Optimism in the late 19^th and early 20^th Century.

This optimism was largely deflowered and dashed by two bloody World Wars, a eugenics Holocaust (compliments of Charles Darwin), followed by another half-century  of smaller wars, abortion and euthanasia. Those of us who came of age on the tail end of a fading optimism of Enlightenment modernism have difficulty imagining its former secular and rational glory. Ours has been a reluctant transition to the Post-Modern era, which is now dominated by a technological and existential ethic of Personal Peace and Affluence, to borrow a phrase from the late protestant theologian Francis Schaeffer. Speaking of the early 1960s Schaeffer says:

“And the great majority of people had come to the place where they had only two horrendous values. Absolutely horrible values: Personal Peace and Affluence. Now, because I'm going to use terms over and over again in this episode let me define them carefully, and I'd urge you to please listen with care. As I use the term personal peace, I mean, I want to be left alone. And I don't care what happens to the man across the street, or across the world. I want my own lifestyle to be undisturbed. Regardless of what it will mean even to my own children and grandchildren. Now that's what I mean by personal peace. Affluence means things, things, things, always more things. And success seen as an abundance of things.”  [From How Shall We Then Life video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdLejdyNpi”]

But let us not rush ahead of ourselves. We did not arrive here at this point in a day, or even a single century. Nisbet teaches us an important truth in the transition Europe trod from is Monarchical and Roman Catholic era, to our Modern and quickly dominant Post-Modern world. So, before our modern era of rank Individualism Nisbet says:

“Amid all the interpretations and judgments of historians regarding medieval society...The first is the pre-eminence in medieval society—in its economy, religion, and morality—of the small social group. From such organizations as family, gild, village community, and monastery flowed most of the cultural file of the age. The second fact, deriving from the first, is the centrality of personal status, of membership, in society. In the Middle Ages, Jacob Burckhardt has written, 'Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation—only through some general category. The reality of the separate, autonomous individual was as indistinct as that of centralized political power.”

”It is a different story when we come to the sixteenth century. We are now at the beginning of a world in which the individual—the artist, scientist, the man of business, the politician, and the religious devotee—become steadily more detached, in area after area, from the close confinements of kinship, church, and association. This is preeminently the century of the beginnings of secularism, religious dissent, economic individualism, and of political centralization. And in these massive institutional changes we can miss the decline of much of the communalism that flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” [pages 73 & 77, Nisbet, The Quest For Community]

It is from these various “subsidiary structures” in old European society Nisbet argues that modern Secularism and the democratic State has over the past several hundred years sought to liberate society. Thus, “subsidiary structure” like state or local government, church, gild, fraternity, and family would stand in the way of man's sole identity and allegiance to the modern unitary State.

The Pope of Rome & Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity is...the idea that problems should be solved at the smallest and most intimate level possible. For example, the federal government shouldn't be solving problems states can solve, states shouldn't be solving problems that communities can solve, and so on. This is another aspect of charity. Charity isn't a faceless international bureaucracy doling out tax dollars. It's a soul exhibiting the love of Christ. This also means that our moral obligations to tend for our family are higher than our moral obligation to care for our neighborhood, or community, or city, or state, or country, or planet. We have some degree of moral duty and responsibility towards each of these, but it's best understood as concentric circles. (How to Understand Catholic Social Teaching: Solidarity and Subsidiarity, Joe Heschmeyer.)

One might think that given the strong hierarchical structure and administration of the Roman Catholic Church, that all notions of subsidiarity would militate or rub against this real subsidiarity. After all, the Bishop of Rome is the absolute Pope, or Papa of the Church, with authority over all other Cardinals, Bishops and Priests, to say nothing of local parishioners. This is not an easy thing for any outsider of the Church (Protestants in particular) to keep straight.

But my good Roman Catholic friends will argue that absolute Papal authority only pertains to matters of faith and doctrine. Such authority does not extend to all matters equally. After all, the Pope of Rome has no jurisdictional authority to tell those same Cardinals and Bishops what car to purchase and drive, much less which blender for the kitchen is best for all parishioners!

In other words, there is at least no current reason to expect some future evolution of Papal authority to extend to such lengths as to supplant all notions of subsidiarity, which of course, always existed in seed form from the very beginning. The temptation here is to delve too deeply into ancient ecclesiastical disputes where my Eastern Orthodox friends would argue most Papal claims from the Great Schism (1054) are indeed evolutionary innovations not found in Holy Tradition, all the while appealing to an earlier historic Conciliar Church. But that would take us too far adrift, and into grander disputes than apropos for this article.

As it stands, it appear at least in our day, that Roman Catholic social  theory is more than broad enough to accommodate its historic ideal of subsidiarity. After all, Roman Catholic Libertarians will argue it is they who are closer to authentic Catholic tradition than are others who just as zealously hold to a more Paleo-Conservative Distributism (not to mention far more leftist Liberation Theology and its millions of adherents). So our answer is No. The hierarchical authoritarianism of the Roman Papacy is no threat to a vibrant cultural and societal Subsidiarity...yet. []

 

A fully registered Stock Broker/Financial Planner for over 16 years, Mr Rockett has worked as The Charitable Steward in planned Charitable Giving the past 15+ years, leveraging or super-sizing assets with a creative use of Life Insurance. A committed advocate of Southern Agrarianism, Mr Rockett has also been a studied reader in Christian theology the past 40 years.

E-mail - agsteward@gmail.com

Blog - thecharitablesteward.wordpress.com