Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal

(Via ELS Connections)

Joel Saladin offers his thoughts on trying to be an honest farmer: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal. Much of it is about the regulatory constraints placed on modern agriculture. His voice contains both frustration and some sense of wry humor. For instance, this is his description of government regulatory agencies:

These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

Toward the end he waxes philosophical.

[I]t is the freedom to opt out that differentiates tyrranical and free societies. How a culture deals with its misfits reveals its strength. The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers.

When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, then silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.

I am intrigued by the idea that faith might really mean (or at least contain an element of) tolerance. In other words, we have faith that things are basically OK, that people are basically OK, and that we can work together to figure things out.

"Faith" is a word that I find complex, and the process of working out its meaning for me is dynamic and ongoing. This gives me a new dimension to consider.