The following of tradition is pleasing, the most educated follow the traditional ways.
Especially when learning within the public school system fore to teach non-traditionally is a career battle for the teacher, so few survive the thought let alone the practice. To learn non-traditionally is to score low on the standardized tests, so few step outside of the box and dare the system; tradition survives to teach again and again ... traditionally.
Within the work place the 'bankable" business models are traditional, otherwise they are unfunded start-ups ... few survive. To design business models that are non-traditional is to be outside of the system. The establishment helps perpetuate tradition, not start-ups; traditional business models survive to continue business again and again... traditionally.
There are exceptions, aren't there?
Of course, that is why we no longer live in caves. But what took thousands of years to achieve was not all that earth-shaking of an idea when looking back ... the innovative caveman may have thought "If we build our own shelter we can move away from the cave and closer to the river where there is more food." ... "hm" came the reply, "but no one has ever done that before; "and besides" they said, "what do you mean when you say 'build?"
Tradition is great, however, it slows progress because to progress is to break from "Great Tradition".
Doing things the way that our
parents and grandparents, even great grandparents did in many cases, is
comfortable, it is the system with which we are most familiar. We are slow
to change because what we are born into we accept with little
question. What questions we have are quickly answered by that very system and we
then become the mechanism for self perpetuating it. To change from tradition seemingly takes forever.
Example:
- 10,000+ years ago agriculture
was invented by warlords to feed thousands upon thousands of hungry
soldiers.
- The only economy at the time was stealing by force from the neighboring warlord. The economy was not good, time to steal again, but how? It takes a lot to feed the winning Army, where will the food come from?
- The warlord tells his officers
that they must figure a way.
- The beginning of a new
tradition ... Agriculture.
Traditional Agriculture has been a 10,000+ year solution to this day...
The clearing of the land of its trees
and the like in order to grow crops was a totally new concept.
Circumstances required that in order to be successful the army needed to
be fed. Agriculture was a new idea, who would fund it? Since it was
the warlord's idea funding came from his deep pockets. There certainly was silent opinion against such a bazaar concept and that resistance surfaced when no respectable citizen
would be convinced to go out into the hot sun, clear the soil of trees,
weeds and other ground cover and then place into the soil a seed, which
would require daily watering and personal care until it would grow; to
wait months before being able to eat from that plant must have been a
ridiculous thought, what about storms, floods, drought and the other warlord's army? In order to feed the army would require more plants
than one could see looking toward the horizon ... how ridiculous the citizen would continue to think...
use slave labor, that is the only way to make it work. Besides, if the slave does not survive so be it, maybe
it's not such a bad idea after all so "let us" encourage the warlord to do this
crazy experiment anyway.
... "Don't touch it, only improve it so we can make it worse for all of us."
The agriculture of old resembles agriculture of present in only a few ways, but important ways.
- Large sectors of land are used, much of which was previously forested.
- The cheapest labor possible is still the norm, slaves by a different name have become serfs and without government subsidies he remains poor but today he is called a farmer.
What has changed?
- The economy of scale is more efficient, our agricultural schools taught us to till the soil, irrigate and fertilize it and make so many other improvements that a whole industry of chemical additives developed.
- Colleges of agriculture made a science out of increasing product
ion.
- More PhD's developed than most any other academic study.
- Each documents how to grow more on the same space.
- This "improvement" process became tradition, don't mess with it.
- Hybrids are the norm
- Little resistance to disease, weed encroachment, insects, birds, animals
- Greater reliance upon chemical remedies, physical barriers and more science
- They don't reproduce
- Each year the farmer must buy the newest hybrid at today's inflated price
- The newest hybrid is "better" than the improved one of last year.
- Next year the next one will be even better.
- If you, the farmer, do not buy the newest hybrid your neighbor will.
- Look at how much more money the neighbor farmer will earn.
- Fewer farmers are needed for the same amount of production overall.
- Those who do not follow, fall off.
- The greater the production the lower the price that the consuming public is willing to pay.
- The farmer who drops out of the race becomes a tractor salesman.
- Oops, not in the Third World, there are not enough tractors for that.
- He becomes a subsistence farmer so he can feed his family.
- The subsistence farmer makes no money, only food for his family.
- He has no capital to farm all of his land so he farms about 1/3rd of it.
- The landlord/lender system allows it as part of peace and order maintenance.
- The agricultural economy dies a little more each year.
- Corporate farming does not prosper to use the new idle land in such an environment, but
- The hybrid seed business continues,
- The chemical agribusiness continues,
- More imports of agricultural products from First World countries arrive to fill the void.
- Subsistence farmers head to the forests and slash and burn to gain fertile land,
- They plant cash crops on the land for three years or until the fertile land
plays out and then they repeat the process.
The next generation needs to be agroforesters.
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