Soil, the rhythm of life

There has been much about soil over the last few months on my facebook page mostly because it is the International Year of Soil. When i used to think about soil in the past i thought about it has having nothing to do with me. I mean soil, right? I do literature. No idea what that has to do with me. How times have changed. Yes i garden at school and at home, but soil, as it turns out is so much more to us than we could ever imagine.

Steiner in his Agri lectures says soil is the diaphragm of the earth. If we think about what lives beneath the soil and what lives above it - they are completely different. Above the diaphragm is the head - the head is 'dead' in that thoughts have a crystalised deadened quality to them. What lives below the diaphragm is the digestion and reproduction system. The heart is the mid range. It is the interchange between the thinking and willing sections of our bodies. The soil is like our heart. It is the rhythm of life itself. A living warmth is where soil is. Dead warmth is where we are. There is no good or bad. The warmth above the soil needs to be where we live, or we would be vegetative. We need this dead warmth to be who we are. The warmth below the soil, especially in winter, is where all life comes to being. It is not some inert substance you poke around. Contemporary science is now understanding this connection to us and soil.

We have bascially buggered up our soil. Life has been turned on its head. We are now discovering that this is stupid, what we have created. This world is pointless. The obsession with money is not going to deliver everything which it had promised. A better life for everyone. It simply cannot. Capitalism was much like communism - in the end the power and those representations of power accrued to the top of the pyramid and those at the bottom suffer. Institutionalised injustice is not an option for anyone. It is simple untenable. All power must be shared. The world that delivers will be the most stable. It will give us the best chance - everyone the best chance.

It does worry me that like climate change, this soil conversation, is not going to be opened up to include justice. This is ironic since the people who work most closely with the soil are the most deprived, the poorest in the world. Those who knew the most have lost the most. And they are now the instruments of their own persecution. What do i mean? They are the ones now, that under the leash of scientists and markets are being forced to abuse the land they love. It is like women who listen to advertisers about their bodies, or women who abuse their daughters-in-law. They become the instruments of their own oppression. There are a few movements which are trying to work with the poorest, the most dispossessed, but it is few and far in between. Perhaps it is the earth that will whisper the truth in the soil erosion, in the empty farms, in the crippling loans. Perhaps it is not up to anyone to save them. Just like we need to stop the aid mentality which keeps poor country on their knees and stop looting them, we need to just let farmers be.

It is good to make mistakes you know. It is ok. It is just that we must learn from them. The danger is when a mistake is made and you have this pyramidal system of power so that the mistake is punished instead of learnt from. Instead of everyone coming around and telling the person who made the mistake, that's ok, we will sort it out. It is good you made that mistake now we know it doesn't work, we have a system which says, you stupid fuck. So the people who make mistakes are not likely to admit to them. When mistakes are not revealed for what they are, and the people who make them are in power, then the mistake is compounded and this is where we are today with our soil. Where we are with our banking system. Or education system. Or relationships with people. Then everything turns toxic and that is where we are in this toxic soup.

When i was a child, when i was 12, i realised that the Singapore education system was not right. It was not right for anyone. If exams were what it was all about then it was not worth it. I did not understand the logic of exams. I think that the discipline of exams is about all that is good about it. Finishing something from start to finish. But it was also flawed. It would be much better if this was a project which was well done by the class. Some of the best times i had in school were when i had to produce a mock up newspaper with my friends. Or when i did a diorama of the Singapore River with them. Or when we cooked or conducted experiments. Exams i loved partly because i got to learn how to do all these cool diagrams by heart. But really, as a way of cultivating discipline it sucked. 

As a way of determining someone's future it was unjust. Exams are unjust.

There are no 'fair' exams as such. There are only fair journeys and some of these can be fairly harrowing. So many mistakes will be made and really, sometimes i think that part of our journey on earth is about making mistakes. If we do not make mistakes, then what is the point? The Journey to the West would not be the beloved tale it is if Monkey wasn't so hot-termpered, Pig wasn't so horny, Sand was not so dull and Sanzang so terrified for everything. The thing though is that we need to learn from our mistakes.

And this is where exams come in. You don't really learn from mistakes in an exam. Instead you are told, you stupid fuck if you have not managed to do well. This is a great start in life for everyone, of course.

Yesterday i wrote about bureaucracy. Coincidentally an article in the Daily Telegraph says that teaching is being killed by bureaucracy. Anything is killed by bureaucracy really. 

So on to happier things. After three weeks of hard labour i now have abs again!!! After three weeks of the building main lesson, and Maypole dancing and walking up and down to Holywood and lots of gardening, i have abs once more. I will always have a huge butt and fat thighs, but what the hell. I am 44, i am allowed these things. I love the way my muscles have all tightened up and i love the way i am now fitter and have more stamina, although i have to say it does not feel like it when i come home after a day's work and collapse in bed and sleeeep.

Wow, it looks like a great start to the morning. I am going to get some gardening in before it all kicks off. Gardening, sunrise and coffee.... that's the life.