Philosophical Farming and Sustainable Living, the Rouge Scientist's Guide to

Nature and Chaos

I awoke in the night to the sound of thunder without rain. For most people, this wouldn't be a cause for alarm, but most people aren't sleeping in a cheap tent that was a give-away at a breast cancer walk. Ninja, my cat, had already unzipped the tent flap, surely hiding under the car. I followed suit and stepped out, naked, into the cold desert night.

We had stopped for the night in New Mexico, between farms. I don't know if it was legal to be camping where we were, but there wasn't any other human beings around to tell me otherwise. The moon, brighter than any street lamp, was behind me, and before me was the endless desert. Crawling across it was a thunderstorm, headed my way. It would be here in an hour, maybe two.

I opened the car door and Ninja jumped in. I put some clothes on and started packing up the campsite.

They say lightning never strikes the same spot twice, at least, not by accident, not without intervention by man. Some people see this as randomness. Yet, nature is not randomness, but chaos with rules. Everything in nature can only act accordingly to its nature. Lightning never strikes twice because that is the nature of lightning.

Since, at least, the time of Aristotle, the general consensus of western society has been what man does is separate from nature. In the current year, nearly 2500 years past when Aristotle sat his students down in the Garden of Lyceum to codify man's view of the universe, a hot topic is man-made global warming.

I'm not a climate change denier, but I'm also not an alarmist. The climate was changing on planet earth 4 billion years before mankind arose and will change 4 billion years after we're gone. Natural changes in the earth's climate are extreme and any contributions to it from mankind are mostly negligible and to man's advantage. The earth has gone through extreme changes in the time of man and while millions of species didn't survive that change, mankind did. It's is the nature of the earth to change, it is the nature of man to adapt.

A tree grows in the shape it does because that is the best way for a tree to be a tree. A bee take pollen from the flower because this is the best way for a bee to make honey. Lightning strikes the ground because this is the best way for the ionosphere to balance its electron count. Man builds a farm because it's his best way to eat.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the gods came from the sky and taught man how to farm. It is possible, but I highly doubt that. I believe man saw what nature was already doing and simply encouraged nature to do it a little bit more orderly. I do believe that at least one God exists, but I don't think he hands out instruction manuals. I think he gives us the tools we need to do the job we need to do, but it is up to us to pick up those tools and use them.

The car I was driving in to the next farm in Nevada was made by man. The systems the car runs on were made by God. Man didn't make round things roll, man only recognized round things roll. Man didn't create combustion, man only channeled that combustion to make the wheels turn.

The universe has its own way of doing things and things can't be done any other way. Man's job is to see that way and to harness it.