One aspect of agrarian life that might easily be overlooked is that it reconnects us to tangible reality. We are so accustomed to virtual reality that we might be tempted to believe in a world that only exists in our minds. The world around us -- through which commerce functions and communication takes place -- is largely virtual. Email is virtual mail. Stocks are virtual assets. Credit cards are virtual cash. Currency is virtual silver and gold. News gives us a virtual presence in current affairs. We can even have a virtual identity on the Internet (an avatar) with which we can relate to a virtual community.

 

 

Avatars cannot work the land, cook the food, or satisfy hunger. Real people engaged in real work are needed to do that. There is nothing like holding a hammer in your hand to awaken your heart to the measure of who you really are and of how much you need your community. When the barn has been blown over and emptied by a tornado, Amish know better than avatars how to come to the rescue. It is wrapped in the efforts of such realities that we realize both our insignificance and our value.

 

Food takes on a whole new meaning when you plant it, cultivate it, pick it, and prepare it for yourself. There is nothing more humbling or rewarding than having to shovel and hoe the earth by hand so that you can plant the seeds that will eventually feed your family. Such labor removes you from the protective buffer of virtual reality in which so much of the world lives and hides. When you wake up the next morning, blisters on your hands and muscles sore, knowing that regardless of how you feel you must get back to work in the fields to feed your family, and that you will have to do this for the rest of your life, a new more physical and 'generational' definition of responsibility suddenly kicks in.

 

When you select, feed, cull, pluck and prepare the chickens, and gather the eggs, you suddenly understand why those eggs or that meat cost so much in the store. When you milk the cow until your hands cramp, taking pains every day to insure your cow's health and productivity, a glass of milk is suddenly far more than something poured from a carton. Agriculture does that. It puts you in direct touch with the reality of the labor that provides for the basic tangible needs of all mankind.

 

Money that you use to buy what you cannot provide from cultivating the earth or harnessing sun, wind, and water for yourself, has a whole new meaning when you realize that it is the virtual value of everything you actually do on the farm. Some things we can do without, but those things that are essential are the real value of money. If money cannot buy you what is essential, it is worthless. Agrarian living reminds us of what is useful, of what is essential.

 

We can live without the Internet, without avatars, without stocks and bonds. We can even live without currency and without our televisions and their twenty-four hour news channels. A large portion of the world already does. But what we cannot live without is food, water, shelter, clothing, and each other. Agrarian living reminds us both of how fragile and of how tenacious life can be. It reminds us that love has a price. It reminds us that community is about more than the accumulation of goods and buildings -- it is about neighborliness -- about remembering that everything we do directly or indirectly benefits or harms our neighbor.

 

In an agricultural community, accountability is essential to survivability. Local neglect always has regional consequences. If your fences are down, someone's fields may get ruined. If you're farming organic, a windy day and pesticides from a neighbor's fields could ruin your whole crop. If you don't take care of your animals and they become diseased, that disease could spread to the whole farming community. If you don't exercise good soil conservation practices, your neglect could soon strip your neighbor of his livelihood. Relationships take on more tangible value when the one thing you share in common with your neighbor is the cultivation of the land.

 

When the crops fail, when disease threatens our livestock, when erosion threatens our land after a big rain, when a tornado has destroyed our house or barn, we don't need to indenture our future and our children to avatars -- to masters of virtual reality. In such circumstances, no representational embodiment will do. We need real neighbors.

 

Virtual reality is just that -- virtual. It removes us one step from absolute truth and in so doing robs us both of a measure of pain and a measure of pleasure. It is a blinding buffer. Tangible reality, on the other hand, is the only kind of reality there really is. That is not to say that it cannot be spiritual, only that its influences cannot be removed from its physical consequences. Spiritual realities have consequences in the physical world and, therefore, to that same degree, they are tangible. Virtual reality has consequences in the virtual world. Living tangible lives cognizant of spiritual realities is rarely harmful. Rather, it is when we attempt to live tangible lives according to virtual realities that we get into the most trouble and suffer the most harm.

 

It is in this venue of our tangible interaction with the world around us that our integrity is affirmed or compromised. Virtual reality does not necessarily imply virtue. Rather, it is an expression of what we hope the value of a thing was, is, or will be. It can be inspiring, but it does us a disservice when it ignores fact in favor of hopeful fiction. Rather, our hope ought to be based on tangible facts, spiritual and physical, that affirm the integrity we share with God, with man, and with the natural world.

 

In my view, agrarian living does just this. It affirms our dependence on God for life, light, water, and maturity (spiritual and natural). It affirms our dependence on the integrity of community, working responsibly together, as neighbors and as individuals, for the good of the whole. And it affirms the necessity of our cooperation with nature, which God created to sustain us and through which we affirm our worth in tangible ways. Agrarian life is a tangible reminder of our real worth in the real world. In the real world, especially when times are rough, we don't need avatars. We need neighbors.

 

Michael Hennen