Subject: Forwarded mail.... (fwd)
From: [email-masked] (Larry London)
Date: 4 Jun 1994 14:39:24 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 4 Jun 1994 11:03:56 -0700
From: Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup) <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list SUSTAG-L <[email-masked]>
Subject: Forwarded mail....
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 4 Jun 94 12:51 EST
From: Jim Worstell <[email-masked]>
To: Tom hodges <[email-masked]>
Subject:

Subject: the modena paradigm and its detractors
Re: >Drucker would agree and *emphasize* the need for a moral /ethical
outlook,but that it is useless if it contradicts or refuses to deal
realistically with large scale social realities...<

>The civil rights. . .Czechoslovakia.. .etc<

The civil rights movement did not occur in the 1880s because it "contradicted or
refused to deal with" the then existing Zeitgeist.  Likewise, Czechs were not
liberated in 1967 because the movement contradicted the existing "large scale
social reality."  So, in a manner of speaking, these moral stances were
"useless" in an immediate sense since they could not accomplish their immediate
objectives.  But, using this same definition, they became "useful" in the 1960s
and 1990s, respectively, when they helped to change the ways of thinking of
enough folks.

Similarly, we'll likely make little headway toward more sustainable agricultural
systems (at least in the American South) until we can effect a paradigm shift
among some farmers, agents and researchers--esp at NCSU--coupled with a
different shift among environmental regulators and activists.

This won't happen by trying to prove each other wrong--often resulting in
hardening of positions or some just shifting the grounds of the debate.

Instead we must create situations where contradictory viewpoints are stated,
noone has the "power" to dismiss or ignore the contradictions, and all
participants are (or can be cajoled into) working toward a new synthesis.

What will the new synthesis be?  Surely it will attack the Zeitgeists where they
live.  One lives in profit, the other in envrionmental purity.  Can focusing on
principles behind perfecting practices such as pre-sidedress nitrate tests and
rotational grazing serve us better than the recent clashing of paradigms on this
network? Maybe, except adoption of these practices seems to not depend on their
technical validity but on lack of fit with unexplored aspects of farmers'
systems (including philosophical schema).

Jworstell
[email-masked]