'Tis the Gift to be Simple

In the manner of nostalgic time travel (i.e. Midnight in Paris), I've always wished to be a pre-Industrial Agriculture farmer. I think that those of the agrestic life, while they do not have the monetary or materialistic success by which Western societies measure wealth, enjoy more of their lives than do people who worry about these contemporary standards of success. While farmers must exert more time and energy into their work, it ultimately sustains them, and the knowledge that one's efforts directly become the reward sans corporate shadiness.

While simple farmers live "according to the rhythm of the day" in the absence of omnipresent Smart technology, they have a deeper connection with the cycles of time; it belongs to them.1 So often we consider ourselves to be higher than nature, but in reality we are equal and of it. Forgetting this, the age of Industrial Agriculture has removed us from our knowledge of the earth and of our food. For example, as Professor DuBois touched upon in his lecture "Commensality and Conflict: Politics of Conviviality at the Gastronomic Table, we have removed ourselves from understanding the seasonality of food and the culinary experience that such knowledge provides us. He stated that "eating is a knowledge." In distancing ourselves from the source of our food, I argue that we strip ourselves of a natural wealth and become peasants (when we consider food as wealth and power).

In The Girl from Paris, we observe the harsh feelings and regretful emotions that accompany life on a farm, such as having to kill a pig for food. This scene rang too close to home for me; when I studied sustainable agriculture in Costa Rica, I heard the family pig squealing while I ate breakfast (it was on its way to death), and we ate it for dinner that night. While it was alarming to have a visual and auditory association with my food as it was alive, it reminded me that we must live in harmony with nature. The amount of food we produce indicates how wealthy we are, and that we can sell it for monetary gains (my host family had to walk 20 miles to sell their pig in the main village!), but it is unnatural to exploit our resources to the extent that Industrial Agriculture endorses.

I had never seen a pig in this position...

Though I strongly advocate for local and sustainable food, the experience of knowing, seeing, and hearing the animal before it was used as food was alarming. Still, I consider myself better off knowing that my food came from the natural and honest work of "peasants" (and I do not think that 'peasant' should have a negative connotation).

 La Virgen de Sarapiqui, Heredia, Costa Rica – June, 2012.

Humans have always depended on the environment to sustain themselves as a species, just as all living things have done and do. Because of this, I think the best life is a simple life. Society has devised the term peasant to indicate one who has less, works the land, and is (assumed) less happier than those in a modern environment. However, this is how humans have existed forever! The peasant life, while simple and challenging and at times isolating, provides numerous benefits in the connection with nature.

P.S. I wish Professor DuBois could have stayed for our conversation about this film and Carles' autobiography!

1. Carles, Emilie.  A Life of her Own:  A Countrywoman in 20^th-Century France.  New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991, 17.
2. The Girl from Paris /Une Hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps (dir. Christian Carion, 2001)