Re: Why we must return to the land

Lieutenant Gruber wrote: 
On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 11:10:56 GMT, Stephen Glynn
<stephen.glynn@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Lieutenant Gruber wrote:

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 10:43:14 GMT, Stephen Glynn
<stephen.glynn@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Lieutenant Gruber wrote:


On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 22:23:57 +0100, "arealman"
<arealman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




"Lieutenant Gruber" <eins@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:buf7m15o7m0kup76q1gp851plja97cqef0@xxxxxxxxxx



We must return to the land, to a less materialistic, more rural, way
of living, because only such a way of living with its close and
intimate contact with Nature and with its often hard manual work
enables us to live in an authentic and human way.



All very well but in England it pisses down with rain too much. You would
soon tire of muddy boots, cold wet hands, freezing feet and premature
burial.



You obviously have no experience of working the land since if you did
you'd know that such work keeps you warm, physically fit and healthy.


When, then, do you say it is that the story is always of people trying to move off the land and into the cities, just about throughout recorded history and in such different places as Europe, Africa, Latin America and India? 


Because until recently, cities have offered the promise of riches to
the poor, now however they can offer nothing except increasingly
stressful lives in crime-ridden overcrowded surroundings breathing in
poisoned air.

In the next few years, the world is going to change beyond all
recognition, &  I'm thankful that people like you don't believe it &
therefore have made no preparations. Natural selection, they call it,
though I prefer to call it the 'big flush'.

Nothing personal, by the way.


No offence taken, I assure you.

Do you say, then, that -- for example -- Victorian London, with its slums, rookeries, high crime rate in the poorer areas and, of course, its pea-souper fogs was, in any real sense, comparatively a far more attractive destination for the C19th agricultural worker than is contemporary London for most people? 


London, being the first city in the world to achieve a population of
over 1 million, was very much a 'one-off' back then. In fact, it could
be argued it was nearly 200 years 'ahead of it's time'
environmentally, whilst at the same time being a model of
backwardness. It's somewhat foolish of you to choose London, a single
city in a small European country, as a yardstick with which to guage
any perceived trends.


IOW, you *don't* say that migration to Victorian London suits your case. Thank you.

How about migration to and within the USA? Newly arrived immigrants, IIRC, tended to congregate in cities -- if they had any choice in the matter, and weren't slaves or indentured servants -- and had to be encouraged to 'Go West, young man', with all manner of inducements. And, of course, when they did go West, they started building cities there.

Let's try another tack; since working on the land is nowadays so attractive, how is it that the countryside and agriculture in Europe depend on massive subsidies from the cities, in the form both of the CAP and regional development money and central government expenditure on things like schools, roads and hospitals in rural areas?

Steve
.

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