A culture is not a collection of relics or ornaments, but a practical necessity, and its distruction invokes calamity. A healthy culture is communal order of memory, insight, value and aspiration. It would reveal the human necessities and the human limits. It would clarify our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other. It would assure that the necessary restraints be observed, that the necessary work be done and that it be done well.
A healthy farm culture, can only be based upon familiarity. It can only grow among the people soundly established upon the land. It would nourish and protect the human intelligence of the land that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace. The growth of such a culture was once a strong possibility in the farm communities of this country. We now have only the sad remnants of that possibility, as we now have only the sad remnants of those communities. If we allow another generation to pass without doing what is necessary, to enhance and embolden that possibility, we will lose it all together. And then we will not only invoke calamity, we will deserve it.
Seven years ago, I argue with a friend of mine that we might make money by going ahead and marketing some inferior lambs. My friend thought about this for a minute and then he said, I’m in the business of producing good lambs and I’m not going to sell any other kind. He also said that he kept the weeds out of his crops for the same reason that he washed his face. Surely no one would question that the human race has survived by that attitude. It still survived by that attitude, though now can hardly be said to know it, much less acknowledge it. But this attitude does not come from technique or technology. It does not come from education. In more that two decades in universities, I’ve rarely seen it. It does not even come from principle. It comes from a passion that is culturally prepared, a passion for excellence in order that is characteristically it may be exclusively handed down to young people by older people whom they respect and love. When we destroy the possibility of that succession, we will have gone far towards destroying ourselves.