Who is the person most radically different from you whose ideas you consume?
I love Joel Salatin.
Joel is a fundamentalist Christian - a member of the US religious right.
Joel is an odd duck. He doesn’t fit in anywhere.
See, Joel is a libertarian, organic farming environmentalist.
His books have been hugely helpful in my understanding of permaculture and how humans working in partnership with nature (with god according to Joel) we can help save the earth, develop soil, improve local economies all while making food more nutritious and delicious.
Some great starters with Joel include: Everything I want to do is illegal, You can farm and Folks, this ain’t normal.
These books for the most part have focused on farming while merely stating his position as an evangelical Christian.
Well… That was up until now.
Published in 2017 The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs - Caring for and Respecting all of God’s Creation is a departure from his focus on the mechanics of farming and environmental renewal. In this book, Salatin goes into great detail about his Christian environmentalist theology.
It’s a bit of the kind of Neo Platonic logic you’d expect to find from a Christian.
You know - from the Republic - The Platonic Forms
The form of ‘chairness’ - the essence of being a chair.
The form of ‘pigness’ - the essence of being a pig.
Salatin believes that a Christian’s job is to give into supporting the glory of god.
He believes that in helping a pig live it’s best life, we’re doing god’s work. We’re enhancing the glory and perfection of creation.
So as a Jim, I need to do what I can to embody my essential ‘Jimness’ in order to live a full life.
I kinda like that. Salatin argues that the corporate model of factory farming keeps pigs from experiencing their pigness and Jims from experiencing the fullness of their Jimness.
Short form?
God made made nature. God is good. Don’t fuck with nature.
By now the clueless, er the totally stupid, er morally reprehensible, ultimately foolish, self righteous martyrs, ?
Sorry, the fucking vegans.
Fuck.
The fucking vegans will say that when you kill the pig, you are ending it’s pigness. Sure, let the pig live a good life then kill it - what’s the difference between that and a factory farm?
Or worse:
If we just stop eating animals, everything would be better for everyone everywhere.
When I hear that, I wish that every vegan’s family line never existed. If everyone who is a vegan never were born, nor were their family before them, the climate change thing likely wouldn’t be so bad.
If we’re getting to the ‘it’s so bad we need human sacrifice to save the planet’, my vote is that we sacrifice the vegans.
Then?
We can feed them to the pigs.
Because to a pig, we’re just something tasty to eat.
Salatin is a lot more polite about this. He speaks a simple truth:
All life requires death.
Everything we eat has to die. Our existence is based on sacrifice, both human and otherwise. The pig lives to die. We raise it, give it a good life then eat it.
Yum.
He goes further to say that the misinformed over capitalized under worked researchers developing the lab grown meat by removing death as the cost of living have created an abomination. He believes that fake meat is more blasphemous than gay marriage.
So he and I agree is fake meat is as close to Satan as possible and fake ‘cheese products’ are essentially the same.
Over the two hundred thousand years humans have been around, human sacrifice and cannibalism has been a gigantic part of our culture. If you want to go further with this, please check out Daryl Cooper’s Martyrmade podcast episode: How To Serve Man - on Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism.
He also has a substack here you should check out.
Anyway he figures that Catholic Communion is a symbolic form of magical cannibalism where we eat god.
But this isn’t about Cooper, this is about Salatin.
Salatin claims that his Creator worshiping Christian community do not do enough to celebrate the glory of god when they feed their children tonnes of candy and show up to a church picnic with a bucket of KFC.
Saltain believes that the religious right are those who should be on the leading edge of environmental defense
I agree with this too. Conservatism is about conserving, preserving and maintaining. Our king Charlie was organic farming and acting as eco activist since 1972.
Salatin is as confused by this as many are. His hardcore religious friends think that the eco types are the embodiment of Satan.
Many of my eco conscious aquaintances believe that ecological progress MUST NECESSARILY BE LINKED TO ANTI RACISM ANTI HOMOPHOBIC, PRO LIFE, FEMINISM…
you name it…
Somehow, progress on environmental issues can only happen if gay black transgendered, very very short, deff, dumb, blind, quadriplegic downs syndrome adhd bi polar schizophrenia immigrant ladies approve?
And only those who’ve had big gulps of a pro corporate, heavily regulated, government controlled, critical theory passed, D.I.E. approved Kool-aid are permitted to have any opinion or influence on these issues.
His Creation worshiping hippie friends - the godless community that loves and supports him despite his hard right fundamentalism on cultural issues pay for his food. They stand shoulder to shoulder against Monsanto, GMO’s and agribusiness.
They drink his raw milk and decry how laws limit who gets to participate in the marketplace and how. He loves this community for their understanding of what he refers to as ‘the glory of god’s creation’. His problem? They love the art without giving credit to the artist.
His Creator worshipping friends puzzle at how ‘one of theirs’ from the religious right could possibly hang out with these hippie, free love, godless eco freaks. Salatin feels like he doesn’t belong anywhere - anywhere but his farm.
If you want to help save the world, find a way to grow your own food.
If you want agency, dig in the dirt.
Do something real.
And while doing so, try to imagine someone who has radically different points of view on something you think is really important - something like abortion, god, race, gender - and find out what you share with them.
Me and Salatin?
We both want smaller government. We both want more regulations on what larger corporations get to do and fewer regulations on individual human activity.1
And both of us want to eat meat from healthy animals.
Most of all, old Joel and I have a shared belief and that I want you to consider:
Humans on earth are not bad.
We’re not the problem.
When we work with nature, we can enhance it’s ability to regenerate.
We can use these big brains, this curse of choice to support ourselves using what the god lord provides, while enhancing god’s glory through our interactions with it.
Most of Joel’s books were written for people like me and Laura: We believe that the single best thing you can do for the planet is to grow your soil. From there, grow vegetables. If you live in a city that allows it, keep hens for eggs and meat - they’ll enhance your soil.
You have a doctor, a massage therapist, a coach and a chiropractor.
They may keep you healthy, happy and operating optimally.
There’s someone missing from your team. For thousands of years it would have been you. Most humans that have humaned up until the 20th century could have answered this question:
Who is your farmer?
This man is a gift to humanity.
Check out his books and have his simple ways and sophisticated contrarianism blow your mind today.
seatbelt laws, no bike helmet laws thank you very much and I don’t want to hear a fart about how these state impositions saved your life. Not interested for a second