Years later I was gifted a book, ‘Lexicon of Sustainability,’ and the author kept on about his ‘Road to Damascus Moment.’ Like Saul of Tarsus struck blind, then through the love of the lord able to see once more or really for the very first time, the writer spoke of his come to Jesus moment when he realized we can’t go on living and eating and farming and fishing as we do. I suppose my Road to Damascus had been paved in theory for years before that existential moment staring into the owner’s rage filled eyes, but as I gauged his capacity for violence – as I wondered could he really do it, could I be killed out here because I had some romantic notion of growing weed and rebelling against the man – my vulnerability was laid bare. I realized just how unfit I was for survival. Given what I felt about the world and its injustices and its teetering ever more closely towards collapse, given the certainty with which I spoke about climate change and peak oil and the creeping totalitarian state, given that I had all the theory and such pathetically inept practice, I was a fraud. I would never survive the collapse I felt so iminent. I wanted a mutiny of our system and I didn’t even know how to sail.

It’s become something of a mantra for me now. Even after The Brit lost the farm the following winter, after my credit was ruined by the investment I had made in his place, after I left the farm for the steady pay check and consistency of the kitchen, and after the kitchen chewed me up and spit me out as well – after it’s all gone about as agley as I could imagine, I keep on planning, striving, preparing for a future I can’t possibly portend.

Something like McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – ‘Well, I tried, didn’t I? Goddamnit at least I did that,’ – or Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus and the Absurd Man – ‘One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity [...] it is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. That revolt is the certainty of crushing fate without the resignation that ought to accompany it,’ – we must go on trying and scheming and dreaming up ways to change the world and our place in it, or we must resign to accept things the way they are.

I have worked two farm jobs in my career that paid a living wage. Both farms were owned by millionaires. One by the creator and former CEO of a company we all use to buy plane tickets -- their commercials star the former star of Star Trek -- the other by an international playboy restaurateur who owns the clubs and hotels that current stars frequent. The former CEO had sold his stake and made millions, ‘retired’ from the nasty world of IPO’s and hedge funds to start an investment firm focused on ‘mission based’ investment and bought 3 farms. The ‘mission based’ investment firm focused on market-based solutions to ecological problems, namely climate change. The playboy built an empire on his reputation for luxury, fine dining, and exclusivity. He dated movie stars. His focus seemed strictly on his image and his brand. I doubt he could be bothered with climate change unless the sea levels rose on Shelter Island and upended his hotel.

What these two had in common, the only thing tying them together besides the off night William Shatner spent in the Boom Boom Room, was their apparent interest in organic farming. 

Why?

I’m not saying there isn’t an ecological true north, just that it is difficult for us humans to accurately pin it down considering the complexity of ecological interactions. John Muir summed it all up, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

So one species of bacteria or fungi in our gut, like say Candida, might be associated with disease. It might be a good idea to discourage it’s growth, to limit the resources it seems to like. But now imagine waging an all out war on Candida, wiping it entirely from the face of our gut, and we find it was hitched to everything else in the Universe. We find its existence and its use of resources to perpetuate that existence was keeping some other, more hazardous organism from thriving in our bellies. We find we killed the devil we know and unleashed the devil we don’t.

In my small town there are four Asian Restaurants. Two of them are the sort of Chinese place you’d find in any town anywhere -- glossy pictures of food on the wall, general tso’s, eggrolls, crab rangoon, four small tables on tile floor, overhead fluorescent lighting. The type of place you can walk out of for under $15 full, perhaps too full, riding a monosodium glutamate high. The other two establishments ain’t that. They’re posh, dimly lit, serve cocktails and ambiance and $20 plates of noodles. Their pantries are Asian -- fish sauce, miso, shaoxing and scallions -- but their patronage, their owners are white.

What should we make of this? Are they Culture Vultures? Gentrifiers? Appropriators?

What about the food? Should the ethnicity of the chef reflect on the food’s value? What if it’s genuinely delicious? What if the flavor is more pronounced, more ambitious, more unapologetically Asian than the Americanized-Asian food offered by owners who tone down their cuisine so white people will like it? Is it possible that in some cases, the more ‘authentic’ flavor could come from a white guy in chef’s whites, or is that colonialism all over again? Elvis stealing the blues, Brooklyn turned into a bike lane.

Imagine you were born on an island. As you grow up, you find all of your needs provided for, all of your biological necessities met by some benevolent presence. You don’t have to work. You don’t have to find shelter or food. You’re surrounded by family and peers who, like you, have no concerns other than how to spend these waking moments. Should I lay in the sun? Or maybe have another meal? Socialize with friends? Sleep? Hump? Presumably time would become hard to track. With no real structure to your days and no struggles to strive against, time would stretch into one long sleepy now. 

Now, at some point in this now-ness, on this island of no concerns, a strange figure arrives one day. Unbeknownst to you, his presence signals the end of yours.

Certain things don’t mix. Eating weed, flame weeding -- don’t mix. Despite the fun syntax and potential for puns, it turns out to be quite a dangerous activity, one that could send your crops, your farm, your dreams, up in smoke.

Flame weeding is a particularly effective means of weed suppression used by organic growers because it uses elemental fire instead of petrochemical herbicides. Basically you take a propane grill tank, strap a flamethrower on there and fit it to a backpack. Then you take that mobile flame thrower and literally scorch the earth.

Not since the Industrial Food Revolution has America not had enough food. Hunger and the necessity of taking modest ingredients and creating not just sustenance, but joy, long ago ceased to be the driving force in America’s food culture. Hunger has been replaced by hedonism, necessity by our overwhelming desire for novelty.

These older food cultures, with their decentralized authority and history of nurturing and nourishing the hoards of hungry masses throughout history (not just the Industrial Food Era, like American food culture) might arguably be characterized as Matriarchal.

Our current culture, even when a woman or a person of color is at the center of focus, can only be called Patriarchal.

After the fallout, I discussed the incident with one of the waitstaff, Cain. Cain is 55, the son of Mexican immigrants, a gay man who lived through the AIDS crisis. He was far from impressed. ‘If these girls think speech like that is violent or threatening, well come on. They’d never make it through the shit I’ve seen.’ 

Which raises the question -- if a Seinfeld reference can push you to publicly debase a man’s character and an entire company’s climate, if being referred to as a delicate flower can cause you to walk out on your job and never return, might we in fact be acting a bit too, well, delicate? 

This is not to say that very real forms of chauvinistic behavior, gender-based oppression and violence towards women do not exist. These societal ills are far too common, especially in the restaurant industry. I am not arguing the existence of the patriarchy or attempting to quantify female oppression. 

I am however asking, is it possible that an ideology that sees the game as rigged against you, that views life’s hardships and suffering as the result of institutional inequities based solely on your sex, that tells you your identity is undervalued and your failures the result of oppression, an ideology that has the stated goal of producing strong women, might in fact be coddling its adherents and producing the opposite?    

Get your tinfoil hats on, there’s a conspiracy a-brewin. For within the halls of our fearless government institutions, a great war is being planned. A war to save us from ourselves, to shield us from that insidious enemy that for generations has plagued us from the inside, ravaged our minds, corrupted our morals -- public enemy number 1, psycho-active plants.

These sneaky plants use their alkaloids to elevate our moods, increase our physical and mental health, keep us high so that we keep them around. And they do it without making our pharmaceutical companies any money.

You still can’t patent a plant, and plants just want to grow and as long as those facts remain, this war will rage on. Please see the history of Cannabis. Please witness the current war on Kratom.