Look For Someone to Eat and Drink With

The eagles are back. Truth is, I don't think they really leave in the winter. Perhaps we just aren't looking hard enough. Still, it is always a thrill to see them down near the river, gazing deeply into a small melt hole in the ice waiting for a fish, or pairing up near a nest - perhaps planning for this year's brood. Usually it is after the groundhog makes his declaration, but long before the peep frogs sing. I view it as an encouragement, a sign that the ice will soon give way to mud and then to planting and, then that Heaven on Earth, June Grass.

I don't know much about any afterlife, and opinions vary widely throughout the world and over time. For me, I have always hoped that a life well lived might be rewarded with eternity spent during that special brief window when the pasture is lit with a perfect light that shows not just the crisp, youthful complexion of the grass, but it's supple swaying in friendship with a gentle June breeze. After that moment comes heat, and hay and work to lay up stores for winter. Life goes on as before.

But June is still a ways off, and despite wistful yearnings, the work of living continues and the gears of life mesh and turn. The pasture remains white. The air is blue, but not yet the sky.

I think a lot about technology. Probably talk too much about it too. But this latest push toward everything AI seems more de-humanizing than previous technologies. I worry that generations coming up will lose their ability to feel deeper emotions, even while they indulge themselves in the baser ones. Especially a feeling of purpose, of meaning. I worry what they will use to fill that empty spot within them.

Life is an experience, not just an existence. I raise chickens not just because they are more healthy or nutritious, not just because they are tastier, but because they are real. They are not a mindless, soulless nearly flavorless substance on styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic, or worse, an amorphous blob of chemically simulated, flavored substance heated in a microwave so as not to interrupt the game.

Real chicken is effort, effort to raise, effort to cook, even perhaps effort to eat, in that it can be a mindful act. In that mindfulness, hopefully is pleasure - flavor, texture, aroma. But, I hope, more than that. Perhaps a pleasure in preparation. Perhaps an anticipation while waiting for completion. Perhaps a time shared with friends and family. Perhaps a connection to a memory or to the Earth itself that has arranged for you to share the same time and space with this meal.

I hold that there is no purpose without effort, without work. And without purpose, there is no life, just existence. When a tool such as AI offers to take away effort, what are we to replace it with?

To be sure, AI is only the latest tool to tempt us, and perhaps we will yet find our way. While few of us, myself included, are today quite ready to give up our computers, Wendell Berry made a good case for it back in the late 1980's, which can be read here.

I want to thank everyone who has made the effort, who has purchased our chickens and other products. I know it takes some effort, and this long winded tirade was not meant to justify that. It was simply me, thinking out loud, or rather onto the keyboard. I have often been accused of thinking after I speak, rather than before. My retort is at least I am trying to think, and that is human. Sometimes I do not know what I think until I say it.

Epicurus taught that we should appreciate the simpler pleasures in life, focusing on friendship, knowledge and tranquility. While he is sometimes interpreted as encouraging hedonism, I think he was just trying to get us to be human.

*"We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink." ~ Epicurus

Or maybe I'm just ahead of my skis.

Thanks for Listening,

Dave