For, Lo, the Winter Is Past
For, Lo, the Winter Is Past
An Agrarian View of Seasonality
Days and Seasons
The industrialists want to maximize the day. They are on a never ending search for the most productive daily routine. What they find to be the best they then want to replicate for every day. Perfect utility is demanded from sun up to sun down. This only flows out of a mechanical view of the world that wants it to have the best cogs, routine maintenance, and to be well oiled.
The consequence of our steely society is the ruin of all things without economic use; the family, our religion, our culture, and our way of life have been pressed and molded into the premade cast for the new almighty god named “Efficiency”.
The agrarian perspective is quite different. For the agrarians, the season is the measurement. They understand that high-level output is difficult to replicate from day-to-day. Agrarians do not believe in perfect utility, and therefore are not swayed by the thrills of “super productivity”. This understanding comes from their view that the world has a natural seasonality to it; all things ebb and flow, all things wax and wane. There is a time to work and a time to rest. There is a time when work is full and a time when it is thin.
Constant demand is understood to be more of a curse than a blessing. For the agrarian, work should require much of your energy, but not all of it. Because of the seasonality of work, your energy must be conserved as you plod. Through every season there are still the demands of the family, religion, culture, and way of life. The agrarian keeps all of these in his perspective, knowing that this is what he comes back to.
Thesis
Ordering life according to seasons is far better than days, because seasons are inherent in nature, provide the proper flow of creative work, and necessary for happiness, peace, and contentment.
Seasonality In Nature
For it is from nature that we receive the term ‘season’. The word is agricultural to the core: the Latin root is ‘serere’ which means ‘to sow’. The seasons determine when to sow and when not to sow. In Alabama, there is a wide time range for the planting of peas. For most of the spring and late summer they are to easy to grow without difficulty. It is the late spring and early summer that is difficult to manage with aphids and plant rust.
The seasons are demarcation lines. When something is in season it is proper. When something is out of season it is improper. Nature changes for a time and regulates action in that time. It would be improper for there to be snow in summer as it would be improper for there to be a perfect beach day in the winter. Who has ever woken up in the spring and expected the leaves to turn brown; or in the fall, to turn green? This would be foolish. Embedded in nature are the limitations and changes of time.
It would be congruent for us to fit ourselves in line with the natural change of time. All of nature and creation is subject to a time to do something and a time to refrain from doing something. By the manifest display and function of the world not all days can be alike.
Seasonality In Creative Work
Seasonality is not only imperative for the natural order of creation, but is needed in creative work. The industrialists have skewered the arts by applying their attitude of unwavering constant work to it. Yes, most of the blemishes are undoubtedly due to the utilitarian view of all things, but the element of constancy remains largely at fault. Constancy to utilitarianism is as oil to a machine. Without oil, the machine cannot run. The arts have been pressed down into that full synthetic, utility blend, viewed only as either escapism or “teaching a lesson”.
The instinct of all creative acts is to both work and rest when necessary. All imaginations are well-fed with adequate rest. The mind does not flourish under ceaseless work. It is clear to everyone that some of the best thoughts anyone can come up with are in the shower, cleaning dishes, and even talking a walk. These mundane and non strenuous activities provide rest for the mind to process. Aristotle and Jesus were peripatetic; they taught as they walked from place to place. Empirically, I can attest that my best thoughts are not when I am at the grindstone during tax season. It is during the off season that my mind is alit with ideas.
But seasonality is not entirely synonymous with rest. Seasonality allows time for work as well. Without proper diligence and patience, creative work cannot survive. A mind that has always been at rest cannot sit down and write The Lord of the Rings. There were decades of work and influence beforehand. Work is necessary for excellence. The mind must rest for a time, even an extended period of time. But it must not atrophy.
The industrialists have made everything monochrome; black or white, rest or work. If the agrarians were not silenced, then we would hear of the seasons to work and the seasons to rest. But take notice of this: I have not once defined how long a season should be. It is determined by the innate flow of things. But what should be understood and accepted is that each season prepares you for the next.
Seasonality In Human Joy
The human soul ebbs and flows; it does not turn off and on like a switch. The heart, as its river, rises and falls to the successive orders of time. Man himself, in his affections, is in flux: a fact of nature that cannot be bulldozed over and paved with concrete. For him to be happy, he must accept his mutability by ordering life according to seasons.
It is easy to become discontent if life is ordered according to the maximizing of days, because days are difficult to optimize for perfection. Everyone can attest that it is more likely we have good days and bad seasons rather than bad days and good seasons. If we order life according to days, we set ourselves up for future disappointment and discontentment because of the natural flow of emotions. Joy and mourning come and go. If we rear our industrial hats against that, we are asking for more misery to come.
But if we order life according to seasons, we give ourselves peaceful understanding to accept that what we are in will pass but return. This allows contentment: submitting to and delighting in the will of God. We may then be able to say to ourselves that this is the season we are in and that is okay; it is not uncommon for man; this is the natural order of things; this a feature, not a bug.
Conclusion
In conclusion, seasonality in all things agrees to the created order, needed for creative endeavors, and essential for happiness, peace, and contentment in the human soul. The modern approach of the ordering of life to maximize the day has deluded man into thinking he has no relation to the dust and that he will not go to it. The agrarian view of seasons in all of life breeds virtue, and provides grounds for human flourishing. The agrarians fall in line with Cicero’s saying: “Custom shall never conquer nature; it is unconquerable.”