Does a place have inherent value? Is one place somehow "better" than another? Or are these just subjective human rankings?
Wendell Berry, the visionary farmer, poet, novelist, and essayist, writes often and convincingly of the value of place. He says, "My work has been motivated by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place." Biologist Rupert Sheldrake speaks of the "morphic resonance" of places. Many places are sacred, and everyone feels a tug to their birthplace. Itinerants and travelers may satisfy their wanderlust, but eventually they come home to roost. People want to have a sense of community, and family, and continuity.
You don’t get that feeling as a constant migrant or world traveler. I’m not saying that travel is inherently bad; just that round-trip is better than one-way, and there is such a thing as too much. There comes a time for everyone when they feel a need to establish themselves and put down roots.
And then there is the (immensely politically incorrect) theory that people of a given race are best suited to a given place. For example, Northern races tend to be light skinned. They lack the melanin that blocks sunlight, thus allowing them to take maximal advantage of the sun’s ability to convert skin oil to Vitamin D. Conversely, tropical races have darker skin. They get more than enough sunlight to produce all the Vitamin D they need. Their problem is not too little sun; it’s too much. Hence their skin has more melanin to block the sun’s burning UV rays.
Unfortunately, this theory has been extrapolated to justify some extreme and dangerously flawed views. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu, in his book Man’s Most Dangerous Myth, rightly points out that skin color has no association whatsoever with any other traits—whether intelligence, athletic ability, or physical features. In a word, skin color is independent of race. It is correlated only with how near a given culture of people happens to live near the equator, and its only function is to adapt that culture to local sunlight.
Anyone who has followed the World Trade Organization controversy has heard all the arguments against globalization and free trade, and why it’s bad to constantly ship things willy-nilly all around the world. Wendell Berry (and others) has pointed out another reason, which is not often heard. He says that people do best on locally grown produce. Not just because it’s fresher or cheaper, but that it is what we are designed by Gaian evolution to eat.
My feeling is that Wendell Berry, Rupert Sheldrake, and the WTO protesters are right. But there is a common thread running through their arguments that I would like to pull together. For many of the same reasons that locally grown produce and locally made goods are better for us, local people are a good thing. Like plants, we thrive best where we’re sown.
Unfortunately, this theory doesn’t work so well in the real world. There is a lot of rotten ground where very little or nothing will grow. Wars, ecological devastation, and "natural" disasters (actually induced by the first two) have reduced the fertility of many areas to all but barren wasteland. The survivors are miserable; hence the massive migrations of today.
Jeff Herman, chairman of the Greater Boston chapter of Zero Population Growth, believes immigrants have been unfairly scapegoated. He is no fan of organizations like Numbers USA, which seek to restore immigration quotas in this country to traditional levels. Numbers USA takes great pains to point out that they are not "immigrant bashers". For example, their Internet site states "Nothing about this website should be construed as advocating hostile actions or feelings toward immigrant Americans." Even so, they have become the target of pro-immigrant groups.
Mr. Herman responded to an article from Numbers USA by saying, "I found [the article to be] very good. It is quite stimulating and provides a lot of information I wanted to know. But, it makes some judgments, that are just that. For example, it calls for sustainability at present levels. However, sustainability cannot be achieved at present levels. We need to reduce the size of the population on Earth, now. How do we do that? Would reducing immigration levels into the United States help? For how long? Why not start by throwing some immigrants out? Why not throw all immigrants out that aren’t native Americans? Isn’t that ridiculous? So let’s compromise. Throw everybody out that isn’t a Native American or married to a Native American. What I am saying is let’s solve this problem, or at least propose a solution to this problem that’s viable. Borders are artificial constructs drawn by elitists in the Developed World that most of the world doesn’t respect. Why make that our standard of what is good and what is not good?"
Herman’s argument, following as it does the standard ‘reductio ad absurdium’ approach, is entirely logical and completely correct. I can’t fault him on it; if I tried to debate his position I would lose. I was trained as an engineer and it is my profession. I know and value logic—it is a powerful technique for solving many kinds of problems. It is the way I have operated most of my life.
And I do agree with Herman’s central point that the Earth is critically overpopulated. Overpopulation is the driving force behind and the key to solving all of our environmental woes. Altering immigration levels will affect our global numbers only marginally, if at all. It just re-arranges the checkers on the board; it doesn’t add or subtract any.
However, for better or worse, I am starting to see that there are limits to logic. I’m not ready to jettison it entirely yet, and I’m not even sure it’s the right thing to do. In any case, it has not been easy by any means to overcome a lifetime of logical thinking.
Indian yogis and Zen masters don’t use logic. In fact, the first thing they do with new students is to "unteach" it. Thus the famous Zen koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", and the focus in yoga on breath, not mind.
If not logic, then what? Some evidence suggests that intuition is a higher form of logic. You may not be able to explain them, but your hunches and feelings may be right. As Montagu argues in The Natural Superiority of Women, females generally have better intuitive skills than males. So they may be better suited to guiding us through the increasingly turbulent times that lie ahead. Realistically, though, that is highly unlikely given our current near-universal patriarchy.
Dr. Norman Myers, writing in the March 2000 issue of Earthwatch magazine, says we are "precipitating the greatest extinction episode since the first flickerings of life almost four billion years ago." He is only one voice among many reputable scientists who are coming to the consensus that biodiversity is in a tailspin. Estimates are that we have anywhere from 50 to 200 years before most species vanish forever—probably including ours truly, Homo sapiens.
My intuitive sense, for whatever it’s worth, is that places do indeed have inherent value. Plants, animals and even human beings all have a "morphic resonance" with their own special place on this Earth. Wherever practical, we should try to perceive and respect this phenomenon. If we can learn to discover the sacredness of place, we might just be able to achieve true sustainability.
There are some problems that are just too complicated for logic to handle correctly. I believe this applies to problems of global scope, including immigration and free trade. Herman is right, and the WTO are right, logically. But it won’t matter to our descendants if we don’t have any.