Production Costs Are Not Coming Down
It is a mistake to believe that progress in agricultural technology will lower production
costs and make food less expensive. Suppose that some entrepreneur decided to grow rice
and vegetables in a large building right at the center of a major city. He would make full
spatial use of the building in three dimensions, fully equipping it with central heating and
air conditioning, artificial lighting, and automatic spraying devices for carbon dioxide and nutrient solutions.
Now, would such systematized agriculture involving automated production under the
watchful eyes of a single technician really provide people with fresh, inexpensive, and
nutritious vegetables? A vegetable factory like this cannot be built and run without
considerable outlays for capital and materials, so it is only natural to expect the
vegetables thus produced to be expensive. However efficient and modern it may be, such
a plant cannot possibly grow produce more cheaply than crops grown naturally with
sunlight and soil.
Nature produces without calling for supplies or remuneration, but human effort always
demands payment in return. The more sophisticated the equipment and facilities, the higher the costs. And man never knows when to stop.When a highly efficient robot is
developed, people applaud, saying that efficient production is here at last. But their joy is
short-lived, for soon they are dissatisfied again and demanding even more advanced and
efficient technology. Everyone seems intent on lowering production costs, yet these costs
have skyrocketed nevertheless.
Equally mistaken is the notion that food can be produced cheaply and in large quantity
with microorganisms such as chlorella and yeast. Science cannot produce something from
nothing. Invariably, the result is a decrease in production rather than an increase, giving a
high-cost product.
People brought up eating unnatural food develop into artificial, anti-natural human
beings with an unnatural body prone to disease and an unnatural way of thinking. There
exists the frightful possibility that the transfiguration of agriculture may result in the perversion of far more than just agriculture.
Increased Production Has Not Brought Increased Yields
When talk everywhere turned to increasing food production, most people believed that
raising yields and productivity through scientific techniques would enable man to
produce larger, better, more plentiful food crops. Yet, larger harvests have not brought
greater profits for farmers. In many cases, they have even resulted in losses.
Most high-yield farming technology in use today does not increase net profits. At fault
are the very practices thought to be vital to increasing yields: the heavy application of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and indiscriminate mechanization. But although these may be useful in reducing crop losses, they are not effective techniques for increasing productivity. In fact, such practices hurt productivity. They appear to work because:
1) Chemical fertilizers are effective only when the soil is dead.
2) Pesticides are effective only for protecting unhealthy plants.
3) Farm machinery is useful only when one has to cultivate a large area.
Another way of saying the same thing is that these methods are ineffective or even
detrimental on fertile soil, healthy crops, and small fields. Chemical fertilizers can
increase yields when the soil is poor to begin with and produces only 4 to 5 bushels of
rice per quarter-acre. Even then, heavy fertilization produces an average rise in yield of
not more than about 2 bushels over the long term. Chemical fertilizers are truly effective
only on soil abused and wasted through slash-and-burn agriculture.
Adding chemical fertilizer to soil that regularly produces 7 to 8 bushels of rice per quarter-acre has very little effect, while addition to fields that yield 10 bushels may even
hurt productivity. Chemical fertilizer is thus of benefit only as a means for preventing a
decline in yields. Green manure—nature’s own fertilizer—and animal manure were
cheaper and safer methods of increasing yields.
The same is true of pesticides. What sense can there be in producing unhealthy rice plants and applying powerful pesticides anywhere up to ten times a year? Before investigating how well pesticides kill harmful insects and how well they prevent crop losses, scientists should have studied how the natural ecosystem is destroyed by these pesticides and why crop plants have weakened. They should have investigated the causes underlying the disruption in the harmony of nature and the outbreak of pests, and on the basis of these findings decided whether pesticides are really needed or not.
By flooding the paddy fields and breaking up the soil with tillers until it hardens to the
consistency of adobe, rice farmers have created conditions that make it impossible to raise crops without tilling, and in the process have deluded themselves into thinking this
to be an effective and necessary part of farming. Fertilizers, pesticides, and farm
machinery all appear convenient and useful in raising productivity. However, when
viewed from a broader perspective, these kill the soil and crops, and destroy the natural
productivity of the earth.
“But after all,” we are often told, “along with its advantages, science also has its
disadvantages.” Indeed, the two are inseparable; we cannot have one without the other.
Science can produce no good without evil. It is effective only at the price of the
destruction of nature. This is why, after man has maimed and disfigured nature, science
appears to give such striking results—when all it is doing is repairing the most extreme
damage.
Productivity of the land can be improved through scientific farming methods only
when its natural productivity is in decline. These are regarded as high-yielding practices
only because they are useful in stemming crop losses. To make matters worse, man’s
efforts to return conditions to their natural state are always incomplete and accompanied
by great waste. This explains the basic energy extravagance of science and technology.
Nature is entirely self-contained. In its eternal cycles of change, never is there the
slightest extravagance or waste. All the products of the human intellect—which has
strayed far from the bosom of nature—and ail man’s labors are doomed to end in vain.
Before rejoicing over the progress of science, we should lament those conditions that
have driven us to depend on its helping hand. The root cause for the decline of the farmer
and crop productivity lie with the development of scientific agriculture.
Energy-Wasteful Modern Agriculture
The claim is often made that scientific agriculture has a high productivity, but if we
calculate the energy efficiency of production, we find that this decreases with
mechanization. Table 1.1 compares the amount of energy expended directly in rice
production using five different methods of farming: natural farming, farming with the
help of animals, and lightly, moderately, and heavily mechanized agriculture. Natural
farming requires only one man day of labor to recover 130 pounds of rice, or 200,000
kilo calories of food energy, from a quarter-acre of land. The energy input needed to
recover 200,000 kilo calories from the land in this way is the 2,000 kilo calories required
to feed one farmer for one day. Cultivation with horses or oxen requires an energy input
five to ten times as great, and mechanized agriculture calls for an input of from ten to
fifty times as much energy. Since the efficiency of rice production is inversely
proportional to the energy input, scientific agriculture requires an energy expenditure per
unit of food produced up to fifty times that of natural farming.
The youths living in the mud-walled huts of my citrus orchard have shown me that a
person’s minimum daily calorie requirement is somewhere about 1,000 calories for a
“hermit’s diet” of brown rice with sesame seeds and salt, and 1,500 calories on a diet of
brown rice and vegetables. This is enough to do a farmer’s work—equivalent to about
one-tenth of a horsepower.
At one time, people believed that using horses and oxen would lighten the labor of
men. But contrary to expectations, our reliance on these large animals has been to our
disadvantage. Farmers would have been better off using pigs and goats to plow and turn
the soil. In fact, what they should have done was to leave the soil to be worked by small
animals—chickens, rabbits, mice, moles, and even worms. Large animals only appear to
be useful when one is in a hurry to get the job done. We tend to forget that it takes over
two acres of pasture to feed just one horse or cow.This much land could feed fifty or
even a hundred people if one made full use of nature’s powers. Raising livestock has
clearly taken its toll on man. The reason India’s farmers are so poor today is that they
raised large numbers of cows and elephants which ate up all the grass, and dried and
burned the droppings as fuel. Such practices have depleted soil fertility and reduced the
productivity of the land.
Livestock farming today is of the same school of idiocy as the fish-farming of
yellow tails. Raising one yellow tail to a marketable size requires ten times its weight in
sardines. Similarly, a silver fox consumes ten times its weight in rabbit meat, and a rabbit
ten times its weight in grass. What an incredible waste of energy to produce a single silver fox pelt! People have to work ten times as hard to eat beef as grain, and they had
better be prepared to work five times as hard if they want to nourish themselves on milk and eggs.
Farming with the labor of animals therefore helps satisfy certain cravings and desires,
but increases man’s labor many times over. Although this form of agriculture appears to
benefit man, it actually puts him in the service of his livestock. In raising cattle or
elephants as members of the farming household, the peasants of Japan and India
impoverished themselves to provide their livestock with the calories they needed.
Mechanized farming is even worse. Instead of reducing the farmer’s work, mechanization enslaves him to his equipment. To the farmer, machinery is the largest domestic animal of all—a great guzzler of oil, a consumer good rather than a capital good. At first glance, mechanized agriculture appears to increase the productivity per worker and thus raise income. However, quite to the contrary, a look at the efficiency of land utilization and energy consumption reveals this to be an extremely destructive method of farming.
Man reasons by comparison. Thus he thinks it better to have a horse do the plowing
than a man, and thinks it more convenient to own a ten-horsepower tractor than to keep
ten horses—why, if it costs less than a horse, a one-horsepower motor is a bargain! Such
thinking has accelerated the spread of mechanization and appears reasonable in the context of our currency-based economic system. But the progressively inorganic
character and towered productivity of the land resulting from farming operations aimed at
large-volume production, the economic disruption caused by the excessive input of
energy, and the increased sense of alienation deriving from such a direct antithesis to
nature has only speed ed the dislocation of farmers off the land, however much this has
been called progress.
Has mechanization really increased productivity and made things easier for the
farmer? Let us consider the changes this has brought about in tilling practices.
A two-acre farmer who purchases a 30-horsepower tractor will not magically become a 50-acre farmer unless the amount of land in his care increases. If the land under cultivation is limited, mechanization only lowers the number of laborers required. This
surplus manpower begets leisure. Applying such excess energy to some other work
increases income, or so the reasoning goes. The problem, however, is that this extra
income cannot come from the land. In fact, the yield from the land will probably decrease
while the energy requirements skyrocket. In the end, the farmer is driven from his fields
by his machinery. The use of machinery may make working the fields easier, but revenue
from crop production has shrunk. Yet taxes are not about to decrease, and the costs of
mechanization continue to climb by leaps and bounds. This is where things stand for the
farmer.
The reduction in labor brought about by scientific farming has succeeded only in
forcing farmers off the land. Perhaps the politician and consumer think the ability of a
smaller number of workers to carry out agricultural production for the nation is indicative of progress. To the farmer, however, this is a tragedy, a preposterous mistake. For every tractor operator, how many dozens of farmers are driven off the land and forced to work in factories making agricultural implements and fertilizer—which would not be needed in the first place if natural farming were used.
Machinery, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides have drawn the farmer away from nature. Although these useless products of human manufacture do not raise the yields of
his land, because they arc promoted as tools for making profits and boosting yields, he labors under the illusion that he needs them. Their use has wrought great destruction on nature, robbing it of its powers and leaving man no choice but to tend vast fields by his own hand. This in turn has made large machinery, high-grade compound fertilizers, and
powerful poisons indispensable. And the same vicious cycle goes on and on without end.
Larger and larger agricultural operations have not given farmers the stability they
seek. Farms in Europe are ten times larger, and in the United States one hundred times
larger, than the 6- to 7-acre farms common to Japan. Yet farmers in Europe and the U.S.
are, if anything, even more insecure than Japanese farmers. It is only natural that farmers in the West who question the trend toward large-scale mechanized agriculture have sought an alternative in Eastern methods of organic farming. However, as they have come to realize also that traditional agriculture with farm animals is not the way to salvation, these farmers have begun searching frantically for the road leading toward natural farming.
Laying to Waste the Land and Sea
The modern livestock and fishing industries are also basically flawed. Everyone
unquestioningly assumed that by raising poultry and livestock and by fish farming our
diet would improve, but no one had the slightest suspicion that the production of meat
would ruin the land and the raising of fish would pollute the seas.
In terms of caloric production and consumption, someone will have to work at least
twice as hard if he wants to eat eggs and milk rather than grains and vegetables. If he
likes meat, he will have to put out seven times the effort. Because it is so energyinefficient, modern livestock farming cannot be considered as “production” in a basic
sense. In fact, true efficiency has become so low and man has been driven to such
extremes of toil and labor that he is even attempting to increase the efficiency of
livestock production by raising large, genetically improved breeds.
The Japanese Bantam is a breed of chicken native toJapan. Leave it to roam about
freely and it lays just one small egg every other day—low productivity by most
standards. But although this chicken is not an outstanding egg-layer, it is in fact very
productive. Take a breeding pair of Bantams, let them nest every so often, and before you
know it they will hatch a clutch of chicks. Within a year’s time, your original pair of
chickens will have grown to a flock often or twenty birds that together will lay many
times as many eggs each day as the best variety of White Leghorn. The Bantams are very
efficient calorie producers because they feed themselves and lay eggs on their own,
literally producing something from nothing. Moreover, as long as the number of birds
remains appropriate for the space available, raising chickens in this way does not harm
the land.
Genetically-upgraded White Leghorns raised in cages lay one large egg a day.
Because they produce so many eggs, it is commonly thought that raising these in large
numbers will provide people with lots of eggs to eat and also generate droppings that can
be used to enrich the land. But in order for the chickens to lay so many eggs, they have to
be given feed grain having twice the caloric value of the eggs produced. Such artificial
methods of raising chickens are thus basically counterproductive; instead of increasing
calories, they actually cut the number of calories in half. Restoration of the wastes to the
land is not easy, and even then, soil fertility is depleted to the extent of the caloric loss.
This is true not only for chickens but for pigs andcattle as well, where the efficiency
is even worse. The ratio of energy output to input is 50 percent for broilers, 20 percent for
pork, 15 percent for milk, and 8 percent for beef. Raising beef cattle cuts the food energy
recoverable from land tenfold; people who eat beef consume ten times as much energy as
people on a diet of rice. Few are aware of how our livestock industry, which raises cattle
in indoor stalls with feed grain shipped from the United States, has helped deplete
American soil. Not only are such practices uneconomical, they amount essentially to a
campaign to destroy vegetation on a global scale.
Nonetheless, people persist in believing that raising large numbers of chickens that are
good egg-layers or improved breeds of hogs and cattle with a high feed conversion
efficiency in enclosures is the only workable approach to mass production; they are
convinced that this is intelligent, economical livestock farming. The very opposite is true.
Artificial livestock practices consisting essentially of the conversion of feed into eggs,
milk, or meat are actually very energy-wasteful. In fact, the larger and more highly
improved the breed of animal being raised, the greater the energy input required and the
greater the effort and pains that must be taken by the farmer.
The question we must answer then is: What should be raised, and where? First we
must select breeds that can be left to graze the mountain pastures. Raising large numbers
of genetically improved Holstein cows and beef cattle in indoor pens or small lots on
concentrated feed is a highly risky business for both man and livestock alike. Moreover,
such methods yield higher rates of energy loss than other forms of animal husbandry.
Native breeds and varieties such as Jersey cattle, which are thought to be of lower
productivity, actually have a higher feed efficiency and do not lead to depletion of the
land. Being closer to nature, the wild boar and theblack Berkshire pig are in fact more
economical than the supposedly superior white Yorkshire breed. Profits aside, it would be
better to raise small goats than dairy cattle. And raising deer, boars, rabbits, chickens,
wildfowl, and even edible rodents, would be even more economical—and better protect
nature—than goats.
In a small country like Japan, rather than raising large dairy cattle, which merely
impoverishes the soil, it would be far wiser for each family to keep a goat. Breeds that are
better milk producers but basically weak, such as Saanen, should be avoided and strong
native varieties that can live on roughage raised. The goat, which is called the poor man’s
cattle because it takes care of itself and also provides milk, is in fact inexpensive to raise
and does not weaken the productivity of the land.
If poultry and livestock are to truly benefit man, they must be capable of feeding and
fending for themselves under the open sky. Only then will food become naturally
plentiful and contribute to man’s well-being.
In my idealized vision of livestock farming, I see bees busily making the rounds of
clover and vegetable blossoms thickly flowering beneath trees laden heavy with fruit; I see semi
wild chickens and rabbits frolicking with dogs in fields of growing wheat, and great numbers of ducks and mallards playing in the rice paddy; at the foot of the hills and in the valleys, black pigs and boars grow fat on worms and crayfish, and from time to time goats peer out from the thickets and trees.
This scene might be taken from an out-of-the-way hamlet in a country untarnished by
modern civilization. The real question for us is whether to view it as a picture of
primitive, economically disadvantaged life or as an organic partnership between man,
animal, and nature. An environment comfortable for small animals is also an ideal setting for man.
It takes 200 square yards of land to support one human being living on grains, 600
square yards to support someone living on potatoes, 1,500 square yards for someone
living on milk, 4,000 square yards for someone living on pork, and 10,000 square yards
for someone subsisting entirely on beef. If the entire human population on earth were
dependent on a diet of just beef, humanity would have already reached its limits of
growth. The world population could grow to three times its present level on a diet of
pork, eight times on a milk diet, and twenty times on a potato diet. On a diet of just grains, the carrying, capacity of earth is sixty times the current world population.
One need look only at the United States and Europe for clear evidence that beef
impoverishes the soil and denudes the earth.
Modern fishing practices are just as destructive. We have polluted and killed the seas that were once fertile fishing grounds. Today’s fishing industry raises expensive fish by feeding them several times their weight in smaller fish while rejoicing at how abundant
fish have become. Scientists are interested only in learning how to make bigger catches
or increasing the number of fish, but viewed in a larger context, such an approach merely
speeds the decline in catches. Protecting seas in which fish can still be caught by hand
should be a clear priority over the development of superior methods for catching fish.
Research on breeding technology for shrimp, sea bream, and eels will not increase the
numbers offish. Such misguided thinking and efforts are not only undermining the
modern agricultural and fishing industries, they will also someday spell doom for the
oceans of the world.
As with modern livestock practices that run counterto nature, man has tricked himself
into believing that he can improve the fishing industry through the development of more
advanced fish farming methods while at the same time perfecting fishing practices that
destroy natural reproduction. Frankly, I am frightened at the dangers posed by treating
fish with large doses of chemicals to prevent pelagic diseases that break out in the Inland
Sea as a result of pollution caused by the large quantities of feed strewn over the water at
the many fish farming centers on the Sea. It was no laughing matter when a rise in
demand for sardines as feed for yellowtails resulted in a curious development recently: an
acute shortage of sardines that made the smaller fish a luxury item for a short while.
Man ought to know that nature is fragile and easilyharmed. It is far more difficult to
protect than everyone seems to think. And once it has been destroyed, nature cannot be
restored.
The way to enrich man’s diet is easy. It does not entail mass growing or gathering. But it does require man to relinquish human knowledge and action, and to allow nature to restore its natural bounty. Indeed, there is no other way.
2 THE ILLUSIONS OF NATURAL SCIENCE
1. The Errors of the Human Intellect
Scientific agriculture developed early in the West as one branch of the natural
sciences, which arose in Western learning as the study of matter. The natural sciences
took a materialistic viewpoint that interpreted nature analytically and dialectically. This
was a consequence of Western man’s belief in a man-nature dichotomy. In contrast to the
Eastern view that man should seek to become one with nature, Western man used
discriminating knowledge to place man in oppositionto nature and attempted, from that
vantage point, a detached interpretation of the natural world. For he was convinced that
the human intellect can cast off subjectivity and comprehend nature objectively.
Western man firmly believed nature to be an entity with an objective reality
independent of human consciousness, an entity that man can know through observation,
reductive analysis, and reconstruction. From these processes of destruction and
reconstruction arose the natural sciences.
The natural sciences have advanced at breakneck speed, flinging us into the space age.
Today, man appears capable of knowing everything about the universe. He grows ever
more confident that, sooner or later, he will understand even phenomena as yet unknown.
But what exactly does it mean for man to “know”? He may laugh at the folly of the
proverbial frog in the well, but is unable to laugh off his own ignorance before the
vastness of the universe. Although man, who occupies but one small corner of the
universe, can never hope to fully understand the world in which he lives, he persists nonetheless in the illusion that he has the cosmos in the palm of his hand.
Man is not in a position to know nature.
Nature Must Not Be Dissected
Scientific farming first arose when man, observing plants as they grew, came to know
these and later grew convinced that he could raise them himself. Yet has man really known nature? Has he really grown crops and lived by the fruit of his own labor? Man looks at a stalk of wheat and says he knows what that wheat is. But does he really know wheat, and is he really capable of growing it? Let us examine the process by which man thinks he can know things.
Man believes that he has to fly off into outer space to learn about space, or that he
must travel to the moon to know the moon. In the same way, he thinks that to know a
stalk of wheat, he must first take it in his hand, dissect it, and analyze it. He thinks that
the best way to learn about something is to collect and assemble as much data on it as
possible. In his efforts to learn about nature, man has cut it up into little pieces. He has
certainly learned many things in this way, but what he has examined has not been nature
itself.
Man’s curiosity has led him to ask why and how the winds blow and the rain falls. He
has carefully studied the tides of the sea, the nature of lightning, and the plants and
animals that inhabit the fields and mountains. He has extended his inquiring gaze into the
tiny world of microorganisms, into the realm of minerals and inorganic matter. Even the
sub-microscopic universe of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles has come under
his scrutiny. Detailed research has pressed forth on the morphology, physiology, ecology,
and every other conceivable aspect of a single flower, a single stalk of wheat.
Even a single kaf presents infinite opportunities for study. The collection of cells that
together form the leaf; the nucleus of one of thesecells, which harbors the mystery of
life; the chromosomes that hold the key to heredity; the question of how chlorophyll
synthesizes starch from sunlight and carbon dioxide; the unseen activity of roots at work;
the uptake of various nutrients by the plant; how water rises to the tops of tall trees; the
relationships between various components and microorganisms in the soil; how these
interact and change when absorbed by the roots and what functions they serve—these arc
but a few of the inexhaustible array of topics scientific research has pursued.
But nature is a living, organic whole that cannot be divided and subdivided. When it is
separated into two complementary halves and these divided again into four, when
research becomes fragmented and specialized, the unity of nature is lost.
The diagram in Figure 2.1 is an attempt to illustrate the interplay of factors, or
elements, that determine yields in rice cultivation. Originally, the elements determining
yield were not divided and separate. All were joined in perfect order under a single
conductor’s baton and resonated together in exquisite harmony. Yet, when science
inserted its scalpel, a complex and horrendously chaotic array of elements appeared. All science has succeeded in doing is to peel the skin off a beautiful woman and reveal a bloody mass of tissue. What a miserable, wasted effort.
Nowadays, plants can be made to bloom in all seasons. Stores display fruits and
vegetables throughout the year, so that one almost forgets whether it is summer or winter
anymore. This is the result of chemical controls that have been developed to regulate the
time of bud formation and differentiation.
Confident of his ability to synthesize the proteins that make up cells, man has even
challenged the “ultimate” secret—the mystery of life itself. Whether he will succeed in
synthesizing cells depends on his ability to synthesize nucleic acids, this being the last
major hurdle to the synthesis of living matter. The synthesis of simple forms of life is
now just a matter of time, this was first anticipated when the notion of a fundamental difference between living and non-living matter was laid to rest with the discovery of bacteriophage s, the confirmation—in subsequent research on viral pathogens—of the existence of non-living matter that multiplies, and the first attempts to synthesize such
matter. Following his interests blindly, man is intently at work on the synthesis of life without
knowing what the successful creation of living cells means or the repercussions it might
have. Nor is this all. Carried along by their own momentum, scientists have even begun
venturing into chromosome synthesis. Soon after the disclosure that man had synthesized
life came the announcement that the synthesis and modification of chromosomes has become possible through genetic recombination. Man can already create and alter living organism:; like the Creator. We are about to enter an age in which scientists will create organisms that have never before appeared on the face of the earth. Following test-tube babies, we will see the creation of artificial beings, monsters, and enormous crops. In fact, these have already begun to appear. Granted, one certainly does get the impression that great advances have been made in human understanding, that man has come to know all things in nature and, by using and
adapting such knowledge, has accelerated progress in human life. Yet, there is a catch to
all of this. Man’s awareness is intrinsically imperfect, and this gives rise to errors in
human understanding. When man says that he is capable of knowing nature, to “know” does not mean to grasp and understand the true essence of nature. Itmeans only that man knows that nature which he is able to know.
Just as the world known to a frog in a well is not the entire world but only the world
within that well, so the nature that man can perceive and know is only that nature which
he has been able to grasp with his own hands and his own subjectivity. But of course, this
is not true nature.
The Maze of Relative Subjectivity
When people want to know what Okuninushi no Mikoto, the Shinto deity of
agriculture, carries around in the huge sack on his shoulder, they immediately open the
sack and thrust their hands in. They think that to understand the interior of the sack, they
must know its contents. Supposing they found the-sack to be filled with all sorts of
strange objects made of wood and bamboo. At this point, most people would begin to
make various pronouncements: “Why this no doubt is a tool used by travelers.” “No, it’s
a decorative carving.” “No, it most definitely is a weapon.” And so forth. Yet the truth,
known only to Okuninushi himself, is that the object is an instrument fashioned by him
for his amusement. And moreover, because it is broken, he is carrying it around in his
sack merely for use as kindling.
Man jumps into that great sack called nature, and grabbing whatever he can, turns it
over and examines it, asking himself what it is and how it works, and drawing his own
conclusions about what purpose nature serves. But no matter how careful his
observations and reasoning, each and every interpretation carries the risk of causing
grievous error because man cannot know nature any more than he can know the uses for
the objects in Okuninushi’s sack.
Yet man is not easily discouraged. He believes that, even if it amounts to the same absurdity as jumping into the sack and guessing at the objects inside, man’s knowledge will broaden without limit; simple observations will start the wheels of reason and inference turning.
For example, man may see some shells attached to a piece of bamboo and mistake it for a weapon. When further investigation reveals that rapping the shells against the bamboo makes an interesting sound, he will conclude this to be a musical instrument, and will infer from the curvature of the bamboo that it must be worn dangling from the waist while dancing. With each step in this line of reasoning, he will believe himself that much closer to the truth. Just as he believes that he can know Okuninushi’s mind by studying the contents of his sack, so man believes that, by observing nature, he can learn the story of its creation and can in turn become privy to its very designs and purpose. But this is a hopeless illusion, for man can know the world only by stepping outside of the sack and meeting ace-to-face with the owner.
A flea born and raised in the sack without ever having seen the world outside will
never be able to guess that the object in the sack is an instrument that is hung from
Okuninushi’s belt, no matter how much it studies the object. Similarly, man, who is born
within nature and will never be able to step outside of the natural world, can never
understand all of nature merely by examining that part of nature around him. Man’s answer to this is that, although he may not be able to view the world from without, if he
has the knowledge and ability to explore the furthest reaches of the vast, seemingly
boundless universe and is able at least to learn what there is and what has happened in
this universe, is not this enough? Has not man learned, sooner or later, everything that he
wished to learn? That which is unknown today will become known tomorrow. This being
the case, there is nothing man cannot know.
Even if he were to spend his entire life within a sack, provided he was able to learn
everything about the inside of the sack, would this not be enough? Is not the frog in the
well able to live there in peace and tranquility? What need has it for the world outside the
well? Man watches nature unfold about him; he examines it and puts it to practical use. If he
gets the expected results, he has no reason to call into question his knowledge or actions.
There being nothing to suggest that he is in error,does not this mean that he has grasped
the real truth about the world?
He assumes an air of indifference: “I don’t know what lies outside the world of the
unknown; maybe nothing. This goes beyond the sphere of the intellect. We’d be better off
leaving inquiries into a world that may or may not exist to those men of religion who
dream of God.”
But who is it that is dreaming? Who is it that is seeing illusions? And knowing the answer to this, can we enjoy true peace of mind? No matter how deep his understanding
of the universe, it is man’s subjectivity that holds up the stage on which his knowledge
performs. But just what if his subjective view were all wrong? Before laughing at blind
faith in God, man should take note of his blind faith in himself.
When man observes and judges, there is only the thing called “man” and the thing
being observed. It is this thing called “man” that verifies and believes in the reality of an
object, and it is man who verifies and believes in the existence of this thing called “man.”
Everything in this world derives from man and he draws all the conclusions. In which
case, he need not worry about being God’s puppet. But he does run the risk of acting out
a drunken role on the stage supported by the crazed subjectivity of his own despotic
existence.
“Yes,” persists the scientist, “man observes and makes judgments, so one cannot deny
that subjectivity may be at work here. Yet his ability to reason enables man to divest
himself of subjectivity and see things objectively as well. Through repeated inductive experimentation and reasoning, man has resolved all things into patterns of association and interaction. The proof that this was no mistake lies about us, in the airplanes, automobiles, and all the other trappings of modern civilization.”
But if, on taking a better look at this modern civilization of ours, we find it to be
insane, we must conclude that the human intellect which engendered it is also insane. It is
the perversity of human subjectivity that gave rise to our ailing modern age. Indeed,
whether one views the modern world as insane or not may even be a criterion of one’s
own sanity. We have already seen, in Chapter 1, how perverted agriculture has grown.
Are airplanes really fast, and cars truly a comfortable way to travel? Isn’t our
magnificent civilization nothing more than a toy, an amusement? Man is unable to see the
truth because his eyes are veiled by subjectivity. He has looked at the green of trees without knowing true green, and has “known” the color crimson without seeing crimson itself. That has been the source of all his errors.
Non-Discriminating Knowledge
The statement that science arose from doubt and discontent is often used as implied
justification of scientific inquiry, but this in noway justifies it, On the contrary, when
confronted with the havoc wrought by science and technology on nature, one cannot help
feeling disquiet at this very process of scientific inquiry that man uses to separate and classify his doubts and discontents.
An infant sees things intuitively. When observed without intellectual discrimination,
nature is entire and complete—a unity. In this non-discriminating view of creation, there
is no cause for the slightest doubt or discontent. A baby is satisfied and enjoys peace of mind without having to do anything.
The adult mentally picks things apart and classifies them; he sees everything as
imperfect and fraught with inconsistency. This is what is meant by grasping things
dialectically. Armed with his doubts about “imperfect” nature and his discontent, man has
set forth to improve upon nature and vainly calls the changes he has brought about “progress” and “development.”
People believe that as a child grows into adulthood his understanding of nature deepens and through this process he becomes able to contribute to progress and
development in this world. That this “progress” is nothing other than a march toward annihilation is clearly shown by the spiritual decay and environmental pollution that plague the developed nations of the world.
When a child living in the country comes across a muddy rice field, he jumps right in and plays in the mud. This is the simple, straightforward way of a child who knows the earth intuitively. But a child raised in the city lacks the courage to jump into the field. His mother has constantly been after him to wash the grime from his hands, telling him that dirt is filthy and full of germs. The child who “knows” about the “awful germs” in the dirt sees the muddy rice field as unclean, an ugly and fearful place. Are the mother’s knowledge and judgment really better than the unschooled intuition of the country child?
Hundreds of millions of microorganisms crowd each gram of soil. Bacteria are present
in this soil, but so are other bacteria that kill these bacteria, and yet other bacteria that kill
the killer bacteria. The soil contains bacteria harmful to man, but also many that are harmless or even beneficial to man. The soil in the fields under the sun is not only healthy and whole, it is absolutely essential to man. A child who rolls in the din grows up healthy. An unknowing child grows up strong.
What ‘this means is that the knowledge that “there are germs in the soil” is more
ignorant than ignorance itself. People would expect the most knowledgeable person on
soil to be the soil scientist. But if, in spite of his extensive knowledge on soil as mineral
matter in flasks and test tubes, his research does not allow him to know the joy of lying
on the ground under the sun, he cannot be said to know anything about the soil. The soil
that he knows is a discreet, isolated part of a whole. The only complete and whole soil is
natural soil before it is broken down and analyzed,and it is the infant and child who best
know, in their ingenuous way, what truly natural soil is.
The mother (science) who parades her partial knowledge implants in the child
(modern man) a false image of nature. In Buddhism, knowledge that splits apart self and
object and sets them up in opposition is called “discriminating knowledge,” while
knowledge that treats self and object as a unified whole is called “non-discriminating
knowledge,” the highest form of wisdom.
Clearly, the “discriminating adult” is inferior to the “non-discriminating child,” for the
adult only plunges himself into ever-deepening confusion.
It is a mistake to believe that progress in agricultural technology will lower production
costs and make food less expensive. Suppose that some entrepreneur decided to grow rice
and vegetables in a large building right at the center of a major city. He would make full
spatial use of the building in three dimensions, fully equipping it with central heating and
air conditioning, artificial lighting, and automatic spraying devices for carbon dioxide and nutrient solutions.
Now, would such systematized agriculture involving automated production under the
watchful eyes of a single technician really provide people with fresh, inexpensive, and
nutritious vegetables? A vegetable factory like this cannot be built and run without
considerable outlays for capital and materials, so it is only natural to expect the
vegetables thus produced to be expensive. However efficient and modern it may be, such
a plant cannot possibly grow produce more cheaply than crops grown naturally with
sunlight and soil.
Nature produces without calling for supplies or remuneration, but human effort always
demands payment in return. The more sophisticated the equipment and facilities, the higher the costs. And man never knows when to stop.When a highly efficient robot is
developed, people applaud, saying that efficient production is here at last. But their joy is
short-lived, for soon they are dissatisfied again and demanding even more advanced and
efficient technology. Everyone seems intent on lowering production costs, yet these costs
have skyrocketed nevertheless.
Equally mistaken is the notion that food can be produced cheaply and in large quantity
with microorganisms such as chlorella and yeast. Science cannot produce something from
nothing. Invariably, the result is a decrease in production rather than an increase, giving a
high-cost product.
People brought up eating unnatural food develop into artificial, anti-natural human
beings with an unnatural body prone to disease and an unnatural way of thinking. There
exists the frightful possibility that the transfiguration of agriculture may result in the perversion of far more than just agriculture.
Increased Production Has Not Brought Increased Yields
When talk everywhere turned to increasing food production, most people believed that
raising yields and productivity through scientific techniques would enable man to
produce larger, better, more plentiful food crops. Yet, larger harvests have not brought
greater profits for farmers. In many cases, they have even resulted in losses.
Most high-yield farming technology in use today does not increase net profits. At fault
are the very practices thought to be vital to increasing yields: the heavy application of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and indiscriminate mechanization. But although these may be useful in reducing crop losses, they are not effective techniques for increasing productivity. In fact, such practices hurt productivity. They appear to work because:
1) Chemical fertilizers are effective only when the soil is dead.
2) Pesticides are effective only for protecting unhealthy plants.
3) Farm machinery is useful only when one has to cultivate a large area.
Another way of saying the same thing is that these methods are ineffective or even
detrimental on fertile soil, healthy crops, and small fields. Chemical fertilizers can
increase yields when the soil is poor to begin with and produces only 4 to 5 bushels of
rice per quarter-acre. Even then, heavy fertilization produces an average rise in yield of
not more than about 2 bushels over the long term. Chemical fertilizers are truly effective
only on soil abused and wasted through slash-and-burn agriculture.
Adding chemical fertilizer to soil that regularly produces 7 to 8 bushels of rice per quarter-acre has very little effect, while addition to fields that yield 10 bushels may even
hurt productivity. Chemical fertilizer is thus of benefit only as a means for preventing a
decline in yields. Green manure—nature’s own fertilizer—and animal manure were
cheaper and safer methods of increasing yields.
The same is true of pesticides. What sense can there be in producing unhealthy rice plants and applying powerful pesticides anywhere up to ten times a year? Before investigating how well pesticides kill harmful insects and how well they prevent crop losses, scientists should have studied how the natural ecosystem is destroyed by these pesticides and why crop plants have weakened. They should have investigated the causes underlying the disruption in the harmony of nature and the outbreak of pests, and on the basis of these findings decided whether pesticides are really needed or not.
By flooding the paddy fields and breaking up the soil with tillers until it hardens to the
consistency of adobe, rice farmers have created conditions that make it impossible to raise crops without tilling, and in the process have deluded themselves into thinking this
to be an effective and necessary part of farming. Fertilizers, pesticides, and farm
machinery all appear convenient and useful in raising productivity. However, when
viewed from a broader perspective, these kill the soil and crops, and destroy the natural
productivity of the earth.
“But after all,” we are often told, “along with its advantages, science also has its
disadvantages.” Indeed, the two are inseparable; we cannot have one without the other.
Science can produce no good without evil. It is effective only at the price of the
destruction of nature. This is why, after man has maimed and disfigured nature, science
appears to give such striking results—when all it is doing is repairing the most extreme
damage.
Productivity of the land can be improved through scientific farming methods only
when its natural productivity is in decline. These are regarded as high-yielding practices
only because they are useful in stemming crop losses. To make matters worse, man’s
efforts to return conditions to their natural state are always incomplete and accompanied
by great waste. This explains the basic energy extravagance of science and technology.
Nature is entirely self-contained. In its eternal cycles of change, never is there the
slightest extravagance or waste. All the products of the human intellect—which has
strayed far from the bosom of nature—and ail man’s labors are doomed to end in vain.
Before rejoicing over the progress of science, we should lament those conditions that
have driven us to depend on its helping hand. The root cause for the decline of the farmer
and crop productivity lie with the development of scientific agriculture.
Energy-Wasteful Modern Agriculture
The claim is often made that scientific agriculture has a high productivity, but if we
calculate the energy efficiency of production, we find that this decreases with
mechanization. Table 1.1 compares the amount of energy expended directly in rice
production using five different methods of farming: natural farming, farming with the
help of animals, and lightly, moderately, and heavily mechanized agriculture. Natural
farming requires only one man day of labor to recover 130 pounds of rice, or 200,000
kilo calories of food energy, from a quarter-acre of land. The energy input needed to
recover 200,000 kilo calories from the land in this way is the 2,000 kilo calories required
to feed one farmer for one day. Cultivation with horses or oxen requires an energy input
five to ten times as great, and mechanized agriculture calls for an input of from ten to
fifty times as much energy. Since the efficiency of rice production is inversely
proportional to the energy input, scientific agriculture requires an energy expenditure per
unit of food produced up to fifty times that of natural farming.
The youths living in the mud-walled huts of my citrus orchard have shown me that a
person’s minimum daily calorie requirement is somewhere about 1,000 calories for a
“hermit’s diet” of brown rice with sesame seeds and salt, and 1,500 calories on a diet of
brown rice and vegetables. This is enough to do a farmer’s work—equivalent to about
one-tenth of a horsepower.
At one time, people believed that using horses and oxen would lighten the labor of
men. But contrary to expectations, our reliance on these large animals has been to our
disadvantage. Farmers would have been better off using pigs and goats to plow and turn
the soil. In fact, what they should have done was to leave the soil to be worked by small
animals—chickens, rabbits, mice, moles, and even worms. Large animals only appear to
be useful when one is in a hurry to get the job done. We tend to forget that it takes over
two acres of pasture to feed just one horse or cow.This much land could feed fifty or
even a hundred people if one made full use of nature’s powers. Raising livestock has
clearly taken its toll on man. The reason India’s farmers are so poor today is that they
raised large numbers of cows and elephants which ate up all the grass, and dried and
burned the droppings as fuel. Such practices have depleted soil fertility and reduced the
productivity of the land.
Livestock farming today is of the same school of idiocy as the fish-farming of
yellow tails. Raising one yellow tail to a marketable size requires ten times its weight in
sardines. Similarly, a silver fox consumes ten times its weight in rabbit meat, and a rabbit
ten times its weight in grass. What an incredible waste of energy to produce a single silver fox pelt! People have to work ten times as hard to eat beef as grain, and they had
better be prepared to work five times as hard if they want to nourish themselves on milk and eggs.
Farming with the labor of animals therefore helps satisfy certain cravings and desires,
but increases man’s labor many times over. Although this form of agriculture appears to
benefit man, it actually puts him in the service of his livestock. In raising cattle or
elephants as members of the farming household, the peasants of Japan and India
impoverished themselves to provide their livestock with the calories they needed.
Mechanized farming is even worse. Instead of reducing the farmer’s work, mechanization enslaves him to his equipment. To the farmer, machinery is the largest domestic animal of all—a great guzzler of oil, a consumer good rather than a capital good. At first glance, mechanized agriculture appears to increase the productivity per worker and thus raise income. However, quite to the contrary, a look at the efficiency of land utilization and energy consumption reveals this to be an extremely destructive method of farming.
Man reasons by comparison. Thus he thinks it better to have a horse do the plowing
than a man, and thinks it more convenient to own a ten-horsepower tractor than to keep
ten horses—why, if it costs less than a horse, a one-horsepower motor is a bargain! Such
thinking has accelerated the spread of mechanization and appears reasonable in the context of our currency-based economic system. But the progressively inorganic
character and towered productivity of the land resulting from farming operations aimed at
large-volume production, the economic disruption caused by the excessive input of
energy, and the increased sense of alienation deriving from such a direct antithesis to
nature has only speed ed the dislocation of farmers off the land, however much this has
been called progress.
Has mechanization really increased productivity and made things easier for the
farmer? Let us consider the changes this has brought about in tilling practices.
A two-acre farmer who purchases a 30-horsepower tractor will not magically become a 50-acre farmer unless the amount of land in his care increases. If the land under cultivation is limited, mechanization only lowers the number of laborers required. This
surplus manpower begets leisure. Applying such excess energy to some other work
increases income, or so the reasoning goes. The problem, however, is that this extra
income cannot come from the land. In fact, the yield from the land will probably decrease
while the energy requirements skyrocket. In the end, the farmer is driven from his fields
by his machinery. The use of machinery may make working the fields easier, but revenue
from crop production has shrunk. Yet taxes are not about to decrease, and the costs of
mechanization continue to climb by leaps and bounds. This is where things stand for the
farmer.
The reduction in labor brought about by scientific farming has succeeded only in
forcing farmers off the land. Perhaps the politician and consumer think the ability of a
smaller number of workers to carry out agricultural production for the nation is indicative of progress. To the farmer, however, this is a tragedy, a preposterous mistake. For every tractor operator, how many dozens of farmers are driven off the land and forced to work in factories making agricultural implements and fertilizer—which would not be needed in the first place if natural farming were used.
Machinery, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides have drawn the farmer away from nature. Although these useless products of human manufacture do not raise the yields of
his land, because they arc promoted as tools for making profits and boosting yields, he labors under the illusion that he needs them. Their use has wrought great destruction on nature, robbing it of its powers and leaving man no choice but to tend vast fields by his own hand. This in turn has made large machinery, high-grade compound fertilizers, and
powerful poisons indispensable. And the same vicious cycle goes on and on without end.
Larger and larger agricultural operations have not given farmers the stability they
seek. Farms in Europe are ten times larger, and in the United States one hundred times
larger, than the 6- to 7-acre farms common to Japan. Yet farmers in Europe and the U.S.
are, if anything, even more insecure than Japanese farmers. It is only natural that farmers in the West who question the trend toward large-scale mechanized agriculture have sought an alternative in Eastern methods of organic farming. However, as they have come to realize also that traditional agriculture with farm animals is not the way to salvation, these farmers have begun searching frantically for the road leading toward natural farming.
Laying to Waste the Land and Sea
The modern livestock and fishing industries are also basically flawed. Everyone
unquestioningly assumed that by raising poultry and livestock and by fish farming our
diet would improve, but no one had the slightest suspicion that the production of meat
would ruin the land and the raising of fish would pollute the seas.
In terms of caloric production and consumption, someone will have to work at least
twice as hard if he wants to eat eggs and milk rather than grains and vegetables. If he
likes meat, he will have to put out seven times the effort. Because it is so energyinefficient, modern livestock farming cannot be considered as “production” in a basic
sense. In fact, true efficiency has become so low and man has been driven to such
extremes of toil and labor that he is even attempting to increase the efficiency of
livestock production by raising large, genetically improved breeds.
The Japanese Bantam is a breed of chicken native toJapan. Leave it to roam about
freely and it lays just one small egg every other day—low productivity by most
standards. But although this chicken is not an outstanding egg-layer, it is in fact very
productive. Take a breeding pair of Bantams, let them nest every so often, and before you
know it they will hatch a clutch of chicks. Within a year’s time, your original pair of
chickens will have grown to a flock often or twenty birds that together will lay many
times as many eggs each day as the best variety of White Leghorn. The Bantams are very
efficient calorie producers because they feed themselves and lay eggs on their own,
literally producing something from nothing. Moreover, as long as the number of birds
remains appropriate for the space available, raising chickens in this way does not harm
the land.
Genetically-upgraded White Leghorns raised in cages lay one large egg a day.
Because they produce so many eggs, it is commonly thought that raising these in large
numbers will provide people with lots of eggs to eat and also generate droppings that can
be used to enrich the land. But in order for the chickens to lay so many eggs, they have to
be given feed grain having twice the caloric value of the eggs produced. Such artificial
methods of raising chickens are thus basically counterproductive; instead of increasing
calories, they actually cut the number of calories in half. Restoration of the wastes to the
land is not easy, and even then, soil fertility is depleted to the extent of the caloric loss.
This is true not only for chickens but for pigs andcattle as well, where the efficiency
is even worse. The ratio of energy output to input is 50 percent for broilers, 20 percent for
pork, 15 percent for milk, and 8 percent for beef. Raising beef cattle cuts the food energy
recoverable from land tenfold; people who eat beef consume ten times as much energy as
people on a diet of rice. Few are aware of how our livestock industry, which raises cattle
in indoor stalls with feed grain shipped from the United States, has helped deplete
American soil. Not only are such practices uneconomical, they amount essentially to a
campaign to destroy vegetation on a global scale.
Nonetheless, people persist in believing that raising large numbers of chickens that are
good egg-layers or improved breeds of hogs and cattle with a high feed conversion
efficiency in enclosures is the only workable approach to mass production; they are
convinced that this is intelligent, economical livestock farming. The very opposite is true.
Artificial livestock practices consisting essentially of the conversion of feed into eggs,
milk, or meat are actually very energy-wasteful. In fact, the larger and more highly
improved the breed of animal being raised, the greater the energy input required and the
greater the effort and pains that must be taken by the farmer.
The question we must answer then is: What should be raised, and where? First we
must select breeds that can be left to graze the mountain pastures. Raising large numbers
of genetically improved Holstein cows and beef cattle in indoor pens or small lots on
concentrated feed is a highly risky business for both man and livestock alike. Moreover,
such methods yield higher rates of energy loss than other forms of animal husbandry.
Native breeds and varieties such as Jersey cattle, which are thought to be of lower
productivity, actually have a higher feed efficiency and do not lead to depletion of the
land. Being closer to nature, the wild boar and theblack Berkshire pig are in fact more
economical than the supposedly superior white Yorkshire breed. Profits aside, it would be
better to raise small goats than dairy cattle. And raising deer, boars, rabbits, chickens,
wildfowl, and even edible rodents, would be even more economical—and better protect
nature—than goats.
In a small country like Japan, rather than raising large dairy cattle, which merely
impoverishes the soil, it would be far wiser for each family to keep a goat. Breeds that are
better milk producers but basically weak, such as Saanen, should be avoided and strong
native varieties that can live on roughage raised. The goat, which is called the poor man’s
cattle because it takes care of itself and also provides milk, is in fact inexpensive to raise
and does not weaken the productivity of the land.
If poultry and livestock are to truly benefit man, they must be capable of feeding and
fending for themselves under the open sky. Only then will food become naturally
plentiful and contribute to man’s well-being.
In my idealized vision of livestock farming, I see bees busily making the rounds of
clover and vegetable blossoms thickly flowering beneath trees laden heavy with fruit; I see semi
wild chickens and rabbits frolicking with dogs in fields of growing wheat, and great numbers of ducks and mallards playing in the rice paddy; at the foot of the hills and in the valleys, black pigs and boars grow fat on worms and crayfish, and from time to time goats peer out from the thickets and trees.
This scene might be taken from an out-of-the-way hamlet in a country untarnished by
modern civilization. The real question for us is whether to view it as a picture of
primitive, economically disadvantaged life or as an organic partnership between man,
animal, and nature. An environment comfortable for small animals is also an ideal setting for man.
It takes 200 square yards of land to support one human being living on grains, 600
square yards to support someone living on potatoes, 1,500 square yards for someone
living on milk, 4,000 square yards for someone living on pork, and 10,000 square yards
for someone subsisting entirely on beef. If the entire human population on earth were
dependent on a diet of just beef, humanity would have already reached its limits of
growth. The world population could grow to three times its present level on a diet of
pork, eight times on a milk diet, and twenty times on a potato diet. On a diet of just grains, the carrying, capacity of earth is sixty times the current world population.
One need look only at the United States and Europe for clear evidence that beef
impoverishes the soil and denudes the earth.
Modern fishing practices are just as destructive. We have polluted and killed the seas that were once fertile fishing grounds. Today’s fishing industry raises expensive fish by feeding them several times their weight in smaller fish while rejoicing at how abundant
fish have become. Scientists are interested only in learning how to make bigger catches
or increasing the number of fish, but viewed in a larger context, such an approach merely
speeds the decline in catches. Protecting seas in which fish can still be caught by hand
should be a clear priority over the development of superior methods for catching fish.
Research on breeding technology for shrimp, sea bream, and eels will not increase the
numbers offish. Such misguided thinking and efforts are not only undermining the
modern agricultural and fishing industries, they will also someday spell doom for the
oceans of the world.
As with modern livestock practices that run counterto nature, man has tricked himself
into believing that he can improve the fishing industry through the development of more
advanced fish farming methods while at the same time perfecting fishing practices that
destroy natural reproduction. Frankly, I am frightened at the dangers posed by treating
fish with large doses of chemicals to prevent pelagic diseases that break out in the Inland
Sea as a result of pollution caused by the large quantities of feed strewn over the water at
the many fish farming centers on the Sea. It was no laughing matter when a rise in
demand for sardines as feed for yellowtails resulted in a curious development recently: an
acute shortage of sardines that made the smaller fish a luxury item for a short while.
Man ought to know that nature is fragile and easilyharmed. It is far more difficult to
protect than everyone seems to think. And once it has been destroyed, nature cannot be
restored.
The way to enrich man’s diet is easy. It does not entail mass growing or gathering. But it does require man to relinquish human knowledge and action, and to allow nature to restore its natural bounty. Indeed, there is no other way.
2 THE ILLUSIONS OF NATURAL SCIENCE
1. The Errors of the Human Intellect
Scientific agriculture developed early in the West as one branch of the natural
sciences, which arose in Western learning as the study of matter. The natural sciences
took a materialistic viewpoint that interpreted nature analytically and dialectically. This
was a consequence of Western man’s belief in a man-nature dichotomy. In contrast to the
Eastern view that man should seek to become one with nature, Western man used
discriminating knowledge to place man in oppositionto nature and attempted, from that
vantage point, a detached interpretation of the natural world. For he was convinced that
the human intellect can cast off subjectivity and comprehend nature objectively.
Western man firmly believed nature to be an entity with an objective reality
independent of human consciousness, an entity that man can know through observation,
reductive analysis, and reconstruction. From these processes of destruction and
reconstruction arose the natural sciences.
The natural sciences have advanced at breakneck speed, flinging us into the space age.
Today, man appears capable of knowing everything about the universe. He grows ever
more confident that, sooner or later, he will understand even phenomena as yet unknown.
But what exactly does it mean for man to “know”? He may laugh at the folly of the
proverbial frog in the well, but is unable to laugh off his own ignorance before the
vastness of the universe. Although man, who occupies but one small corner of the
universe, can never hope to fully understand the world in which he lives, he persists nonetheless in the illusion that he has the cosmos in the palm of his hand.
Man is not in a position to know nature.
Nature Must Not Be Dissected
Scientific farming first arose when man, observing plants as they grew, came to know
these and later grew convinced that he could raise them himself. Yet has man really known nature? Has he really grown crops and lived by the fruit of his own labor? Man looks at a stalk of wheat and says he knows what that wheat is. But does he really know wheat, and is he really capable of growing it? Let us examine the process by which man thinks he can know things.
Man believes that he has to fly off into outer space to learn about space, or that he
must travel to the moon to know the moon. In the same way, he thinks that to know a
stalk of wheat, he must first take it in his hand, dissect it, and analyze it. He thinks that
the best way to learn about something is to collect and assemble as much data on it as
possible. In his efforts to learn about nature, man has cut it up into little pieces. He has
certainly learned many things in this way, but what he has examined has not been nature
itself.
Man’s curiosity has led him to ask why and how the winds blow and the rain falls. He
has carefully studied the tides of the sea, the nature of lightning, and the plants and
animals that inhabit the fields and mountains. He has extended his inquiring gaze into the
tiny world of microorganisms, into the realm of minerals and inorganic matter. Even the
sub-microscopic universe of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles has come under
his scrutiny. Detailed research has pressed forth on the morphology, physiology, ecology,
and every other conceivable aspect of a single flower, a single stalk of wheat.
Even a single kaf presents infinite opportunities for study. The collection of cells that
together form the leaf; the nucleus of one of thesecells, which harbors the mystery of
life; the chromosomes that hold the key to heredity; the question of how chlorophyll
synthesizes starch from sunlight and carbon dioxide; the unseen activity of roots at work;
the uptake of various nutrients by the plant; how water rises to the tops of tall trees; the
relationships between various components and microorganisms in the soil; how these
interact and change when absorbed by the roots and what functions they serve—these arc
but a few of the inexhaustible array of topics scientific research has pursued.
But nature is a living, organic whole that cannot be divided and subdivided. When it is
separated into two complementary halves and these divided again into four, when
research becomes fragmented and specialized, the unity of nature is lost.
The diagram in Figure 2.1 is an attempt to illustrate the interplay of factors, or
elements, that determine yields in rice cultivation. Originally, the elements determining
yield were not divided and separate. All were joined in perfect order under a single
conductor’s baton and resonated together in exquisite harmony. Yet, when science
inserted its scalpel, a complex and horrendously chaotic array of elements appeared. All science has succeeded in doing is to peel the skin off a beautiful woman and reveal a bloody mass of tissue. What a miserable, wasted effort.
Nowadays, plants can be made to bloom in all seasons. Stores display fruits and
vegetables throughout the year, so that one almost forgets whether it is summer or winter
anymore. This is the result of chemical controls that have been developed to regulate the
time of bud formation and differentiation.
Confident of his ability to synthesize the proteins that make up cells, man has even
challenged the “ultimate” secret—the mystery of life itself. Whether he will succeed in
synthesizing cells depends on his ability to synthesize nucleic acids, this being the last
major hurdle to the synthesis of living matter. The synthesis of simple forms of life is
now just a matter of time, this was first anticipated when the notion of a fundamental difference between living and non-living matter was laid to rest with the discovery of bacteriophage s, the confirmation—in subsequent research on viral pathogens—of the existence of non-living matter that multiplies, and the first attempts to synthesize such
matter. Following his interests blindly, man is intently at work on the synthesis of life without
knowing what the successful creation of living cells means or the repercussions it might
have. Nor is this all. Carried along by their own momentum, scientists have even begun
venturing into chromosome synthesis. Soon after the disclosure that man had synthesized
life came the announcement that the synthesis and modification of chromosomes has become possible through genetic recombination. Man can already create and alter living organism:; like the Creator. We are about to enter an age in which scientists will create organisms that have never before appeared on the face of the earth. Following test-tube babies, we will see the creation of artificial beings, monsters, and enormous crops. In fact, these have already begun to appear. Granted, one certainly does get the impression that great advances have been made in human understanding, that man has come to know all things in nature and, by using and
adapting such knowledge, has accelerated progress in human life. Yet, there is a catch to
all of this. Man’s awareness is intrinsically imperfect, and this gives rise to errors in
human understanding. When man says that he is capable of knowing nature, to “know” does not mean to grasp and understand the true essence of nature. Itmeans only that man knows that nature which he is able to know.
Just as the world known to a frog in a well is not the entire world but only the world
within that well, so the nature that man can perceive and know is only that nature which
he has been able to grasp with his own hands and his own subjectivity. But of course, this
is not true nature.
The Maze of Relative Subjectivity
When people want to know what Okuninushi no Mikoto, the Shinto deity of
agriculture, carries around in the huge sack on his shoulder, they immediately open the
sack and thrust their hands in. They think that to understand the interior of the sack, they
must know its contents. Supposing they found the-sack to be filled with all sorts of
strange objects made of wood and bamboo. At this point, most people would begin to
make various pronouncements: “Why this no doubt is a tool used by travelers.” “No, it’s
a decorative carving.” “No, it most definitely is a weapon.” And so forth. Yet the truth,
known only to Okuninushi himself, is that the object is an instrument fashioned by him
for his amusement. And moreover, because it is broken, he is carrying it around in his
sack merely for use as kindling.
Man jumps into that great sack called nature, and grabbing whatever he can, turns it
over and examines it, asking himself what it is and how it works, and drawing his own
conclusions about what purpose nature serves. But no matter how careful his
observations and reasoning, each and every interpretation carries the risk of causing
grievous error because man cannot know nature any more than he can know the uses for
the objects in Okuninushi’s sack.
Yet man is not easily discouraged. He believes that, even if it amounts to the same absurdity as jumping into the sack and guessing at the objects inside, man’s knowledge will broaden without limit; simple observations will start the wheels of reason and inference turning.
For example, man may see some shells attached to a piece of bamboo and mistake it for a weapon. When further investigation reveals that rapping the shells against the bamboo makes an interesting sound, he will conclude this to be a musical instrument, and will infer from the curvature of the bamboo that it must be worn dangling from the waist while dancing. With each step in this line of reasoning, he will believe himself that much closer to the truth. Just as he believes that he can know Okuninushi’s mind by studying the contents of his sack, so man believes that, by observing nature, he can learn the story of its creation and can in turn become privy to its very designs and purpose. But this is a hopeless illusion, for man can know the world only by stepping outside of the sack and meeting ace-to-face with the owner.
A flea born and raised in the sack without ever having seen the world outside will
never be able to guess that the object in the sack is an instrument that is hung from
Okuninushi’s belt, no matter how much it studies the object. Similarly, man, who is born
within nature and will never be able to step outside of the natural world, can never
understand all of nature merely by examining that part of nature around him. Man’s answer to this is that, although he may not be able to view the world from without, if he
has the knowledge and ability to explore the furthest reaches of the vast, seemingly
boundless universe and is able at least to learn what there is and what has happened in
this universe, is not this enough? Has not man learned, sooner or later, everything that he
wished to learn? That which is unknown today will become known tomorrow. This being
the case, there is nothing man cannot know.
Even if he were to spend his entire life within a sack, provided he was able to learn
everything about the inside of the sack, would this not be enough? Is not the frog in the
well able to live there in peace and tranquility? What need has it for the world outside the
well? Man watches nature unfold about him; he examines it and puts it to practical use. If he
gets the expected results, he has no reason to call into question his knowledge or actions.
There being nothing to suggest that he is in error,does not this mean that he has grasped
the real truth about the world?
He assumes an air of indifference: “I don’t know what lies outside the world of the
unknown; maybe nothing. This goes beyond the sphere of the intellect. We’d be better off
leaving inquiries into a world that may or may not exist to those men of religion who
dream of God.”
But who is it that is dreaming? Who is it that is seeing illusions? And knowing the answer to this, can we enjoy true peace of mind? No matter how deep his understanding
of the universe, it is man’s subjectivity that holds up the stage on which his knowledge
performs. But just what if his subjective view were all wrong? Before laughing at blind
faith in God, man should take note of his blind faith in himself.
When man observes and judges, there is only the thing called “man” and the thing
being observed. It is this thing called “man” that verifies and believes in the reality of an
object, and it is man who verifies and believes in the existence of this thing called “man.”
Everything in this world derives from man and he draws all the conclusions. In which
case, he need not worry about being God’s puppet. But he does run the risk of acting out
a drunken role on the stage supported by the crazed subjectivity of his own despotic
existence.
“Yes,” persists the scientist, “man observes and makes judgments, so one cannot deny
that subjectivity may be at work here. Yet his ability to reason enables man to divest
himself of subjectivity and see things objectively as well. Through repeated inductive experimentation and reasoning, man has resolved all things into patterns of association and interaction. The proof that this was no mistake lies about us, in the airplanes, automobiles, and all the other trappings of modern civilization.”
But if, on taking a better look at this modern civilization of ours, we find it to be
insane, we must conclude that the human intellect which engendered it is also insane. It is
the perversity of human subjectivity that gave rise to our ailing modern age. Indeed,
whether one views the modern world as insane or not may even be a criterion of one’s
own sanity. We have already seen, in Chapter 1, how perverted agriculture has grown.
Are airplanes really fast, and cars truly a comfortable way to travel? Isn’t our
magnificent civilization nothing more than a toy, an amusement? Man is unable to see the
truth because his eyes are veiled by subjectivity. He has looked at the green of trees without knowing true green, and has “known” the color crimson without seeing crimson itself. That has been the source of all his errors.
Non-Discriminating Knowledge
The statement that science arose from doubt and discontent is often used as implied
justification of scientific inquiry, but this in noway justifies it, On the contrary, when
confronted with the havoc wrought by science and technology on nature, one cannot help
feeling disquiet at this very process of scientific inquiry that man uses to separate and classify his doubts and discontents.
An infant sees things intuitively. When observed without intellectual discrimination,
nature is entire and complete—a unity. In this non-discriminating view of creation, there
is no cause for the slightest doubt or discontent. A baby is satisfied and enjoys peace of mind without having to do anything.
The adult mentally picks things apart and classifies them; he sees everything as
imperfect and fraught with inconsistency. This is what is meant by grasping things
dialectically. Armed with his doubts about “imperfect” nature and his discontent, man has
set forth to improve upon nature and vainly calls the changes he has brought about “progress” and “development.”
People believe that as a child grows into adulthood his understanding of nature deepens and through this process he becomes able to contribute to progress and
development in this world. That this “progress” is nothing other than a march toward annihilation is clearly shown by the spiritual decay and environmental pollution that plague the developed nations of the world.
When a child living in the country comes across a muddy rice field, he jumps right in and plays in the mud. This is the simple, straightforward way of a child who knows the earth intuitively. But a child raised in the city lacks the courage to jump into the field. His mother has constantly been after him to wash the grime from his hands, telling him that dirt is filthy and full of germs. The child who “knows” about the “awful germs” in the dirt sees the muddy rice field as unclean, an ugly and fearful place. Are the mother’s knowledge and judgment really better than the unschooled intuition of the country child?
Hundreds of millions of microorganisms crowd each gram of soil. Bacteria are present
in this soil, but so are other bacteria that kill these bacteria, and yet other bacteria that kill
the killer bacteria. The soil contains bacteria harmful to man, but also many that are harmless or even beneficial to man. The soil in the fields under the sun is not only healthy and whole, it is absolutely essential to man. A child who rolls in the din grows up healthy. An unknowing child grows up strong.
What ‘this means is that the knowledge that “there are germs in the soil” is more
ignorant than ignorance itself. People would expect the most knowledgeable person on
soil to be the soil scientist. But if, in spite of his extensive knowledge on soil as mineral
matter in flasks and test tubes, his research does not allow him to know the joy of lying
on the ground under the sun, he cannot be said to know anything about the soil. The soil
that he knows is a discreet, isolated part of a whole. The only complete and whole soil is
natural soil before it is broken down and analyzed,and it is the infant and child who best
know, in their ingenuous way, what truly natural soil is.
The mother (science) who parades her partial knowledge implants in the child
(modern man) a false image of nature. In Buddhism, knowledge that splits apart self and
object and sets them up in opposition is called “discriminating knowledge,” while
knowledge that treats self and object as a unified whole is called “non-discriminating
knowledge,” the highest form of wisdom.
Clearly, the “discriminating adult” is inferior to the “non-discriminating child,” for the
adult only plunges himself into ever-deepening confusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment