Looking across the fence

I have always lived on the edge of worldviews. I have always been either the most liberal or conservative of my friends, the most anticorporate or the most probusiness, the farthest right or the farthest left. Living on this edge has helped me to see how arbitrary some of those lines are and yet how comfortable they can become.

I have sometimes felt comfortable in my ideas, and I have let some of those ideas develop into ideologies—ideologies that have allowed me to talk to some people with ease and to others not at all. I can talk to the supporter of one candidate, but sometimes lack the imagination or empathy to talk with the supporter of another candidate. I regret those times, and yet I am also torn by the alternative.

I am someone who is committed to certain values and certain causes because I think that they are unequivocally right. I don’t have any ironic distance from my commitment to sustainability; I can’t be objective about an industrial form of agriculture that has contributed to the destruction of good in the world. And yet I want to have conversations. I want to talk with the CEOs of Tyson and Monsanto. I want to get some picture of the way they see the world and attempt to bring them to my side.

For some, this is like wanting to convert the devil. But I don’t think that is an entirely bad idea either. I believe people can change. But how could such conversations take place when the people having them exist in different worlds? How could pastured poultry farmer Joel Salatin have an open and honest conversation with Don Tyson—a conversation that isn’t simply full of moral outrage and polemics on both sides?

I am not sure that such a conversation could take place, but if it was possible, I think the philosopher Gadamer might be of assistance. Gadamer described this problem of talking across the borders and suggested that although someone like Tyson may not be able to enter the world of someone like Salatin, a fusion of their horizons might be possible-each looking into the world of the other.

This fusion could only happen if some of the barriers at the border are taken down—in other words, if we leave aside the comfortable language and categories of “industrial”, “GMO,” “sustainable,” “green,” etc. and try to just see things as they are for the other side. The sides may not be balanced. There is, I believe, an objective right and wrong here. But the conversation must take place across the borders.

I guess I’m one of those who thinks that we should talk to our enemies. That may be a dangerous or misguided idea, but I think the world of sustainability should be one of open horizons and open borders, so hopefully those who look across the border will one day want to enter it.

Don Tyson, come down to my farm in Little Rock and I’d be glad to show you how we do pastured poultry. In turn, I want to see how you raise your chickens.

Posted by Ragan Sutterfield on Jun 2, 2008 at 3:27 PM
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