Bonded by Swine

My brother and I were talking about the swine flu the other day. To my astonishment, I discovered he’d just gotten vaccinated. He was surprised by my surprise and suggested that my mistrust of government and health authorities was an ongoing manifestation of my parents’ deep-seated lack of confidence in people and societal norms. It is true that we were brought up to keep our heads down and trust no one other than family. These were obviously necessities of survival in the young adult lives of my refugee parents. But does this modus operandi have deeper roots than recent wars? What purposes are served by blending in and relying only on familiar folk?

Trusting the known undoubtedly has deep roots in Estonian as well as other peasant cultures. Rural folks have learned to rely on their own eyes, their own intuition and the collective experience of their families and communities for survival. Why? Because living within the natural world involves knowing the specifics, not generalities, of where you are. Each place has its own soil, its own weather patterns, its own predators, its own weeds, its own ambience, its own human culture. Very little of this information can be found in books – it is kept alive through story telling as a living, collective resource that changes and grows day to day through the participation of the inhabitants.

This self reliance was spun as stupidity, xenophobia and incompetence by popular culture in the 1960s and 70s. That was the era in which the capitalist project included industrialization of farming; getting those pesky, independent-minded farmers to move into cities was no easy task. Remember shows like Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and the Beverly Hillbillies? The characters were rarely, if ever, shown as having the profound and highly functional knowledge of place that characterizes rural people.

But what about drawing attention to oneself? Why has that not been well looked upon? Could it be because in more traditional settings surviving and thriving is a communal affair instead of a personal quest? One head sticking out may jeopardize the idea of collectivity as well as draw very real, unwanted attention to the group. It’s important to differentiate between drawing attention to oneself and being one’s unique self. The former involves expecting and striving for rewards while the latter simply asks for acceptance. Drawing attention to oneself takes a person out of the collective.

Interestingly, modern urban, capitalist culture asks people to do precisely the opposite on both counts. In order to get ahead among the masses, we’re supposed to jump up and down loudly proclaiming our unique worth. And since we don’t have contact with primary producers, we’re supposed to trust labels, guarantees, warranties, economic forecasts and the claims of myriad snake oil merchants. Chia seeds anyone? In the mad rush of a consumer culture, there’s no time to know who and what is around you. There’s no time to develop your unique self in your unique setting beyond taking on entertainment and style likes and dislikes. Most urbanites become passive consumers rather than creators of culture.

Of course, this culture of “look at me” embedded in sameness has made inroads into rural cultures as well. However, Luanne’s tale of the Armstrong pig raising venture shows how our mistrust of authority and the machinery of consumer culture can bring rural people back to some of those values. People who slaughter pigs together, inevitably, in spite of differences, bond on a primal level. Killing is an intimate act. Every time one of the slaughter crew eats a pork chop, ham or sausage this winter, they will have a bodily, as well as mental, memory of that day at the Armstrong farm. Their psyches will conjure up the people who were there with them, the flavour of the autumn air and the tang of the land that took up the blood of their efforts. Nobody was a star, everybody had a role, everybody was required.

Though I missed the Armstrong Farm pig slaughter, I did my own bonding through swine last week. When I got my flu vaccination the natural way – one short, achy bout in bed was what the dreaded H1N1 amounted to – my land partners and I had plenty of time to visit, take each other soup and remedies, and mull over the early snowfall. I feel fortunate to live in a place where so many in my community have refused to bow to the media hysteria about the flu pandemic and the government’s promotion of the pharmaceutical industry’s profit margin. Instead, we entrusted ourselves to each other’s care and wisdom. And it was good.