The Destruction of That Which Should Be Left Standing

I saw a machine recently that can only be described as a monster, and it forced me to ask the question, where is our desire for efficiency taking us?

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

A lone oak in a field of wheat is an object of stark beauty and magnificence - and thankfully a rather common sight in the fields of the Essex countryside near where I live. Many a time while gazing upon such a tree, I have wondered “why was it left standing?”. Surely the idols of our modern age (efficiency and profit), would prefer that this tree was chopped down to be sacrificed on their alters? It gets in the way of machine work and reduces the yields of the productive land. It is a lodger in the field that does not pay dividends or rent with its presence. So why is it here?

The reason is picturesque - it is the shade that these giants gave to workers (when most work on the farm was done by hand) that saved them from the chop all those years ago¹. In the heat of the noonday sun, farmers and their farmhands would sit in the cool shade of the tree, recounting stories of harvests gone by and cycles of life and death that have played out in the fields, pastures, and barns.

But today shade is no longer required; the tractor or combine roof now fulfils that role. But despite this redundancy, these trees remain standing, even in a day and age where efficiency and profit are all the more worshipped. Why do they still remain? The only reason I can surmise is simply because of their magnificence, and the farmers, who are more in-tune with creation than most of us, keenly perceive this. They have grown to know and love these familiar features in their landscape, and cannot bear to bring them down, no matter how difficult they make the harvest time. It would be almost sacrilegious to chop down such a marvel of creation. Thus, the lofty giants live on to this day.

These farmers, then, rightly value these trees for what they are. This attitude displays much wisdom and rationality, for such farmers have perceived what is of true and lasting value and have acted in accordance. It is an attitude that we can learn much from in our fast-paced efficiency-driven modern societies.

However, it is not just these lone oaks that should cause us to think twice before we swing the axe. The removal of any tree is a significant event. It is in this context that I recently saw something that left me speechless, not with a sense of awe and wonder, but with a sense of fear and dread. For what I saw was a machine (or was it a monster?) which in a matter of seconds chopped, stripped, and dumped tree after tree, all with the movement of one mechanical arm. It is no wonder that this video of the machine in question, is titled "monster machine" for that is exactly what it is - a monster, an instrument of destruction and devastation, fuelled by the desire for raw efficiency.

It is granted that this machine obviously saves the forester an immense amount of time, for what would have taken minutes with a chainsaw, and perhaps a half hour or more with an axe, is reduced to almost an instant. The logs, which are the fruit of the labour, are produced in a matter of seconds for maximum profit. But to achieve this feat, raw, untamed, brute efficiency is required - and herein lies the great danger.

Caught up in the pure efficiency of the process, it is easy to lose sight of just what it is we are doing. For when we fell a tree, we obliterate a habitat and home for an abundance of species, we destroy that which gives stability and rejunivation to the soil, and we remove part of the lungs of the earth that produce the air we breathe. Yes, one could, with justification, argue we are producing logs which we can use to make other beautiful things² - but this does not negate the fact that the tree itself is annihilated, and this is an event loaded with significance and irreversible consequences.

This machine engenders us to forget all this. It reduces the tree from a tall, towering giant that gives life, stability and shade, to a mere obstacle that needs removing, or a resource for our limitless consumption. What’s more, this monster-machine gives humans the power to annihilate creation - a power that the evidence (deforestation, mountaintop removal, tar sand landscapes…) stacked up against us amply proves, we are not wise enough to use with restraint. As Wendell Berry has said, “in the absence of moral restraint - and we have never imposed adequate moral restraint upon our use of machines - the machine is out of control by definition.”³

This all begs the question, what else have we embraced for the sake of efficiency which erodes or destroys that which is good? As I have argued elsewhere, the arrival and subsequent dominance of the supermarket upended local food systems, causing the collapse of the local proprietors who were unable to compete with the rock-bottom prices and efficiency the supermarkets were able to offer. Not only that, but the supermarkets put immense pressure on farmers to drive down their prices even more. The effects of such intense price squeezes can be seen in our farmlands which bear the scars of intensification.

And then there is technology. Wendell Berry famously wrote, “Why I’m not going to Buy a Computer” and we can all see the wisdom in such a stance. But now, even computers seem tame when compared to the smartphone. We carry around with us a machine, small enough to fit inside our pockets, with which we can literally bring down empires⁴, make millions on the stock market, and buy anything we want from wherever we want all at the click of a button. It is a tool of immense power that few, if any of us, know how to use well. And the effects of its misuse can be disastrous.

For on the altar of the smartphone we have sacrificed our attention spans on vanity, our productive time “on that which does not earn us our bread”, and our time with friends and family for our “virtual” or online friends. The question of pertinence for us all ‘is are excising the moral restraint necessary to use the smartphone well?’. If not, we shall find it dominates our lives - which is the definition of a life outside of our control.

I shall leave us with an insight that Paul Kingsnorth said something in an interview recently which is worth quoting in full and pondering on (with our smartphones turned off):

I could come back to the Amish again, and that’s pretty much what they do. They say, is this piece of machinery going to negatively affect our community, and our spiritual life? Because if it is, we’re just not having it. We don’t care how convenient it is; we’re not having it. We’ll have this one here because this one seems to enhance what we do without destroying the community, but we’re not having anything that is going to negatively affect the central reason that we’re here, which is to have a certain type of really rooted community and to worship God. That’s what we do. And that seems to be a good way of looking at it. What are you going to have in your life, and what are you not going to have in your life? How much of the machine are you going to put up with, and how much are you going to say, “No, this is demonic, this is dangerous, I’m not having this here, I don’t care how much pressure I get”? It’s that kind of thing.⁵

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1. Carrie Ann Tomoko, https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-life/why-1-lone-tree-field

2. Additionally, it must be caveated that these machines are used mostly to fell plantation trees which arguably are not very valuable for aesthetics, wildlife, or soils. This is true. However, plantations are not the only place these machines are used.

3. Wendell Berry, The Use of Energy.

4. This is no exaggeration. One message or tweet sent from a smartphone could be enough to scandalise a political party, and spread like wildfire through our digital universe.

5. Paul Kingsnorth and Tessa Carman, Following Christ in the Machine Age: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth. https://mereorthodoxy.com/following-christ-in-the-machine-age-a-conversation-with-paul-kingsnorth/