Urban Gardens: Font of Hopefulness
I have a client in Detroit who keeps a small stash of money at his son's house, along with a few guns, in a rural farming community on the west side of Michigan.
The reason?
"When things collapse and Detroit erupts, I'll live with my son, where the food is."
Back in 1967, he lived inside Detroit, only a few miles from the Blind Pig speakeasy where the massive riot started. The riot's destruction came close to his neighborhood. He also watched the 2020 BLM riots. He knows that most unrest in American history has started in the cities.
Violent Unrest is a Symptom of Left-Hemispheric Domination
We can discuss, debate, and argue about the causes, but one thing is clear: violent unrest is fueled by dogma.
If a person is acting with such firm conviction that he feels violence is justified, he's holding a firm conviction. It might be a correct or incorrect conviction, an understandable or irrational conviction, but it is a firm conviction that brooks no disagreement. It is, in other words, dogmatic.
You know what else is dogmatic?
The left hemisphere of the brain. As Iain McGilchrist has shown (and shown and shown), the hallmark of modernity is left-hemispheric. Modernity is the era of the left hemisphere’s hegemony.
As a result, we are raised in a culture that values, asserts, and pushes the left hemisphere’s view of the world.
Including its proclivity for dogmatism.
If we can quiet the left hemisphere, we can weaken our disposition to dogmatism. We can then take a bit of pressure out of the inner (city) tube.
Urban Gardens Infuse Right-Hemispheric Dispositions into These Areas of Violent Unrest
I like the hundreds of urban gardens that are sprouting up across America.
The right hemisphere is receptive to those things demanded by the garden: uncertainty, failure, surprise, patience, slowness, curiosity.
Granted, the garden also engages the left hemisphere (the plotting, planning, procedures, and implementation), but the right hemisphere ultimately controls because of gardening’s inherent uncertainty. The setbacks and surprises built into dealing with nature relentlessly push the right hemisphere to the front by slapping down the left hemisphere.
As more urban areas convert to agrarian pursuits, the more the right hemisphere will re-assert itself: dogma will weaken and violent unrest will become less likely.
Detroit is Booming
I like to point out to my client that Detroit is arguably the leader in the urban gardening phenomenon. It has several community gardens and expansive agrarian operations, some even raising chickens and small animals.
Detroit’s commercial activity is also booming and the city didn’t suffer much unrest during the BLM Summer of Violence.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
I’m not naive enough to think that Detroit’s renewal has come from its urban gardens or a restoration of the right hemisphere’s way of looking at things when it comes to public affairs. Huge infusions of capital and Detroit’s no-nonsense Police Chief probably deserve most of the credit. But its urban agrarian operations are no doubt helping, if only in small and largely unnoticed ways.