In a non-mechanistic conception, the new emerges from the old, through the creative transformation that takes place between advanced technology and the empirical techniques of peasants.
Paulo Freire
In rural areas, it can be said that a technology is public domain when it has been generated with the participation of peasants, both men and women, using their knowledge and creativity, based on their needs and problems. Therefore, the availability of such technology constitutes an act of shared enjoyment among those who have participated in its recreation or invention.
This path runs counter to the overpowering law of the globalizing free market, which gradually makes life impossible for any peasant community attempting to work with simplicity and collective creativity using any accessible technology or basic knowledge. This corporate dynamic cuts off the roots of technology appropriation and dissemination in rural areas because knowledge and its development did not begin with the Cartesian “scientific method.” This logic of globalizing agrarian capitalism becomes a dangerous threat to agricultural culture for the following reasons:
Because it seeks absolute control over both the means of production and the “intellectual property” of technology, as well as the channels for its democratic dissemination for the benefit of society.
Because the knowledge and technology originating from the agricultural culture of peasants cannot be standardized to generate barcodes or patents for social manipulation that fattens the broth of agro-industrial capital.
Because in today’s gangster capitalism, under its so-called “laws of the free market,” agricultural culture does not serve agro-industrial capital to create dependence, thirst, and a pace of consumerism.
Because the evolution of technology and knowledge generated by the agricultural culture of peasants denies the logic of “specialized or complex technological assistance,” instead favoring the logic of simplicity and local common sense.
Because the resources for the development of knowledge and technology arising from the dynamics of peasant agricultural culture are often available within the farm itself or are local and locatable, in line with the cultural rhythms of each community.
Because by promoting social exchange possibilities like barter and collective research, the success of the results and the transmission of achievements become nomadic, transcending borders without any economic control over speed or time and space for their social use. This dynamic is itself the engine that constantly drives the generation of new inventions, redesigns, and creative acts; where the intensity of the offering of technological services has its limits in accordance with the eco-social and economic impact at the local level.
The knowledge and technology of agricultural culture constitute open systems of communication and exchange, thus strengthening people’s capacities to solve individual and collective difficulties based on their own resources, initiatives, and local development.
Undoubtedly, the best way to solve any obstacle-filled situation, seemingly without a solution, from an individual approach, is through cooperation; the collective has its own fuel and strength to find quick and sensible solutions to any issues in rural or urban areas.
This action reconstructs the fabric of historical and collective memory, which becomes indestructible from generation to generation. It keeps alive the expectations that arise from the possibility of dreaming and participating in the construction of a different world, with technologies for the protection of society and life, above any economic interest and manipulation.
What is not controlled or manipulated for unhealthy reasons becomes revolutionary, dissenting, and transformative, and this is the path to block any negative situation that hinders the progress of social freedom to build an ideal state of being.
The miracle of life, independent of any rationality, space, and time, has its roots in cooperation, endosymbiosis, harmony, giving, and in the natural understanding of what the other does. We must take responsibility for respecting everyone’s integrative and interdependent role in forming the broth of life. Otherwise, the blind reasoning of unlimited egocentrism in the current financial, industrial, and consumer capitalist model, in the limited space that is the Earth, will lead us down the path of destruction. This means depriving all future generations of the potential for infinite enjoyment of a naturally animated, beautiful, and happiness-filled world.
“There is no attitude or thing more subversive than a consumer who stops buying artificial soda and a hamburger or a souvenir; or a healthy person who does not buy medication at a pharmacy; or a peasant who does not depend on an ATM to buy a bag of fertilizer or input to produce high-quality food.”
“If hunger is the law, justice is rebellion” (Written on the street walls).