14—Lancaster Farming. Saturday. April 13, 1974
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ORGANIC LIVING
By
Robert Rodole
Soon you will be able to buy butter that spreads easily even
when cold. The technology for that new-product advance has
>been perfected. Cows will be fed special foods, changing the
•character of their milk so it can be made into cold-spreading
•outter. All that remains is for the practical application of the
• echnique to be worked out.
Already, you can buy commercial'chickens that have a
'olden-yellow color, just like the farmyard chickens of
venerations ago that used to scratch for wild foods that gave
heir flesh a deep, healthy pigment. Advertisements for these
tew yellow chickens claim that the color is natural - from
narigold petals added to their rations.
Neither one of these changed foods is harmful to our health,
■md possibly the added cost of these changes is reasonable
*nough to allow such modified products to fit easily into the
amily budget. Yet frivolous technological improvements -
1 ike butter that spreads when cold - are deeply disturbing to
iome observers of the way our lives have been changed by
irogress. They are symbolic of our inability to see progress
is anything other than increased material prosperity in all
ireas.
Bernard Levin, a columnist for the London Times, views
'old-spreading butter and similar inventions as a positive
hreat to the survival of society as we know it. “If our society
*annot stop itself spending its labour and its treasure on
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survive, nor long deserve to,” he says.
The main problem, says Levin, is our inability to draw a
line and say that progress in certain areas has reached
reasonable limits. The idea of easy living is like a balloon
that can expand indefinitely. Even if everyone would have
several refrigerators, each filled with a couple of hundred
pounds of perpetually soft butter, people would still want
more “prosperity.” At least, that’s Levin’s view, and he
makes a good deal of sense.
Of course, the immediate outlook is for a decline in
material prosperity, forced on us by the energy situation and
rampant inflation. But even though many people are
tightening their belts and cutting back their travel plans,
those measures are generally viewed as temporary setbacks.
Someday, the popular view holds, nuclear energy or oil from
shale will again give us the power to boost our physical
standards of living onward and upward.
Evidence of our inability to steer our efforts at improving
prosperity into logical channels abounds. Probably every
American is now using a dozen products that symbolize our
mixed-up objectives as much as cold-spreading butter. Here
are a few examples to ponder:
Instant-on TV sets. You may not have realized that many
TV’s that turn on instantly in fact have power running
through some circuits all the time. So to get the convenience
of immediate entertainment, you are consuming power when
nothing is heppening. (That’s not true, incidentally, of solid
state TV’s. They can be turned off completely.)
Four-channel stereo draws current only when turned on,
but is it a truly meaningful advance, worth the extra cost and
the purchase of new records and tapes? Has anyone thought
of defining reasonable limits for high fidelity sound
reproduction, or are there no limits?
American autos are replete with borderline “im
provements.” Automatic speed controls take the pressure off
our right foot. Antennas rise from the fender automatically
when the radio is turned on. Windows open or close at the
touch of a finger. All these things make life easier, but do we
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■r, it will not long
really need that ease? Does It warp our sense of values?
Food and drugs are ripe with similar examples. Striped
toothpaste blends in mouthwash. Peanut butter and Jelly la
layered in jars in the same way, saving a few arm
movements each day. Aspirins are made to dissolve in eight
hours instead of four, for the sake of convenience.
Packaging is another fertile field for study. Throw-away
bottles are a national habit, while glass for canning Jars is in
short supply. Pop-top beer and soda cans have hooked a
whole generation, while their discarded tabs cut bare feet on
beaches and litter the landscape. Cheese is sold sliced, with
each slice individually wrapped in plastic.
There are other examples. New electric thermometers
show both indoor and outdoor temperature in digital
numerals, saving us the trouble of peering at a dial. And over
the horizon looms the supersonic transport, promising to take
us anywhere in the world twice as fast as old-fashioned jets -
while using more fuel per mile.
I am not against progress, and I admit that all these things
that seem to me slightly silly or needless do represent
progress of a kind. That is why most people accept such
changes readily, and are willing to pay for them.
But this question remains: Have we retained our ability to
tell the difference between progress that makes life better in
meaningful ways, and what I call pseudo-progress - which
uses gimmickry to lull us into thinking that we need slight
improvements in traditional products that have served us
well in the past?
Find out more about how technology can sometimes back
fire, in the 48-page booklet, “Hot-Line to Health.” To get your
copy of this inside report on man-made hazards that affect us
all, send fifty cents to Robert Rodale, Organic Living, in care
of this newspaper. Be sure to ask for the booklet by name,
and please allow at least three weeks for delivery.
(c) 1974 by The Chicago Tribune. World Rights Reserved
ATTENTION FARMERS
AGRISERUM is a word that about 3 /ith of the
farmers know of, but with some confusion about
the proper use of it as a fertilizer replacer, or a
helper to feed your bacteria.
A meeting is planned by the Farmers Mfg. Co.
to explain the way Agriserum is intended to be
used to get your benefit from the product. If you
have any questions on Agriserum, please try to
attend this meeting.
Place - Quarryville Fire Hall
217 East State St., Quarryville, Pa.
Time - 7:30 P.M. EOT April 17, 1974
Speaker - Wilfred AJjets - Dorsey, 111.
Product Available From Your Distributor
Emanuel B. King, Kirkwood, Pa.