On Returning from Our Agricultural Babel

Abstract

SAMUEL BECKETT'S play, Breath, consists of a stage, and on it a pile of junk. The curtains part; there is a giant sound of a person inhaling, punctuated by a baby's struggled cry, then the giant exhalation of one dying. The curtains close; the scene is repeated several times; that is all; that is the message. The anguished world of Beckett is the quintessence of a universe organized along the double polarity of the necessity to say something and the impossibility of saying it. The paradox of the artist incapable of not writing, not speaking, not struggling to communicate his truth, despite the apparent absurdity of existence, might be likened to that of the modern economist. It attests to a striving for significance in the face of irrationality in the world and among men. It also embodies a hopesometimes in a desperate gamble-to use words and symbols to escape a meaninglessness that surrounds us even though our roles testify to some peculiar meaninglessness. The situation Socrates faced in Plato's Phaedo was analogous to Beckett's and to ours: there was evil in the souls of men because there were conflicting communications. Ordinary words had many different meanings, were distorted and diverted from the plain and simple use that people believed them to have. We here today cannot be indifferent to the communication problem. Language has committed American agriculture to a world that does not exist. Between the agricultural word-vision of the world and the reality of the world extends a wide chasm. Our profession is filled with sophists; but instead of praying for a modern Socrates to save us, I call on all agricultural economists to clarify an agrarian language, to update our own dictionary, and to make significant the link between