“A community is the mental and spiritual connection of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives.”
MANIFESTO:TILLAGE
Do we Need
To Buy A Farm?
It knocked me off my feet.
I was reading about a fictional town—bypassed by the newly constructed interstate—whose people, its Membership, are fighting to love each other amidst the long defeat of their history.
It’s a place where not much happens, and yet, that nothingness sits heavy and loud in the room.
My impulse to buy a farm and get close to the land was born from a desire to belong to Place, to take care of Place, and I believed that PLACE was over there.
[I point my finger vaguely somewhere; elsewhere; just not San Francisco].
At the time, I was pretty pale, with soft hands, making a living working on a computer, and living in an urban neighborhood in San Francisco. My closest farming connection goes all the way back to my potato farmer ancestors in Maine who skipped over to Canada at the start of the American Revolution because they still liked the king (true story; different story).
[I look in a mirror]
Not much has changed. I have started rock climbing, so my hands aren’t quite as soft. I am still pale.
So I'm not cut out to be a farmer. What then? How do I reconcile this disonance?
It took some time, but the more I read (of Berry, of Wallace Stegner, of John Steinbeck, of Jane Jacobs, of E.F. Schumacher, and many others who deeply understand Place), the more I realized that this “go farm the land” was not the primary message and definitely not the message for me (see prior note about paleness and soft hands).
Berry writes in another of his novels, Hannah Coulter, “Most people now are looking for a better place, which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one…. There is no ‘better place’ than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we’ve got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven….”
Jayber Crow, Hannah Coulter, and all the other stories set in Port William are not about farmers and farming; not primarily.
Those stories are primarily teaching us about Place, our connection to it, and how we cultivate affection for it and the people that inhabit it.
This idea, this singular idea that Place matters—and my place in it—took root and would not let go.
“A community is the mental and spiritual connection of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives.”
Wendell Berry
Our Addiction
to Optimization
Leads to Isolation
But, we live in a place that encourages us to whittle away our souls on the altar of more; to ask to be sorted, sifted, and filtered into affinity groups, cohorts, and echo chambers of like-minded souls; to wrap our lives in technology, and cede our autonomy to an algorithm that promises perfection through optimization—when to sleep, what to eat, when to produce, who to date, what to believe, what to buy, and ultimately, when to die.
Playlists personalized just for me.
Ads curated just for me.
Internet “truth” made just for me.
Soon, already, music, movies, and books generated for an audience of Me.
What happens to our humanity when our lives are so perfectly personalized that we never experience the discomfort of bumping up against someone else’s life?
Hold Up.
Do I spy a Luddite?
This is no anti-tech screed being pecked out on an L3 Smith-Corona portable manual typewriter in an off-the-grid cabin in the woods of Lincoln, Montana. You are reading this on the World Wide Web after all.
Nor is this a nostalgic look back to yesteryear through rose-colored glasses. We feel no nostalgia for dial-up.
What is going on here is a warning shot across the bow of our community to say that the hockey-stick growth of our current technological moment is and will likely continue to outpace humanity’s ability to adapt well. And when humanity feels something as relentless and overwhelming as this tsunami, we tend toward one or another extreme.
Either, we pull hard against the progress—get off the grid, become a farmer, smash the stocking frames. Or, we capitulate into the current cultural river—fawn over an imminent AGI utopia where no one works, everyone has plenty, and human vice has somehow magically disappeared.
These are the responses. This is the game. Your only choice is to choose your fighter.
But what if there was another option?
What if we didn't play the game?
“I am moreover a Luddite, in what I take to be the true and appropriate sense. I am not “against technology” so much as I am for community. When the choice is between the health of a community and technological innovation, I choose the health of the community. I would unhesitatingly destroy a machine before I would allow the machine to destroy my community.”
an essay by Wendell Berry
Don’t Play the Game.
Save Your Humanity
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion – put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,
by Wendell Berry
Life Thrives
In analog
Welcome to the rebellion. This is Tillage.
Intentionally unscalable. We believe small is beautiful which means we will not dilute our focus outside of San Francisco. We are purpose-built to be unscalable.
Designed for less. And more. We have no private offices or dedicated desks. Tillage is a place for work, yes, and also, reading, writing, thinking, connecting, and community gatherings. Being embedded in your neighborhood means Tillage is a place to use more frequently in shorter bursts throughout your week.
Annoyingly opinionated. Tillage has opinions (if this is a surprise to you at this point in your reading, we have questions). We believe certain things cultivate thriving in humans and other things poison it. Those beliefs color every decision we make.
Tillage won’t appeal to everyone. That’s intentional. For you who get it, Tillage will be a powerful wind in your sails—a place of rootedness and belonging—to support your thriving here in San Francisco.
“It all turns on affection now,” said Margaret. “Affection. Don’t you see?”
work. create.
connect. thrive.
Tillage is a member-supported third place in the Inner Sunset. Coming soon to 1410 Irving St.
