Two Cultures

[xoxoxoBruce]

Two Cultures is a book written in 1959 by Brit novelist and physicist C P Snow. He laments the growing "divide between scientists and literary intellectuals in the world of academe".

This article, by a genetics researcher at Penn State, compares his culture and value to the world, with his sister/brother-in-law, who run a goat dairy in Vermont.

I recognize that I could make similar comparisons between academics and miners, or soldiers, or athletes or musicians or visual artists. The singular difference here is that farmers provide the rest of us with sustenance. They are tied to the land and the seasons in ways that most of us can, and do, ignore.

I was at the farm once when we got word that a grant we’d applied for had been funded. This is always good news to an academic. But out feeding kids, when I explained the project to my sister, she asked: ‘Why is that important?’ Not skeptical, she really wanted to know, but I had trouble explaining.

Seen from the farm, C P Snow was right about two worlds that hardly intersect. But he was wrong about which ones. There are two cultures: farming — and everything else.

It's a good read, even if just for the description of life on the farm, so you can better understand how people like Nirvana live.