Agroecology and screens

This article is in English to make it accessible to a wider community of people. But the video of me is in French 🙂

Do you think that Les Agron’Hommes project is existing more on screens, or more in the living word? Well, this project that I initiated is a YouTube channel, and I massively communicate on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And yes, I send emails and use Whatsapp a lot. I also write articles online. You see?

BUT :

Those are just tools. Everyday I wake up, meditate one hour without turning on my phone, and I ask life to help me in this mission of inspiring farmers of the future, by allowing them to experience agroecology. Experience, meaning putting your hand into the soil, planting, helping, organizing a holistic system, understanding the mindset of the farmer who produce our food every day. Everyday, it is my endeavor to make this happen in the real world, not just on Youtube, and that’s why I want to be a farmer myself. 

I was already aware of my addiction to screens even if I am very connected to nature and I think I am not the biggest user of technology. 

But after watching Stare into the lights my Pretties, from Jordan Brown, I had a new way of looking at how technology companies dominate and control our decision making process and our lives.

When something bigger than us control our day to day actions, something so big and smart that we even don’t realize that it impacts our decisions and how we interact to the world, that’s a problem.

It is similar to the farmer who believes that he is making mindful decisions on his farms, while a very organized system is in fact controlling his decisions.

Among all the farmers I met, around 70 in 13 countries, the ones that are doing real agroecology, working with Nature (which means respecting all living beings including humans) are the ones who have a deep connection to Nature, connecting every day to it, even if they have an important use of smartphones and computer for their work. When they have to make decisions, they take a deep dive into mindfullness, siting in a field, under a tree, listening to the birds. Alone. Listening to the gut feeling and the heart. Without Google or any technological decision making tool.

Technologies are not neutral. Just start looking at the environmental and social impact of technologies. Technology is not part of the living word. It has an impact on the living word. I especially love those sentences from « Stare into the Lights my Pretties ». A huge thank to Jordan Brown, director of the movie.

« Think about it: do you touch plastic or human flesh more often? How many times per day do you have relationships with machines and how many wild animals do you have daily relationships with? If you have more relationships with machines, you come to believe that those machines are more important than the real world » 

« The technology is like one of the grate forces of the universe, it will progress enivitably and we can jump on or jump out the way. There is no « stop technology ». Ant this is a myth that is propagated to make us feel powerless that we have any say in the way that technology is used, because technology is an expression of the elites of the society that create it. But what we should take from that, is that once we are aware of this myth, then we are able to say « Resistance is not futile »

« It’s hard to make a person understand something when their entitlement depends on them not understanding it. When their addiction depends on them not understand it. It is all tied to addiction too« 

A sum up of this feeling in a small video (in French).

WHAT YOU CAN DO ?

The solution is not « turn-off the computer ». We have to recognize how much fun I’m having talking to my friends or playing. 

I copy-paste here the last part of Otto Scharmer article , lecturer at MIT and co-founder of the Presencing Institute. 

Here are eight micro-actions that can help you regain some of the control that has been lost to Big Tech:

  1. Ban your smartphone from the bedroom and buy an alarm clock.
  2. Get out of the filter bubble by doing what people inside Google already do: drop the Google search engine and use DuckDuckGo, an engine that protects your privacy and does not sell your data.
  3. Minimize your notifications and retake control of your social media feed (check out MIT Media Lab’s Gobo)
  4. Start your day with a moment of mindfulness.
  5. Take intentional reflection breaks—for example, a short daily walk that exposes you to the amazing beauty of nature that is all around us.
  6. Form a small circle of friends for practicing deep listening and generative dialogue conversations.
  7. Make a list of places of most potential—places that would help you figure out the next steps on your life’s and work’s journey—and then immerse yourself in at least one of those places every few months.
  8. Join the Transforming Capitalism platform to link up with inspiring innovators who share their stories, experiences, methods, and tools on addressing the issues outlined above. 

> Now, go for a walk, hug a tree… or just breath. You know ?