Faced with accelerating change due to advances in transportation and communication, and pressure to advance even faster due to population growth as the planet becomes ever more gentrified, weak minds yearn for a simpler past. That past was not in fact simpler, but they have a muzzy false narrative about it which selects oddments of semi-factual data to assemble a myth of a lost Edenic past. Being weak minded, they then resort to political activism to force their deformed visions of society.

All this suggests that a political constituency for change is building and not only on the left: lately, conservative voices have also been raised in support of reform. Writing of the movement back to local food economies, traditional foods (and family meals) and more sustainable farming, The American Conservative magazine editorialized last summer that “this is a conservative cause if ever there was one.”

Local food economies are fragile. Food production varies from season to season, year to year, decade to decade. Seven fat years followed by seven lean years, yada yada. Famine is an old fellow traveler of humanity. People die by the millions and wars of conquest break out as food insecure populations support the ambitions of charismatic leaders who promise food security through expansion and domination of neighbors. Poor nutrition stunts populations and has epigenetic effects that are heritable. You are what your grandmother ate.

It isn't that local food production and consumption is bad, it's that it is insufficient. It is one part of a comprehensive food system, not the whole of it. It can feed anyone, but not everyone. Being clear about this, maintaining an adult perspective, may not be conducive to political activism which depends on catch phrases designed to conceal rather than reveal - slimebag arguments in other words - but it is the best course if the objective is good governance rather than political power. Moral hazard? This is it.

The construction of the false narratives of activists involves selective use of current and historical data to weave a fantasy, a story with a carefully selected moral which induces the hearer to vote a certain way. It is the same method used by ideologues - religious or otherwise - to incite passions that move people against their own interests. People are funny that way, and monsters always arise to exploit them. It is complicated by tricks of the mind which allow these monsters to actually feel good about themselves, to flood their brains with reward chemicals when they do an especially good job of hoodwinking their prey.

Every word you hear from them must be scrutinized sceptically. You must always ask yourself not can I believe this, but must I believe this. Is it the whole story, complete and accurate? Have games been played with the data such as selecting a short and unrepresentative fragment of the whole data set, has it been massaged to conceal deviations from the script, is the meta-narrative actually supported unambiguously by the whole data set?

The sad part, the sick part, is that there are real threats and some part of the false narrative is true and useful. The comparatively easy task of blanket rejection is not the solution. Instead, each facet of the false narrative must be verified - accepting some, rejecting others, and modifying some of the rest - which is a long and tedious task. Your eyes glaze over and you long for someone, anyone, to just give you the bottom line because you have your own pressing work to do.

Life's a bitch.