Think for a minute about what a perfect world would be like. Such a world would guarantee everybody a high standard of living, filled with suburban comforts. All people in that world would be politically equal and highly educated. They would know and embrace one truth. Utopia is a nice dream, but it would also be a world of boring conformity. This is why suburbanization creates killers and social alienation. The author proposes we call the materialistic suburban world 'rational'. Utopia suits our basic human needs, but fails to inspire our psyche.

We need a world that gives us a 'rational' quality of life, but also gives us far more. The author proposes to call this part of life 'irrational'. Rationalism bought us material goods and knowledge, but it forgets about the importance of environmentalism and the joys of rural life. Science can tell us why the birds fly or predict how much milk our cars will produce, but it does not address why watching the birds fly and farming is so enjoyable to so many people.

Rationalism and Family Farmers

Rationalism threatens our basic enjoyment of society. People sell out farms to developers for quick cash. People go to college to get education, only to forget the basic enjoyment of life. The material things they get do not make them any happier, and in most cases makes them unhappy. Getting up every morning at the crack of dawn to muck around in a cowshed might not be an easy life, but it gives the individual something beyond material happiness.

The author realizes the hardships that family farmers face. People in the country often have to work for their living. They can not just hop in their car and spend all day in an office doing little work. Maybe mass-society is an easy way to get money and happiness, but it leaves us feeling empty at the end of the day. The farmer portrays a man who works in freedom with the natural world.

Creating Your Own Path: Beyond Rationalism

The author does not advocate everybody goes out and buys some land in the country. It is a nice dream to open up the Want Ad Digest and buy farm equipment and farm your land, but it is also impractical for most of us. The author has never worked a job outside of an office, but he has found a great deal of wisdom from what he sees as the farm life. The farmer creates his own path, and shapes his environment in ways that produce in harmony with nature. He makes is own trail. When you do your own thing, you are limiting beyond the limits of suburban rationalism.

It is easier to follow the preexisting trail that is provided by suburban comforts. The author has hiked many trails in the Catskills and knows well about the pitfalls of such a mentality. A trail that is well used is often muddy and has roots sticking up where the soil has worn down. Such a world is not particularly desirable. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation ("DEC") occasionally reroutes trails to reduce the impact of an old trail. However, that is often impractical. We instead use other solutions.

The solutions can exist in many fashions. We can build bridges, fill in rutted areas with dirt, gravel, or wood chips. Those solutions do not require the creation of new trails, or the exploitation of new resources. Those kinds of solutions do not require the holding back of individuals and can be very effective. The DEC also keeps trails neat by limiting their use through limiting parking spaces, banning all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes. Those solutions limit our liberties, and some groups would say such things are unacceptable. How would you like if you where not allowed to ride your dirt bike on a trail you have used for years? If scientific grounds justified the decision you might accept it.

Rationalism and Freedom

Suburban rationalism makes life easy to live. You get your college degree, and you work your 9-5 white-collar job in the city. For many that is an acceptable life. Yet it leaves a form of emptiness. It limits you from the joys of rural life. It also leaves you stuck in a world of bureaucratic rules that describe all behaviors. On the farm, you are defined largely through natural laws and your personal choices. In the city, large bureaucracies made up of hundreds of people make such choices. Government defines life in the city. The individual defines life in the country.Not only do we have cows and birds out in the country, we have fewer people to damage the environment. This means a cleaner and better environment with more freedom. Going back to the analogy of hiking trails in the Catskills, we can see how these plays out. We would not be considering limiting all-terrain vehicle access to the hiking trail if only a few machines would be using the trails. The damage would be virtually unnoticeable. Yet, when we have hundreds of people wanting to ride their machines along the trail we have problems.

If you want to be a free individual, you have to find your own path. You have to create your own realities. You have to live the life of the farmer in the suburb or city. You need to embrace hardship and fight the good fight for a better world around you.