The Paradox Of Rural Life
By Peter Goodchild
24 June, 2012
Countercurrents.org
All of humanity is now involved in a global collapse, which is happening on two levels: the material (fossil fuels, metals, food, etc.) and the economic (unemployment, high price, debt crises, etc.). Basically it's the first causing the second, as in ancient Rome, but the causality is complicated, now as it was then. By the year 2020 or 2030, the only real solution will be to move away from the cities, because ultimately that is the only way to provide independence from the cataclysm.
This will be a move on the part of the individual person. Collective decisions, on the national or even municipal level, will be largely impossible, because most people are indecisive on such issues, and politicians prefer less embarrassing questions. Escaping from the city will be the ultimate do-it-yourself project.
But buying rural property at the moment, at least in the more-industrialized countries, involves a bizarre irony: in spite of our ingrained ideas about going back to nature, the reality is that it's very expensive. Thoreau's "Walden" is a wonderful book, but there's more to country living than hoeing beans.
"Elegant country living," to use the term of the glossy magazines, isn't available on demand. Those who most need to get out of the city are those who have the least money, while those who find it easiest to get out of the city are those who are rich enough to be hauling huge motorboats behind them as they travel. That's the irony -- or so it seemed to me one morning as I watched such a boat going down the road.
The rich can live well in the city, because endless goods and services are available with money. They can also live well in the country, for exactly the same reason. The non-rich -- i.e. the majority of the population -- cannot live as well in the city. It's the non-rich, therefore, who have the greater need to escape. But the fact is that the non-rich are, in many ways, locked into the city. For them, the city is habitable; the countryside is not.
In the city, even if you cannot live in great luxury without money, you can at least "get by" there. You can survive in the city with little or no money because there is public transportation, or you can use a bicycle, or you can walk. There is cheap housing, even if only at the level of the boarding house or lower, and maybe you can find a nice landlord. And there are always sources of food, to the extent that with no money at all you could go to a food bank or elsewhere. The nanny state will keep you alive, at least if you are willing to obey your nanny.
On the other hand, in order to move to the country, during these earlier days of collapse, you would need money for the purchase of property, and while property in the country is not as expensive as in the city it is still not cheap. For one thing, if you intend to grow vegetables, raise animals, and cut firewood, you'll need several acres of land as well as a house. But the house itself will not be free; don't expect to live in a humble log cabin unless you're quite young and you're very physically fit -- and even then, it's basically a male fantasy: a woman is less likely to put up with such a habitation.
The house will certainly cost money. Here in Canada, for example, for less than about $60,000 would not even get a "fixer-upper," you would only get a "tearer-downer," i.e. something that should not have been regarded financially as an element of the purchase agreement you signed. And after enough sixteen-hour days of doing repairs on rotting timbers, your spouse is going to decide that marital vows are not non-negotiable. Because there is usually no public transportation out in the country, you will probably need a car, and on top of that the distance from home to job -- if you actually have such a source of money -- may be considerable. If you can produce some of your own food you will be doing better than many other people, but it's unrealistic to think you can produce all your own food; again contrary to popular conceptions, raising animals is more troublesome than vegetable-gardening. In general, food is more expensive out in the country. So are many other things, including electricity, gasoline, and telephones, mainly because of the greater distance between one point and another, resulting in longer stretches of road, more utility poles, and so on.
You will probably need a job. But jobs in the countryside are rare; they usually go to somebody's cousin, and bitching about nepotism is going to get you nowhere, even if you manage to explain the word. Such jobs also pay less than comparable jobs in the city, partly because the rural economy is even more depressed than that of the city, and partly because you don't need as much money in the country -- or so you'll be told.
The land itself is a major consideration. Soil is not just dirt. To grow crops, you need fertile soil, arable land, not bare rock or swamp. Here in the province of Ontario the arable land is only 5 percent of the total land mass. It's just a small V that reaches from Georgian Bay down to Niagara, and then northeast towards Ottawa. But that small piece of land also holds 90 percent of Ontario's population. The same ratio is roughly true of the rest of the country. Arable land here in Canada is nearly always expensive. If you find a place where arable land is cheap, a closer look may reveal poverty, alcoholism, and petty crime -- not a good trade-off.
There are other aspects to the down-side of owning a house nowadays, but some of these are matters that hold true irrespective of whether the house is in the town or in the country. It's less practical for a single person to buy or occupy a house than for a couple, and couples are rarer in this age of quick divorces. The money you pay for a house might not be recouped if you resell, since real-estate bubbles may be less common in less-optimistic times. And the expenses of a house cannot all be cheerfully ascribed to equity if they include insurance, taxes, and repairs.
In the nineteenth century, the division between urban and rural was not so pronounced; Thoreau's town of Concord was almost part of the forest, or so it seems as we read his accounts. But rural living has been transformed since those days: the property is now expensive, crowded, and just not readily available. I know people who are living in the country with fair success, but they are exceptions for various reasons: for example, they might have moved there when property was cheap or their bank accounts were adequate, or both. I lived in the country myself from 2000 to 2008, but I can't say it was either cheap or easy.
Fortunately, after the total collapse the money economy will vanish, both from urban and from rural areas. Even in industrialized countries, the use of money is already starting to disappear because of the underground ("gray") economy. But how long do we have to wait for total collapse? I would guess it won't be before 2020.
The paradox of rural and urban living is not insoluble, and we each have to make our own choices. In these early years of the twenty-first century, if you're a physically-fit twenty-year-old without much money, you could move to north of latitude 50, get a gun and an axe, and head for the bush. On the other hand, if you're well past that age, you might decide that you're better off spending the winter somewhere other than in a log cabin.
Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American Indians. His email address is prjgoodchild[at]gmail.com
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