*For the Western world, the foundation of critical thinking was conceived during a time when farming was king. It was known to the ancients as georgics. Georgics, more commonly known since the 1800s as the philosophy of agrarianism, is a term that describes a culture of independent farming that engenders the qualities of duty, order, frugality, and self-control. These farming-oriented values and ethics are the same ones that create and sustain a liberal arts system of education and a political order in which citizens govern rather than being ruled by the so-called 1%ers.

The word “georgic” or “georgics” is derived from both Latin and Greek, and literally means to work the land or to engage in agricultural efforts. When I say that in the 21st century, people generally think I am suggesting that everyone should engage the profession of farming, but that is not what I am saying. I mean to say that even while a person may be a doctor, a lawyer, a bricklayer, or a salesman; we should all still engage in farming to produce food and creating a rural lifestyle.

Georgics as a concept has a strong 2,700-year history. It begins with Hesiod around 700 BC. The Roman historian Virgil picked up the torch in his poetic writings actually called “The Georgics” in 35 BC. Hilaire Belloc illuminated economic medieval history in his work The Servile State, which outlines the evolution of the term “yeoman” from servant of the king to free landholder and independent farmer from 500 to 1400 AD. Georgics as an Anglo New World concept and practice, started in 1607 with Jamestown as agriculture and georgics became the primary means of livelihood and way of thinking for the American
colonists. By the late 17th century John Locke introduced his georgic concepts of private land ownership with “Two Treatises on Government,” followed by the mid to late 18th century economic theories of the Physiocrats in Europe, which supported the growth and development of agriculture as the true means of national wealth. Early 20th century Austrian philosopher, Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf Schools, developed the georgic concept of biodynamics in the 1920s, which was then introduced to American farmers in the 1930s, followed by the georgic concepts of permaculture presented by Bill Mollison in 1978 (chapter four covers both biodynamics and permaculture in depth).

The term georgics was adopted by the early Americans to describe a quality they not only very much admired, but one that they were determined to inculcate into the new American culture and that they were convinced would create a great land of liberty.