If you often feel misunderstood, like some sort of outcast or like you just don't fit, then you'll likely know what I'm talking about.

My wife and I were enjoying afternoon walk when we came across a groundskeeper spraying weeds on the lawn in front of a local preschool. This is clearly the norm in many cultures, but it’s hardly efficient or healthy.

“Isn’t that always the answer?” I said, nodding at the scene of the worker snuffing out the unwanted plants.

There’s a sense in which I feel like a weed almost anywhere I go. I just don’t fit, standing out like a lone dandelion on a well-manicured lawn. Even my wife often comments that I don’t even fit my own family. As a result, I often just try to blend, keeping my views on geopolitics and socioeconomics largely to myself.

What is a Weed?

First, what constitutes a weed? Contrary to what many think, it's not a plant family or any sort of scientific designation. It's simply “a plant in the wrong place” or “a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation”. 

The fact is, one man strives to eradicate what another cultivates. Blackberries are invasive in the Pacific Northwest. Amaranth is invasive in my yard, though many in other areas cultivate and harvest it. So it might be helpful if we started thinking about whether or not what we consider weeds are actually beneficial.

What Good are They?

Second, weeds are not only opportunists, but they serve to improve poor soil conditions. When we have a patch of dirt where only “weeds” grow, it’s not a bad idea to let them so that we can take advantage of their productivity. They're growing there because nothing else wants to. And their activity there will improve the conditions for succession plants. 

Why? Because the roots are burrowing down into the ground, building infrastructure and nutrients that can help nourish future plants. Consequently, if you spray it then you’re poisoning the ground in that area. And if you pull it, you’re actually adding to the compaction of the soil because the roots have been removed. But if you leave them to flourish and die naturally, or simply cut the weeds off at the ground once in a while, then the greens add nutrients while the roots serve as capillaries to help nourish the soil.

When it’s time to plant something more desirable, all you do us build on the top of the infrastructure. Knock the weeds down, spread some leaves, grass cuttings and mulch over the area, cover it with cardboard, then add some layers of manure, topsoil, mulch and woodchips. The cardboard will keep the weeds from growing while your new crops take root. Eventually the cardboard will decay, offering the nutrients from the weeds, as well as their burrowing efforts, to help your crop thrive. They'll also add to the growing ecology of your soil.

What Does That Have to do With Me?

If you’re innovative or inventive, then you just might be a weed… to the state

The parallels are somewhat obvious. Just like our manicured lawns and monoculture crops, the innovative tend to stick out in the crowd in most cultures today. Ingenuity, unless it fits within the proper bureaucratic or societal molds, all too often gains negative attention from the self-designated lawn-keepers. If you stand out in the crowd then you my very well be a weed, and are often considered a threat to the state.

It matters not that, just like in nature or a well-established regenerative agricultural setting, diversity brings greater health and stability through complementary relationships and opportunities. These are frowned on, rendering the working landscape akin to chicken houses, where the only function of the inhabitants is to get fat as fast as possible and produce as quickly as possible, regardless of the quality or long-term ramifications.

Consider all the people around you, going about their busy days. They get to work, punch the clock, sit in their cubicle or other appointed workspace, produce for their bosses, involuntarily contribute to their keepers and enjoy the weekend with what’s left over so they can do it all again the next week.

Depending on what state you belong to, you can buck the trend to greater or lesser degrees. In the most draconian jurisdictions, there’s little you can do. Some even go so far that wearing the wrong clothing, dancing or saying the wrong words in the wrong place at the wrong time can lead to incarceration, or worse.

But even in states that boast freedom, simply doing what mankind has done for centuries can make one a weed, to be exterminated, uprooted or converted. Some of these weed-like behaviors include such ominous activities as peddling raw milk (and here), growing food in your front yard, moving your offices to another jurisdiction, feeding the homeless, storing food for possible emergencies or even the infamous unlicensed lemonade stand. Weeds – all of them.

If you are suspected of anything the state deems suspicious activities (seven days of food, several guns in your house, missing fingers from one hand), then you are planted in an undesirable location. You may be exterminated, pulled up by the roots or in some way forced to become a well-manicured blade of grass.

So What’s a Weed to do?

Well, you have a few choices. Depending on your situation and personality, some will be more appealing, attractive or attainable to you than others.

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics 

1. Stay and fight the lawn-keepers. Historically, it’s a pretty tough route that almost inevitably has led to hardship. But there may be reasons compelling or forcing you to do so.
2. Find a place in your state where weeds are part of the landscape. Many people do this, in various forms of prepping or communal activities.
3. Move to a new landscape altogether, where you are no longer a weed. There are opportunities abroad that you can’t imagine without being there. Travel and find a place where you’re no longer a weed, but desirable or even exotic.

Whatever your situation, remember that we all have strengths that are a means for productivity. Perhaps you are struggling where and how you’re to produce. Don’t be discouraged. Seek out the soil that will nourish you the best, then sink your roots and give it all you have. After all, even the mighty sequoia is a weed in the middle of a baseball field.

Steemin' on,
Another Joe