Essays From West of 98: The Nonsense of Inevitability
Progress (or its prevention) requires action, not inevitability.
“It’ll never work…it’s just too hard…it’s a different world now…the system is rigged against us...people just don’t care enough.”
Have you ever heard a statement like that in the context of improving rural communities or revitalizing rural economies? If you are like me, you might have heard some variation of all those tropes. This pessimism serves as a reason to be discouraged, a basis to resist change, and frankly, an excuse to avoid trying new and bold things.
There’s an old saying that “the only sure things are death and taxes.” Even if it’s a well-worn cliché, it has a point: apart from those two items, nothing in life is inevitable. Yet in many quarters, we have treated the decline of rural America as an inevitability powered by the greatest of social and economic forces, from which we can never recover, at least not to an old sense of prosperity. Rural America might “recover,” but it will be with lower-paid jobs, less-than-ideal businesses, and with a greater dependence on outside forces for our continuing existence. Lest you disagree, I would suggest that this bleak offering describes the last 30+ years of “economic development” offered to rural communities by the State of Texas.
The idea that any of this is inevitable strikes me as utter nonsense.
Why must it be? On April 16, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. succinctly outlined the nonsense of “inevitable” forces in his brilliant “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” White pastors told Dr. King that black Americans would receive equal civil rights eventually, if only they would be patient. Dr. King wrote that “such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills.”
Equality was inevitable, they said. Dr. King knew better. Dr. King knew that nothing, good or bad, was inevitable.
“Time itself is neutral,” wrote Dr. King, continuing, “human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”
Progress appears through action, not inevitability. The same applies to our rural communities. Time alone will not bring progress, but time alone (“inevitability”) will also not prevent progress, unless we allow it to do so.
What are some of those clichés that we hear as roadblocks to rural prosperity? It’s too hard to make a living in agriculture. Farming does not require the same amount of human labor. Rural life is too hard. Good rural jobs do not exist anymore. People are better off in the city.
The idea of “inevitability” suggests that nothing could have stopped the forces that created those roadblocks. Yet, each of these ostensible roadblocks is a direct outcome of policy choices that were made at the state and national levels for the past 75 years. Those outcomes resulted from choices. New and better outcomes can result from different choices.
We cannot wait for state and national leaders to make different choices. Assuming they could even agree with one another on the color of the sky long enough to legislate productively, there’s no reason to believe that they would reverse course from 75 years of decisions. It is up to rural communities to push through the nonsense and forge the path. I have used this line before, and I likely will again, but in his seminal essay “The Work of Local Culture,” Wendell Berry theorized:
“I know that one resurrected rural community would be more convincing and more encouraging than all the government and university programs of the last fifty years, and I think that it could be the beginning of the renewal of our country, for the renewal of rural communities ultimately implies the renewal of urban ones.”
A resurrected, prosperous rural community would show that the idea of “inevitability” is nonsense. Undoubtedly, others would soon follow.
📷: early 20th century farm in Stamford area via Museum of the West Texas Frontier
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.