John Shuttleworth, Founder of Mother Earth News, Interview Part II

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Jumping to another area, I find that you were advocating a return to the family farm five years ago when all the other farming periodicals — the "establishment" publications — were almost gleefully celebrating the death of the same family farm. And now that those agricultural papers and magazines and a few of their "freak" counterparts have jumped on the family farm bandwagon I see that you've already moved on to emphasize the necessity for planning whole agrarian communities.

What's going on here anyway? Have you got a crystal ball or something that tells you where we're all going to be a year or two from now?

SHUTTLEWORTH: Yes, that's exactly what I've got. And I not only know where we're all probably going to be two years from now ... I have a very educated idea of where we're going to be 10 years from now ... and 20 years from now ... and so on for as long as I want to look into the future.

PLOWBOY: What! Do you know what you're saying?

SHUTTLEWORTH: Yes, I know precisely what I'm saying. I'm saying that I can do what we all think we'd like to be able to do. I can — with clarity — see into the future. I've been doing it for at least 20 years — I started buying silver in anticipation of the recent rising silver market, for instance, in 1957 — I'm doing it now, and I expect to keep on doing it for as long as I live.

PLOWBOY: But ... that's incredible!

SHUTTLEWORTH: Oh balderdash. There's nothing incredible about it at all. I can name other people who predict the future with far greater precision than I ever will. At best, I'm merely a one-eyed man in the land of the blind.

PLOWBOY: What does that mean?

SHUTTLEWORTH: It means that, as far as I'm concerned, most of the inhabitants of the so called "advanced" countries in this second half of the 20th century ... should be awarded some sort of collective prize for the sheer tonnage of wool they've pulled over each other's eyes. Despite — or more probably, because of — the modern world's surfeit of computers and "experts," humankind now seems to have reached an absolute and all-time low in the areas of wisdom and common sense.

PLOWBOY: Those are strong words.

SHUTTLEWORTH: Not strong enough. Let me say it another way: I believe, after due and careful consideration, that at least 90% of the population of the so called "developed" and "developing" nations is stark raving bananas. Deluded. Crazy. Insane.

And I'll explain that by asking you to define "insanity".

PLOWBOY: Well, uh ...

SHUTTLEWORTH: Samuel Johnson said that, "All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity." And I've run across one old legal definition which states that insanity is "a mental condition, either from existence of delusions or from incapacity to distinguish between right and wrong, with regard to any matter under action ... that does away with individual responsibility."

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