Farmers possess land and work it. Possession and work are the farmer’s basic defining activities. Vagabonds traverse space and transform it through play - moving and playing are the vagabond’s basic activities. Farmers need habit, ritual, consistency, unity. Vagabonds break habit, transform, fluctuate, diversify. Farmers deify order. Vagabonds create chaos.
Farming is the origin of the work ethic, because the farmer is one whose life is created for her by the work of farming. The farmer cannot create any moments for himself that conflict with the necessities of farmwork - otherwise, the farm fails and the farmer loses her identity, and possibly his survival. Time - a steady and standardized measure of motion - is essential to the farmer - his motion through space is not motion through space - not essentially - but working of the land. It is based on the order, the rule of measured cycles.
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