The coinage feraculture is almost, but not quite, an oxymoron, and our triad of terms requires explanation. Culture, from the Latin cultus, originally had two meanings—one connected with tillage of the soil, and the other with ritual or religious reverence. Modern English reflects both senses: we speak of soil cultivation, but also of cultivation in the abstract sense of refinement—we cultivate a taste for fine wine; a cultured individual enjoys fine art, music, and literature. Culture in the broadest sense refers to the physical objects, places, and activities and the aesthetic, intellectual, moral, and religious concepts that a society or civilization holds in highest regard or reverence, while cult refers pejoratively to fanatical, obsessive reverence for a person or object of ritual veneration. In the first sense, then, agriculture denotes physical cultivation of the soil (Greek agros), and horticulture refers to the cultivation of plants (Latin hortus). The second sense of cultus is latent in these familiar terms, however, and ought to be emphasized more: the best agriculture should both cultivate the soil physically and respect it spiritually; horticulture should cultivate plants for both their practical uses and their aesthetic qualities. Our invented term feraculture is meant to highlight the second sense of cultus, suggesting a reverence for the wilderness that includes refraining from using it for pragmatic or commercial purposes—tillage, mining, drilling, and the like, or cultivation in the first sense. We are inspired in the use of this term by Berry, who writes in “God and Country” that we ought to have (1) “the ability to use well” the things of this world, (2) “the goodness or the character required to limit use” of these things, and (3) the character to recognize when we ought “to forbear to use” them.
ents, elves, and eriador by Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans
H2 level heading
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