Now friends, if there’s one trick as old as moldy bread, it’s this: get folks fussing with each other while you quietly slip off with the pie. Kings and politicians did it, corporations still do it, and if bacteria had thumbs, I suspect they’d try it too.
Division is a mighty profitable business. Keep neighbor glaring at neighbor, farmer squabbling with city-folk, young sneering at old, straight versus gay, black vs white and before you know it—nobody’s paying attention to the real sleight of hand. It’s as if the soil food web itself started bickering—fungi blaming bacteria for root rot, protozoa pointing at nematodes—and meanwhile the earthworms sneak off with all the goodies.
But here’s the gospel according to dirt: life thrives in cooperation. Prairie grasses don’t reach sky-high because they bullied their neighbors; they do it because roots, fungi, and microbes shook hands (figuratively) and said, “Let’s trade.” You give me sugars, I’ll give you minerals. Together, we all stand tall enough to wave at the bison.
Humans are no different. We’ve got more microbial roommates than human cells in our bodies—trillions of the little hitchhikers. And guess what? They don’t care if you vote left, right, or upside-down. They just want a little fiber, a little polyphenol, and a stable neighborhood where no one’s firebombing your gut.
So when you feel the tug to quarrel—over headlines, hashtags, or the latest clever wedge—remember the soil. Remember that the real danger isn’t your neighbor’s opinion, it’s the hands tugging the strings that keep us distracted while the nutrients leak away.
Let us be like a prairie root system—intertwined, resilient, impossible to tear apart. Division weakens; cooperation feeds. Don’t let them divide us, my friends. Not in the soil, not in the gut, and certainly not out here under the wide, wild sky.
That’s all I have to say, I will say no more.
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