Chaotic, Evil, Good Chart Meme
This is a first pass at an alignment chart for different types of agriculture and things associated with gardening and farming. It’s…rough…to say the least. Inspired by the Chaotic Evil Good Chart Meme, I think this is a funny way to categorize various practices and companies, and originates from character alignment in Dungeons & Dragons.
Nature is Chaotic
What got me thinking about this was realizing that food forests are kind of a subset of chaos gardens, but with a permaculture twist. I mean, I’ve seen chaos gardeners just buy a bag of dried beans and whip them around a plot of land. It’s not that much different from planting a blueberry plant and letting the birds eat some of the berries. Then, just seeing what crops up the next year in my food forest. The only difference is that instead of distributing the seeds myself, I’m letting the birds and other animals take care of seed distribution.
Some of the spots on this alignment chart are obvious. For example, Monsanto (bought by Bayer) is obviously evil and lawful (presumably). This is only because they lobby for laws favorable to their terrible business practices. Chaos gardeners are obviously chaotic, but it’s a practice that is mostly used in rural areas where they have enough land for both rows of crops and a chaotic garden. Though I think they are good, I think guerrilla gardeners do more for the greater good in the context of this Chaotic Evil Good Chart Meme.
Monoculture Lawns Need an Update
I really dislike monoculture lawns, so they gotta be on the evil end. However, they’re not particularly chaotic in any sense due to being manicured. Monsanto/Bayer is the root of the monoculture lawn and associated pesticides and herbicides. Along with similar chemicals and GMOs for large-scale agriculture. Maybe “Lawful Evil” should just be all of Big-Ag?
Invasive plants are obviously no bueno, and they spread chaotically. So I think that’s a nice fit on our Chaotic Evil Good Chart Meme.
Native Plants for the Win
Planting native plants is obviously good. There are no laws about it, but there’s a large and growing movement to plant native. Vegetable gardens are not as good as native gardens, but they’re lawful and help reduce food miles. Organic and regenerative vegetable gardens are better than ones that use chemicals, but natives are still better. Then there’s wild, undisturbed land which is obviously great. However, it doesn’t generally provide food for humans. Agroforestry is a little worse than undisturbed land from an ecological perspective. It provides food for humans, and more food for wildlife than unchanged land would typically be able to support.
Thoughts? How would you change it? What would you swap, or add/replace to this whole Chaotic Evil Good Chart Meme?