Sowing the World with Salt

originally published on CounterPunch

While the historicity of the practice of sowing a vanquished enemy’s fields with salt is the subject of considerable dispute, there is no disputing the fact that it exists as a symbol. Beyond the canonical examples (such as the biblical account of the Israelite judge Abimelech sowing the mutinous city of Shechem with salt in the second millennium BC, or the more well-known story of the Roman general Scipio Africanus’ sowing conquered Carthage with salt in the second century BC), spreading salt over the fields of a defeated adversary has come to signify thorough, undisputed conquest. 


As such, one may be forgiven for wondering why the new Rome, with its Senates and its Capitols, and its world-spanning empire, has not sought to emulate the old Rome by pursuing just such a practice. Aside from the various territorial and economic problems this consideration raises, however, the fact of the matter is that the present political-economic order is already considerably far along in sowing the fields of the world with salt. In addition to the salinization of the world’s fields resulting from rising oceans attendant climate change, much of the world’s land is being salinized by industrial fertilizers and other forms of pollution, not to mention the far more quotidian practice of irrigation farming.


The historical irony, of course, is that these ecological injuries are not the contemporary political-economic order (global capitalism)’s specific aim. They are the consequence of a number of short-sighted, market-based, technology-oriented factors. Nor do they symbolize the end of a war. Unlike in ancient times, by further diminishing access to water, limiting crop yields, and threatening biodiversity, among other harms, sowing the world with salt has little to do with ending wars. Instead, it creates them.

Forget Security

Originally published on CounterPunch

From national security to social security, and from economic security to water security and food security, the early 21st century concern with security reflects modes of interacting with the world that create and recreate the very harms that the various forms of security seek to correct. The demands of “economic security,” for instance (which, in typically uncritical fashion, excludes basic considerations from its concept), leads to practices such as fracking and rainforest clearance, not to mention more mundane, widespread contaminants, which in turn imperil “water security,” among others.


To some degree, the etymology of the word security illuminates why this is the case. Derived from the Latin se cura, which means free from care, being secure in many respects means being carefree. However, one must not overlook the fact that being carefree does not simply mean being free from worry. It also drifts into another meaning – that one doesn’t have to think about troubling things at all. That is, being carefree slides into being careless. These meanings are inextricable.\


In addition to its more direct violence, managing the world and society in accordance with the interests of security not only discourages people in general from thinking too much about the issues we collectively face (allowing deeply ideological, racist structures to flourish). In organizing society around the principle of security (of carefreeness and carelessness) we neglect a duty of care to the world and to one another that reproduces the toxic, hostile world we all inhabit.


Rather than accepting the validity of this ideology of security (inseparable historically from ecocidal and genocidal levels of carelessness) we ought to cultivate a politics of attentiveness and carefulness. And maybe, by caring in concrete practice (as opposed to caring in mere theory), we can overcome the problems that we’re told we can correct by means of security.



Elliot Sperber is a writer, lawyer, and adjunct professor. He lives in New York City, and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com