If you search the world ‘cultivate’ in wikipedia, you get twelve options as to what this word may refer to. See for yourself here if you don’t believe me. This of course, made me reconsider which option made for the most interesting use of the word.
Options for thought
While I was thinking of the word in terms of a relationship or the soil in my backyard, here we have a menu of alternate thinking. Animal Husbandry, referring to the cultivation of livestock, at once seems weirdly appealing and conjures images of a white veil atop the ears of a milking cow.
What about fungiculture, the business of cultivating mushroom farms. I had to stop and consider what the purpose here would be but since I’ve looked it up now, I’ll tell you. It’s done in the interest of producing medicine (not hallucinogens, that was my first thought too), and food. I’m sure the Food Network has at some point covered this subject.
Random-ness
There is a video game named Cultivation by Jason Rohrer, released in 2007 it is “a social simulation about a community of gardeners.” To me the most interesting part of this is the creator and his belief in the copyright-less system and prefers to post his code on sourceforge.net. I also like that he practiced ‘simple living’ for seven years and his family of four lived off a yearly budget of less than 15k. That seems very interesting and I’m likely to dedicate a post only to ‘simple living’ to explore it more.
There is a music album by Gram Rabbit called Cultivation. I didn’t go out and listen to it so I can’t state what the lyrics might pertain to but I’m sure it could be googled if one cared enough. I’m sorry but I do not.
There is a Cultivation Theory now which examines the long term effects of television. And it does make sense to me. The more time people spend watching television the more they’ll begin to consider what they see on television as reality. I would have to agree with this point and I think we have ‘numbed’ ourselves to a lot of subjects simply because we’ve been given permission to by tv executives. I’m going to save this rant for a later post.
Conclusion
My original intention in looking at this word was to get more insight into the ‘idea’ of cultivating and I’m not sure I’ve succeeded. I thought I’d be looking at pictures of green pasture land waiting for homesteaders but instead I my world was opened to quite a few new facts. For myself, I’m going to consider the word fun to look at, and will likely use it often when referring to myself. “Yes, I’ve cultivated quite an audience on Facebook.” or “Yes, I’ve cultivated my cooking skills to allow me to survive four whole days in the wilderness now.” That sounds about right to me. What do you think?