For those who wish to get out of the city and take up farming, such isolated mountain villages are good places to borrow land and get started. Long ago human beings lived and survived in the foothills of the mountains, so such a place -- the border between the plains and the mountains, is certainly the ideal environment for people. Though it may be an economically poor place to live, it is ecologically ideal. * * * Even though one may have left the city and fled to an inconvenient mountain village to take up farming, it is impossible to guarantee that one will thus be able to survive into the twenty-first century. Even if, in the event of a nuclear war, one managed to avoid a full-scale nuclear attack, the Earth will cool as a result of nuclear war, and agriculture will suffer a severe blow. There is no assurance that those who have left the city and taken up farming in the mountains will be safe. One may of course conceal about two years' worth of grain in a pit solo, but there are yet difficult problems such as residual radiation and the pillaging of starving people. Still, when the city destroys itself by means of its own poisons (the peace of waste, contamination, and destruction), the independent farmers will not, as the modernized mass-offering farmers will, be dragged down with it. I shall explain the reason for this in the final chapter. Chapter VIII Notes 45 [The author actually uses a term meaning literally "all the members of an ethnic group farm."] The reason I say "ethnic-group farming" instead of "citizen farming" is because I deny the existence of the nation-state. I believe that the nation-state is a power structure, a structure of domination and plunder (i.e., the root of urban evils). If we negate the great evils of the nation-state, then of course the nation-state itself is negated. If we negate the nation-state, then of course there are no "citizens," and what remains is a group of people known as an ethnic group or race. On the other hand, the use of distinguishing terms like "ethnic group" and "race" breeds racism, small-mindedness, and exclusivism, so perhaps it would be better to employ terms like "humanity" or "Earth people." But since my discussion in this chapter concerns mainly the island country of Japan, I will ask the reader's indulgence and slip by with this makeshift term. 46