All living things are borne and nourished by the Land. Rain is absorbed by the Land, becoming the source of well water and stream water, water that is released gradually in dry times by means of the Land's regulatory and retaining capabilities. The Land also purifies all contaminants (except for things like heavy metals and chemicals). The Land has, for millions of years, continued its work of reducing waste products, dead plants, and fallen leaves by means of bacterial action, and returning them to the soil.
But by covering the Land with concrete we paralyze this function, and it dies. Dead land (concrete) will not grow plants or absorb water, or give it forth in dry times. And contaminants on concrete just stink without being purified; if we don't clean up the mess we cannot even live there.
The functions of the earth — giving life to the plants and animals, regulating the rainwater, purifying waste and returning it to the soil — may be said to form the main artery of Nature's cyclical function. If the earth is blocked off, the flow of blood will halt, and the Earth will turn into a dead planet. And it is none other than concrete that is responsible for cutting off the flow of blood.
The big city is a great mass of concrete, and it is here that the rape of the Land attains its highest perfection. Should the multitudes of buildings collapse, how would they dispose of the mountains of rubble? No matter where they put the rubble, it will cover the earth, and the bottom of the ocean should also be considered earth. Whether a factory, an office building, or a paved road, once it is built we have condemned some part of the Land to be covered with it. The more you block off the Land, the more the functions of nature are necessarily impaired, and we will pay for this sooner or later. The net of Heaven is coarse, but allows nothing to escape [4] — is it possible that Nature will miss this or generously overlook it?
Evil Four
The fourth evil is the theft of the farm population.
The cities have burgeoned by stealing the farm population. The expansion of the cities is in other words the growth of those employed by the secondary and tertiary industries, and the growth of the secondary and tertiary population represents the decline of the farming population.
In order to feed a large non-tilling population with a small farming population, labor-saving, high-yield agriculture is an absolute necessity, and this leads to plundering, contaminating agriculture using machines that run on petroleum. As long as the increased secondary and tertiary population tries to enjoy a modern lifestyle (convenience, extravagance, and ease), it only stands to reason that the consumers (the non-tilling population) will have to put up with, and pay the price of, contaminated agricultural produce.
Evil Five
The fifth evil is squeezing food out of the farmers. Since the concrete cities are incapable of supplying themselves with food, the inhabitants must, in order to survive, squeeze everything they eat — be it an apple, a tomato, or a grain of rice — out of the farming villages. Long ago the cities expropriated agricultural produce through the feudal lords and landlords, and in more recent times they forced the farmers to give it up by means of the Food Control Act. Now, however, they take mountains of food by means of money. These are necessary, desperate measures taken to keep the cities alive. No matter what means they employ, the cities must forever (until they collapse into rubble) continue to extort food from the farmers. They can do nothing else, even if they have to send in the military and seize food from the farmers at gunpoint.