Choosing a way of life › Crop rotation is more than chasing novelty

The title “Crop Rotation” invites a tempting misunderstanding. A does not merely recommend replacing one activity with another whenever interest fades. He distinguishes changing the soil from changing the method of cultivation. His proposed method seeks variety intensively, through how experience is approached, rather than only through a succession of external changes.

The principle of limitation is central to that proposal. Restricted material can provoke ingenuity. A describes the resourcefulness of a person finding amusement in very small things. His point is that the interesting can be cultivated through attention and invention within a limit.

Remembering and forgetting become arts within this strategy. A wants to manage the effect an experience has on him. He warns against being carried too far by enjoyment. The aim is to preserve a degree of control over one's relation to an experience, rather than simply surrender to every appetite.

This makes the aesthetic standpoint harder to dismiss. It includes a kind of discipline. A critic of it has to explain why disciplined management of enjoyment remains inadequate. Simply recommending concentration or persistence would not meet the position A has actually presented.

Imagine a hypothetical reader who keeps returning to the same novel while continually inventing new ways of approaching it. The absence of constant external novelty does not settle whether their life has the orientation the judge criticizes. We would still need to ask what place this activity has among their responsibilities. This illustration distinguishes the location of novelty from the ethical assessment of a life.