[AGL] Fw: (")OWL(") The Ecology of Work

[michele mason]

I have been trying to convince my sons and others for 15 stinkin' years 
to work on my place; help me make a real farm—get in shape and see REAL 
ORGANIC food growing—enough for all to eat and make a profit!!!! Deaf 
DEAF ears. So I did it myself and beat myself nearly to death, or it 
feels like. Now too crippled up to do it any more, but it probably gave 
me strength for a longer period than I would have had. Bad sentence 
structure—don't have time to make it nice.

Anyway, thanks,  Michele

On May 16, 2007, at 12:22 PM, Gerry wrote:


>

> This is a great piece. Being old enough to recall the '40's when the 

> world

> was simple I often wonder how we have allowed modern values to corrupt 

> our

> world.

>

> And while on the subject, I read recently about a professional athlete 

> whose

> off-season training regimen is hard work--not in the gym or the fitness

> center, but taxing physical labor in agriculture. He says that his 

> strength

> far surpasses that of his team mates who get into shape riding 

> treadmill

> bicycles in air-conditioned gyms, etc. Somehow the spectacle of

> well-employed people paying to use weight machines and the like, doing

> aerobic dancing, etc. to stay "fit" while outside the facility Mexican

> nationals are doing the work strikes me as absurd. Now we have all 

> these

> escapes from real, meaningful labor in the form of organized outdoor

> activity like cycling, skiing, hiking, beach play, 4 wheeling through 

> the

> forests, etc. in which we attempt to reach the same kind of 

> conditioning our

> forefathers achieved by engaging in hand labor. Now the laborers are 

> at the

> bottom of the pecking order (and increasingly difficult to find)...bad

> ecology. The worst result is our extended life expectancy which is the 

> major

> cause of over-population which is the greatest danger to planet Earth 

> and

> the major cause of global warming (although you won't hear Al Gore 

> saying

> so).

>

> There does seem to be an unconscious need to perform labor on the part 

> of

> many people such as the college students who have been volunteering to 

> do

> real shit work in places like New Orleans. We see some of them each 

> year in

> our little valley far away from the burger chomping hordes. The 

> attraction

> of  learning agriculture seems to be a basic need in many people. By 

> the

> time these young people are my age there is good chance that this 

> knowledge

> may be necessary for their survival.

>

> Anyhow, my read is that there are too many people and too many cars. 

> Some

> kind of moratorium on both would seem to be a crucial step in saving 

> the

> planet.

> G

>

>

>>> This is the end of an essay called The Ecology of Work

>>> Published in the May/June 2007 issue of Orion magazine

>>> http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/267

>>>

>>> .......

>>> ...

>>> Spiritual rebirth will mean the rediscovery of true human work. Much 

>>> of

>>> this work will not be new but recovered from our own rich 

>>> traditions. It

>>> will be useful knowledge that we will have to remember. Fishing as a

>>> family

>>> and community tradition, not the business of factory trawlers.

> Agriculture

>>> as a local and seasonal activity, not a carbon-based scheme of 

>>> synthetic

>>> production and international shipping. Home- and community-building 

>>> as

>>> common skills and not merely the contracted specialization of

> construction

>>> companies and urban planners. Even "intellectual workers" (professors

>>> and scholars) have something to relearn: their own honored place in 

>>> the

>>> middle of the community and not in isolated, jargon-ridden 

>>> professional

>>> enclaves.

>>>

>>> Such knowledge was once the heart of our lives, and not that long 

>>> ago.

>>> Before 1945, survival meant that most families would have all of 

>>> these

>>> skills to some degree. These families were certainly materially 

>>> poorer

> and

>>> perhaps more naïve, but they were richer in human relations, less 

>>> bored,

>>> less depressed, less isolated, less addicted to food and drugs,

> physically

>>> healthier, and they had the rich human pleasure of knowing how to 

>>> make

>>> things. It's clear that we haven't forgotten these skills and their

>>> pleasures entirely, but their presence for us is strange and a little

>>> unreal. What used to be life is now "fine living": an array of

>>> expensive hobbies for the affluent that are taught through magazines,

>>> cable

>>> and PBS programs, and local guilds dedicated to gardening, basket

> weaving,

>>> cooking, home remodeling, quilting, and woodworking. Although we 

>>> rarely

>>> recognize it in this way, through these "hobbies" we express a desire

>>> for a world that is now lost to us.

>>>

>>> My argument is not, I assure you, a longing look back to the 

>>> wonderful

>>> world of pre-war rural America. But it is to say that in the course 

>>> of

> the

>>> last century of global capital triumphant we have been further 

>>> isolated

>>> from what Ruskin called "valuable human things." In exchange, we have

>>> been offered only the cold comfort of the television and computer

> monitor,

>>> and the GPS device that can locate you but only at the cost of being

>>> located in a place that is not worth knowing and certainly not worth

>>> caring

>>> about.

>>>

>>> The turn away from this ugly, destructive, and unequal world is not

>>> something that can be accomplished by boycotting corporations when

>>> they're bad or through the powerful work of the most concerned

>>> scientists. It will not be delivered with glossy brochures by the

>>> President's Council on Sustainable Development, and it will certainly

> not

>>> be sold to you by Martha Stewart. A return to the valuable human 

>>> things

> of

>>> the beautiful and the useful will only be accomplished, if it is 

>>> ever to

>>> be

>>> accomplished, by the humans among us.

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>> ********************(")OWL(")****OWL-Old Ways

>>> Living****(")OWL(")**************************

>>>

>>> "We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to 

>>> us.

>>> When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to 

>>> use

> it

>>> with love and respect." - Aldo Leopold

>>>

>>> ************************(")OWL(")****OWL-Old Ways

>>> Living****(")OWL(")********************************

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