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

[Gerry]

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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