Archive for the 'Social Justice' Category

“Just War Theory” And Simple Living

admin January 15th, 2010

Obama, Niebuhr, “Just War Theory,” and simple living are all of a piece.

It’s time for me to comment a bit on political and world affairs.

I hesitate to go there because this arena has become so filled with hate and vitriol. I also believe that we can live as Christians regardless of what any government or political party does or doesn’t do. However our congregation’s adult Sunday school has been discussing President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and his use of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Just War Theory in it. This got me thinking about the theory, foreign policy, Christian morality, and its relationship to Christian simple living.

Niebuhr, of course, was one of America’s preeminent protestant theologians in the 20th Century who taught for many years at Union Theological Seminary. He is known for his mentoring relationship with German minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, his writings on Just War Theory, and a number of critical books on other theological topics.

Niebuhr and others, most recently Barak Obama in his Nobel speech, claim that Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi-style nonviolence never successfully stops wars or conflicts. They suggest that Gandhi or King could never have succeeded in stopping or preventing the Second World War by talking with Adolf Hitler, for instance.

The theory holds that war and conflict are permanent parts of human life because of original sin, i.e., we are ‘fallen’ imperfect people, and we will always be falling into conflict. Because we live in this sinful world, therefore, we will be forced to exercise power in order to prevent the world from collapsing into chaos, which would not be the Christian thing to do. Rather than merely trying to prevent war through ineffective nonviolent strategies, we should strive to make war as moral as possible by preventing more suffering than is necessary.

The fundamental principles for doing this are that:

  • War must always be a last resort;
  • Force must always be proportional to the threat (never more than an eye for an eye…);
  • Civilians must be spared whenever possible.

So what in the world does this have to do with Christian simple living?

Christian simple living as I’ve defined it, is based on Jesus’ teaching that we should above all else, love and care for others and not engage in war or other acts that are destructive to people. This is what I call “Kingdom thinking.” It is a kingdom where we put our egos in our back pockets and consider the welfare of our neighbors first, no matter how far away or how much we might disagree or argue with them.

Part of doing that is to live simply so that we don’t use up more than our share of things, or use our ‘wealth’ or its accumulation, to abuse, oppress, or injure others, or injure creation as a whole which would be destructive to everyone. Rather we are to use our resources and our energy to build-up others, i.e., the community and the nations, as a whole.

This is a holistic, far-sighted, and patient approach to life which I think is at considerable odds with Just War Theory.

I believe that the notion of the just war is based on the brain wiring we are all, unfortunately, born with. That is, we are biologically and emotionally pre-programmed to use fight-or-flight responses. If a threat of any kind arises, we automatically want to either fight back (go for the jugular) or flee from the threat. Neither of these, of course, leads to peace.

The fight-flight response pretty much prevents us from engaging in long-term, proactive prevention and peacemaking efforts – the kind of thing Jesus has been asking us to do. In fact, much of the peacemaking that does go on today is focused on stopping existing conflicts, and even though that is a step in the right direction, it is not based on long-range or holistic thinking. Reducing current conflicts means that we are still focused on the conflict rather than on preventing future conflicts in the first place.

Even phrasing this as prevention is off-target because the term ‘prevention’ by definition assumes there are anticipated conflicts that we want to avoid. This is still reactive rather than proactive. Being proactive, in this case, means creating the fundamental conditions that ensure peace, period. This would mean, among other things, creating healthy interpersonal, social, economic, and international conditions which optimize the quality of life for everyone. Prevention efforts usually focus on altering only those conditions which affect the current conflict. Although the ‘healthy conditions’ might be preventative, the thinking and psychology behind them and the strategies and tactics used to create them are just not the same thing as prevention.

Under such optimized living conditions, people would tend to feel more fairly treated, would have most basic needs met, and would have better tools and resources for dealing fairly with disagreements long before they became conflicts or wars. I say this having spent a great deal of my career in the health promotion and disease prevention business, particularly substance abuse prevention. So I’ve had some time to think about it.

Our knee-jerk fight-flight response usually kicks-in so quickly that we don’t often give ourselves the time to learn or practice being proactive. We don’t have the time to practice peace! We only have time for fighting the next war or, at best, intervening once a war is about to start. Long term Kingdom Thinking requires patience and understanding so it’s usually at best an afterthought for us – after we’ve counted all the bodies.

Here, then, is my biggest objection to Just War Theory: it enables us, or traps us in the fight-flight vicious circle, because it always leaves open a large opportunity to give up on learning, understanding, patience, and peace, and instead to reach for a gun – fast, because it has been humanity’s accepted way of dealing with things. It’s a huge loophole, which we most often make use of, that actually prevents us from ever learning to do it right.

So day-by-day we get further and further from the Kingdom, and more and more entrenched in the darkening vicious circle of fight-flight and war as our preferred way of life.

So what are Christian Simple Livers to do? Do we have a role to play here?

One of the just war issues is that nations and their governments are constitutionally incapable of keeping the peace through peaceful means. That was Niebuhr’s whole point. Fallen people and their governments can’t seem to do without war. And Obama was in total agreement.

Truth be told, if I were president, I would adopt the same Just War stance even in spite of my Christian beliefs and rantings about Kingdom Thinking.

The secular world of nations and governments is mired deeply in its conflictual DNA as a way of governing and surviving. Obama and Niebuhr might be right that even a Gandhi couldn’t have succeeded against a Hitler.

But I think that is exactly the point that Jesus was trying to make about the Church and the Kingdom. It isn’t for everyone! Perhaps it can never be for everyone. But it can happen – in the Church, if we take it seriously – we just never have. A community of believers can function in this way through care and concern for each other, even those with whom we have very strong disagreements. With faith we can learn to do it. It has been done before.

I do believe that people who are intent on it, and have faith in it, and have faith in God, can create a better community and a better society at least within the bounds of the church community. And it may well spill beyond the church community as it often has in the past. We just need a lot more genuine Christian community based on living simply, and still more spillage into the secular world. Let’s think in terms of millennia here, not just a few years. But even in a few millennia I don’t believe it will be for everyone, as Jesus said.

This is my vision for the foundations of Christian simple living: We are called apart to behave differently – to take a radically different path. We don’t need to avoid the world as the Amish do so as not to be dirtied by it, but to work with Jesus in creating the Kingdom, while being “in the world” but not a part of it. This is a mark of The Church. If we can learn to live simply, spare the earth, and act in just and compassionate ways with each other, we will have taken a few more steps toward Kingdom Thinking and keeping the peace. And we can continue taking more and more steps toward creating equitable and just foundations for a more peaceful world as we mature in Christian simple living.

Within The Church – within this (potentially) blossoming Kingdom, we don’t need Just War Theory – it would destroy us.

This approach is very much in line with what has become known as “Christian Anarchy” which I am a great fan of. I keep threatening to write a few posts on this and have yet to do it, so maybe that will be my next project.

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The Church Abandoned Christ – Should We Abandon The Church?

admin June 5th, 2009

In my last post (It’s Time To Push Our Congregation’s Limits, 5/8/09) I was being too mild-mannered.

The truth is, I believe that most denominations and congregations long ago abandoned Christ’s principle message to live simply and care for others.

It’s about time that we call The Church on it.

A large part of Jesus’ message about The Kingdom was socio-political. It was designed to redress the horrible economic abuses and pervasive social injustice heaped upon the poor (read John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus for an excellent presentation on this) – not only by the Roman Empire, but by the Jewish temple leadership and bureaucracy. The Romans, of course, were intent on perpetuating and enlarging their empire no matter the cost to common people, but the Temple worked hand in hand with Rome to maintain a horrifically unjust taxation, economic, and slavery system contrary to the teachings of the Torah. It was against this apostasy that Jesus preached for much of his ministry, not to mention virtually all of the prophets.

We are at that point again!

It is this that pushes Christians to “live simply so that others may simply live,” but as far as I can tell, a large portion of The Church has at very least acquiesced to, if not willingly participated in the economic, social, and environmental injustices perpetrated by the first world’s Consumer Industrial Complex (CIC) rather than choosing to live simply. In today’s society, we almost all work hand in hand with globalized corporations that manipulate people and societies here and abroad without regard to their wellbeing, or for that matter, their very existence.

As I pointed out in my last post, corporate culture as a whole has morphed into a devil-may-care, profit-obsessed system in which the only considerations are profits, stock prices, and market capitalization regardless of the human and environmental costs incurred to reach those goals. Some of the abuses resulting from this has had, and continues to have, disastrous effects on the poorest people on earth – those who are least able to defend or help themselves.

The governments of virtually all Western nations have bought into this culture through the indoctrination of ‘Neoliberalism’ as promoted by Milton Friedman and the University of Chicago School of Economics. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are the First World’s acolytes to this approach – which has impoverished millions of Third World people while their leaders have been handsomely enriched, and their environments directly and indirectly decimated. The U.S. and most other industrialized nations fully fund and support these organizations as well as the economic and moral philosophy they espouse.

For an in-depth and chilling read on this, try The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. And for some extra spice, read Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty. Sachs is one of the villains in Klein’s book, but he claims to have seen the light and now proposes in this book to right the economic wrongs of the past half century.

I believe that the Consumer Industrial Complex, it’s corporations, consultants, and supporting governments operate with fundamentally un-Christian, un-Jewish, and un-Muslim values and principles!

To be fair, there are corporations executives and national leaders, who do not think or operate in this way, and my hat is off to them – they should be celebrated and we should patronize their businesses or help them get elected again – but they are few and far between regardless of the marketing hype corporations feed us.

So what does that have to do with The Church? Aren’t we above it all?

The Church is as much a part of the CIC as any other organization. Many, if not most, of our denominations and congregations (and we, as congregants) purchase goods and services from these multinational corporations, enabling their abusive practices. We put our financial reserves into stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other ‘securities’ (as it turns out they aren’t real secure!) that finance their operations around the world including the direct and indirect deforestation and pollution they foster, as well as the health, social, and economic inequities they cause.

The Church rarely speaks out against working for these institutions as a moral issue (and timidly when it does) and even more rarely warns us not to purchase products or invest in these companies.

Instead we work hard at being ‘nice’ and not bringing up these issues for fear of offending others or perhaps starting an argument. The Church has allowed us to become anesthetized to the human cruelty our economic theory and practice has produced in many places around the world – but hey, we kind of like it this way. We get to have our personal economic cake and eat it too. We get to stay comfortable – no hassle.

The Church’s anesthesia has allowed us to acquiesce to an extreme version of the profit principle to the neglect of people, their needs, and the world God has given us.

Again, there are exceptions. There are some congregations and a smattering of denominations that have, in good faith and on a regular basis, addressed these issues, but they are known because they are un-usual, not the norm. There are also brave-hearted individuals who have chosen not to participate in the CIC and the corporate/government organizations that support it, and who have pushed their churches to do likewise, but they are few.

If the church as a whole is defined as “those who follow Jesus,” then by and large we are no longer The Church!

Personal confession: it isn’t just “all you out there” who have done (or who are not doing) these things. It is me. This is an indictment of myself as well as others – for all the years I have spent not wanting to go out of my way to buck the system and help people who most need my help. I am guilty of not challenging the status quo and the authorities who maintain it. It is me who needs to start paying attention in order to see where I’ve left Jesus behind. But I’d like some company.

What should we do?

All of us can take some or all of the actions I suggested in my May 8th post, but there are more and more days when I wonder…

…If Jesus said that those who would save their lives must lose them, then isn’t that also true of The Church?

So if we are to make a leap into “Kingdom living,” then maybe we shouldn’t be afraid to let the Church, as we have known it, die!

Must we leave this unconscionable amount of money invested in buildings, bureaucracies, and banks to pad our comfortable backsides, or can we get rid of some or all of it and convert the money for use where it is truly needed?

Do we really need large congregations, members of which often attend services to enjoy the show or come simply out of life-long habit or guilt rather than to be disciples who are ready to challenge the CIC as Jesus did in His day?

At very least maybe we should make it difficult if not impossible for The Church to make things worse for others through its continuing support or lack of action toward the CIC and the damage it does.

If we still survive after that, then maybe there will be something of The Church still worth saving.

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Economic Crisis: The Mother of All Hangovers

admin November 6th, 2008

Even in the heart of this deepening recession many perpetrators of the real estate and financial bubbles are quite un-repentant about their role in the mess, and are simply looking for yet another opportunity to make a killing when the market recovers – on the backs of consumers of course. They don’t seem to be able to help themselves… which is the definition of addiction.

But many of us living on Main Street can’t help ourselves either. We should be even more concerned about the fact that we ‘consumers’ are biding our time too, until better times return and we can get back to spending again – except for those who are using the recession and financial collapse as an opportunity to re-evaluate their ways of living so they can begin living more sanely.

I have to confess that as a recovering consumaholic, I keep watching the Dow Industrial Average – half of me wanting it to go back up so my retirement fund regains a little value, and the other half feeling good that it went down (probably to about where it ought to be anyway) because it is teaching us another little lesson and forcing all of us to live more simply.

I feel like the alcoholic who looks wistfully at the bar as he walks by.

Oh yeah, I’m hooked! I need to keep reminding myself about that.

The thing about recovering from an addiction is that the hangover and withdrawal can be hell.

Obviously each person who shifts to living simply suffers a little because we have to give up a number of things we’ve become used to, and may even think we’re entitled to.

But think about the economy as a whole: now there would be the mother of all hangovers!

If a large number of consumers gave up their addiction and became simple livers instead, what would happen to an economy that is based entirely on excessive consumption? Many industries and businesses would dramatically down-size or close. This would not just hurt wealthy business people and financiers, there would also be a loss of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs and a concomitant loss of homes, and savings – probably a great deal more than we have lost in the current bust. We would all hurt… a lot.

Almost no one wants to even contemplate this kind of train wreck, just as addicts don’t want to contemplate going ‘cold turkey’. They would literally rather die than quit.

But we are in the same boat with all the other addicts. Our national god has been perpetual, dynamic, and unsustainable economic growth, which a growing number of scientists and ecological economists tell us will kill us if we don’t dramatically down-shift.

Yet the neo-classical economic model on which our economy is based, assumes that profligate consumption must continue if we are to survive economically (keep the good times rolling!) – even if it means turning the planet into a cinder and burning our own furniture just to keep warm. Of course mainstream economists, engineers, and supply-siders argue that technology will save us from ourselves, and we’ll be able to go on consuming until the end of time… even though there is lots of evidence that this will not happen.

So there will be lots of very bright and very important people saying that living simply would be a catastrophe for us and the world, and we should give up such naïve, “simple-minded” ideas. Many of these will be fellow Christians.

So does that mean we should give up the idea of living simply as a society or as the Church? Does it mean that few people will ever shift to simple living because the pain would be too great… so we should forget it? Or will we not live more simply just because we are told it can’t or shouldn’t happen?

I’m not smart enough to answer those questions. But both the Old and New Testaments have told us over and over that it is unwise and immoral to focus our lives on making money and having a lot of stuff. We have been told, by One who is a lot smarter than all of us put together, that simple and humble is the way to go, and I believe that, so I’ll base my decision on the Bible rather than economic models which have been so wrong so many times before.

And it appears that He wants us to spread the word about it, so I will continue to remind folks that there is another way of living – a better way, that is not only sustainable, i.e., it will save our butts, but is, more importantly, moral, as Jesus would define the word.

And there is this: humanity has been through bigger train wrecks and natural calamities before and we’re still here! And we know that large-scale change always brings pain along with it. More importantly we know that Jesus told us that we would have to suffer for our faith, and he never promised us an easy road or lots of money.

Maybe an economic train wreck is what 21st Century Christians, along with everyone else, must suffer just as the 1st Century Christian were fed to the lions.

So let’s press on!

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Imagine What We Could Become …

admin September 1st, 2008

… making fewer demands on the planet, building more meaningful lives and having the time and resources to serve others are primary goals of Christian simple living.

But to make a real difference in the Twentyfirst Century living simply requires a community of people in close proximity working together to create a more responsible community. We know that it takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to live sustainably and serve others. The membership of many urban and suburban congregations are geographically dispersed, sometimes having long commutes just to get to the church building or visit each other. This makes it difficult to have the day-to-day community necessary to support each other’s efforts, reduce reliance on transportation, share and barter equipment and materials regularly and so forth. So many of us are left to go it alone – a real shame since congregations have tremendous potential to change the world, if we could just change our organizational model and shift our missions and goals just a bit. But Imagine …

…what could happen if one or two urban or suburban congregations decided to take seriously their mission to live and work together as a physical Christian community enabling them live simply and reach out to the needs of others. They might create a new geographically integrated community in which:

  • What was important was not their jobs, incomes, houses, and reputations, but building their community, enriching their lives and relationships as well as their ability to reach out to those who needed their help;
  • Members lived within walking/biking distance of each other, the church meeting house, and their jobs, thus reducing pollution and resource degradation while improving their health;
  • They shared resources such as vehicles/transportation, appliances, tools, and their skills and labor;
  • Families didn’t need to have 2 fulltime incomes because they didn’t engage in a consumer lifestyle, buying unnecessary stuff and throwing away much of what they had.
  • They therefore needed less money than the average consumer and thus had more time to be with their families, support their church and community, and work in the congregation’s service projects and ministries;
  • They made the community affordable for people of all income levels. Even in the midst of urban consumer culture, they created their own steady-state micro economy by providing low cost basic services for each other such as preventive health care, education, elder care, professional services, local food production, real estate, financial services, etc., through voluntarism and by adopting alternative service and financing arrangements for their community.

Imagine that over time they:

  • Created a meeting house that served as their community center for religious functions as well as daily living activities, and which over the years, eventually housed not only space for worship and Christian education,
  • but also … A small high quality K-12 school run not only by professionals but also by a cadre of volunteers, thus charging a tuition low enough that everyone could afford it;
  • Home and community-based support services for their elders enabling them to continue living in the community or with their families instead of having to live in assisted living and nursing facilities.
  • In addition they operated a senior drop-in and activities center.

All these services were staffed by volunteers including students as well as professionals;

  • A restaurant serving seniors, kids, and the local community, again run by volunteers (elders, empty-nesters, kids, and ‘sandwich generation’ adults) and a small paid staff;
  • Offered alternative financial planning and counseling, responsible investing, home re-location and real estate services, and local job finding services to support more congregation members in moving into the local community and finding employment consistent with their values;
  • Space for community meeting and recreation functions;
  • An equipment loan/barter service;
  • Consulting services and support groups for green living;
  • bartering for repair and up-keep of homes, vehicles, etc.
  • Alternative, low cost preventive health care services, rehab and perhaps clinical services based in part on barter and volunteer services.
  • Created a local farming and food production system to ensure that the community had healthy organic, locally-grown foods all year round which:
  • Utilized a network of local Community Supported Agriculture farms and other local organic farmers including member and non-member farms;
  • Managed a small volunteer/user-run food processing plant for freezing and canning local produce so they were able to eat high quality, local food all year;
  • Operated a meal preparation facility to make meal preparation more time- and cost-efficient (similar to the new Dream Dinners or Super Suppers stores) using the locally grown and processed food;
  • Supplied the restaurant (see above) with healthy locally grown food.

Impossible? Unrealistic?

It’s entirely do-able, given time and a critical mass of congregation members with the desire and a plan. In fact many congregation already have the seeds to begin. Such a community would be self-supporting and sustainable. It would offer both paid and volunteer jobs, providing many of the services families need at well below market prices, and all operating outside of the conventional economic system. It works, not because it has to make a profit and keep shareholders happy, but because the Church community wants and needs it, and because it is a key part of their faith and practice. A key difference between this and various other Christian communities in the past and a few still in existence today, is that a community such as this is geared toward using an existing urban/suburban infrastructure (houses, apartment buildings, church buildings, transportation, jobs, etc.) and bases it’s structure and practice on Twentyfirst Century conventional family and community norms. It doesn’t attempt to be monastic, exclusive, or driven by a single tightly focused mission, but rather would be sufficiently diverse in its activities, incomes, and interests that it could be nearly, if not completely self-sustaining. Rural communities such as the Hutterite communities have done this, sometimes with great success, but it may be time to make it work in urban America as well.

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Elders : Let’s Just Warehouse ‘em

admin March 20th, 2007

Is institutionalizing our parents and grandparents in nursing homes a loving, just, or economically sustainable thing to do?

It must be, because that’s what has become the norm in our society.

Fortunately all older people haven’t been institutionalized this way yet. Some older people are lucky enough, or healthy enough, to be able to ‘age in place’, being supported by family and friends if and when needed. But many are not so lucky. A growing number of elders unfortunately walk, or are pushed, down the common pathway to the nursing home.

My day-job is working for a health care research organization that studies issues in long term care among other things. It is clear from that research that we are already in big economic trouble caring for elders with the boomers hitting 60. And that problem is going to get much worse in the near future.

I’ve also had a fair amount of personal experience with assisted living and nursing facilities. I’ve found that once you get past the ‘chandelier effect’ (the big brass chandelier and French provincial furniture that usually grace the entryways and public rooms) the level of care can be devastatingly poor except in the more expensive programs.

Certainly some people proactively choose to go to nursing facilities, but there are many others, however, who are forced into this because there aren’t any other real options. In our society, living with your children or grandchildren is now usually considered to be an unfair burden and therefore not a real option.

Full-time nursing care or a nursing home is sometimes a practical solution, but there are better, higher quality, less expensive options, which often aren’t offered or aren’t considered.

Soon many of our parents, grandparents, and us for that matter, will not be able to afford to live in such a facility of any quality – and the range of quality in these facilities is breathtaking. The economics of long-term care are turning against us as the boomers age and health and custodial care costs go up. There are already far too few trained caregivers and facilities, and just too little money for many of us to afford the rapidly escalating costs of assisted living and nursing home care.

Folks getting close to retirement can forget about long-term care insurance because it is too expensive to justify the tiny benefit it will provide. For middle-aged folks the prospects are a little better, but not much. Long-term care is so expensive that even relatively good LTC insurance policies won’t come close to providing what will be needed.

We are racing toward a financial wall at break-neck speed, apparently without a thought as to how we are going to deal with it

More difficult than financing is the issue we have so far avoided thinking about:

Institutionalizing our parents is not a loving response to the normal process of aging.

It isn’t loving because no institution of any quality can provide the love and concern that a normally healthy family and community can, and they can’t provide the familiarity and comfort that ‘home’ provides at any stage of our lives. Home is home no matter how old you are. And it certainly isn’t loving to push our families into a terrible financial quagmire just to survive.

We try to avoid this issue because none of us want to see ourselves as unloving or uncaring, but in those fleeting moments when we are honest with ourselves this feeling pops-up as a very unwelcome intruder. Let’s face it: we are merely rationalizing when we try to convince ourselves that “they’re better off this way because we could never provide that kind of care.” Thank God you can’t provide that kind of care!

How did we get ourselves into this crisis?

Americans, in the Twentieth Century, took the notion of the self-reliant frontiersman and the rugged individualist to a new extreme. We decided that our children must be allowed to fulfill themselves as completely independent individuals, discovering their futures and making their fortunes no matter where that might lead them. This extreme individualism has become one of the key drivers for our culture.

This meant that kids routinely moved around the country in search of education, jobs, and spouses, usually never to return home to live. We then decided that individualism must also mean that the insular, nuclear family of two adults and two kids was a big improvement over the traditional extended family. This left us with families scattered across the country. Increasingly communities, particularly suburban communities, became case studies for the film “Bowling Alone” – large tracts of houses occupied by strangers who formed temporary alliances with a few people living close-by or at work.

‘Family’ has become a mere holiday entertainment involving costly and time-consuming travel, not to mention the newly traditional argument over whose family we will visit this year!

What does all this have to do with simple living? There seems to be nothing simple or sustainable about this new arrangement – especially not for the young and the old. The young are also farmed-out to day care or pre-pre-pre-school, which are simply mini-institutions but, we hope, not as bad as the nursing homes!

But it seems to me that a community of Christian people or congregations committed to living simply and caring for each other, could creatively work together at the congregational level to develop loving, effective, and enjoyable lives – not just for our elders, but also for every generation represented in our congregations. If we care, shouldn’t we be able to create our own ‘hand made’ solutions that are better than relying on ‘competitive free market forces’, the wisdom of government, or blind luck?

If we really began to live simple lives by cutting back on our demands for the ‘good life’ we might save time, money, and effort, which could then be re-invested in voluntarily caring for our youngsters who need day care and after-school care, and elders who could be cared for in their homes or congregationally run home and community care programs – rather than farming them out to commercial institutions. Young folks can help take care of elders along with adults, and elders can help take care of kids and provide other services as well. That way everyone stays useful, productive, and happy much longer. It builds community, and it builds family. Seems to me things used to be this way, but who am I to stand in the way of ‘progress’?

It’s not possible to turn back the clock, but I’m wondering if we haven’t thrown the baby out with the bath water in our race to be modern, self-fulfilled, well-off individuals – maybe otherwise known as a ‘race to the bottom’. Maybe we need to re-visit these issues and bring our lives and communities back into a truly human scale that have depth and meaning again.

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