When will we ever learn?*

Many decades ago, when I was in college, a sociology professor teaching one of the courses I took noted that technology changes much faster than the ability of humans to adapt to those changes. It seems to me the times we are living in confirm the validity of that sociological assessment, scaled almost to global dimensions. I also remember, from somewhere or other, encountering the concept of running faster (and faster) to remain in place. Does that feel about right to you?

how vulnerable is our infrastructure?

Photo by J. Harrington

We arrived home yesterday evening after visiting the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law, and Granddaughter, to discover there had been a power outage (the garage door was unresponsive to the remote opener signal) plus our internet service was down. The power had been restored just before we returned home and our internet connection was restored mid-morning today. This all makes me wonder if electric and internet service are so essential to contemporary life, and getting made more so by the powers that be, why they aren’t made more reliable. Both the power and the Frontier phone and DSL have been down a couple of times in the past month or so. All of this reminds me of yet another saying from my younger days: “We have created a world with no one in charge.” If internet service is important enough to be subsidized as infrastructure and for those with limited incomes, why isn’t it important enough to be better regulated by local, state and/or federal government entities?

If child care costs and availability have become essential to support our labor force, why not extend and expand child care services as part of the school systems. Isn’t economy of scale supposed too be one of the benefits of a capitalist-industrial economy? At least so far, I’ve not seen any proposals to outsource child care overseas to take advantage of lower labor rates.

Forgive me (or don’t) for yet another rant. Today is George Orwell’s birthday and, it appears to me, we’ve been busy creating a society that incorporates the worst aspects of both Animal Farm and 1984. Someone seems to have failed to realize both books were intended as fiction, not as operating manuals.

*with apologies to Pete Seeger and Where have all the flowers gone?

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry


Original Language English

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

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