A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Brink talks about "comfort" as one of the chief promises of consumerism today, and he also speaks a couple of times about the "will-to-comfort". I thought about which undergrad English lit class I took decades ago in which we read a dramatic work in which "comfort" played a significant role in the plot and character development, and then I had it: G B Shaw's "Heartbreak House"!
One of the more interesting characters in the work is Captain Shotover, the salty old sea captain who stands aloof from his family members as they plot and scheme about how to gain more affluence and comfort. In one particular passage, Captain Shotover says to his granddaughter:
"I see my daughters and their men living foolish lives of romance and sentiment and snobbery. I see you, the younger generation, turning from their romance and sentiment and snobbery to money and comfort and hard common sense. I was ten times happier on the bridge in the typhoon, or frozen into Arctic ice for months in darkness, than you or they have ever been. You are looking for a rich husband. At your age I looked for hardship, danger, horror, and death, that I might feel the life in me more intensely. I did not let the fear of death govern my life; and my reward was, I had my life. You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life; and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live."
I don't remember much about Shaw's others plays we read that term, but this particular passage stuck out to me (particularly the last 4 lines). I don't sympathize with many of Shaw's political sentiments, but I do agree with him that if we're overly concerned with being comfortable, we won't really live. While most people would understandably prefer to lie their head on a pillow rather than on a log, I don't consider it much of a life if our main preoccupation is the seeking of comfort. The Stoics, among others, understood the value of adversity in shaping our personalities. In short, they believed that we can't really flourish as human beings unless we contend with some kind of adversity, or discomfort, that tests us and causes us to refine how we think and act. I think there's truth in that.
But I don't think the general trend is heading in that direction; I think that most of us are perpetually enthralled with the idea of the will-to-comfort, and that as time goes by, many people will become even more isolated from other people and therefore lacking in real relationships even as they may live more of their "real lives" in their VR goggles. Screens, screens, everywhere. Lots of comforting images, but then this reminds me of another literary work, "The Glass Menagerie", in which one of the characters, Tom, says:
"People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses."
And that was written in the early 1940's!
I don't wish to be on a bridge in a typhoon nor in a war, per se, but again, I am all for building personal resilience and flourishing as we tangle with adversity, and spending too much time mesmerized by the idea of comfort and how much additional comfort we can seek is a recipe for self-indulgence and non-flourishing.
Thanks so much for this wonderful comment. I haven't read Heartbreak House, and I'd long forgotten those line from The Glass Menagerie -- but both great quotes!
Isn't it. I didn't get into "books" until my undergrad liberal arts education, and I somehow ended up in an English elective course on Shaw's plays. Some did nothing for me, but others seared themselves right into my young brain. And of all the places, none moreso than this one. And of all the characters, none moreso than Captain Shotover. If you think this quote is powerful, go and read the play. There's more where that came from!
I heard the word "producerism" on some BBC radio talk show and it caught my ear. As the opposite of "consumerism," it is a very attractive concept/word. A bit of Googling, however, the concept weighted down with political baggage. A lovely word/idea, sadly associated with nativism, populism, and Trumpism -- all anti-intellectual, nearly anarchical if they weren't fascist movements. So, that word has a bit of stink to it, but I trust you will coin an even better one.
For community/family being a source if learning, in addition to academic pursuits: As a veteran teacher, I have long wondered what families thought families were for (like preparing children for adulthood) if schools are supposed to do everything. "We shouldn't learn algebra/read Shakespeare because you cant use it in real life. Why not teach filling out tax forms and reading laptop instruction manuals and how you change a flat tire?" The application of consumerism to education is a source of our current woes. Learning becomes a commodity, students become both product and customer, and certification(regardless of whether adequate skills are present) is the goods. So rather than the feeding and training of a human mind, teaching has become a formula to gain an outcome, with outcomes posted on our whiteboards so that admin can do drive-thru evals, making sure everyone is on task.
I am a big believer in public education, like the press, as a mainstay of democracy. I devoted my 40 year professional life to it. Sadly, it has also been under attack from the financial elite for decades. If we could have schools foster community on the smaller scale you describe while still providing equity and access, it would be a dream come true. Just dont want us to return to the frontier "schoolhouse" that our grandfather attended, Joe-Dick Stovall and his butcher knife aside.
Thanks for your good thinking and work, Brother. I am enjoying the challenge of this journey!
Since industrialization, the strain of opinion that's upheld the beauty of nature, devotion to craftsmanship, and the importance of human scale has always been marbled with ugly reactionary sentiments -- when you define yourself in opposition to Progress with a capital P, you're going to attract those ideas. My novel idea is uprooting producerism from that historical context and presenting it instead as the next level of progress.
I'm not sure it's just the financial elite. I point my finger at, well, the entire enlightenment, the industrial revolution and everything that's come since. My term for it is "extreme rationalism" or "radical secularism." Our culture's extreme response to the rise of science and technology is to be suspicious of anything that's not "rational."
But as a kind of counter-trend, maybe it doesn't have to be "rational" if it fulfills an ideological objective.
And then, how many recent generations have been advised to apply their "Passion" to their careers, rather than learning to enjoy whatever passions spring up while accepting "paying their dues" career-wise will probably involve learning all the various ways to get through a long day at work.
This is a slightly different angle than where you're coming from, but I think that having a “frontier” or “pioneer” option is a vital escape valve for young ambitious people who want to make their lives different - but my question is, where would this happen? Leasing/selling federal land or carving up some National Parks? I'm not against either of those ideas, but there's basically no “unclaimed land” left for people to pioneer.
No unclaimed land, but lots and lots of unoccupied land. In addition, I think an economic independence movement should be operating in suburbia and central cities as well -- lots of scope for expansion of work from home, home-based businesses, rooftop solar, community gardens, co-living arrangements, child and elder care coops, etc.
No need to start from scratch. It would be much more efficient to implement change in our existing communities. Some will no doubt be more amenable to radical change than others. A move might be required.
I think that most states and municipalities have rules that would need to be repealed or ignored to actually build innovative communities. The "charter city" idea might work, but you have to convince the surrounding powers to give up their power over the territory.
Brink, I think it is interesting that the issues of modern society that you list, "getting fatter," "getting dumber," "getting lonelier," "plagued by growing mental health problems," and "stopped reproducing ourselves," all seem...related, no? Maybe this is not a problem with consumer culture as much as it a more specific problem with modern diets? An obese person, it would seem, is likely to be lonelier, have mental health problems, and be less likely to reproduce, so the causes of these problems could be very specific.
In the last century, advancement in global food production has dramatically increased food output when measured in terms of calories, but as I have noted, this came at a cost. We have lost 75 percent of agricultural plant diversity, food processing strips nutrition from food to enhance shelf life, and because Omega-3 fatty acids break down and spoil quickly, we began selectively breeding against Omega-3 long before science had even identified its existence.
We are getting more calories, particularly from sugars, but an unnatural balance and low amount of nutrients. We know that this can make us obese, it isn't a big leap to tie all of the above maladies to a dietary cause, which is probably a solvable problem.
I think Dan's reply to your comment is illuminating. Our diet is certainly a part of the problem, but there are other elements of our culture driving us toward that diet.
And add to sugars the gigantic quantities of Omega 6 - PUFAs that are being consumed by so many Americans (and not much in the way of Omega 3s to balance them out).
I would agree with you that it's a solvable problem; people need to eat healthier, whole foods-based diet (and preferably plant-based, in my opinion). However, the issue isn't that we don't know how to solve the problem; rather, we know what the problem is, and most of us choose to eat nutrient-poor food and gain weight all the same. I didn't take any science at university, but I would guess that a lot of the unhealthiest foods consumed today are highly addictive: lots of sugar, sodium, fat, and all kinds of manufactured "natural flavors" and "artificial flavors" etc. Also, we could argue that because of the "predicament" that many Americans find themselves in today (that of living in a society with all the ills Brink has mentioned in this and other essays), when they come home from their unfulfilling jobs and plop down in front of a screen or two, these unhealthy foods provide taste and emotional satisfaction that many people find irresistible. So to my mind, it's not just about the diet and what we eat; it's also about what's going on in the culture that causes so many to find consistent emotional fulfillment in "bad" food when they should be finding it more consistently in meaningful labor, flourishing communities, meaningful hobbies, etc.
At this point I don't so much blame people for their bad choices in food as I blame consumerism fueled by unregulated capitalism, where the incentive is to sell more and more sweet and fatty processed foods by cultivating addictions. The result is that consumers are essentially "brainwashed" (except for the elite, where it's a cultural and affordable thing to eat healthy.) And the brainwashing happens young: it's been awhile since I've had a strict food budget, but I think that the sweet and fatty processed foods are the cheapest way to feed your kids the calories they need, especially in urban food deserts, but also in the homes of busy two-worker families.
Contributing to this trend are the ethnic agricultural cuisines that many of us have inherited: our rural ancestors had to eat a lot, so it's hard to modify nutritional wisdom passed down for generations to new circumstances.
I love it when Adam Smith is invoked beyond the "invisible hand." Along with Ms. Biddle, my cavil at Heinlein's nostalgia(?) is aimed at keeping perspectives open: my recent Peace Corps experience in a post-Soviet (agricultural) republic allowed me to live in a society where people were more "real" than we are. The people who hosted me for the entire two years were highly skilled at maintaining life in difficult circumstances. They lived in a community where family and friendship ties were strong (basically you stayed in your village, moved to the city not so far away, or at great necessity worked in Western Europe and sent back remittances.)
I guess the problem was that it was *all* production: everyone in the country was perpetually tired and mostly depressed, holding jobs while raising their families, growing and preserving their own food, building their own homes and maintaining their own vehicles and equipment. (Of course there's a lot more to that story in terms of corrupt government etc.)
My folks there were smart, and the Soviet Union had educated them well, so theoretically they had the internal capacity to engage in fulfilling leisure. I think the man got closer to it because he was part of the local musical group and seemed to get satisfaction from rebuilding tractors and such. She was deeply invested in managing the family.
Ultimately there has to be non-productive, free leisure for its own sake. The ideas that Brink (and commenters) are exploring are heading in that direction, but I think it's essential.
Very interesting Peace Corps experience! I have no interest in romanticizing poverty and backwardness, but some elements of life before mass affluence were better than what we've got now. Figuring out how to bring those elements (better connections to other people and the real world) into a world of high-tech abundance is at the heart of the permanent problem.
I agree. I admit to "romanticizing" a bit in terms of "wow, this is kind of how my Polish ancestors used to live," not to mention the pre-industrial literary tradition of European fairy tales. For example, I have a "covert" shot of an old woman trudging up a hill in the snow with two pails of water from the neighborhood well.
But when people ask me, I say the experience was "interesting". It's all in the ambiguous but illuminating perceptions of the "wow" familiar to most serious travelers and ex-pats.
So yes there is a need for a counterculture. What would aid that? I think a better distribution of wealth would help in America. People would feel more secure in satisfaction at the good-enough life if they felt less vulnerable to unbridled capitalism. And overproduction of elites is another ingredient in this cultural problem we are having. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societal-trends-institutional-trust-economy/674260/
I have many things in my own life that seem countercultural in my highly-educated Boston tribe. It’s not easy to maintain some of these things, which can seem risky to them and to me. Some of it is opportunity cost: perhaps me enjoying mowing my lawn with a manual mower is wasting time when I could be advancing my career. Perhaps telling my kids they won’t be going to college could dim Thor future. Some of it - like having four kids rather than the approved one or two - definitely has a high cost and deprives us of being able to participate in many things.
Of course, it would be easier to accept lower career achievement in the name of a simpler life if housing and healthcare wasn’t so expensive.
I have many other thoughts but I have gone on too long.
Brink - I agree that we could benefit from an economic independence movement, but I believe that would be organic, and would probably happen only when it becomes necessary to fill a void in consumer goods and services caused by the near-collapse of the corporate model. (One could argue we saw some of that during the pandemic, but…)
Meanwhile, I think we need to examine the way that corporations are structured to allow more oversight. In exchange for the safeguards for owner and stakeholder liability, we could place a government official on corporate boards. They would assure compliance with regulations and more robust consumer safety measures. I would call this new arrangement “stewardship” because it implies built-in concern for the public good and wise use of resources. Below is a speech given by a fictitious senator in a novel I recently published:
“This is why we need stewardship and campaign finance reform to get the best the private sector can bring to the table, while keeping them honest. Frankly, the finance reform part of the bill may be the most important.
“Corporations are NOT people, and this will finally end the excesses caused by Citizen’s United. We can spend more time governing and less time fundraising to outspend one another.
“It’s the only way to give the American people a fair deal when it comes to services. We are constantly hearing about CEOs getting huge bonuses even when their companies are losing money.” So much money could be saved by taking away the incentive for corporate officers and, yes, us legislators to turn their heads the other way when corruption occurs.
“We do not take the position that private entities have no place in the public sector, but we believe strongly that a guiding hand is needed to assure that the desire for profit does not override the need for effective and affordable services to the people of the United States.
“In this vein, government and private corporations or companies cannot operate as equal partners, because they are inherently at odds with their primary goals. One exists to serve the people while the other exists to make money for its owners or shareholders.
‘You may ask then, ‘Why have private interests been involved in basic human services at all then?’
Our answer is simple. Private companies represent an economic engine that the government can’t rival. Government, by its nature, becomes bureaucratic, which impedes innovation and risk-taking. Our challenges in 2027 are too daunting to wait for slow progress but we need protections against profiteering.”
For my part, I'm skeptical of corporate governance reform, but I agree completely that proper regulation is necessary to align private profit-seeking with the public interest. Alas, though, getting regulation right is difficult, especially when the regulatory process is so easily captured by regulated industries. It's a hard problem!
I guess I'm more positive about the fact that government and corporations are "at odds with their primary goals." I see them as more-or-less balanced counteragents who can nudge each other towards what society needs.
Stewardship is a good word because it has external implications, beyond corporate interests (i.e. "the public good" which extends beyond specific or current government policy as well.) Maybe I'm even more hopelessly idealistic, but for me ethics is a framework that goes further. One way that I would characterize "The Permanent Problem" is as the huge discrepancy between our best values as a culture and our out-of-control institutions.
1) Would we have these government incentives without decades of value-based citizen activism counteracting government's deeply-rooted caution around the private sector?
2) If the energy sector keeps developing a sustainable energy infrastructure, is it possible that those corporations might absorb some of society's "love your Mother" ethic into their genuine internal cultures?
Along the same lines, as corporations become more diverse, could more managers, including some not-quite-so-male ones and some from less privileged backgrounds ultimately swing corporations back towards employment policies that allow people to have lives outside of work? Back in the day (during the growth period of the 50s and 60s) it seemed like these kinds of internal values were possible in some firms, at least with regard to their employees. Was that an expression arising from the cultural ethics at the time, and thus grounds for hope?
There are two things that people should be able to do (mostly) independently that are almost impossible now. (When I say independently, I mean independent from a company just delivering the finished product, and the banker delivering a mortgage or a 5-year finance plan.)
That's build a house and build a car (and thereby build wealth, skills, confidence, resilience and it's also anti-fat, anti-dumb, anti-lonely, anti-crazy, and anti-anti-baby).
Cars are designed to be built on assembly lines (with robots). House are designed to be built by either various construction crews, a pre-fab builder, or a 3-D printer. But both houses and cars could be designed to be built by individuals, families, communities with help from local builders, mechanics, community colleges, churches, civic groups and inspectors.
In the early 1900s Sears sold kit homes that were designed to be built by the buyer or a local builder.
I'm inspired by a couple of these themes, specifically the need to start thinking about what a post-capitalist life and society should look like and the fact that economic statistics still can't measure all the most important things in life (relationships with friends and family, well-being, satisfaction and engagement with life, and so on). As a society, we might not quite be at a post-capitalist stage yet, where money truly doesn't matter much, but some people certainly are. And society as a whole is very likely to get there in the next 50 years.
Having said that, is a frontier option the solution? It feels retrograde, and to me at least, not very appealing. Of course people's preferences vary, but we should play this scenario out a bit. How does this solve our problems? Is the disaffected screen-watcher going to become a pioneer? Maybe, but most often not. Will their problems be solved at a distance by virtue of the pioneers out there, perhaps by seeing their posts on social media? Also probably not. A counter-culture is fine, but how much does it really do for the culture?
I think we should broaden our frame of reference before we anoint something as the solution. Perhaps a UBI would give people the feeling of agency they currently lack? Perhaps we should work on reducing bureaucracy and boredom within the working world rather than focusing on an alternative for the few? Perhaps our current pattern of suburbanization is the main thing stifling us? I'm not sure we have the right conclusion yet, but looking at the people who are currently thriving and happy and figuring out what they have that others don't might be a good start.
Good constructive criticism. I'm not even offering a potential panacea, since I see economic independence as a supplement to rather than replacement of large-scale capitalism. But all progress is just an accumulation of partial solutions and half-measures, and it's my belief that creating a viable counterculture would not just be good for its participants but would also have a wholesome influence on the larger society. There are strains of opinion in America today that are extremely influential despite being held only by a relatively small minority. Energized minorities can accomplish a great deal.
My grandparents were farmers in northwest Tennessee in the early 1900’s. Being a farmer meant also being a mechanic, seamstress, veterinarian, carpenter, cook, and so much more. I’ve actually plowed behind a mule and have a distinct memory of what that kind of life was like. There was a lot of hardship but also a lot of reward.
The little town near where we lived, which had a population of 120, was a lively place with two stores, a school, a bank, cafe, feed mill, four churches (!!), and was a hub of activity. Now it’s a dead, depressing place that’s merely a shell of its former self. I don’t want to romanticize it too much. We are not going back to that way of life. Maybe we don’t want or need to, but something valuable has definitely been lost in our rush to centralize, homogenize, and strive for maximum efficiency.
Thank you as always for getting the juices going. My only hang up with the idea is as you wrote about management being so much more fun than being managed. This is so true, at least in my life. Anyways, as Canada burns and suffocates our continent, the need for your thinking is upon us. What better way to get things rolling than to save our god forsaken arses. Seriously, not much time left.
Just saw this and will take a look. In the meantime the title is making me chuckle, because the last essay brought to my mind, with some nostalgia, The Whole Earth Catalog.
Glad you published the "Epigraph" note, which just showed up today in my email. The email notification for this essay still hasn't appeared. (File either to annoying Substack quirks or why do all my email providers eventually fail for mysterious reasons.)
Another fantastic post, thank you! I find myself wondering, only half-jokingly, if we're more likely to find that pioneer space in a future settlement on Mars or a similarly far-flung place, where there's no temptation to drive back into town for a figurative donut or two.
It's a chicken and egg problem: how do we get people to colonize Mars when we can't even get them to live in the Great Plains anymore? As I intend to write about later, reviving the appeal of pioneering here on Earth seems like a prerequisite -- or at least a very solid foundation -- for expanding to other worlds.
Some people mentioned the pandemic and that got me remembering back to the pandemic- I felt there were initially many potentially positive aspects to it. Everyone was home, walking more (but afraid to get too close so socialization was inhibited) feeling like we were all in it together. No need to spend the day commuting. Time to think about how you really wanted to spend our days on this earth. And the quiet, nature and lack of traffic! And the UBI like checks everyone was getting took away some of the economic insecurity/fear most feel and again made us kinder and more tolerant of others. You could strike up a conversation with a homeless guy and ask if he had gotten his stimulus check! Imagine how a universal UBI would make that permanent. Suddenly the need to win the lottery or score big to avoid poverty decreases and the suddenly the space and time to actually come together in new types of mutually supportive communities opens up! People could pool their UBI payments and try coliving arrangements or fund small business ideas. And giving the workers the power to walk away from jobs could only improve working conditions.
I've been thinking about this post and the previous ones about economic independence and I wonder if one of the reasons for the high level of dynamism in Israel (you can think a lot of things about that country but I think most of us aknowledge that they are very innovative) could be the existence of the Kibutz, I know that the population in the Kibutz is just a very small percentage of their population but maybe they reduce levels of risk aversion among people who view them as an option, also I think it is safe to assume that those who feel more alienated by the market are more likely to move to a Kibutz and that pessimism is usually contagious
Brink talks about "comfort" as one of the chief promises of consumerism today, and he also speaks a couple of times about the "will-to-comfort". I thought about which undergrad English lit class I took decades ago in which we read a dramatic work in which "comfort" played a significant role in the plot and character development, and then I had it: G B Shaw's "Heartbreak House"!
One of the more interesting characters in the work is Captain Shotover, the salty old sea captain who stands aloof from his family members as they plot and scheme about how to gain more affluence and comfort. In one particular passage, Captain Shotover says to his granddaughter:
"I see my daughters and their men living foolish lives of romance and sentiment and snobbery. I see you, the younger generation, turning from their romance and sentiment and snobbery to money and comfort and hard common sense. I was ten times happier on the bridge in the typhoon, or frozen into Arctic ice for months in darkness, than you or they have ever been. You are looking for a rich husband. At your age I looked for hardship, danger, horror, and death, that I might feel the life in me more intensely. I did not let the fear of death govern my life; and my reward was, I had my life. You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life; and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live."
I don't remember much about Shaw's others plays we read that term, but this particular passage stuck out to me (particularly the last 4 lines). I don't sympathize with many of Shaw's political sentiments, but I do agree with him that if we're overly concerned with being comfortable, we won't really live. While most people would understandably prefer to lie their head on a pillow rather than on a log, I don't consider it much of a life if our main preoccupation is the seeking of comfort. The Stoics, among others, understood the value of adversity in shaping our personalities. In short, they believed that we can't really flourish as human beings unless we contend with some kind of adversity, or discomfort, that tests us and causes us to refine how we think and act. I think there's truth in that.
But I don't think the general trend is heading in that direction; I think that most of us are perpetually enthralled with the idea of the will-to-comfort, and that as time goes by, many people will become even more isolated from other people and therefore lacking in real relationships even as they may live more of their "real lives" in their VR goggles. Screens, screens, everywhere. Lots of comforting images, but then this reminds me of another literary work, "The Glass Menagerie", in which one of the characters, Tom, says:
"People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses."
And that was written in the early 1940's!
I don't wish to be on a bridge in a typhoon nor in a war, per se, but again, I am all for building personal resilience and flourishing as we tangle with adversity, and spending too much time mesmerized by the idea of comfort and how much additional comfort we can seek is a recipe for self-indulgence and non-flourishing.
Thanks so much for this wonderful comment. I haven't read Heartbreak House, and I'd long forgotten those line from The Glass Menagerie -- but both great quotes!
My God! That Bernard quote by Captain Shotover is so powerful!
Isn't it. I didn't get into "books" until my undergrad liberal arts education, and I somehow ended up in an English elective course on Shaw's plays. Some did nothing for me, but others seared themselves right into my young brain. And of all the places, none moreso than this one. And of all the characters, none moreso than Captain Shotover. If you think this quote is powerful, go and read the play. There's more where that came from!
I heard the word "producerism" on some BBC radio talk show and it caught my ear. As the opposite of "consumerism," it is a very attractive concept/word. A bit of Googling, however, the concept weighted down with political baggage. A lovely word/idea, sadly associated with nativism, populism, and Trumpism -- all anti-intellectual, nearly anarchical if they weren't fascist movements. So, that word has a bit of stink to it, but I trust you will coin an even better one.
For community/family being a source if learning, in addition to academic pursuits: As a veteran teacher, I have long wondered what families thought families were for (like preparing children for adulthood) if schools are supposed to do everything. "We shouldn't learn algebra/read Shakespeare because you cant use it in real life. Why not teach filling out tax forms and reading laptop instruction manuals and how you change a flat tire?" The application of consumerism to education is a source of our current woes. Learning becomes a commodity, students become both product and customer, and certification(regardless of whether adequate skills are present) is the goods. So rather than the feeding and training of a human mind, teaching has become a formula to gain an outcome, with outcomes posted on our whiteboards so that admin can do drive-thru evals, making sure everyone is on task.
I am a big believer in public education, like the press, as a mainstay of democracy. I devoted my 40 year professional life to it. Sadly, it has also been under attack from the financial elite for decades. If we could have schools foster community on the smaller scale you describe while still providing equity and access, it would be a dream come true. Just dont want us to return to the frontier "schoolhouse" that our grandfather attended, Joe-Dick Stovall and his butcher knife aside.
Thanks for your good thinking and work, Brother. I am enjoying the challenge of this journey!
Since industrialization, the strain of opinion that's upheld the beauty of nature, devotion to craftsmanship, and the importance of human scale has always been marbled with ugly reactionary sentiments -- when you define yourself in opposition to Progress with a capital P, you're going to attract those ideas. My novel idea is uprooting producerism from that historical context and presenting it instead as the next level of progress.
I'm not sure it's just the financial elite. I point my finger at, well, the entire enlightenment, the industrial revolution and everything that's come since. My term for it is "extreme rationalism" or "radical secularism." Our culture's extreme response to the rise of science and technology is to be suspicious of anything that's not "rational."
But as a kind of counter-trend, maybe it doesn't have to be "rational" if it fulfills an ideological objective.
And then, how many recent generations have been advised to apply their "Passion" to their careers, rather than learning to enjoy whatever passions spring up while accepting "paying their dues" career-wise will probably involve learning all the various ways to get through a long day at work.
This is a slightly different angle than where you're coming from, but I think that having a “frontier” or “pioneer” option is a vital escape valve for young ambitious people who want to make their lives different - but my question is, where would this happen? Leasing/selling federal land or carving up some National Parks? I'm not against either of those ideas, but there's basically no “unclaimed land” left for people to pioneer.
No unclaimed land, but lots and lots of unoccupied land. In addition, I think an economic independence movement should be operating in suburbia and central cities as well -- lots of scope for expansion of work from home, home-based businesses, rooftop solar, community gardens, co-living arrangements, child and elder care coops, etc.
No need to start from scratch. It would be much more efficient to implement change in our existing communities. Some will no doubt be more amenable to radical change than others. A move might be required.
I think that most states and municipalities have rules that would need to be repealed or ignored to actually build innovative communities. The "charter city" idea might work, but you have to convince the surrounding powers to give up their power over the territory.
Brink, I think it is interesting that the issues of modern society that you list, "getting fatter," "getting dumber," "getting lonelier," "plagued by growing mental health problems," and "stopped reproducing ourselves," all seem...related, no? Maybe this is not a problem with consumer culture as much as it a more specific problem with modern diets? An obese person, it would seem, is likely to be lonelier, have mental health problems, and be less likely to reproduce, so the causes of these problems could be very specific.
In the last century, advancement in global food production has dramatically increased food output when measured in terms of calories, but as I have noted, this came at a cost. We have lost 75 percent of agricultural plant diversity, food processing strips nutrition from food to enhance shelf life, and because Omega-3 fatty acids break down and spoil quickly, we began selectively breeding against Omega-3 long before science had even identified its existence.
We are getting more calories, particularly from sugars, but an unnatural balance and low amount of nutrients. We know that this can make us obese, it isn't a big leap to tie all of the above maladies to a dietary cause, which is probably a solvable problem.
I think Dan's reply to your comment is illuminating. Our diet is certainly a part of the problem, but there are other elements of our culture driving us toward that diet.
And add to sugars the gigantic quantities of Omega 6 - PUFAs that are being consumed by so many Americans (and not much in the way of Omega 3s to balance them out).
I would agree with you that it's a solvable problem; people need to eat healthier, whole foods-based diet (and preferably plant-based, in my opinion). However, the issue isn't that we don't know how to solve the problem; rather, we know what the problem is, and most of us choose to eat nutrient-poor food and gain weight all the same. I didn't take any science at university, but I would guess that a lot of the unhealthiest foods consumed today are highly addictive: lots of sugar, sodium, fat, and all kinds of manufactured "natural flavors" and "artificial flavors" etc. Also, we could argue that because of the "predicament" that many Americans find themselves in today (that of living in a society with all the ills Brink has mentioned in this and other essays), when they come home from their unfulfilling jobs and plop down in front of a screen or two, these unhealthy foods provide taste and emotional satisfaction that many people find irresistible. So to my mind, it's not just about the diet and what we eat; it's also about what's going on in the culture that causes so many to find consistent emotional fulfillment in "bad" food when they should be finding it more consistently in meaningful labor, flourishing communities, meaningful hobbies, etc.
At this point I don't so much blame people for their bad choices in food as I blame consumerism fueled by unregulated capitalism, where the incentive is to sell more and more sweet and fatty processed foods by cultivating addictions. The result is that consumers are essentially "brainwashed" (except for the elite, where it's a cultural and affordable thing to eat healthy.) And the brainwashing happens young: it's been awhile since I've had a strict food budget, but I think that the sweet and fatty processed foods are the cheapest way to feed your kids the calories they need, especially in urban food deserts, but also in the homes of busy two-worker families.
Contributing to this trend are the ethnic agricultural cuisines that many of us have inherited: our rural ancestors had to eat a lot, so it's hard to modify nutritional wisdom passed down for generations to new circumstances.
I love it when Adam Smith is invoked beyond the "invisible hand." Along with Ms. Biddle, my cavil at Heinlein's nostalgia(?) is aimed at keeping perspectives open: my recent Peace Corps experience in a post-Soviet (agricultural) republic allowed me to live in a society where people were more "real" than we are. The people who hosted me for the entire two years were highly skilled at maintaining life in difficult circumstances. They lived in a community where family and friendship ties were strong (basically you stayed in your village, moved to the city not so far away, or at great necessity worked in Western Europe and sent back remittances.)
I guess the problem was that it was *all* production: everyone in the country was perpetually tired and mostly depressed, holding jobs while raising their families, growing and preserving their own food, building their own homes and maintaining their own vehicles and equipment. (Of course there's a lot more to that story in terms of corrupt government etc.)
My folks there were smart, and the Soviet Union had educated them well, so theoretically they had the internal capacity to engage in fulfilling leisure. I think the man got closer to it because he was part of the local musical group and seemed to get satisfaction from rebuilding tractors and such. She was deeply invested in managing the family.
Ultimately there has to be non-productive, free leisure for its own sake. The ideas that Brink (and commenters) are exploring are heading in that direction, but I think it's essential.
Very interesting Peace Corps experience! I have no interest in romanticizing poverty and backwardness, but some elements of life before mass affluence were better than what we've got now. Figuring out how to bring those elements (better connections to other people and the real world) into a world of high-tech abundance is at the heart of the permanent problem.
I agree. I admit to "romanticizing" a bit in terms of "wow, this is kind of how my Polish ancestors used to live," not to mention the pre-industrial literary tradition of European fairy tales. For example, I have a "covert" shot of an old woman trudging up a hill in the snow with two pails of water from the neighborhood well.
But when people ask me, I say the experience was "interesting". It's all in the ambiguous but illuminating perceptions of the "wow" familiar to most serious travelers and ex-pats.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......
So yes there is a need for a counterculture. What would aid that? I think a better distribution of wealth would help in America. People would feel more secure in satisfaction at the good-enough life if they felt less vulnerable to unbridled capitalism. And overproduction of elites is another ingredient in this cultural problem we are having. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societal-trends-institutional-trust-economy/674260/
I have many things in my own life that seem countercultural in my highly-educated Boston tribe. It’s not easy to maintain some of these things, which can seem risky to them and to me. Some of it is opportunity cost: perhaps me enjoying mowing my lawn with a manual mower is wasting time when I could be advancing my career. Perhaps telling my kids they won’t be going to college could dim Thor future. Some of it - like having four kids rather than the approved one or two - definitely has a high cost and deprives us of being able to participate in many things.
Of course, it would be easier to accept lower career achievement in the name of a simpler life if housing and healthcare wasn’t so expensive.
I have many other thoughts but I have gone on too long.
Thanks for commenting -- glad to keep making you go hmmmmm.
Brink - I agree that we could benefit from an economic independence movement, but I believe that would be organic, and would probably happen only when it becomes necessary to fill a void in consumer goods and services caused by the near-collapse of the corporate model. (One could argue we saw some of that during the pandemic, but…)
Meanwhile, I think we need to examine the way that corporations are structured to allow more oversight. In exchange for the safeguards for owner and stakeholder liability, we could place a government official on corporate boards. They would assure compliance with regulations and more robust consumer safety measures. I would call this new arrangement “stewardship” because it implies built-in concern for the public good and wise use of resources. Below is a speech given by a fictitious senator in a novel I recently published:
“This is why we need stewardship and campaign finance reform to get the best the private sector can bring to the table, while keeping them honest. Frankly, the finance reform part of the bill may be the most important.
“Corporations are NOT people, and this will finally end the excesses caused by Citizen’s United. We can spend more time governing and less time fundraising to outspend one another.
“It’s the only way to give the American people a fair deal when it comes to services. We are constantly hearing about CEOs getting huge bonuses even when their companies are losing money.” So much money could be saved by taking away the incentive for corporate officers and, yes, us legislators to turn their heads the other way when corruption occurs.
“We do not take the position that private entities have no place in the public sector, but we believe strongly that a guiding hand is needed to assure that the desire for profit does not override the need for effective and affordable services to the people of the United States.
“In this vein, government and private corporations or companies cannot operate as equal partners, because they are inherently at odds with their primary goals. One exists to serve the people while the other exists to make money for its owners or shareholders.
‘You may ask then, ‘Why have private interests been involved in basic human services at all then?’
Our answer is simple. Private companies represent an economic engine that the government can’t rival. Government, by its nature, becomes bureaucratic, which impedes innovation and risk-taking. Our challenges in 2027 are too daunting to wait for slow progress but we need protections against profiteering.”
For my part, I'm skeptical of corporate governance reform, but I agree completely that proper regulation is necessary to align private profit-seeking with the public interest. Alas, though, getting regulation right is difficult, especially when the regulatory process is so easily captured by regulated industries. It's a hard problem!
Testifying, OK. Lobbying, not OK. End Citizen's United too. Taht would be a good start.
I guess I'm more positive about the fact that government and corporations are "at odds with their primary goals." I see them as more-or-less balanced counteragents who can nudge each other towards what society needs.
Stewardship is a good word because it has external implications, beyond corporate interests (i.e. "the public good" which extends beyond specific or current government policy as well.) Maybe I'm even more hopelessly idealistic, but for me ethics is a framework that goes further. One way that I would characterize "The Permanent Problem" is as the huge discrepancy between our best values as a culture and our out-of-control institutions.
Thus a couple of questions rising out of hope: In some good news, some are arguing that the new Climate Law is working: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/opinion/climate-clean-energy-investment.html.
1) Would we have these government incentives without decades of value-based citizen activism counteracting government's deeply-rooted caution around the private sector?
2) If the energy sector keeps developing a sustainable energy infrastructure, is it possible that those corporations might absorb some of society's "love your Mother" ethic into their genuine internal cultures?
Along the same lines, as corporations become more diverse, could more managers, including some not-quite-so-male ones and some from less privileged backgrounds ultimately swing corporations back towards employment policies that allow people to have lives outside of work? Back in the day (during the growth period of the 50s and 60s) it seemed like these kinds of internal values were possible in some firms, at least with regard to their employees. Was that an expression arising from the cultural ethics at the time, and thus grounds for hope?
There are two things that people should be able to do (mostly) independently that are almost impossible now. (When I say independently, I mean independent from a company just delivering the finished product, and the banker delivering a mortgage or a 5-year finance plan.)
That's build a house and build a car (and thereby build wealth, skills, confidence, resilience and it's also anti-fat, anti-dumb, anti-lonely, anti-crazy, and anti-anti-baby).
Cars are designed to be built on assembly lines (with robots). House are designed to be built by either various construction crews, a pre-fab builder, or a 3-D printer. But both houses and cars could be designed to be built by individuals, families, communities with help from local builders, mechanics, community colleges, churches, civic groups and inspectors.
In the early 1900s Sears sold kit homes that were designed to be built by the buyer or a local builder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Modern_Homes
Think a cake mix and Rachel Ray. Not gelatin from bones and Martha Stewart.
Full disclosure, I've never built a house or a car. But I have changed a diaper and pitched manure.
I'm inspired by a couple of these themes, specifically the need to start thinking about what a post-capitalist life and society should look like and the fact that economic statistics still can't measure all the most important things in life (relationships with friends and family, well-being, satisfaction and engagement with life, and so on). As a society, we might not quite be at a post-capitalist stage yet, where money truly doesn't matter much, but some people certainly are. And society as a whole is very likely to get there in the next 50 years.
Having said that, is a frontier option the solution? It feels retrograde, and to me at least, not very appealing. Of course people's preferences vary, but we should play this scenario out a bit. How does this solve our problems? Is the disaffected screen-watcher going to become a pioneer? Maybe, but most often not. Will their problems be solved at a distance by virtue of the pioneers out there, perhaps by seeing their posts on social media? Also probably not. A counter-culture is fine, but how much does it really do for the culture?
I think we should broaden our frame of reference before we anoint something as the solution. Perhaps a UBI would give people the feeling of agency they currently lack? Perhaps we should work on reducing bureaucracy and boredom within the working world rather than focusing on an alternative for the few? Perhaps our current pattern of suburbanization is the main thing stifling us? I'm not sure we have the right conclusion yet, but looking at the people who are currently thriving and happy and figuring out what they have that others don't might be a good start.
Good constructive criticism. I'm not even offering a potential panacea, since I see economic independence as a supplement to rather than replacement of large-scale capitalism. But all progress is just an accumulation of partial solutions and half-measures, and it's my belief that creating a viable counterculture would not just be good for its participants but would also have a wholesome influence on the larger society. There are strains of opinion in America today that are extremely influential despite being held only by a relatively small minority. Energized minorities can accomplish a great deal.
My grandparents were farmers in northwest Tennessee in the early 1900’s. Being a farmer meant also being a mechanic, seamstress, veterinarian, carpenter, cook, and so much more. I’ve actually plowed behind a mule and have a distinct memory of what that kind of life was like. There was a lot of hardship but also a lot of reward.
The little town near where we lived, which had a population of 120, was a lively place with two stores, a school, a bank, cafe, feed mill, four churches (!!), and was a hub of activity. Now it’s a dead, depressing place that’s merely a shell of its former self. I don’t want to romanticize it too much. We are not going back to that way of life. Maybe we don’t want or need to, but something valuable has definitely been lost in our rush to centralize, homogenize, and strive for maximum efficiency.
Thank you as always for getting the juices going. My only hang up with the idea is as you wrote about management being so much more fun than being managed. This is so true, at least in my life. Anyways, as Canada burns and suffocates our continent, the need for your thinking is upon us. What better way to get things rolling than to save our god forsaken arses. Seriously, not much time left.
Just saw this and will take a look. In the meantime the title is making me chuckle, because the last essay brought to my mind, with some nostalgia, The Whole Earth Catalog.
Glad you published the "Epigraph" note, which just showed up today in my email. The email notification for this essay still hasn't appeared. (File either to annoying Substack quirks or why do all my email providers eventually fail for mysterious reasons.)
Let me know if you keep having problems with email notifications of new essays -- this is the first I've heard of a problem.
Another fantastic post, thank you! I find myself wondering, only half-jokingly, if we're more likely to find that pioneer space in a future settlement on Mars or a similarly far-flung place, where there's no temptation to drive back into town for a figurative donut or two.
It's a chicken and egg problem: how do we get people to colonize Mars when we can't even get them to live in the Great Plains anymore? As I intend to write about later, reviving the appeal of pioneering here on Earth seems like a prerequisite -- or at least a very solid foundation -- for expanding to other worlds.
Some people mentioned the pandemic and that got me remembering back to the pandemic- I felt there were initially many potentially positive aspects to it. Everyone was home, walking more (but afraid to get too close so socialization was inhibited) feeling like we were all in it together. No need to spend the day commuting. Time to think about how you really wanted to spend our days on this earth. And the quiet, nature and lack of traffic! And the UBI like checks everyone was getting took away some of the economic insecurity/fear most feel and again made us kinder and more tolerant of others. You could strike up a conversation with a homeless guy and ask if he had gotten his stimulus check! Imagine how a universal UBI would make that permanent. Suddenly the need to win the lottery or score big to avoid poverty decreases and the suddenly the space and time to actually come together in new types of mutually supportive communities opens up! People could pool their UBI payments and try coliving arrangements or fund small business ideas. And giving the workers the power to walk away from jobs could only improve working conditions.
I've been thinking about this post and the previous ones about economic independence and I wonder if one of the reasons for the high level of dynamism in Israel (you can think a lot of things about that country but I think most of us aknowledge that they are very innovative) could be the existence of the Kibutz, I know that the population in the Kibutz is just a very small percentage of their population but maybe they reduce levels of risk aversion among people who view them as an option, also I think it is safe to assume that those who feel more alienated by the market are more likely to move to a Kibutz and that pessimism is usually contagious
If anyone can do it, you can. There needs to be a great deal of redefinition if we are to survive, much less thrive.