E.F. Schumacher "Good Work" worthy of the reading

[Morpheal]

I urge anyone to go back and read or reread E.F. Schumacher's "Good Work" and other writings on the subject of economics and society.

Unfortunately we have a tendency to short memories, in our day to day struggles, and get too easily absorbed by all the instigated and
manipulated conflicts meant to consume away our lives and energies, failing to even stop a moment to think about higher values. In some
regards the perfection of repetitive mass production, sameness of things becoming sameness of thinking and acting as well as conformity
of the produced object to precise standards, increasingly blinds our ability to consider other values. Similarly the growing and more and
more strictly enforced concepts of "free market" in every area of life. We get reduced into being marketable or unmarketable commodities
in a human marketplace, not human beings with real and intrinsic individualized talents, personalities and value, but something defined
more by profit than by anything else. Eventually only profit would be left as the only value. A nihilism of profit as the only value is an
absolute nihilism.

Imagine how much that would be good for humanity ends up being undone and never done, in a world that is defined purely by profit.
Imagine what effects an increasingly fascistic marketplace, of material trappings and superficial characteristics, of standardized modes
of superficial expression, has on any real freedoms of association, and expression. It perishes real freedom leaving only a sham version
in place of that. In a world such as that an individual can struggle forever, showing any exceptional talent or ability you might imagine, and
in effect be unmarketed, unmarketable and ignored forever in favour of the fascistic superficiality of a profit oriented "free marketism"
which effects more than the commerce of things and dollars, but has profound and far reaching effects upon people far beyond simply
the buying and selling of marketable mass production. It has effects on every form and type of relationship, not simply on commerce
as it is superficially and commonly defined.

Robert Morpheal

[druidity33]

1. Small is Beautiful

is another of his masterworks.

The EF Schumacher Society in the Berkshires has been working on a local currency the past couple of years. Berkshares? Also, check out timebank.org.


Forward thinking, but too "radical" for most people. Americans have lost the desire to sacrifice for the common good. We have lost conception of the "commons" in general.


:sigh: