What Peter Thinks About What’s Really Worth Doing and How To do It / From Behind the Piano by Judith Snow and Jack Pearpoint
by: Peter Block

...continued
Conventional wisdom in every discipline has two themes; one is the belief in patriarchy, the second is the belief in a world organized around the primacy of the individual. Patriarchy is the belief that some human beings know what is best for others, and should therefore be in charge of what is taught, designed and provided those others. Patriarchy believes that large, centrally driven institutions, which are economically efficient, are best equipped to build a better society.

Individualism is the belief that in the final analysis, we are on our own, and that success and accomplishment is primarily an individual matter. If you live on the margin, are not successful, or a casualty of modern culture, you are deficient and it is your fault.

Convention always values victory, size, central control, speed, consistency, specialized expertise and efficiency above all else. It does not matter if you are a social worker, historian, architect, manager, educator or health care professional. Patriarchy and individualism are the constructs. If you are a historian, for example, you hold that the victors, the leaders, and exceptional individuals are the ones worth understanding. If you are a traditional architect, you preach that great design comes from the mind and imagination of the professional. A social worker calls their clients “cases”; managers refer to their employees as “my people.” Conventional health care is interested in disease and intervention, not health and prevention. You get the picture.

The radical subcultures hold the belief that people are capable of knowing what is best for them selves. That, with some help, we have the capacity to live out our own intentions, and that these intentions will serve the common interest. They dare to use the word, “freedom.” The radical belief is that each person is a set of gifts, not deficiencies. That real transformation is in each of our hands, not the hands of the professional and this occurs in the world through a small scale, more customized approach to service. This values teams over a star system, depth over speed, care over efficiency.

This underground also believes that a strong community and human relatedness among ordinary people is what produces accomplishment, great buildings and neighborhoods, good businesses, healthy people, educated citizens and a good society.

The book, “What’s Really Worth Doing and How to Do It/From Behind the Piano” by Judith Snow and Jack Pearpoint, is a beautiful example of this kind of radical underground thinking and practice in the field of disabilities. The authors, Judith Snow and Jack Pearpoint have written about Judith from their own, independent perspective, and joined their stories into one volume, thus the long title.

Judith’s story is about her transformation from being an over treated patient and a problem to be solved to becoming a free, independent person, surrounded by a community of friends. She was for years labeled a disabled person, institutionalized, operated upon, kept alone and separate from society.

Her portion of the book is about the journey from being a package of deficiencies to a collection of gifts, told from the inside out. She speaks from the inside out about the shift from curse to blessing. Her story is about a very human being, it is not about the ills of society. She also lives and writes about the shift in paradigm from deficiency to giftedness that is relevant to us all. In discovering our giftedness, and widening our idea of what constitutes giftedness, Judith lays out a way of being and thinking for each of us to create the supportive community of care that is necessary to discover our own freedom and our own dreams.

Jack’s story is also about transformation…his. After years as a service- oriented person and executive in higher education, he came to realize, through Judith, the real meaning of care. He began as an advocate for Judith and eventually became a friend and part of her support community. He writes beautifully about this path and how it changed his life.

This is a radical book, for it confronts much of what occurs in professional care. It calls for us to take care out of the hands of professionals and their institutions and place care properly in the hands of the individual and their circle of friends. Of course professionals are needed, but their role is secondary.

As mentioned earlier, this same perspective applies to more than health care; it is relevant to most every discipline. In fact affirming the strength of community and the capacity of regular citizens to create their own life is a social movement well under way. There are historians who value everyday lives (Howard Zinn), architects who support the design capacity of lay people (Christopher Alexander), and managers who know that core workers know much of what is best for the business ( Dennis Bakke and Rich Teerlink). Finding kindred spirits to this movement like Judith Snow and Jack Pearpoint is exciting for it affirms that focusing on the gifts of citizens and the value of community rewards us no matter what place or circumstance we find ourselves in.

I strongly recommend this book. It is a fine mixture of story telling, wisdom and practical structures that are needed for us to add depth and life to our eternal conversation about differences and diversity. In fact, if we took this book to heart, the conversation about differences and diversity would disappear. We would see that most of what wounds us as individuals and as a culture can be healed through a giftedness way of seeing and by a communal way of being.

What Peter Thinks About Michael D'Antonio's Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams
by: Peter Block

          We live in a society where corporations define and in many ways define our  cultural values and set the tone for what we are and become. This typically reinforces our materialism and belief that it is all about the money. None of which is particularly good news.

          The book, “Hershey”, tells the unique story Milton Hershey, creator of the Hershey bar and Kisses. Living in the early part of the last century, he was an amazing capitalist who created a different model of what corporations can mean to their community and to society at large.

          On the surface this book is simply a biography of one more American industrialist who built an empire on a 5-cent candy bar. His inventiveness and capacity to bring a dream into reality is important but not so unique. As a human being, he lived well, was deeply paternalistic, self indulgent, demanded fierce loyalty, carried grudges and had his way with the people around him. Not so different than the rest of us.

          What is worth reading about, though, is what he did with his success. He turned over his wealth and the ownership of Hershey Chocolate to a foundation created to provide a home and education for children. He also invested heavily in the community (one he created out of farmland in Pennsylvania). When most industrialists were creating minimalist labor camps and taking advantage of immigrant workers, including creating security forces to keep them subservient, Hershey invested in a utopian town.

          He financed and developed a town that encouraged home ownership and a strong sense of community. He provided a local economy that created jobs and a decent standard of living even for those not working for the company.

          The book is not purely a whitewash or romanticized version of a historical figure. What Milton Hershey created and how he lived had its flaws. The town was very ethnocentric, he was unfriendly to unions, and he, in effect, was czar of a local monarchy. All of which carried its longer-term costs.

          Despite his human frailties, what is special enough to care about, is his willingness, in the middle of his life, to surrender so much of his wealth to a larger purpose. And to devote that wealth to support the community where he located his business. There are a hundred other stories of great wealth producing foundations, but few with the commitment that Hershey demonstrated. It is common for wealthy people to create foundations, but few have vested ownership of their companies to a social purpose. Most large companies give to foundations and good causes, but it really only a small portion of their profits and wealth. I saw a couple of years ago where State Street Bank in Boston was the largest corporate giver to the community, and that amounted less than 1% of their profits.

          We do have many examples of social entrepreneurs who, as individuals, do amazing things for our communities. This is still the individual philanthropist model and does not confront the core issue of the role of the private sector and the purpose of an enterprise. There are many socially conscious chief executives, Dennis Bakke (AES) and Rich Teerlink (Harley Davidson) are two I know, who have given their lives to authentic service. But most of these had to do this work outside the confines of the businesses they built. 

          This story of Hershey shows what is possible if the business community decided that generosity was a core purpose rather than secondary obligation.

          Too many live by the urging of economist Milton Friedman who declared that any social responsibility on the part of the corporation was a betrayal of stockholder interests.

          The business community, just by its existence, is a major player and benefactor to every community in which it operates. The jobs and economy it creates is important and can’t be underestimated.

          Most businesses do get involved in their community and support social purposes. But too often the mindset of the corporation is to extract what benefits it can from the community, at times using its power to gain concessions. This is not so much about corporate philanthropic practices as it is a question of corporate purpose. We are in an era where shareholder is the dominant stakeholder, or at least the excuse for a short-term profit focus. At some point, the private sector will truly re-examine its idea of purpose and contribution to society.

          Hershey proved, flaws included, that a corporation can be committed to a larger purpose and still be successful as a business. This company prospered through the depression, survived the upheavals of a decade of antitrust legislation, rode out spiraling raw material costs and international competition, and resisted aggressive takeover bids. It is inspiring to read about one example where noble purpose and economic prosperity could live as equals. If it happened once, then we know it is possible. Also the book is well written, which is a bonus.

What Peter Thinks About Cowboys and Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History
by: Sarah Stockslager

            Few art forms have more power to influence culture than film. There is the myth in the public conversation that the influence of film is solely in the direction of over the top social freedom, corrosion of traditional values and advancement of the “liberal” agenda. The opposite is just as true, and even more so. Film has over the years, given support to the conservative, empire building, and colonial aspect of American culture. This is beautifully documented and analyzed in the book, Cowboys as Cold Warriors, by Stanley Corkin. He makes a fascinating and compelling argument that Western films released from 1946-1962 helped sell and rationalize the United States stance in regard to the Cold War and ultimately our venture into Vietnam. The glamorous image of the cowboy taming the west was a cinematic reflection of the foreign policy of the United States in the world.  Corkin emphasizes the fact that many of these Western films “responded to and influenced the cultural climate of the country.” Cowboys as Cold Warriors takes a close look at considerations that lead to how “these cultural productions both embellished the myth of the American frontier and reflected the era in which they were made.”

The book also teaches us how to watch a film. Corkin is very detailed about the construction and visual design of Westerns that reinforce individualism and value the choice of conquest over domestication. In the classic western film, Red River, Corkin writes,

“As viewers, we are implicated in an editing strategy that reveals Dunson (the main character in the film) to be the power that moves the mass of cattle and men. A sequence of parallel shots of men in the foreground, cattle in the middle distance, and mountains in the background is interrupted by a rider coming into the frame… . The film cuts to Dunson, who was clearly the rider…he literally fills the frame; only a glint of daylight appears over his shoulders. Dunson’s dark clothing and hat block out the sun itself. The camera then pans 360 degrees, in effect defining Dunson’s point of view as superhuman and all encompassing. … That is, he is all but a force of nature and a powerful example of the need to ensure the frontier (American) way of life.” 

Corkin’s descriptions such as this raises our consciousness of the power of film to define cultural values which even today we see repeated in the selling of our current leaders and our role in the world. 

The book demonstrates how these classic films (16 in all) reflect the kind of national and international political strategy of the United States.  The Western movie and the romanticized Cowboy make personal and intimate what on a national scale becomes American imperialism, and American manifest destiny.  Corkin’s analysis of the film details the cultural foundation upon which the U.S. conducts its foreign relations and how film can sell to the culture the kind of expansionism that says we have a right almost, and duty to conquer other lands, subjugate other people, all in the name of commerce and democracy. Referring to Kennedy’s inauguration speech about our history of the frontier, which was, quoting from Corkin, “ the defining moments of American imperialism when the ‘traditions’ of indigenous peoples or of those outside the social or economic systems of the United States were disregarded, when inhabited lands with their own histories were treated as though they were virgin lands. Kennedy asks his audience to forget such historical incidentals and to bring the single mindedness of continental expansion to a wide range of situations, not the least of which were ‘unresolved problems of peace and war.” This was the argument that eventually led to the war in Vietnam, and much that has followed since.           

The value of the book is not just about American foreign policy. Everything that is written about the Cold War can also be applied to modern corporate cultures.  Given that the book reflects on films of a different era than today, one that many readers may not have even lived through, it gives insight into how cultural images reinforce how corporate leaders are currently operating.  Corporate leaders in America today have become royal icons and are treated as if they are kings and queens, which further the colonial nature of American culture. Our corporate icons have replaced the “cowboy images” on that same heroic pedestal. 

The heroic image of the entrepreneur, much like the cowboy, is a cultural object of worship. Here is another quote from Corkin about Red River that defines this perfectly: “For example, Red River (1948) reveals a fascination with the development of a business strategy that rewards centralized production and the seeking of far-flung markets. This emphasis in the film is concurrent with the implicit and explicit national discussion of the day, which rationalized a global system of exchange with the United States at the center. The film’s implicit idea of open markets subject to penetration by the swashbuckling entrepreneur was a core belief of an important group of business leaders in the post war era.” We are still creating our leaders in the image of the western cowboy and we continue to pay the price for this nostalgia. The culture, especially through its films and biographies, defines and creates the leaders that we will accept. We create leaders by how we portray them. Art, then is an important vehicle for expressing or definition of leaders. Even the anti hero film and art, by its focus on leader or non-leader, makes leadership the central focus. Although Hollywood tries to promote itself openly as populist, it subtly furthers the American patriarchal attitude through the attention and centrality of leader as cause of the world.

The premise of Cowboys as Cold Warriors, works equally well for television shows.  The reality shows create a context for life as survival of the fittest; life is dangerous and only the strong survive. It is a pessimistic view of the human condition. The other side of the same coin is the presentation of life as a search for style, makeovers, consumer ecstasy, happy endings, and California dreaming. Shows like Santa Barbara and Baywatch were two of the first television shows that were exported to Third World countries. An example of how our consumerism is invading foreign culture, go to the coffee shop at the Marriot in New Delhi, India. It is named “Baywatch.”   Exporting the American lifestyle is today’s new frontier and our version of winning the west. It is a form of economic adventurism that goes under title of globalization. All reflected in today’s television, similar to the way Cowboys as Cold Warriors describes the use of movies after WWII. 

Stanley Corkin is a social critic and professor of literature at University of Cincinnati.  He has written an important book and it needs to be read by those who work to democratize our institutions and also people who work hard to make ends meet, and for some reason think that the condition of our society and our own workplace is best left to “strong leaders” and cowboys in waiting. We all need to be clear that what we listen to and watch, and who we admire as leaders, are all political acts that when added all together impact the sustainability of our democracy and our place in the world.

We also need to keep reminding ourselves of the power of the arts in impacting culture. If part of our job is to change culture, art has the power to achieve this. There is a growing group of consultant/artists, and companies who hire them, that use theatre, storytelling, improvisation, and music to transform the culture we have inherited into places that create a future distinct from our past.

To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work
 

He is a strong advocate for the importance of creating and supporting local businesses and sustaining our local economies. The book underlines the importance of transforming our choices about consumption by focusing on food and agriculture. Food, its production, distribution and consumption is central to the kind of world many of us want to support. It is an arena where each of us can be activists in creating this world. Agriculture is one of the primary industries that is highly centralized, automated with a high energy requirement, operates under the control of giant corporations, and undermines all the advantages of a self sufficient local economy. 

Stephen Decater, a community based farmer is quoted as saying,   “When someone goes to the supermarket to buy food, only ten cents or less goes to the farmer. The only way to survive on that is to grow ten times more product, which is not possible without large capital inputs.

So farming has become a system run by banks and large industrial corporations, subsidized by our taxes, that keeps food artificially cheap, driving out the small farmer who is not subsidized and can’t compete with their prices. There is no future for the family farm under that system. So we need an approach where the people eating the food work directly with the people growing the food. If we want to create a local agriculture that is not so totally dependent on bands for capital, fossil fuels for energy, toxic chemicals for pest problems, an chemical fertilizers, and not burdened by the environmental destruction that comes from all that, we need to bring it back to a food system that works locally.” 

Reading this book is going to make a difference in how I think about the role food plays in ways much larger than just diet and health. Take this way of thinking and broaden it to include all of our patterns of lifestyle and consumption. Every organization we choose to work for and every business we patronize become political acts, which determine the future of our society. By thinking and acting along these lines, we can create an economy which confronts the very purpose of our organizations.

No one wants to be purists or even heroic in what we do, but we can become conscious and Smith helps us along.  It is an important insight to see the day-to-day connection between our actions and the health of our communities, our businesses and our own spirit.

What is also important about this book is how Smith goes beyond the need for individuals to find meaning and actualization within the givens of our organizations and society. Smith is much more political than this and joins others such as David Korten (When Corporations Rule the World) and Marilyn Kelly (the Devine Right of Capital) in confronting the basic purpose of corporations and their willingness to take responsibility for their full role in the world. 

His goal is to “create pockets of democratic cooperation” in our workplaces and in our communities. He has a quote from Wendell Berry that captures the essence of what will create an alternative future: “The real work of planet saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.” This is a strategy and way of being that we each can act on and Smith gives a very concrete set of actions that will make a difference. It is also noteworthy that the author, as founder of companies like Smith and Hawken and Briarpatch Co-op, has himself followed the path he recommends.

The book is structured in the spiritual context of converting the seven deadly sins into the seven life-giving seeds.  This is a very good book, in its accessible style, the breadth of its thinking, and in the generosity with which it is offered.    

WMKV FM

One aspect of the media that threatens our communities and our level of civility is that much of our radio and TV programming is based on a deficit view of society. What gets reported acts to commercialize our flaws and our suffering. If you are weary of the distressing and predictable nature of the media, I have a special radio station for you.

It is WMKV FM. 89.3 in Cincinnati and WMKVFM.org on the web. What makes this station unique is what it does not do. The station broadcasts no news, no weather, no sports and no traffic.

This is important because the real power of media is its capacity to name the debate. This capacity to determine what we focus on, to define the conversation, is more powerful than any political or ideological leanings. In fact, the power to decide what is discussed and not discussed may be the ultimate political act. 

This is why WMKV FM and others like it are important. So what does it mean to a radio station with no  news, no weather, no sports and no traffic reports?

No News. 

Most news is selling fear for the sake of ratings. The news consistently leads with stories of crime, disaster or runaway brides that present society as a dangerous place. In the last ten years crime in most places has gone down and the reporting of crime has gone up. This makes us more cynical about our cities and anesthetizes us to tragedy by making it a daily and common experience.

There is crime and evil in the world, but it does not serve us to popularize and exaggerate it so that we begin to believe the dark side of life is the norm instead of the exception. Most news also is exclusively a hunt for the guilty which ignores the complexity that any serious exploration of life contains.

No Weather.

When we make the weather the lead story, we reinforce our lifestyle addiction. We create a mindset that good weather and happiness are related. That rain and cold is “bad” weather. There is a mass migration in this country to move to warm weather climates thinking that the four seasons are a problem to be solved. This is not just about the weather, but is also a life stance that keeps your sunny side up, and forces the difficult and challenging aspects of existence underground, much like a Disney theme park.

I must admit that one good thing about reporting the weather is that it reminds us that Mother Nature is still a player. Eliminating weather reports would affirm the belief that the weather is to be experienced rather than managed, and being surprised by the occurrence of rain and snow might enrich our lives.   

No Sports.

The interest in sports supports a spectator society and encourages us to take our identity from how well our sports teams do. Why would I want the jumping, running or throwing ability of a young person in their twenties to determine the well being of our city or school? Without the constant reporting of sports, we might become more interested in activism in the cultural and civic events of our community. Schools would be more balanced in their goal of education and the development of a citizenry capable of engaging productively in society.

There is nothing wrong with local sporting events that can bring us together. When we focus instead on the reporting of sports, where ESPN is the flagship profit center of a network, our attention is deflected from issues more universally relevant to our lives. Plus we would stop creating role models of people often unable to carry our projections.

No Traffic.

Although life is a journey, constantly reporting how long it takes to get somewhere reinforces our obsession with the automobile and the illusion that it is somehow related to our freedom.

The automobile causes harm to the environment and has contributed to the decline of our cities. The car supports a big box, mall oriented world, where street life, sidewalks, and walking as a form of transportation are a thing of the past. The quality of our life and communities would be enhanced if we narrowed our highways and made cars less desirable. We would then begin to live, work, shop and play close to our neighborhood. Our cities and our sense of connectedness to each other would be rebuilt to the benefit of all.     

So if any of this makes sense to you, try out this radio station. It offers music from the middle of the twentieth century and a few talk shows. Its tag line is “the way radio was meant to be.” A small version of how life was meant to be.

One other thing I like about the station is that its General Manager, Alan Bayowski believes in silence. So there are simply quiet periods from time to time. That pause in most media would be called dead air. In Alan’s mind silence is to be valued as a background for a moment for reflection. This station is revolutionary in a special way and I hope you try it out. 

Again, the site on the web is WMKVFM.org. If you know of other stations like this let me know and we will spread the word.  

Visit WMKV's website at http://www.wmkvfm.org/
 

Garrett Wade and CHEF's Catalogues

One of my favorite ways to fall asleep at night is to read mail order catalogues. They provide a middle passage to the night, lying halfway between dreams and commerce.  For me, these catalogues provide a non-chemical way to end the day and prepare for the hour of the wolf.

My Kingdom for a Tool

One of my favorite catalogues is the Garrett Wade Tool Catalogue. Every place I go, people are always        looking for tools and techniques and this catalogue delivers. Of course the tools are mostly for woodworking, but there are many items of interest for just better everyday living.    

For example, the Garrett Wade Catalogue offers several items for outdoor exploring, including a folding cot that is actually comfortable, making it ideal for the Boy Scouts. ‘The Best Folding Camp Cot’ is made in Maine, since 1880, by the oldest maker of wood cots in the country. This model is 2 inches wider than usual and the frame is 43% larger in cross section.  Larger than what is unspecified, but at $114.50 plus additional shipping charges that do apply, it is worth considering.  Perhaps if I have ‘The Best Folding Camp Cot’ I will actually spend the next winter camping close to nature.

Another item I covet is a Camper’s and Hiker’s Saw Designed To Be Set Up in Less Than 15 Seconds. Its sleek design and Swedish Steel Blade make it an item that I became instantly interested in.  Reading about this saw led me to wonder what kind of person, leading what kind of life, would find themselves in a situation where taking 30 seconds, or even two minutes to set up a saw would be burden enough to invest in the $34.95, 15 second saw? Question enough to keep me awake.  

The catalogue’s main focus is on tools to manipulate wood. You can find Japanese pull stroke saws, solid ebony English squares and bevels, brass quick check squares, a wooden and brass rule set with markings in inches and metric, accompanied by an inside out caliper. I have no clear idea what any of these tools are used for and I do not care. I need and want them.

What is special about this catalogue is that the beautifully photographed pictures make every item desirable. I am thinking of asking if they do portraits. The text is educational and the prices are high enough to let me know that I will be getting genuine quality.

The tools are exotic, beautifully photographed, and promise a life organized around craftsmanship, usefulness and open afternoons and evenings whiled away surrounded by classic implements speaking to us from generations gone past. Order this catalogue. It offers infinite objects of desire and the promise of a lifetime of precision and attention to detail. It is an especially valuable reading experience for those of us who used to think a workshop was a place where adults assembled for three days to learn about leadership.   

Home is Where the Hearth

Another of my favorite catalogues is CHEF’S catalogue for the complete kitchen. If you like to cook, or know someone who cooks, this catalogue holds endless possibilities. You can buy a three-foot tall pepper mill. Just why I need a pepper mill this tall is hard to imagine, but imagination is just what catalogues are for. Perhaps the size of this mill means you will always be able to find it or maybe some people just hate to run out of pepper.  No matter what the reason for purchasing such a necessary product, as the copy says, this mill is impressive and can be had for under $100 ($99.99 to be precise).

CHEF’S will introduce you to the Orka Silicone Oven Mitt. This is a glove that is heat resistant up to 500 degrees, and allows you to pluck food from frying oil or boiling water by hand. You see, this is the beauty of a great catalogue. It opens you to an endless array of latent desires. Who among us ever dreamed of the pleasure of plucking food from frying oil or boiling water by hand?         

There are endless choices of more traditional kitchen products. One can never own enough knives, sauté pans, chicken broasters, electric smokers, or stainless steel fish turners (pg 11, only $19.95). The final item I can personally recommend is the stainless steel, rosewood handled chimney starter. All you need to light your charcoal is some crumpled newspaper and a match, but the purchase of the $24.99 chimney starter allows you to take a stand in protecting the environment. 

A great catalogue is the literature of modern times. It is visual art; the writing is about a way of life, not just a product. You can start reading anywhere in document and you do not have to worry about how it ends. It is free, disposable, light weight, and portable. Mostly though, in a consumer society, it is the stuff that dreams are made of.

The Technological Society                                                                                              by: Jacques Ellul

This book is about the pervasive power of technology in impacting our way of thinking of ourselves and who our society is becoming. It is in no way an argument against technology but a comprehensive discussion of its meaning and effects. Ellul wrote this over fifty years ago, so it is not specifically about computers or the information age is practical, productive and mechanized in the name of scale.

A small sample from the foreword; “Not understanding what the rule of technique is doing to him and to his world, modern man is beset by anxiety and a feeling of insecurity. He tries to adapt to changes he cannot comprehend. The conflict of propaganda takes the place of the debate of ideas. Technique smothers the ideas that put its rule in question and filters out for public discussion only those ideas that are in substantial accord with the values crated by a technical civilization. Social criticism is negated because there is only slight access to the technical means required to reach large numbers of people.” 

What resonated for me was the argument that when our tools become too much the point, we operate at their mercy. Our humanity becomes subordinated to what the tool requires and it happens in a way we remain unaware of. Ellul spent his life as an activist always trying to raise our consciousness about the confinement of the material world that we choose to worship.  

This is not an easy read. Ellul takes his thinking into every aspect of society and does it in great detail. Despite this, it is a work that puts light on the foundation of what modern life entails and demands of us. Interestingly, Ellul ultimately believed that the only adequate way of dealing with the dehumanizing effects of technology was through religion and a spiritual path.

Peter's Picks (...this is a start!)

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity
by Marshall Berman

In The Answer to How is Yes, Peter writes about this book:
Beautifully written insights into the origins of our modern culture. Cuts across literature, economic development, community, institutions, and the individual psyche in a breathtaking way

ribabookshops.com Review:
In this acclaimed book already widely praised in the U.S.A, Marshall Berman undertakes an affirmative exploration of modern consciousness. The experiences of modernization- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world- and modernism in art, literature and architecture, have never been so well integrated in a single account. Goethe, Marx, Baudelaire, Dostoevsky and Mandelstam are among a myriad of writers invoked here. The centrality of urban experience in these twin processes of modernity ensures that cities themselves, their architects and destroyers, are the major actors in the drama. The Paris of Baudelaire and Haussmann, the Petersburg of the Tsarist builders and Pushkin, the New York of the devastated wastelands and creative artists- and of Berman himself; the streets themselves are registered, in all their variety and chaos. Marshall Berman has made a fine contribution to the struggle 'to make ourselves at home in this world, even as the homes we have made, the modern street, the modern spirit, go on melting into air'.

 

What Are People For?
by Wendell Berry

From Publisher's Weekly:
Poet, novelist and critic Berry ( Remembering ) identifies himself as "a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts," thereby indicating the scope of these 22 prodding, opinionated pieces. He touches on literary subjects as well as agrarianism, environmentalism and other political issues, his splendid writing infusing each topic with his sense of its urgency. Wallace Stegner is esteemed as a regionalist who protects the integrity of his literary terrain, unlike the many who write "exploitively, condescendingly, and contemptuously" of their milieus; and Edward Abbey is praised because he "does not simply submit to our criticism, as does any author who publishes; he virtually demands it." Shifting from art to farming in "Economy and Pleasure," Berry notes that, "More and more, we take for granted that work must be destitute of pleasure." In "Waste," he calls our attitude toward garbage the "symbiosis of an unlimited greed at the top and a lazy . . . consumptiveness at the bottom." And in the title essay, he wryly observes that agricultural economists say there are too many farmers--but not too many agricultural economists.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits
McKnight, John.

In The Answer to How is Yes, Peter writes about this book:
Compelling arguments about the loss of community in our culture. It is also about how efforts to help have the opposite effect and how helpers focus on deficiencies as a way of creating demand for their service.

Back Jacket Cover:
John McKnight's "The Careless Society" is a breakthrough in its critique of professional practice and its profound understanding of the role of community as a helping agent.  McKnight does a brilliant analysis of the criminal justice system and provides a valuable, constructive worldview.