[0-O-0]

What is this lost paradise taken away from us by industrialisation? Subsistence farming? You don't have to theorise if that was enjoyable lifestyle - just take a look on any developing nation and people that are more than eager to ditch that. Or do you propose we escape further back and live our lives as hunter-gatherers?

[hosh]

That is a really common response I get. I’m not coming from the frame that the past is better than the present, or that the past was somehow a paradise. I am also not coming from the frame that the present is better than the past, or that the future is better than the present, or that just because we got to industrialization, that it is necessarily the best we can do.

I am talking about a different way of seeing and relating to the world that is not the same as way of seeing of the world that lead us to our current industrialization. That, while this frame does share some of the way of seeing from the past, it does not mean that it is the same. That this way of seeing considers people as whole beings, and ecologies that are not separate from people. That humans have a particular role in ecologies that includes their ability to reason, develop technologies, and cultivate the land.

The kind of seeing that lead us to industrialization have been extent since the rise of civilizations and the separation of labor.

I know a lot of people from developing nations seek out to become more like the modern world. I also see people from the modern world having lost some part of themselves, who they are, their sense of place and belonging, and desperately seek out remedies for it. I see people joke about “First World Problems”, but for me, those are symptoms of a much deeper psychological malaise. So they seek out the jungles of Peru for psychedelics. Go to India to find a guru. Search for social justice at home. Cling to traditional values as they watch the rest of the world erode. Or just resign to the grind and hope you are lucky enough to win the social lottery.

I’m looking at a way of seeing that is not what had come before. It is not an escape. It taps into the tremendous power of human creativity, but one self-directed in a way that makes meaningful contributions to the world and society. I think that includes growing at least some of the food yourself, as that changes the participant’s psychology and relationship with the world and people around them, as well as building a decentralized food system. Not everyone is going to do that full time. But not everyone who can contribute something meaningful (art, music, etc) are able to do so now with the current systems in place.