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Health & Fitness

Dependence Day

Building a more local economy that connects people to good work will not be easy. It will require us to embrace a new vision for our life together.

We spent this past Labor Day the way many familes do — with family and friends enjoying each other’s company. 

At our evening meal, our host said a prayer of thanks for the gifts we received from the bounty of the creation and the labor of those who made the meal possible, including those who prepared it in the kitchen, grew it in their fields and orchards, etc.

Upon reflection, this prayer of gratitude was in stark contrast to the heated debates occurring across our nation regarding our current recession and the creation of jobs. And it reminded me that what we must remember is that we are dependent upon each other, the planet we live on, and even, upon god. Unfortunately, we have lost sight of our dependence. Not in the existential sense, (while that may be true) but on a very practical level. 

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We are, in every sense of the word, dependent. We rely on others for our support, aid, and livelihood. The meal I described was made possible as much by the people who made the automobiles, refined the petroleum and built the roads as it was the people who grew it, transported it and prepared it. Not to mention, the teachers who taught the engineers to design the roads, the law enforcement officers that patrol them and the crew that cleans the ditches. Our problem is that we need labor day, perhaps we should call it dependence day, to remind us that we take our dependence for granted — only at our own peril.

The problem is that we take all of our inter-connectedness for granted most of the time. When we go to the grocery, how often do we consider the social, ecological and political impacts of our choices? Or the fact that we have so many choices to begin with? Or that the prices of food are so low relative to the income we make?

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Our urbanized, integrated and monetized society has abstracted price from cost to such a degree that our dependencies are abstract. It is hard to know, without much research, the impact of my consumption on people, place and planet. Likewise, the work that I do, in exchange for U.S. currency, is part of a capital economy that I have little or no influence upon. Globalization, in which we have thrown down space-time barriers with ecologically costly energy and technology, has served to make us increasingly dependent while at the cost of a mindful interdependence.  That is to say, we do not have the ability to readily understand, let alone influence, a sophisticated level of governance mechanisms that are required to maintain justice, improve equity and protect our planet.

Our current ideological debate about jobs and economy has returned us to the old arguments pitting labor against capital. Supply side and demand side solutions to high unemployment both neglect the real question of our age: “what is the work that needs to be done?” If we can answer this question in the context of the needs of the people, place and planet, we will be able to find the right people to do this work. Our industrialized, monetized, globalized world view only asks, “where are the jobs?” And it leads us to an educational system disconnected from the real world and its needs — which are for our collective time, talent and treasure.

Part of the solution to our individual and common depression can only be found in a kinder, gentler globalism, one in which we really do think globally and act locally. We each ought to consider asking ourselves, 'what can I do to help meet the needs that are all around me?" Some of us believe that the kernel of an answer is found in regionalism, working to re-weave local dependencies. This means growing and eating more locally, reducing the use of energy and producing more of our own through methods that protect the planet and are sustainable for thousands of years. It also means understanding that our health is a matter of being well and includes work and transportation that uses our bodies in a respectful way, producing as much of what we need from the abundance that surrounds us.

Building a more local economy that connects people to good work will not be easy.  It will require us to embrace a new vision for our life together. It will require us to educate ourselves on the difference between work and jobs, life and work, price and cost, mine and ours. And yes, it will require us to put aside our self-centeredness, and to say a prayer of gratitude for our dependence upon each other, a world we did not make, and for the possibility of a wholesome interdependence.

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