Oct./Nov. 1983 RAIN Page 31 play of our nature—to learn from the work and to infuse it with our purposes and our dreams—and to give the fullest possible opportunity for our physical and mental faculties to experience, experiment, and grow. A tool focuses work so that our energy and attention can be fully employed to our chosen purposes. Our culture has valued devices that are labor saving and require little skill to operate. By those very measures, such devices are machines which rob us of our opportunity to act, experience, and grow, and to fill our surroundings with the measure of our growth. We need skill-developing rather than labor-saving technologies. INDEPENDENCE AND INTERDEPENDENCE. Many of the basic values upon which we have tried to build our society have become weakened through the ways they have been interpreted and face the prospect of further weakening through the pressures inevitable in adapting our society to new conditions. Independence cannot be maintained when we are dependent upon other people or other nations—as long as we are forced to work on others' terms, to consume certain kinds of education to qualify for work, to use automobiles because that kind of transportation system has made even walking dangerous or physically impossible; as long as we are dependent upon fossil fuels to operate our society; as long as we must depend upon resources other than ourselves and the renewable resources of our surroundings, we cannot be independent; We have also discovered through the power that our wealth has given us that slavery is as enslaving for the master as for the mastered—by becoming DEPENDENT upon the abilities of the slave, whether the slave is human, animal, institutional, or energy slave, we forego developing our own capabilities to be self-sufficient. In another sense total independence is never possible, for that means total power, which inevitably collides with the wants and power of others. We are also, in reality, dependent upon the natural systems that convert the sun's energy into the food upon which we live. Totally independent individuals may have freedom from organization, but have no special value, no special mission, no special contribution, and no necessary role in the energy flows and relationships of a society that permits greater things than are attainable as individuals. Such freedom results in little respect or value for the individual. Our success and survival on this planet also must recognize the total interdependence that exists between us and the health, disease, wealth, happiness, anger, and frustrations of the others with whom we share this planet. Two things are important. We must have the CAPABILITY for self-sufficiency—in order to have options, alternatives, self-confidence, and knowledge of how things are related and work and to be able to lighten our demands on others. We must also have the ABILITY to contribute our special skills to the development of interdependent relationships which can benefit all. Trade, as giving of surplus, of what is not necessary, is the only viable resolution of the interrelated problems oif independence, interdependence, and slavery. As we begin to actually make changes, the things we come to find of value are almost the opposite of what we value today. What contributes to stability and soundness and to valued relationships is exactly what prevents and hinders disruption, change, and growth—which have been both necessary and desired under the conditions we have until recently experienced. Meaningful work, localized economies, diversity and richness of employment and community, and controllable, clever, human- centered technologies will become important. Common sense and intuition will be recognized again as more valuable than armies of computers. Community will become more important than individualism and our present actions seen as unsupportably selfish. Strong roots and relationships will become more important than mobility. Buildings and equipment with long life and lower total costs rather than low initial costs will be favored. Cooperation will be seen as more positive, wiser, and less costly than competition. Skill-using will replace labor-saving. We will soon discover that all our present sciences and principles are not unbiased, but are built upon values promoting growth rather than stability, and will need to be modified when quantitative growth is no longer possible. □ □
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