The way in which we work as Americans has changed drastically over the last century. These shifts in how we work have followed the development of innovations in technology, beginning as far back as the steam engine and cotton gin, as well as in the physical sciences, opening the way for such advancements as genetically modified foods, pesticides, and herbicides. All of these developments have affected our work and communities. Yet, as the climax of the information age looms above us, we also are beginning to see that some of our work, some of our societal behavior, is accumulating a tangible cost to this world in which we live and grow, die and return to dust. This realization, whether new or old for the receiver, begs the question: How can we be good to our earth, our home? As Americans we work hard and more than most Western countries, but now, more than ever before, we must ask whether our industrialized and ever more information-based economy is truly serving the needs of our planet, the needs of our communities, and of ourselves. Our environment and human experience seems to be telling us that as our industrial and technological society grows larger and more powerful it tends to separate us from “good work” and from our identity as humanity.
Today, as always, work is the way in which we create wealth. Wealth being the means by which we sustain our lives, the way we put food on the table and a roof over our heads. At present, the vast majority of Americans produce wealth through employment. They have a job in some vocation where their boss or company or corporation pays them a wage in return for work done. You might work for General Electric, General Motors, or Monsanto, as many do, and they get a crisp check every month for their efforts. This has been a fact of life for American laborers ever since the Industrial Revolution when science and technology merged the visions of great names like: Edison, Ford, and Westinghouse. The world and especially the workplace seemed to be resonating with new ways to move faster, build better, and produce with blinding efficiency. Many families were accustomed to having to work hard and strenuously, but they did so at home or often in rural communities. But, because of ever more efficient machines and methods, the entrepreneurial American family was undersold and forced to move into the cities en masse which lead to living conditions of almost unimaginable depravity.
Yet, over decades and eventually centuries we corrected these problems for many. They still had to work for the company or corporation, but because of hard-won agreements, the employer was forced to compensate the employee in a satisfactory enough way to at least provide sustenance in some comfort. Even so, two key things have not been returned: economic freedom (for the vast majority) and a direct connection with place, land, and community. To help understand how our economic freedom has been lost, a study was done by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) in 2009, which shows the average real wage earnings of Americans compared to those workers productivity from 1949 to 2004. This study shows that from 1949 to approximately 1970 the average real wage of American workers increased nearly parallel with those same worker’s productivity. After about 1970 this drastically changed and while a worker’s productivity continued to increase dramatically, his real wage actually decreased. In short, this means that you would have earned more for less work in nineteen-seventy than you do today. One result of this is that our connection with place has also been severely inhibited. This is because, when you don’t earn enough money at your job to pay for what you need, buying on credit is always a convenient option, and when it came to one of the most expensive items an average wage earner buys, a house, he often bought it on credit, creating what was affectionately called the housing bubble. Many Americans have been forced to foreclose, leaving them with few options for good housing. And when a family cannot keep a home they are not likely to make sacrifices for their community and are incapable of making them for the environment.
If economic freedom and healthy communities are to be returned to us, and if the energy and environmental crises are to be resolved, the way in which we create wealth must change. A far greater number of families will need to be able to create their own income, meaning they will need to own their own means of production and their own land. The way in which this can be done is through a return to an agriculturally based society. In such a society, human and environmental concerns could not be as easily externalized because we would have an intimate understanding of the effects of our actions. The land could become our teacher and not something to be conquered and destroyed. Efficiency could be sacrificed to the degree that it is subordinate to human need both physical and spiritual. Society could again be seen as a complex web of interdependences rather than an individualized race for survival. We could begin to understand the importance of food production and its significance as a means to physical health.
Even so, not everything would be different and not everything could change so easily. Whether a society can unlearn its old habits completely or not, to do so would only be the repetition of a mistake already attempted. Better technology would always be developed and produced. The real difference would be a simple shift in the meaning of the word “better.” Likewise, the pursuits of science would have a similar change in standards from simple utilitarian needs to human ones. In effect, the purpose of all work would and must make a drastic turn.
Our present society suffers from a long history of misplaced values and dreams. We’ve attempted to remove ourselves from the land and our environment, the effects of which have been very harmful to both, and in so doing we have hurt ourselves as well. A new society is waiting to be built upon the ideal health of individual communities and the places in which they dwell.