Feels like we're going to read a blog soon enough that mirrors Wendell Berry's opening to The Unsettling of America:
The commission said, according to an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, that the country’s biggest farm problem was a surplus of farmers: “. . . the technological advances in agriculture have so greatly reduced the need for manpower that too many people are trying to live on a national farm income wholly inadequate for them.” The proposed solutions were to find “better opportunities for the farm people,” “a more comprehensive national employment policy,” “retraining programs,” “improved general educational facilities,” etc. Both the commission and the writer of the article had obviously taken for granted that the lives and communities of small farmers then still on the farm—and those of the 25 million who had left the farm since 1940—were of less value than “technological advances in agriculture.” There seemed also to be no official doubt that adequate solutions were to be found in government supplied “opportunities,” facilities, and programs. Reading that article, I realized that my values were not only out of fashion, but under powerful attack. I saw that I was a member of a threatened minority. That is what set me off.
This is what the Luddites were primarily upset about, fwiw. That economic value and power would move away from their threatened minority group and towards landowners. It'll keep happening, and the new "opportunities" might be no better.
Christopher Alexander, as mention elsewhere on this page, is also a great reference here. I'm working through his Nature of Order books at the moment, and although he can be long-winded and vague at times, I'm absolutely loving them.
Your comment made me think of a quote from the first book: "The view of order which I describe in this book is very different. It is even-handed with regard to ornament and function. Order is profoundly functional and profoundly ornamental."
You might find Albert Borgmann a helpful voice here. He describes 'focal things and practices' which push back against the commodification of nearly everything. So, for example, making a meal and eating it with others at a table, reading a book with a friend, singing or playing an instrument, etc. Much more actionable about what can be done, reclaiming agency in a world that feels completely inevitable.
I learned of Berry just this last year. His book 'The Unsettling of America' really had an impact on me. He was a leader who lived what he preached. RIP.
