Eloquently stated.
A friend alerted me to the World Made by Hand series, written by social critic, James Howard Kunstler. In this fictional series, Kunstler writes about a world stricken by the collapse of the oil based high technology economy and culture of today. In the World Made by hand series he reminds readers of the richness of the hand made culture that we would have if our speedy transportation, mass media, and digital distractions were removed.
I am not seeking that collapse, but instead would push us to a point at which all human beings were creatively engaged in the arts instead of driving blindly through suburbs, or scrolling mindlessly through too much useless information. Kunstler writes and speaks of small communities in which people are creatively engaged. He wrote one of his non-fiction books, the Geography of Nowhere,
“Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work.”My own town of Eureka Springs is not the Geography of Nowhere, but if corporate America, were to have its way, with AEP building extra high voltage power lines through the middle of our beautiful lands, as they propose, we would inch our way toward the irreversible ugliness they have allowed to inhabit so much of the US. We formed Save the Ozarks to stop them and while I can't claim we're winning yet, we have fought hard and have landed a few good whacks against the corporate behemoth and their regulatory minions.
Make, fix and create...
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