Localism and Care for the World: Thoughts on a New Philosophy of Work

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things, which he can afford to let alone.

-       Henry David Thoreau

To create a philosophy of work that is fit for human beings, we need to remind ourselves of three truths:

1.              You don’t have to be rich or have a lot of money in order to live well.

2.              The world is arranged to make it quite easy to acquire everything you need to live well.

3.              If you’re finding life difficult and not enjoyable then you are doing something wrong.

We have forgotten that money and wealth are not goods in themselves. When we seek to acquire and accumulate more and more wealth, we inevitably cause harm to the environment and exploit the least advantaged among us. In the end, we only end up destroying our own ability to experience happiness and to live well. A poor or modest home, filled with love and healthy relationships, is happier than a mansion filled with isolated individuals and broken relationships. Philosophers have long pointed out that the acquisition of our basic needs should be enjoyable and not too time consuming. As Epicurus said in 300 BCE, it is pleasurable to eat, to have sex, to sleep, even to work if we are doing what we love. The basic necessities of life are good, provide enjoyment, and are abundantly provided when moderately consumed. Yet too often we make it difficult for others and ourselves by seeking not just to satisfy our basic needs, but greedy ambition tempts us to pursue lifestyles that are unnecessary, unenjoyable, and destructive to the environment.

We’ve allowed avarice to flood our lives with unnecessary products forcing us to work and bury our lives in menial servitude to unhealthy status symbols of large homes, expensive cars, and shiny toys. But as Thoreau once said: “In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we live simply and wisely.” His advice was to simplify our lives. We should use our talents and time making some real contribution to humanity and the world. If it does make us wealthy, we must not be seduced by the siren song of greed and conspicuous consumption, but still live simply and use our surplus wealth to help others make their contribution. Yet this goes against many years of cultural conditioning!

At least since the industrial revolution, we’ve been socialized into believing that being a productive member of society means working long hours making money for someone else in return for a paycheck. The proof we are a person of value to society and our family is that we work hard and are a good provider. We are taught that if we don’t waste time engaged in activities that neither produce nor consume economic resources, then we show our good character and earn a favored status before God. A person’s worth and value is determined by his or her ability to make money. So we’ve come to feel guilty when we aren’t working, and it seems wasteful if we’re just enjoying ourselves outside of economically approved activities.

Further, if we’re to be considered good employees today with modern technology, especially our smart phones, we’re expected to be available 24/7 to our employers. So instead of being an expression of our humanity and a joyful exercise of our talents and skills in service to others in community, work has become difficult, tedious, and demeaning. Technology should have brought us more creative ways to secure our basic needs, while serving others, and without harming the planet. It should have freed up more leisure time for cultivating our relationships and developing ourselves. Instead it has been used to produce artificial needs, bringing greater consumption, less time for building relationships, and more harm to the planet. Instead of creative leisure time, which renews our spirits, technology has turned us into insecure narcissists who need others to like our posts and friend us on social media. Only their acceptance will assure us that we are lovable and as great as we think we are. Or seeing the fabricated happiness of others’ Facebook or Instagram posts, we fear we are missing out and become anxious and depressed.

Technology mixed with greed and anxiety has led us to produce far more stuff than we need to satisfy our human needs. We have an economy of waste and artificial needs, which drives the consumer economy but kills the human spirit. As Hannah Arendt pointed out, the world today will be annihilated in runway consumption and mindless work. Such consumer capitalism and soulless labor destroys the very things they seek to satisfy. We become like leaky pots, never able to be filled but always needing more. Our lives are consumed in wasteful consumption and dreary jobs. We have jobs, but not work. We pursue careers, but not vocations. We have turned our lives into a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder.

We are each responsible for the impact of our work on the world. We must be creative not destructive in our relationship to the world through our work. Work clears a space for ourselves, a clearing in the physical world where we can achieve our basic existential needs for security, respect and meaningful freedom. But not by injuring others, exploiting community or damaging the environment. We must assume responsibility even for the acts that harm the world, but our not our own. As Abraham Joshua Heschel was fond of saying, “All are not guilty but all are responsible.”

Today people and the environment serve the economy. That’s backward! The economy should serve people and the environment. This new philosophy of work can be neither individualistic nor collectivist. Neither held hostage to global capitalism not controlled by planned socialism. It must be grounded on a belief in localism and the principle of simplifying our wants, so that work becomes something that we love to do and not something that we have to do. If we simplify our wants to those needs, which are natural and necessary, and then seek to satisfy those needs locally, we will free ourselves to discover meaningful work. Work can be humanizing and a joyful expression of our talents and our own authentic way of being human. 

Recall the five principles of localism, the five R’s, which will provide the context to simplify our wants and return to a work that is joyful and creative realizing our full human potential. When we live more and consume less, we will experience the joy that is in intrinsic to life itself. The five R’s are:

Responsibility – we should govern our local communities through equal power relationships and peer practices of town hall meetings, citizen councils, rotational stewardship positions, and mentors. We need to return to some sense of real and genuine self-government and public participation.

Reduction – we should reduce our dependence on distant sources, whether governmental or commercial, for the provision of the necessary goods and services we need to live our lives.

Replacement  - we should replace goods and services acquired from remote sources with goods and services produced and provided locally.

Regeneration – we can regenerate the world through the practice of local innovation and creativity in finding new ways, and improving old ways, of meeting our needs.

Reconnecting – This is not a strategy of isolation or secession form either the national or global community, but a return to the only authentic source of political power – the people governing themselves at the local level. Upon the foundation of self-sustaining and self-governing local communities, we can reconnect community-to-community and then to our governments in the exchange of ideas, best practices, and in assisting less fortunate communities.

For more information on the type of communities such a vision suggests and how to manage them see my book, Deconstructing the Supermeme of Leadership, at https://goo.gl/MpBiWl.

Return to Community

“What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.”  -- Henry David Thoreau

We are only limited by our thinking. This is a self-imposed limitation. Whatever we can conceive, we can eventually achieve. Today’s dreams become tomorrow’s realities. So we must be careful what we dream. We must be cautious of what we conceive and express in words for what we imagine become seeds scattered in the winds of time, which eventually come to fruition in the plans and deeds of future generations. We could list the things, which are commonplace today, but only a few generations ago would have seemed impossible. Air travel, space travel, the Internet, cell phones, 3-D printing, and the list could go on for pages and pages! Among them are a few things that I believe have not been beneficial—the professionalization of management, work viewed as career, the collusion of big business with big government. It struck me just now as I wrote those words that the positive innovations have been in the area of technological products, while the negative innovations have been cultural, or in the realm of ideas and values by which we understand, use, and manage the technology.  

It reminds me of something E. O. Wilson said: The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.

It seems we have lost our ability to understand and then love nature and other human beings. Or, at least, we’ve allowed this ability to become withered and starved in our blind pursuit of the external goods of money, power, and status, where we seek to understand nature and other human beings only in order to exploit them more efficiently.

The wealth of nations is found in productive labor in local communities and in work done as vocation. Today global capitalism punishes productive labor and rewards those who trade in speculation and profit off the imbalance in markets and the exploitation of financial markets—all of which feeds off of productive labor without adding any value itself. Our political system will not fix this nor will big business. The only solution lies with ordinary people turning away from big government and big business and engaging in local economics and local self-government.  

We don’t need to work for large corporations. We don’t need to cooperate with a predatory mass consumer culture. We can return to and create authentic local cultures in our local communities. Work done in local communities, with local resources, and with local management becomes a vocation; work becomes healing and even sacred. Of course, work in local communities cannot be managed by professional managers and rank-based leaders. Work as vocation and genuine community require peer-based organization, design, and management, where we all share and participate in the competency of managing ourselves and our labor and in making the decisions, which govern our shared lives together.

I imagine neighborhoods, each having a corner lot with a multistoried vertical farm, where all the food they need year-round is grown. Next to it is a shop with a 3-D printer where all the equipment to maintain the vertical farm is made. I imagine local communities governing themselves through community councils and ensuring the well-being of each and every member of their community. Where education, food, shelter, health care, and even entertainment originate and are managed by the local community. In such authentic community, each person comes to feel irreplaceable in the affection and esteem of others, and everyone enjoys the satisfaction of his or her basic existential needs for security, respect, and meaningful freedom.

I have said and imagined more about this idea in my book: Deconstructing the Supermeme of Leadership: A Brief Invitation to Creating Peer-Based Communities & Leaderless Organizations. You may find the book here--http://goo.gl/qOeaue

LOCALISM SEEKING A PEOPLE

Paul Klee, the great Bauhaus artist, said:

Nothing can be rushed. It must grow. It should grow of itself. We must go on seeking it. We have found parts but not the whole! We still lack the ultimate power: for the people are not with us. But we seek a people. We have begun…more we cannot do.

Global capitalism is like a high-powered bullet train speeding towards a cliff of economic unsustainability, carrying all the people of the world, as well as the environment along as passengers. It was moments from the cliff bringing certain destruction to it and all the passengers when it came off the tracks and derailed (2008). A perfect time for the passengers to realize the ultimate destination of the train and get off, to choose a new mode of transportation, or at least to choose a different direction for the train! Sadly, instead of reevaluating the mode and direction of transportation, we are rushing to get the train back on track and race once more towards certain destruction over the cliff.     

We can choose differently. We can choose to refuse to cooperate with global capitalism. We can choose to accept more responsibility at the level of our neighborhoods and local communities to stay and manage resources locally. We can choose to reduce our own consumption of goods and services that come from distant sources. We can choose to replace those goods and services with those produced and sold locally, which support and build local businesses. We can choose to find creative ways to regenerate our local economies and local markets, which will employ and care for our local under and unemployed. We can choose to reconnect with other local communities in sharing best practices.    

The polyphonic voices in the world must be orchestrated into a beautiful symphony of human worth and dignity with a creative and productive diversity harmonized into a global network of local communities, rooted in the geography of place but aware of their interdependence with the global community. We have the technology to return to local communities and to stay globally connected. We only need a people. We seek a people.

The Destructive Consequences of the Professionalization of Management and the Loss of Work as Vocation – Further Negative Effects of the Supermeme of Leadership

To live in community and to work in organizations requires the arrangement, design, and management of human cooperation. The question is: How will we choose to arrange, design, and manage human cooperation? The supermeme of leadership leads us to believe the only way to do so is through the rank-based authority of leadership positions, where some one or some few are placed in charge over others to do the commanding and controlling of their cooperation. The supermeme of leadership is so unquestioned and all-powerful that most people cannot even envision any other way to order human cooperation and manage work than through leadership positions.   

In the twentieth century, with the rise of large and complex business organizations, the supermeme of leadership naturally led to the professionalization of management. This, I believe, has been disastrous for human wellbeing, and the twenty-first century is witnessing the catastrophic failure of this, now global, management system. The professional management taught in our business schools has systemized unsustainable business practices and created economies, which can no longer produce good jobs at livable wages.

With the professionalization of management, we also lost the notion of work as a vocation, where the work itself provided pleasure, meaning, and fulfillment. Today the goal is promotion, to advance up the ranks of management, and the work is secondary to maximizing profit. Work no longer possesses intrinsic value, but is to be manipulated to give the appearance of value, where the only measure of success is profit regardless of the affect on workers, society, or the environment. 

We need to recover the notion of the intrinsic value of work – that the skillful practice of our work is worthy of our commitment and care. We must realize that we can bring this attitude of skillful practice to almost any job to both ennoble the work and ourselves in the process. Work as vocation is to see the worth of work and the nobility of our dedication to produce meaningful goods and services, to improve our talents, and to serve others through the skillful practice of our labor.  

Of course, to recover the notion of work as vocation and to create authentically valuable work will require we reject the professionalization of management. To alienate decision-making from the work itself and locate it in some separate management position turns the skillful practice of work into the empty and meaningless repetition of coerced movements, robbing the worker of joy and the labor of significance. No, the management of decision-making must be both the responsibility and competence of every community member and each worker in our business organizations.

For more insight into these topics, please see my book - Deconstructing the SUPERMEME of Leadership: A Brief Invitation to Creating Peer-Based Communities & Leaderless Organizations. Available at amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Deconstructing-SUPERMEME-Leadership-Communities-Organizations-ebook/dp/B00MUGGEJ8/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dp_tMjfub0SPHME5_im

Reimagining How We Live & Work Together

We live in a world of incredible beauty, abundant resources, and much human goodness. Yet, too often life for many people is filled with ugliness, scarcity, and cruelty. There is a joy inherent in the simple fact of our existence and a happiness present in each moment. Yet, too often many people are caught up in anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. It doesn’t have to be this way.

A chief obstacle to living better, more productive, and flourishing lives is how we allow power and authority to be distributed and exercised in our communities and work organizations. We made a mistake when we decided that management should be a profession, instead of the competence of every single person residing in our communities and working in our organizations.

When management becomes a profession, power and authority get distributed through rank-based leadership positions, which distort the productive flow of information and resources through the community or organization. Unwittingly every business school, management curriculum, and leadership program contribute to the further decline of a healthy and robust economic system.

One telltale sign of the dysfunction of our professionalized management system is the continual need to regulate business and large corporations. A healthy system is self-regulating. The fact that we must regulate business and corporations today, otherwise they would destroy themselves and harm everyone else, reveals that they are unhealthy and dysfunctional. Government intervention in the economic system is not the answer.

We must fundamentally reimagine how we design and manage our communities and work organizations. This will be the great challenge of the 21^st century if we ever want to reach the potential present in our human nature and the possibilities found in our common human destiny.

That is exactly what I present in my new book, Deconstructing the Supermeme of Leadership: A Brief Invitation to Creating Peer-Based Communities and Leaderless Organizations. You’re probably asking yourself, “What the heck is a supermeme and what does he mean by deconstructing it?” Well, I invite you to purchase the book where those questions are answered. Join me in this exciting new project of creating communities and work organizations where beauty, abundance, and human goodness are the measures of our success, and each person is able to experience the joy and happiness present in each moment.  

Here is a look at the table of contents: 

Forward: Deconstructing Leadership

Chapter One: Supermemes, Idols, & Myths

Chapter Two: Power

Chapter Three: Power Relationships

Chapter Four: Conceptions of Authority—Rank-based versus Peer-based

Chapter Five: Emergence of Management Theory in the Twentieth Century

Chapter Six: Leaders, the MBA, & Leadership Programs in the Twentieth Century

Chapter Seven: Human Nature & the Nature of Community

Chapter Eight: Creating Peer-based Communities & Leaderless Organizations

Appendix One: Key Questions Regarding Leaderless Organizations

Appendix Two: The Practice of Localism in Peer-based Communities

Afterward: Becoming the Kind of Persons Who Can Flourish in Peer-based Communities and Thrive in Leaderless Organizations

You may find my book here: http://www.amazon.com/Deconstructing-SUPERMEME-Leadership-Communities-Organizations-ebook/dp/B00MUGGEJ8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409422684&sr=8-1&keywords=jeffrey+nielsen

The Rise of the Cult of Profit & the Loss of Business Purpose (An Opportunity for Localism)

What are the basic requirements for people to flourish as human beings and live good, meaningful lives of purpose and value? The simple answer is a person needs a few basic goods and services such as food and water, shelter and sanitation, along with education and health care. A person also needs the freedom to pursue his or her own unique goals and dreams and the opportunity to be respected as a valued member of their community. When so simply stated, it follows that work in organizations is an effective way to satisfy these basic needs and flourish as human beings. 

            This answer also illuminates why people need meaningful work to thrive. We discover three reasons why we need to work: one, to earn the income to acquire the basic goods and services we need to live a good life; two, to develop the talents and abilities to exercise effectively the freedom to achieve our dreams; and three, to make a lasting contribution to the wellbeing of others and become respected and valued members of our community.

            A business then, whether for profit or nonprofit, is an organization of physical and financial assets, people, and knowledge, brought together in order to satisfy our need for work and to produce the goods and services we need to prosper. So we can state the purpose of business as four-fold:

1.     To produce profitably some good or service that benefits someone who wants them.

2.     To pay employees adequately so they are able to purchase the goods and services needed to live well.

3.      To develop the capacities of people so they can effectively exercise their freedom to make a difference.

4.     To contribute to the larger community, which both supports and is supported by the business in an interdependent relationship of society and economy.       

A successful business must effectively balance these four purposes. A business cannot be imbalanced for long without doing great damage to the people and world around it. It cannot neglect any one purpose for the sake of any other purpose, nor can it privilege one purpose at the expense of any other purpose. To do so harms the business, harms the people in the business, and harms society itself. The art of management is to balance the four-fold purpose of business and create the conditions for people to flourish as human beings. It seems obvious that we are failing.

Why are we failing? Our current “recovery” is pretty much a jobless recovery, as have been the last few economic periods following recessions. The jobs that are created tend to be part-time and/or low paying jobs, so people end up being underemployed and see their earnings and benefits shrinking. Since the 1970’s even though worker productivity has risen, middle class working families have seen their incomes stagnate or decrease, and poverty has risen to a 17-year high. Today the gap between the top 1% of income and wealth holders and the rest of us is greater than at any other time since the Great Depression. Yet, while most working families are barely hanging on to economic survival, CEO pay has risen 725 percent and now the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay is 354 to 1.* By any objective reflection, this is neither wise nor sustainable.

Two great organizational thinkers, Charles Handy and Peter Drucker, both of whom are very much pro-business and could never be considered anti-capitalist, recognized this dangerous trend back in the 80’s and 90’s. The pursuit of profit and the enrichment of the individual at the expense of everything else was becoming the driving motivation in business practices. The cult of profit had enslaved the economy. As a young man in the 1980’s, I remember speaking with my friends, and all we could talk about was how to make a lot of money quickly and with little effort. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was a popular TV show of the time and characterized the ambitions and attitudes of many. In an essay entitled, “The Lure of the Zeros,” Handy said:

Money is not the root of all evil; St Paul was careful to say that it was the love of money which was the problem. But I wonder if you really can see straight with all those zeros in front of you, still disentangle right from wrong, above all still be true to yourself in spite of the numbers.

Drucker said way back in 1974 in his book, Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices:

The profit motive and its offspring maximization of profits are just as irrelevant to the function of a business, the purpose of a business, and the job of managing a business. In fact, the concept is worse than irrelevant: it does harm.

Of course, there is nothing wrong or evil with either profit or wealth. As Drucker pointed out, profit is a necessary measure of the validity of a business, but when it becomes the sole purpose, everyone suffers. Similarly wealth is both desirable and good, but not for its own sake, only in so far as it contributes to a meaningful life of purpose and value, which is possible even without great wealth. 

We could begin in our management councils to measure the performance of our businesses against the four-fold purpose and strive to find a balance. Sadly, it might just be that big business and large corporations are too committed to the cult of profit to adjust their business practices. It just might be that most CEO’s are too attached to the self-enrichment mindset to reign-in their exorbitant salaries. It just might be that our political system is too polarized and inefficient to make a meaningful difference. Yet there still might be a silver lining to the ongoing economic insecurity and hardship faced by the American middle class and workers around the world. As they see the wealth gap only increasing and their opportunities only decreasing, they just might realize the solution to their ongoing plight is to build business and economic security at the local level.

At the local level we can form businesses that will respect the human need for work and realize an authentic balance between business’s four-fold purpose. At the local level we can begin to produce the basic goods and services we all need to live well. At the local level we can create meaningful opportunities for people to develop their talents and abilities and contribute to the wellbeing of their neighbors. At the local level each person can be recognized as an esteemed and important member of the community. So we can continue to stagger on hoping without reason that big business and big government will save us in our current economic troubles, or we can seize the opportunity to recreate economic prosperity for all beginning at the local level.

*  Sources – U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.” Money.cnn.com/2011/02/16. Stateofworkingamerica.org. huffingtonpost.com.

The Promise of Localism and Peter Drucker’s Post-Capitalist Society

Peter Drucker, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 96, was one of the wise persons of the twentieth century and certainly its most influential organizational consultant. In a book published in 1993, called Post-Capitalist Society, he argued that every few hundred years societies go through difficult transitional periods resulting in a new society with new values, new beliefs, and new political and economic practices. He believed the world was going through just such a sharp transformation that would end about 2020 with a rearranged global society. The driving force of this transformation was the knowledge worker, and the new society that would emerge around 2020, he called the Post-Capitalist Society.

            Drucker was quick to point out that Post-Capitalist Society would not be anti-capitalist or non-capitalist. Free enterprise would still be the key to integrating economic markets, but the old Capitalist means of production of land, labor, and capital would be replaced by knowledge as the crucial resource. Knowledge does not function the same way and so cannot be managed the same way as land, labor, and capital, hence this new society would be Post-Capitalism but not post-free enterprise. He did not specify exactly what the new society would look like, but he did persuasively argue that something new was in the process of being born, which would be characterized by new values, new beliefs, and new political and economic practices.

            Capitalism in the twentieth century led to the emergence of big business and big government, both of which are now failing to meet the needs of the vast majority of people, whether workers or citizens. They are neither nimble enough nor wise enough to manage knowledge workers, but in fact treat knowledge as if it were just another version of the old means of production. The challenges we face today around the world, whether climate change, conflict, poverty, health care, or full employment can be successfully met, but not by either big business or big government, and we will waste valuable time if we continue to look there. Just how might Post-Capitalist Society look and how might it successfully solve these problems? As Drucker realized whatever emerges will be a function of what the conditions in the environment allow and of the choices we humans make.

            The conditions we face today are both positive, which will make certain choices possible, and negative, which will constrain certain other choices. For instance, knowledge workers have brought us 3-D printers and vertical farming, which are examples of positive conditions that, along with other new and innovative technologies, will soon make possible self-sufficiency at the local level. In the near future, the food a community needs and the tools to farm it can be produced at the local level.

Examples of negative conditions, which constrain our choices, are climate change and the growing disparity of income and wealth between the one-percenters and the rest of us. So relying on distant resources will become less and less sustainable and meeting our basic needs will better be found in solidarity with one another at the local level, not by waiting for assistance from those “above” us and far away. Given the possibilities and limits of these conditions, we must be very thoughtful about the choices we make – the choices that will give shape to Post-Capitalist Society.

I believe our best hope to create a prosperous and joyful future depends on guiding our choices by the five principles of Localism as already set forth in this blog – the principles of responsibility, reduction, replacement, regeneration, and reconnection. (See post dated Monday, August 6, 2012) Following these principles the center of gravity for the new values, beliefs, and political and economic practices of Post-Capitalist Society will be our local communities. Given the knowledge worker and the new technologies of Post-Capitalist Society, a new social contract is possible, where we care for both the environment and our fellow human beings at the level of our local communities. Given the failures and impotence of both big government and big business, we must engage knowledge and the knowledge worker at the local level if we want to flourish in the twenty-first century. The promise of localism is that we can best care for others, our community, the world, and ourselves and experience deep connection, kindness, hospitality, and a greater sense of the joy of being human with one another at the local level.  

Some more thoughts on the principles of localism: Principle Three – Regeneration

We are pilgrims in an unfinished universe. We are co-creators of our collective future. It should be a future we accomplish, not through coercion and force, but through the subtle influence of persuasion, cooperation, and joy.

- From the Myth of Leadership: Creating Leaderless Organizations

Principle Three – Regeneration (regenerate the world at the local level through the practice of innovation and creativity in finding new ways, and improving old ways, of meeting our needs in our local communities):

I always find inspiration in E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful. On page 35 of the new Harper-Perennial edition, we find his three suggestions to scientists and technologists of the 21^st century – suggestions to regenerate our communities at the local level. He says,

We need methods and equipment, which are:

-       Cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone;

-       Suitable for small-scale application; and

-       Compatible with man’s need for creativity.

As begin to practice the five principles of localism (reduction, replacement, regeneration, responsibility, and reconnection), these three objectives should guide our job creation in local industry in a manner that is environmentally healthy and economically sustainable.

There are today innovative companies around the world seeking to do this. One great example of this effort is PlantLab, a Dutch agricultural engineering company focused on developing the technology to make possible indoor local food production. (See http://www.plantlab.nl/4.0/) They are developing the technology for local communities to grow all the food they need locally. Local communities should become active in partnering with innovative companies, like Plantlab, and seeking to solve our human problems at the human scale of localism.

As local communities become both more self-sustaining and self-governing, they can begin to export best practices and ideas to assist other communities in meeting the needs of community members at the local level (Principle Five – Reconnecting).   

We possess the wisdom, the competence, and the resources to create a world where each human might flourish and satisfy his or her deep existential needs for respect and security. Such potential, however, will only become the reality when we focus and work at the local level.

Some Thoughts on Principle One of Localism - Reductionism

The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not for every man’s greed.

                                                                                    - Gandhi

Principle One – Reductionism (decrease our dependence on distant and external sources for the provision of necessary goods and services):  I have often thought that we live in a world of incredible abundance and beauty when measured by our basic human needs to live good lives, but we live in a world of great violence and scarcity as measured against our actual practice of driving economic growth with our limitless desires. The ancient philosopher, Epicurus, suggested that nature easily supplies what is required to simply satisfy our real needs, while our desires for unnecessary things will constantly upset our happiness.

Epicurus taught that only three things were required for human happiness.

1.              Friends

2.              Freedom or self-sufficiency

3.              A reflective life

He believed many fail to meet these three simple requirements, and so fail to be happy, in large part because they fail to distinguish the different types of wants they experience. (He realized long ago what happiness psychologists are now empirically confirming; namely, we are terrible at knowing what will truly make us happy.) Epicurus said the first type of want is natural and necessary. This is a desire for those things that are both harmonious with a good life and required for it as well. These were wants that had to be satisfied in order to live a good life, and yet nature had made these things easy to acquire – things like enough food and shelter to be neither hungry nor homeless. The second type of wants were natural but unnecessary. So these are things that are harmonious with a good life but not required. These might be things like cell phones, TV’s, many electronic devices, etc. The third type of want was for things that were both unnatural and unnecessary. These were things that were not only not required to live a good life but would also jeopardize your ability to live a good life. Any of our needs taken to an extreme become unnatural and unnecessary – large homes, big cars, designer clothes, over eating, etc. His basic idea was that if we could simplify our wants to be congruent with our natural and necessary wants, then we’d have more time to pursue those activities that actually increase our sense of living a good life – more time with family and friends, and more time to engage in self-reflection. Yet our world seems to incite people to chase after unnatural and unnecessary wants and so to lose their freedom to indebtedness and have no time for friends or self-examination.

I had a student, not too long ago, decide to take yellow post-it notes and go around her apartment and label all her possessions as natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, or unnatural and unnecessary. Her goal was to get rid of all the unnatural and unnecessary items, to find ways to minimize all the natural but unnecessary items, and then from that point on before any purchase she would ask, “Is this item natural and necessary?” If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t buy it. She told me this exercise was fantastically liberating and freed her mind from financial anxiety and envy. She discovered surplus time to spend with family and friends, and more opportunities to enjoy community. All experiences that have a greater and more long lasting affect on our sense of wellbeing than the acquisition of more and more material goods and services.

Localism, in part through the principle of reductionism, leads us to simplify our wants to those that can be satisfied locally and aids us in achieving the three objectives Epicurus claimed essential for our own happiness.