This article is a bit of a stretch but contains a few good reasons to buy local just temper your enthusiasm to avoid becoming food fascists......
Don't go loco, buy local
Small jurisdictions in Maine continue to proclaim food sovereignty. It appears that every couple of months, a new locality declares their right to grow their own food while supporting local farmers, artisans, makers of clothes and fishermen. Many of these locavores argue that it is only via food sovereignty and local rule that we can be truly free of corporate and government rule.
In the late 1930s, Fromm broke with the Institute of Social Research and with Escape from Freedom began publishing a series of books which would win him a large audience.
Escape From Freedom argued that alienation from soil and community in the transition from feudalism to capitalism increased insecurity and fear.
Documenting some of the strains and crises of individualism, Fromm attempted to explain how alienated individuals would seek gratification and security from social orders such as fascism.
To fascism, I would add the consumerism hiding underneath the shirt tales of corporatism, which is nothing less than the old feudal class system re-dressed under a different name.
Does any of this help you with feeling alienated in our age of computers, televisions, and other mind-numbing contraptions to keep you entertained and mesmerized?
According to psychologists like Abraham Maslow, it appears that human beings want to experience a sense of belonging as their foundations.
Where do we get our sense of belonging?
How will the economy look if more local food ordinances happened throughout the nations?
There are several possibilities including:
1. It will encourage people to get all their needs met locally. Perhaps a person who loves to build can thrive in building compost toilets or perhaps someone who loves to knit can create clothes for others while using local materials (e.g., wool from sheep);
2. The goods will be of higher quality. If you loved to knit, how would you feel if the sweater you designed and made fell apart on your neighbor's shoulder the first day she wore it? Furthermore, how would that affect your business and even your friendships?
3. A person's craftsmanship will be advertisement enough, thus your intelligence won't be insulted with blonde, anorexic women and abnormally muscular men trying to entice you into buying beer while engaging you into shop-till-you-drop escapades.
4. There would be full employment with people supporting the community in line with their talents, passions and training.
5. Communities and individuals would be independent in creating their lives in relation to how they saw fit instead of trying to be pigeon holed into a category of work or philosophical/spiritual/theoretical/political philosophy.
References:
Information regarding Eric Fromm ( http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell9.htm ).
OpEdNews - Article: Re-Empowering Localities
By Burl Hall
Burl works full-time with families containing children at-risk for out-of-home placement, primarily kids that are involved with the juvenile justice system.
Don't go loco, buy local
Small jurisdictions in Maine continue to proclaim food sovereignty. It appears that every couple of months, a new locality declares their right to grow their own food while supporting local farmers, artisans, makers of clothes and fishermen. Many of these locavores argue that it is only via food sovereignty and local rule that we can be truly free of corporate and government rule.
In the late 1930s, Fromm broke with the Institute of Social Research and with Escape from Freedom began publishing a series of books which would win him a large audience.
Escape From Freedom argued that alienation from soil and community in the transition from feudalism to capitalism increased insecurity and fear.
Documenting some of the strains and crises of individualism, Fromm attempted to explain how alienated individuals would seek gratification and security from social orders such as fascism.
To fascism, I would add the consumerism hiding underneath the shirt tales of corporatism, which is nothing less than the old feudal class system re-dressed under a different name.
Does any of this help you with feeling alienated in our age of computers, televisions, and other mind-numbing contraptions to keep you entertained and mesmerized?
According to psychologists like Abraham Maslow, it appears that human beings want to experience a sense of belonging as their foundations.
Where do we get our sense of belonging?
How will the economy look if more local food ordinances happened throughout the nations?
There are several possibilities including:
1. It will encourage people to get all their needs met locally. Perhaps a person who loves to build can thrive in building compost toilets or perhaps someone who loves to knit can create clothes for others while using local materials (e.g., wool from sheep);
2. The goods will be of higher quality. If you loved to knit, how would you feel if the sweater you designed and made fell apart on your neighbor's shoulder the first day she wore it? Furthermore, how would that affect your business and even your friendships?
3. A person's craftsmanship will be advertisement enough, thus your intelligence won't be insulted with blonde, anorexic women and abnormally muscular men trying to entice you into buying beer while engaging you into shop-till-you-drop escapades.
4. There would be full employment with people supporting the community in line with their talents, passions and training.
5. Communities and individuals would be independent in creating their lives in relation to how they saw fit instead of trying to be pigeon holed into a category of work or philosophical/spiritual/theoretical/political philosophy.
References:
Information regarding Eric Fromm ( http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell9.htm ).
OpEdNews - Article: Re-Empowering Localities
By Burl Hall
Burl works full-time with families containing children at-risk for out-of-home placement, primarily kids that are involved with the juvenile justice system.
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