Why I Wrote for The Whole Earth Catalog, and Why My Views Have Not Changed
April 8, 2009
I wrote one article in The Whole Earth Catalog and one in the Whole Earth Epilog. The first was in 1970. I recommended buying silver coins. The second was on the Dvorak keyboard layout.
I may have written more, but that is what I recall.
Recently, the Harvard Business organization ran an article on Stewart Brand, who founded the Whole Earth Catalog
Brand runs a foundation, the Long Now Foundation, in San Francisco.
He is still in the counter-culture.
That counter-culture's elements hardly seem threatening today. Respect the land and learn to grow your own food -- how radical! Recycle garbage into compost to fertilize the gardens -- doubly radical! Make your own herbal tea, cut electricity use, preserve water, ride bicycles or walk -- how revolutionary! Share your living space with other people and create a sense of community -- over the top! Be skeptical of establishments, and value the earth more than earthly assets -- too much! Make love, not war -- what will they think of next?
I don't see many people doing much of this. My wife recycles trash. I don't. My time and the cost-per-mile of the trip are too valuable. I think the same of hers, but I don't complain. (She won't read this article. She will be driving from Mississippi today.)
What Brand did was to get these ideas acceptable. Once they were acceptable, almost nobody actually implemented them. That's the problem with radical ideas. When they cease to be radical, they fade.
The writer concludes: "But the changes did not stick. The benign 1960s counter-culture morphed into excess and even pathology; the establishment did not budge; America's economic dominance was ascendant; and yesterday's hippies became investment bankers." The classic example was Jerry Rubin. He became a bond salesman.
Green awareness. A recent newspaper article featured a family that is recycling its household water, thereby feeling virtuous while cutting their water bill. What struck me most was how laborious their efforts were -- emptying buckets of water from the shower to reuse for dish-washing isn't that much less time-consuming than the efforts of villagers I visited in India who carried containers back and forth from the village clean water sanitation supply. And all that effort just for water.
The value of our time is high. In India, they have low-output time because they have so little capital. They are into recycling because they are poor.
The justification for implementing a little of this is that there could be a social breakdown. But urban living would be too dangerous and difficult if anything happened that is bad enough to make these practices cost-effective.
What about electricity, fuel, air quality? We need integrated systems, diagnostic tools, and easy-to-use devices that can be applied and maintained without requiring enormous individual effort. Where are the smarter systems that integrate across utilities and help people monitor and make strategic choices? We need systematized tools that work in office buildings as well as homes.
These are public monopolies. They control distribution. I wish there were cost-effective alternatives, but they are not here yet, or if they are, I can't locate them. I would like to . . . for a place 20 miles out of town.
Second, self-sufficiency becomes popular in recessions, the author says. My time is valuable, so I cannot afford self-sufficiency. Neither can you. But a garden is a good idea, just for practice. Non-hybrid seeds are wise. The food grown in your garden tastes better. But, time-wise, it's very expensive food.
Third, we have adopted healthy behaviors. I have always been into that. I'm a healthy food guy. I take vitamins. I live a quiet life. What that has to do with The Whole Earth Catalog is not clear to me. Prevention had more to do with it nationally, I think.
"Exercise tops the list of do-it-yourself health-promoting behaviors." But Jane Fonda was the biggie here, not Stewart Brand.
Then there was communal living.
Okay, that still sounds radical. But consider the possibilities, especially for an aging population. Instead of warehousing sicker older people in nursing homes and healthier ones in retirement communities, why not finally enable unrelated people to live together in residential areas currently zoned for single families? Conchy Bretos, a Miami activist, has turned the idea of assisted living in housing projects into a prize-winning enterprise.
This is a dream for the very rich. This is not how most people grow old and die.
All in all, Stewart Brand's lifestyle remains on the fringes of modern life. That is because it's more convenient to be conventional. But, on the fringes of the American dream, we can opt out. We can plant a garden. We can exercise. I am doing it, after 60 years of not doing it. We can modify our lives at the margin.
The division of labor giveth. The contraction of the division of labor taketh away. There will be contraction.