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('where the
heart is'), family and community are based on blood ties or on other
bases of familiarity: there are families by adoption and by choice,
and ultimately there is the human family.
Suppose you
grow your own vegetables. To find if this is 'ECONOMIC', the cost
of land, labour and materials has to be set against the 'market
value' of the product.
But suppose
the labour is to you rest and refreshment, the input is mostly organic
waste and the land is your own garden, that would never be available
for the agricultural industry, being as much your amenity or pleasure
and recreation as for food. How do you assess this in 'ECONOMIC'
balance?
In other
words this is an essential part of your chosen way of life. You
may seek to enrich your self within it, but to sacrifice your ease
and development and delight- the wealth/well-th you measure in your
own well being, for a style of wealth/wellth dictated by someone
else, is not for you development and progress but permanent impoverishment.
The point
is that 'ECONOMIC' measurements are marginal in so far as you live
a life of natural fulfillment. For centuries people struggled to
have their own independent homesteads beyond slavery and serfdom,
and they called this FREEDOM. Till this ideal was overwhelmed in
profiteering by the powerful few in the industrial revolution, and
we hardly know any longer what FREEDOM means.
But to grow
your own food and live in your own homestead is not tar removed
from the possibilities of our modern riches, and from the CULTURE
and way of life that many people seek today.
Go
to Page 11 (We have to do it, it's a new part:
PROFIT) * Go to Elizabeth's Page
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