Husband, father, son, brother, friend, entrepreneur, urbanist, and wilderness lover.
Ten years ago in Mexico it was the normal thing to be born and die in one’s own home and to be buried by one’s friend’s. Only the soul’s needs were taken care of by the institutional church. Now to begin and end life at home become signs of either poverty or of special privilege. Dying and death have come under the institutional management of doctors and undertakers.
– Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, published in 1971
The celebrated anthropologist Clifford Geertz has half-jokingly suggested that all states can be parceled into four types: pluralist, in which the state is seen by its people as having moral legitimacy; populist, in which government is viewed as an expression of the people’s will; “great beast,” in which the rulers’ power depends on using force to keep the populace cowed; and “great fraud,” in which the elite uses smoke and mirrors to convince the people of its inherent authority. Every state is a mix of all of these elements…
Charles Mann, describing the pre-Columbian states in North and South America, in his excellent book, 1491
The craftsman is proud of what he has made, and cherishes it, while the consumer discards things that are perfectly serviceable in his restless pursuit of the new.
Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft
Geoffrey Graham 