The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment" -- that is, what surrounds us, we have already made a profound division between it an ourselves. We have given up the understanding -- dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought -- that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than they other.
Another decent possibility my critics implicitly deny is that of work as a gift_They assume__nd this is the orthodox assumption of the industrial economy__hat the only help worth giving is not given at all, but sold. Love, friendship, neighbourliness, compassion, duty__hat are they?
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Another decent possibility my critics implicitly deny is that of work as a gift_They assume__nd this is the orthodox assumption of the industrial economy__hat the only help worth giving is not given at all, but sold. Love, friendship, neighbourliness, compassion, duty__hat are they?
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Some say that "there is no such thing as free lunch". And, I ask, why not? The joy of giving without expecting anything in return from a particular source is simply magic.
But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing...and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, "I am a mechanic." At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job.
When you are stressed on mind...to pour it out, is the behaviour, most kind!
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.
However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy. All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative.