Notes from Day Seven: Plant closures, call centres and alternatives part two

Last week I commented on the shutdown of Caterpillar operations in London and I hinted that there's something unhealthy about the way we usually think about economic development. The problem I suggested is twofold. First, we now accept it as normal to have an economy where companies can locate, close down and then relocate only for the benefit of the shareholders of the company while those most impacted, the employees and the local community, are left high and dry.

Second, we also accept it as normal that shareholders grow richer on the backs of the millions of people around the planet who are displaced from their local communities or ancestral homes and wind up living in crowded urban centres, if not the great slums of the planet. There they work in call centres, dirty industries and the mills that produce our designer jeans and tablets. By “ancestral homes” I don't mean only the lands of North America from which Native North Americans have been driven, I am also thinking of European-Canadians who once lived in the villages and farms of this country but have been forced to leave those communities out of economic necessity. Of course, other examples of this from around the world are legion.

Many writers and activists have been at work trying to offer alternatives. It's extremely difficult to do that year after year because by and large, the powers that be behave as if there is only one game in town: the game of a web- and oil-driven, heavily militarized, industrial, global economy. Yes, this economy will give us lots of “cool stuff” and surplus food — for a while. But it comes at a colossal price. When it has run its course, there will hopefully be enough of the planet left for people to do well, but the chances of that being the outcome grow smaller every hour.

Canada plays its part in this economic juggernaut. We offer our tar sands oil to the furnace of rapid progress in exchange for jobs for unemployed Ontarians and East Coasters, and for the opportunity for all Albertans to purchase a third SUV.

It is understandable that government looks to big business to keep people employed and doing something productive. After all, no MP wants to see the unemployed grow into a permanent, growing class of hungry people apt to riot in the streets. And I am serious about this last comment. Keeping people involved in positive activities like education and work is extremely important. And every political leader rightly fears the breakdown of whatever systems we have in place to preserve such activities.

All that being said, can't alternative thinkers be given a more serious hearing? One who I think deserves it is Wendell Berry. Berry has been writing about the evaporation of the family farm and what it means for modern society. He writes out of the American context, however, that is not entirely his own fault. He apparently was born there. Anyway, many Canadians I have met celebrate his work.

On Farming and Food (Counterpoint, 2009, with introduction by Michael Pollan) is a terrific collection of essays by Berry. On the one hand, it laments a number of related currents of our modern world. We buy items for their low price. We don't really care much where they come from. (I think I noticed recently that even the city of Guelph, once renowned for its ban of big box stores, has relented and is now letting Walmart into the city.) Hidden in the actual production of many items is the tremendous amount of oil required to produce and transport our goods. While we consume more and more — indeed we are reminded by Parliament Hill (and Capitol Hill) daily that we must consume our way out of recession back into economic prosperity — we derive less and less satisfaction from our consumption. While we are required to make more and more stuff, we like our part in the game less and less — and won't those two realities eventually collide?

On the other hand, drawing inspiration especially from the Christian Amish communities of the United States, Berry generates an alternative vision for the future, not one that is divorced from modern realities, but one that tries to work with them while at the same time recovering the strengths of older, more durable approaches to the economy and to community. To be continued.

In the meantime, why not take a drive through Amish country north and east of London and visit a local farmers' market?

Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.