The main drawback with industrialism is that it must industrialize everything. Based on the mechanical efficiency of the assembly line, it has a rapacious appetite for resources in the right place at the right time. Along this assembly line, there is no tolerance for inefficiency or failure. Every actor has a function, a place, and a time -- a synchronous rhythm -- dictated to it by the relentless purpose of the mechanism. An arrhythmic, dysfunctional, or dislocated actor becomes a liability that must be eliminated and replaced. The problem with industrializing humankind is that the human race is not, and cannot be treated as, a mechanism. Its cohesion is socially organic, not mechanical, and the relationships it engenders cannot be dictated but must be inspired.

 

An unavoidable obstacle to the rule of industrialism is that mankind is the one burred cog in an otherwise perfect wheel. To industry, such nonconformity is intolerable. Yet, though men have learned to make machines that make machines, fortunately for mankind, he is still needed to make the machines that make the machines that make machines. But the truth is that technology is progressing, if one dares label it progress, toward making mankind obsolete.

 

Obsolescence, whether planned or the unintended byproduct of haste and greed, is the driving force behind industry. Factories can only stay in business so long as the products they manufacture can be made obsolete. If ever those products lose their obsolescence, the factory will lose its influence within society. So, products are designed with the flaws that insure the consumer will need to replace them. In short, industry stays in business not by creating a good product but by creating a bad product cleverly disguised as a good product. Sadly, consumers richly reward those industries that deceive them best. Meanwhile, we fill our landfills with truckloads of planned obsolescence while polluting our water with the toxic byproducts of the processes needed to produce them.

 

Whether or not we have intended it, industrialism is a six-foot hole in the ground in which we are preparing to bury ourselves. When all the consumers are dead and buried under piles of toxic trash, who will be left to buy the products we've conspired so efficiently to manufacture?

 

Industry wants to speed things up. But there is a limit, called 'the pace of nature', which, if ignored, actually becomes a threat to the very ideals industry was invented to serve. And what are those industrial ideals so ensconced in the psyche of modern man? 1) That consumption is more important than the pastime of enjoying what is produced. 2) That the process of labor is repugnant and to be avoided, whenever possible and at all costs. 3) That efficiency is paramount and that inefficiency should be eliminated. 4) That the only way to get more time or money is to spend more time and money producing things that save time and make money. And 5) that all this effort and efficiency will in some way reveal or amplify the intrinsic value of man.

 

But man is not a machine! He is not a mechanism, he is an organism, and it is not in the pursuit of mechanics that the intrinsic value of man is magnified or revealed but in the pursuit of something far more organic. Mankind is demeaned by the loss of the organic relationships God has created him to enjoy. To the degree that industry is a diminutive factor in mankind's development of organic relationships, to that same degree mankind is degraded. And wherever mankind is degraded, his actions inevitably reflect that degradation in a perpetually compounded depravity that threatens to label him as inefficient, disposable, and obsolete.

 

To war against this human obsolescence, social engineers have industrialized education and exalted 'specialization', hoping to stem the tide of degradation and depravity. Such evolutionary development, it is thought, will make our lives more rewarding. Yet, to the contrary, through industrial education, we are limiting our ability to engage in the full scope of human experience so available in the world around us. By choosing to specialize in one industrial field we are automatically excluding ourselves from the rewards of all others. This "trained incapacity" has not only separated us from a broad spectrum of rich and rewarding opportunities, it has also largely restricted our social venue, preventing us from developing meaningful relationships beyond our field of industrial expertise.

 

We are no longer seen, by ourselves or by our governments, as homogenous communities of distinct individuals. Rather, we are viewed as collections of consumer trends, departments with specialized abilities, office-sized cubicles of humanity, thrust into the industrial stratosphere of perpetually unprecedented growth. But on a planet bought and paid for several times over by consumers subject to the fickle dynamics of industrial greed and need, centuries of commerce and war have, so far, failed to instill in us a genuine sense of ownership of the land we live on. Industry, whether commercial or military, has failed to give us ownership because it requires the rent (taxes) of its wage-slaves to keep it solvent. Ultimately, land is a freedom that industry cannot afford to give its laborers.

 

The antidote to the industrial degradation of humankind is not 'specialization' and the relative significance and notoriety it brings. Rather, the antidote to industrial degradation is to pursue a more wholesome agrarian lifestyle. The mechanics of industrial evolution will never erase the threat of human obsolescence or produce the satisfaction of noble, seemingly less efficient, human choices. As inefficient and illogical as it seems to the industrial mind, compassion for one's neighbor and for the environment we share with him -- not industry -- is the answer to the looming threat of human obsolescence.

 

So, what does a more wholesome lifestyle look like? In contrast to industrial ideals, the "holistic ideals" we must embrace in our generation are these: 1) That our lifestyle must leave room for man to truly enjoy, long-term and without fear of untimely obsolescence, the products he has labored so hard to provide for those he loves. 2) That labor is a pastime to be enjoyed as much as, if not more than, the product being produced. 3) That the motivational process (how you do things), not efficient production (what you do), is paramount and that holistic processes should be encouraged and rewarded. 4) That time is more valuable than money and, regardless of what commodity you are aspiring to gain, that you can never truly spend your way out of debt. Lacking the time to do what you want most, you must spend less time doing what you like least. This does not mean that we abandon work, but that we transform our work into a venue for genuine social benevolence and self-esteem. Craftsmanship and neighborliness must replace mass production quotas as the bedrock of genuine value and real wealth. And, 5) that man's value is truly intrinsic, God-endowed, and cannot be amplified or diminished either by our effort, by our efficiency, or by our neglect. Yet, it can be revealed, more or less, through our stewardship of resources, or lack thereof. Our stewardship of resources, including non-quantifiable resources such as time and relationships, and, thereby, our conduct, reflects the glory of God and displays our intrinsic value.

 

How is a more holistic lifestyle adopted? Here are a few generic admonitions:

1) Slow down! Speed hastens death.

2) In all labor, both in the process and in the product, there is profit.

3) Our ways are more important than our works.

4) Our time is an audition for eternity.

5) Our highest intrinsic value is to reflect God's glory. In this regard, both obedience and neglect reap their due rewards.

 

Industrialism is a blight only where we've allowed it to dominate our lives. But it is never too late to move toward the redemption of the earth we've nearly destroyed through negligence and greed. Wherever progress proceeds at nature's pace, a pace most lifetime farmers understand well, there is still hope for our world. And yet, I harbor no hope of complete redemption until the Lord returns. The day He comes back, to judge the earth, I wonder how much of our prized industrialism will be able to withstand the scrutiny of His holy gaze?

 

Scripture says, "The meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace" (Psalm 37:11). I've never met a meek industrialist, though there must be at least a few, but most farmers I've met have been meek. My guess is that there are more 'meek' farmers than industrialists and that Jesus is more likely to give the earth as an inheritance to those that know how to care for it than to those who have proven, beyond any doubt, they know how to exploit it.

 

Michael Hennen