Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [110]
A threshing bee or a barn-raising is a kind of work-out, festivity, and test of wits all rolled into one. Because of the ongoing richness of the rewards, there’s little time-pressure. They even have a term for time in the local community, "slow time," which they contrast with the hectic pace of the world around them, "fast time." Some individuals in the group choose to take on more work than others, but the overall tenor of the community is serene. The secret comes in fine-tuning the amount and kind of technology they use.
Question: How do the Minimites decide on what technology to use or not use?
Answer Simply by taking the time to think deeply about the alternatives. If there is one underlying secret, it is a virtue they call "Gelassenheit," or self-surrender, which flows from their Christian religious heritage. Gelassenheit is the exact opposite of the modern push-button mentality, which promises that by pressing a key, you can get what you want, when you want, and how you want it. Under Gelassenheit, you wait for the answer to show itself, whether through patient observation, longstanding experience, or serendipitous insight. You test possibilities before committing to any. You don’t get instant results. You wait for ideas and experience to come to fruition. You prepare yourself for the unexpected.
Question: Can you give an example of the community deciding to not use some technology we all use?
Answer When I was in the community, there was a debate under way about the use of telephones. By common agreement, phones were not allowed in people’s homes, but there was no rule against using pay phones. The trouble was that, in order to set up times with outside vegetable distributors, members were running back and forth in buggies to faraway gas stations to make calls. This was becoming a kind of rat race. It was finally agreed that pay phones should be used only for emergencies or urgent business dealings, but only with extreme discretion. In the members’ minds, face-to-face communication was much more important that making phone calls.
Question: What about the average person today? Wouldn’t it be difficult to try to live like a Minimite?
Answer I think the main difficulty would be to accept that it would be easier. We’re so used to a complex, scattered workload that has piled up incrementally that we can’t imagine gaining more leisure by reversing the trend. The only antidote is a kind of trust, a leap of faith, Gelassenheit, if you will. Admittedly, there may be one tangible obstacle too: the net effect of everyone else’s technological choices and the sprawling, modern environment we live in.
Question: How does your family live in St. Louis today?
Answer Mary and I and our three children have adapted the principle of "minimation" to the urban environment in St. Louis, by thinking of ourselves as amphibians_able to swim in different media and leap from one to another. By choosing an older urban neighborhood where most basic services are close, and by working at home, we can get around easily by foot or bicycle most of the time. We sometimes even pile the whole family in my pedal-powered rickshaw to go to church (one of my income sources today is carting people around St. Louis in my rickshaw). But to deal with the occasional need to negotiate the freeway or to travel out of the city, we procured a back-up form of transit: a 1983 Honda. Nonetheless, because of our neighborhood’s compactness, we can readily minimize the use of the car.
We don’t have a television, computer, automatic washing machine, or any kitchen appliances except a small refrigerator, all in the hopes of restoring social and physical dimensions of daily life. Our washing machine, handmade by a Minimite, has an easy swing-handled action, and Mary looks forward to the laundry as a kind of aerobic workout. In lieu of a computer at