Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [58]
We exchanged a few pleasantries. He seemed to breathe his words rather than speak them, in a voice deep and quavering. Then, with little ado he went to the point, as if he were resuming a conversation we had recently left off.
The Minimite community, he bemoaned, was too affluent! “In the Bible you don’t find any reference to the use of horses. They were used then, but not by the early Christians. Christ rode on a donkey one time, but they had to go find someone to borrow it from. That shows they didn’t own any themselves. The only way they traveled was on foot or by ship. On foot or by ship.” The last words he repeated didactically, as if trying to impress the lesson upon me.
He realized that life had changed after two thousand years, but he felt that the standard of living in biblical times was adequate. No one in the local community, he admitted, paid much attention to him.
“But there’s only one of you in this house,” I said, half-jesting, “Maybe if there were twelve they’d listen more closely.”
He nodded and laughed. Then he explained how he had gradually arrived at his present viewpoint. He too had grown up in the Lancaster settlement, which he viewed now as egregiously worldly, a mecca of hedonism. There he had had a good-paying job. At that time, even though he was surrounded by farmland, he bought all his food at the grocery store. He’d always purchase whatever tempted him on the spur of the moment, telling himself he had a good income, he could afford it, he could take life easy. But he gradually noticed the “reverse” taking place. Though his job gave him flexible hours, he inevitably worked overtime in order to buy more refined, processed foods.
“I’ve noticed,” he said, “that’s generally the way it goes. Most of the work around here is just to turn the machine. To turn the machine.” He repeated the phrase with a wistful gravity. Here he had come to the crux of his position. On his own, living among the prosperous descendants of Menno, with no vast knowledge of sociology, he’d arrived at an observation not unlike that of Max Weber in his famous study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: the means by which the spiritually reborn demonstrated their righteousness were threatening to become their ends. The outward tokens of salvation or self-worth were starting to stand in place of the inner reality.
I almost murmured something about Edward. But even Cornelius admitted to having once succumbed. It was only a chance event that had led him to break the pattern. His parents decided to move to another county in Pennsylvania, and it was there, in his new position as schoolteacher, that he had reason to reread the Bible. One day he read the passage from Acts that told how the early Christians gave away their possessions and commenced to “hold all things in common.” Cornelius began to rethink his priorities and to scale back on his consumption.
His quest for simplicity finally led him here. Now he owned practically nothing and bartered for the things he did have. In return for teaching school for free and contributing to occasional work bees, he received a place to live, space for a garden, and use of the adjoining timber lot. He ate no meat or butter because his arteries were hardening and his pulmonary vessel was “partly blocked up.” This, alas, had compelled him to consider giving up teaching. But the neighbors would continue to help him out.
His life was as simple and serene as Thoreau’s, it seemed, with the difference that he acknowledged its dependence on community. (Thoreau accepted hand-outs too but, alas, kept quiet about their source—his friends and relatives in nearby Concord!)
“Do you think you’re getting enough protein?” I asked.
He thought so. He took care to include a mix of