Small villages

With the economy backsliding and the idea that our jobs market is pretty stagnant right now, might it be time to consider more protectionism?

I am not talking about downright closing off our borders but stopping the small towns from disappearing under the weight of trying to be big towns.

Over time, we have had to become more and more creative creatures. Once we settled in an area, we had to not only feed ourselves but give ourselves something to occupy our time. Then someone else came along, and another and another and, soon, we had consolidated resources. Eventually we even came up with another way, other than feeding ourselves and staving off boredom, to up the ante, give our towns more luster.

Industries came in, we took jobs, good jobs by the standards of having to support a farm with the income and putting it back into the land. Here we started to rely on others to provide for us, all we had to do was punch a clock.

Pretty soon every town had a radius of homes and settlements where people worked for the factory and services came in, the other time-wasting things we needed to stave off boredom or to make us feel better. Florists, dentists, restaurants, grouping our education, having a trained group to put out fires, a place to hold our miscreants when they strayed from the law. Everything seemed like it was working toward a better world.

But then the factory found someplace else to do it's work, or couldn't compete with someone with more capital. Soon the factory cut staff until it couldn't keep it's doors opened. The town panicked, consolations were made, wages cut, stores closed. Suddenly the next generation saw the reality that life here wouldn't be permanent and decided to move on, not to be replaced.

And here we are, several generations beyond the beginning of the American tragedy of greed and profit margins. Many of us end up working for someone, educated to work for someone else and, some, unable to cope with the reality that our essential mission in life, to survive, is compromised but what we were taught, what we were told.

But there is hope. It is hope that we are not dead nor or on the edge of ending. We are a resourceful creature, capable of many good things and have a willingness to do better than previous generations.

Maybe it is time that we look inward, to those around us. Maybe it isn't about who has bigger or more but understanding that we are all in this world together. When crisis hits, we suddenly find funds to help out. When we have excess, we give to charity. What better charity is there but our own small tribes, our villages on the periphery? If we look around, if we see opportunity, not for the self but for the whole, then we can see that we can, with ingenuity and thought, that we are able to fill in the gaps. Without concern for making money, we can make our small worlds better without trying to compete.

But it takes a sense of caring for the greater good, something that has seemed to have been forgotten.