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Abril 26, 2006
The issue is abstraction...
WB: The issue is abstraction. The nature of things is that you can't properly
value something on abstract terms. Every parcel of land in the country is a
particular place, and you can't love it or care for it or use it properly in
the abstract. To reduce it to money value obscures its existence as a
particular good. And when you reduce human beings to an abstraction like
"labor" or a "labor force," you obscure the whole issue of their community
membership and their involvement in a particular economy and their particular
worth as individual people, individual creatures--that's what I was saying in
that essay. I'm against referring to people as "human resources" because it
reduces them to abstract counters like dollar bills. I am insisting that you
must not regard your community members as a labor force that is subject to
being moved about at the whim of the economy. You must not accept the breakup
of community relationships or homes as a normal cost of production. Communities
shouldn't give up their members so easily.
From a web interview with Wendell Berry
Posted by sarita at Abril 26, 2006 10:23 AM