THE METAINDUSTRIAL VILLAGE

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From 1900 to 1972 America experienced a shift in population from agriculture and industrial production to services, and this shift, supported by massive injections of oil, is what postindustrial civilization is all about. In America the most highly populated profession is teaching, and so it is fair to say that we live in a world of information, not of farms or factories. To appreciate the unusual nature of our civilization, we should consider the fact that in Maoist China, 96 percent of the population is involved in food production. The Chinese have factories and hightechnology laboratories, but they do not have freeways, McDonald's stands, and shopping centers.c I am assuming that by the year 2000 the electronic decentralization of information and the miniaturization of technology will enable people to move from New York. Detroit, and Los Angeles to live in rural areas. I am assuming that the production of good small tools will enable communities to produce goods and services in small workshops rather than large factories. I am also assuming that, as human beings begin to move out of the concrete world of New York to live with trees, the consciousness of the individual will undergo a profound transformation.

And so I imagine a transformation from the present postindustrial civilization to a new planetary, metaindustrial culture. I imagine a movement in America in which 40 percent of the population becomes involved with food production. If in the near future we begin to experience a shortage of food, then the sacredness of food will have to be rediscovered, and that resacralization will have to be part of an individual's education. As in Mao's China, or in the spiritual community of Findhorn in Scotland, the students and teachers will have to work in the fields as well as in the libraries.

Not only will colleges have to become like the community of Findhorn, but factories will also. In a shift from the old factory system, which alienates women from the productive process and workers from management, factories will need to become communities with workers on the board of directors of the local and autonomous small plant. With an emphasis on contemplative and communal values, the goods would be crafted to be good and long-lasting, after the traditions of the Shakers.

The agricultural economy of the metaindustrial village would focus on organic gardening and the replacing of fossil-fuel agribusiness with natural cycles in the food chain. Since the shift from gardening to field tillage with the plow originally displaced women from food production, the return to ecologically sophisticated gardening enables women to return to take up significant roles in the economy of the village, and thus to overcome the sexual alienation characteristic of industrial society.

It is always unsettling and annoying for one culture to see a subculture within its own society. It is all well and good to travel to some exotic and exciting culture halfway round the world, but when an alien way of life sprouts up in your own back yard it feels as if crab grass is invading the family turf. Sometimes when people see another culture, they make a move, but since such moves are full of risks, it is always very few people who are willing to undertake such risks.

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