"Consumers have 10 times as many conversations at farmers' markets as they do at supermarkets — an order of magnitude difference. By itself, that's hardly life-changing, but it points at something that could be: living in an economy where you are participant as well as consumer, where you have a sense of who's in your universe and how it fits together. At the same time, some studies show local agriculture using less energy (also by an order of magnitude) than the "it's always summer somewhere" system we operate on now. Those are big numbers, and it's worth thinking about what they suggest—especially since, between peak oil and climate change, there's no longer really a question that we'll have to wean ourselves of the current model." [emphasis added]
Bill Mckibben, "Reversal of Fortune: The formula for human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?" Mother Jones, March/April 2007
available at: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/reversal_of_fortune.html
Brian's post to TownTalk (where he talks about the oil running out, gas reaching $10 a gallon, and a time when we're all walking to do our errands, out of necessity, and won't it then be nice to have some mixed use density around us...) reminded me of this article in a recent issue of Mother Jones (rest her soul -- she died not so far from here, you know).
It's a very interesting article on "happiness", and what a new and growing school of thought in economics has to say about it. One "finding" is that a lot of what we treat as "morality" seems to be hard wired into us genetically! "Indeed, we seem to be genetically wired for community."
And the particular section from which I pulled the above quote seems to me to say that what we are about here in Riverdale Park is the right thing -- and we should just keep doing more of it!
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