How We Got Nothing But Money

My grandfather turns 100 this year. If you don't know any centarians, then you'll profit from reading my Grandfather Witty's vivid account of life in the early 1900s.

Back then work and entertainment were remarkably different. Family and community were stronger, often because both parents worked the family farm. The children learned to work by first playing at their grown-up's work. They learned to love the land, their family, and community.

For entertainment the oldtime people used to visit each other in the evenings, it was called "sitting till bedtime." They told stories about each other, their past, and the land. And among the hearers were children, thus keeping the memories alive. Some have said, "they had everything but money."

How times have changed. Now the child is not expected to return home and be of use to the place and community he grew up in. He is educated to leave home and earn money that has nothing to do with his parents or the place he grew up. The aims are now money and ease.

We tell our stories now mostly to doctors or lawyers or insurance adjusters, not to our neighbors for their (and our) entertainment. The stories that our children hear are made up for them in New York or Los Angeles or other centers of commerce.

Generation after generation, as children depart their family's home without hearing the stories and without coming back to their community, the place loses its memory--its history and culture. And this, in part, explains how we now have nothing but money.

(This post was heavily influenced by a recent reading of Wendell Berry's What Are People For?, especially Part III).