Summary: Specialization has allowed us to achieve many things, but at what cost? We never consider that doing something ourselves, however poorly, might be preferable to turning that task over to someone who can do it better... Why do so many of us have hobbies? For all the emphasis we put on a rounded childhood and well-rounded education, or society doesn't reward the generalist--it rewards the specialist, who, is also the consumer. Roughly 90 percent of the American populace prior to 1830, was self-sufficient. Among all the things that we've lost, worst is that we've lost our ability to produce our food. Specialization, by its very nature, turns us into consumers for everything that cannot be produced by our specialized skill. Someone new to homesteading would naturally ask: is it worth it? From the specialist point of view, you might think, "did we save money doing all this hard work?" Probably not. After all, we've been indoctrinated with the notion that time is money. But there are other benefits: * At some point, the cost of energy and food is going to go up. Producing more of it directly will make more monetary sense as this happens. * Health benefits * Connectedness with earth * Better for the planet * Preparedness * Child-rearing At the risk of being an iconoclast, I think that our society needs to rethink it's heroes: Einstein versus a typical pioneer homesteader, like Pa Ingalls. I'm not advocating a society without specialists--I just think that the balance has been skewed in the opposite direction.
