by Michael Wooller | Oct 17, 2007 | Luddites
I often wonder what life would be like if the Luddites hadn’t failed in their attempt to humanise progress. But unfortunately they couldn’t win. For starters they weren’t an actual organised entity, just a collection of individuals who stood to loose most from, what was later termed, the Industrial Revolution. They were up against those with the capital, the British government, (predominately the same people), the British Army and the Police Force. Even so it took hastily drafted draconian laws, quite a few hangings and a lot of violence to quell them.
We are living with their defeat today. It’s why we travel in peak hour droves to a place of work where we exchange large slabs of our lives for money.
Before the industrial revolution there was an organic economy based on land, labour and local exchange.
The weavers of the north of England were largely one-person home businesses. Apart from producing woven goods, often with the involvement of his family, the weaver also had a small self-sufficient family vegetable garden. Because of the quality and the demand for his manufactured goods, he was always assured that everything he produced would be sold at a constant price. He and his family had abundance, stability and unrestrained social interaction.
Technology allowed the manufacture of goods, although inferior in quality, independent of nature, of geography and season and weather, of sun or wind or water or human and animal power. It produced an economy based upon fuel, factory and foreign trade. Humans became a minor consideration in the manufacture of goods and were now serving the machine.
It was this uncontrolled empowerment of the machine in human society that the Luddites fought against.
The people who formed the Luddite movement were mainly weavers or similar craftsmen. They had the most to loose. They fought for and lost their idyllic cottage industry lifestyle of stability and self-reliance. The very lifestyle that a lot of us yearn for today.
The combined power of weaving machines, the steam engine, the laws of enclosure that enabled industrialists to fence off farming land and build factories, put an end to the weavers way of life. Whereas before the factories, agreed customary prices and therefore income were stable, the new technology brought with it a free market economy, which drove prices and wages down along with the quality of the product.
Life for the displaced farmers and weavers forced into the urban factories had become grim. Working for long hours in dangerous conditions with no days off for very low pay, men, women and children spent their lives either working or sleeping. Several families would have to share one house to save on rent. Humans had become a disposable adjunct to the machine. This is what the Luddites and those before them were against.
History is written by the victors, who were obviously not the Luddites, which is how the word has come to be used to mean a stupid person who doesn’t understand and is opposed to advances in technology. They were in fact very perceptive. They could see what was going to happen to humanity.
And they were right. Despite their valiant opposition we now have a collective mindset that says we must have a JOB and go to WORK for some one else. It is now taken for granted that production and technological progress is more important than being human.
There was a brief time, with the advent of computers, that we all entertained the idea that computers would handle the more mundane tasks of modern life such that the working week would be reduced to three or four days, maybe less. It’s what the Luddites would have supported. Didn’t happen. The increased capacity that computers gave us was simply used to produce more not improve humanity. The amount of time many office workers spend away from home at a JOB has actually increased.
Interestingly a totally unplanned result of computer technology has given some people a chance to recreate the weaver’s lifestyle. I’m referring to the internet. There are those that have replaced the loom with the computer and yarn with broadband. They have offices in their homes where they can interact with their families, live in a country environment and grow vegetables and keep chickens should they choose. As for products they range from selling information to buying and selling on e-bay, trading in stocks and shares to advertising.
Thanks to appropriate technology, we have the opportunity to conduct business whilst packing the kids off to school, planting the spinach, feeding the chickens and maybe an afternoon delight between Google-ads.
Used this way the computer can give us more free time and at last live up to it’s promise.
It’s not much but I’m sure that the mythical Nedd Ludd would approve.
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by Michael Wooller | Oct 17, 2007 | Memoirs Of An Aging Hippie
I had a South African girlfriend once. Not a girlfriend in the way that she was the total focus of my attention in the traditional courting sense. But, never the less, she’s etched ever gentle on my mind. Her name was Reg. Short for Regina. No! Really. Well if you had a name like that, wouldn’t you want to change it?. Stunning girl. She wasn’t really classically beautiful or pretty. She was more statuesque in the Greek sense and she had the most enormous breasts with inverted nipples. Never seen any thing like it since. The nipples became non inverted when she was aroused. How do I know? Come on! it was the sixties! Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Personally I never bothered with the drugs, unless you include alcohol, in which case I did quite a bit of bothering. As for sex, in those days the contraceptive pill was newly available and there was no such thing as HIV aids, so the worst that could happen was some form of STD that could be treated. Make love not war was the motto. Halcyon days! Or quite often daze. Rock and roll, well although of course I was definitely into music of the time, Hendrix, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Rolling Stones etc., my favourite music was New Orleans Jazz of the traditional variety from the 20s and 30s. On a Friday night my friends and I would journey to a pub called “The Fox & Hounds” in a village outside of my home town of Brighton. We’d drink cider and dance all night long. The dance was called a skip jive. It was like a rock and roll jive except that you skipped at the same time. It was very energetic and I could do it without pause. Mind you I was only nineteen.
Anyway back to Reg.
It was a most unusual and somewhat casual relationship, mainly because she was so incredibly intelligent, far beyond my comprehension. I think she must have regarded me as some sort of ‘toy boy’, although we were the same age.
At the time I had a sports car. It was a Triumph TR3A. It was magnificent. It was British racing green. It was the last of the true old fashioned sports cars with a big souped up tractor engine and a driver’s seat almost over the back wheels. At 70 mph the engine was only doing 3,000 rpm. You could drop the clutch at the traffic lights without touching the accelerator and it would pull away. It was ….. groovy.
I remember taking Reg driving on windy English country roads impressing her with my masculine driving expertise and knowledge. “See that line of telegraph poles” I said, “although I can’t see where the road is I know that it will follow the telegraph poles so I can drive accordingly”. The line of telegraph poles went straight ahead over the brow of the hill. The road, on the other hand, went sharp left and took a completely different route. She said “I’m suitably impressed”. I stated the absolutely flaming obvious. “You can see right through me, can’t you?” A reply was superfluous. Still, she loved going driving because back in South Africa she also had a Triumph TR3A. We talked of philosophy, of sports cars and esoteric concepts and her anger of the lop sided news from South Africa where no one ever heard of the brave white politicians who put themselves in the firing line everyday to oppose apartheid. She was learned, eloquent, an artist and like so many geniuses she was schizophrenic.
I didn’t realise it initially. Then, one night when I met her at a party, she was wild she was ebullient, she was electric and she invited to sleep with her. What was a young hippy to do? I was groovy with shoulder length hair, a beard, wearing platform shoes, flare trousers and a really cool leather jacket. I had just finished playing a set of Bob Dylan and Buddy Holly songs on my guitar. I was hot. So naturally I said “You and me babe”, and relaxed into the night.
She screamed out “Thank you God!” when she came and when we awoke in the morning said to me, “What are you doing here?” Very confusing for a simple young lad.
Anyway, for some reason, she latched onto me in a casual sort of a way, or at least I suppose one of her did. She would come and stay with me sometimes and likened herself to the protagonist in the Chris Christofersson song ‘Forever Gentle On My Mind’.
One day after she had stashed her sleeping bag behind my couch for the night she announced she was going back home to South Africa. Seems that a psychiatrist was trying to tell her she was schizophrenic. There was an awkward pause. Do I say “No of course not, they must have it all wrong”. Or do I tell the truth as I experienced it. It was difficult. I opted for the truth and related the story of the time I woke up in her bed and she didn’t remember inviting me. Well she wouldn’t, she wasn’t the same person I met the night before.
She left shortly after that, full of love and appreciation and I never heard from her again. I often wonder what happened to her. I think of her whenever South Africa is mentioned and whenever I hear “Forever Gentle On My Mind”.
I don’t think she was taking the pill. Maybe I’ve got family in South Africa.
by Michael Wooller | Oct 17, 2007 | Luddites
It was a morning that heart attacks are made of.
Bitterly cold with rain that could be best described as a miserable heavy drizzle. The sun had not yet made it over the horizon to brighten up the top of the rain cloud blanket.
The figures at the bus stops were barely discernible. Grey shapes with umbrellas against grey houses and pavements, limply illuminated by sickly yellow sodium streetlights. And it was Monday. The first day of the working week.
The bus driver was a different story. Relentlessly eccentric, laughing at a world that takes itself far too seriously. He had decorated his bus with stuffed toys of all colourful varieties, a lioness, a gorilla in a RAP outfit, a clown fish, a puppy dog in a fireman’s hat.
In a plastic ice cream container taped to his change counter he offered free lollies for his passengers and wore on his head a hat in the shape of a pink pig. The dismally damp Monday morning commuters could not help but smile when confronted with this theatre of the absurd. Folding their soggy umbrellas they fumble with frozen fingers to find money or season tickets.
As I watched the shadowy grinding traffic and listened to the hiss of tyres on wet tarmac, it struck me. Why on earth am I doing this to myself? Why is anyone doing this to themselves?
The truth is that we have gotten used to this way of life over the centuries, ever since the Luddites failed to stop the inexorable march of the industrial revolution. The factory or office and technology became more important than human beings or quality of life. It was this that the Luddites were actually opposed to. Technology that enslaved humanity rather than adding to what it was to be human.
So here we are a couple of centuries down the tarmacadam and we now accept as normal the concept of going somewhere away from home and family to exchange time for money in order to survive. A total dependence on some one else’s business and self-interest for survival.
A plague on this 19th century poverty mindset. I needed to take control of my life. Live how I want to live, relying on my own talents and initiative. Stop traveling on buses on dark wet Monday mornings.
I’m not quite sure how it came about, but I found myself in the possession of Stone Evans’s E-book “Dotcomology”. And there was the answer. As plain as could be. Start Internet marketing.
The book taught me about making an attractive website, gave me some ideas about what business to run on the internet, showed me how to use search engines, taught me about email marketing, affiliate programs, joint ventures, viral marketing, adsense and even how to manage life when you work from home.
The Internet is, in effect, the next revolution. Most interestingly it enables those who are willing to embrace it, a chance to return to the idyllic days of a pre-industrial revolution lifestyle, but with broadband and enjoy a modern day version of self employed bliss.
And what an enviable way of life it was back then. Picture this, (please go to iTunes download and play”Morning” from the Peer Gynt Suite), a cottage in the bucolic English countryside. Butterflies flit from colourful flower to colourful flower whilst the birds sing sweetly in the lush green trees by the babbling brook.
Inside the cottage the weaver is contently finishing his latest creation destined for the markets of Europe and because the price of his goods never changes, he knows how much he will be paid. His wife and children are happily helping him in his tasks.
Pausing to refresh himself from his labours, he wanders out into the garden to check on the progress of the spinach, pulls a few weeds out of the potato patch and throws the chickens some food left over from the family lunch. At no time is he separated from home and family and he never gets on a Monday morning bus!
Today, thanks to appropriate technology, we have the opportunity to conduct business at home whilst packing the kids off to school, planting the spinach, feeding the chickens and maybe indulging in an afternoon delight between google-ads.
The computer has replaced the weaver’s loom, the Internet has replaced the traveling merchants, software has replaced the yarn, but I bet you we have the same aspirations for peace, joy and happiness as our ancestors. But probably not pink pig hats! They didn’t need them.
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