Esteemed Reader: August 2011

by Jason Stern, July 27, 2011

Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine:

“Hi, Daddy.”

The words were spoken quietly, from the back seat.

We were hurtling along Route 32 going north. I had been thinking. Or perhaps the state was more akin to dreaming—one thought associating with the next like ice crystals forming, randomly, never in a straight line.

Images of a writer friend who wrote a book about the sirens’ song...Odysseus’ craving for experience ingeniously indulged with ropes and the beeswax-packed ears of his sailors…masts and trees…tree is the root-word of truth…what is truth?

And then in a moment, perhaps triggered by the word, or a ray of sunlight alighting on a part of the brain, thought stopped. Suddenly I was in the car, the sky and trees whizzing by, the sounds of the engine and wheels and wind, aware of my children sitting behind me in their car-seats—I was having a spontaneous in-body experience.

And that was when he said it:

“Hi, Daddy,” as though he noticed I had been away, and then returned.

I share this anecdote in the context, believe it or not, of what I would call local economy.

In 1972 Gregory Bateson wrote a book called Steps to An Ecology of Mind. Like many great books the title is an expression of the message of the whole tome, that ecology in every arena arises with a careful cultivation of the vast mind-space between our own ears.

In this direction, the title of this missive might be Steps to a Local, Living Economy, with the basis that a living economy begins at home. As the father of Hermeticism, Hermes Trismegistus put it, As Above, So Below.

The word economy has its roots in ancient greek and literally means to “manage a household.” The household may be any microcosm of relationships; eg, a family, a community, nation, or planetary world. It is the place we live, the world we inhabit, and the system through which our creative and productive output flows.