In the modern world, during the last hundred or so years, there has been an enormous and historically unique shift; away from self-reliance and toward organization. As a result, people are becomeing less self-reliant and more dependent than has ever been seen in history. They may claim to be more highly educated than any generation before them; but the fact remains that they cannot realy do anything for themselves. They depend utterly on vastly complex organizations, on fantastic machinery, on larger money incomes. What if there is a hold-up, a breakdown, a strike, or unemployment?
Does the state provide all that is needed? In some cases ; in other cases, no. Many people fall through the meshes of the safety net; and what then? They suffer; they become dispirited, even despodent. Why can't they help themselves?
Generally, the answer is only obvious: they would not know how to; they have never done it before and would not even know where to begin.
John Seymour can tell us how to help ourselves, and in this book he does tell us. He is one of the great pioneers of self-sufficiency. Pioneers are not for imitation but for learning from. Should we alll do what John Saymour has done?
Of course not. Total self-sufficiency is as unbalanced and ultimately stultifying as total organization. The pioneers show us what can be done, and it is for every one of us to decide what should be done, that is to say, what we should do to restore some kind of balance to our existence.
Should I try to grow all the food my family and I require? If I tried to do so, I probably could do little else. And what about all the other things we need? Should I try to become a jack-of-all-trades? At most of the trades I would be pretty useless and horribly inefficient. But to grow or make some things by myself; for myself: what fun, what exhilaration, what liberation from any feelings of utter dependence on organizations! What is perhaps even more: what an education of the real person! To be in touch with the actual processes of creation. The inborn creativity of people is no mean or accidental thing; neglect or disregard it, and it becomes an inner source of poison. It can destroy you and all your human relationships; on a mass scale, it can -- ney, it inevitably will -- destroy society.
Contrariwise. nothing can stop the flowering of a society that manages to give free rein to the creativity of its people - all its people. This can not be ordered or organized from the top. We cannot look for government, but only to ourselves, to bring about such a state of affairs. Nor should anyone of us go on "waiting for Godot", because Godot never comes. It is interesting to think of all the "Godots" modern society is waiting for: this or that fantastic technical breakthrough or automation so that nobody, or hardly anybody, will have to lift a finger anymore; government policies to solve all problems once and for all: multinational companies to make massive investments in the latest and best technologies; or simply "the next upturn in the economy".
John Saymour has never been found "waiting for Godot". It is the essence of self-reliance that you start now and dont wait for something to turn up; and though the technology behind John Saymour's self-sufficiency is still quite rudimentary, it can, of course, be improved. The ggreater the number of self-supporters, the faster will be the rate of improvement, that creation of technologies designed to lead people to self-reliance, work-enjoyment, creativity, and therefore the good life. This book is a major step along that road, and I wholeheartedly commend it to you.
- foreword written by Dr E.E. Schumacher to the first edition (1976) of The Complete book of Self-Sufficiency by John Saymour
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