Wendell Berry quote

According to the industrial formula, the ideal human residence (from the Latin residere, "to sit back" or "remain sitting") is one in which the residers do not work.  The house is built, equipped, decorated, and provisioned by other people, by strangers.  In it, the married couple practice as few as possible of the disciplines of household or homestead.  Their domestic labor consists principally of buying things, putting things away, and throwing things away, but it is understood that it is "best" to have even those jobs done by an "inferior" person, and the ultimate industrial ideal is a "home" in which everything would be done by pushing buttons.  In such a "home," a married couple are mates, sexually, legally, and socially, but they are not helpmates; they do nothing useful either together or for each other.  According to the ideal, work should be done away from home.  When such spouses say to each other, "I will love you forever," the meaning of their words is seriously impaired by their circumstances; they are speaking in the presence of so little that they have done and made.  Their history together is essentially placeless; it has no visible or tangible incarnation.  They have only themselves in view.

- from the chapter titled "Men and Women In Search of Common Ground" in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry


*Edit - My thoughts: This is what I do not want in life... yet this is the standard.  And, oh, how sad if one looks at the "norms" of our society.  Wealth allows one to have more options, indeed; however, it has the potential to dehumanize us.  I cannot comprehend the justification of why people want luxuries and why people aspire to be at the top??  You become dependent on others and machines for your well-being.  It's not sustainable at all.  Why must one aspire to be at the top when there is already so much richness to be realized and had at the bottom? Oh, and if everyone viewed physical work as healing and wholesome "normal" activity, this would be a better world... if only.