Guy Reams (00:00.834)
This is day 201, Live Where You Work. One of the most influential writers I have come across in my lifetime is Wendell Berry. One of the principles he spoke about was how moving people away from their homes was one of the most destructive consequences of modern industrialization. Quote, when we no longer live where we work and when we do not work where we live, we have abandoned the place, we have a
abandoned the place to others." I've always worked from home, meaning that I never really had an office. There were times when an office was set aside for me, but I have rarely used it. So when COVID emerged and the sudden realization struck the world that you could telecommute, it was no shock to me. And looking this up, it turns out that nearly 40 % of people with advanced degrees work from home.
So in 2020, the number of people across all education levels working remotely has continued to grow. This past year, data shows that almost 40 million people have been exclusively worked from home occupation. Before industrialization took root in the United States, most people not only worked from home, their work was their home. Over 95 % of the population was considered agrarian.
They lived on their own farms, grew their own crops and raised their own livestock. Today it is the exact opposite. Very few people live off the land and those who do are often viewed as eccentric or even suspect the fringes of society. Last spring I was a, I was comically trying to grow a tomato in my backyard. When I realized how embarrassed my great grandparents would be to have seen my efforts. These were people who grew everything they ate.
And here I was, dancing around the yard, holding a single tomato in my hand as if I had just vanquished the Vikings from my homeland. Sadly, it seems I am not alone. Most people today are completely unaware of what it takes to grow fruit, vegetables, or even raise livestock. Being around my home more often and spending more time in my community, I started to notice things, things that I had missed when my head was buried in work. Some of these things are not necessarily good.
Guy Reams (02:18.56)
Is this what Barry was warning us about? Good work connects us to the places and people around us. Bad work detaches us. To rephrase, good work is local, communal, and sustaining, while bad work is extractive, anonymous, and destructive. I'm not sure that working from home on a computer wearing a headset on Zoom calls is exactly what Wendell Barry had in mind. I suspect he would argue that when we live in one place,
work elsewhere and have no lasting responsibility for either, it weakens every part of society, the land, the community, the family, and even potentially your personal integrity. Telecommunity might seem better than commuting to a far-off office, but it might not truly address the deeper issues Barry had identified. When I first read Barry's most famous book, The Unsettling of America, I was enthralled by the vision that he laid out.
Living where you work fosters a deep sense of responsibility, care, and stewardship. You are more likely to take care of the land, the community, and the resources because your own life is bound up with their health and their prosperity. However, as I got older, I began to see that this might only be a dream for the wealthy, or for the few. The rest of us seem condemned to roles that alienate us from our work. Alienation happens when people are separated from the consequences of their labor.
When someone works in a city planning office, projects that destroy rural land or when workers manage processes whose impact they actually never see. Very bleak this disconnection leads to environmental degradation, social decay and personal dissatisfaction. You just don't get to see the results of your work. Does it really have to be so extreme though?
Must we either live isolated on a self-sufficient farm or sit in a track home tethered on a headset in a conference call? I don't think so. I believe there is a middle way. We can find ways to reconnect with the places where we live. We can grow a garden, however small. We can learn our neighbors' names. We can volunteer locally. We can pay attention to the land, the seasons, the needs of our communities.
Guy Reams (04:34.517)
Even with modern digital economy, we can choose, choose to participate in the life around us rather than retreat into our virtual spaces and lock ourselves up into our offices. Berry's vision is not about nostalgia for a vanished world. It's about recovering something timeless. The simple truth that our lives are bound to the places we inhabit. To neglect this bond is to lose something essential. To nurture it is to find ourselves again.
We may not be able to live off the land anymore, but we can live with the land. We can choose each day to be present where we are. And in so doing, we might slowly heal not just our communities, but potentially ourselves.