Money has been, and continues to be, very important to us. It has brought to most of us in our American culture, a level of comfort and security unprecedented in the world heretofore. The upper income earners enjoy a luxuriously extravagant life style that, surely, would have been the envy of even the wealthiest monarchs of history. We all seek comfort and security and enjoy luxury, if only occasionally, and it is money that brings these things to us - so is it a stretch to say that we love money? While, certainly, there are those among us who harbor a love of money, I believe that most of us see money for the medium of exchange that it is. We Americans are in love, not with money, but with Technology for it is the true source of our power and wealth.

The growth of Technology has paralleled the unfolding of the Industrial Revolution. Today, the Technology that we love is the technology of the Machine. The Machine that efficiently harvests Earth's resources then feeds them to the Machine that converts them into products for our consumption. The Machine that protects us from the elements and maintains our habitat at a comfortable 68 degrees and a 60% relative humidity. The Machine that provides us an unlimited mobility - transporting us, with grace and style, great distances in luxurious comfort. The Machine that fixes our bodies and restores our heath. The Machine that provides perpetual entertainment. The Machine that makes it possible to communicate with other human beings and other Machines. The Machine, The Machine, The Machine. I think that the Slow Food founders were on to something when they wrote in their manifesto, back in 1989, that: "Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model."

The mode of thinking that made the Technology of the Machine flourish is referred to as Reductionism. Reductionism arrives at an understanding through dividing the subject into its constituent parts and those into their parts. Learning how the parts work and how they interact at various levels provides an understanding of the whole. This is the thinking that has been applied, almost exclusively, in the Machine Technology age and is still applied today not only in the building of machines but also in the building of our systems such as law and government and in the structuring of our organization and institutions. This linear thought process has worked so well that is has become the proverbial universal tool. If it can take us to the Moon, is there anything it cannot do?

In our current moment in history, there is a confluence of forces in the world that will require us to move, quickly and deliberately, toward a more sustainable way of living. Climate change, ill health, pollution, despeciation and loss of habitat, urban decline, sprawl. . . are all serious problems that are largely a byproduct of the Machine Technology era and the Reductionist way of thinking. As Albert Einstein warned: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." To solve these problems, a new way of thinking will need to emerge.

Along with this new way of thinking will emerge a new Technology. A Technology based on thinking that: unites science and the humanities, utilizes the left and right hemispheres of our minds equally, understands that all things are interconnected and are part of the same whole; a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts (Aristotle), and that wealth, even exorbitant, is a poor substitute for community.

We in America need to reinvigorate democracy in order to reinvent community. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can (Arthur Ashe). Let's start right here in Broad Ripple. Let's employ the power of democracy to acquire a greater capacity for self-determination. Let's look for ways to become more self-reliant and self-sufficient. Let's develop a viable local economy. Let's think big, let's have courage, let's join as neighbors and let's Go Local.