STOP
&
THINK
Our mission is to live an alternative to the consumer culture.  To choose something different requires first an awareness of a choice to be made.  This page offers questions and choices, inviting readers, as we invite visitors to the farm, to look again at what they have taken for granted.
In our first years here student groups came to the farm expecting to serve the poor.  We asked them to help grow the food that they and others would eat and to see the ways that the poor serve them.  Visitors talked about “real”  food”, by which they meant the brand their family buys and described the places they lived as “the real world”.   We suggested another vision of what is real.
 
In 2008 Joanna received permission to go to the local high school with counter-recruitment information.  She was concerned that young people who saw few options open after high school and who had little adult guidance were being misled by recruiters trying to fill quotas.  She wanted them to be able to make informed decisions.  The sign on her table read STOP & THINK.  “Stop and think about what?” the students asked.  It occurred to her that they were subjected to many sales pitches, not only from recruiters. Since then she’s added handouts on advertising, bullying, and screen-time reduction to her original information on recruiting and alternative paths after high school.
We’ve used the Stop & Think sign to get children’s attention when a walk takes us by stinging nettle or poison ivy.  And we keep noticing more times when the sign seems appropriate.
How much is enough? Kids from local families who struggle to afford decent housing and good food talk about the brand-name stuff they ‘need’. Girls in a group from an affluent community talk about needing to wear make-up, even working at the farm, to feel confident that they look acceptable. Rich and poor visitors say they miss having free time, quiet space, basic work, community. What do we really need? How do we decide how much is enough? The primary value communicated in just about any ad is that buying the product will make us happy (or ‘cool” or ‘fulfilled” or “sexy” or “popular” or whatever our hearts desire.) At the same time, these messages communicate that not buying will render us miserable, unfulfilled, unpopular, unattractive... The message we get is that things, not just a particular thing, will make us happy. (adapted from Consuming Kids by Susan Linn) The difference between wants and needs is that when I take care of a need it’s satisfied--my need for shelter, food, transportation. But when I take care of a want there’s always one right behind it....screaming “buy me, get me, have me.” I never satisfy that. I never quench that thirst.” --Alternatives for Simple Living What do you want? What do you need? When have you felt most satisfied and grateful? What do you value most about yourself, the way you are now? What would you most like to change? Could anyone guess your answer by watching how you spend your time and money? Serving the poor? It’s easier to go out and serve the ‘less fortunate’ than to look at the ways in which they are already serving us and the hidden ways our over-consumption harms them and the earth we share. Being poor. . .is much harder than serving the poor. The unnoticed, unspectacular, unpraised life in solidarity with people who cannot give anything that makes us feel important is. . . the way to poverty. Not an easy way, but God’s way, the way of the cross.--Henri Nouwen We cannot do good by standing back and pulling levers that drop bounty on people who need it. Right action can only be an immersion of ourselves in reality, an immersion that involves us in relationship.--Parker Palmer We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes which we are inviting catastrophe to make.--What Are People For? by Wendell Berry To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else... they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high.--Barbara Ehrenreich Who makes the stuff you buy? Who grows the food you eat? How are those people treated? What can you make or do for yourself, your family and your neighbors? When do you feel poor? How do your choices contribute to others feeling or being poor? Connected? Some visitors wonder about our life at the farm, seeing us as isolated. Others say how good it is to step away from their screens for a little while and actually be present to the people and places around them. Where is the healthy balance between screen-time and real time? “We hear constantly about cyberspace as a place of connections between all kinds of people who would not have come together before. Perhaps. But every one of them is connected by being alone in front of a computer screen, and this is a poor excuse for what community has meant in most of history.”--Paul Goldberger, quoted in Generation MySpace by Candace Kelsey The only way to cultivate a happy inner life is to spend time there, and that’s impossible when you’re constantly attending to the latest distraction. . . The point isn’t that the screen is bad . . . The point is lack of proportion, the abandonment of all else and the strange absent-present state of mind this compulsion produces. --Hamlet’s BlackBerry by William Powers (this is also the source of the following questions) What are the best uses of this device? How is this device affecting me and my experience? Is it altering how I think or feel, changing the rhythm of my days? Are the effects good or bad? Will pursuing more and more digital connectedness make us smarter and more creative? Will it help us understand one another better? When we’re all hyper-connected, will our families and communities be stronger? Will we build better organizations and lead more prosperous lives? Does your screen time help you think and work better? Does it deepen ties to friends? Do you come away in a better state of mind than you were to begin with?
Resources and more things to think about: Further thought-provoking reading material is excerpted on our Readings page. Counter-recruiting material available is available from the Quaker House Truth In Recruiting project and the Project for Youth Nonmilitary Opportunities. Joanna’s work in the high school has gotten her concerned about bullying and the subtle ways in which it is bolstered by the consumer culture. More about that , and resources for further reading, in her blog post here. Readings.htmlhttp://quakerhouse.org/documents/enlist.htmlhttp://www.projectyano.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=40http://livingasifthetruthwastrue.blogspot.com/2011/02/marketing-meanness-and-possible.html#comment-formshapeimage_6_link_0shapeimage_6_link_1shapeimage_6_link_2shapeimage_6_link_3