Living Architecture & Construction Management<

In the 1920's, Henry Ford started collecting the homes of famous people, the Wright Brothers, H.J. Heinz, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and his own humble birthplace. The homes were carefully dismantled and reassembled in a make-believe, walk-down-memory-lane, old-town-motif, called Greenfield Village. A one room school house, a covered bridge, a grist mill and stagecoach inn were added as attractions to connect the famous houses. Streets were properly narrow. Trees were planted in perfectly spaced rows with sidewalks between, creating a comfortable and shady sense of place. The people who now run the place, dress in period clothing and the illusion, now complete, is just short of Disneyland.

Greenfield Village is a popular tourist attraction, drawing thousands to walk about and experience the "Good Old Days".

Funny thing is, there are no cars in Greenfield Village.

The genius of mass production, the creator of the Model T, the "Affordable Car to the Masses", outlawed cars in his eighty acre dreamland because too many cars would have killed the feel and the deal.

Weird thing is, nobody visiting Greenfield Village notices that there are no cars.

People love the romance of the place, they appreciate the tree-lined lanes, the quiet of the "town" square and they revel in how things seem to gracefully slow down to the pace of a nice walk. But nobody gets the fact that there are no cars. People like the place precisely because it was designed, not for cars but for people walking around.

Now, let me get this.

Henry Ford, the Father of the almighty god, Car, disallowed god Car into his romantic view of what made America, America. Greenfield Village was too precious an illusion to allow god Car to enter in.

Ford prophesized the future of the car in America but I don't believe he looked far enough into the future to envision the effect god Car would reign on the creation of what America is today.

America IS god Car. We are connected by Car. We are surrounded by Car. Our cities were laid out for Car's sake. We are bound to Car. We finance Car. We rely on Car. We care for Car. We adore Car. America IS god Car.

James Howard Kunstler, in his powerfully insightful description of The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, "The Geography of Nowhere", suggests that it's not just the car but the philosophy of what the car means to Americans that has within it the seed of our demise.

The car, to Americans and a constantly increasing mass of others in other countries, means freedom to move, to relocate, to escape, to run away from or towards and to expand, indefinitely. Our national and world financial model is entirely built upon the premise of Eternally Expanding Increase.

But intuitively, we must understand that all things expanding must eventually contract. There comes a time when everybody has what they need or thought they needed or can't afford any more and the system comes quickly to a stop. At the least, it comes to a momentous, screeching slow-down.

And here we are. This golden moment in time is a perfect opportunity for personal change and personal change is the only way to change the world.

Ask yourself, what more do I need? What things don't I have that I must? What's most important to me now that I see the world around me like Ford's Greenfield Village, an illusion of reality?

Discover what you want to spend your life energy doing. Is it to work for a living or living to work? The measure of your success will be measured not on what you havebut what you have done with what you have. Doing more with less is more meaningful than doing less with more.

And here's the score,
Give more,
Care more,
Do more,
See more,
Feel more,
Touch more,
Love more,
Now smile more and
Be more.