permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

On Saturday, July 5, 2003, at 01:27 PM, dwayne wrote:

> > Generalizations like this frighten me.  
>
> Yeah, I found it extremely annoying.

Glad to see you're delurking, Dwayne, but, as Loren pointed out [thanks!], if you read my statement with a little care, you'll notice it is qualified and specific ("often," "notable exceptions," "sometimes") and could only be taken to refer to a particular subset of the people without money--it's not even remotely a generalization. I was aware that without the qualifiers if would be inaccurate and unkind. If you read all the words it probably won't frighten or annoy you. My statement comes from personal experience with what it takes to make a successful community. Money is one of many useful filters for finding community members. I rarely meet people with some money and no skills (even my trust-fund friends have some skills); unfortunately, I frequently meet people with no money, and neither skills nor fire in the belly.  And of course there are many people without money but with skills and ambition. Like you and Miekal and many on this list, I earn below poverty level but have a couple skills.  

I think you'll find that most people on this list are very reasonable, and if you read something that seems offensive or outrageous, you've probably misunderstood it.

Toby

Loren wrote, quoting me,

> > It's a sad fact that often (with notable exceptions) people without cash also don't have skills, experience, or sometimes the will to persevere, which are all useful to a community.
>
> I fail to see how "often (with notable exceptions)" constitutes a "generalization." If he'd said "always" and not included the exception, or even if he'd said "It's a sad fact that people without cash...", *that* would be a generalization, as I understand the usage of the word.