Fire and Knowledge

Modern society is losing the knowledge of how to do anything in a direct, hands-on, manually-skilled kind of way. I don’t know if the words “progressive” or “advanced” can be applied to a nation that can no longer function without certain technologies over which individuals have no control. The more local communities become dependent on centralized powers for food, clothing, and shelter, the more they become enslaved to that power.

—Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer (1993), p. 14