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Basic Ideas And IssuesFirst and foremost, Sale is a critic of industrial society. This means a variety of things, but it is important to recognize that he begins with the assumption that the Enlightenment and the philosophies that spawned it “was one of the great dark turns that European society took. But it was absolutely predictable, this dark turn, because it was one which enabled a greater control over nature to take place and a greater power for the individual as against the community.” Sale is a proponent of the community. This is not to say that be is unconcerned with individual rights, but that when those rights trample the needs of the many, they should be curtailed. He calls himself a communitarian,” though he is certainly not of the Amitai Etzioni school of thought. Before we outline just what school of communitarian thought Sale does belong to, it is important to establish the fundamental principle of Sale’s life, which might be stated like this: “Bigger is never better.” Just a glance at the titles of books he has written or contributed to reflects his idyllic vision of the small, the local, as opposed to the large, the bureaucratized. Sale is an equally harsh critic of big government as he is of big business, choosing to diverge from colleagues like Jeremy Rifkin in adopting an even greater mistrust of the Federal Government. In Sale’s eyes, it is this kind of centralized, disconnected mass that separates human from each other. The kind of community Sale advocates in his most reasoned analyses is the “Bioregional” community. Defined as an ecologically bounded, decentralized system of local governance, a bioregion might best by illustrated by example: Cascadia in the Northwest and Ozarkia in the Appalachians. Regions where there are similar landscapes, similar livelihoods to be had, and, according to Sale, similar concerns and similar values. From Sale’s perspective, any problem among the local dwellers in a bioregion can be solved by those same dwellers working together, whereas outside, bureaucratized influence would only complicate matters. Then there is his Luddism. Sale proudly identifies himself as a Luddite, alongside a “basic core of intellectuall activist writers who will call themselves Neo-Luddites.” He includes among this group of “maybe one hundred or two hundred” such people as Jeremy Rifkin, Wendell Berry, Jerry Mander, Helena Norberg-Hodge, “a lot of people in Green politics in Europe and some in California as well. People who are not afraid to say they are Luddites.” However, the word takes on meanings greater than simply anti-technology when Sale uses it. In his latest book, Rebels Against The Future--The Luddites And Their War On The Industrial Revolution, Sale argues that the Luddites were not simply people in fear of losing their jobs through automation, but people who were concerned with resisting the broader picture of social transformation, such as the rising tide of industrialization and the crowding out of local communities. Sale does not shy away from the ‘antitechnology” label, but is quick to point out that his views and his Luddism extend beyond that. it is important to note that Sale’s check on abuses of technology is also his tool of social change--the intentional community. Unlike some anti-technology thinkers, Sale accounts for productive uses of technology.. He says--and his series of discussions with Kevin Kelly make this abundantly clear--that the community, the group, ideally the bioregion, should have the final say on what does or does not get produced. This is his answer to people like Kelly who protest that without civilization we couldn’t have advances like musical instruments, or artistic expressions through technology. Sale’s response is that if the community determines such advances are mutually beneficial and environmentally benign, then there would be no problem with their production. Given the above view, it goes without saying that Sale is an environmentalist. Looking deeper, we can say that Sale is an environmental thinker very suspicious of mainstream environmentalism and its propensity to be co-opted by the dominant culture. For Sale, action taken to protect the earth must come from a group of like-minded individuals who form a community to resist the onslaught of technology, capitalism, and, of course, the industrial mindset. Application To DebateSale has manifold application to debate, particularly on the level of values. Though he insists--as do most--that his views are practical, non-utopian expressions of human life, it is not necessary to assume an advocacy stance of these views in order to find his ideas on such subjects as the environment, technology, and society useful. Sale writes excellent, passionate essays on the evils of centralization and the merits of decentralization. Not only is this useful as an argument against any case which chooses to defend the role of “big government’ or “big business’ but also proves ideal against a value stance defending efficiency. As is probably evident from Sale’s sympathy with the Luddites, he portrays early, pre-Enlightenment thinking as unconcerned with the “efficiency” of an economy or a society, but nevertheless vastly superior to what we have in the post-Enlightenment era. He argues that, though humans are inefficient, an efficient society is vastly inferior to one which respects the intrinsic value of human life and worth--on what he would call a ‘human scale.” Also, Sale vehemently contradicts the value of progress, especially as it relates to technology. Noting that progress is supposed to imply “that which makes life better,” Sale argues that to progress, we must, in many ways, regress. He states, for instance, that “I don’t see how objectively you could look around at what’s been happening in the last 25 years in this society and say that the computer technology we have has produced anything but increasing social tensions and misery.” A more rational society--a bioregional society--would challenge these values. Sale savagely attacks the primacy of the individual in human morality. How, he asks, can the individual be the end-all-be-all of existence if organization is the only way to get anything done? And how can we only consider the notions of “freedom” if those unrestrained notions cause such pernicious evils as ecodevastation, centralization, and the disconnection of one individual from another? This is helpful in providing an ethical framework which places the community at the center of the value stance. Finally, Sale provides an alternative to the statist communitarianism offered up by Etzioni and his ilk. Though Sale might agree with some of Etzioni’s views--the morally bankrupt nature of “rugged individualism” for example-- he would agree with many of Etzioni’s critics that his ideology represents little more than “authoritarian moralism.” Sale, by contrast, offers an approach that is more radical, thus avoiding many of the leftist criticisms to which Etzioni is subject. 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