In this interview, Jon talks about the links between community self-reliance and deep happiness. He explains how globalization has profoundly undermined this self-reliance, driving masses of people into a kind of urban slavery. It has also undermined the diversity of foods, cultures, and thinking, leaving a physical, mental and spiritual wasteland in its wake. Yet, especially for those people who have experienced both the old world of self-reliant local cultures, as well as industrial-globalized modernity, the pitfalls of the latter have come into sharp focus and sparked a movement to return to the countryside, and to reclaim the deep knowledge and skills of local living.