The following is from Alvin Toffler's 1970 book, Future Shock:
"There is something morally repellent about one group seeking to gratify itself psychologically, pursuing novel and rarified pleasures, while the majority of mankind lives in wretchedness or starvation. The techno-societies could defer the arrival of experientialism [Toffler's guess at the type of job economy that will follow the service-heavy industry, which followed manufacturing; and which exists today not as Toffler would have envisioned it but in our TV, gaming, vacation, dining, drug, and other experiences], could maintain a more conventional economy for a time by maximizing traditional production, shifting resources to environmental quality control, and then launching absolutely massive anti-poverty and foreign aid programs.
"By creaming off 'excess' productivity and, in effect, giving it away, the factories can be kept running, the agricultural surpluses used up, and the society can continue to focus on the satisfaction of material wants. A fifty-year campaign to erase hunger from the world, for example, would not only make excellent moral sense, but would buy the techno-socieites badly needed time for an easier transition to the economy of the future.
"Such a pause might give us time to contemplate the philosophical and psychological impact of experiential production. If consumers can no longer distinguish clearly between the real and the simulated, if whole stretches of one's life may be comercially programmed, we enter into a set of psycho-economic problems of breathtaking complexity. These problems challenge our most fundamental beliefs, not merely about democracy or economics, but about the very nature of rationality and sanity" (208).
I'm not so sure about ramping up production for its own sake at the expense of doing things sustainably, but I can see Toffler's larger point. Change happens. Faster and faster all the time. Toffler and others would argue that growth happens, or should happen. I'm just not so sure we're growing in the right direction. Economic growth, for example, is an unsustainable machine that feeds on itself, on the backs of the poor, and on the coffers of our limited and quickly dwindling resources. I don't see how any of that can be disputed at this point.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Zinn, Chapter 6
This chapter is about sexism and the oppression of women. What strikes me first and most deeply is the litany of accounts of women transported from Africa as slaves or from Europe as indentured servants and enduring things like giving birth to a child while chained to a dead body the overseer didn't make time to remove.
Similiarly to (although more severely than) today, women who had children out of wedlock were prosecuted while the men who conceived the children were untouched by the law.
On the flip side, "The father's position in the family was expressed in The Spectator, an influential periodical in America and England: 'Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion; and ... as I am the father of a family ... I am perpetually taken up in giving out orders, in prescribing duties, in hearing parties, in administering justice, and in distributing rewards and punishments.... In short, sir, I look upon my family as a patriarchal sovereignty in which I am myself both king and priest.'"
Obviously, not all women submitted to subjugation so easily. Many women rebelled in the limited ways they could. Zinn recounts the story of Anne Hutchinson, who claimed that people could interpret the Bible for themselves and became a dynamic preacher on that and other subjects. She was, of course, put on trial for heresy and challenging the authority of men, and she was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Then, "[d]uring the Revolution [...], the necessities of war brought women out into public affairs. Women formed patriotic groups, carried out anti-British actions, wrote articles for independence. They were active in the campaign against the British tea tax, which made tea prices intolerably high. They organized Daughters of Liberty groups, boycotting British goods, urging women to make their own clothes and buy only American-made things."
A few interesting notes:
Feminist Margaret Fuller made explicit the similarities between women and slaves. Indeed, many women were very active in antislavery protest and outreach. "What woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded. . . ." This is true for all human beings, no?
Zinn also touches on Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Dorothea Dix, Frances Wright, Sojourner Truth, and many other feminists and general human rights activists. I recommend reading this chapter for the quotations by these wonderful women.
The chapter ends with a quotation by Sojourner Truth on what it means to be a woman and a human being. The power struggle continued and continued, and Zinn segues into the next chapter with these closing words:
"In the midst of these movements, there exploded, with the force of government and the authority of money, a quest for more land, an urge for national expansion."
More more more. Growth unlimited.
Similiarly to (although more severely than) today, women who had children out of wedlock were prosecuted while the men who conceived the children were untouched by the law.
On the flip side, "The father's position in the family was expressed in The Spectator, an influential periodical in America and England: 'Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion; and ... as I am the father of a family ... I am perpetually taken up in giving out orders, in prescribing duties, in hearing parties, in administering justice, and in distributing rewards and punishments.... In short, sir, I look upon my family as a patriarchal sovereignty in which I am myself both king and priest.'"
Obviously, not all women submitted to subjugation so easily. Many women rebelled in the limited ways they could. Zinn recounts the story of Anne Hutchinson, who claimed that people could interpret the Bible for themselves and became a dynamic preacher on that and other subjects. She was, of course, put on trial for heresy and challenging the authority of men, and she was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Then, "[d]uring the Revolution [...], the necessities of war brought women out into public affairs. Women formed patriotic groups, carried out anti-British actions, wrote articles for independence. They were active in the campaign against the British tea tax, which made tea prices intolerably high. They organized Daughters of Liberty groups, boycotting British goods, urging women to make their own clothes and buy only American-made things."
A few interesting notes:
- the women we tend to hear about today are the genteel, beautiful, upper-class, gracious wives of wealthy men; the lower-class activists are belittled, rewritten as prostitutes (some of them were, but many were not), or completely ignored
- Abigail Adams wrote her husband a letter explicitly asking him to include rights for women, arguing (among other things): "Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could." I don't know if I agree with this, but it tickles me.
- Thomas Paine called for equal rights for women.
- Mary Wollstonecraft was awesome. I had never heard of her until now.
- The 1800s saw many primers and how-tos for women on being docile, virtuous, pious, meek pushovers.
- But many women, tired of being houseslaves or spinsters, spoke out. In 1819, Emma Willard said "Reason and religion teach us that we too are primary existences ... not the satellites of men."
Feminist Margaret Fuller made explicit the similarities between women and slaves. Indeed, many women were very active in antislavery protest and outreach. "What woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded. . . ." This is true for all human beings, no?
Zinn also touches on Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Dorothea Dix, Frances Wright, Sojourner Truth, and many other feminists and general human rights activists. I recommend reading this chapter for the quotations by these wonderful women.
The chapter ends with a quotation by Sojourner Truth on what it means to be a woman and a human being. The power struggle continued and continued, and Zinn segues into the next chapter with these closing words:
"In the midst of these movements, there exploded, with the force of government and the authority of money, a quest for more land, an urge for national expansion."
More more more. Growth unlimited.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Zinn, Chapter 5
You say you want a revolution? Well, the truth is that not everybody did.
1. Not everyone in the colonies was for a revolution.
2. Frankly, a lot of people didn't care. They had enough to worry about.
3. Many people were more annoyed with the Revolution's army than with teh British.
4. Blacks, American Indians, and poor whites were particularly nonplussed. The elite usually recognized this and avoided conscripting them into service, figuring their penchant for dissent would be more trouble than it was worth.
5. On the other hand, enlistment did become a viable option for poor, white "unrespectable" folks who wanted to get ahead. They knew that they could move up in the ranks if their COs died.
6. At other times, the poor fought on behalf of the rich, often against their will. The rich prospered in this way because the proles had a common enemy (the British) that was not them.
7. Even if soldiers didn't believe in the cause, John Shy postulated: "'The mechanism of their political conversion was the militia.'" Zinn added, "What looks like the democratization of the military forces in modern times shows up as something different: a way of forcing large numbers of reluctant people to associate themselves with the national cause, and by the end of the process believe in it."
8. After the war, the disparity between rich and poor continued, as did inflation. Still ramped up with revolution, many poor and middling people revolted against the rich in order to get or afford to get food.
9. The upper class, "finding itself possessed of enormous wealth [in land they confiscated that once belonged to Loyalists], could create the richest ruling class in history, and still have enough for the middle classes to act as a buffer between the rich and the dispossessed."
10. With the British off their backs, the new Americans could now expand westward, pushing off the imperialism of the crown and expanding into their manifest destiny, killing off American Indians that lived in their way.
11. I believe that the Constitution is "the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support."
12. Let's repeat the theme so far: "The Constitution, then, illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law-all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity."
13. In this chapter, Zinn pretty convincingly deconstructs the myths of American liberty and justice for all. Those with money and power want to keep and increase their money and power, and the only way to do so is on the backs of the poor. The middle class serves as a series of pawns between the groups. That is all for now.
1. Not everyone in the colonies was for a revolution.
2. Frankly, a lot of people didn't care. They had enough to worry about.
3. Many people were more annoyed with the Revolution's army than with teh British.
4. Blacks, American Indians, and poor whites were particularly nonplussed. The elite usually recognized this and avoided conscripting them into service, figuring their penchant for dissent would be more trouble than it was worth.
5. On the other hand, enlistment did become a viable option for poor, white "unrespectable" folks who wanted to get ahead. They knew that they could move up in the ranks if their COs died.
6. At other times, the poor fought on behalf of the rich, often against their will. The rich prospered in this way because the proles had a common enemy (the British) that was not them.
7. Even if soldiers didn't believe in the cause, John Shy postulated: "'The mechanism of their political conversion was the militia.'" Zinn added, "What looks like the democratization of the military forces in modern times shows up as something different: a way of forcing large numbers of reluctant people to associate themselves with the national cause, and by the end of the process believe in it."
8. After the war, the disparity between rich and poor continued, as did inflation. Still ramped up with revolution, many poor and middling people revolted against the rich in order to get or afford to get food.
9. The upper class, "finding itself possessed of enormous wealth [in land they confiscated that once belonged to Loyalists], could create the richest ruling class in history, and still have enough for the middle classes to act as a buffer between the rich and the dispossessed."
10. With the British off their backs, the new Americans could now expand westward, pushing off the imperialism of the crown and expanding into their manifest destiny, killing off American Indians that lived in their way.
11. I believe that the Constitution is "the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support."
12. Let's repeat the theme so far: "The Constitution, then, illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law-all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity."
13. In this chapter, Zinn pretty convincingly deconstructs the myths of American liberty and justice for all. Those with money and power want to keep and increase their money and power, and the only way to do so is on the backs of the poor. The middle class serves as a series of pawns between the groups. That is all for now.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Zinn, Chapter 4
This post will be very frenetic and full of tangents. All are sincere. None are edited. Pull and tease out what interests and run with it. Interact with me and/or with others. Maybe later I'll read this, whittle it down, and create more comprehensive, subject-specific posts and pieces. But for now, let's plunge right in. I'll quote Zinn's first two paragraphs of this chapter, because they're scathing and true:
"Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership.
"When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command."
War: the same now as then:
"The war had brought glory for the generals, death to the privates, wealth for the merchants, unemployment for the poor."
Politics before the Revolutionary War were complicated. Rich whites wanted England and its taxes off their backs, but they in turn wanted to subjugate and squeeze money out of the poor. It was up to the colonial wealthy and elite to convince the poor that the British and not the rich new Americans were the enemy. The rhetoric focused on liberty, but only if it kept those without money or property (and thus voting rights) in line.
Zinn describes the way the Sons of Liberty, for example, a group of elite landowners and merchants, tried to protest and oppose the British through quiet, tranquil, more lawful means. Those with less to lose were much less concerned with the sanctity of private property. It reminds me of the differences among activist groups in GLBT history, for example. Or any groups fighting against oppression, really. Some groups try to work within the system, keeping whatever ground they have while pushing paper to make incremental changes. Other activists are more radical and attempt to take down the system, seeing the inherent corruption in the ways hierarchies are organized and systematically supported. I'm obviously of the opinion that there is something fundamentally wrong with these hierarchical, oppressive systems in which people think that their own creature comforts are intrinsically more valuable than literally the lives of the people they subjugate. I still live relatively complacently in my place of privilege(s), so my preaching here only has so much value, but I try to educate (myself and others) here to encourage a zeitgeist and real change.
I've been thinking a lot in different venues lately about how to educate, how to talk to people, when and how to engage people about and against oppression on all levels. First, you have to educate yourself. You have to meet people where they are, love them, and work in the ways that you can. Sometimes people are not ready to talk. They will spew hatred and the best you can do is walk away. But that's a story for another blog. I am reminded these past few minutes of some really excellent Rage Against the Machine lyrics:
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?
So I guess I'm pressed to think about different ways to be an activist. I've focused on education, getting the word out. Making myself a better speaker. Putting myself out there. Using my capital resources to take care of myself and give to others. Reducing consumption, sequestering carbon, not having children.
... Other notes from Zinn:
An oft-quoted line from Thomas Paine, but here the entire sentence is included:
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil."
People, especially current Republicans, like to focus on the second part of that sentence, but they don't seem to understand its relationship to the first part. First, I am not sure that society as we have it today is a blessing. Community is a good thing, sure, but a civilization in which the comforts of the rich depend on the blood of the poor is not just. Self-government, then, would do well to make us aware of this. Government should not exist to create new false hierarchies but to encourage discourse and education, to check and balance how we interact with the natural world, and to help provide what is best for all.
Anyway, Zinn describes Paine's background and political leanings pretty well, something I think is important if one chooses to quote him and now. Context, as always, is important.Common Sense. By the end, though, Zinn says scathingly that Paine eventually "lent himself perfectly to the myth of the Revolution - that it was on behalf of a united people."
Here's a piece of history I didn't remember. The British, for various reasons, told the colonies in the Proclamation of 1763 that they could not settle west of the Appalachians. Partly, I'm sure, they wanted to maintain control of the colonies, and keeping them smaller geographically was one of the best ways to effect that. Another part of me says good on them, stopping the butchering of the Native Americans, even if for selfish reasons.
At the end of Chapter 4, Zinn accurately analyzes some of the rhetoric of "our" "Founding Fathers" in such documents as the Declaration of Independence. I encourage you to read it if you are so inclined, but I will not touch on it here, as rhetoric is something I think about and employ every day. Zinn again damns John Locke for his use of rhetoric in supporting a system of barons controlling everything and any poor children over the age of three being pressed into labor (or at least formal education to break their wills and inure them to work for the rich).
And so, while England's poor protested about low wages and hard working conditions while the price of staples like bread continued to rise [sound like any Middle Eastern uprisings, anyone?], the rich colonists of the budding United States wrote grand declarations and gave speeches to inspire the people to revolt against England... and then forced them into conscription, being sure to pay off middle- and lower-class people so they wouldn't actually have to do the dirty work of fighting.
"Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership.
"When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command."
War: the same now as then:
"The war had brought glory for the generals, death to the privates, wealth for the merchants, unemployment for the poor."
Politics before the Revolutionary War were complicated. Rich whites wanted England and its taxes off their backs, but they in turn wanted to subjugate and squeeze money out of the poor. It was up to the colonial wealthy and elite to convince the poor that the British and not the rich new Americans were the enemy. The rhetoric focused on liberty, but only if it kept those without money or property (and thus voting rights) in line.
Zinn describes the way the Sons of Liberty, for example, a group of elite landowners and merchants, tried to protest and oppose the British through quiet, tranquil, more lawful means. Those with less to lose were much less concerned with the sanctity of private property. It reminds me of the differences among activist groups in GLBT history, for example. Or any groups fighting against oppression, really. Some groups try to work within the system, keeping whatever ground they have while pushing paper to make incremental changes. Other activists are more radical and attempt to take down the system, seeing the inherent corruption in the ways hierarchies are organized and systematically supported. I'm obviously of the opinion that there is something fundamentally wrong with these hierarchical, oppressive systems in which people think that their own creature comforts are intrinsically more valuable than literally the lives of the people they subjugate. I still live relatively complacently in my place of privilege(s), so my preaching here only has so much value, but I try to educate (myself and others) here to encourage a zeitgeist and real change.
I've been thinking a lot in different venues lately about how to educate, how to talk to people, when and how to engage people about and against oppression on all levels. First, you have to educate yourself. You have to meet people where they are, love them, and work in the ways that you can. Sometimes people are not ready to talk. They will spew hatred and the best you can do is walk away. But that's a story for another blog. I am reminded these past few minutes of some really excellent Rage Against the Machine lyrics:
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?
So I guess I'm pressed to think about different ways to be an activist. I've focused on education, getting the word out. Making myself a better speaker. Putting myself out there. Using my capital resources to take care of myself and give to others. Reducing consumption, sequestering carbon, not having children.
... Other notes from Zinn:
An oft-quoted line from Thomas Paine, but here the entire sentence is included:
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil."
People, especially current Republicans, like to focus on the second part of that sentence, but they don't seem to understand its relationship to the first part. First, I am not sure that society as we have it today is a blessing. Community is a good thing, sure, but a civilization in which the comforts of the rich depend on the blood of the poor is not just. Self-government, then, would do well to make us aware of this. Government should not exist to create new false hierarchies but to encourage discourse and education, to check and balance how we interact with the natural world, and to help provide what is best for all.
Anyway, Zinn describes Paine's background and political leanings pretty well, something I think is important if one chooses to quote him and now. Context, as always, is important.Common Sense. By the end, though, Zinn says scathingly that Paine eventually "lent himself perfectly to the myth of the Revolution - that it was on behalf of a united people."
Here's a piece of history I didn't remember. The British, for various reasons, told the colonies in the Proclamation of 1763 that they could not settle west of the Appalachians. Partly, I'm sure, they wanted to maintain control of the colonies, and keeping them smaller geographically was one of the best ways to effect that. Another part of me says good on them, stopping the butchering of the Native Americans, even if for selfish reasons.
At the end of Chapter 4, Zinn accurately analyzes some of the rhetoric of "our" "Founding Fathers" in such documents as the Declaration of Independence. I encourage you to read it if you are so inclined, but I will not touch on it here, as rhetoric is something I think about and employ every day. Zinn again damns John Locke for his use of rhetoric in supporting a system of barons controlling everything and any poor children over the age of three being pressed into labor (or at least formal education to break their wills and inure them to work for the rich).
And so, while England's poor protested about low wages and hard working conditions while the price of staples like bread continued to rise [sound like any Middle Eastern uprisings, anyone?], the rich colonists of the budding United States wrote grand declarations and gave speeches to inspire the people to revolt against England... and then forced them into conscription, being sure to pay off middle- and lower-class people so they wouldn't actually have to do the dirty work of fighting.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Zinn, Chapter 3
(Nathaniel) Bacon's Rebellion
- Bacon was anti-Indian and
- anti-aristocracy
In fact, he sounds kind of Tea Party-ish to me the way Zinn describes him.
Many poor whites in the colonies supported him because he opposed the unfair price setting and trade rules Mother England imposed on tobacco, for example. As we see so often in history, the people at the top were making too much too unfairly on the backs of the poor.
Many of these were the same poor whites had been imprisoned in England for their poverty (which came, often, from having their land seized by those in power) and signed up for indenturehood to maybe get ahead in the New World. Their conditions on the trip across the Atlantic were better than those of slaves from Africa, but, for example, "[t]he sloop Sea-Flower, leaving Belfast in 1741, was at sea sixteen weeks, and when it arrived in Boston, forty-six of its 106 passengers were dead of starvation, six of them eaten by the survivors. On another trip, thirty-two children died of hunger and disease and were thrown into the ocean." It just wasn't cost-effective for the people who funded the voyages to keep these potential indentured servants alive. Once they reached the colonies, these servants were often raped and beaten and were certainly prevented from voting, marrying or having sex without the permission of their masters, and organizing.
To again quote Zinn at length (from Chapter 3, which pages I do not know):
"More than half the colonists who came to the North American shores in the colonial period came as servants. They were mostly English in the seventeenth century, Irish and German in the eighteenth century. More and more, slaves replaced them, as they ran away to freedom or finished their time, but as late as 1755, white servants made up 10 percent of the population of Maryland.
"What happened to these servants after they became free? There are cheerful accounts in which they rise to prosperity, becoming landowners and important figures. But Abbot Smith, after a careful study, concludes that colonial society 'was not democratic and certainly not equalitarian; it was dominated by men who had money enough to make others work for them.'"
The class system solidified in those colonial years as John Locke encouraged a "feudal-type aristocracy, in which eight barons would own 40 percent of the colony's land, and only a baron could be governor." Zinn shares numerous examples of the differences among the classes and how the gap between the rich and the poor grew. "The colonies, it seems, were societies of contending classes-a fact obscured by the emphasis, in traditional histories, on the external struggle against England, the unity of colonists in the Revolution. The country therefore was not 'born free' but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich."
As usual, the rich kept their wealth in some pretty clever ways:
1. Divide and conquer your enemies.
2. Pit your enemies against each other. You keep them busy and they dwindle each other's numbers.
In another file somewhere, I am compiling a list of ways to subjugate people.
I think a point Zinn made in Chapter 2 which I noted in my last blogpost bears repeating: "Racism [in the mid-1700s in the colonies] was becoming more and more practical. Edmund Morgan, on the basis of his careful study of slavery in Virginia, sees racism not as 'natural' to black-white difference, but something coming out of class scorn, a realistic device for control." Indeed, the "answer to the problem [of blacks and poor whites uniting against their oppressors], obvious if unspoken and only gradually recognized, was racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous black slaves by a screen of racial contempt."
Allow me to pull out something in a slightly different context, if only because it reminds me so much of the Republican rhetoric I hear today:
"Middle-class Americans might be invited to join a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. The New Yorker Cadwallader Golden, in his Address to the Freeholders in 1747, attacked the wealthy as tax dodgers unconcerned with the welfare of others (although he himself was wealthy) and spoke for the honesty and dependability of 'the midling rank of mankind' in whom citizens could best trust 'our liberty & Property.' This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of 'our' liberty, 'our' property, 'our' country." Indeed, the middle class is seen as the salt of the earth, to be governed today by a republic of elected representatives who supposedly look out for the best interests of *real* Americans. It's the middle class being ruled by the upper classes. Democrats do it and Republicans do it, although the political game now is to pretend that they're everyday, next-door kind of people. The oligarchy rules, though, by appeasing the middle class as well as they have to and shitting on the poor and easily marginalized, which today includes people who look "funny," sound funny, act funny, or love funny. Pick your -ism; we've got oppression for all.
Zinn ends Chapter 3 in a way that sends chills up my spine:
"Those upper classes, to rule, needed to make concessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites. This bought loyalty. And to bind that loyalty with something more powerful even than material advantage, the ruling group found, in the 1760s and 1770s, a wonderfully useful device. That device was the language of liberty and equality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality."
- Bacon was anti-Indian and
- anti-aristocracy
In fact, he sounds kind of Tea Party-ish to me the way Zinn describes him.
Many poor whites in the colonies supported him because he opposed the unfair price setting and trade rules Mother England imposed on tobacco, for example. As we see so often in history, the people at the top were making too much too unfairly on the backs of the poor.
Many of these were the same poor whites had been imprisoned in England for their poverty (which came, often, from having their land seized by those in power) and signed up for indenturehood to maybe get ahead in the New World. Their conditions on the trip across the Atlantic were better than those of slaves from Africa, but, for example, "[t]he sloop Sea-Flower, leaving Belfast in 1741, was at sea sixteen weeks, and when it arrived in Boston, forty-six of its 106 passengers were dead of starvation, six of them eaten by the survivors. On another trip, thirty-two children died of hunger and disease and were thrown into the ocean." It just wasn't cost-effective for the people who funded the voyages to keep these potential indentured servants alive. Once they reached the colonies, these servants were often raped and beaten and were certainly prevented from voting, marrying or having sex without the permission of their masters, and organizing.
To again quote Zinn at length (from Chapter 3, which pages I do not know):
"More than half the colonists who came to the North American shores in the colonial period came as servants. They were mostly English in the seventeenth century, Irish and German in the eighteenth century. More and more, slaves replaced them, as they ran away to freedom or finished their time, but as late as 1755, white servants made up 10 percent of the population of Maryland.
"What happened to these servants after they became free? There are cheerful accounts in which they rise to prosperity, becoming landowners and important figures. But Abbot Smith, after a careful study, concludes that colonial society 'was not democratic and certainly not equalitarian; it was dominated by men who had money enough to make others work for them.'"
The class system solidified in those colonial years as John Locke encouraged a "feudal-type aristocracy, in which eight barons would own 40 percent of the colony's land, and only a baron could be governor." Zinn shares numerous examples of the differences among the classes and how the gap between the rich and the poor grew. "The colonies, it seems, were societies of contending classes-a fact obscured by the emphasis, in traditional histories, on the external struggle against England, the unity of colonists in the Revolution. The country therefore was not 'born free' but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich."
As usual, the rich kept their wealth in some pretty clever ways:
1. Divide and conquer your enemies.
2. Pit your enemies against each other. You keep them busy and they dwindle each other's numbers.
In another file somewhere, I am compiling a list of ways to subjugate people.
I think a point Zinn made in Chapter 2 which I noted in my last blogpost bears repeating: "Racism [in the mid-1700s in the colonies] was becoming more and more practical. Edmund Morgan, on the basis of his careful study of slavery in Virginia, sees racism not as 'natural' to black-white difference, but something coming out of class scorn, a realistic device for control." Indeed, the "answer to the problem [of blacks and poor whites uniting against their oppressors], obvious if unspoken and only gradually recognized, was racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous black slaves by a screen of racial contempt."
Allow me to pull out something in a slightly different context, if only because it reminds me so much of the Republican rhetoric I hear today:
"Middle-class Americans might be invited to join a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. The New Yorker Cadwallader Golden, in his Address to the Freeholders in 1747, attacked the wealthy as tax dodgers unconcerned with the welfare of others (although he himself was wealthy) and spoke for the honesty and dependability of 'the midling rank of mankind' in whom citizens could best trust 'our liberty & Property.' This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of 'our' liberty, 'our' property, 'our' country." Indeed, the middle class is seen as the salt of the earth, to be governed today by a republic of elected representatives who supposedly look out for the best interests of *real* Americans. It's the middle class being ruled by the upper classes. Democrats do it and Republicans do it, although the political game now is to pretend that they're everyday, next-door kind of people. The oligarchy rules, though, by appeasing the middle class as well as they have to and shitting on the poor and easily marginalized, which today includes people who look "funny," sound funny, act funny, or love funny. Pick your -ism; we've got oppression for all.
Zinn ends Chapter 3 in a way that sends chills up my spine:
"Those upper classes, to rule, needed to make concessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites. This bought loyalty. And to bind that loyalty with something more powerful even than material advantage, the ruling group found, in the 1760s and 1770s, a wonderfully useful device. That device was the language of liberty and equality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality."
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Zinn, Chapter 2
Highlights:
1. Colonists from Europe to the future U.S. in the early 1600s practiced cannibalism when it was necessary. At the same time, members of the leisure class of England were loath to work and would much rather indenture and enslave people (especially blacks and native Americans) to work for them. Working in the colonies was hard, so whites tried multiple methods to subdue other people to work for them. This is not true of all whites, obviously, but it was enough to create institutionally supported crimes against humanity.
2. These sins stem from hubris: "If you were a colonist, you knew that your technology was superior to the Indians'. You knew that you were civilized, and they were savages... But your superior technology had proved insufficient to extract anything. The Indians, keeping to themselves, laughed at your superior methods and lived from the land more abundantly and with less labor than you did... And when your own people started deserting in order to live with them, it was too much... So you killed the Indians, tortured them, burned their villages, burned their cornfields. It proved your superiority, in spite of your failures. And you gave similar treatment to any of your own people who succumbed to their savage ways of life." ~ from Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom
3. Zinn talks about the African culture(s) whites plucked slaves from, how they were advanced and beautiful but certainly far from perfect (they had wars, human sacrifice, a caste system, and even a form of slavery, too). The point is that their way of life was not inherently inferior to the European model. Their sense of community, to Zinn anyway, was remarkable.
4. To quote Zinn at length: "African slavery is hardly to be praised. But it was far different from plantation or mining slavery in the Americas, which was lifelong, morally crippling, destructive of family ties, without hope of any future. African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave. In fact, it was because they came from a settled culture, of tribal customs and family ties, of communal life and traditional ritual, that African blacks found themselves especially helpless when removed from this."
5. In case you've forgotten how awful the transportation conditions were, please read about it in this chapter.
6. Zinn suggests that segregation had to be legally enforced because slaves and servants were fraternizing: blacks, natives, mulattos, and whites all being *gasp* friendly and intimate was too much for those in power. It's reminiscent to me, as many things are, of Jensen's Premises, specifically #4. People in power will do what is necessary to enforce the hierarchies that economically benefit them the most, even when it's inhuman(e) to do so.... And then, wow, a dozen paragraphs after I wrote that, I read Zinn's spin on it: "It was an intricate and powerful system of control that the slaveowners developed to maintain their labor supply and their way of life, a system both subtle and crude, involving every device that social orders employ for keeping power and wealth where it is."
7. Zinn wrote in his first chapter that he's trying to retell history from a different perspective but not to make us feel impotent shame and rage (my words, not his). His "where do we go from here" point from this second chapter seems to be: "that the elements of this web [of racism] are historical, not 'natural.' This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction." It was true then and it sounds pretty darn true now as U.S. politicians frame their arguments in ways to either pit rich against poor or middle class against middle class, all while the powerfully somewhat rich seek to keep and expand their power. Class warfare continues. Racial warfare is easier, as "Americans" can point at red and brown and black people and blame them for occupying space "we" think is ours by divine right.
1. Colonists from Europe to the future U.S. in the early 1600s practiced cannibalism when it was necessary. At the same time, members of the leisure class of England were loath to work and would much rather indenture and enslave people (especially blacks and native Americans) to work for them. Working in the colonies was hard, so whites tried multiple methods to subdue other people to work for them. This is not true of all whites, obviously, but it was enough to create institutionally supported crimes against humanity.
2. These sins stem from hubris: "If you were a colonist, you knew that your technology was superior to the Indians'. You knew that you were civilized, and they were savages... But your superior technology had proved insufficient to extract anything. The Indians, keeping to themselves, laughed at your superior methods and lived from the land more abundantly and with less labor than you did... And when your own people started deserting in order to live with them, it was too much... So you killed the Indians, tortured them, burned their villages, burned their cornfields. It proved your superiority, in spite of your failures. And you gave similar treatment to any of your own people who succumbed to their savage ways of life." ~ from Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom
3. Zinn talks about the African culture(s) whites plucked slaves from, how they were advanced and beautiful but certainly far from perfect (they had wars, human sacrifice, a caste system, and even a form of slavery, too). The point is that their way of life was not inherently inferior to the European model. Their sense of community, to Zinn anyway, was remarkable.
4. To quote Zinn at length: "African slavery is hardly to be praised. But it was far different from plantation or mining slavery in the Americas, which was lifelong, morally crippling, destructive of family ties, without hope of any future. African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave. In fact, it was because they came from a settled culture, of tribal customs and family ties, of communal life and traditional ritual, that African blacks found themselves especially helpless when removed from this."
5. In case you've forgotten how awful the transportation conditions were, please read about it in this chapter.
6. Zinn suggests that segregation had to be legally enforced because slaves and servants were fraternizing: blacks, natives, mulattos, and whites all being *gasp* friendly and intimate was too much for those in power. It's reminiscent to me, as many things are, of Jensen's Premises, specifically #4. People in power will do what is necessary to enforce the hierarchies that economically benefit them the most, even when it's inhuman(e) to do so.... And then, wow, a dozen paragraphs after I wrote that, I read Zinn's spin on it: "It was an intricate and powerful system of control that the slaveowners developed to maintain their labor supply and their way of life, a system both subtle and crude, involving every device that social orders employ for keeping power and wealth where it is."
7. Zinn wrote in his first chapter that he's trying to retell history from a different perspective but not to make us feel impotent shame and rage (my words, not his). His "where do we go from here" point from this second chapter seems to be: "that the elements of this web [of racism] are historical, not 'natural.' This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction." It was true then and it sounds pretty darn true now as U.S. politicians frame their arguments in ways to either pit rich against poor or middle class against middle class, all while the powerfully somewhat rich seek to keep and expand their power. Class warfare continues. Racial warfare is easier, as "Americans" can point at red and brown and black people and blame them for occupying space "we" think is ours by divine right.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Zinn, Chapter 1
On Wednesday I finally started reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." As I've done with past books, I'd like to (at least start) go(ing) through it chapter by chapter.
Chapter 1 starts by talking about Christopher Columbus's "discovering" America from a different perspective. He quotes Columbus's own journals, including exerpts like:
"With fifty men we could subjugate them all [the Arawak people, Haitian natives, now extinct] and make them do whatever we want."
Yay slaves, yay manifest destiny. And then,
"Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves [to Spain] that can be wold."
Yay genocide, cruelty, power and corruption!
Zinn certainly points these things out, but this is not a story about Columbus, per se. Instead, in his own words,
"My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims."
The point I took most clearly is about "the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress." Is progress really worth that much? Sure, all our ancestors have done it. We all continue to be complicit in it. Some would argue that, to a certain extent, anyway, it's part of human nature. To some extent, as well, animals do it. But I don't think animals exploit others and gleefully butcher others the way humans do when we have the power and the feeling of God on our side to do so. Killing others so we can steal their resources to build bigger and better (and more derivative) structures doesn't seem right to me.
But it's not just the strong oppressing the weak, although we do plenty of that, and Zinn is the first to recognize that. The Aztecs massacred by later Spaniards, after all, performed ritual sacrifices to kill their own. Zinn has a thing or five thousand to teach me: "Still, understanding the complexities, this book will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest. I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don't want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: 'The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.'"
I think there's a difference, though. The very system of capitalism, which requires growth to function, relies fundamentally on finding new sources of capital - land or water or minerals - acquiring them by force or funds, and exploiting the hell out of them.
At the end of Zinn's first chapter, he describes the histories and cultural attributes of many American Indian tribes and nations. Life wasn't perfect, but scholar John Collier and others think it just might have been sustainable:
"John Collier, an American scholar who lived among Indians in the 1920s and 1930s in the American Southwest, said of their spirit: 'Could we make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace.'"
Zinn ends the chapter thusly:
"Perhaps there is some romantic mythology in that. But the evidence from European travelers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, put together recently by an American specialist on Indian life, William Brandon, is overwhelmingly supportive of much of that 'myth.' Even allowing for the imperfection of myths, it is enough to make us question, for that time and ours, the excuse of progress in the annihilation of races, and the telling of history from the standpoint of the conquerors and leaders of Western civilization.
This is going to be a good book.
Chapter 1 starts by talking about Christopher Columbus's "discovering" America from a different perspective. He quotes Columbus's own journals, including exerpts like:
"With fifty men we could subjugate them all [the Arawak people, Haitian natives, now extinct] and make them do whatever we want."
Yay slaves, yay manifest destiny. And then,
"Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves [to Spain] that can be wold."
Yay genocide, cruelty, power and corruption!
Zinn certainly points these things out, but this is not a story about Columbus, per se. Instead, in his own words,
"My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims."
The point I took most clearly is about "the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress." Is progress really worth that much? Sure, all our ancestors have done it. We all continue to be complicit in it. Some would argue that, to a certain extent, anyway, it's part of human nature. To some extent, as well, animals do it. But I don't think animals exploit others and gleefully butcher others the way humans do when we have the power and the feeling of God on our side to do so. Killing others so we can steal their resources to build bigger and better (and more derivative) structures doesn't seem right to me.
But it's not just the strong oppressing the weak, although we do plenty of that, and Zinn is the first to recognize that. The Aztecs massacred by later Spaniards, after all, performed ritual sacrifices to kill their own. Zinn has a thing or five thousand to teach me: "Still, understanding the complexities, this book will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to a common interest. I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don't want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: 'The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.'"
I think there's a difference, though. The very system of capitalism, which requires growth to function, relies fundamentally on finding new sources of capital - land or water or minerals - acquiring them by force or funds, and exploiting the hell out of them.
At the end of Zinn's first chapter, he describes the histories and cultural attributes of many American Indian tribes and nations. Life wasn't perfect, but scholar John Collier and others think it just might have been sustainable:
"John Collier, an American scholar who lived among Indians in the 1920s and 1930s in the American Southwest, said of their spirit: 'Could we make it our own, there would be an eternally inexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace.'"
Zinn ends the chapter thusly:
"Perhaps there is some romantic mythology in that. But the evidence from European travelers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, put together recently by an American specialist on Indian life, William Brandon, is overwhelmingly supportive of much of that 'myth.' Even allowing for the imperfection of myths, it is enough to make us question, for that time and ours, the excuse of progress in the annihilation of races, and the telling of history from the standpoint of the conquerors and leaders of Western civilization.
This is going to be a good book.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Peak Everything, p. 18
So, let's look at it this way.
2000 calories per day > 600 calories per day but
3500 calores per day is not better than 2000 calories (or 1500 calories) per day
shelter, potable water, and a little electricity are better than not having these things BUT
a 5000 square foot home for 3 people is not better than a 1500 square foot home
Everything has limits, and limits are good. Growth in terms of energy consumption and physical production Is Limited. Is Finite. Recognize!
Or, in Heinberg's words:
"Addressing the economic, social, and political problems ensuing from the various looming peaks is no mere palliative and will require enormous collective effort. If it is to be successful, that effort must be coordinated, presumably by government, and enlist people by educating and motivating them in numbers and at a speed that has not been seen since World War II. Part of that motivation must come from a positive vision of a future worth striving toward. People will need to believe in an eventual reward for what will amount to many years of hard sacrifice. The reality is that we are approaching a time of economic contraction. Consumptive appetites that have been stoked for decades by ubiquitous advertising messages promising “more, faster, and bigger” will now have to be reined in. People will not willingly accept the new message of “less, slower, and smaller,” unless they have new goals toward which to aspire. They must feel that their efforts will lead to a better world, with tangible improvements in life for themselves and their families. The massive public education campaigns that will be required must be credible, and will therefore be vastly more successful if they give people a sense of investment and involvement in formulating those goals. There is a much-abused word that describes the necessary process—democracy."
What now? It's not a matter of damning and shaming people about how wrong, wrong, wrong our way of life is, although we do need to recognize and admit our excesses and our sins. But this isn't sufficient. We have to create something better, a positive alternative, not just opposing a negative one. This is wrapped up intimately in ideas of binaries, but I can't go there right now. It's all connected.
2000 calories per day > 600 calories per day but
3500 calores per day is not better than 2000 calories (or 1500 calories) per day
shelter, potable water, and a little electricity are better than not having these things BUT
a 5000 square foot home for 3 people is not better than a 1500 square foot home
Everything has limits, and limits are good. Growth in terms of energy consumption and physical production Is Limited. Is Finite. Recognize!
Or, in Heinberg's words:
"Addressing the economic, social, and political problems ensuing from the various looming peaks is no mere palliative and will require enormous collective effort. If it is to be successful, that effort must be coordinated, presumably by government, and enlist people by educating and motivating them in numbers and at a speed that has not been seen since World War II. Part of that motivation must come from a positive vision of a future worth striving toward. People will need to believe in an eventual reward for what will amount to many years of hard sacrifice. The reality is that we are approaching a time of economic contraction. Consumptive appetites that have been stoked for decades by ubiquitous advertising messages promising “more, faster, and bigger” will now have to be reined in. People will not willingly accept the new message of “less, slower, and smaller,” unless they have new goals toward which to aspire. They must feel that their efforts will lead to a better world, with tangible improvements in life for themselves and their families. The massive public education campaigns that will be required must be credible, and will therefore be vastly more successful if they give people a sense of investment and involvement in formulating those goals. There is a much-abused word that describes the necessary process—democracy."
What now? It's not a matter of damning and shaming people about how wrong, wrong, wrong our way of life is, although we do need to recognize and admit our excesses and our sins. But this isn't sufficient. We have to create something better, a positive alternative, not just opposing a negative one. This is wrapped up intimately in ideas of binaries, but I can't go there right now. It's all connected.
Peak Everything - A Very Short Note
The stock market is not a measure of the real economy, and GDP is not a measure of real happiness.
Guess what.... I'm reading another book (or introduction to one). Here's a quotation from it:
"Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is easily measured and shows a mostly upward trend for the world as a whole over the past two centuries. But it takes into account only a narrow set of data—the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time. Growth in GDP is used to tell us that we should be feeling better about ourselves and our world —but it leaves out a wide range of other factors, including damage to the environment, wars, crime and imprisonment rates, and trends in education (like whether more or fewer people graduate from high school or college, and the quality of the education received)" (page 17 of the Introduction to Peak Everything).
Guess what.... I'm reading another book (or introduction to one). Here's a quotation from it:
"Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is easily measured and shows a mostly upward trend for the world as a whole over the past two centuries. But it takes into account only a narrow set of data—the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time. Growth in GDP is used to tell us that we should be feeling better about ourselves and our world —but it leaves out a wide range of other factors, including damage to the environment, wars, crime and imprisonment rates, and trends in education (like whether more or fewer people graduate from high school or college, and the quality of the education received)" (page 17 of the Introduction to Peak Everything).
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Plan B, Chapter 9 Highlights
For notes on Chapter 8, check out my other blog.
Chapter 9 of Lester Brown's book is titled "Feeding Eight Billion People Well." It's a big issue. My friend JLC shared a blogpost by someone today while I was reading the Brown chapter; this post talked about how our huge population is a blessing and not a problem. This made me angry and I shared it and my response to it via googlereader (which I think you can check out through this very site). Anyway, on to Chapter 9, which shows that it's all connected, baby.
So, how do we feed all the people in the world? Here's Brown's Plan, sometimes with my interjections:
1. Increase Food Productivity. Granted, we have been doing this, through using more fertilizer (but at what cost to the environment, ecosystems, and other life forms?), through improved irrigation, and through different crop breeds (a lot of the arguments against GMOs are overzealous and ridiculous, as humans have been hybridizing plants manually for thousands of years, but we should still be cautious of how, why, and how thoroughly we research the effects of some of the more invasive splicings). However, productivity cannot grow forever. Crop yields in corn, wheat, soy, and rice have pretty much all hit their peaks. Brown talks specifics in the beginning of this chapter, and if you want to argue the science, I encourage you to read it.
2. Increase Water Productivity. Drip irrigation is really good for this. Brown also argues for giving more power and responsibility to the locals and taking it away from central governments. This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the infrastructures provided by the government for the common good. This suggestion of Brown's is fascinating to me but brings up questions of how to balance the government's role (in providing security, liberty, infrastructure, etc.) with local and personal sovereignty.
3. Produce Protein More Efficiently. "World meat consumption increased from 44 million tons in 1950 to 260 million tons in 2007" (226). "In every society where incomes have risen, so has meat consumption" (ibid). So, what can we do? Well, on the supply side, we can use crop residues instead of specially allotted grains to feed dairy cows, as they do pretty darn effectively in India right now. Eat less meat, and eat smaller animals. If you must eat meat, go with sustainably raised chickens and fish rather than cows. Brown also seems to nod a little at Derrick Jensen, noting that salmon aren't particularly sustainable as far as fish go. They're carnivorous, after all. If you're going to eat fish, consider carp, tilapia, and catfish. Brown likes to talk pragmatically as much as he does moralistically, but he doesn't forget that, either. The easy answer is to reduce consumption: "Meat consumption is growing almost twice as fast as population" (230). He makes a nuanced argument later in the chapter about how much protein we really need anyway. He doesn't make the point very strongly, but he does point out that a moderate amount of protein does lead to longer lifespans. Relying mostly on grain for calories as they do in India and other nations is correlated to shorter lifespans, but so does relying more on too much protein as we do in the U.S. Brown loosely suggests a Mediterranean-type diet, which falls somewhere between the two extremes, as being closer to the ideal.
4. Localizing Agriculture. Well, this often results in lowering the carbon required in transportation costs. Arguments have been made that producing and shipping stuff in bulk is more carbon efficient than individuals driving their SUVs (or Priuses) and purchasing small amounts in farmers' markets, but I don't quite buy it, and I think that local is good for a lot of things. There's also the idea that localized agriculture, at least when compared to ridiculously huge agriculture, provides better opportunities for nitrogen fixation and general nutrient recycling as farmers who are less removed from their land are more aware of how composting, using animal waste, and growing legumes alongside their cash crops can help productivity and reduce long-term monetary and ecological (which eventually become monetary) costs. Again, please bug me more about this if you like, or read Chapter 9. And, while I'm at it, check out Farmer John's blog. He's an actual farmer'n'stuff. :-)
5. Reduce Demand (233).
a. Stabilize the Population (See this blogpost on why feminism is awesome.)
b. Move down the foodchain, especially in first world countries like the U.S. This means eating less meat or at least smaller, more grain-efficient animals.
c. Reduce the use of grain to fuel cars. I'm not sure if ethanol still has a big push in the U.S. and other countries, but here are some numbers:
"The estimated 104 milliion tons of grain used to produce ethanol in 2009 in the United States is the food supply for 340 million people at average world grain consumption levels" (235).
Brown finishes up the chapter with the idea - perhaps the book's theme - that it's all connected. If it keeps getting hotter and sea levels rise while deserts grow, food productivity will decrease. "With water, as with energy, the principle opportunites now are increasing efficiency on the demand side, not in expanding the supply side" (236-237).
There is one more chapter left in Lester Brown's Plan B. It's titled "Can We Mobilize Fast Enough?" and will probably be less full of the facts, which he's brought in good measure throughout the rest of the book, and more a direct call to urgent and immediate action. I'm not sure what I suggest that individuals do, but one of the first answers seems to be to Educate people, demonstrating that the problems outlined and elucidated are real and imminent. Then we can Empower them. Not just to change the bad behaviors but to engage in good, sustainable, community-building, soul-enriching behaviors, routines, and rituals [about which I need to write later].
Chapter 9 of Lester Brown's book is titled "Feeding Eight Billion People Well." It's a big issue. My friend JLC shared a blogpost by someone today while I was reading the Brown chapter; this post talked about how our huge population is a blessing and not a problem. This made me angry and I shared it and my response to it via googlereader (which I think you can check out through this very site). Anyway, on to Chapter 9, which shows that it's all connected, baby.
So, how do we feed all the people in the world? Here's Brown's Plan, sometimes with my interjections:
1. Increase Food Productivity. Granted, we have been doing this, through using more fertilizer (but at what cost to the environment, ecosystems, and other life forms?), through improved irrigation, and through different crop breeds (a lot of the arguments against GMOs are overzealous and ridiculous, as humans have been hybridizing plants manually for thousands of years, but we should still be cautious of how, why, and how thoroughly we research the effects of some of the more invasive splicings). However, productivity cannot grow forever. Crop yields in corn, wheat, soy, and rice have pretty much all hit their peaks. Brown talks specifics in the beginning of this chapter, and if you want to argue the science, I encourage you to read it.
2. Increase Water Productivity. Drip irrigation is really good for this. Brown also argues for giving more power and responsibility to the locals and taking it away from central governments. This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the infrastructures provided by the government for the common good. This suggestion of Brown's is fascinating to me but brings up questions of how to balance the government's role (in providing security, liberty, infrastructure, etc.) with local and personal sovereignty.
3. Produce Protein More Efficiently. "World meat consumption increased from 44 million tons in 1950 to 260 million tons in 2007" (226). "In every society where incomes have risen, so has meat consumption" (ibid). So, what can we do? Well, on the supply side, we can use crop residues instead of specially allotted grains to feed dairy cows, as they do pretty darn effectively in India right now. Eat less meat, and eat smaller animals. If you must eat meat, go with sustainably raised chickens and fish rather than cows. Brown also seems to nod a little at Derrick Jensen, noting that salmon aren't particularly sustainable as far as fish go. They're carnivorous, after all. If you're going to eat fish, consider carp, tilapia, and catfish. Brown likes to talk pragmatically as much as he does moralistically, but he doesn't forget that, either. The easy answer is to reduce consumption: "Meat consumption is growing almost twice as fast as population" (230). He makes a nuanced argument later in the chapter about how much protein we really need anyway. He doesn't make the point very strongly, but he does point out that a moderate amount of protein does lead to longer lifespans. Relying mostly on grain for calories as they do in India and other nations is correlated to shorter lifespans, but so does relying more on too much protein as we do in the U.S. Brown loosely suggests a Mediterranean-type diet, which falls somewhere between the two extremes, as being closer to the ideal.
4. Localizing Agriculture. Well, this often results in lowering the carbon required in transportation costs. Arguments have been made that producing and shipping stuff in bulk is more carbon efficient than individuals driving their SUVs (or Priuses) and purchasing small amounts in farmers' markets, but I don't quite buy it, and I think that local is good for a lot of things. There's also the idea that localized agriculture, at least when compared to ridiculously huge agriculture, provides better opportunities for nitrogen fixation and general nutrient recycling as farmers who are less removed from their land are more aware of how composting, using animal waste, and growing legumes alongside their cash crops can help productivity and reduce long-term monetary and ecological (which eventually become monetary) costs. Again, please bug me more about this if you like, or read Chapter 9. And, while I'm at it, check out Farmer John's blog. He's an actual farmer'n'stuff. :-)
5. Reduce Demand (233).
a. Stabilize the Population (See this blogpost on why feminism is awesome.)
b. Move down the foodchain, especially in first world countries like the U.S. This means eating less meat or at least smaller, more grain-efficient animals.
c. Reduce the use of grain to fuel cars. I'm not sure if ethanol still has a big push in the U.S. and other countries, but here are some numbers:
"The estimated 104 milliion tons of grain used to produce ethanol in 2009 in the United States is the food supply for 340 million people at average world grain consumption levels" (235).
Brown finishes up the chapter with the idea - perhaps the book's theme - that it's all connected. If it keeps getting hotter and sea levels rise while deserts grow, food productivity will decrease. "With water, as with energy, the principle opportunites now are increasing efficiency on the demand side, not in expanding the supply side" (236-237).
There is one more chapter left in Lester Brown's Plan B. It's titled "Can We Mobilize Fast Enough?" and will probably be less full of the facts, which he's brought in good measure throughout the rest of the book, and more a direct call to urgent and immediate action. I'm not sure what I suggest that individuals do, but one of the first answers seems to be to Educate people, demonstrating that the problems outlined and elucidated are real and imminent. Then we can Empower them. Not just to change the bad behaviors but to engage in good, sustainable, community-building, soul-enriching behaviors, routines, and rituals [about which I need to write later].
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Plan B, Chapter 7 Highlights
"On the food front, the number of hungry is climbing. The long-term decline in the number of hungry and malnourished that characterized the last half of the twentieth century was reversed in the mid-1990s—rising from 825 million to roughly 850 million in 2000 and to over 1 billion in 2009. A number of factors contributed to this, but none more important than the massive diversion of grain to fuel ethanol distilleries in the United States. The U.S. grain used to produce fuel for cars in 2009 would feed 340 million people for one year" (Brown 170).
Yes, Brown cites those numbers. Check out the PDF for more info.
"Economist Gene Sperling [in “Toward Universal Education,” Foreign Affairs, September/ October 2001, pp. 7–13] concluded in a study of 72 countries that “the expansion of female secondary education may be the single best lever for achieving substantial reductions in fertility" (Brown 172). We're talking about fewer pregnancies in general, but we're also talking about lower infant and childhood mortality rates.
George McGovern (former Democratic Senator) thinks that feeding poor babies worldwide can help "dry up the swamplands of hunger and despair that serve as a potential recruiting ground for terrorists." Of course, that's not the only reason to feed hungry children, but it's a great argument when dealing with those among us who are more interested in national security than compassion. Brown adds, "In a world where vast wealth is accumulating among the rich, it makes little sense for children anywhere to go to school hungry" (174).
The next 10+ pages or so talk about stabilizing population growth, which many thinkers from multiple political persuasions think is the key issue we should focus on. Brown is blunt in his own opinion: "Put simply, filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The costs to society of not doing so may be greater than we can afford" (184).
Final thoughts for today: subsidies are bad. Not only do they skew the ecological and human price of domestic commodities like corn and oil; they also undercut the fair market price for commodities produced by other nations. Not cool as far as global economics goes. When more states fail and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow, it hurts everybody. This trickle-down stuff has had its run and it didn't work.
Yes, Brown cites those numbers. Check out the PDF for more info.
"Economist Gene Sperling [in “Toward Universal Education,” Foreign Affairs, September/ October 2001, pp. 7–13] concluded in a study of 72 countries that “the expansion of female secondary education may be the single best lever for achieving substantial reductions in fertility" (Brown 172). We're talking about fewer pregnancies in general, but we're also talking about lower infant and childhood mortality rates.
George McGovern (former Democratic Senator) thinks that feeding poor babies worldwide can help "dry up the swamplands of hunger and despair that serve as a potential recruiting ground for terrorists." Of course, that's not the only reason to feed hungry children, but it's a great argument when dealing with those among us who are more interested in national security than compassion. Brown adds, "In a world where vast wealth is accumulating among the rich, it makes little sense for children anywhere to go to school hungry" (174).
The next 10+ pages or so talk about stabilizing population growth, which many thinkers from multiple political persuasions think is the key issue we should focus on. Brown is blunt in his own opinion: "Put simply, filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The costs to society of not doing so may be greater than we can afford" (184).
Final thoughts for today: subsidies are bad. Not only do they skew the ecological and human price of domestic commodities like corn and oil; they also undercut the fair market price for commodities produced by other nations. Not cool as far as global economics goes. When more states fail and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow, it hurts everybody. This trickle-down stuff has had its run and it didn't work.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Quotations from Brown and Plan B
"The twentieth century witnessed the globalization of the world energy economy as the entire world came to depend heavily on a handful of countries for oil, many of them in one region of the world. This century will witness the localization of the world energy economy as countries begin to tap their indigenous resources of renewable energy.
"The localization of the energy economy will lead to the localization of the food economy. For example, as the cost of shipping fresh produce from distant markets rises with the price of oil, there will be more local farmers’ markets. Diets will be more locally based and seasonally sensitive than they are today.
The combination of moving down the food chain and reducing the food miles in our diets will dramatically reduce energy use in the food economy.
"As agriculture localizes, livestock production will likely start to shift from mega-sized cattle, hog, and poultry feeding operations. There will be fewer specialized farms and more mixed crop-livestock operations. Feeding operations will become smaller as the pressure to recycle nutrients mounts with the depletion of the world’s finite phosphate reserves and as fertilizer prices rise. The recent growth in the number of small farms in the United States will likely continue. As world food insecurity mounts, more and more people will be looking to produce some of their own food in backyards, in front yards, on rooftops, in community gardens, and elsewhere, further contributing to the localization of agriculture."
Lester Brown, Plan B 4.0, p. 140
"The localization of the energy economy will lead to the localization of the food economy. For example, as the cost of shipping fresh produce from distant markets rises with the price of oil, there will be more local farmers’ markets. Diets will be more locally based and seasonally sensitive than they are today.
The combination of moving down the food chain and reducing the food miles in our diets will dramatically reduce energy use in the food economy.
"As agriculture localizes, livestock production will likely start to shift from mega-sized cattle, hog, and poultry feeding operations. There will be fewer specialized farms and more mixed crop-livestock operations. Feeding operations will become smaller as the pressure to recycle nutrients mounts with the depletion of the world’s finite phosphate reserves and as fertilizer prices rise. The recent growth in the number of small farms in the United States will likely continue. As world food insecurity mounts, more and more people will be looking to produce some of their own food in backyards, in front yards, on rooftops, in community gardens, and elsewhere, further contributing to the localization of agriculture."
Lester Brown, Plan B 4.0, p. 140
Monday, February 14, 2011
Quick Climate Quotation
"Climate change is caused primarily by fossil fuel use. Burning fossil fuels has two main consequences: on the one hand, it produces substantial benefits through the production of energy; on the other, it exposes humanity to the risk of large, and perhaps catastrophic, costs from climate change. But these costs and benefits accrue to different groups: the benefits arise primarily in the short to medium term and so are received by the present generation, but the costs fall largely in the long term, on future generations. This suggests a worrying scenario. For one thing, so long as high energy use is (or is perceived to be) strongly connected to self-interest, the present generation will have strong egoistic reasons to ignore the worst aspects of climate change. For another, this problem is iterated: it arises anew for each subsequent generation as it gains the power to decide whether or not to act."
~ Gardiner's "Ethics and Global Climate Change," p. 595
~ Gardiner's "Ethics and Global Climate Change," p. 595
Friday, February 11, 2011
You say you want a revolution?
I wrote a blogpost on my other blog (boureemusique.xanga.com) today and then went to read all of my subscriptions at that site. One of my favorite bloggers, a liberal old man who works at a hospital, takes his wife to symphony, and plays a phenomenal game of Scrabble, wrote about Mubarek's stepping down in Egypt. Hell, the whole world is writing about it right now. And rightly so.
I'm optimistic about this. I'm elated that the Egyptian people are free and can begin to make better and more informed choices about how they want to live because information is now freer there. But I cannot simply rejoice. Here is my response to Bob's post:
"I am glad Egypt is free and there is a feeling of revolution there. Now I hope that people in Egypt, in the Middle East, and all over the world begin to look more clearly at our natural resources, their availabilty (by which I mean scarcity), and how the global market affects global politics. Egypt moved from an oil exporter to an oil importer; global food production took a major hit this year while demand is rising; and here in the U.S. we continue to keep our heads in the sand about climate change because it's not "economically sound." Well, neither us subsidizing a proverbial plane that's about to crash. So... Yay for revolution! Let me not downplay that. But let's keep that momentum going!"
I'm just trying to see the bigger picture. People are people and national and political boundaries are manmade and often arbitrary. But we all live on this planet. As populations grow physically larger and socially more hungry (whether they want to not starve or they want to drive cars), our non(ornotquicklyenough)renewable resources are dwindling. Something's got to give eventually. Let revolution be a joy AND an opportunity.
I'm optimistic about this. I'm elated that the Egyptian people are free and can begin to make better and more informed choices about how they want to live because information is now freer there. But I cannot simply rejoice. Here is my response to Bob's post:
"I am glad Egypt is free and there is a feeling of revolution there. Now I hope that people in Egypt, in the Middle East, and all over the world begin to look more clearly at our natural resources, their availabilty (by which I mean scarcity), and how the global market affects global politics. Egypt moved from an oil exporter to an oil importer; global food production took a major hit this year while demand is rising; and here in the U.S. we continue to keep our heads in the sand about climate change because it's not "economically sound." Well, neither us subsidizing a proverbial plane that's about to crash. So... Yay for revolution! Let me not downplay that. But let's keep that momentum going!"
I'm just trying to see the bigger picture. People are people and national and political boundaries are manmade and often arbitrary. But we all live on this planet. As populations grow physically larger and socially more hungry (whether they want to not starve or they want to drive cars), our non(ornotquicklyenough)renewable resources are dwindling. Something's got to give eventually. Let revolution be a joy AND an opportunity.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Meditation on Seeding
People meditate in different ways and for different reasons. I often meditate while doing other things. For example, if I'm on the elliptical (which I haven't been in weeks), I often forgo the music or the television and focus on my breathing. This is good for my body and for my spirit. I am usually less mindful of my self, but I could argue that sometimes I meditate when I sing. I'd call this more a transcendent experience, or perhaps something even more active, like prayer. Some people practice guided meditation while others meditate while knitting. Some people sit in lotus pose, on a mat, in a forest, on a mountaintop. All of these sound calming and sacred to me. All seem to have the potential to help energize or relax, to reduce blood pressure and increase alertness, to improve an individual's sense of well being and mental clarity.
Let me share with you part of a blogpost I snatched from my friend John B. Farmer John, if you will. He's made a lot of changes in his life lately, and dropping out of college to pursue farming full time was one of his biggest and best, in my mind. He's written recently about planting seeds, and he does so beautifully and in his own real voice:
"Speaking of seeding, on the past few occasions I’ve been using a mechanical plate seeder to plant the crops. It’s a fast and moderately effective device, yet it’s one weakness is that it spits out seeds like a machine gun. This is bad for two reasons, the first being that when it comes time to thin the crop I’ll be stuck out there for hours, and the second reason being the fact that it’s very much a waste to spend so much money on seed and have to throw away the majority of it whenever it germinates. We don’t have a precision planter, so I’ve taken to seeding some crops by hand.
"It’s a surprisingly spiritual exercise, I’ve found out. The first thing I realized is that it’s very humbling to have to get on your hands and knees and move at such a slow pace, planting a few seeds at a time. It takes a fairly long while, yet the time seems to fly after a while as your thoughts drift while conducting the monotonous exercise. Before too long, I realized that this was actually a very effective form of meditation, a way to anchor myself and let my thoughts drift away in the sea of time. Finally, before too long, I realized that there was a spiritual component to what I was doing. I felt as though, subconsciously, I wasn’t merely planting seeds but also engaged in silent prayer as I knelt down to the ground and rhythmically slid my hand over the dirt to cover the seeds before patting down the location where they had been buried, as if giving them some final blessing before moving on. Despite how tedious this exercise is, I imagine I’ll keep doing it even after a more precise seeder can be purchased."
Check him out.
Let me share with you part of a blogpost I snatched from my friend John B. Farmer John, if you will. He's made a lot of changes in his life lately, and dropping out of college to pursue farming full time was one of his biggest and best, in my mind. He's written recently about planting seeds, and he does so beautifully and in his own real voice:
"Speaking of seeding, on the past few occasions I’ve been using a mechanical plate seeder to plant the crops. It’s a fast and moderately effective device, yet it’s one weakness is that it spits out seeds like a machine gun. This is bad for two reasons, the first being that when it comes time to thin the crop I’ll be stuck out there for hours, and the second reason being the fact that it’s very much a waste to spend so much money on seed and have to throw away the majority of it whenever it germinates. We don’t have a precision planter, so I’ve taken to seeding some crops by hand.
"It’s a surprisingly spiritual exercise, I’ve found out. The first thing I realized is that it’s very humbling to have to get on your hands and knees and move at such a slow pace, planting a few seeds at a time. It takes a fairly long while, yet the time seems to fly after a while as your thoughts drift while conducting the monotonous exercise. Before too long, I realized that this was actually a very effective form of meditation, a way to anchor myself and let my thoughts drift away in the sea of time. Finally, before too long, I realized that there was a spiritual component to what I was doing. I felt as though, subconsciously, I wasn’t merely planting seeds but also engaged in silent prayer as I knelt down to the ground and rhythmically slid my hand over the dirt to cover the seeds before patting down the location where they had been buried, as if giving them some final blessing before moving on. Despite how tedious this exercise is, I imagine I’ll keep doing it even after a more precise seeder can be purchased."
Check him out.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
On Duality
I don't like binary systems. Rather, I don't like that opposites are assigned values and are often defined each by the other. For, example, white is good and black is bad. Straight is good and queer is bad. Light is good and dark is bad. Etc. This idea extends in many contexts to subject/self is good and object/other is bad. And I can't buy it. I try to understand it from a literary, a psychological, and a theological perspective. Lately the last of those three has been most interesting to me. So I will try to explore it a little from a few traditions I know a little bit about.
Many Christians believe that the self (humanity) is bad and that the other (God) is good. The Gnostics, prot-Christians, went so far as to say that the body was an illusion, something to escape. This is in line with many puritanical sects today, those who say "the flesh is weak," etc. Many Buddhists believe the same thing, that humanity suffers categorically and that, to some minds, the only way to alleviate this suffering is to detach ourselves from what makes us human, desire.
Another understanding of Buddhism more in line with the little Hinduism I understand sees Brahman as the ultimate self. Christian, Jewish, and other mystics, see themSelves not as separate from God but in union with the divine. Meister Eckhart, a 13th century German Dominican, was pretty much labeled a heretic for his "panentheism," the idea that God and man are one (but, of course, God is still separate and better).
There are other examples and nuances of each of these positions of course. But basically we can see self as good and other as bad, other as good and self as bad, or self and other as the same thing. To these three options I have today added a fourth. Noah Sobe interprets the pedagogical work of Maria Montessori, after whom the Montessori-type schools are named, and writes about her focus on children's interactions with objects in their education. Specifically, he posits, an object is "an enabling device" to help students "establish the self" (Sobe 295).
What's the point? Okay, my tenuously explained connection is that I really like this idea. I like the idea that before Time we were all part of the Divine, of something Universal and singular. Something - the Big Bang or the creation of man - causes us to disperse. Now it is our choice to return to the Way, either physically or spiritually or what have you. But why, then, do we need the dispersion? For me it's wrapped up in the idea of choice. We need the object, the physical world around us, as an object with which to interact, which can enable us to understand our true selves better. Please note that my concept of "other" and "object" does not refer to any human beings. All souls (whatever *that* means) are subjects and we should respect them as such. To try to tie this concept back to the sloppy ideas at the beginning of the post, basically I say that subject and object don't have to work against each other. They can exist harmoniously, each affecting the other.
Many of you have already pondered this on some level. And many of you probably think my theology is cracked. But this is a really cool turn of phrase for me, so I'm gonna roll with it and add it to my arsenal of language with which to try to express my ideas of the world.
:-)
Sobe, Noah W. "Challenging the Gaze: The Subject of Attention and a 1915 Montessori Demonstration Classroom. Educational Theory 15.4. University of Illinois: 2004.
Many Christians believe that the self (humanity) is bad and that the other (God) is good. The Gnostics, prot-Christians, went so far as to say that the body was an illusion, something to escape. This is in line with many puritanical sects today, those who say "the flesh is weak," etc. Many Buddhists believe the same thing, that humanity suffers categorically and that, to some minds, the only way to alleviate this suffering is to detach ourselves from what makes us human, desire.
Another understanding of Buddhism more in line with the little Hinduism I understand sees Brahman as the ultimate self. Christian, Jewish, and other mystics, see themSelves not as separate from God but in union with the divine. Meister Eckhart, a 13th century German Dominican, was pretty much labeled a heretic for his "panentheism," the idea that God and man are one (but, of course, God is still separate and better).
There are other examples and nuances of each of these positions of course. But basically we can see self as good and other as bad, other as good and self as bad, or self and other as the same thing. To these three options I have today added a fourth. Noah Sobe interprets the pedagogical work of Maria Montessori, after whom the Montessori-type schools are named, and writes about her focus on children's interactions with objects in their education. Specifically, he posits, an object is "an enabling device" to help students "establish the self" (Sobe 295).
What's the point? Okay, my tenuously explained connection is that I really like this idea. I like the idea that before Time we were all part of the Divine, of something Universal and singular. Something - the Big Bang or the creation of man - causes us to disperse. Now it is our choice to return to the Way, either physically or spiritually or what have you. But why, then, do we need the dispersion? For me it's wrapped up in the idea of choice. We need the object, the physical world around us, as an object with which to interact, which can enable us to understand our true selves better. Please note that my concept of "other" and "object" does not refer to any human beings. All souls (whatever *that* means) are subjects and we should respect them as such. To try to tie this concept back to the sloppy ideas at the beginning of the post, basically I say that subject and object don't have to work against each other. They can exist harmoniously, each affecting the other.
Many of you have already pondered this on some level. And many of you probably think my theology is cracked. But this is a really cool turn of phrase for me, so I'm gonna roll with it and add it to my arsenal of language with which to try to express my ideas of the world.
:-)
Sobe, Noah W. "Challenging the Gaze: The Subject of Attention and a 1915 Montessori Demonstration Classroom. Educational Theory 15.4. University of Illinois: 2004.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Props to JLC
As usual I'm trying to find balance for myself: work, church, friends, games, my love. And in all of these, how much do I consume, how much do I pay for it, and what do I offer in return?
I read an article today that posited that U.S. citizens consume less energy than we did in the 1970s. My friend ECM made a similar argument recently, and I'd like to hope it's true. However, we still have a growing population and, what's more, a growing population that is getting used to "our" way of life. More cars, more calories, more electricity, more gadgets.
While I am still of the opinion that there is something morally wrong with such flagrant excess, it's much simpler to argue pragmatically. Resources such as we are able to use them now are finite. Egypt used to be an oil exporter, and now they consume as much as they produce. This among myriad other factors contributes to the instability in that region now. We (as civilized humans) continue to worship growth for its own sake, thinking via some twisted logic that it is necessary to keep us afloat. At best, this growth we think we need is being measured inaccurately. It takes into account the wrong factors (GDP instead of employment rates, for example) and refuses to take into account others (like the real price of dwindling resources).
The long-term solutions, according to some?:
1. harvest the energy of the sun (we're starting to do this; bring it on;... and yet, still, with our current growth rates, even this won't be enough eventually)
2. go gobble up other planets (not terribly feasible at this point, and there's a huge resource sink in making that happen)
Technology will continue to make some processes more efficient and less resource-intensive, but we're still using more and more and more. We will eventually find equilibrium - we always do. I'm only advocating that we find it sooner rather than later, mitigating as much of the misery that is going to accompany such a crash.
Okay, and the reason I started this blogpost in the first place.... Here are some quotations from JLC's latest post:
I read an article today that posited that U.S. citizens consume less energy than we did in the 1970s. My friend ECM made a similar argument recently, and I'd like to hope it's true. However, we still have a growing population and, what's more, a growing population that is getting used to "our" way of life. More cars, more calories, more electricity, more gadgets.
While I am still of the opinion that there is something morally wrong with such flagrant excess, it's much simpler to argue pragmatically. Resources such as we are able to use them now are finite. Egypt used to be an oil exporter, and now they consume as much as they produce. This among myriad other factors contributes to the instability in that region now. We (as civilized humans) continue to worship growth for its own sake, thinking via some twisted logic that it is necessary to keep us afloat. At best, this growth we think we need is being measured inaccurately. It takes into account the wrong factors (GDP instead of employment rates, for example) and refuses to take into account others (like the real price of dwindling resources).
The long-term solutions, according to some?:
1. harvest the energy of the sun (we're starting to do this; bring it on;... and yet, still, with our current growth rates, even this won't be enough eventually)
2. go gobble up other planets (not terribly feasible at this point, and there's a huge resource sink in making that happen)
Technology will continue to make some processes more efficient and less resource-intensive, but we're still using more and more and more. We will eventually find equilibrium - we always do. I'm only advocating that we find it sooner rather than later, mitigating as much of the misery that is going to accompany such a crash.
Okay, and the reason I started this blogpost in the first place.... Here are some quotations from JLC's latest post:
“It would appear that impressive economic growth does not, in fact, magically alleviate crushing poverty” and “Eventually, the natural resources feeding exponential economic growth provide a hard limit on that growth, as we see in Egypt and elsewhere around the world.” Also “How can we expect the price of energy to do anything but trend upwards as the supply of the cheap sources of that energy continue to trend downwards?”
Funk soul bruva, check it out now:
Right about now, about now, 'bout now, 'bout now.
Fuuuuuuuunkkkkkkkk sooooooooooul bruuuuuuuuuuuuuvvvaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Musings on Romantic Relationships
A couple I barely know announced via Facebook this morning that they're splitting up. They're both nice people - you know, based on the two times I've met them. They seem fun and interesting and generous. And I think they were together for a while. Their breakup should not affect me in the slightest. And yet it does.
I won't pretend to know what went wrong. I will try not to pry too much or to point fingers or to blame people without hearing the whole story. But as it stands, it reminds me a bit of my last relationship. I'm projecting my own former pain and mistrust onto the few details I choose to read as clues. My social ties make me closer to him but my feminine instincts make me closer to her.
My own last, long relationship went on far too long, although I needed it to in order to be sure. During that time, though, I was repeatedly encouraged to second-guess my gut feelings, to presume I was overreacting when something felt wrong. I'm slowly learning not to do that anymore. My sense of self is returning.
My sense of self is not tied up (often, anyway) in my significant other. We embrace vulnerability and entwine in measure, but each of us is a strong individual on our own. We have our own careers and distinct social activities, but we also love spending time with each other, doing things romantic or friendly or mundane. I bristle and my heart clenches when I think about the possibility of ending things, but I know we're both strong enough to not just survive but thrive. I don't dwell on things; I am all about living in the moment (at least relative to how past- and future-oriented I've been in the past).
I seem to let each long-term relationship I see end weaken my own relationship, or at least make me question it. Make me paranoid. Make me wonder at all the hidden things between people that make or break something. When is something worth it? When is it not working anymore? What do people want? How much of that changes, and how much of that stays the same?
It's about commitment. Actively and repeatedly choosing to make it work. But what's the value of commitment anymore in contemporary Western society? It's about honesty. Not being out to hurt your partner but being willing to do so if it means avoiding deception. It's about affection. Genuinely liking another person, flaws and all. Being willing to give the benefit of the doubt, and forgive, and compromise. It's not for everyone. It's not always forever. But for me, right now, it's right.
Currently reading: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
I won't pretend to know what went wrong. I will try not to pry too much or to point fingers or to blame people without hearing the whole story. But as it stands, it reminds me a bit of my last relationship. I'm projecting my own former pain and mistrust onto the few details I choose to read as clues. My social ties make me closer to him but my feminine instincts make me closer to her.
My own last, long relationship went on far too long, although I needed it to in order to be sure. During that time, though, I was repeatedly encouraged to second-guess my gut feelings, to presume I was overreacting when something felt wrong. I'm slowly learning not to do that anymore. My sense of self is returning.
My sense of self is not tied up (often, anyway) in my significant other. We embrace vulnerability and entwine in measure, but each of us is a strong individual on our own. We have our own careers and distinct social activities, but we also love spending time with each other, doing things romantic or friendly or mundane. I bristle and my heart clenches when I think about the possibility of ending things, but I know we're both strong enough to not just survive but thrive. I don't dwell on things; I am all about living in the moment (at least relative to how past- and future-oriented I've been in the past).
I seem to let each long-term relationship I see end weaken my own relationship, or at least make me question it. Make me paranoid. Make me wonder at all the hidden things between people that make or break something. When is something worth it? When is it not working anymore? What do people want? How much of that changes, and how much of that stays the same?
It's about commitment. Actively and repeatedly choosing to make it work. But what's the value of commitment anymore in contemporary Western society? It's about honesty. Not being out to hurt your partner but being willing to do so if it means avoiding deception. It's about affection. Genuinely liking another person, flaws and all. Being willing to give the benefit of the doubt, and forgive, and compromise. It's not for everyone. It's not always forever. But for me, right now, it's right.
Currently reading: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Copy and Paste
I've been writing my church's worship service for Sunday, and I asked my friend K, who is more into ecology and sustainability than I am, if she knew of any good passages on sustainability that would serve as a reading or readings for our service. She was quick to share some really wonderful material, including some quotations by the Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh. I am not sure how much commentary I'm willing or able to provide today, but let me at least share some excerpts from this Guardian interview I came across yesterday.
Hanh writes: "The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way."
"He says that it is an ill-conceived idea that the solution to global warming lies in technological advances. While science is important, even more so is dealing with the root cause of our destructive behaviour: "The spiritual crisis of the West is the cause for the many sufferings we encounter. Because of our dualistic thinking that god and the kingdom of god is outside of us and in the future - we don't know that god's true nature is in every one of us. So we need to put god back into the right place, within ourselves. It is like when the wave knows that water is not outside of her."
"Our way of life, our style of living, is the cause of [spiritual pollution]. We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination." At least in the Western world, much of our happiness is tied up in staying busy for busy-ness's sake, for making money to keep up with the Joneses. This is not to say that individuals do not have meaningful lives. But Snooki and a new Lexus every year are fabricated cultural ideals and goals. And they are killing us on many levels.
He and others talk about the evils of capitalism. I believe in innovation, though not for its own sake. I believe in improvements, but not for the greed of profit. I believe in the desire to take care of oneself and others, but I believe that communities and not islands are the way to effect this.
And then the hook, the same hook Jensen talks about: "Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come," he warns. "Civilisations have been destroyed many times and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.
"You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope." Part of me read this as a little non sequitur, but then it clicked again and reminded me of what I wrote recently about our worship of human life at all costs. My ipod, awesome as it is, is not worth the lives of those in the "third world" who were destroyed to mine the minerals that go into my technology.
[Note: this article also shares that "When visiting America, [Hanh] persuaded Martin Luther King to oppose the war publicly, and so helped to galvanize the peace movement. In fact King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968." This tickled me, as I blogged about King quite recently.]
"His whole philosophy is based on watching the breath and walking meditation to stay in the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future." I'm still pragmatic and capitalistic enough to work in the system. I have a job. I make money. I consume goods, often unthinkingly. But my quality of life is improved when I am intentional, present, and in the now. It has been an active practice of mine for over a year now, and I am so happy.
Thich Nhat Hanh encourages people to avoid toxic things, whether they are edible consummables or alcohol or soul-damaging [my word, not his] media. I think these are things to be mindful of. I am not a radical yet, but I think there is much we can learn from. And now back to one of my oldest mantras (I'm full of them... or something... recently), "Everything in moderation - except Love."
<3
Hanh writes: "The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way."
"He says that it is an ill-conceived idea that the solution to global warming lies in technological advances. While science is important, even more so is dealing with the root cause of our destructive behaviour: "The spiritual crisis of the West is the cause for the many sufferings we encounter. Because of our dualistic thinking that god and the kingdom of god is outside of us and in the future - we don't know that god's true nature is in every one of us. So we need to put god back into the right place, within ourselves. It is like when the wave knows that water is not outside of her."
"Our way of life, our style of living, is the cause of [spiritual pollution]. We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination." At least in the Western world, much of our happiness is tied up in staying busy for busy-ness's sake, for making money to keep up with the Joneses. This is not to say that individuals do not have meaningful lives. But Snooki and a new Lexus every year are fabricated cultural ideals and goals. And they are killing us on many levels.
He and others talk about the evils of capitalism. I believe in innovation, though not for its own sake. I believe in improvements, but not for the greed of profit. I believe in the desire to take care of oneself and others, but I believe that communities and not islands are the way to effect this.
And then the hook, the same hook Jensen talks about: "Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come," he warns. "Civilisations have been destroyed many times and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.
"You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope." Part of me read this as a little non sequitur, but then it clicked again and reminded me of what I wrote recently about our worship of human life at all costs. My ipod, awesome as it is, is not worth the lives of those in the "third world" who were destroyed to mine the minerals that go into my technology.
[Note: this article also shares that "When visiting America, [Hanh] persuaded Martin Luther King to oppose the war publicly, and so helped to galvanize the peace movement. In fact King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968." This tickled me, as I blogged about King quite recently.]
"His whole philosophy is based on watching the breath and walking meditation to stay in the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future." I'm still pragmatic and capitalistic enough to work in the system. I have a job. I make money. I consume goods, often unthinkingly. But my quality of life is improved when I am intentional, present, and in the now. It has been an active practice of mine for over a year now, and I am so happy.
Thich Nhat Hanh encourages people to avoid toxic things, whether they are edible consummables or alcohol or soul-damaging [my word, not his] media. I think these are things to be mindful of. I am not a radical yet, but I think there is much we can learn from. And now back to one of my oldest mantras (I'm full of them... or something... recently), "Everything in moderation - except Love."
<3
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Thank You
Many thanks to those of you who commented here as well as via email, gchat, and in person about what I meant by worshipping life. I was talking about the way the Civilized worship human (and that usually means middle class or upper-middle class U.S.) life, disregarding the lives of other people and definitely the lives of the plants and animals that serve us and die for us. My friend Will asked pointedly why I'm not a vegetarian yet. It was a good question. The truth is that most of us needlessly kill animals even if we are vegetarians. Whenever we are not mindful of what and how we consume - whether it's food, textiles, electronics, gasoline, other energy - we are disrespecting the earth. Why we should respect the earth (or creation, or the Creator, or the Tao) is the topic of another post, I suppose. It's something harder to argue on the grounds of logic. There's a major moral component to it. Of course, there's the utilitarian idea backed up by some 20th century economists that says that what's good for others is often good for us. So nice for science and psychology and philosophy to catch up with what is for some a fundamental life principle.
In short:
- Be mindful of what you do. Even if you only pick fallen fruits and nuts, you're still killing some of the grass you walk on. Life feeds on life in a cycle. Respect that cycle.
- Read my tirade on love and war at my other blog.
- Consider reading Derrick Jensen's Endgame. Start with the Premises. Argue with them. Sit with them a while. Pay attention.
- Love.
In short:
- Be mindful of what you do. Even if you only pick fallen fruits and nuts, you're still killing some of the grass you walk on. Life feeds on life in a cycle. Respect that cycle.
- Read my tirade on love and war at my other blog.
- Consider reading Derrick Jensen's Endgame. Start with the Premises. Argue with them. Sit with them a while. Pay attention.
- Love.
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