Government as a business, education as a business, ideas as a business... by SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Oh, you might be wondering what the post has to do with the title.

One of the reasons why we don't plan for abundance is because prices would collapse if there was more than enough of everything for everyone. The reason for this drive to efficiency is because we all think that everything can be valued by market forces. It's all about business. Except that it's not.

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Monday, April 8, 2013 7:39 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So, still thinking online... I guess it wasn't clear what I was getting at. Maybe if I went back to the beginning.

I was thinking that we live on the edge. But partway thru writing that we should not exploit the Canadian tar sands, I realized... even if we DID step back from that feat, we would STILL be living on the edge. Maybe we would be using up fewer resources, but we'd still be insecure.

Why?

Because we always have. Because that's what humans have done. In the past, we used to be limited by what our technology could do, but we ate, and bred, and spread as much as our technology allowed. Fire, agriculture, and antibiotics were major turning points. But we STILL ate, and bred, and spread to the limits of our resources. Learning to use non-human, non-animal energy ... now the limits of our resources aren't determined by our technology but by the planet. Even if we learn to conserve, will we still eat and breed and spread to the limits of our resources, living just one disaster away from... disaster?

Or will we learn to do different? And if we did, what would it take?

Well, I think we would have to change one of our most basic paradigms. To learn NOT to always, always be on the precipice.

What would that take? I really don't know, but I think it would be a major shift of outlook.

In thinking about this concept... more than enough for everyone... what if there was more than enough education? More than enough ideas? More than enough time? What if we DIDN'T have to parse out every single friggin' morsel of resource, to eye each and every action for it's "return on investment"?

It contravenes every single impulse that I have of how things "should" work. Maximal efficiency, "hurry sickness", extreme focus. When something is that ingrained in me, I think it is probably very ingrained in others. So ingrained, we don't even see that it's there.

But I see that there is a new way of thinking and of feeling.

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Monday, April 8, 2013 9:22 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Well, this is something I've been thinking about for literally years. All animals breed to the limits of their resources. Which means in seasons, or years, or environments, of fewer resources, all animals live on the edge of starvation at some time. That includes early humans. When humans discovered their first technology - the baby sling? the bowl? the pounding rock? - they had a chance to get ahead of their marginal existence if they did two things - only have replacement children, and only take enough for immediate existence and for future food/ water/ shelter security. Don't be the chimp on the pile of fruit b/c you can't eat it all, and the social structure that allows it destroys your long-term security. But if everyone takes just enough, there will always be enough for all, immediately and in the future. Everyone COULD live a life of security and comfort if humanity learned the lesson technology had to teach us - we are no longer at the imminent mercy of 'not enough'. We don't need to act AS IF our existence is under threat - it no longer is.
And each expansion of technology was a chance to learn that lesson all over again.
But we haven't learned it yet.
So I wonder why. Why do we prostrate ourselves to a system and submit to its yoke around our necks when there is absolutely no need for it?

And I've come up with a few possible answers, but I'm not able to reach a conclusion I am confident in.

One possible answer is evolution ... in the short-term it rewards that which garners the most resources the fastest - with high rates of population growth and expanding territory. That may be the efficiency you refer to. They're efficient consumers of energy.
OTOH it punishes the unsustainable in the long term. When you look at a biome, or ecology, the most sustainable is the one with the most overlapping of functions between species. So there are multiple insects that eat leaves, multiple insects that eat honey, multiple insects that eat carrion etc. And there are multiple insect eaters with overlapping types of insects that they consume. There are grazers of fresh grass, browsers of dried grass, nibblers of roots, consumers of brush and tree leaves ... and various predators of those grazers, browsers, nibblers and consumers, depending on relative size, and speed or other defenses. This is the antithesis of efficiency. While it's most efficient to have one key species of each type, the loss of a key species spells the death of that system. Multiple overlapping functions means the systemic interaction remains stable if one species is lost.
So we may just be at the exponential growth phase and haven't hit the pruning stage of instability.

Another is that as a species we may be built for hierarchies. To have people who have power over your life, or to be a person who has power over other people, may be a normal human state. Uneven resource distribution doesn't strike us as abnormal b/c we're to some extent built for it.

Another is the 'free engery' approach to living systems. If free energy is available, some living thing will find a way to exploit it. Or in social terms, when technology creates excess resources, groups arise that parasitize it. So you get layers of priests, rulers, military, capitalists who find a way to exploit the resources created by technology.

Anyway, my thinking on this is still a work in progress.

Is this along the lines you were thinking?

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Sunday, April 14, 2013 1:03 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Yes, but I think I was approaching it from a different direction, and the idea is so far-reaching and has so many implications that it's impossible to see the whole thing.

I just had several paradigms collide. The paradigm that conservation will save us. The paradigm that efficiency will save us. The paradigm that new technology will save us.

But none of that is true. We can conserve to the point where we're living on a very primitive level and STILL be living on a knife's edge, albeit at a lower standard of living. Heck, we did THAT for hundreds of thousands of years! We can squeeze every last amp-hour and calorie and work-hour out of our resources and our people and divide them up efficiently and STILL be living like shit in some meager, insecure world. We can dream up the greatest technology in the world, but if all we do is strip-mine our planet or use it to make more and more useless toys, what will our future look like?

If we think that we will ensure our future and be more personally secure by applying the approaches that we've always relied on in the past, it's not going to work. It's just not, and if anyone can show me how we can get from "here" to "there" by increased efficiency, more technology, and conservation... well, I sure would like to see it.

Technology, efficiency, centralization, science worked for us in the past to enhance surivial and security, but they're not going to work for us in the future because our limits are no longer technological. Our limits are being imposed by the world. We are living in a new era.

A word on efficiency- efficiency is like a god to us. Even those of us who aren't overtly pro-capitalist can hardly think a bad thing about efficiency. After all, isn't using resources less wastefully a good thing?

But efficiency is a very narrow measure. It only measures how much of "X" you get out for how much of "Y" and "Z" that you put in. So you can measure the efficiency of a car engine, for example, but fail to question the wisdom of creating a society where everyone has to drive everywhere. "The commons" and even the people needed to propel a system forward are almost never counted... they are used up without regard.

The other problem with "efficiency" is that it is the prime driver of centralization (by economies of scale) and centralization is very fragile and prone to all kinds of shocks. In many ways, "efficiency" is a seriously problematic concept. Seed banks, for example, are a very vulnerable "solution" to monoculture. The real answer is diversity.

Two things in our favor: (1) We have reliable, practical birth control that doesn't rely on infanticide. (2) We have big brains. We have to learn to use them.

What it takes, really, more than anything else, is a complete change of focus. Instead of thinking (like good capitalists) that our economy ALWAYS has to "grow" (Say, how CAN one keep growing in a finite world?), that we HAVE to squeeze every last drop of juice out of every single person, that we have to go back to living in caves ... I think that we really need to start thinking about how to live for the foreseeable future... a future that will be fraught with volcanoes and climate shift and earthquakes and all kinds of natural disasters that will make life tough if we don't learn to set surplus aside, and share across the planet.

So, here I am, at the point that you already got to, Kiki. More than anything, if we're going to survive, we're going to have to set aside the algorithms that are running in our heads and directing our feelings, and replace them with something truly new: a plan for the future. A REAL plan, not just a combination of hope and denial and panic and control by TPTB.

For example, we are well past the point where increased automation is improving our lives. People like to work, it's in our genes, it gives us a sense of control. What's NOT in our genes is having to work like a dog for hours and hours at a rapid pace, or not being able to find work at all. Both ends of the spectrum are very unnerving. So, how much autpmation do we use, and how do we distribute work so everyone has work that they want to handle? What should our population be? Do we want cities of 20 million, or is 1 million big enough? How much centralization do we want to give up? How big a resource footprint should any city occupy?

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Monday, April 15, 2013 1:06 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"It's just not, and if anyone can show me how we can get from "here" to "there" by increased efficiency, more technology, and conservation... well, I sure would like to see it."

I don't find efficiency in itself to be a bad thing. After all, why do things in a way that wastes time, energy and resources when you could be doing them with less waste? Being old, and in pain, sick, and out of steam, I tend to meter my output, looking for easy and ecologically thrifty ways to do things (at a certain point ease and thrift collide, mostly I still choose thrift. That may change.) I > personally < still find a lot of value in conserving both myself and external resources.

I thought there were two important factors to human sustainability: 1) husbanding resources by realizing the mental state that demands MORE is a response to living on the edge, and that due to technology we no longer live in that state, and 2) having only replacement children. In sum, the mental state is one of mutual social recognition that 'just enough' will ensure ease and freedom from want for everyone, not just in the present but indefinitely into the future (as far as is humanly possible).

I think it's the same ethic UK LeGuin wrote about in her book 'The Dispossessed'.

But I find your path to the same end enlightening, b/c it looks back to the beginning, and forward to the logical endpoint of efficiency. What is its function in the world? What is its conclusion? What is its value?

You've given me a lot to consider.

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Monday, April 15, 2013 4:44 PM

Hey you guys,

I think you may be kinda blinded by the current paradigm. Some (a lot of) humans have learned the lesson, did learn it and applied it for centuries--on this continent, for instance. It's primarily white Europeans who have taken over the entire world with their knife-edge lunacy. Even where white Europeans do not hold sway, their paradigms have choked out the indigenous cultures like kudzu choking the native grasses.

What's needed, what's always been needed, is gratitude to the planet itself for our existence. Cultures which have held gratitude to the Earth at the center of their spiritualities flourished for millennia before the knife-edge paradigm told them to over-hunt, over-fish and deplete the soil. Many Native American cultures understood and practiced stewardship of the natural world for centuries before the Europeans mucked things up.

Y'know, the vast, and I mean VAST, majority of modern Europeanized people in any population of modern Europeanized people do not create art. Do not have time to create art. That's a sickness. Capitalism degrades art into advertizing and propaganda. Removes "artist" from the list of serious vocations. And whole populations of modern Europeanized people look down on art as some kind of elitist sham.

Aboriginal cultures are full to bursting with art. It's everywhere. If they were living on your knife-edge, as you suggest, from the beginning of time, how could they have made all that art? And good god, why, when life is such an all-consuming struggle? But they did and do. And what fundamental healing purpose does all this art everywhere fulfill? Gratitude to the planet.

This is my single gripe with atheism: where's the gratitude? The Earth, our mother, feeds and clothes us and every spring lavishes us with unbelievable beauty. Gratitude would turn this whole world around, because gratitude makes us humble. It makes us want to give back. Gratitude makes us appreciate something larger than our idiot appetites.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, April 15, 2013 5:41 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"It's primarily white Europeans who have taken over the entire world with their knife-edge lunacy."

And part of my question is how that happens. What triggers it? What allows it to spread? If an existing culture is sustainable, and stable for hundreds or thousands of years, what happens to it in the face of knife-edge lunacy? Does it become overwhelmed, or corrupted? How did this lunacy of greed come to dominate so that pretty much the entire human population is under its yoke? And so that the entire planet is now entering an uncertain future because of it.

And what is the tool to convincing people that it's a dead-end and completely unnecessary? (While we have a choice before the planet scratches us off like a dog does a flea.)

It may not be the only system by which people live, but as insane as it is, it's become the dominant one, and there has to be a mechanism by which that happens.

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Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:14 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

HK, I hate to burst your bubble, but natives of all kinds (Maoris, north Americans, Easter Islanders) managed to wipe themselves out by knife-edge existance, or wasted critical resources profligately. There are stories of north American native buffalo hunts where whole herds were killed for tongues, humps, fetuses, and marrow, leaving nearly-whole rotting carcasses. THe Anasazi practiced cannibalism and strip-mined their local area of trees and water. And as far as I know, while the NE natives were matriarchal, the Plains natives treated their women like shit.

The only peoples that I know of who have TRULY learned to live within limits were some Polynesian islanders who could quite often literally see the limits of their world, and who would at times send young men off in canoes whenever the population got too high. Mythologizing ancient peoples isn't going to point us in the direction of a solution.

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Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:24 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
I don't find efficiency in itself to be a bad thing. After all, why do things in a way that wastes time, energy and resources when you could be doing them with less waste? Being old, and in pain, sick, and out of steam, I tend to meter my output, looking for easy and ecologically thrifty ways to do things (at a certain point ease and thrift collide, mostly I still choose thrift. That may change.) I > personally < still find a lot of value in conserving both myself and external resources.

Efficiency is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's also not necessarily a good thing either.

Efficiency is always calcuated from a vewpoint- for example, from the factory-owner's POV - who discouns a lot of inputs (the drive time that workers have to make to get to the production floor, the clean air that get dirtied) if the input doesn't appear on his/her balance sheet.

But even if we try to calculate efficiency from a more universal viewpoint (number of calories per person, number of barrels-of-oil equivalents, or what-have-you), using efficiency as the ONLY measure can lead to dangerous/ distorted results. I realized that when I realized that the things I'm advocating... surpluses everywhere ... stored locally, in the pipeline, decentralized-redundant-excess production capacity... are all considered "waste".

In many ways, the single-minded drive towards "efficiency" is the drive that has created our highly centralized, interdependent, and fragile production structure. So we have one plant in Japan that makes the special plastic required by capacitors? It may be very "efficient", but not very durable.

So, I understand that efficiency can be a good thing, but not if it is the ONLY factor being considered.

----------------

Did you know that there was a plant tht grew around the Mediterranean in ancient times which contained a natural birth-control agent? It was so valuable, it made up part of the treasury assets (along with gold and other valuables) and even appeared on the coin of the realm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium Unfortunately, it was made extinct.

Fortunately, we don't have to depend on Silphium.

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Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:27 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

My short answer would be: "Humans are short-sighted". Much as I'd like to agree with Cav, that theory is, as Sig explained, also irrelevant unless some way could be found to get people to AGREE to live within sustainable limits, and at the same time plan for contingencies and...well, already you're past the point of conceivability once you pass the word "agree", so I'll stop there.

Unless we were to evolve PAST our short-sightedness, which we've not done as a species since we evolved this far, I don't see any way to change things, especially at this late date with the population we already have. If I were religious I would go with the "failed experiment" theory where our species is concerned; as it is, I've kind of sadly accepted my role as flea.

It's awfully easy to see all the aspects of human nature that make us open to the systems that have created the world we live in; I'm not smart enough to ferret out the aspects of human nature that might be used to change things. I certainly agree with everything thus postulated, but have no answers with which to offer hope.

It's a fascinating discussion and perhaps THE most relevant one in the world, but...

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Thursday, April 25, 2013 1:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
HK, I hate to burst your bubble, but natives of all kinds (Maoris, north Americans, Easter Islanders) managed to wipe themselves out by knife-edge existance, or wasted critical resources profligately. There are stories of north American native buffalo hunts where whole herds were killed for tongues, humps, fetuses, and marrow, leaving nearly-whole rotting carcasses. THe Anasazi practiced cannibalism and strip-mined their local area of trees and water. And as far as I know, while the NE natives were matriarchal, the Plains natives treated their women like shit.

The only peoples that I know of who have TRULY learned to live within limits were some Polynesian islanders who could quite often literally see the limits of their world, and who would at times send young men off in canoes whenever the population got too high. Mythologizing ancient peoples isn't going to point us in the direction of a solution.

Yup.

I found Jarrod Diamond to be one of the most useful writers and thinkers on this subject, in both

Guns, Germs, Steel
http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552
and
Collapse
http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Succeed-Revised-Edition/dp/01
43117009/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

Thank you for bringing this up, as I feel the need to read Collapse again.

He makes the distinction between hunter/gatherer societies and those with agriculture.

Hunter/gatherers did not depend on surplus, they were able to survive on seasonal fare, tended to be generalists rather than specialists, and their societies were small and fairly egalitarian.

The jump to agriculture (according to Diamond) was not a result of ingenuity but necessity. The environment could not support people based on seasonal fare, so provision for times of scarcity needed to be made inorder to survive. That and access to plants that could be harvested and stored ie grains.

Argriculture led to sedentry civilisations, and surpluses led to trade, trade led to specialisation. It is not true to say that art died in such civilisations, but that it became specialised, along with other skills. Specialisation meant that skills could become crafts, and therefore technology began to develop.

A rough precis of the theory.

In Collapse, Diamond details what happens to civilisations when resources are depleted by agrarian societies, and usually there gets to a critical point where you see increase in hostilities through to descent into total war and then total breakdown of society. Diamond's point is that this happens, but it is not inevitable if we take steps to curtail overuse of resources.

The problem therefore lies in signy's original point, or what I took it to be. How can we curtail resource use in a system that depends upon consumption of resources?

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Friday, April 26, 2013 4:08 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

MAGONS- ETA- Hmmm... interesting take on Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel. I had slightly different take-way messages. AFA Guns, Germs, and Steel, it seems to me that many of the features that Diamond pointed to as being accidental but necessary to the development of a world-spanning imperium: the development of agriculture, the presence of a high-protein grain, the domestication of animals, and the resistance to a wide variety of pathogens leading the invaders to being their own best biological weapons... were reproduced in South America, because of the availability of quinoa, amaranth and corn and the domestication of alpaca and llama. The one factor that couldn't be reproduced, and the one that I think was a necessary ingredient, is the ease of traveling in the east-west direction. As Diamond pointed out, if you can travel within a latitude, you can take your whole way of life with you because climate remains the same. But in Africa and the Americas, the only available travel was north-south, which meant (for example) that only two technological developments could be translated- corn and irrigation. Everything else... the amaranth, quinoa, alpacas and llamas... had to be left behind.

AFA Collapse is concerned, the message I got was that people are hostage to crazy ideas. The most chilling example was the Easter Islanders (Rapa Nui), and their suicidal downfall was cutting down trees to erect the moai. What was that man thinking as he cut down the last tree? Once the trees were cut down, the island was swept bare by the wind and both escape and deep-sea fish became out of reach because the islanders could no longer make canoes. Altho some blame the introduction of rats, which ate the palm seeds, the end-point is the same: If the Rapa Nui had looked at their island realistically, they would have taken every effort to keep their tree population healthy. Instead, they wound up in a cannabalistic free-for-all, in which a prime insult was "Your mother's flesh is stuck between my teeth".

But now I want to re-read both books!

------------

To answer your question, I think the only way that we can curtail resource-use and create a more durable structure is by changing the purpose of the system itself.

Right now, the pupose of the system is to "make money". Production is geared towards what can be paid for instead of what is needed. So, for example, we have pharma focused with laser-intensity on diseases of excess and pleasure (statins, viagra) rather than anti-malarial drugs because the northern middle class can afford to buy drugs but the infected southern poor cannot. ("Market", in modern terms, is never determined by need but always geared towards money. That is why we have so many unemployed, even while people need housing, education, and medical care; and the earth needs to be seriously remediated... there is no "demand" for housing for the poor, nor can the earth pay for its own rehabilitation. So this is a prime example of the failure of "markets" to guide our economy and society. But I digress.)

But in order to see this, people have to look at all of this in an entirely new way. Because, I believe, people... even poor people... have bought into many of the myths that underlie the way we do things. (Of course, these myths are pumped at people every day, because the wealthy also control the media. And that is one of the inherent failings of human beings: We believe what we are taught, more than the evidence of our senses. So we can transmit the ideas of electrons and atoms... very useful concepts, but try showing THOSE to someone! At the same time, we can also transmit the ideas of "god", or that men are superior to women, or that "free markets" will create a constantly-improving economy and society.) One of those myths is the myth of efficiency, and another one of those myths is that technology will save us.

The concept that cracked the paradigm-barrier for me was the idea that conservation and efficiency would lead to human survival. When I ran that string out to its conclusion, two of my deeply-felt paradigms (efficiency/ survival) clashed, and only one remained. I realized then, after probing my feelings like I would probe a broken tooth with my tongue, that there were a LOT of ideas I had in my head that were tightly interlinked but deeply flawed. It was like running into a wall in the dark... there it was, suddenly, when it had never been there before, and when I felt around to see how far it extended, I realized it was really, really big.

Anyway, part of what I'm wondering is... how can people be induced to looking with new eyes at things they have taken as unquestioned reality their entire lives? I think it may happen when people have a new goal, and are challenged to imagine a new future- a future they never thought possible. THAT future, the one that the 99.9% never thought possible, is a secure future. Just imagine- a future where 99.9% of the population DOESN'T have to worry about what tomorrow will bring.

ETA: I also realized that I think and learn in my own style. With me, it's all framed in "feeling"... an almost-kinesthetic sense of "push" and "balance" rather than a 30,000-foot view. My hubby, OTOH, is all about visualizing. He frames everything as a perspective.

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Friday, April 26, 2013 6:18 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Wonderfully eloquent, Sig, and I tend to agree with everything you wrote. Most especially

Quote:
I realized then, after probing my feelings like I would probe a broken tooth with my tongue, that there were a LOT of ideas I had in my head that were tightly interlinked but deeply flawed. It was like running into a wall in the dark... there it was, suddenly, when it had never been there before, and when I felt around to see how far it extended, I realized it was really, really big.

That's what happened to me; unfortunately, when I realized how really, really big it was, I pretty much stopped trying to understand and gave up hope. I still find understanding (or trying to) individual humans fascinating, but when it comes to the species, and any hope of us changing in any way which will salvage things, I just gave up. Now I just do what I can in my own small way, bitch and moan, and try to bring things to people's attention, and nothing more. Obviously that's not the answer, either...

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Friday, April 26, 2013 8:23 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
HK, I hate to burst your bubble, but natives of all kinds (Maoris, north Americans, Easter Islanders) managed to wipe themselves out by knife-edge existance, or wasted critical resources profligately. There are stories of north American native buffalo hunts where whole herds were killed for tongues, humps, fetuses, and marrow, leaving nearly-whole rotting carcasses. THe Anasazi practiced cannibalism and strip-mined their local area of trees and water. And as far as I know, while the NE natives were matriarchal, the Plains natives treated their women like shit.

The only peoples that I know of who have TRULY learned to live within limits were some Polynesian islanders who could quite often literally see the limits of their world, and who would at times send young men off in canoes whenever the population got too high. Mythologizing ancient peoples isn't going to point us in the direction of a solution.

Hey Signy,

I think you may have been talking to assholes on the internet too long. My first comment in this thread you meet with dismissal, ridicule and the arrogance that a couple cherry-picked negative examples are going to "burst" my "bubble." Which, of course, puts me on the defensive, doesnt' it? sending me rushing to back up my claims to find examples you will simply label cherry-picked and insignificant.

You site "stories" of wasteful buffalo hunts as if such instances sum up the entire history of buffalo hunting on this continent, when the kind of hunting you're talking about could only have happened, and did only happen, after the introduction of the horse critically altered the paradigm of the Nations of the great plains. The horse represented a violent shift in available technology and changed plains cultures just as violently. It made the most aggressive actions of the population vastly more efficient. The treating women like shit thing came with.

And the Anasazi were no more representative of the hundreds of Nations on this continent before the white man than Nazi Germany was representative of the whole of western culture (and before anyone calls Godwin, I'd like to say that the Anasazi are the Godwin of internet conversations about Native American culture). I'm surprised you didn't bring up Ester Island as well.

And in true gladiatorial style, Signy, you base your dismissal entirely on the first paragraph of my post. The grave irony of all this is that you're exemplifying the destructive and wasteful paradigm you despair of. You've trained your mind to destroy and to do it efficiently. I was just trying to give you a different perspective and possible way out.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, April 26, 2013 8:32 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Cav, I went back and re-read your post after that, and I need to apologize, insofar as I agreed with a lot of what you said, but I, too, dismissed it, for my own reasons. In my case, I extrapolated the examples you gave to "what would have happened as they continued to populate?", and I do believe those you described would have followed the same path as humanity did on all the other continents. Yes, there still exist aboriginal peoples here and there, but as they expand--and can you show any society which has NOT expanded eventually, as their ability to do so became possible?--I think they'd play out the same story as the rest of us.

So while I don't dismiss your examples, can you show any instance of such a society which has not eventually abandoned whatever appreciation of they have of Mother Earth and gone the way of the rest of us? And have you any suggestion as to how to instill that appreciation in such a way as to change things from the path they are now on? I'd really like to know. I'd adore to be wrong.

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Friday, April 26, 2013 8:38 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

HK - your first paragraph:

Quote:
I think you may be kinda blinded by the current paradigm. Some (a lot of) humans have learned the lesson, did learn it and applied it for centuries--on this continent, for instance. It's primarily white Europeans who have taken over the entire world with their knife-edge lunacy. Even where white Europeans do not hold sway, their paradigms have choked out the indigenous cultures like kudzu choking the native grasses.

I could point to many primtive cultures that destroyed some vital part of their environment, or behaved like assholes. The Maori, for example, hunted all nine species of moa to extinction. The Easter Islanders cut down all of their palm trees. The Mayans and the Aztecs believed in human sacrifice. Most jungle-dwelling natives, once they've learned the trick of fire, burn down trees to create clearings for agriculture. It's not just a few cherry-picked examples. Even within a single culture, there was an extremely wide variety of behaviors ... some that we should emulate, others not so much.

Also, if you're telling me that the introduction of new technology caused more destruction ... well, that was kind of my point. Cultures seem to do the most damage when they come into a new area, or they develop (or are introduced to) a new technology, and they haven't figured out the limits. In this current situation we are developing more and more technologies, and the constant change is exceeding our capacity to understand the ramifications of what we're doing.

Sorry if I didn't direct my response to your other points.

Quote:
What's needed, what's always been needed, is gratitude to the planet itself for our existence. Cultures which have held gratitude to the Earth at the center of their spiritualities flourished for millennia before the knife-edge paradigm told them to over-hunt, over-fish and deplete the soil. Many Native American cultures understood and practiced stewardship of the natural world for centuries before the Europeans mucked things up.

Did they practice birth control? Without birth control, it is difficult to understand how one COULD practice "stewardship" over the long-run, because without it- over the long-run- you will overrun your resources.

But, yes, I believe that we should feel gratitude for our existance, and for the web of life that sustains us. I do a thing, it's a stupid thing, but it's mine: whenver I have leftover water, I take it outside and pour it on a plant, and send out thanks to whomever for rain. But that's not going to get us anywhere. We have the power to be far more destructive than ancient peoples, and so OUR approach has to be different.. perhaps more deliberate and self-aware, because now the problem with our survival is us and our technologies.

Again, apologies for stating things so aggressively.

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Friday, April 26, 2013 12:55 PM

Signy, I tried to precis two very complex books into a paragraph, so I did cherry pick a few of his ideas. Or I may have even taken his ideas and, you know, kind of extrapolated. Your description appears to be accurate as far as I remember.

I don't know how easy it is to get societies to change dramatically. Not everyone takes to time to rub the broken tooth (love that analogy) and even if they did, they may not come up with the same solutions as you.

Historically, it appears that dramatic change has taken place post catastrophic events, made made or natural. Plague, war, famine, natural disaster tend to sweep away old power structures and herald new societal structures.

eg the Black Death brought about the end of feudalism
WW1 ended rigid class structures in Europe.

The other way is through revolution.

I guess revolution and more subtle changes are all preceded by ideas and discourse, rather like we are having now. When people are able to articulate what they think will work better and truly believe it.

One of the things I regret about the fall of Eastern Europe is that there is now no currently viable alternative to capitalism, unless you count failed states, not very encouraging. Communism wasn't terribly successful either, but at least there were some countries where you weren't assaulted with the sight of a MacDonalds.

Re appreaciating the earth, Cav truly you don't have to believe in god with that one.

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Friday, April 26, 2013 1:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Re appreaciating the earth, Cav truly you don't have to believe in god with that one.

Really, Magons? Ya think I'm advocating for a belief in god??? Jesus...

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, April 26, 2013 1:29 PM

Jesus Cav, you're an angry man lately. Want to reign it in a bit.

I was responding to your post -

"This is my single gripe with atheism: where's the gratitude? The Earth, our mother, feeds and clothes us and every spring lavishes us with unbelievable beauty. Gratitude would turn this whole world around, because gratitude makes us humble. It makes us want to give back. Gratitude makes us appreciate something larger than our idiot appetites. "

If you want to clarify, please do, but if you snarl at me once more, I won't respond to you again.

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Friday, April 26, 2013 2:58 PM

Oh my goodness, Magons?

I'm snarling at you? I made a lame joke in my last post, saying "Jesus..." after claiming that I don't advocate belief in god. See how lame that joke was? Super lame. Prolly should have left it out. I thought of writing it "Jeez..." to underscore the comic tone I was intending, but then I thought it might sound too conversational and the humor would be lost, so I ended up thinking "Jesus..." was actually funnier in context. So. Lame joke. My fault. No snarl. And. I don't believe in Jesus.

You gotta know I'm hesitant to even reply to you after you tell me that you consider my last post a snarl, but in the interest of mutual understanding, I'm gonna give it a go. Please, feel free to respond or not as you see fit.

I am frustrated, certainly, that you can't read what I wrote without thinking I'm advocating god over atheism. This touches on myriad conversations I've been embroiled in on this board over the years, which you may not have been privy to. But I kinda thought you were and so your comment was frustrating to me in that context. If I am wrong, I am wrong and I am sorry for dragging you into it.

I said, as you quote: "This is my single gripe with atheism." I meant that. I assure you, I have A LOT MORE than one gripe with theists.

The self-described atheists I've known--every last one of them--has been a materialist as well. I've come to understand that the two are generally considered one and the same thing by atheists. So, for all the atheists I've ever known, their atheism includes a denial of anything beyond or behind or in addition to the physical world as currently defined by science.

I have had many experiences that fall well outside the realm of accepted scientific materialism. So I don't get to be an atheist (yet--maybe at some future vantage of history, the things I've experienced in my life will be accepted reality, but not now, not yet).

So, atheism is lovely, because it doesn't include anything I consider bullshit, like God the Father. Unfortunately, a lot of what I have experienced in my life my atheist brothers and sisters tend to consider bullshit.

And certainly any card-carrying theists know perfectly well I ain't one of them. They got an instinct for such things. So I'm stuck in the middle. Looking at both sides. And the one thing I think atheism lacks is a sense of something larger, something to love that isn't human.

But here we have Signy, being a somewhat inconsistent (she called it "stupid") materialist. On the one hand, her water and thanks warms my heart as a beautiful expression of natural spirituality. And on the other hand, it makes me sad that she feels obliged to call it "stupid." This kind of self-denegration is not at all uncommon in the serious atheists I've known. Gratitude is not an easy fit for the atheists I've known.

That's why I said what I said. I think if the atheists could fit gratitude comfortably into their world-views they would be ideal stewards for our planetary home.

Here's a stupid idea of my own. This is how I think. The things we tend to take the best care of are the things we love. If we could LOVE the planet we live on--y'know, think of it maybe as a living being (you know the drill)--then we would be in a better position to take proper care of her. If you can love the Earth and be an atheist at the same time, I rejoice. I have no problem with such an atheism.

Does that help?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, April 26, 2013 3:40 PM

Matey, I can't assume your tone unless you make it very clear. Sometimes a ;)
or an emoticon will help if you are making a joke.

I don't have time to read your entire post at the mo but will get back to you later.

A sunny Autumnal day calls - too good to spend inside on this forum.

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Saturday, April 27, 2013 6:58 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Signy's original post.....

HOLLYWOOD STYLE!!!!!!!

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Saturday, April 27, 2013 1:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:

The self-described atheists I've known--every last one of them--has been a materialist as well. I've come to understand that the two are generally considered one and the same thing by atheists. So, for all the atheists I've ever known, their atheism includes a denial of anything beyond or behind or in addition to the physical world as currently defined by science.

I have had many experiences that fall well outside the realm of accepted scientific materialism. So I don't get to be an atheist (yet--maybe at some future vantage of history, the things I've experienced in my life will be accepted reality, but not now, not yet).

So, atheism is lovely, because it doesn't include anything I consider bullshit, like God the Father. Unfortunately, a lot of what I have experienced in my life my atheist brothers and sisters tend to consider bullshit.

And certainly any card-carrying theists know perfectly well I ain't one of them. They got an instinct for such things. So I'm stuck in the middle. Looking at both sides. And the one thing I think atheism lacks is a sense of something larger, something to love that isn't human.

But here we have Signy, being a somewhat inconsistent (she called it "stupid") materialist. On the one hand, her water and thanks warms my heart as a beautiful expression of natural spirituality. And on the other hand, it makes me sad that she feels obliged to call it "stupid." This kind of self-denegration is not at all uncommon in the serious atheists I've known. Gratitude is not an easy fit for the atheists I've known.

That's why I said what I said. I think if the atheists could fit gratitude comfortably into their world-views they would be ideal stewards for our planetary home.

Here's a stupid idea of my own. This is how I think. The things we tend to take the best care of are the things we love. If we could LOVE the planet we live on--y'know, think of it maybe as a living being (you know the drill)--then we would be in a better position to take proper care of her. If you can love the Earth and be an atheist at the same time, I rejoice. I have no problem with such an atheism.

Does that help?

Thanks, yes it does. I think your experience is shaped by the kind of atheists you know. I'm sorry for that, because that isn't my experience of atheism at all.

Quote:
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural
So blow your hippy noodle
That you would rather just stand in the fog
Of your inability to Google?

Isn't this enough?

Just this world?

Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable, NATURAL world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?

Well known atheist Tim Minchin, Storm.

He is a comedian, hence some of the vitriol. If you care to see the whole video, google it. Tried to go post it here and it didn't work.

I suppose not so much gratitude as awe is more the experience that I have with regard to the natural world, because sometiimes gratitude is not the emotion I feel in the face of some of the natural world. The capacity for destruction, catastrophic change. The knowledge that a few minor changes and we would easily cease to exist as a species, that life itself may no longer go on on earth.

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Saturday, April 27, 2013 6:25 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

6IX
Heya Jack! Yeah, Hollywood style!

MAGONS
Yes, the feeling of gratitude diminishes our universe. Gratitude implies an emotional relationship. The earth doesn't have one with us. I hope your autumnal day was pleasant!

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Saturday, April 27, 2013 9:19 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I think if we really knew the overwhelming powers in the universe around which our puny lives flit, we wouldn't feel gratitude but ice cold fear. Thank god (meant colloquially) for human limits on our perceptions.

"Right now, the pupose of the system is to "make money"."

But before that other systems also unsustainable had the purposes of oh, assuring the sun god would return (hence the sacrifice of human hearts), or filling your rightful place in the structure (either Medieval Europe or historic China), or acquiring as many cows as you can to impress your friends and relatives - and get the girl (Masai).

The same thing comes up over and over again.

So I was thinking about an individual human alone in the wilderness. She understands that in order to survive she must deal with the impersonal world around her on its impersonal terms - find water, make fire, find food etc.

Now instead you have two couples, or two villages, or tribes, or countries - doesn't matter. As time goes on, it becomes apparent that resources are starting to run a bit thin. There just isn't the abundance there used to be. The answer - the REAL answer - is for them both to reduce their populations, and use resources efficiently rather than wastefully.

But instead of treating this as an impersonal problem needing practical solutions which will benefit them all, the mere presence of other people will open the door to them treating this as a zero sum human problem - a COMPETITION. So they each try to have more children, more arms, more fighters, in order to TAKE from the other what little remains. (I wonder if that's what happened on Easter Island, and it blinded them to the larger picture ...)

So, I heard something interesting the other day. Apparently it's an old observation that goes to the effect that humans are good at recognizing the immediate crises, but not the slow-moving ones. Maybe they're also good at putting the human face on a problem, but not the impersonal facet. So you don't recognize that if you have four children and they each have four children and so on, that sooner or later things will run out. And maybe you see the problem as a competition between you and the other village, rather than a systemic imbalance between all the people and their surroundings.

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Saturday, May 11, 2013 9:59 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Back to the problem of efficiency.

An efficient factory means that maximum goods will be produced for minimum input. Ordinarly, one thinks that's a good thing: waste not, want not. But maximum efficiency, when calculated that way, fosters centralization, because economies of scale (bigger enterprises have less waste) foster larger businesses.

Other costs don't get factored in. People need to live in crowded conditions in order to be an "efficient" labor source for factories (hence, the many-thousand-person dormitories of China, where ppl sleep in shifts three to a bunk). Food needs to be trucked in, and shit needs to be piped out. Children are separated from their parents and their parents' work-experience, and are wharehoused in age-appropriate cohorts to be "educated" in assembly-line fashion, efficiently producing the maximum number of factory-ready and cubicle-ready workers using the least number of bricks, books, and teachers. Goods are produced in singular factories, such as the one in Japan that produces all of the integrated circuit-chip plastic for the entire world. (True) "Just in time" supply becomes the rage; redundancy and surplus are anathema. A thousand single points of possible failure are generated.

-------------------

Every nation has been touched by the global financial meltdown. Russia's big money-makers, gas and oil, are selling cheap. Greece and Spain are experiencing a Great Depression. Argentina is struggling with inflation. Ireland is facing yet another mortgage default crisis. Even China, mighty China, is slowing down. (Oh yeah, and the brain-dead rightwingnuts think this is all Fannie's and Freddie's fault.)

Every single nation is looking for a leg up on every other nation. Sellers of commodities (ores, energy, foodstuffs) are looking to manufacture, since commodity prices are declining. Manufacturers are looking to either sell labor cheaper or upping the quality of labor - or both. Governments are trying to reduce the value of their currency in order to boost exports. Financials are looking for better investments. Everyone is trying to be more efficient. But nobody is buying, because a lot of money is stuck in the hands of a few, who are themselves looking for some sort of investment that will return MORE money into their hands. Since bonds, commodities, and manufactures are flat, that means more speculation and yet another upcoming bubble.

Wow, is that a cluster-fuck, or what???

Everything.... boom-and-bust, global warming, social breakdown... can be eliminated by simply changing the purpose of our economies. Rather than jumping into the world economy as a gladiatorial event, nations COULD really just redirect their production and focus to doing what economies should be doing in the first place: making safe and secure places for people to work and live, planning for the future, healing the earth, and telling the rest of the world to go hang.

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Saturday, May 11, 2013 10:50 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I agree with your overall conclusion, I'm still not sure if I agree with your concept of efficiency.

Part of your objection to efficiency lies in the fact that the inputs are miscounted. But if a society were to account for the inputs - short and long term, direct and indirect resources used - then efficiency might not look so bad. At present we count only direct itemized costs, all with an eye toward profit. We don't count soil lost, watersheds damaged, CO2 increased, centralization of farming into large multinationals, packaging waste etc. But if that changed we would be looking at farming with an eye to losing less land, keeping more creeks, lakes and rivers viable, keeping CO2 down etc per unit of food production. And then I don't think you could argue that increased efficiency in that case is bad ... after all, who would agree that farming that ruins more land is better than farming that ruins less land, or none?

And then there's the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness. One can be very efficient at doing the wrong thing. Effectiveness, which is doing the right thing, trumps efficiency, which is doing things in the right way.

So, I don't have an objection to efficiency per se, just to very short-sighted calculations and to the notion that what you do doesn't matter as long as you're doing it efficiently.

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Sunday, May 12, 2013 9:03 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I think that robustness and effiency are intrinsic opposites, no matter HOW universally you calculate efficiency. Robustness requires redundancy and surplus... "wasted" resources in anyone's calculation.

As an aside, it seems to me that human economies wobble back and forth between functioning like an ecosystem (disparate, and redundant activities) and functioning like a body (ie integrated, specialized functions tied together in a single unit).

When I try to imagine disasters of various kinds, the most consequential involve a breakdown of transporation and communication. It is our transportation systems that allow activities to be centralized; w/o transportation it would be impossible to ship IC-plastic from Japan to everywhere; tantalum from Africa to China; and iPhones from China to the world; or to remove trash and sewage from our neighborhoods. That is where our human economy differs from an ecosystem, because ecosystems are always local: ALL of the functions of an ecosystem have to happen in one place. It's not like you can have plants converting sunlight to sugar in one place, the the grazers feeding in another place, and the predators and parasites someplace else.

So... transportation ... like blood flowing thru a body... is the essential ingredient in specialization and centralization.

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Sunday, May 12, 2013 11:10 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Robustness requires redundancy and surplus... "wasted" resources in anyone's calculation."

Well, let's take an example of one kind of 'waste' - the rotting of grain in storage. How does increasing that waste lead to an increase of robustness?

I think there might be different categories of waste, and they aren't all equal. Perhaps there are types of things we think of as waste - generalization rather than specialization; diversity of method rather than imposition of an assembly-line style; dispersal, duplication and overlap of function rather than centralization and streamlining - that do lead to increased robustness;; but there are other types of waste that don't ...

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Monday, May 13, 2013 6:18 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

OR perhaps different categories of efficiency... ones which reduce robustness, and others which don't.

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Monday, May 13, 2013 6:26 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I was noticing that the instances of increased robustness seem to be clustered with increased human effort. I don't know if that's a random observation or an essential distinction.

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Monday, May 13, 2013 7:49 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Caveat: I haven't been following this thread; the idea of "everything as a business" is something I'm all too well aware of and don't like to think about, given it's being pushed more and more in our society more and more effectively, including private prisons, etc., etc.

But I saw this, and it's relevant to the title of this thread, so here it is:

Quote:
Who Is Profiting From Charters? The Big Bucks Behind Charter School Secrecy, Financial Scandal and Corruption

Studies shows that charter schools don’t typically outperform public schools and they often tend to increase racial and class segregation. So one must wonder, what exactly is motivating these school “reformers”? And why have they pushed for more and more closure — and new charter schools — at such an unprecedented rate in recent years?

Pro-charter supporters will tell you that it’s time for public institutions like our schools to start competing more like for-profit institutions. Test scores and high enrollment, then, define success. Unsuccessful schools, they say, should close just as unsuccessful businesses do. For neoliberal school reformers from today’s Arne Duncan-led Department of Education to scandal-ridden movement leader Michelle Rhee to billionaire Bill Gates, it is taken on faith that market principles are desirable in education.

But since it’s not clear that market principles are benefiting students on a large scale, it seems likely that something else is at stake. And reformers may be more than a little disingenuous in publicly ignoring that other, less high-minded thing: Profit. Critics of charter schools and school closings point out that proponents may not really be motivated by idealism, but by self-gain.

But who precisely is profiting? And how? Untangling answers to these questions is a more daunting task. Compared to public schools, charters schools are an extremely unregulated business. They contract with private companies to provide all kinds of services, from curriculum development to landscaping. Most of the regulations that bind charter schools are implemented at the state level. And unlike public institutions, the finances of charter schools are managed on a school-by-school basis. Because they are not consistently held accountable to the public for how they distribute funds, charter schools are often able to keep their business practices under wraps, and thus avoid too much scrutiny.

For an article of this scope, it’s impossible to describe the profit issue in anything approaching thorough and accurate generalization. Instead, we will look at a couple of decades-old federal incentives for charter investment that may have helped pave the way for the explosion of charter schools today, and provide some examples and snapshots of what is happening on the ground in those major cities where the charter school movement is most influential. The rest at http://www.alternet.org/education/who-profiting-charters-big-bucks-beh
ind-charter-school-secrecy-financial-scandal-and?page=0%2C1&paging=off

Spoiler alert: It ain't good.

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Sunday, June 30, 2013 5:49 AM