tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34861670547322976332024-03-13T03:55:22.689-07:00synergetic omni-solutionThe Synergetic Omni-Solution is a multidisciplinary social and environmental action initiative inspired by Buckminster Fuller's theory that old systems can most efficiently be destroyed by building new models that make the old ones obsolete.alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-25738540078825415652014-12-22T18:07:00.002-08:002017-03-18T07:22:38.548-07:00THE POST-ANTHROPO-SCENE: RECLAIM THE HUMANE, ADDENDUM TO THE MANIFESTO FOR THE OBVIOUS INTERNATIONAL<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
span.MsoEndnoteReference
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
vertical-align:super;}
p.MsoEndnoteText, li.MsoEndnoteText, div.MsoEndnoteText
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-link:"Endnote Text Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
span.EndnoteTextChar
{mso-style-name:"Endnote Text Char";
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Endnote Text";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--1_Imdb3OoE/VJmV9HHv7dI/AAAAAAAABIg/VeWFsQ-t-zg/s1600/bird_man_galicia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--1_Imdb3OoE/VJmV9HHv7dI/AAAAAAAABIg/VeWFsQ-t-zg/s1600/bird_man_galicia.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Graffiti seen on the streets of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, December 2011 </i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The original </i><a href="http://www.obviousinternational.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Obvious International</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Manifesto was published in </i><a href="http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/16740-manifesto-for-the-obvious-international"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">TruthOut on June 3, 2013</i></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Lately I have been exploring the meaning of the word
"humane". While it has its roots in the word "human", it
refers to compassion and empathy with non-human entities as well ("humane
societies" are generally intended to encourage the humane treatment of
animals, not people, for example).<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_edn1" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[i]</span></span></a> A quick
internet search reveals a graph of the word’s usage over time<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_edn2" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[ii]</span></span></a>;
according to this set of data, the adjective "humane" has been on the
decline since 1800 (with a brief upward trend in the early 1970s). I can't help
but wonder, has the entire concept of humaneness been on the decline too?</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Philosopher-physicist Karen Barad routinely uses the word “matter”
as a verb. Through the lens of language, she invites us to envision a kind of
“post-humanist” world in which humanity along with everything else is not just
equal and interconnected, but is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">intra</i>-connected
and ever-becoming – ever-<i>mattering –</i> based on constantly-morphing intra-relationships.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_edn3" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[iii]</span></span></a>
Incensed that it is possible to live in a world in which it is of urgent
necessity to point out that #BlackLivesMatter (glaring evidence, if ever there
was, that the obvious is in dire need of advocates), it is in this active
sense of the word "matter" that I am suggesting that #Humaneness<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matters</i>. Active humaneness towards
everyone and everything of all colors, genders, species, and even presumed status
with regard to “aliveness” or “consciousness” is bound to cause an immediate
ripple effect, resulting in a measurable increase in overall planet-wide levels
of humaneness.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">To humanize someone or something
– human or otherwise – is to relate to her, him, or it with compassion, on an
equal plane with oneself<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_edn4" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[iv]</span></span></a>. “To humanize”
has elements in common with<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“anthropomorphize”…to
ascribe our own characteristics to things outside of ourselves, such as plants,
animals, geological features, or forces of nature. Anthropomorphization is
often thought of as a quaint, if slightly risky, poetic device, a handy
metaphorical tool, but something that must be used with discretion if we wish
to be taken seriously as rational creatures in societies in which it is
collectively assumed that humans are different, separate, and superior to
everything around us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On the other hand, to
“dehumanize” someone or something is to degrade it, to divorce oneself from responsibility
for her, his, or its well-being. Soldiers are trained to de-humanize those
deemed enemies in order to fight, kill, or torture them. Imperialists
de-humanize pre-established populations in order to colonize their lands. Capitalists
often de-humanize labor in order to exploit it. In addition, they may find it
necessary to detach themselves emotionally from environments and entities that
must be harmed or eradicated in order to maximize profit. De-humanization is
routinely employed to justify all manner of predatory behavior.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The ongoing effort to reverse
these trends – racism, classism, sexism, speciesism and other oppressive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">-isms</i> – may be enhanced and accelerated
by the radical re-humanization of everyone and everything. A simple mental
shift will transform the pigeon in the park or the mountain in the distance
from “it” to “him” or “her” (as is standard in many languages other than
English). This could be thought of as a kind of “post-anthropomorphism”, the
reflexive granting of equal status, respect, and care to every being and every thing.
What if we were to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">begin</i> with the
assumption that we are more alike than different and work our way out from
there, instead of starting from a position of presumed
separateness-until-proven-connected?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Even if you are a scientist, have
no fear…this mindset will not permanently impair your capacity for objectivity
when necessary, nor will it cause you to do your job less accurately. In fact,
you may be able to do it more constructively; empathizing with your specimens
could move you to design more humane, ethical, and beneficial experiments. After
all, the notion of objective observation is a poetic device too.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It turns out that poetic devices
– including our basic assumptions about the ways the world works – can have extremely
tangible effects, for better or worse, on the ways we treat each other and the
planet we share. By choosing a social imaginary that presumes equality and interrelationship,
rather than one that perpetuates exploitation and abuse, our individual
everyday lives become re-infused with purpose and meaning. Detachment leads to
alienation and nihilism, while caring leads to a sense of cooperation and
fulfillment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In this time when it seems
apparent from a cursory glance at the daily news that humans are capable of so
much damage and violence, it is important to bear in mind that it is a
relatively small percentage of the total population of humans that is causing
the majority of the harm<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_edn5" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[v]</span></span></a>, whether
through extremist acts of aggression or by a seemingly more innocuous form of
fundamentalism: excessive consumerism. For those wooed by such ideologies,
gravely destructive acts have become normalized. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But it is not too late to stop
the spread of destructive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">-isms</i> and
reclaim the spirit of what it means to think and act humanely – with kindness,
compassion, and empathy. If “to humanize” means to connect with another in an
intelligent, emotional way that feels uniquely human to us, we can approach
this fraught moment in history most constructively and with maximum grace by
coming to humanize everything. </span></div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="edn" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_ednref" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[i]</span></span></a> <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Curiously, most definitions include a
reference to “humane” ways of killing.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_ednref" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[ii]</span></span></a> http://tinyurl.com/ofa4jux</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_ednref" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[iii]</span></span></a> http://humweb.ucsc.edu/feministstudies/faculty/barad/barad-posthumanist.pdf</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_ednref" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[iv]</span></span></a> http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/Humanize</div>
</div>
<div id="edn" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3486167054732297633#_ednref" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[v]</span></span></a> http://climateandcapitalism.com/2014/12/07/care-fertility-control-wont-solve-climate-crisis/</div>
</div>
</div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-45712531749467546242014-07-13T14:29:00.000-07:002014-07-13T14:29:35.146-07:00Joseph Beuys: Appeal for an Alternative<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z653Tjs3uog/U8L4ukQrHUI/AAAAAAAABDI/6Z78QZsSSrM/s1600/beuys_think.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z653Tjs3uog/U8L4ukQrHUI/AAAAAAAABDI/6Z78QZsSSrM/s1600/beuys_think.jpg" height="640" width="630" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Joseph Beuys' December 1978 <a href="http://issuu.com/sethjordan/docs/beuys_appeal" target="_blank">Appeal for an Alternative</a> which first appeared in the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-69031058830150716722014-03-01T14:56:00.000-08:002014-03-03T16:12:59.816-08:00Liberty, Equality, Geography: An Interview with John P. Clark on the Revolutionary Eco-Anarchism of Elisée Reclus<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"MS Mincho";
mso-font-alt:"MS 明朝";
mso-font-charset:128;
mso-generic-font-family:modern;
mso-font-pitch:fixed;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
h1
{mso-style-link:"Heading 1 Char";
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:1;
font-size:13.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-font-kerning:0pt;
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;}
h2
{mso-style-link:"Heading 2 Char";
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:justify;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:2;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:FR;
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;
font-style:italic;}
h3
{mso-style-link:"Heading 3 Char";
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:3;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;}
h4
{mso-style-link:"Heading 4 Char";
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:4;
font-size:11.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;}
span.MsoEndnoteReference
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
vertical-align:super;}
p.MsoEndnoteText, li.MsoEndnoteText, div.MsoEndnoteText
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-link:"Endnote Text Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-indent:.2in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:9.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoTitle, li.MsoTitle, div.MsoTitle
{mso-style-link:"Title Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:bold;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
em
{mso-style-parent:"";
mso-bidi-font-style:italic;}
p.MsoNoSpacing, li.MsoNoSpacing, div.MsoNoSpacing
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph
{margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
span.Heading1Char
{mso-style-name:"Heading 1 Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Heading 1";
mso-ansi-font-size:13.0pt;
font-weight:bold;}
span.Heading2Char
{mso-style-name:"Heading 2 Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Heading 2";
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:FR;
font-weight:bold;
font-style:italic;}
span.Heading3Char
{mso-style-name:"Heading 3 Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Heading 3";
font-family:"MS Mincho";
mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";
font-weight:bold;}
span.Heading4Char
{mso-style-name:"Heading 4 Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Heading 4";
mso-ansi-font-size:11.0pt;
font-weight:bold;}
span.TitleChar
{mso-style-name:"Title Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:Title;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-weight:bold;}
span.EndnoteTextChar
{mso-style-name:"Endnote Text Char";
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Endnote Text";
mso-ansi-font-size:9.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
/* List Definitions */
@list l0
{mso-list-id:1160002839;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:-590690356 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l0:level1
{mso-level-tab-stop:none;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l1
{mso-list-id:1912931663;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:-1327485096 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l1:level1
{mso-level-start-at:3;
mso-level-tab-stop:none;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l2
{mso-list-id:2141070709;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:42888668 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l2:level1
{mso-level-tab-stop:none;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
ol
{margin-bottom:0in;}
ul
{margin-bottom:0in;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r-2-rXLBvDg/UxJkWioN_vI/AAAAAAAAA_0/cgEyUPo-bsU/s1600/anarchy_geography_modernity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r-2-rXLBvDg/UxJkWioN_vI/AAAAAAAAA_0/cgEyUPo-bsU/s1600/anarchy_geography_modernity.jpg" height="640" width="424" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Photo: <a href="https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=565" target="_blank">PM Press</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"MS Mincho";
mso-font-alt:"MS 明朝";
mso-font-charset:128;
mso-generic-font-family:modern;
mso-font-pitch:fixed;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
h1
{mso-style-link:"Heading 1 Char";
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:1;
font-size:13.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-font-kerning:0pt;
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;}
h2
{mso-style-link:"Heading 2 Char";
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:justify;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:2;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:FR;
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;
font-style:italic;}
h3
{mso-style-link:"Heading 3 Char";
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:3;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;}
h4
{mso-style-link:"Heading 4 Char";
mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:4;
font-size:11.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;}
span.MsoEndnoteReference
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
vertical-align:super;}
p.MsoEndnoteText, li.MsoEndnoteText, div.MsoEndnoteText
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-link:"Endnote Text Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-indent:.2in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:9.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoTitle, li.MsoTitle, div.MsoTitle
{mso-style-link:"Title Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:bold;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
em
{mso-style-parent:"";
mso-bidi-font-style:italic;}
p.MsoNoSpacing, li.MsoNoSpacing, div.MsoNoSpacing
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph
{margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
span.Heading1Char
{mso-style-name:"Heading 1 Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Heading 1";
mso-ansi-font-size:13.0pt;
font-weight:bold;}
span.Heading2Char
{mso-style-name:"Heading 2 Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Heading 2";
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:FR;
font-weight:bold;
font-style:italic;}
span.Heading3Char
{mso-style-name:"Heading 3 Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Heading 3";
font-family:"MS Mincho";
mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";
font-weight:bold;}
span.Heading4Char
{mso-style-name:"Heading 4 Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Heading 4";
mso-ansi-font-size:11.0pt;
font-weight:bold;}
span.TitleChar
{mso-style-name:"Title Char";
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:Title;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-weight:bold;}
span.EndnoteTextChar
{mso-style-name:"Endnote Text Char";
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Endnote Text";
mso-ansi-font-size:9.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
/* List Definitions */
@list l0
{mso-list-id:1160002839;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:-590690356 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l0:level1
{mso-level-tab-stop:none;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l1
{mso-list-id:1912931663;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:-1327485096 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l1:level1
{mso-level-start-at:3;
mso-level-tab-stop:none;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l2
{mso-list-id:2141070709;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:42888668 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l2:level1
{mso-level-tab-stop:none;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
ol
{margin-bottom:0in;}
ul
{margin-bottom:0in;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Social geography</i> is the study of how landscape, climate, and other
features of a place shape the livelihoods, values, and cultural traditions of
its inhabitants (and vice versa). Frenchman Elisée Reclus (1830 – 1905), a
progenitor of the discipline, believed strongly in the rights and abilities of
people to manage themselves in relation to their local bioregion, free from
rule by a remote, centralized government. His approach to anarchy was unique in
its emphasis on the environment – Reclus understood that a mindset that
encourages one person or people’s domination over another must, in the race to
profit from natural “resources”, also foster domination over nature. Like the
social ecologists who have succeeded him, Reclus believed that solutions to
ecological crises must involve restoring balance, equality, and a sense of
interrelationship between humans and other humans, and between humans and the
biosphere. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
The first half of the
recently-published <a href="https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=565"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected
Writings of Elisée Reclus</span></a><u>,</u> edited and translated by John Clark
and Camille Martin, forms a comprehensive critical survey of Reclus’ philosophy
and political theory,<span style="color: red;"> </span>including biographical
information and historical context<span style="color: red;">. </span>The “modern”
manifestations of oppression (including the concentration of wealth and power,
surveillance, racism, sexism, and ecological degradation) that concerned Reclus
in late-1800s Europe, the United States, and Central and South America are
indeed still strikingly – infuriatingly – present. The second half of the book
consists of translations of several pieces from Reclus’ extensive oeuvre, some
of which have never before appeared in English translation. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">AS: Can you describe how anarchy – specifically the kind based in
mutual aid and environmental responsibility in service to a greater good
illuminated here by Reclus, and by you in your book <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-impossible-community-9781441185471/"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The Impossible Community</span></a>, differs
from other conceptions (or misconceptions) of anarchy, and how it might (as
contrasted with other ideologies) be useful to us <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now? </i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: FR;">John P. Clark</span></b><span style="mso-fareast-language: FR;">: The world is rife with misconceptions about
anarchism.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
The most historically and
theoretically grounded definition – the one that goes back to classical figures
like Elisée Reclus – is quite simple: anarchy consists of the critique of all
systems of domination and the struggle to abolish those systems, in concert
with the practice of free, non-dominating community, which is the real
alternative to these systems. <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Anarchy
is the entire sphere of human life that takes place outside the boundaries of <i>arche</i>,
or domination, in all its forms – statism, nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy,
racial oppression, heterosexism, technological domination, the domination of
nature, etc. </span>It rejects the hegemony of the centralized state, the
capitalist market, and any hybrid of the two, and seeks to create a society
free of all systematic forms of domination of humanity and nature. It envisions
a society in which power remains decentralized at the base, decision-making is
carried out through voluntary association and participatory democracy, and
larger social purposes are pursued through the free federation of communities,
affinity groups, and associations. <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Anarchism is not merely about
a transformation of social institutional structures, however. As further discussed
in my book <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-impossible-community-9781441185471/">The
Impossible Community</a>, it also encompasses a fundamental transformation of the
social imaginary, the social ideology, and the social ethos. Communitarian
anarchism assumes that social transformation, to be successful, must encompass
all major spheres of social determination. It recognizes that there are
ontological, ethical, aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of
anarchy or non-domination. According to Reclus and other communitarian
anarchists, these are not <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">just
</span>vague ideals to be achieved in some future utopia; rather, such a
transformation is<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";"> immediately
realized <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">here and now<span style="color: red;"> </span></i>wherever love and solidarity are embodied in
existing human relationships and social practice. </span>Anarchism is strongly
committed to “prefigurative” forms of association, and to the idea of “creating
the new society within the shell of the old.” In fact, the communities of
liberation that we create here and now do more than “prefigure” the ultimate
goal; they are actual “figurations” of our ideals, actually giving a form, or a
face, to them in the present.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
By demonstrating that the most
deeply rooted social order arises not out of coercion, oppression, and
domination, but out of mutual aid and cooperation, communitarian anarchism is a
truly revolutionary project. In working to regenerate community at the most fundamental
level, it seeks to reverse the course of thousands of years of history in which
relations of solidarity have been progressively replaced by market relations,
commodity relations, bureaucratic relations, technical relations, instrumental
relations, and relations of coercion and domination. The ecocidal and genocidal
effects of such relations compel us to consider whether we will remain
on history’s present catastrophic course, or seize the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the flourishing of both humanity and the whole of life
in the biospheric community. In the work of Reclus we find universally
accessible, immediately implementable alternatives. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Reclus cites some of the anarchic forms of human community that
have made up much of world history, and remarks that “the names of the Spanish
comuñeros, of the French communes, of the English yeomen, of the free cities in
Germany, of the Republic of Novgorod and of the marvelous communities of Italy
must be, with us Anarchists, household words: never was civilized humanity
nearer to real Anarchy than it was in certain phases of the communal history of
Florence and Nürnberg.” Today we can add the names of many movements that span
the century since Reclus: the collectives in the Spanish Revolution; the
Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement; the global cooperative movement; the rich history
of libertarian intentional communities; the Zapatista Movement; radical
indigenous movements throughout the world; the global justice movement; and recently,
the “horizontalist” practice of the Occupy Movement.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">AS: In his 1898 essay “Evolution, Revolution, and the Anarchist Ideal”
Reclus reflects on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“the spirit of the
strike”</i> and various kinds of cooperative associations (such as bartering of
goods and services, collaborative communities, and consumers’ associations) as
effective ways to build solidarity. He claims that it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“in struggling for a common cause”</i> together that we form the bonds
necessary for the ongoing project of social revolution. In an 1895 letter to
Clara Koettlitz he advises the aspiring anarchist to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“work to free himself personally from all preconceived or imposed
ideas, and gradually gather around himself friends who live and act in the same
way. It is step by step, through small, loving, and intelligent associations
that the great fraternal society will be formed.”</i> Can you speak on the transformative
power of the process itself? Can you recommend some constructive immediate
steps for today’s revolutionaries?</b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">JPC:</b> The spirit of the strike, which means essentially the spirit
of active and creative resistance, has enormous significance in the everyday
life of any person who is committed to liberatory social transformation. In our present epoch of looming ecocidal and genocidal catastrophe, each
person must make a basic decision. It is a “living, forced, momentous option,”
to use William James's famous terms. Each must answer the question, “Am I a
resister or am I collaborator?” This is as true for us today as it was for
anyone living in Vichy France in the early 40s. We must decide either for
solidarity with humanity and nature or for betrayal of both in the struggle
against domination. For this reason we might say that authentic anarchists are
not merely an-archists but anti-archists. To be an “an-archist,” one who is
“not an archist,” might imply something like “domination just isn’t my thing,”
or “I’m not comfortable with domination.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the true spirit of anarchism, that is, anti-archism, implies that
“domination is an intolerable thing,” that “when I see domination in any form I
become indignant.”</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">I agree with Reclus’ contention that “small, loving and
intelligent associations” are the<span style="color: red;"> </span>key to
breaking out of the cycle of social determination and regenerating free
community on the larger social level. Such micro-communities are “small” in the
sense that they are the locus of primary, intimate, face-to-face relationships,
they are “loving” in that they are founded on the practice of solidarity,
mutual aid, compassion, and cooperation, and they are “intelligent” in that they
are self-consciously transformative, awakened to their own meaning and
purpose, the primary social space in which theory and practice converge. As
primary communities of solidarity they are the only basis on which a solidarity economy
and a larger solidarity society can be created. </span>Reclus believed that
these <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">“small, loving and
intelligent associations” </span>should not isolate themselves, but on the
contrary should develop their lives together in close relationship to their
larger communities, always considering their role in the evolution of the whole
society toward “<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">the great
fraternal society” of the future. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
While ambivalent
towards, and even skeptical of, the role of small cooperatives and intentional "communes" or "colonies" separate from the local community, Reclus believed that an indispensable part of
the process of social transformation is the creation of institutions that
embody a growing spirit and practice of solidarity at the most basic levels of
society.<span style="color: green;"> </span>He stressed the importance of the
development of a “spirit of full association” in which local communities
collectively take on many cooperative projects. He looked to already-existing
practices of mutual aid and cooperation as a kind of material basis on which
further developments could be grounded. <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">The
Reclus family’s life, which was pervaded by love and cooperation, was described
by Elisée’s nephew and biographer Paul Reclus as “putting communism into
practice.” Thus, Reclus’ own family was in effect a libertarian communist or
communitarian anarchist affinity group, his most immediate evidence of what is
possible in a future society. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">In <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-impossible-community-9781441185471/" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Impossible Community</span></a>,
I refer to “communities of liberation and solidarity,” but these have gone
under many names, notably, the “affinity group” in the anarchist movement, the “base
community” in Latin American social justice movements, and the “ashram” in the
Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement. In all of these cases, the fact that they have been
integral parts of transformative social movements has helped protect them from
the pitfalls of self-obsession and self-marginalization that Reclus saw in some intentional communities. Rather than
one-sidedly turning inward, they turn both inward and outward simultaneously,
and act as the foundation for larger federative activity. We might call them the
material and spiritual base for social evolution and social revolution.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Reclus’ insights into the
“spirit of full association” are desperately needed by today’s anarchists,
anti-authoritarians, and all those who are concerned with liberatory social
transformation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the one hand, many
of those who have the most far-reaching visions of social change remain trapped
in marginal projects and relatively isolated subcultures. On the other hand, almost
all those who are most actively engaged with local communities are in the end
co-opted into single-issue politics and innocuous reformism. Reclus urges
activists, (who must be, he says, at once “evolutionists” and “revolutionists”)
to become deeply engaged in the struggles of actually-existing communities, focusing
on the needs and aspirations of ordinary people, while at the same time helping
to create new expressions of communal solidarity that are a revolutionary
challenge to the existing system of domination. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">AS: The caption to an illustration of the globe being held up by two
hands that appears in the preface to Reclus’ 3,500-page masterwork <u>L’Homme
et la Terre</u> (reproduced in this edition of <u><a href="https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=565">Anarchy,
Geography, Modernity</a></u>) contains one of his best-known maxims: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“L’homme est la nature prenant conscience
d’elle-même” </i>– translated here as “humanity is nature becoming
self-conscious.” </b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Do you think (or might Reclus have
thought) that humans are the<i> only</i> biological creature that is an
artifact of nature becoming conscious of itself?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kIQ8riyphDU/UxJlLJZ8KKI/AAAAAAAAA_8/BtOlOpa-x6M/s1600/reclus_image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kIQ8riyphDU/UxJlLJZ8KKI/AAAAAAAAA_8/BtOlOpa-x6M/s1600/reclus_image.jpg" height="281" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<style>
<!--
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
p.MsoNoSpacing, li.MsoNoSpacing, div.MsoNoSpacing
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">JPC:</b> Human beings are certainly not the only form of nature’s
consciousness. Of course, all consciousness is nature’s consciousness, and
since the objects of this consciousness are also nature, there is a sense in
which all consciousness is nature’s self-consciousness, as I’m sure Reclus
would agree. But the idea that humans are self-conscious nature in a strong
sense means that not only do we possess consciousness,<span style="color: red;"> </span>we
are capable of knowing that we have this quality and guiding our actions
accordingly. There is a degree of self-consciousness that makes possible a
sense of wonder at the natural world and a sense of responsibility concerning
it. It is this self-consciousness that makes possible a
narrative understanding of our place in the natural world. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
We are only now beginning to
see the way in which Reclus’ thought made a major contribution to the dawning
awareness of humanity’s place within a larger story of the earth. His conviction
that “humanity is nature becoming self-conscious” belongs to certain
wide-ranging tendencies in Nineteenth Century thought. On the one hand, German
idealist philosophy (Hegel, Schelling) and Romantic literature (Wordsworth, the
transcendentalists) reinterpreted all of reality as aspects of a Universal
Spirit that encompasses humanity and nature, and was becoming conscious of
itself in history. But these insights stayed largely on an idealist and
aesthetic level, and Spirit remained largely divorced from scientific and
material realities. Marx’s historical materialism contributed much of what was
lacking in such idealist accounts, in that it interpreted history as the story
of the alienation of humanity from its own life activity and productive
processes, and of the overcoming of this split and the ideologies that mystify
it. This account was in many ways a great advance, in that it was grounded in
material reality and took seriously the insights of modern science. Yet it
tended toward a reductionism that ignored many of the dimensions of nature and
spirit that idealism and Romanticism uncovered. Reclus’ thought was the first
attempt at a real synthesis and transcendence of these two perspectives. In his
work, Hegel’s story of “Spirit” and Marx’s story of “Man” are raised up (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aufgehoben</i>) to the level of the “Earth Story”,
a narrative in which humanity is seen as developing in dialectical relation to
nature, and in which the opposition between spirit and matter is overcome...or, minimally, that the project of overcoming it is posed seriously. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Prior to the late twentieth century,<span style="color: red;"> </span>broad, encompassing, synthesizing conceptions of the
global and of “globalization” had not pervaded the general consciousness. Yet, well
before the end of the Nineteenth Century, Reclus had already begun developing a
theoretically sophisticated historical and geographical conception of
globalization, one that encompasses the geological, geographical, ecological,
political, economic, and cultural spheres. Reclus is thus a crucial figure in
the emergence of a conception of globalization that remains more advanced than
the ones that predominate even today. He urged us, long before this language
even existed, to overcome the “centrisms” that have doomed us. He attacked the
egocentrism that raises one individual above others and the anthropocentrism
that subordinates the natural world to humanity. But not least of all he
challenged his age to overcome Eurocentrism and adopt a truly global
perspective. He asks, “Hasn’t it become obvious to members of the great human
family that the center of civilization is already everywhere?” [AGM, p.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>222]. In the end, Reclus is a visionary
and prophet of earth-consciousness and world-consciousness in their deepest
senses, senses that are still only beginning to dawn on humanity.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Reclus summarizes his project
in his two great works,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> The New Universal
Geography</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Humanity and the Earth</i>
(which together run to nearly 20,000 pages) as “the attempt to follow
the evolution of humanity in relation to forms of life on earth, and the evolution
of forms of life on earth in relation to humanity.” <span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">[Élisée Reclus, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leçon d’ouverture du cours de Géographie comparée dans l’espace et dans
le temps. </i></span>Extrait de la REVUE UNIVERSITAIRE, Bruxelles, 1894, p. 5,
my translation]. It is for this reason that he deserves recognition as a
founder not only of social geography but also of social ecology. In fact, his
rich, detailed development of social ecological analysis makes most of what
has gone under that rubric since his time seem amateurish in comparison. We
need to reinvigorate social ecology today with the kind of scientific and
historical grounding found in Reclus but with a theoretical rigor that goes far
beyond his efforts.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
Reclus’ announcement that
“humanity is nature becoming self-conscious” is a quite momentous one, and is
certain to become even more fateful as global climate catastrophe accelerates
and as we move more deeply into the Sixth Mass Extinction of life on Earth.<span style="color: red;"> </span>We need to ponder what is at stake today in the
question of whether humanity can actively assume its role as self-conscious
nature. Reclus was confident that it would succeed in doing so, and in the
process demonstrate that another world is possible beyond the limits of
domination. Today, in our much less optimistic age, it is much more difficult
for many to believe that such an “other world” is at all possible, despite the
fact there are ever stronger indications that the present one is becoming less
possible day by day. This world’s ultimate impossibility, even if it is inevitable,
remains implausible. For its productive powers, imaginary powers and
ideological powers are all seeming testimony to its insuperable reality, and
these powers<span style="color: red;"> </span>continue to expand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality, we have good reason to ask
whether, if another world does not rapidly become possible, any world at all
will remain actual. The impossible community, the Reclusian community of love and solidarity, is a practical and dialectical answer to this more than theoretical, more than rhetorical question. In the midst of a world-destroying epoch, the impossible community presents itself as a world-making and world-preserving community. In the midst of egocentric cynicism and moral paralysis, it is a charismatic community of gifts and of the gift. It is an ethos that inspires and reawakens the person, sweeping him or her into a new realm of deeper reality and more compelling truth. It is our ultimate hope for the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alyce Santoro’s interview with John P. Clark on his book <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-impossible-community-9781441185471/">The
Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism</a> published in
Truthout on June 9, 2013 can be found <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16856-the-impossible-community-an-interview-with-john-p-clark-on-grassroots-revolution">here</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-66166157601586469022013-06-25T17:28:00.003-07:002013-06-25T17:28:53.676-07:00speech for president obama on the environment, written in 2010 during gulf oil disaster<h3 class="post-title entry-title">
<br />
</h3>
<div class="post-header">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-au7MgIzuIOQ/TZOt6t6lqYI/AAAAAAAAAYg/TI7s8U1OGMo/s1600/we_are_technology_sm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.ggpht.com/-au7MgIzuIOQ/TZOt6t6lqYI/AAAAAAAAAYg/TI7s8U1OGMo/s1600/we_are_technology_sm.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
i wrote this a bit less than a year ago as the speech i wanted to hear
president obama give during the gulf oil disaster. it could easily be
adapted to reflect current catastrophes:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Uniting Towards a Sustainable Future: A Speech for the President</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">My
Fellow Americans, I stand before you tonight wishing that I could tell
you from the bottom of my heart that everything is going to be all
right. But that would be dishonest, and you have been lied to enough.
You have been lied to by politicians, by CEO’s, and, the sad fact of the
matter is that we have been lying to ourselves. We all know that our
system is broken – that rampant borrowing is unsustainable, that
voracious, wasteful consumption of non-renewable resources is
unsustainable, that a culture based on greed and fear is unsustainable.
Everywhere we turn, we see evidence of muck rising to the surface, muck
we sensed was lingering just out of view, but chose to ignore. Citizens
cannot go on pretending, and nor can the government. The time has come
for us to look ourselves and each other in the eye and ask the question,
“What really matters? What are the things that bring real happiness?”
For most of us, family, community, health, and security might come to
mind. And yet many of us feel that these things are in jeopardy. How did
this happen? When we take a moment to think about it, we may realize
that at some point we simply stopped nurturing the things we value most.
We mortgaged away our most precious assets, bet them against some
artificial notion of future success. When did the American Dream become
something that very few can afford, with many others so caught up in the
struggle just to get by that they have no time to tend to the things
that matter most? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">In
the April 3, 1944 issue of LIFE magazine, there is an article on page
93 titled “OIL – U.S. Must Drill 20,000 More Wells to Get Enough in
1944.” In the same issue, almost every advertisement – from aftershave
to shoes - alludes to the motto of the day, “Use It Up, Wear It Out,
Make It Do…or Do Without”. On page 130 there’s a full-page ad from the
“War Advertising Council” with a list of things you can do “if you want
to be able to enjoy the good things of life in the peaceful days to
come…if you want to speed victory and thus save the lives of thousands
of fighting men.” The first item on the list is “Buy only what you need.
Take care of what you have. Avoid Waste.” Another point urges the
reader to “Pay off your old debts – all of them. Don’t make new ones.”
Next is “If you haven’t a savings account, start one. If you have an
account, put money in it – regularly.” Last, “Buy and hold War Bonds.
Don’t stop at 10%. Remember – Hitler stops at nothing!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">How
different would our current wars and other crises be if our leaders
asked us to contribute, to collaborate with them, all of us working
together to do our parts? During WWII self-sufficiency in general was
encouraged. Citizens were asked to grow “Victory Gardens” in order to
limit the burden on trucking and railroad supply lines and other
industries. A national “Victory Speed” of 35 miles per hour was
enforced. Gasoline was rationed according to necessity, and for almost a
year, anyone with an “A” sticker – those for whom driving was deemed
non-essential – were allowed only 4 gallons of fuel per week. Since
rubber was in extremely short supply, citizens were asked to contribute
old raincoats, shoes, garden hose, and tires to the recycling effort. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">What
has changed? In 65 years, how did we go from a culture eager to share
responsibility and involvement to one of selfish obliviousness? After
9/11, George W. Bush advised us to go about business as usual, act like
everything is fine and leave it to him to annihilate “evil”. Well, it
turns out that, unlike Hitler’s army, this far less tangible and
insidious enemy could not be annihilated with aggression – in fact,
hostility and hatred are the very food on which it thrives. After 9/11
we were justified in our anger – but we did not clearly define our
adversary before we began the battle. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan
were not our enemies. Brothers, fathers, mothers, children, homes,
schools, farmland, ancient relics – all destroyed because violence was
used as the first resort instead of the last one. Our crusade to root
out and destroy evil has wreaked havoc on countless families,
livelihoods, and traditions in the cradle of civilization – and here on
our own soil as well. In our vain attempt to destroy the enemy, we have
lost no small part of ourselves. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">But it’s not too late to begin now to do what’s right. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">This
starts with the understanding that there are bad seeds and extremists
in every land, but this does not justify unbridled aggression. We must
trust what we know in our hearts to be true: that most people,
regardless of their religion or nationality, yearn for a peaceful
existence, and hold out hope for a better life for their children. We
must focus on that which we have in common with our neighbor, rather
than seek out and exaggerate our differences. After WWII, Americans were
viewed as heroes who made great sacrifices to come to the aid of forces
fighting on the side of good. In stark contrast, our current wars have
caused us to be seen as lone vigilantes, serving only to isolate us and
ignite disgust and disdain for the United States around the world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">These
wars have cost too much in every sense of the word, in lives as well as
dollars. WWII was a boon to our economy because we manufactured goods
that were sold to our allies. We stopped making cars and made airplanes
instead. In contrast, our current wars provide few benefits to our
domestic economy, with the majority of funds going into the coffers of
war profiteers who have proven time and time again to favor their own
bottom lines over the safety and well-being of those they have been
charged to protect. The biggest winner in the war on terror is the oil
companies themselves. More petroleum is purchased by the Department of
Defense for use by the U.S. military than by any other singular entity
in the world. If the oil companies had their way, we’d be at war until
our tanks came to a grinding halt on the battlefield, having run out of
last drop of fuel on planet Earth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Which
brings me to the subject I came to speak with you about tonight - the
torrent of oil currently gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I wanted to
speak with you first about the wars in order to make something amply
clear: we are not fighting over religious differences, or to retaliate
for the attack on our soil on 9/11. The unspoken truth is that we are in
these battles for the sake of a substance that controls our every
action. We have been led to believe that we cannot survive without it,
and the fear of not having enough of it compels us kill or die for it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">We
can and must end these wars, but doing so as quickly, efficiently, and
humanely as possible will require us to first understand the real
reasons we began them</span><span style="font-family: Palatino;">. As a
nation, we must come to realize that the true enemy is our dependence on
oil, and collectively agree that the appropriate way to fight it
consists of each and every one of us doing our part to simply use less
of it. These wars – and the system that supports them - will cease to
exist the moment we reduce our reliance on oil. We need to bring our
energy and our efforts back home to help protect the things that are in
danger here on our home soil. Our men and women abroad are needed here
on our own shores to join a new and very different kind of battle. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">This
will necessitate immediate legislation and, in the longer term, the
development and implementation of technologies based on harnessing
renewable resources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower.
This is your government’s responsibility. We have subsidized the oil
industry, provided astronomical tax breaks, and given it free reign on
the shortsighted premise that our economy will continue to require more
and more oil - and only oil - in order to thrive. We have put ourselves
in the precarious position of having no back-up systems, no safety net.
Rather than accept oil’s limitations and begin to scale back our
reliance on it, we’ve developed a culture based on ever-expanding
markets and increasing dependence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Let
me be clear: BP is fully to blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster –
they will be held financially and personally accountable for the
reckless, irresponsible decisions that caused its equipment to fail and
put its employees, the Gulf of Mexico, and countless lives and
livelihoods at stake. But there are painful truths that must be faced –
first we need to understand that all the money in the world is not
sufficient to clean up the oil that is choking sea life from plankton to
birds and is seeping into sand and marshes. We will try everything in
our power to restore the Gulf to its former glory, even strive to make
it better than it was, but a clean up could take years, or even decades.<span> </span>The
most difficult truth to face is that, directly or indirectly, we
encouraged and participated in a system that cut corners and allowed
this catastrophe to occur. Now we must leave behind these obsolete and
reckless ways, and instead concentrate our efforts on new, sustainable
means to thrive. The government can and must facilitate these changes in
any way it can, but the fastest route to change will be through the
actions of the people. Your help is urgently needed. We must act
immediately if we wish to enjoy the good things of life in the peaceful
days to come, if we wish to live healthier, less wasteful, more
sustainable lives, if we wish to share the burden with our soldiers
abroad. If we have any hope of leaving the world a better place for our
children, we must make changes necessary – today, not tomorrow. The fate
of our families, or nation, and our world is in our hands. Our greatest
resource has been and always will be the determination of our people,
our resolve, and our ability to do what is necessary in the face of
challenge and adversity.<span> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">It
seems there is a lot of fear around change – many people argue that
changes will take too long and cost too much. The hemorrhage of oil into
the Gulf is the most tangible evidence our country has ever seen that
we have no choice – we cannot afford NOT to change. This isn’t only a
matter of the perilous state of the economy of the Gulf – this is
rapidly becoming a matter of health and safety on a global scale. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">American citizens constitute 5% of the world population, and yet we consume nearly a quarter of all the world’s resources.<span> </span>China
has a billion more people than the United States, and yet the Chinese
consume less than a third of the resources we use. So much of what we
Americans consume is simply wasted – water down the drain, lights left
on, disposable packaging, inefficient automobiles, appliances, and
architecture. By reducing waste and maximizing our efficiency, almost
without noticing we could cut consumption of resources – and costs - by
50%. During World War II, citizens were asked to “Use it Up, Wear it
Out, Make it Do, or Do Without.” I must ask this of you again today. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Using less would also go a long way towards resolving another problem – pollution. <span> </span>There’s
been a lot of debate about global warming, about whether it exists and
if we should trust the scientific data. The fact is that it doesn’t
really matter if humans are causing global warming. Clearly, humans are
causing pollution. Pollution causes cancer, lung disease, birth defects,
and a whole host of ailments too numerous to list. We now know better
than to eat lead paint chips, drink the effluent from a factory, or
breathe the air in a sewer. We need to learn to be more conscious
stewards of the home we share, this small and miraculous planet Earth.
We don’t need scientists to tell us that all the oceans are connected,
or that the air we breathe here in the United States is the same air
that people in China or Australia or Europe are breathing. Poet John
Donne said, “No man is an island.” No war, no environmental catastrophe
is an island either. All of these events are interrelated. Decisions we
make today will determine not only the future of our own families, but
the future of families on the other side of the world. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">This is why today I am proposing the following:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">1. A permanent moratorium on all deep water drilling for oil. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">2. A national campaign for every citizen to <a href="http://www.facebook.com/UseHalfNow?ref=ts">USE HALF</a>
of all non-renewable resources to begin immediately, with greater
emphasis placed on those who have had the luxury of using the most. The
new American way of life will not be one of wasteful excess, but one of
thoughtful, sensible, comfortable efficiency. Constantly striving to
streamline our habits will make the transition to alternative energy
sources easier and cheaper – the less energy we require, the smaller and
more affordable the system needed to sustain our lifestyles. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">3.
The establishment of an independent non-profit Sustainability Advisory
Council to develop guidelines for the transition to a more sustainable
society. This council will design programs for corporations, government
offices, families, and individuals to assist in maximizing efficiency
and eliminating waste. The American government will serve as an example,
beginning immediately by converting the White House and all buildings
in Washington to renewable energy. These guidelines will be considered
when taking into account future government contracts, purchases
including supplies, vehicles, and buildings, and other government
spending. Non-essential plane and automobile travel will be eliminated
or discouraged, with as much business as possible being carried out via
Internet and electronic technologies. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">4.
A 5% tax on fossil fuels with all monies going to fund development of
renewable technologies, green jobs training for those in the fossil fuel
industry or other industries such as fishing which have been put at
risk by non-renewable resource mining and drilling, improving and
construction of new national train infrastructure and improving
efficiency for other ground transportation systems, rebates and
incentives for those who build new homes and businesses that utilize
renewable resources, and retrofits for existing structures. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">5.
New utilities billing practices, with the greatest discounts given to
those who use the least. This new more-you-use-the-more-you-pay model
will make it especially desirable for the largest consumers to develop
ways to maximize efficiency and reduce waste. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">6.
New efficiency standards for all vehicles and appliances, and
incentives for the development and implementation of technologies that
maximize efficiency from foot-pedal operated faucets to chest-style
refrigerators that require a tenth of the energy of upright models. The
age of planned obsolescence, disposable everything, and shoddy
workmanship to save a dime in the short run and lose dollars in the long
run is over. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">7. A “Victory Maximum Speed Limit” of 55 miles per hour on all roadways, with 65 being allowed on major interstates only. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">8.
The establishment of a “Peace Advertising Council” to encourage “Using
It Up, Wearing It Out, Making It Do, or Doing Without”, promote green
entrepreneurialism, and distribute information on gardening,
permaculture, and food forestry for homes, parks, college campuses,
community developments, and industrial complexes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">This
is just the beginning. With your help, this horrific catastrophe will
become an opportunity to unite the people of our United States of
America towards a common goal. Together we can strengthen and heal our
families, our communities, our society, and our world. In this way, the
suffering of our Gulf of Mexico and all affected by this tragic disaster
will not be in vain. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Thank you and good night. </span></div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-71271025387662454482013-06-05T12:03:00.000-07:002013-06-10T18:40:56.710-07:00INTERVIEW WITH JOHN P. CLARK on THE IMPOSSIBLE COMMUNITY<style id="dynCom" type="text/css"><!-- </style><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ac4dal1EvDQ/Ua-IfuLx7lI/AAAAAAAAA1g/ViIUFlCIkmU/s1600/impossible_community_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ac4dal1EvDQ/Ua-IfuLx7lI/AAAAAAAAA1g/ViIUFlCIkmU/s1600/impossible_community_cover.jpg" height="400" width="340" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Lucida Grande";
panose-1:2 11 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:SabonLTStd-Roman;
panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-alt:Times;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-format:other;
mso-font-pitch:auto;
mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoCommentText, li.MsoCommentText, div.MsoCommentText
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-link:"Comment Text Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
span.MsoCommentReference
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-ansi-font-size:9.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
em
{font-weight:bold;
font-style:normal;}
p.MsoCommentSubject, li.MsoCommentSubject, div.MsoCommentSubject
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"Comment Text";
mso-style-link:"Comment Subject Char";
mso-style-next:"Comment Text";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:bold;}
p.MsoAcetate, li.MsoAcetate, div.MsoAcetate
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-link:"Balloon Text Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:"Lucida Grande";
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-font-family:"Lucida Grande";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoNoSpacing, li.MsoNoSpacing, div.MsoNoSpacing
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
span.apple-style-span
{mso-style-name:apple-style-span;}
span.usercontent
{mso-style-name:usercontent;}
span.st
{mso-style-name:st;}
span.CommentTextChar
{mso-style-name:"Comment Text Char";
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Comment Text";
mso-ansi-font-size:12.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
span.CommentSubjectChar
{mso-style-name:"Comment Subject Char";
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-parent:"Comment Text Char";
mso-style-link:"Comment Subject";
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:bold;}
span.BalloonTextChar
{mso-style-name:"Balloon Text Char";
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Balloon Text";
mso-ansi-font-size:9.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;
font-family:"Lucida Grande";
mso-ascii-font-family:"Lucida Grande";
mso-hansi-font-family:"Lucida Grande";}
span.a
{mso-style-name:a;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:.4in .5in .5in .5in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
</style>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
To social ecologists, environmental issues are, at their
core, socio-economic issues. The same sense of separateness that justifies our
exploitation and domination of one another makes possible similar acts of
violence against nature. As long as we remain oblivious to underlying flaws in
our collective logic (i.e.: that it is reasonable to endlessly consume
non-renewable resources on a finite planet; that peaceful, just societies can
emerge out of competitive, hierarchical frameworks) any responses we could
devise will be insufficient to significantly alter our current course. A
social ecological approach to “saving the environment” would require balancing
relationships between humans and other humans, and between humans and all other
phenomena. It sounds like a tall order…and it is. In light of the obvious
destructive effects of systems within which we are obliged to strive for
quantity of goods for one over quality of life for all, we are now faced with
two choices: pull off the impossible, or perish.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://chn.loyno.edu/philosophy/bio/john-p-clark">John
P. Clark</a>, a social ecologist/cultural theorist/activist operating out of
Loyola University in New Orleans, specializes in the "...potential
of a<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: SabonLTStd-Roman;"> </span></span>positive
practice of social transformation and social regeneration based on
nondominating mutual aid and cooperation”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref"></a>; In other
words, tall orders. His latest book, titled <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-impossible-community-9781441185471/">The
Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism,</a> <span class="usercontent">outlines historical cooperative political/social/ecological
movements, provides examples of successful initiatives currently in progress,
and suggests that the present and future wellbeing of all life on earth is
dependent upon grassroots revolution of thought and action.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span class="usercontent"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">AS: Are you
suggesting that social transformation can happen <i>now</i>, without
waiting for radical change in the dominant political structure? Do you see “the
impossible community” as a viable next phase in the evolution of the OCCUPY
movement?</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
JPC: Change can only happen now. That’s when we do all our
living, thinking and acting. So, we need to focus on how we can be most
effective in creating forms of social transformation now. We need to rethink
the temporality of change and also the spatiality of change. This means rethinking
the old cliché “think globally, act locally.” The challenge is to think and act
locally and globally at the same time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, we can’t avoid <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">acting</i>
locally and globally simultaneously, since global phenomena are largely made up
of local ones and the magnitude of the global impacts of local action are
constantly increasing. But there’s another crucial dimension to this
issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
We need to continue to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">occupy</i>,
in the sense of truly liberating putatively public spaces, but we also have to
consider carefully the ways in which we are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">occupied</i>,
in the sense of being dominated. To change the dominant structures, we need to
find a way to break free from their dominance, which is not only institutional,
but also ideological, imaginary, and practical. Our lives are determined
powerfully by our shared systems of ideas, our collective fantasies, and our
common forms of social practice, or ethos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only effective way to short circuit this order of
determination is to create, and then live, moment-to-moment, other
institutional, ideological, imaginary, and practical realities—realities that
embody freedom, justice and solidarity. To be effective, this must take place
above all on the level of our most basic, primary communities. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
The idea of “the impossible community” is that the
community of solidarity and liberation appears as an impossibility within the
confines of these structures of domination. So, the only viable alternative is
to create—here and now—those impossible communities. We need to stop <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demanding</i> the impossible and simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> what is impossible. The strongest
evidence for the possibility of something, including the impossible, is its
actual existence. So, to begin with, we have to do some serious anarchaeology,
uncovering the rich history of free community that lies under layers of
domination and the ideology of domination. But, above all, we have to get in
touch with the practice of free community that is very much alive today, so
that these living traditions can be nurtured and realized further.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
I have in mind, historically, the enormous legacy of
cooperative community, including many tribal traditions, the caring labor of
women and traditional peoples, historical practices of local direct democracy,
movements for workers’ self-management, the vast history of intentional
community, and the multitude of experiments in cooperative production,
distribution, consumption, and living. This history continues today, especially
on the margins of and in the gaps within the system of domination, and thus
provides the “ethical substantiality,” the realized and embodied social good,
that is our best source of hope, guidance, and inspiration. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
Occupy is part of the process that I am describing. I
devoted a lot of time to Occupy, and believe that, whatever its limitations, it
has been enormously significant in engaging large numbers of people at the
grassroots level, and giving them experience in participatory, directly
democratic and consensual forms of decision-making. This kind of experience is
invaluable to the kind of libertarian communitarian project described in the
book. In such a project, the primary focus is on the regeneration of communities
of solidarity and liberation through such specific forms as affinity groups,
base communities, and intentional communities. At the same time, it requires
expanding our efforts horizontally, through complementary cooperative projects
in spheres such as the workplace, education, media and cultural creation, and vertically,
through federative efforts at successive levels from the local, through the
regional, to the global. Protest, occupation, and various forms of direct
action must of course continue. But the creative, regenerative dimension must
become our primary focus. Bakunin said, famously, that “the urge to destroy is
a creative urge also.” There is truth in this; however, we need to avoid
lapsing into the leftist pitfalls of reactivity and the culture of permanent
protest. Above all, we must not forget that that “the urge to create is a
creative urge also.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">AS: It seems the
words “libertarian” and “anarchy” can be broadly interpreted; “communitarian”,
on the other hand, seems somewhat less ambiguous. Can you provide some basic
definitions/current context for these constantly-morphing terms? </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
JPC: Libertarians are people who are dedicated to defending
and expanding freedom. However, “freedom” is a floating signifier, a flexible
concept that can be appropriated for diverse and often conflicting purposes.
It’s also a master signifier, in that it has a kind of ineffable charismatic
power that everyone wants to latch on to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So the big question is what we mean by freedom. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
The “Third Concept of Liberty” that I discuss in the book proposes
that freedom has several crucial dimensions. One of these, the one that seems
almost intuitive for Americans, is “negative freedom,” or freedom from
coercion, often epitomized as “not being told what to do.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This idea must be developed into a
larger conception of freedom from all forms of domination. While domination
functions through overt force and the threat of force, it also (and more
usually) operates through other diverse strategies and tactics of control. The
second dimension of freedom is personal and communal self-determination. This
means, above all, that we are able to live in a community that is a collective
expression of our social being and our social ideals, rather than being an
obstacle to them. Finally, and most significantly, freedom means personal and
communal realization or flourishing, the achievement of the good in our
personal and communal lives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
The term “libertarian” was invented in New Orleans in the
1850’s by the French anarchist philosopher Joseph Déjacque. While he was here,
Déjacque wrote his most important work, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L’Humanisphère</i>,
and an important letter to Proudhon, the most famous anarchist thinker of the time.
Despite their agreement in opposing the centralized state, Déjacque harshly criticized
Proudhon on two grounds, first, for his sexism and support for patriarchy, and
secondly, for his belief that the contribution of each individual to the value
of a product could be determined. For Déjacque, true freedom requires the
abolition of all historic forms of domination, including, obviously, the
age-old system of domination of women by men. It also requires that production and
distribution be designed to fulfill the needs of all, rather than being based
on a spurious individualist theory of value and entitlement. Déjacque concluded
in his letter that because of Proudhon's acceptance of patriarchy and economic
injustice, he was not a true <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">libertaire</i>
or libertarian. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
Déjacque’s analysis also explains the meaning of anarchism
in its deepest sense. This is discussed in the chapter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Impossible Community</i> entitled “Against Principalities and
Powers.” Anarchism is not merely an opposition to coercion or to any particular
form of domination, such as the centralized state. Rather, it is the quest for
freedom from all forms of domination—capitalism, the state, patriarchy, racial and
ethnic oppression, bureaucratic and technological domination, gender and sex
role oppression, and the domination of other species and of nature.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
Which brings us to “communitarianism.” In the United
States, this term usually has a relatively conservative connotation, and is
juxtaposed to liberalism in mainstream political thought. In South Asia and
Britain, it’s a more popularized term, often with pejorative undertones, and is
linked to strong ethnic and religious identification and group conflicts. As I,
and many others, use it, it is an affirmation of the age-old tradition of free,
self-determining community. This might also be termed “communism,” and often
has been, though unfortunately this term has been co-opted by the forces of
domination, just as the word “libertarian” has. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
Nevertheless, I like to pose the seemingly paradoxical question:
“Why is communism so good in practice, but it never seems to work in theory?”
What most people think of as “communism” has not been communism at all, but
rather a form of oppressive state capitalism or techno-bureaucratic despotism,
justified through an ideology (a theory that doesn’t work) that disguises it as
“communism.” Such a system has often been very effective as a form of
domination, but not as a free, just or humane form of social organization. We
might call it “authoritarian communism,” but in reality, not only is it not
really communism, it is in a very precise sense a form of anti-communism, the
negation of communal autonomy. Historically, it has always feared real
communities, taken power away from them, and done its best to crush or dissolve
them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
There is, on the other hand, a long tradition of libertarian
communism, which is the form of organization taken by communities of solidarity
and liberation. It has been practiced in indigenous societies, in intentional
communities (such as the most radical early <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kibbutzim</i>
in Israel and the Gandhian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ashrams</i> or
cooperative eco-communities in India), in the self-managed collectives during
the Spanish Revolution, in affinity groups, in base communities, and in many
families. It has constituted communism, in the sense of the autonomous self-determination
of the community. It has often worked quite well. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
We can also call this form of social organization
“communitarianism.” I find this term to be politically crucial today, above all,
because I see the key step in personal and social transformation to be at the
level of the person-in-community and each person’s moment-to-moment practice
within that community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We show that
another world is possible by making another world actual. We need to rethink
politics as world creation, though it is equally a process of world
preservation. I think this is why much of the most effective communitarian
anarchist practice has come from groups with a strong spiritual basis that generates
an all-encompassing ethos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
true of groups that come out of long traditions, like the Catholic Worker
Movement, the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement, engaged Buddhism and Daoism, and
indigenous people’s movements. But it is also true of small groups that draw on
many communal and spiritual traditions and the great libertarian communitarian
heritage, while finding their own way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
The emphasis on the primary community in no way excludes the
need for simultaneous action at every other level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The quest for direct participatory democracy, for worker
self-management, and for liberation from imperialist occupation, for example,
cannot wait. However, the only way that these struggles can avoid cooptation is
if they are rooted in liberatory transformation at the personal and communal
level.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">AS: On page 17 of
your book you say, “What emerges out of traumatic marginalization and exclusion
is liberatory communitarian potentiality, not any historical necessity.” Could you
talk about disaster-as-catalyst and about New Orleans as a particularly
striking model of the inherent interconnectedness of the social and the
ecological?</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
JPC: We can be in the midst of crisis without noticing
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Disaster came to New Orleans
long before Hurricane Katrina, but its true severity wasn’t noticed. Before
Katrina New Orleans was already the incarceration capital of the world, it had one
of the highest murder rates in the country, the education system was
devastated, medical care was a disgrace for a large segment of the community,
and there were growing ecological threats such as massive coastal erosion–we
had already lost an area of wetlands the size of the state of Delaware. Before
Katrina, one saw bumper stickers that said “New Orleans: Third World and Proud
of it.” After Katrina, we understood better what it means to be “Third World,”
or more accurately, to be on the Periphery, on the margins of Empire. The
awareness is more akin to horror than to pride.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
In New Orleans, as in the world in general, we have been
faced with the tragic problems of denial vs. disavowal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Denial is the inability to allow an
idea to enter consciousness, though it always enters in strange, distorted
forms. Disavowal is the inability to keep in one’s mind what one knows. It’s
the problem of the elusive obvious. People often can remember everything except
the most important thing. These mechanisms often occur in families that have
major problems such as violence, sexual abuse, betrayal, victimization.
Sometimes the problem cannot even be recognized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes everyone knows but learns how to forget that they
know. The same mechanisms work on the global level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, the single most important development taking place
on our planet is met with denial and disavowal. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
At the beginning of each semester I tell every one of my
classes, no matter what the topic of the course may be, that I want to mention
one thing: We are living in the sixth great mass extinction of life on earth.
If an extraterrestrial came to visit the Earth and went back to report on what
was happening here, this would certainly be the number one item. News from
Earth: “They’re going through a kind of planetary disaster that has only
happened six times in several billion years!” Yet, when I go through this
routine, I find that most of my students had never been told this news in their
twelve-plus years of formal education. Denial and disavowal reign supreme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
One thing that I learned from the Katrina experience is
that the traumatic event can sometimes undo processes of denial and disavowal
and awaken us to the gravity of our predicament. Such trauma can result in
regression, which can be expressed in fundamentalism, reactionary movements,
racism, nationalism, fascism, and the clamor for an authoritarian leader. We
saw this in post-Katrina New Orleans, in the form of racist vigilantes, police
repression, and prison atrocities. Or, it can result a new breakthrough, a new
awakening, a new inspiration to act creatively and communally. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
The Katrina disaster was the most devastating experience I
have lived through, but also the most uplifting and inspiring one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Post-Katrina New Orleans was a
horrifying, heart-breaking and post-apocalyptic world in many ways. But the
communities of compassion and solidarity that developed in the wake of the disaster
were the closest thing to my social ideal that I have ever experienced. I feel
fortunate to have spent a significant period of time living and working with groups
of people devoting themselves fully to serving the real needs of people and
communities. In such times of communal solidarity, we can see the emergence of
that “Beloved Community” that Martin Luther King spoke about. This experience
was a major inspiration for what I described in the book as “The Impossible
Community.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
Many traditions have recognized the importance of the
traumatic breakthrough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
Buddhist tradition, the primary teaching is that one must be shaken out of
complacency and come to the shocking realization of the universality of sickness,
aging, and death, if one is ever to attain wisdom and compassion. In the Jewish
tradition, a break with everyday reality and the traumatic experience of the
sacred is described the beginning of wisdom. In the vision quest of indigenous
traditions, extreme stresses are part of the path to a spiritual breakthrough.
Both Western and Asian mysticism describe a traumatic “dark night of the soul”
that is part of the path to spiritual awakening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, dialectic is a kind of philosophical vision quest that
works through traumatic challenges to all stereotyped thinking. In each case, trauma
releases the ability to look at the gaps in our supposed reality and the
incoherence in our conventional accounts of the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trauma is an encounter with death, but
it is also an opportunity for rebirth. It helps us to see the possibility of
the impossible and to think the unthinkable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">For further exploration of these ideas,
please see also John Clark’s articles </span><a href="http://raforum.info/spip.php?article4483"><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Ecopolitics as
a Politics of Spirit</span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, and </span><a href="http://www.academia.edu/3264979/_The_Political_Imagination_of_Beasts_Domination_and_Liberation_in_Beasts_of_the_Southern_Wild_"><span style="font-family: Cambria; letter-spacing: -.65pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Political Imagination of Beasts: Reflections on
Disaster, Domination, Community, and Liberation</span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 53.5pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">. </span>Please <a href="http://www.academia.edu/3438199/The_Impossible_Community_Publishers_flyer_and_discount_form_">click
here for a discount form to order <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Impossible
Community</i></a>.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><a href="http://anarchistnews.org/content/inteview-john-p-clark-impossible-community" target="_blank">PUBLISHED AT ANARCHIST NEWS</a> ON JUNE 5, 2013 </i><br />
<i><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16856-the-impossible-community-an-interview-with-john-p-clark-on-grassroots-revolution" target="_blank">PUBLISHED AT TRUTH-OUT.ORG</a> ON JUNE 9, 2013</i><br />
<i><a href="http://www.newclearvision.com/2013/06/10/the-impossible-community/" target="_blank">PUBLISHED AT NEW CLEAR VISION</a> ON JUNE 10, 2013</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-50244760723773409672013-05-15T14:20:00.000-07:002013-05-30T09:27:15.756-07:00MANIFESTO FOR THE OBVIOUS INTERNATIONAL <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_j51SFnwsSA/UaVEA0iNyjI/AAAAAAAAA04/Ovu9aui8yy8/s1600/obvious_international_air_celebration_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_j51SFnwsSA/UaVEA0iNyjI/AAAAAAAAA04/Ovu9aui8yy8/s1600/obvious_international_air_celebration_sm.jpg" height="640" width="480" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The exponentially intensifying causes of the social, political, and ecological crises faced by peoples across the globe are becoming increasingly obvious; the wellbeing of all life on planet earth depends upon the eradication of market-driven social structures that bolster the few at the expense of the many. The image of ourselves as separate – from one another, from nature, and from the havoc being wreaked – has reinforced the disastrously misguided impression that competition (as opposed to collaboration) and the quest for material wealth (as opposed to the cultivation of caring relationships) are not only prerequisites for fulfillment, but inevitable factors in the course of “evolution.”<br />
<br />
Those of us who are members of the wealthiest societies on earth can no longer sit idly by, waiting for the catastrophes to run their course. Once we identify that which is founded on exploitation and avarice, we can begin to extract ourselves from these toxic systems and develop new approaches based on cooperation, empathy, and altruism. By engaging creatively and constructively in even the most seemingly mundane aspects of existence, each of us realizes the potential to become an active participant in the reimagining of every facet of civilization, in epitomizing what it means to be human.<br />
<br />
Like many philosophers before him, artist and self-described “social sculptor” Joseph Beuys proposed that <a href="http://www.thinkoutword.org/resources-4/appeal-for-an-alternative-by-joseph-beuys/" target="_blank">“before considering the question WHAT CAN WE DO we have to look into the question HOW MUST WE THINK?”</a> By identifying the kind of thinking (individual and collective) that is shaping our situation (for better or for worse), we can begin to fundamentally and constructively recast it. Inner alterations in perception can lead to outward shifts in the structure of our relationships, society, and surroundings. But just as thinking differently leads to different actions, different actions can lead to different ways of thinking.<br />
<br />
Convention-challenging creative practitioners of every ilk are approaching the ills of our time from all sides. By cultivating an array of alternative visions and actions, many of us are subtly undermining and replacing cultural paradigms that define “success” based on quantity of material goods rather than quality of life. We are supplanting that which emphasizes division (between human and human, human and nature, mind and body, time and space) over interrelationship.<br />
<br />
Drawing on art’s infinite possibilities, system-defying agents are re-humanizing, de-commodifying, and debunking all manner of contrived contraries by creating barter systems, cooperative workspaces, soup kitchens, food forests, and street libraries. In societies based on an ever-intensifying quest not for peace, health, or contentment, but for “progress” (broadly defined as the drive toward maximization of personal convenience, or <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ZjIG7LVSieUC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=fetishization+of+needs+murray+bookchin&source=bl&ots=pCuYgdS3tj&sig=IWdDtseOAW3L61GTufWhMiFHD-U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dRelUdGuIMf6yQGMyYGIAw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA" target="_blank">what social ecologist Murray Bookchin called “the fetishization of needs”</a>) – strategies for existence that are participatory, inclusive, and nonhierarchical, and that encourage the sharing of skills, ideas, and resources (the maximization of meaning), are eminently subversive.<br />
<br />
Beuys advised us to think first, but if critical thinking and appropriate action are not undertaken in a dynamic, harmonious fashion coupled with earnest consideration of underlying systemic causes, any remedies that may be devised will, at best, temporarily assuage symptoms or, at worst, divert attention away from authentic solutions while providing a false sense of effectiveness.<br />
<br />
The most fruitful interventions will be ones that do not, inadvertently or intentionally, reinforce established destructive systems, but instead directly engage populations in acts of social transformation.<br />
<br />
In philosophy, the collectively agreed upon definitions, symbols, styles, behaviors, ways of using language, and other factors that are held in common throughout a culture – assumptions about how things are “supposed to be” – are called the social imaginary. Whether it is “normal” to compete or cooperate, own property, go into debt, go to war, or go shopping is determined by a wide range of constantly shifting factors, including the influence of our political, legal, and educational systems; corporate advertising; the media; and various amalgams thereof. The social imaginary is like a program that runs surreptitiously in the background; until we become consciously aware of it, we don’t notice that our attitudes are being influenced by entities that may have a vested interest in them. When we fear our neighbors instead of loving them, industries that produce guns, fences, and alarms profit – we willingly give them our dollars in exchange for a strange kind of security indeed. The same happens when we buy into the illogical premise that it is “normal” to pursue endless economic growth based on finite resources that, if consumed, destroy planetary conditions that support life.<br />
<br />
Changing what is “normal” in societies that are deeply influenced by corporate interests begins with rejection of forms of space (e.g., shopping malls, cloned fast-food/coffee conglomerates, cubicle workspaces) and time (e.g., chronic busyness, obsessive scheduling, being “on the clock”) that reinforce behaviors and routines that alienate individuals from one another, from the development of a sense of connection to place, and from the clarity of mind that arises when we feel integrated and composed. <br />
<br />
Philosopher Henri Lefebvre believed that the fundamental character of a society stems from the everyday habits of its people. Cultural change begins when customs change. As town squares and markets, inviting cafés, locally owned shops, pedestrian streets, and solidly constructed edifices are eradicated, we succumb to a culture of the disposable, banal, isolated, and hurried, dispensed by short-sighted profiteers with little concern for enduring collective wellbeing.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the antidotes are obvious. We refuse to comply with those who would have us submit to a state of fearful isolation and frantic inability to think clearly, critically, and creatively. We do not allow our thoughts to be constrained by linear, commercialist clock-time, and subvert it by realizing immeasurable, fluid, unstructured time that, infused with intention, flows via its own trajectory and with its own momentum (e.g., Parisian café culture of the 1920s and 30s, Black Mountain College 1933–1957, potlatch gatherings, jam sessions). By understanding the detrimental effects of prefabricated space, we can transform or avoid it to the greatest extent possible and strive to create alternatives that provide inhabitants with deeper senses of connection to one another and to place (e.g., parks, camps, churches, locally owned establishments, community gardens). <br />
<br />
The Obvious International is an imaginary collective – one joins by imagining oneself a part of it. While the collective is imaginary, the relationships it generates and the results of its efforts are quite real. By rethinking the meaning of evolution, humanity, progress; by reconsidering the meaning of meaning itself; and by living our lives according to what we find, we are setting a bold new course into the present. Each of us can start where we are, first by noticing and then by becoming practitioners of the arts of the commonplace, the quotidian, the obvious.<br />
<br />
This manifesto is a catalyst for further dialog and development of appropriate action. It is neither a starting point nor an end, but an articulation along a trajectory. This text is copyleft, share-ready, and open for comment at <a href="http://www.obviousinternational.com/">obviousinternational.com</a>. Plans, exchanges, designs, and modifications by collaborators are actively being sought, collected, assimilated, and implemented.<br />
<br />
OBVIOUS PRECEPTS-IN-PROGRESS:<br />
<br />
1. Paradox exists everywhere.<br />
<br />
By embracing paradox, we acknowledge the human capacity to perceive subtlety and nuance, and we recognize the speciousness of habitual compartmentalization and dualistic thinking. We may feel separate from nature, but in fact we are both separate and interconnected. We are individuals and members of a society. Thought and action are not isolated; they are two facets of an intricate, dynamic process.<br />
<br />
2. All is in flux.<br />
<br />
When we appreciate that nothing is truly static or linear we gain a sense of the complexity of being. By embracing the idea that everything, including information, is in a constant state of refinement or modification, we see that conventional forms of communication that require one isolated viewpoint to prevail above another may hinder perception of subtle connections that exist within seeming contradiction. The dialectician’s goal is not to “win” a debate, but instead to pool and analyze knowledge to gain a deeper, more holistic understanding of a situation.<br />
<br />
3. Culture is in the quotidian.<br />
<br />
To change what is normal, we must recraft the commonplace and cultivate reverence for and awe at everyday phenomena including air, sensory input, flora, fauna, empathy, and architecture. By paying attention to the details of everyday existence (the ways we experience both space and time), we can influence its effect on ourselves and our communities. <br />
<br />
This is a dynamic participatory occasion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<br />
<i>If you would like to propose an edit or addition, please let us know via the comments. Thanks in advance for your thoughts!</i></div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-83349791468902723942012-10-22T08:16:00.003-07:002013-04-25T18:57:30.133-07:00the structure of a philosophical revolution<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q-ZggU7X7dc/UIVx1tq1JpI/AAAAAAAAArQ/F55HJhIPynM/s1600/mycorrhizae.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q-ZggU7X7dc/UIVx1tq1JpI/AAAAAAAAArQ/F55HJhIPynM/s1600/mycorrhizae.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cof.orst.edu/cof/teach/for442/cnotes/sec3/myco.htm" target="_blank">scanning electronic micrograph of a mycorrhizae</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> </span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
</style>
</span></span></div>
<a href="http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/12303-the-structure-of-a-philosophical-revolution" target="_blank"><i>Published in Truthout.org, Oct. 24, 2012</i></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“If contemporary science points to inadequacies in present-day modes
of thinking, we can ask: What will be the shape of the new manner of
understanding required by our future? I believe that artists are the harbingers
of the future mentality required both by science and by the imperatives of
living in our precarious times. For centuries, artists have struggled to create
ways of seeing and knowing that often appeared to be at odds with the
burgeoning science of our era. I believe that we now truly stand in need, not
only as scientists but as a civilization, of the artist’s cognitive capacities.
In them, when rightly developed, might the two streams of our cognitive
inheritance commingle?”</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
– Arthur Zajonc, <u>Goethe’s Way of Science</u>.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> </span>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">To a</span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> profound yet rarely acknowledged extent, our basic
understanding of the world is shaped by the culture within which we find
ourselves. We learn what thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and aspirations are
appropriate from a kind of collective mindset, which operates like a constantly
modulating swarm – the influence of a powerful individual or idea resonates
within the cloud, altering its shape to dramatic or subtle effect, for better
or for<span style="font-size: small;"> worse.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Here in the early 21</span><sup><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">st</span></sup><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> century, the notion that each of us is an isolated entity, ever at
odds with one another and with the ecosystems of which we are a part, is a
fundamental aspect our collective belief system. Until we evaluate the
implications of this assumption and discover that there may be new, more
multifaceted and constructive ways of thinking, our collective swarm – unaware
that it is a swarm at all – is bound to drift ever deeper into perilous
territory.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">How did we arrive at a worldview so deeply invested in dividing
things up into distinctly isolated, irreconcilable parts? From the 16</span><sup><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">th</span></sup><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> century onwards, with the advent of
scientific techniques for analyzing the world, separateness seemed rationally
verifiable – microscopes allowed us to see that matter is composed of smaller,
distinct parts; telescopes showed us that our universe contains celestial
bodies separated by vast distances. In some parts of the world, the dominant
holistic, interdependent way that our ancestors perceived themselves as woven
in to a vast web of being was on the wane. Humans became the self-imposed most
sophisticated entities in the Universe. And yet we had nothing to do with the
design of the hardware that we use to make this bold determination.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Some believe that the human intellect evolved at random out of
available building blocks. Some attribute it to a supreme being or entity. In
the Western world, these are the standard choices: random or God, take your
pick. Other cultures have more nuanced ways of defining and expressing the
kinds of intelligence that go into the making of a fish, a leaf, a rain cloud,
a mountain.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">During previous eras in recorded history, humanity has undergone
profound collective shifts in the ways in which we perceive ourselves in the
world, often accompanied by fierce resistance. During Galileo’s time, emerging
forms of analysis clearly demonstrated the reality that our planet is not at
the center of the solar system. While this revelation took time for many to
accept, we have since collectively agreed to depend upon science as the preeminent
way to gather information, going so far as to diminish other less quantifiable
ways of knowing (such as “gut feelings”, empathy, and intuition).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The knowledge that emerges from hard science tends to reinforce a
dualistic perception of the world. Because something is made of parts, we
conclude that each of those parts has an existence separate from the whole,
neglecting the logical corollary that parts can exist only in relation to the
whole. Science favors definitives, and culture follows. But human consciousness
is not limited to understanding through absolutes – we are capable of
perceiving and transmitting subtle shades of nuance, irony, and paradox. We are
individuals and part of society simultaneously. Embracing interdependence does
not require us to forsake independence. Concepts do not often fit neatly into
boxes.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Perhaps we are now in the throes of a radical new paradigm shift,
one that we are looking to science to confirm, but one that cannot be expressed
through empirical data alone. We cannot turn to the scientific method to prove that
objectivity is an illusion, that the existence of parts does not preclude the
existence of a contiguous whole. It will require a comingling of qualitative
and quantitative methods of inquiry in order to effectively transmit the notion
that humans must now relinquish our assumed position as separate, superior
beings. We are receiving overwhelming data from all fronts: violence begets
violence, pollution begets disease, greed begets poverty and instability. No
action happens in a vacuum – autonomous agency is an illusion. Our spaceship
Earth and everything aboard it functions like a giant living organism; if its
parts cease to be in symbiotic relationship with one another, the system breaks
down.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The humancentric model of
the biosphere is an improvident construction.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">400 years ago,
there were profound sociological implications of the shift from geocentrism to
heliocentrism. But humanity was not in imminent danger of perishing as a result
of a faulty worldview. Today, in the absence of a visceral realization that the
perilous state of our environment is the direct result of systemic social and
political injustices enabled by an inherently narcissistic narrative, we are
likely to continue our flaccid attempts to mollify symptoms without the ethical
foundation required to shift the behaviors that are causing the problems. Until
we begin to perceive ourselves not as superior but as equal and integral to all
other phenomena, our misguided actions will continue to serve as a destructive
force in the world.</span></span></div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-72344406188360370502012-07-30T11:25:00.001-07:002018-04-10T07:48:18.031-07:00the multifold resistance: an invitation<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Palatino-Roman;
panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-alt:Palatino;
mso-font-charset:77;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-format:other;
mso-font-pitch:auto;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
span.MsoEndnoteReference
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
vertical-align:super;}
p.MsoEndnoteText, li.MsoEndnoteText, div.MsoEndnoteText
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-link:"Endnote Text Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
span.commentbody
{mso-style-name:commentbody;}
span.EndnoteTextChar
{mso-style-name:"Endnote Text Char";
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:"Endnote Text";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hoy9OFqaWSw/UBbRcpn4USI/AAAAAAAAAm8/SHQO_nc-MgM/s1600/7_generations_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="635" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hoy9OFqaWSw/UBbRcpn4USI/AAAAAAAAAm8/SHQO_nc-MgM/s640/7_generations_sm.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10656-breaking-up-with-big-oil-a-complicated-relationship" target="_blank">Published on Truthout as <b>"How to Break Up with Big Oil: a Complex Relationship" </b>on Aug. 1, 2012</a></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<br />
In Bill McKibben’s recent article
in Rolling Stone, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719">Climate
Change’s Terrifying New Math</a>, he identifies “the enemy” as the oil
industry. But like so many of today’s enemies, this one too is not well defined.
Whether we like it or not, the architecture of the “developed” world has been
meticulously structured around the entire population’s dependence on non-renewable
resources. We don’t just support the industry when we unconsciously flick the switch,
fly, or fill up at the pump; old-fashioned pensions are now shadowy “investment
portfolios” (beware: even “green funds” support oil companies and war
profiteers). Plastics, products shipped via plane and truck from faraway lands,
crops grown with petrochemicals…fossil fuels are everywhere, hidden in plain
sight. If we could trace our paychecks back to the source, many of us would
have to admit that our livelihoods, in one way or another, depend on the fossil
fuel industry. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So how do we fight an enemy with
whom we are so thoroughly intertwined?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
First, we must accept that the
problem is a complex one, riddled with paradoxes and contradictions. YES, it is
possible to be part of the problem and part of the solution at the same time. By
cultivating awareness of all factors involved and learning to weigh the consequences
of our actions, we can begin to make choices that contribute less to the
problems and more to the solutions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Next, we’ll need to see the
fossil fuel industry for what it really is: not as an ordinary industry, but as
an oppressive regime that has, by wielding massive power in the form of
financial capital, taken control of our government and infiltrated every facet
of our society.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Fortunately, oppressive regimes
can and have been toppled, and we can draw on historical evidence to help us in
the development of effective strategies to subvert them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="commentbody">Dr. Gene
Sharp, a political scientist who has dedicated his life to the study of
non-violent resistance movements, states in his book <a href="http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html">From Dictatorship to
Democracy</a> that:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
“When one wants to bring down a dictatorship most effectively
and with the least cost then one has four immediate tasks:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<ul>
<li>Strengthen the oppressed population themselves in their
determination, self-confidence, and resistance skills</li>
<li>Strengthen the independent social groups and institutions of
the oppressed people</li>
<li>Create a powerful internal resistance force</li>
<li>Develop a wise grand strategic plan for liberation and
implement it skillfully.”</li>
</ul>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
Additionally, Dr. Sharp recommends that we discover the
sources of the oppressors’ strengths and destabilize them. At the same time, we
must identify weakness and concentrate our attacks on “Achilles heels”. Sharp suggests
that, <b><span class="commentbody"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"Liberation
from dictatorships ultimately depends on the people’s ability to liberate
themselves."</i></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
What would it mean to “liberate ourselves” in the context of
bringing down the fossil fuel industry? Self-liberation will involve
extricating ourselves from the corrupt system to the greatest extent possible.
Personal, community, and national energy independence are not separate issues:
they are one issue with many facets, all of which can and must be addressed
simultaneously for maximum, immediate impact. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
A “wise grand strategic plan for liberation” will provide the
tools the oppressed peoples will need once they have been freed. In this case,
we are going to need to develop new habits and skills that will be necessary in
a post-fossil-fuel dominated society. Beginning to develop these skills as soon
as possible will immediately begin to diminish the power of the oppressor and
empower the ones who resist, while preparing us to thrive in the future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
There has been much ado about the roll of “personal action” –
as opposed to political action – in averting ecological catastrophe. There is some
concern amongst activists, expressed both in the McKibben article and by Annie
Leonard in her new video <a href="http://www.storyofstuff.org/">The Story of
Change,</a> that the public will be apt to mistake token gestures (such as
recycling and switching to high-efficiency light bulbs) for wholehearted dedication
to holistic system change. Rather than proceeding to educate eager audiences
about ways we can begin to implement more substantial kinds of changes in our
own lives and communities <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in addition</i></b> to concerted political
action, these leaders have chosen to begin a fight against the system from the
top down <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">instead.</i></b> Meanwhile, while we wait for authority figures to
direct our efforts, our outrage and eagerness to become involved becomes
diffused.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
The urgency of this situation demands that each of us take the
initiative to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lead ourselves</i></b>, to develop solutions that can be implemented
immediately, and fit the scale of our own lives. Why not fight the system from
the top down and the bottom up simultaneously? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
The most abundant “green” technology is available to everyone
right now at zero cost: it’s our collective ability to maximize efficiency and
reduce waste. In light of the profoundly destructive effects of human activity
on our planet’s ecology, we must reevaluate what we consider to be a necessity
vs. that which we consider convenience. Reducing or eliminating consumption for
convenience, multiplied by millions, will result in an immediate, quantifiable
reduction in the demand for fossil fuels. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
During WWII the U.S. and British governments initiated an
intensive and wildly successful resources conservation campaign. The public was
asked to voluntarily use less gasoline, fabric, metal, rubber, paper and other
material goods, and to grow small backyard “Victory Gardens”. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do
Without”</i></b> was the motto of the day. By becoming more self-sufficient,
the government could invest more of the country’s resources in the war effort. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
Obviously, is not in the best interest of a government that is
“for the corporations, by the corporations” to ask us to consume less, in spite
of the fact that the health of the entire planet depends on it. A similar
campaign today – only this time with the purpose of investing in the peace
effort – if it is to happen at all, must come from the grassroots. It must come
from ourselves.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
Perhaps prominent environmental groups hesitate to include us
because they are loath to lay even a modicum of blame for our predicament on
the very people whose support they require. But until we acknowledge our
complicity and admit that there is no one perfect solution – and most of all,
that we are in this together – any strategy that we could devise would lack the
enduring strength that could be derived from a truly inclusive movement,
founded in honesty, transparency, and collective responsibility. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
By inviting us to contribute personally and directly in the
solution, our actions, however small, however symbolic, will provide us with a
sense of unity around a common purpose that has been absent from our culture for
far too long. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
We can look to Dr. Sharp to help us dismantle an oppressive
regime, but unless and until we learn how to live in harmonious relationship
with one another and the earth, no solution will be permanent. For these kinds
of skills, we’ll need to draw inspiration from the wisdom of other, more earth-centered
societies, many of which are alive on this planet today. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
If we’re going to lobby for better legislation, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainability">the Great
Law of the Iroquois</a> would be an excellent place to start. “The Law of the 7
Generations” requires that all decisions be made with consideration for how our
actions would affect a person born seven generations into the future. We don’t
need a government to pass this law – we can establish it for ourselves right
now. </div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-46164941734995787312012-07-24T20:30:00.000-07:002015-11-16T11:31:10.699-08:00the homeopathic remedies for the 5 ills of society<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-auYqMznibAI/VQBsEkUT3kI/AAAAAAAABKs/rzU0XlxdrFk/s1600/homeopathic_remedies_bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-auYqMznibAI/VQBsEkUT3kI/AAAAAAAABKs/rzU0XlxdrFk/s1600/homeopathic_remedies_bw.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>PHILSOPROP*: The Homeopathic Remedies for the 5 Ills of Society </b>is a set of elixirs for social ailments based on the premise that "like cures like"<b><i> </i></b><i><span class="st">(similia similibus curentur)</span></i>.<br />
<br />
Shortly after
9/11/2001 I found a bullet on the ground in NYC and began wondering if I could create a remedy for violence by making a tincture from it? The recipes for the other remedies came to me shortly thereafter:</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<b><b>ALIENATION</b>:</b> Empty (according to homeopathy, the most dilute remedies are the most potent).<b> </b><br />
<b>VIOLENCE</b>: Dilution made from bullet soaked in distilled water.<br />
<b>GREED</b>: Dilution made from coins soaked in distilled water. </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<b>CONSUMERISM</b>: Diluted drop of bottled water from Wal-Mart.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<b>DETACHMENT</b>: Miniscule dose of superglue (this is a "dialectic remedy", the ailment being countered by its opposite. I wonder if, like especially diluted remedies, paradoxical ones have special potency as well?).</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.alycesantoro.com/philosoprops.html" target="_blank">* Philosprops</a></b>
are objects (including booklets, posters, garments, sounds, and videos)
that are intended to demonstrate a concept or spark a dialog. Please see <a href="http://www.alycesantoro.com/philosoprops_book.html" target="_blank">PHILOSOPROPS: A UNIFIED FIELD GUIDE</a> for more information.<br />
<br />
Sets of the remedies are occasionally available in the <a href="http://alycesantoro.com/philosoprops_pop_up_shop.html" target="_blank">Philosoprop Pop-Up Shop</a>. </div>
<br />alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-59921432366445513192012-07-20T11:15:00.002-07:002012-07-30T11:27:36.733-07:00we have met the environment, and it is us<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Palatino;
panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9F_xo-oANlo/UAmfxXEYwpI/AAAAAAAAAlA/aVSjZxzbX8g/s1600/blake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9F_xo-oANlo/UAmfxXEYwpI/AAAAAAAAAlA/aVSjZxzbX8g/s400/blake.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_%28Blake%29" target="_blank">Newton by William Blake </a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">A Constructive Critique of Bill McKibben's Article <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719" target="_blank">Global Warming's Terrifying New Math</a> in Rolling Stone Magazine, July 20, 2012</span></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino;"><a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10483-we-have-met-the-environment-and-it-is-us" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;">Published in Truthout on July 23, 2012 </span></a><i><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Clearly, we have a catastrophic problem on our hands. But climate
change isn’t it. In fact, climate change isn’t a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">problem</i></b> at all – to be
precise, climate change is merely a very acute <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">symptom</i></b> of a much, much
larger matrix of problems that, if left undiagnosed, will rapidly lead to limitless,
albeit unnecessary, suffering for every living creature on the planet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Ironically, the climate change <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">debate</i></b> itself is an extremely potent
anesthetic for those on all sides of the argument. Pose the question to any
good scientist or well-informed environmentalist, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Is the extreme weather we’re
having this summer caused by climate change?”</i></b> and we can give you only
one definitive answer: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">maybe</i></b>. Even if we could convince the
majority of the public that all the terrifying math in the world is real…<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">then
what?</i></b> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">In a culture that habitually treats symptoms without examining the
underlying causes of a disease, it’s really no wonder that even the world’s
foremost environmentalists remain fixated on the warning light while the engine
seizes. On another level, perpetual misdiagnosis of a problem gives us all a
very convenient excuse not to participate in the solution. As with the
overpopulation argument, it’s easy to understand how discussions of climate
change can so easily segue into that classic bit of cul-de-sac logic, “Well,
there’s nothing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> can do about it
anyway…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">So, what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> the problem,
who is to blame, and how can it be solved? To understand our current
predicament, we’ll need to back up a bit….</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Slowly but surely throughout the course of history, a small faction
of power-hungry über opportunists have taken control of the main systems that
sustain our basic needs – food and fuel – and commodified them. In other words,
a few enterprising masterminds have successfully identified the most critical
things that people need to survive, and found ways to profit by controlling
them. If these influential individuals had been altruistic rather than covetous,
they might have developed and implemented what are known as “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology">appropriate
technologies</a>” – solutions that are adapted to conditions, materials, and
labor at hand, and designed to maximize efficiency and minimize cost, waste,
and environmental impact. As we know, when altruistic geniuses such as
Buckminster Fuller and Nikola Tesla <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i></b> come along, the über opportunists
have their ways of discrediting, undermining, and negating their ideas. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">The über opportunists are also über marketing specialists. They have
manufactured needs for their products and planned for their obsolescence. They
have cornered markets, so that the very same company that sells electricity
sells products that use electricity – the less efficient the product, the more
money the company makes. The sicker we are, the more the pill-makers earn.
Under the guise of feeding the world, the chemical industry thrives while small
farmers perish. The opportunists’ PR campaign is so successful that we have
even come to refer to these manufacturers of global inequality, waste, and
disease as “job creators” when the jobs they create serve only to gild their
own lilies, not to serve the families, communities, or environments in which we
live. It is in their interest to keep us fighting amongst ourselves. The less
united we are, the more we have to struggle, the less time we have leftover to
think about where we’re headed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">So here we are, a good ways down the road the über opportunists have
laid out for us. We are all looking around as a global society, all coming to
the realization that we’ve been duped. Collectively, we know we must stop going
down this road…but how, when we’ve come to rely so heavily on the system that
the über opportunists have created? How, when an entire culture is structured
around consumption, inefficiency, and waste – and when so many of us rely on
the flawed system for our livelihoods – can we suddenly change course? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">There are no easy answers. Realizing that there is a problem is a
critical first step. The next one is to correctly identify it. Many of us can
see for ourselves, without any additional scientific evidence, that pollution
is a major cause of ill health. Toxins in our air, food, and water cause cancer
and a host of other diseases. Whether or not humans are changing the climate,
it’s very easy to understand that humans are causing pollution, and pollution
is making us sick…not “maybe”, not in 5 years or 100 years – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">NOW</i></b>.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Who is to blame – the über opportunists who are the architects of
the current system? The people who unwittingly (or not) build and maintain the
system? It doesn’t really matter. What matters now is that we hone in on the
solution…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">The obvious but rarely articulated solution – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">impeccable environmental
stewardship –</i></b> is<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></b>as complex as the problem, and strategies
for its achievement will be as diverse as every single individual who participates
in it. It is a tragic irony that willingness to join in the solution is
inversely proportional to the amount one is contributing to the problem. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Another critical obstacle to the immediate implementation of this
solution is a fundamental sense of alienation from nature that has been
intensifying since the 17<sup>th</sup> century when people first began to study
the world through the lens of the telescope and microscope. These marvelous tools
lent early scientists a profound sense of separation from their subjects.
Suddenly the world was broken into parts that could be deciphered using
mathematics, physics, astronomy, and biology. We have been slowly forgetting
that we were once part of nature, that we can study ecosystems using math, but
the environment is not math – it is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">us</i></b>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Until we come to the collective, visceral realization that by harming
nature we are doing very direct harm to ourselves, all the data in the world –
including dramatic images on the TV news or even right outside our window –
will do little to move us to action. Before enough of us can become inspired to
participate in impeccable environmental stewardship on the scale necessary to
recover from the damage already done, we’ll need to remember that we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i></b>
nature.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Let’s just drop all the numbers for a while and take in the smell of
a blade of grass or the sound of a cricket. Please hurry - we don’t have much
time.</span></div>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-45091380052508362302012-07-09T18:02:00.001-07:002012-07-30T20:31:12.850-07:00welcome to the dialectic revival<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9uktBlBzCfY/T_t-g4GdC0I/AAAAAAAAAk0/x7Y-jXs5Ltw/s1600/dialectic_box_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9uktBlBzCfY/T_t-g4GdC0I/AAAAAAAAAk0/x7Y-jXs5Ltw/s320/dialectic_box_sm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Here in the United States, whether we look to the language used amongst ourselves, in the media, or by politicians, we may find that our standard method of communication is based on rhetoric – a style of argument that relies on a set of distinctly isolated viewpoints, with each view-holder applying a range of persuasive techniques in an effort to prevail over a perceived opponent.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">As we navigate our way into increasingly fragile ecological and social conditions unfolding around the world, however, another lesser-known approach with roots in ancient Greek, European, and Asian thought may be worth revisiting.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In stark contrast to the goal of rhetoric – to win an argument at all costs with all forms of manipulation (including willful dishonesty) on the table – the goal of dialectic is to earnestly expand overall understanding of a situation and the conditions that surround it.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It is not surprising that dialectic is so little-known and little-understood in contemporary culture; throughout the course of history the term has been appropriated by different people for different purposes. Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Marx each developed their own signature varieties. If we could get all of these thinkers in a room together to engage in a dialectical discussion about the definition of dialectic, they may or may not agree on at least two basic tenets: 1) participants in a dialectic dialog understand that reality and our perception of it is in a constant state of flux, therefore definitive conclusions may not be necessary 2) apparent paradoxes and contradictions are identified and embraced as inherently interdependent conditions whenever possible (cases in point: the notion of “light” ceases to be meaningful without darkness by which to compare it; each of us is simultaneously an individual and part of a society).</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Throughout history, forms of dialectic reasoning have been applied to discussions of a wide range of political, philosophical, spiritual, and scientific matters. While horns are locked and the clock ticks away on all manner of pressing social and environmental issues, I am suggesting that now is a fitting moment to evaluate the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of prevailing mechanisms for the exchange of ideas, and develop a more modern, appropriate, efficient, and constructive paradigm.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.alycesantoro.com/dialectic_revival.html" target="_blank">I am proposing a dialectic revival.</a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A new dialectic method has revolutionary potential. Transparency in communication is a radical act. The powers of obfuscation, confusion, and polarization are wielded with great skill by those who seek to suppress and control, often inadvertently drawing in even those with an earnest interest in clarity. Dialectic technique is an antidote, a way of dissolving veils of calculated deception to reveal the inner workings of an underlying reality.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A dialectic method would be applied like a scientific method especially for communication and distillation of understanding. Like the scientific method, it would be taken for granted that any practitioner who wished to be recognized by his or her peers as a clear, principled communicator would be obliged to employ it.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In order for the dialectic method to work effectively, a few parameters would need to be established at the outset. All participants must understand that the primary goal of the dialectic method is to pool knowledge and compare and contrast differing viewpoints on a matter for the purpose of deepening overall understanding. Unlike forms of debate in which one side attempts to demonstrate the superiority of a singular view over an opposing one by any means available (including emotional persuasion not based in reason), those willing to engage in a new dialectic favor logic, analytical proof, and rational deduction. Those who participate in dialectic discourse recognize that all conditions are in a continuous state of flux, and therefore definitive resolution may not be possible.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A preliminary outline of steps in a new DIALECTIC METHOD:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">1. Establish the matter to be considered.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">2. Identify and define abstract or ambiguous terminology and concepts.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">3. Acknowledge the existence of apparent contradiction, paradox, and nuance.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">4. Determine commonalities and points of connection.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">5. Reevaluate the matter in light of information gleaned through elucidation of both paradox and connection.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">6. Develop and implement solutions based on a refined understanding of the matter at hand. If further clarification is desired, begin again at step 1.</span></div>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-40002770172170713092012-07-04T00:00:00.003-07:002022-07-04T08:52:06.963-07:00CAMPAIGN TO CELEBRATE PARADOX: INDEPENDENCE/INTERDEPENDENCE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Palatino;
panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
</style>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uWJTAuWUr9M/V3kfP2VSOII/AAAAAAAABxM/yoP9PwKNtL4nnh5in3E5hg-NtwzrkYVIACLcB/s1600/ice_cream_koan3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uWJTAuWUr9M/V3kfP2VSOII/AAAAAAAABxM/yoP9PwKNtL4nnh5in3E5hg-NtwzrkYVIACLcB/s640/ice_cream_koan3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">July
4, 2012 – Independence Day offers a prime opportunity to reflect on one of the
great paradoxes of contemporary American culture: independence and
interdependence are not, as is commonly assumed, mutually exclusive concepts. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">We
are not<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> either</i> self-reliant,
autonomous agents <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">or</i> cooperative,
interconnected beings. Clearly, we are both. Paradoxically, we are
simultaneously individuals <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and </i>members
of a society. Our freedom to be independent is not only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not hindered</i> by our willingness to act in cooperative, altruistic,
compassionate ways – rather, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it is
enhanced.</i> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Life,
liberty, and happiness are the products of true freedom. Most of us know from
first-hand experience that sensations of happiness and contentment rarely stem
from selfish acts; on the contrary, the most profound joy comes most often from
acts of generosity and caring.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"></span></span><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"></span></span><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Here
in the US the words freedom and independence are so often coupled with the
romanticized American idea of the “rugged individual”. We are taught from an
early age that we are separate from our neighbors and our environment, that to
achieve success we must compete, and that the only success that matters is
financial success. </span></span></span>
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Now
is a good time to ask ourselves: have these principles led us to become healthy,
happy people? Are we achieving the kinds of prosperity we have been striving for?
Are we truly free in a society that has a different, far more lenient set of
laws for the wealthy? Would we be freer and therefore more independent if we
could choose paths that diverge from the limited ones advocated by the
powers-that-be? </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "palatino";">Even those who</span><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> possess at least some freedom to make choices that result
in greater health and contentment for ourselves, our families, and our planet often fail to do so in part because we have not been
invited to embrace the paradox that to become the most profoundly free, first we must recognize our profound interdependence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span style="font-size: small;">~ text and graphic by <a href="http://www.alycesantoro.com/" target="_blank">Alyce Santoro </a></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino";"><br /></span></div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-47382685983123209272012-05-15T15:00:00.001-07:002012-08-14T13:17:14.844-07:00what does collective democracy look like? it's up to us.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Lz6fCxv63Vk/T7LRwgzjiOI/AAAAAAAAAgI/5Pq3SHfOTGQ/s1600/collective_democracy_lg_sq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Lz6fCxv63Vk/T7LRwgzjiOI/AAAAAAAAAgI/5Pq3SHfOTGQ/s320/collective_democracy_lg_sq.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">As the “advanced” nations of the world sink deeper into financial,
ecological, and moral bankruptcy, a growing contingent of the global
population refuses to stand idly by while our collective future is
carelessly gambled away by a rapacious few. With the aid of the internet
we are tangibly connected across borders and oceans, banding together
and supporting one another in droves, pooling resources, knowledge, and
skills to build a do-it-ourselves grassroots revolution of a kind the
world has never known. This is not a war - the Indignados and the
Occupiers are not after blood – we are fighting to have our voices
heard, to have our concerns and ideas considered, and to have the
freedom to participate in building the kind of society we envision. It
is becoming clear that many around the world share a common outrage: we
are no longer willing to tolerate systems of governance that represent
the wealthiest few at the expense of the many.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">In Chapter 14 of his book <a href="https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/5040528/PERMACULTURE__A_Designers_Manual__Bill_Mollison" target="_blank">PERMACULTURE: A Designer’s Manual</a> Bill
Mollison offers a brilliant, concise outline of “Strategies for an
Alternative Nation”. Mollison, who together with David Holmgren coined
the term “permaculture” to describe a holistic approach to cultivating
healthy ecosystems and societies, begins the chapter by suggesting that a
stable nation is formed when members share a basic set of ethical
values, such as willingness to strive together towards “an harmonious
world community”.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">While this may at first seem like an ambitious objective, there are
practical steps that can be taken in an earnest effort to arrive at a
common ethos, beginning with reconsidering our rolls as individuals and
citizens in an increasingly globalized society. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Practically from birth, we are taught to compartmentalize: we learn
that we are separate from our parents, our siblings, our classmates. We
learn that we are separate from those with other beliefs, nationalities,
or skin pigmentation, and sometimes we acquire hostilities toward those
we deem different from ourselves. Rather than learning to focus on our
inherent similarities and accepting any apparent differences as
superficial, so often we are led to believe just the opposite. As we
become alienated from our environment and fellow creatures, we also
become divorced from a sense of responsibility to participate in taking
care of the world around us. When we stop caring, we relinquish the
power to make decisions about our needs to whatever entity thinks it
knows best.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Fortunately it is quite easy to discover that we are not, in fact,
autonomous agents – our actions have very tangible effects – well into
the future – on everything and everyone with whom we interact. By
suspending the tendency to separate and polarize, we can begin to see
connections not only between individuals, disciplines, and philosophies;
we also begin to see the way our beliefs, thoughts, actions, and
decisions shape our world.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Who is to say what beliefs, thoughts, actions, and decisions are the
right ones for an entire society? This brings us to the precarious
question of freedom, that crucial thing that so many on all sides of the
political spectrum claim to understand best, and feel is being
impinged. Some define freedom as the ability to act in any way one
chooses, so long as that action does not do harm to another. But in
order to settle on this definition we must first discuss “harm”, and
decide how much harm is acceptable, not only to other people, but from
the perspective of permaculture, we must also take into account harm to
the planet.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">In thinking about our definition of freedom, we may agree that, while
we must be free to think in any way we choose, certain actions are more
likely to lead to greater harm than others. We may also determine that
some of our desires stem less from true inner longings and more from
external persuasion, often from a commercial entity that has something
to gain by capturing our attention.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">By asking ourselves a few questions, we can begin to open a dialog on
how to build a free society that also has a common ethical basis. The
Iroquois Nation People, for example, have long engaged a rule of thumb:
what effect will my present actions have on the “seventh generation” –
approximately 100 years into the future? How would our behavior change
if we were to routinely ask ourselves similar questions, such as who
will be affected by my choices and how? Is there a more positive,
constructive, efficient course of action? If I have plenty and my
neighbor is starving, which will provide me with a greater sense of
security and well-being: sharing or hoarding?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">There are no singular, hard-and-fast “right” answers to any of these
questions – rather, it is the process of honestly addressing them that
has the potential to reveal the truly subtle, complex, and powerful ways
in which we are connected to our communities and our culture. By
allowing ourselves to think in less linear, literal, rigid ways and by
instead cultivating forms of thought and dialog that are more
encompassing, cyclical, and even accepting of contradiction and paradox,
we may discover new ways to relate and cooperate with forces once seen
as opposing.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">This proposed method of discussion stands in stark contrast to the
more common form of debate in which participants attempt to “win” at all
costs, often by employing emotional persuasion (rhetoric) rather than
reasoned argument. Instead of aiming to overpower an opponent, those
engaged in discussion based on dialectical methods agree at the outset
that there may be more than one answer to a problem, and that all
answers may lead to more questions, allowing for open-ended,
continuously-evolving perspectives.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Willing members of a <a href="http://www.collectivedemocracy.com/" target="_blank">collective democracy</a> agree to participate in
creating an harmonious world community, each in his or her own unique
way, beginning with the state of his or her own immediate situation.
What this means, and where we go from here, is up to us.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://www.collectivedemocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-does-collective-democracy-look.html" target="_blank">Cross-posted with the Collective Democracy blog. </a></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><a href="http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/10875-what-does-collective-democracy-look-like-its-up-to-us" target="_blank">Published in Truth-out.org on August 14, 2012 </a></i></span></div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-53297864022229476242012-05-14T14:14:00.002-07:002012-05-14T14:29:49.693-07:00PARADOX<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fxyIbCQAeE0/T7F1n1qRxaI/AAAAAAAAAf0/SnOdikf_4Sw/s1600/paradox_campaign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fxyIbCQAeE0/T7F1n1qRxaI/AAAAAAAAAf0/SnOdikf_4Sw/s640/paradox_campaign.jpg" width="508" /></a></div>
subtlety, nuance, and contradiction are inherent to reality, and are essential parts of a meaningful dialog. let's not only acknowledge paradox, let's celebrate it.alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-83234741580747402932012-04-26T20:43:00.002-07:002012-07-30T20:32:51.223-07:00the covert power of creativity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BkWbhGYet7g/T5oVKitBoDI/AAAAAAAAAe8/IQBwVhDMzGY/s1600/subtle_reality_technology.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="279" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BkWbhGYet7g/T5oVKitBoDI/AAAAAAAAAe8/IQBwVhDMzGY/s320/subtle_reality_technology.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Because conceptual art can exist in non-material forms, one could
argue that it is not only one of the most sustainable forms of creative
practice, but also one of the most radical in its potential to challenge
conventional thinking. To a tremendous extent, commercial media—whose
primary function is to persuade its audience to consume—influences
current prevailing thought. Conceptual art, by contrast, is often
non-commodifiable; the value of an idea can supersede conventional
methods of quantification, lending it a subtle, subversive,
status-quo-defying kind of power.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The notion that all ecosystems, cultures, disciplines and systems are
interconnected, and that we can cultivate a more efficient, healthy and
satisfying existence by appreciating <i>more</i> and consuming <i>less,</i>
run counter to the mainstream. In spite of the relentless promotion of
the consumer mindset, one can find ample evidence of the tremendous
human impulse to freely share and exchange information and other
commodities simply by perusing the internet (the most culture-altering,
wisdom-liberating development since Gutenberg introduced moveable type
to Europe in 1439). Practical knowledge—including instructions on
permaculture design, DIY, open source and appropriate technologies,
petitions and calls for political and social action—is disseminated free
of charge by those who, knowingly or not, describe a new social
paradigm based on reciprocity, fair exchange and mutual benefit.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">German artist/activist Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986) believed that when
individuals contribute to the betterment of society by infusing everyday
actions with creativity and reverence for nature then “everyone is an
artist.” He considered the fruits of such labor “social sculpture.”</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I didn’t know about Beuys when I first set out to combine art and
science by seeking a degree in marine biology, then going on to study
scientific illustration. As the detrimental effects of reckless human
activity on the environment have become all the more obvious, my urge to
express the intangible, profound mysteries contained in the natural
world has intensified. My technical renderings have morphed into
multimedia “philosoprops,” works that challenge conventional boundaries
between disciplines and spark dialog around social, political and
ecological topics. While most of these pieces have a physical component,
their essence is really the ideas behind them—and these are free for
the taking.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">For example, the concept behind my <a href="http://www.sonicfabric.com/" target="_blank"><i>sonic fabric</i></a>—a textile
woven from cassette tape overdubbed with intricate collages of
sound—alludes to the ultimate interconnectedness of everything. While I
wholeheartedly embrace opportunities to repurpose materials, sonic
fabric was not intended as a statement about recycling, per se. Rather,
the project was inspired by theories in quantum physics suggesting that
everything, at the most basic level, is composed of little more than
vibration. When all the vibrations are woven together, the result is one
exquisite, unified cacophony.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Like Beuys, I believe that by cultivating a relationship with nature
and by honing and engaging personal creative aptitudes, everyone can
become a catalyst for social transformation. While the powers-that-be
wage an insidious war on the freedom to share information, the
subversive force of cooperation and exchange is vastly underestimated,
even by those with the potential to wield it. Shifts in the course of
our culture depend on the quality of our thoughts. Everyone is a
catalyst.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.thesustainabilityreview.org/2012/04/the-covert-power-of-creativity/" target="_blank">Published at The Sustainability Review, April 19, 2012</a></span>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-26805733597487024482012-04-04T09:52:00.002-07:002016-07-03T07:30:50.399-07:00the visible, the invisible, and the indivisible<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RRBr6z9Lk4Q/V3khQSz7inI/AAAAAAAABxY/PTwQJ00wjag2WbDQYAn5_W8CBFuYyuiGwCLcB/s1600/starlings3_lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RRBr6z9Lk4Q/V3khQSz7inI/AAAAAAAABxY/PTwQJ00wjag2WbDQYAn5_W8CBFuYyuiGwCLcB/s640/starlings3_lg.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Prevailing
thought is like prevailing wind; it requires less effort to allow oneself to be
carried along than to set a course that goes against it. Also like wind,
thought is often presumed to be invisible. But one can quite easily learn to
observe the effects of both on tangible objects, and thereby gain the ability
to harness the power of either. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
The
first lesson in sailing usually occurs on the shoreline. Students are invited
to determine from which direction the wind is blowing by looking for clues:
flags, trees, boats at anchor, the feel of the breeze on one’s own skin, and through
careful observation of subtle variations in the texture of wavelets on the surface
of the water itself. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
In
order to see thought, one only needs to look around oneself. The urge to
connect turns into telephones, televisions, and the internet. The inclination
to travel manifests as cars, ships, planes, and trains. The need for social
organization is revealed in our political systems. And so forth and so on…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
But
what is a thought, exactly? An electrochemical impulse? Does it require an
embodied agent, or is it possible that ambient electrochemical forces cause
matter to coalesce into particular patterns and configurations, resulting in
the infinite variety of artifacts we find ourselves among? Needs, longings, and
desires arrive with the distinct sensation that they are ours alone – but couldn’t
the existence of a tree be the outward expression of a fundamental “need” in
the universe for an efficient, multifunctional carbon dioxide processing unit? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
Sophisticated
new investigative apparatus developed around the 17<sup>th</sup> century in the
form of telescopes and microscopes suggested to their human operators that the
world around us could be broken down into parts, and that we ourselves are
unique entities that are distinctly separated from the environment in which we
find ourselves. Galileo declared <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Measure
what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” </i> That which could not be made measureable
was granted an air of dubiousness, if not eliminated outright.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
The
scientific method (i.e.: formulate a hypothesis, design and implement an
experiment, analyze the result, repeat), however useful it may be for technical
applications, was never really intended as an all-purpose standard to which social
and philosophical principles should also be applied. Just because we cannot
measure intuition, love, compassion, grief, or inspiration certainly does not
mean that these things do not exist, or that they are somehow inferior to that
which is tangible. Over the course of the past 400 years as human culture has
become increasingly industrialized, we have also become more compartmentalized.
As we’ve come to put less value on the immeasurable, we’ve rationalized
ourselves into a state of intolerance of the nuanced, the complex, the seemingly
paradoxical. Things that could be taken as two sides of the same coin are
instead viewed as diametrically opposed: art vs. science, religion vs. reason, classical
vs. quantum physics; determinism vs. free will; left (hemisphere of the brain
or political party) vs. right.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
Ironically,
at the same time that scientific rationalism has come to dominate prevailing
thought, science itself has taken a turn towards subtlety. With advances in
quantum theory, we are moving into a strange new domain where things do not
function according to the orderly and predictable rules that we have come to
rely upon. Tests with subatomic particles are not only practically unrepeatable;
they reveal that the very nature of our experiments makes objective observation
impossible. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
Fortunately
there are many other ways to collect and interpret information about our
reality. The ability to hold several seemingly contradictory views
simultaneously, the willingness to cultivate, explore, and trust subtle sensory
signals, the boldness and endurance required to set a course that defies the dominant
paradigm – this is the domain of certain artists, poets, musicians, shamans, ecologists,
permaculturists, philosophers, and others adept at seeing and feeling
connections to the obscured dimensions and forces of nature that others neglect
to notice. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
Throughout
history visionary practitioners from every field of human knowledge have felt
compelled to share their particular mode of data processing. A few notable
examples might include musician John Coltrane, conceptual
artist/social-environmental activist Joseph Beuys, quantum
physicist/philosopher David Bohm, writer/scientist Wolfgang Von Goethe, physician/natural
scientist Hans Jenny, spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, inventor/futurist
Buckminster Fuller, and poet Allen Ginsberg. Through their work, each of these
individuals has given form to the otherwise invisible/inaudible. The products
of their inspiration resonate in those who experience them – our senses know
them to be true without analytical proof. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
Goethe
called investigation that involves a kind of connectedness to and empathic
understanding of a subject <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">delicate
empiricism</i>. Beuys believed that by becoming more attuned to the subtle forces of the ecosystems we inhabit we can rediscover
innate aptitudes that will help us to mend ourselves, our communities, and the
planet. He believed that it is the job of both shamans and artists to shake
people out of ordinary, habitual states of mind and to reawaken latent faculties.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
Even slight shifts in individual and collective values and
intentions could quickly bring new sets of priorities into the mainstream,
radically altering prevailing thought. Like a flock of starlings that moves in
an elegant cloud of instinctive, constantly modulating cooperation, changes of
mind can have an instantaneous ripple effect across an entire culture. When
Beuys said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everyone is an artist</i> he implied
that each of us is not only capable of accessing the same mysterious, improbable,
constantly unfolding, infinitely creative phenomena – we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> the phenomena. Each of us is an outcropping, an empathic agent
of transformation, wired to receive,
process, and transmit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<div style="color: black;">
To
hone one’s connection with this font of supreme imagination, Allen Ginsberg prescribed
this simple but profound experiment to aspiring creative practitioners: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Notice what you notice.”</i> Like a single
pebble out of thousands that catches your glance on the beach, the things you
find yourself aware of – and the state of awareness itself – these are the clues.
Each of us is a receptor for a different part of the same sublime puzzle. Evidence
is everywhere. The investigation never ends.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/491098" target="_blank"><i>Published in the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts Quarterly, Dec. 2012 </i></a></div>
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/41266228?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><style>
</style>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-4453015784288273172011-12-28T14:27:00.000-08:002012-07-30T20:36:17.438-07:00after existential crisis comes occupying everywhere: a revolution of meaning, reunification, and collaboration.<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Palatino;
panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Palatino;
panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-noshow:yes;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iJVv4BFW1LY/Txh39Sr4MjI/AAAAAAAAAd8/Fmbr5HEnIyw/s1600/buckyball_vt_white.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iJVv4BFW1LY/Txh39Sr4MjI/AAAAAAAAAd8/Fmbr5HEnIyw/s400/buckyball_vt_white.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Palatino;
panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">As
common as the idea that reality is connected to consciousness may be in theory,
few of us go through life with a viable understanding of what this might mean
in practice. Perhaps this is because so many facets of western culture
reinforce the sensation of separateness and undermine feelings of connection in
ways both subtle and overt. Competition, individualism, and selfishness in
their most extreme forms are advocated as survival skills. The world comes
complete with distinct borders, countries, religions, teams, traditions, and
national identities that make it seem as if we humans have more differences
than commonalities. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">But
on some level, many of us have a hunch that this isn’t quite right. Our complex
biological sensory systems tell us that being included and cared for feels
better than being alone and left out. We experience empathy and compassion for
complete strangers who are suffering. If we’re very fortunate, we may even have
been in love, in which case we have unquantifiable yet very powerful evidence
that profound emotional connectedness is a very real phenomenon – we feel
another person’s pain, we experience their joy in sometimes all-too-tangible
ways. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">As
humans we arrive preinstalled with sophisticated organs of perception – and yet
somehow we’ve come to trust external sources of knowledge more than our own instincts.
It’s my hypothesis that our collective guts can only handle so much conflicting
data before they begin to pipe up, creating a subtle but piercing kind of dissonance
that is hard to ignore. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">How
much conflicting data does it take to produce extrasensory feedback loud enough
to produce a global cacophony? A rough estimate: about 300 years’ worth. During
the early Renaissance, art, science, and spirituality were practiced as
interconnected parts of an overarching, holistic philosophy of nature. By the
17<sup>th</sup> century, Bacon, Newton, Galileo, Descartes, and others had introduced
the idea of a universe made of separate parts connected by generic, impersonal
forces. Rather than simply accept the “scientific method” as an important new way
of collecting information about the workings of the world while continuing to
embrace the notion that intuition and imagination serve different but equally
valid functions, a battle of the paradigms ensued that still rages to this day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Since
the 1700’s, in the “western” world at least, our formerly holistic vision of
the cosmos has been undermined by learned separateness. But the internal data
we’re receiving tells us that the old notions of mind vs. matter, science vs.
art vs. religion, observer vs. observed just aren’t holding up. Meanwhile, current
breakthroughs in science are also suggesting that things may not be as they’ve
seemed – multiple, even seemingly opposed scenarios can exist simultaneously,
things that appear incompatible may be different facets of the same jewel – separateness
is truly an illusion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">I
believe that the OCCUPY movement, in concert with other uprisings in progress around
the world, marks a new kind of Renaissance, one of collective recognition of
the importance of interconnectedness – between disciplines, cultures, and
communities – and of consciousness, in the sense that individuals are realizing
the power of personal and collective participatory action, intention, and
collaboration. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">The
monumental challenges that humanity faces today on a global scale are the
result of 300 years’ worth of compartmentalizing and un-holistic thinking –
when the earth’s “resources” such as ancient forests, oceans, rivers, oil and
coal deposits, creatures, and even human beings are seized and exploited for
the convenience and profit of the few without regard for environmental or moral
costs, when pharmaceuticals are developed for outrageous profit without regard
for the true causes of disease, when people are told that peace is not possible
without war, that our planet’s biosphere is too large to be disrupted by the
follies of man, that health care and education are too costly while “defense”
and tax breaks for the rich are imperative, that we should fear rather than
love our neighbors, that our voices and actions are too small to make a
difference…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Not
long ago a select few in control of the largest media outlets had the power to
manipulate prevailing thought. But 2011 has been the year of radical, world-shifting
information-sharing and citizen journalism. Armed only with small electronic
devices connected to a common network, we developed ways to pool our resources
in the form of information and ideas. Radical rejection of helplessness has
been the catalyst for individual and collective action. We learned that “occupying”
has both physical and mental components – we can occupy any location at any moment
simply by refusing to participate in a broken system to the greatest extent
possible. By taking personal responsibility for social and environmental
justice in every facet of our lives, from how we acquire food to where we shop
and bank to the quantity and quality of the resources we consume, each of us
can help create the sustainable, healthy, and just society we envision. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">It
is at the precise moment when existence seems the most futile and absurd – when
we have nothing left to lose – that extreme anger and frustration can suddenly
morph into a radical sense of freedom that fuels empowerment and a commitment
to act.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">In
the past year we have not only borne witness to the release of Wikileaks, the
start of the MENA revolutions, the rise of the Indignados in Spain, Anonymous, and
so much more – as a result of social networks many of us have been active
participants in these historic events. We have offered support and held space
as our friends and colleagues have been beaten, arrested, and oppressed, and as
they have succeeded in toppling tyrants and putting their oppressors to shame. The
chills we feel when physically participating in – or experiencing virtually – a
radical act is evidence of the veracity of our connection. It is also a healthy
symptom of the re-infusion of our existences with meaning.</span></div>
</div>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-10909730308603889392011-07-16T09:20:00.000-07:002011-07-16T09:20:03.879-07:00the rubin's tube<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/D7Vw2Ae8WLE?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-75603122545974930872011-07-16T09:17:00.001-07:002011-07-16T09:18:20.087-07:00art of interconnectedness - goethe's game<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/25778553?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/25778553">goethe's game (the mesa), a conceptual artwork based on 1970's "booby trap" toy</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user3413076">alyce santoro</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-31592148660995301452011-07-16T09:17:00.000-07:002012-05-25T06:54:39.795-07:00weekend hosted by ballroom marfa<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L1uP6tFvB94/TiG5YWISaKI/AAAAAAAAAbI/8UhVlR4SZRY/s1600/sos_window.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L1uP6tFvB94/TiG5YWISaKI/AAAAAAAAAbI/8UhVlR4SZRY/s1600/sos_window.jpg" /></a></div>
the SOS opening weekend was a smashing success. lots of pictures from the event are now available on the <a href="http://ballroommarfa.org/archive/event/texas-biennial-with-alyce-santoro/" target="_blank">ballroom marfa website</a>.alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-85006159066698526752011-04-05T10:57:00.000-07:002011-04-26T07:36:21.245-07:00invitation to sos launch hosted by ballroom marfa in marfa, texas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TODY16KAeCQ/TbbYKPoDv_I/AAAAAAAAAZ8/Y2td7ZuVDCw/s1600/SOS_flier9_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TODY16KAeCQ/TbbYKPoDv_I/AAAAAAAAAZ8/Y2td7ZuVDCw/s640/SOS_flier9_web.jpg" width="387" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-15072789041827011092011-03-30T15:26:00.000-07:002011-03-30T15:26:08.971-07:00speech for president obama<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-au7MgIzuIOQ/TZOt6t6lqYI/AAAAAAAAAYg/TI7s8U1OGMo/s1600/we_are_technology_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-au7MgIzuIOQ/TZOt6t6lqYI/AAAAAAAAAYg/TI7s8U1OGMo/s1600/we_are_technology_sm.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
i wrote this a bit less than a year ago as the speech i wanted to hear president obama give during the gulf oil disaster. it could easily be adapted to reflect current catastrophes:<br />
<br />
<style>
@font-face {
font-family: "Times";
}@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
}@font-face {
font-family: "Palatino";
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.rteleft, li.rteleft, div.rteleft { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0in; }ul { margin-bottom: 0in; }
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Uniting Towards a Sustainable Future: A Speech for the President</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">My Fellow Americans, I stand before you tonight wishing that I could tell you from the bottom of my heart that everything is going to be all right. But that would be dishonest, and you have been lied to enough. You have been lied to by politicians, by CEO’s, and, the sad fact of the matter is that we have been lying to ourselves. We all know that our system is broken – that rampant borrowing is unsustainable, that voracious, wasteful consumption of non-renewable resources is unsustainable, that a culture based on greed and fear is unsustainable. Everywhere we turn, we see evidence of muck rising to the surface, muck we sensed was lingering just out of view, but chose to ignore. Citizens cannot go on pretending, and nor can the government. The time has come for us to look ourselves and each other in the eye and ask the question, “What really matters? What are the things that bring real happiness?” For most of us, family, community, health, and security might come to mind. And yet many of us feel that these things are in jeopardy. How did this happen? When we take a moment to think about it, we may realize that at some point we simply stopped nurturing the things we value most. We mortgaged away our most precious assets, bet them against some artificial notion of future success. When did the American Dream become something that very few can afford, with many others so caught up in the struggle just to get by that they have no time to tend to the things that matter most? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">In the April 3, 1944 issue of LIFE magazine, there is an article on page 93 titled “OIL – U.S. Must Drill 20,000 More Wells to Get Enough in 1944.” In the same issue, almost every advertisement – from aftershave to shoes - alludes to the motto of the day, “Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do…or Do Without”. On page 130 there’s a full-page ad from the “War Advertising Council” with a list of things you can do “if you want to be able to enjoy the good things of life in the peaceful days to come…if you want to speed victory and thus save the lives of thousands of fighting men.” The first item on the list is “Buy only what you need. Take care of what you have. Avoid Waste.” Another point urges the reader to “Pay off your old debts – all of them. Don’t make new ones.” Next is “If you haven’t a savings account, start one. If you have an account, put money in it – regularly.” Last, “Buy and hold War Bonds. Don’t stop at 10%. Remember – Hitler stops at nothing!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">How different would our current wars and other crises be if our leaders asked us to contribute, to collaborate with them, all of us working together to do our parts? During WWII self-sufficiency in general was encouraged. Citizens were asked to grow “Victory Gardens” in order to limit the burden on trucking and railroad supply lines and other industries. A national “Victory Speed” of 35 miles per hour was enforced. Gasoline was rationed according to necessity, and for almost a year, anyone with an “A” sticker – those for whom driving was deemed non-essential – were allowed only 4 gallons of fuel per week. Since rubber was in extremely short supply, citizens were asked to contribute old raincoats, shoes, garden hose, and tires to the recycling effort. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">What has changed? In 65 years, how did we go from a culture eager to share responsibility and involvement to one of selfish obliviousness? After 9/11, George W. Bush advised us to go about business as usual, act like everything is fine and leave it to him to annihilate “evil”. Well, it turns out that, unlike Hitler’s army, this far less tangible and insidious enemy could not be annihilated with aggression – in fact, hostility and hatred are the very food on which it thrives. After 9/11 we were justified in our anger – but we did not clearly define our adversary before we began the battle. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan were not our enemies. Brothers, fathers, mothers, children, homes, schools, farmland, ancient relics – all destroyed because violence was used as the first resort instead of the last one. Our crusade to root out and destroy evil has wreaked havoc on countless families, livelihoods, and traditions in the cradle of civilization – and here on our own soil as well. In our vain attempt to destroy the enemy, we have lost no small part of ourselves. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">But it’s not too late to begin now to do what’s right. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">This starts with the understanding that there are bad seeds and extremists in every land, but this does not justify unbridled aggression. We must trust what we know in our hearts to be true: that most people, regardless of their religion or nationality, yearn for a peaceful existence, and hold out hope for a better life for their children. We must focus on that which we have in common with our neighbor, rather than seek out and exaggerate our differences. After WWII, Americans were viewed as heroes who made great sacrifices to come to the aid of forces fighting on the side of good. In stark contrast, our current wars have caused us to be seen as lone vigilantes, serving only to isolate us and ignite disgust and disdain for the United States around the world.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">These wars have cost too much in every sense of the word, in lives as well as dollars. WWII was a boon to our economy because we manufactured goods that were sold to our allies. We stopped making cars and made airplanes instead. In contrast, our current wars provide few benefits to our domestic economy, with the majority of funds going into the coffers of war profiteers who have proven time and time again to favor their own bottom lines over the safety and well-being of those they have been charged to protect. The biggest winner in the war on terror is the oil companies themselves. More petroleum is purchased by the Department of Defense for use by the U.S. military than by any other singular entity in the world. If the oil companies had their way, we’d be at war until our tanks came to a grinding halt on the battlefield, having run out of last drop of fuel on planet Earth.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Which brings me to the subject I came to speak with you about tonight - the torrent of oil currently gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I wanted to speak with you first about the wars in order to make something amply clear: we are not fighting over religious differences, or to retaliate for the attack on our soil on 9/11. The unspoken truth is that we are in these battles for the sake of a substance that controls our every action. We have been led to believe that we cannot survive without it, and the fear of not having enough of it compels us kill or die for it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">We can and must end these wars, but doing so as quickly, efficiently, and humanely as possible will require us to first understand the real reasons we began them</span><span style="font-family: Palatino;">. As a nation, we must come to realize that the true enemy is our dependence on oil, and collectively agree that the appropriate way to fight it consists of each and every one of us doing our part to simply use less of it. These wars – and the system that supports them - will cease to exist the moment we reduce our reliance on oil. We need to bring our energy and our efforts back home to help protect the things that are in danger here on our home soil. Our men and women abroad are needed here on our own shores to join a new and very different kind of battle. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">This will necessitate immediate legislation and, in the longer term, the development and implementation of technologies based on harnessing renewable resources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower. This is your government’s responsibility. We have subsidized the oil industry, provided astronomical tax breaks, and given it free reign on the shortsighted premise that our economy will continue to require more and more oil - and only oil - in order to thrive. We have put ourselves in the precarious position of having no back-up systems, no safety net. Rather than accept oil’s limitations and begin to scale back our reliance on it, we’ve developed a culture based on ever-expanding markets and increasing dependence.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Let me be clear: BP is fully to blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster – they will be held financially and personally accountable for the reckless, irresponsible decisions that caused its equipment to fail and put its employees, the Gulf of Mexico, and countless lives and livelihoods at stake. But there are painful truths that must be faced – first we need to understand that all the money in the world is not sufficient to clean up the oil that is choking sea life from plankton to birds and is seeping into sand and marshes. We will try everything in our power to restore the Gulf to its former glory, even strive to make it better than it was, but a clean up could take years, or even decades.<span> </span>The most difficult truth to face is that, directly or indirectly, we encouraged and participated in a system that cut corners and allowed this catastrophe to occur. Now we must leave behind these obsolete and reckless ways, and instead concentrate our efforts on new, sustainable means to thrive. The government can and must facilitate these changes in any way it can, but the fastest route to change will be through the actions of the people. Your help is urgently needed. We must act immediately if we wish to enjoy the good things of life in the peaceful days to come, if we wish to live healthier, less wasteful, more sustainable lives, if we wish to share the burden with our soldiers abroad. If we have any hope of leaving the world a better place for our children, we must make changes necessary – today, not tomorrow. The fate of our families, or nation, and our world is in our hands. Our greatest resource has been and always will be the determination of our people, our resolve, and our ability to do what is necessary in the face of challenge and adversity.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">It seems there is a lot of fear around change – many people argue that changes will take too long and cost too much. The hemorrhage of oil into the Gulf is the most tangible evidence our country has ever seen that we have no choice – we cannot afford NOT to change. This isn’t only a matter of the perilous state of the economy of the Gulf – this is rapidly becoming a matter of health and safety on a global scale. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">American citizens constitute 5% of the world population, and yet we consume nearly a quarter of all the world’s resources.<span> </span>China has a billion more people than the United States, and yet the Chinese consume less than a third of the resources we use. So much of what we Americans consume is simply wasted – water down the drain, lights left on, disposable packaging, inefficient automobiles, appliances, and architecture. By reducing waste and maximizing our efficiency, almost without noticing we could cut consumption of resources – and costs - by 50%. During World War II, citizens were asked to “Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without.” I must ask this of you again today. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Using less would also go a long way towards resolving another problem – pollution. <span> </span>There’s been a lot of debate about global warming, about whether it exists and if we should trust the scientific data. The fact is that it doesn’t really matter if humans are causing global warming. Clearly, humans are causing pollution. Pollution causes cancer, lung disease, birth defects, and a whole host of ailments too numerous to list. We now know better than to eat lead paint chips, drink the effluent from a factory, or breathe the air in a sewer. We need to learn to be more conscious stewards of the home we share, this small and miraculous planet Earth. We don’t need scientists to tell us that all the oceans are connected, or that the air we breathe here in the United States is the same air that people in China or Australia or Europe are breathing. Poet John Donne said, “No man is an island.” No war, no environmental catastrophe is an island either. All of these events are interrelated. Decisions we make today will determine not only the future of our own families, but the future of families on the other side of the world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">This is why today I am proposing the following:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">1. A permanent moratorium on all deep water drilling for oil. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">2. A national campaign for every citizen to <a href="http://www.facebook.com/UseHalfNow?ref=ts">USE HALF</a> of all non-renewable resources to begin immediately, with greater emphasis placed on those who have had the luxury of using the most. The new American way of life will not be one of wasteful excess, but one of thoughtful, sensible, comfortable efficiency. Constantly striving to streamline our habits will make the transition to alternative energy sources easier and cheaper – the less energy we require, the smaller and more affordable the system needed to sustain our lifestyles. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">3. The establishment of an independent non-profit Sustainability Advisory Council to develop guidelines for the transition to a more sustainable society. This council will design programs for corporations, government offices, families, and individuals to assist in maximizing efficiency and eliminating waste. The American government will serve as an example, beginning immediately by converting the White House and all buildings in Washington to renewable energy. These guidelines will be considered when taking into account future government contracts, purchases including supplies, vehicles, and buildings, and other government spending. Non-essential plane and automobile travel will be eliminated or discouraged, with as much business as possible being carried out via Internet and electronic technologies. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">4. A 5% tax on fossil fuels with all monies going to fund development of renewable technologies, green jobs training for those in the fossil fuel industry or other industries such as fishing which have been put at risk by non-renewable resource mining and drilling, improving and construction of new national train infrastructure and improving efficiency for other ground transportation systems, rebates and incentives for those who build new homes and businesses that utilize renewable resources, and retrofits for existing structures. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">5. New utilities billing practices, with the greatest discounts given to those who use the least. This new more-you-use-the-more-you-pay model will make it especially desirable for the largest consumers to develop ways to maximize efficiency and reduce waste. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">6. New efficiency standards for all vehicles and appliances, and incentives for the development and implementation of technologies that maximize efficiency from foot-pedal operated faucets to chest-style refrigerators that require a tenth of the energy of upright models. The age of planned obsolescence, disposable everything, and shoddy workmanship to save a dime in the short run and lose dollars in the long run is over. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">7. A “Victory Maximum Speed Limit” of 55 miles per hour on all roadways, with 65 being allowed on major interstates only. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">8. The establishment of a “Peace Advertising Council” to encourage “Using It Up, Wearing It Out, Making It Do, or Doing Without”, promote green entrepreneurialism, and distribute information on gardening, permaculture, and food forestry for homes, parks, college campuses, community developments, and industrial complexes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">This is just the beginning. With your help, this horrific catastrophe will become an opportunity to unite the people of our United States of America towards a common goal. Together we can strengthen and heal our families, our communities, our society, and our world. In this way, the suffering of our Gulf of Mexico and all affected by this tragic disaster will not be in vain. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Thank you and good night. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"><br />
</span></div>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-68838460154655994042011-03-28T17:46:00.000-07:002011-03-28T17:55:20.943-07:00the social & scientific implications of the perfectly round tortilla with enrique madrid<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/fVXM1gyK73M?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
<span class="" id="feed_item_G8Rqrnpuqm0_expanded">Texas/Mexico border historian/scholar Enrique Madrid and his wife Ruby offer a lesson on how to prepare traditional Mexican recipes, including Enrique's theory that perfectly round tortillas that obey the very same laws of physics as the universe milliseconds after the Big Bang. Enrique and Ruby feel strongly that teaching people how to cook simple, wholesome food helps to preserve traditions and keeps "endangered flavors" alive. Sustenance - both physical and philosophical - provides individuals and families with the means to thrive, and creates bonds within communities and between cultures.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="" id="feed_item_G8Rqrnpuqm0_expanded">It so happened that I posted this video on the same day that an article on the very same subject titled <a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/2011-04-01/editorsletter.php">Holy Frijole by Jake Silverstein</a> was published in Texas Monthly. </span>alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-48496481822413361402011-03-17T18:40:00.000-07:002012-09-29T10:19:33.034-07:00everyone as activist<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QrNAJTcouPk/UGcs-GDYqSI/AAAAAAAAAqQ/T3O9ZPzCjos/s1600/SOS4_bfi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QrNAJTcouPk/UGcs-GDYqSI/AAAAAAAAAqQ/T3O9ZPzCjos/s1600/SOS4_bfi.jpg" width="338" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://wagingnonviolence.org/2011/03/everyone-as-activist-the-synergetic-omni-solution/">Everyone as activist: the Synergetic Omni-Solution<br />
by Alyce Santoro | March 15, 2011, 2:42 pm Waging Non-Violence.org</a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” Buckminster Fuller said. “To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” In 2007, the Buckminster Fuller Institute began offering an annual $100,000 prize to the individual or team who could present the most practical, efficient, viable way to make a poorly functioning aspect of the existing reality obsolete. Bucky called this kind of solution a “trimtab,” named for the tiny rudder on an enormous ship that is ultimately responsible for steering. I wasn’t ready to enter the competition that year, but from then on, my mind began working around the clock on the riddle of the trimtab. What universally accessible and implementable strategy could bring as many people on board as possible, inspiring contributors to take immediate action using whatever materials may be at hand? </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I began to study and implement <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology">appropriate technologies</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture">permaculture</a>. I started a Facebook group called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UseHalfNow">USE HALF NOW</a> to explore the notion that more mindful consumption may be an efficient place for many to begin (at least for those of us living in “overdeveloped” countries). I studied the wildly successful conservation and Victory Garden campaigns introduced in the U.S. and Britain during World War II. Leaders called on citizens to “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” and people ably complied. I wondered, what if a similar campaign could be put forth today? What if people were simply invited to have a stake in creating a healthier, more peaceful world? What if the sense of helplessness, disempowerment, and defeat that seems to pervade our culture could be overcome, simply by suggesting that each of us contribute to the solution in whatever ways make the most sense to us? Perhaps the fastest-acting, most accessible trimtab would not appear as some new magic-bullet “green” technology—instead it might come in the form of a radical mental shift.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The German artist Joseph Beuys practiced social sculpture, a kind of art-activism that called upon audiences to participate. He believed that everyone, by infusing even the most mundane action with a sense of purpose and creativity, could contribute to ones’ own health and the health of society and the environment at large. By so doing, he proposed that “everyone is an artist” of their chosen vocation. Beuys taught that in order for social transformation to be truly constructive and enduring, methods used to achieve it must be as holistic and inclusive as possible. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">21st-century advances in internet technology and network accessibility offer extraordinary new tools for the contemporary social sculptor. Interactive initiatives based on the dissemination and sharing of information have far greater potential than during any other age in history. Inspired by the developing power of virtual networks, the spirit of the 1940’s conservation campaigns, and the Buckminster Fuller Challenge itself, after four years of deep consideration, it finally seemed that an opportune moment to present a formal application to the Challenge had arrived. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">My proposal, “<a href="http://challenge.bfi.org/application_summary/2256">The Instant & Efficient Comprehensive & Synergetic Omni-Solution</a>,” is a customizable, interdisciplinary, collaborative, philosophical approach to social change. It’s a conceptual framework within which to investigate our inherent interconnectedness and shared responsibility for the health of one another and our environment. SOS is at once a call to action, a compendium of possible strategies, and a means of describing, documenting, and contributing to do-it-ourselves revolutions currently underway around the world. It draws parallels between simple, emotionally-rewarding, system-defying action—such as line-drying laundry, freecycling, and home-growing food—and more complex, radical measures undertaken by those demanding basic human rights and an end to oppressive regimes. By cultivating a willingness to commit to small actions, one may become psychologically prepared to participate in and initiate larger ones. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Through the <a href="http://www.synergeticomnisolution.com/" target="_blank">Synergetic Omni-Solution website</a>, the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/synergeticomnisolution" target="_blank">SOS Facebook page</a>, interviews with visionaries and activists, interdisciplinary art installations, and happenings such as the weekend of <a href="http://ballroommarfa.org/archive/event/texas-biennial-with-alyce-santoro/#event-release">SOS launch events to be hosted by Ballroom Marfa</a> in late April 2011 in Marfa, Texas, I plan to compile examples of innovative works in progress by others, connect dots, and gather collaborators. As the project proceeds, data will be collected from those in a wide range of fields—alternative agriculture, music, art, politics, history, philosophy, economics, and social, political, and environmental activism—and condensed into concise, comprehensive, strategic booklets, posters, videos, and multimedia guides to be disseminated digitally and via alternative media outlets. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">To carry Beuys’ proposition a bit further, perhaps infusing actions with purpose and personal creativity not only makes us into artists, it makes us into activists as well. Realizing the power we have as individuals to shape the world may be the most efficient, accessible, renewable resource available to us—and also the most often overlooked. By approaching issues that affect us all from the standpoint of how to create the greatest health for the greatest number, through shared information and compassionate action, together we have an opportunity to craft a trimtab that's more beautiful and efficient than anything any one of us alone could have imagined.</span></div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3486167054732297633.post-3183693159425708252011-03-08T06:23:00.000-08:002012-09-29T10:22:54.562-07:00makers: DIY agents of social change<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WlQXRebrcsA/UGcuRiXWBJI/AAAAAAAAAqY/g6H7R4Nc1DE/s1600/SRT_technologies_logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WlQXRebrcsA/UGcuRiXWBJI/AAAAAAAAAqY/g6H7R4Nc1DE/s1600/SRT_technologies_logo.jpg" height="311" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.truth-out.org/makers-diy-agents-social-change59919">by: Alyce Santoro, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed</a><br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">EVERYONE IS AN ARTIST</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">As our society collectively awakens to the realization that it must devise ways to stem the hemorrhaging caused by years of denial and excess, and as the DIY (do-it-yourself) movement grows in popularity, Joseph Beuys’ words “Everyone Is An Artist” ring all the more true. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.walkerart.org/archive/4/9C43FDAD069C47F36167.htm">Beuys</a>, who referred to himself as a “social sculptor”, believed strongly not that everyone should make (so-called) fine art, but that everyone can live a richer and more meaningful life by infusing any vocation or action with his or her own personal creativity. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">From the 1950’s through the mid-1980’s, Beuys expressed the notion that personal creativity could be cultivated and honed by connecting with nature and by developing a more intimate relationship with it. He believed that individuals, as well as our entire society could be healed by returning to a simpler way of life, and by becoming more attuned to the subtle, ineffable forces of the ecosystems we inhabit. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">EVERYONE IS A SHAMAN</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Some call one who consciously connects to, communicates with, and elaborates on the intangible a shaman. Some called Joseph Beuys that. Most just called him an artist. Shamans, artists, cooks, gardeners, scientists, inventors and all others who bring imaginary things out of the realm of the intangible to help give them form routinely benefit from enhanced access to the mysterious force of inspiration. In this sense, everyone is a shaman as well. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And as people begin to seek opportunities to “do it themselves” they are exercising a form of personal creativity that has been largely neglected in our culture for far too long. A basic fact of existence that has been all but forgotten is that human happiness and the sense of freedom depends largely on the ability to express personal creativity. Beuys also famously said, <i>“To make people free is the aim of art. Therefore art for me is the science of freedom”.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">THE JOY OF FLUXUS</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It is possible that the reshuffling of our collective deck, while discomfiting at times, will ultimately result in an overall increase in happiness as people come to realize that we were misguided in relating the ravenous, mindless accumulation of stuff to personal joy, and as we begin to experience instead the sense of simple, profound satisfaction that comes from planting a seed, sewing on a button, or cooking a meal from scratch.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">AUTONOMY AS RADICAL ACT</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Consciously creative types (“makers” as they have come to be known) are returning to the sort of DIY approach to the creating and sharing of their work that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus">fluxus</a> artists of the 1960’s and 70’s pioneered – only now we have the internet. Websites, blogs, and social networks have made the notion of the white box/velvet rope style gallery virtually obsolete - now everyone has the same access to the same art and artists, from the comfort and privacy of their own homes. Sculptors can create installations in a basement, musicians can give concerts in their living rooms, writers can publish in an instant – and everything can be shared with millions of people across the globe.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">DIGITAL PIONEERING</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The internet is a fascinating artifact of the fundamental human longing to connect. The telegraph, telephone, and television are all apparatus devised to facilitate communication. The internet takes it all a step further – now we are able to pool resources, share information, and generate tangible links. In 1998 Howard Rheingold, an early internet researcher and pioneer, published a brilliant article called Thinking About Thinking About Technology in the Institute of Noetic Sciences newsletter. In the piece, Mr. Rheingold posits that for new technology to develop into tools for enhancement of creativity and “mind amplification” as opposed to becoming merely a source of “disinfotainment” we must develop a philosophical framework within which it can evolve. That was 12 years ago. Now we can say for certain that technology, devoid of philosophical framework, will become everything that we are - enriching and distracting, elegant and dangerous, brilliant and ridiculous. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Technology has arrived at a point in its evolution when it is exceptionally easy for the maker to direct all aspects of his or her own creation, from inception to publication, marketing, and dissemination. From Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger to Ebay, Etsy, and YouTube, it is an exciting time for the DIY innovator.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">INTERNET AS CAVE WALL</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Technologies for the amplification and enhancement of imagination and conscious intent have existed in every aspect of human culture at least since the first cave painting was created. Modern western civilization’s fanatic rejection of the unquantifiable has, in many ways, done us a great disservice. To trust only that which can be measured negates inspiration, intuition, and imagination – some of humanity’s most precious attributes. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Perhaps Joseph Beuys was right - reenchantment with the intangible, reverence for nature, and an open-minded acceptance of alternative modes of perception may make it possible for humanity to emerge from this period of economic, environmental, and social upheaval and reevaluation into a more peaceful and contented era. By perceiving ourselves as artists of our own particular medium (be it plumbing, politics, cooking, medicine, teaching, healing, engineering, or painting), we have an opportunity to sculpt our very culture into a masterpiece that’s beyond our wildest collective imagination. We just need to keep in mind that technology is only an electronic, externalized version of some far more sophisticated software that exists inside all of us, preinstalled. There’s no Google search that can tell us how to use it, however. For that we’ll need to move away from the machines, and step outside.</span></div>
alyce b. obvioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12696152431282107248noreply@blogger.com0