Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Obviously the world is so broken, in so many ways, that there is endless patching, mending, fixing to do and no one person can make much progress. Yet, as I have reflected over the years I’ve noticed that there is room to be human and an acceptance of the imperfect in this way of thinking and acting. There is, as in the Japanese concept of shibumi, a virtue in simplicity, modesty, and everydayness.
The increasingly self-conscious pursuit of fun has reshaped the ethos of what life was all about. As early as 1958, the psychoanalyst and writer Martha Wolfenstein suggested that society was seeing the rise of a new “fun morality”: an explicit social imperative to have fun all the time, in all areas of life. However, far from being positive, Wolfenstein saw this fun morality as problematic. It created a source of anxiety in which one felt “ashamed” and “secretly worried” that one wasn’t having as much fun as one ought to be.
In September 2010 I joined a team of latter-day explorers in the Netherlands on a quest to discover what American communities can learn from the Dutch about transforming bicycling in the United States from a largely recreational pastime to an integral part of our transportation system. We were in search of the “27 percent solution”—the health, environmental, economic, and community benefits gained in a nation where more than a quarter of all daily trips are made on bicycle, according to Patrick Seidler, vice-chairman of the Bikes Belong Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to getting more people on bikes more often.
When I first heard of the Gaia Hypothesis in the 1990s, as formulated by chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis, I was skeptical but respectful of the idea. I didn’t rule it out. But neither did I feel confident that the Earth is a living single organism. Perhaps I was too caught up in scientific reductionism, and needed to have proof — such as to sit down with Gaia herself. So I took note of the notion and kept on trying to save and heal Earth.
Like all other human activities, warfare depends on energy sources, and the Second World War was the first major war in history in which victory depended on access to petroleum, and in which the possibilities opened up by petroleum-burning internal combustion engines were exploited to the full. It could as well be called the Gasoline War — and its aftermath saw global power transferred to the United States, at that time the world’s largest producer of petroleum. How that happened, and how it impacted an older empire dependent on other resources, is a crucial part of the story this series of posts is trying to explore.
As I explored the ruins of the Hohokam on a recent trip to central Arizona, one question kept popping into my mind: will modern Phoenix thrive as long as the Hohokam did in these desert environs?
If you buy herbal remedies, you are sending money to global corporations – just ones that don’t have to abide by the public rules of pharmaceutical companies, and can sell things that don’t work. I’m neither a doctor nor a politician, but I can think of a number of ways people can improve their and their neighbours’ health. They could persuade many people to garden, getting exercise and fresh vegetables. They could persuade lawmakers to force herbal companies to abide by the same standards as pharmaceutical companies.
Whether Occupy is able to deal effectively with the substantial external threats and internal obstacles is yet to be determined. It will depend partly on the capacity for self-reflection and compassionate listening, as well as the success of channeling anger and frustration into powerful, constructive action.
Many specific suggestions have come from psychologists and activists, such as those at the OccuPsy meeting last month in Oakland.
Merit pay for teachers is a distraction; it ignores the larger context that should be the focus of debate in education: what curriculum (knowledge and skills) will best prepare students and their families for life in a post-carbon world? If we don’t shift our focus to this larger question and begin implementing such changes soon, all other concerns may be moot.
Critics of today’s American empire too often seem to believe that it’s something unique in world history. It’s hard to think of better evidence for the pervasive historical illiteracy of American intellectuals, for nearly all the charges leveled against America’s empire today were made, with even better justification, against the British Empire that preceded it. The interaction between these two empires — the British lion and the American eagle — defined much of what we now call the modern world, and set the stage for the decline of American empire now looming in the near future.
“We’re on a mission here now with this group. We all are co-ordinated and there’s something powerful about having fifteen people completely dedicated to the degree where we all know we’re going to do absolutely what it takes to make this happen in our community”.
Nitrogen is necessary for life on earth to continue and the nitrogen cycle is one of the most important nutrient cycles in terrestrial ecosystems. Everything that lives needs nitrogen; it is required for the manufacture of complex molecules such as chlorophyll, proteins and DNA, and also for the production of enzymes necessary for growth, reproduction and other vital functions. However, when present in excess, nitrogen poses risks both to the environment and human health.
