Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
(Problem fixed!)
– Politics and the Pleasure Principle
– Green giants: the eco power list
– Eco power lists: Fatuous, invidious and misrepresentative
– Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation: Young Green Activists for a Warming World
– Film review: “The Economics of Happiness”
– Beyond the Economic Treadmill and Toward True Well-being
Both health and food security are fraught with expectations at social, academic, and governmental/regulatory levels. Both are states of mind as well as physical conditions. Absent either, the human organism eventually dies.
There is a story implicit in the farmer’s relation to the land, and it is our culture’s central organizing myth, the one that informs all the other stories we tell. The story is just a few words long, but its implications are widespread and profound. The story is this: everything belongs to us.
Let’s start with this phrase: “sustaining our commonwealth.” By sustaining, I don’t mean preserving inviolate; I mean using, without using up. By commonwealth, I mean the wealth that no one has made, or the wealth that practically everyone has made.
According to Gil: “Only about 2 percent of what we eat comes from outside the farm: salt, some cooking oil, spices. That’s it.”
This morning, I’ve been catching up on some reading about the protests in Egypt and Algeria, following on the Jasmine Revolution that is in process in Tunisia. Clearly, the reason for interest is wondering to what extent is there any risk of these events spreading into the big oil exporters, which could cause extremely large disruptions in the global economy. This is probably unlikely, but not so inconceivable that serious observers aren’t starting to at least think about it.
Our desire not to stand on the wrong side of history is radically tempered by our desire to keep the flow of oil coming and the markets stable. The US cannot endure another major economic shock, and oil price spikes and the possible market repercussions of a destabilizing Middle East clearly terrify our present administration.
A friend of mine once remarked that if current trends continue, razor cartridges will have at least 100 blades each by the end of the century. The razor blade wars are among the most visible absurdities illustrating how the limits of complexity clash with our blind faith in the idea that more complexity will always solve our problems or improve our lives.
In a brief but revealing cable included in the vast WikiLeaks “CableGate” trove and published last week by the Norwegian paper Aftenposten, US embassy officials report that the Nordic nation opted to divest its sovereign wealth holdings from companies violating “humanitarian principles” and “fundamental ethical norms.”
Certainly conservationists of all persuasions should be more vocal about challenging the growth machine that is chewing up wild nature. But for Murray to turn his wrath on protected areas, and suggest that preserving places for wildlife and wild processes to thrive unmolested is futile or even counterproductive as a conservation strategy, is a dangerously misguided idea. I hope it will be rejected by everyone who cares about the health of the biosphere.
If humans were smart, we would bet on our ignorance.
When you have plants in common something happens. When you cook together something happens. It’s hard to say what really except that invisible connections are made that make sense of things in a time when absolute madness seems to rule. When fish are thrown back into the sea and everything once owned by the people is up for sale.
