Voices

The voice of Lewis Mumford usually finds its way into my head when I'm writing in my journal.

"On the terms imposed by technocratic society, there is no hope for mankind except by 'going with' its plans for accelerated technological progress, even though man's vital organs will be cannibalized in order to prolong the megamachine's meaningless existence."--The Pentagon of Power

Agatha Christie then comes to save the day:

"'There is always a brave new world,' said Poirot, 'but only, you know, for very special people. The lucky ones. The ones who carry the making of that world within themselves.'"

An Article Worth The Read

If you have read Ishmael you will see what I'm talking about. Below a quote from the article:

"The trees, the animals, the rivers cannot cry out from their appointed courses, nor the oceans from their beds that, "Hey, we are not your resources. We are the only god damned shot you have at survival!"

I never expect to see politicians tell the people: "Quit buying. Quit using all that electrical stuff. Quit traveling all over the world. Quit driving. Just eat, be happy you are breathing and work to grow your mind and soul and let's see if we can come to understand this ruined world around us and how to heal it -- or at least do less damage. Let us change our entire idea about what constitutes governance, and work and happiness."

Neither do I, Joe

How Nothing Works

I've been reading Robert Bly's The Sibling Society and at the same time wondering why Ishmael had such an impact on me ten years ago. It always amazes how you can hold a question in your mind and answers to those questions pop out at you from all different kinds of sources. Take this quote out of TSS about breaking up tribal societies for instance:

"It's possible that American culture now exhibits many qualities we associate with a typical colonialist society. We now know from twentieth-century psychology, if from no other source, that, given the nature of human life, people and nations cannot practice destruction of tribal societies without having it come back on them.
When colonial administrators take over a tribal society, their first task is to prove to the indigenous people that nothing in their culture works. It is important also to prove that tribal ways, such as consensus, do not work, and the old ways of talking with the gods, the ways the shamans practice, do not work.
Ships, gunpowder, and armor overpowered the African tribes, and then Westerners, to secure the power, dismantled the elder system. Pg. 160

In Ishmael, and the rest of his work, Daniel Quinn simply pointed out ways that worked for human beings for hundreds of thousands of years. In other words, we dont have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to finding a better way to live, we have plenty of models to work off from.

That's one reason why I think Ishmael had such an impact on me at that time in my life. At 25 (Hell, at 7 or 8) I knew the world was messed up, and that's part of the reason I was feeling down all the time. Most of the advice and stories I was hearing from adults over the age of 50 wasn't wasn't enough for me, there were always a few missing pieces that I was looking for. Well, Quinn provided the missing pieces, atleast that's the way it looks so far.

Corporations

After reading Erik's post about corporate personhood I had to post this quote out of Derrick Jensen's The Culture of Make Believe.

“Corporations are a legal device invented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to deal with the myriad of limits exceeded by this culture’s social and economic system: the railroads and other early corporations were too big and too technological to be built or insured by the incorporator’s investments alone; when corporations failed or caused gross public damage, as they often did, the incorporators did not have the wealth to cover the damage for which they could be held liable. Because of limited liability, corporations have allowed several generations of owners to economically, psychologically, and legally ignore the limits of toxics, fisheries depletion, debt, and so on that have been transgressed by the workings of the economic system.

“By now we should have learned. To expect corporations to do differently than they do is to engage in magical thinking. We may as well expect a clock to cook, a car to give birth, or a gun to do other than that for which it was created. The specific and explicit function of for-profit corporations is to amass wealth. The function is not to guarantee that children are raised in environments free of toxic chemicals, nor to respect the autonomy or existence of indigenous peoples, nor to protect the vocational or personal integrity of workers, nor to design safe modes of transportation, nor to support life on this planet. Nor is the function to support communities. It never has been and never will be. To expect corporations to do other than to amass wealth at any (externalized) cost is to ignore the system of rewards that has been set up, to ignore everything we know about behavior modification: if you reward someone—those inventing in or running corporations, in this case—for doing something, you can expect them to do it again. To expect corporations to do other than they do is at the very least poor judgment, and the very worst delusional. Corporations are institutions created explicitly to separate humans from the effects of their actions, making them by definition inhuman and inhumane. To the degree that we desire to live in a human and humane world—and really, to the degree that we wish to survive—corporations need to be eliminated." pg. 441

Twain on Recieved Wisdom

"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other”--Mark Twain

Check out If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways if you want to examine the beliefs and convictions you've been given.

Machine Metaphors

I really like the machine metaphor. Here is a quote out of Derrick Jensen's What We Leave Behind that occasionally pops into my head.

"We live in a machine age. To maintain prosperity we must keep the machines working, for when machines are functioning men can labor and earn wages. The good citizen does not repair the old; he buys anew. The shoes that crack are to be thrown away. Don't patch them. When the car gets crotchety, haul it to the town's dump. Give to the ashman's oblivion the leaky pot, the broken umbrella, the clock that doesn't tick. To maintain prosperity we must keep the machines going."--Richardson Wright

Question answered

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Less than a week ago I received this article through email. The author used this quote by Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic quality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

After reading the article I remember asking what does France mean by this? I became busy with something else and didn't give the question much thought after that. Well, this morning, while paging through Derrick Jensen’s “Welcome to the Machine”, the question answered itself.

Jensen says, “Frances point was clear. The poor are not to be free or independent; the rich do not have to beg, as they control the levers of power, which are the privatization of profits and the externalization of costs, or the taking for themselves of whatever material benefits the machine provides, while forcing others (including especially the nonhuman world) to suffer the material consequences.” Pg. 134

I guess I’m on the right path.

Health Care and The Post Office

I worked for the post office yesterday. While I was sorting mail a few of us got into a dicussion about universal health care. One of the guys said "but you realize we're going to have to pay for that." This takes me back to an excerpt out of a blog post I read before going to work.

"It is utterly ridiculous that any adult cannot figure out the obvious inequity of this nation and American capitalism, where an elite one percent of the people grab 45% of the national pie. Such a conditioned stupidity and powerlessness makes you want to cry for your country." Joe Bageant

The top 1% of the income bracket can pay for it.

When are we going to start talking about the wealth gap in America?

Letter to the Editor 7/20/09

I wrote a letter to our local newspaper's editor this week.

Honesty

It was refreshing to read "Oil Prices Rising and as Supply Falls", by Dave Thomas from The Ashland Daily Press last week. It was especially refreshing to read this line at the end of his article: "As Oil prices climb higher, let's hope we find a third mode to address the challenges ahead. A good place to start would be to re-localize our food and energy production and scale down our community size to stay within local carrying capacity. It will happen anyway--through responsible planning, personal change, and careful transition, or through complaceny, panic, and crisis."

He's right, our civilization is collapsing. Of course, looking back at the history of civilizations in the past all of them eventually do. The question is: what are we going to do about it? Mr. Thomas's letter clearly and honestly states the issues that we have to address if we want this collapse to be less painful than others have been in the past. I'm glad he wrote it. I hope to see more like it printed in The Spooner Advocate.

If I could find the link to the article that I responded to I'd post it.

It was nice to see issues like: human overpopulation, carrying capacity, Peak Oil, local economies, and food production addressed in our local newspaper. Although I was hoping the author would've mentioned civilization. Those problems he talked about that need to be addressed are all symptoms of civilization, for the most part.

Grunting

I'm interested in writing and writers. It all started with Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. Before reading Ishmael I could have cared less about writing and writers. I read one book before the age of 25, and that was Night, by Elie Wiesel.

The past year or so I've been following Micheal Perry. He's a writer from Wisconsin. Lives about 2 hours to the south of me in a little town called New Auburn. He's been writing for about 20 years now and has a few books published.

Every writer has a process. Micheal says his process is a lot like grunting. He just puts it all down and then organizes and edits and organizes and edits until it looks good.

I like that idea and that's what I've been doing lately. Not nearly enough of it though. It's probably a combination of thinking I don't have anything important to say, lack of grammatical and technical writing skills, and putting myself out there.

I enjoy it when I do it though.

Weaving

Just some notes here. Lately I've been reading various works by Vine Deloria. He's wise. Take this quote for example:

Now, every society needs educated people, but the primary responsibility of educated people must be to bring wisdom back into the community and make it available to others. Because of hierarchies, European thinkers have not performed their proper social function. Instead, science and philosophy have taken the path already taken by Western religion and mystified themselves. The people who occupy the top positions in science, religion, and politics have one thing in common: they are responsible for creating a technical language incomprehensible to the rest of us, so that we will cede to them our right and responsibility to think. They, in turn, formulate a set of beautiful lies that lull us to sleep and distract us from our troubles, eventually depriving us of all rights - including, increasingly, the right to a livable world.

This takes me back to this excerpt out the Story of B:

"Animism looks for truth in the universe, not in books, revelations, and authorities. Science is the same. Though animism and science read the universe in different ways, both have complete confidence in its truthfulness." Pg. 136

Daniel Quinn goes on to explain how animism finds truth in the universe in a language that most people can understand. He has brought "wisdom back into the community and made it available to others." I'm really glad that he took the time to do this. He is wise too.

How's that for simplicity?

MP3 Recording of Jensen Interview

Someone on a message board that I belong to listened to the interview and recorded it. You can contact them at panopticsort[at]gmail[dot]com to receive a link where you can download the mp3 to it. Don't worry I asked them for permission to do this so they won't be surprised to hear from you.

Good Interview

For those interested the interview on WOJB went well with Derrick. So well they are seriously considering having him on atleast once a month to continue the conversation.

I can't help but think about these words by Daniel Quinn when it comes to Derrick's work, "Derrick Jensen sees as clearly as I do the disastrous impact the Taker Thunderbolt is having on our planet."

In my community there is a lot of confusion when it comes to understanding the disastrous impact Takers are having on the planet. It's a relief to have Derrick on our local radio station helping us understand this. Now all that WOJB needs to do is set up a monthly conversation with Daniel Quinn and this community member will be a happy camper.

Derrick Jensen and WOJB

I'm excited. I recently found out that Derrick Jensen will be a guest on our local radio station. I've been waiting awhile. I first suggested they have him on about five years ago now. I'm glad there were others that did the same, usually it takes more than one person's suggestion (like the show host's good friend) to make something like this happen.

I talked to the show host for a few minutes this morning. He was excited about the interview. He mentioned that he's agreed with Derrick's premises privately for a couple of years now. He also mentioned the conversation that was going on over at Orion's website concerning Derrick's article titled World at Gunpoint in the magazine's May/June issue. He said it would be great to have that conversation continued on his show. He hopes to have many local and internet listeners calling in.


Here is the description of the show:

Monday, July 6
At 10:00AM CDST Derrick Jensen will talk about his book What We Leave Behind on WOJB-88.9FM Reserve, Wisconsin with the station's Public Affairs Director Eric Schubring. The live broadcast will be available to internet listeners at www.wojb.org. Listeners will be invited to join the conversation at 800-776-3689 or 715-634-2100.

WOJB-88.9FM broadcasts from the Lac Courte Orielles (pronounced La-Coo-Dah-Ray) Ojibwa Reservation in northwest Wisconsin. The 100-thousand watt radio station was established in 1982 and remains the only Native American owned and operated radio station east of the Mississippi. Beginning with its first broadcasts WOJB has been recognized as a source for information on peace, justice, environment and equity issues as well as an eclectic mix of music.

Poverty and The Post Office

So I'm at the post office the other day filling for the full-time mail carrier. While I was sorting mail the other carrier and I got to talking about how she and her group were raising money for a mission trip to Lake Atitlan in Guatamala. I mentioned that I've read a few books by a shaman from there. And he wrote that Lake Atitlan was one of the most beautiful places on earth. She wholeheartedly agreed and happily added the people were much happier than we in the United States are. Than all of a sudden the expression on her face changed and she got to telling me that how she couldn't believe how much poverty is there. Her reaction to the Guatamalan's poverty reminded me of what my grandmother use to look like when I would attempt to sit on her furniture with muddy pants.

I came to the conclusion to what their mission trip was about: fighting poverty in Guatamala. The next day I had half the notion to show her Marshall Sahlin's anthropological perspective on poverty:

"The world's most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization."

I left the book at home and let it pass.

Labor Saving Devices

"Men have become the tools of their tools."--Henry David Thoreau


"We spend more time working for our labor-saving devices than they do working for us."--Ed Abbey

"By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed." --Lewis Mumford

Don't Look

This morning I'm thinking about passing through the door backwards, avoiding responsibility, telling lies to ourselves and each other, believing in fantasies, lifting ourselves up above the earth, denial, etc...

"Everyone is looking down, and it's obvious that the ground is rushing up toward you--and rushing up faster every year. Basic ecological and planetary systems are being impacted by the Taker Thunderbolt, and that impact increases in intensity every year. Basic, irreplaceable resources are being devoured every year--and they're being devoured more greedily every year. Whole species are disappearing as a result of your encroachment--and they're disappearing in greater numbers every year. Pessimists--or it may be that they're realists--look down and say, 'Well, the crash may be twenty years off or maybe as much as fifty years off. Actually it could happen anytime. There's no way to be sure.' But of course there are optimists as well, who say, 'We must have faith in our craft. After all, it has brought us this far in safety. What's ahead isn't doom, it's just a little hump that we can clear if we all just pedal a little harder. Then we'll soar into a glorious, endless future, and the Taker Thunderbolt will take us to the stars and we'll conquer the universe itself.' But your craft isn't going to save you. Quite the contrary, it's your craft that's carrying you toward catastrophe. Five billion of you pedaling away--or ten billion or twenty billion--can't make it fly. It's been in free fall from the beginning, and that fall is about to end." ISHMAEL (pages 105-110)

"The point is that in order to maintain these lies--that we are really flying, that we can exploit a landbase (or planet) and live on it, and so on--we must keep pushing away physical reality, and we must keep telling ourselves these lies again and again. The maintenance of these lies is incredibly expensive psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, physically, financially, morally, ecologically, and so on." Derrick Jensen in WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND, pg. 209

Of course this leads to understanding what the basic laws of ecology are and what the law of life is.

The Machine

I've been reading Derrick Jensen's What We Leave Behind and Welcome to the Machine.

"Machinery is the new Messiah,"--Henry Ford

We live in a machine age. To maintain prosperity we must keep the machines working, for when machines are functioning men can labor and earn wages. The good citizen does not repair the old; he buys anew. The shoes that crack are to be thrown away. Don't patch them. When the car gets crotchety, haul it to the town's dump. Give to the ashman's oblivion the leaky pot, the broken umbrella, the clock that doesn't tick. To maintain prosperity we must keep those machines going."--Richardson Wright

Want

"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith, scholar of religious studies

Looking for Answers

Ever since I read Ishmael I've been looking for answers as to why the world is so messed up. Actually I have been wondering about this since I've been a child. It's funny, because when I read Ishmael I pretty much had the attitude that this is just the way things are, so deal with it and try to find some happiness in this life. Ishmael brought those important childhood questions back up to the surface again, and I'm happy for it.

One of the places I find myself looking for answers is Derrick Jensen's work. I can't tell you how many times I've found myself thumbing through his books looking for quotes. And this excerpt out of A Language Older Than Words has been on my mind lately. I said before I was going to write more on this blog, so I'm going to make myself do it, even if I am copying quotes.

Derrick asks: "Why is our behavior so predatory? What are the common factors among predatory cultures?"

"It's interesting," [Judith Hermann] responded. "The anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sunday looked at data from over a hundred cultures as to the prevalence of rape, and divided them into high or low-rape cultures. She found that high-rape cultures are highly militarized and sex-segregated. There is a lot of difference in status between men and women. The care of children is devalued and delegated to subordinate females. She also found that the creation myths of high-rape cultures recognize only a male deity rather than a female deity or a couple. When you think about it, that is rather bizarre. It would be an understandable mistake to think women make babies all by themselves, but it's preposterous to think men do that alone. So you've got to have a fairly elaborate and counterintuitive mythmaking machine in order to fabricate a creation myth that recognizes only a male deity."

The rest of the quote is what really interests me.

"There was another interesting finding, which is that high-rape cultures had recent experiences--meaning in the last few hundred years--of famine or migration. That is to say, they had not reached a stable adaptation to their ecological niche. Sadly enough, when you tally the risk factors, you realize you've pretty much described our culture." Pg. 350

This tells me that we all need to start paying attention to our relationships with nonhumans. That's if we want to stop the cycle of abuse in this culture.