Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy.

	Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Do We Really Want to Know? There's an interesting article by Elizabeth Kolbert in this week's New Yorker on vegetarianism, and specifically on the disconnect between our adoration of pets and our tolerance for the horrific, lifelong suffering of the animals we eat. It's really about human nature, Kolbert argues, and specifically that we just don't want to know about atrocities and suffering we don't feel we have any control over. This was the subject of JM Coetzee's book Elizabeth Costello, that I reviewed six years ago. Here's an excerpt from the book: Seven o'clock, the sun just rising, and John [animal welfare activist Elizabeth Costello's son] and his mother are on the way to the airport. 'I'm sorry about my wife', he says. 'She has been under a lot of strain. I don't think she is in a position to sympathize. Perhaps one could say the same for me. It's been such a short visit, and I haven't had time to make sense of why you have become so intense about this animal business.' She watches the wipers wagging back and forth. 'A better explanation', she says, is that I have not told you why, or dare not tell you. When I think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken into a pillow or into a hole in the ground, like King Midas.' 'I don't follow. What is it you can't say?' 'It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidence. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money. It's as if I were to visit friends,and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say "Yes it's nice isn't it? Human skin it's made of, we find that's best, the skins of young virgins." And then I go to the bathroom and the soap wrapper says "100% human stearate". Am I dreaming, I say to myself. What kind of house is this? Yet I'm not dreaming. I look into your eyes, into your wife's, into the children's, and I see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can't you? Why can't you?' She turns on him a tearful face. What does she want, he thinks? Does she want me to answer her question for her? In my review of the book, I asked: Is there a point in rubbing our faces in it, in forcing people to face up to the horror of concentration camps, slaughterhouses, factory farms, chemical weaponry, mental illness, sexual assault and torture, bullying, spousal and child abuse, animal testing laboratories, political interrogations, what happens behind prison walls, the agony of those in continuous pain not allowed to die and without access to relief, the children whose entire lives are consumed in deprivation and brutality, the suffering of crack babies? Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals, the book that prompted Kolbert's article, draws obvious parallels between the way we treat farmed animals and the way prisoners were treated in the second world war by the Axis powers. Kolbert explains: Foer’s position is that all such arguments [those justifying 'humane' eating of animals put forth by Michael Pollan, Temple Grandin et al.] are, finally, bogus. We eat meat because we like to, and we devise justifications afterward. “Almost always, when I told someone I was writing a book about ‘eating animals,’ they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism,” he says. “It’s a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case.” What we know about eating animals is that we don’t want to know. Although he never explicitly equates “concentrated animal feeding operations” with the Final Solution, the German model of at once seeing and not seeing clearly informs Foer’s thinking. The book is framed by tales of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Reading the article, I thought about the program of practices I have designed for myself once I retire in a couple of months, whose purpose in part is to reconnect me with my instincts, my emotions, my senses and all-life-on-Earth. When I discuss this with people who don't know me well, they tend to ask me either "How and why do you think you became disconnected?" or "Why would you want to subject yourself to that anguish?". These are both questions born, I think, out of subconscious grief -- the first is a denial that the life most of us live is in any way emotionally suppressed, tacitly cruel or unnatural, while the second is dismay that we could ever hope to handle that much terrible reality. It intrigues me that the people who sign up for courses and workshops on emotional reconnection (judging by the research I have done, and on the Joanna Macy workshop videos I've watched) seem to be overwhelmingly female and over 30. Why is that adult women are more willing than males, or young people, to "let their hearts be broken"? This is important, because one of the tenets of social democracy, and activism, is that if a majority of people feel strongly about some facet of the status quo, that this will inevitably produce change. The ending of slavery, women's rights, and other instances are offered as justifications for political awareness, discourse and activism being necessary and sufficient preconditions for bringing about important change. But are they? As Foer says, the majority already know that factory farming is an ugly business. But they don't want to know. They quietly ignore it, turn away from it, satisfy themselves somehow that it's not that bad or that nothing can change it anyway -- it's an inevitable part of civilization. It's "natural". The rationalizations of Pollan and Grandin are music to their ears. The same is true for what we're doing to the Earth, and to the struggling nations of the Earth. We know it's awful, unsustainable, just not right. But we don't want to know. We rationalize that it's not really that bad (hence the popularity of the wing-nut Lomborgian climate change deniers, and corporatists who assert that struggling nations benefit from globalization and that "a rising tide lifts all boats"). We tell ourselves we can't do anything anyway, we do what we can, it's up to the experts and politicians. The problem is, these rationalizations are just untrue, and like the nonsense of technophiles in groups like WorldChanging, the religious loonies who believe in the Rapture, and the "humanist" cults that preach about a coming "global human consciousness raising" it is magical thinking, stuff that we tell ourselves because we really, really don't want to know the truth. Regular readers are probably tired of me reciting Pollard's Law of human behaviour, but until it has been effectively refuted I'll keep saying it: We do what we must, then we do what's easy, and then we do what's fun. We have no time or energy left to do what's merely right. It is not in our nature. Let's look at slavery. Of course the social movements against slavery were important. But I would argue they were not enough. The US civil war was not fought over slavery, it was fought over the right of one region to declare independence (this is the cause of many wars, which are almost always about power, money, control, and land). Slavery of both blacks and whites (called "indentured servitude") was legal for many years throughout the US because it was the only way to make passage of workers economically feasible. They did what they had to. Later as travel costs fell, most people could afford their own passage to the "new world", and slavery was then only essential to agriculture, particularly labour-intensive tobacco, cotton and sugar beet farming. Technology (like the cotton gin) increased manufacturing productivity and hence actually increased the need for more slaves on the farms to feed the new post-harvest automation. Slave owners acknowledged that slavery was (in the words of Robert E Lee) "a moral evil" but rationalized that the slaves were "better off here than in Africa". You know, like how Aghanis and Iraqis are better off now than they were under the Taliban and Saddam. After the civil war, slavery was abolished, but, after the brief but disastrous Reconstruction and a severe economic depression, white supremacy was restored in the former slave states in the Compromise of 1877 as Union forces finally withdrew and left the former slave states to sort things out for themselves. Slavery was replaced by sharecropping, blacks were re-disenfranchised, and for most of the following century suffered under brutal, overtly racist, repressive white-controlled governments. Slavery was allowed for prisoners, judicial and police systems treated blacks no differently than they had during the slave era, and segregation of all institutions meant that life for most African-Americans was only marginally better than it had been. What changed, finally? The decline in the importance of agriculture overall in the US. Access to cheap foreign labour. The Industrial Revolution. As a result, social slavery was no longer necessary. Economic slavery was just as useful, without the blatant "moral evil" that characterized social slavery. Slavery ended ultimately not because of social activism (though that was absolutely necessary), but because it was easier to automate harvesting, import foreign workers (or offshore the whole process to countries unconcerned with "moral evils"), or use the land for something more profitable and less labour-intensive. Has all this social activism brought an end to racism? Not on your life. Wait until the economic debt crisis hits in the next decade or so and you'll see that nothing's changed. Has it really brought an end to slavery? Talk to the Mexican workers in the American fields, or the children working in the blood diamond mines in Africa, or chained to machines in the factories in China, and you'll get your answer. But we don't want to know. I could make an analogous argument for what has happened with women's rights, but you get the idea. It was easy and profitable to get women into the workforce, for low wages, caught in the Two Income Trap, buying all those things a two-worker family needs that a one-worker family didn't. And giving women the right to vote didn't cost anyone anything, nor did it produce any significant power shifts. It was easy. Did women have to fight hard for it anyway, and should we salute them for doing so? Of course. Do women in most of the world still face horrific prejudice and oppression? Damned right. Will they too, with enough decades and centuries of struggle, achieve some reasonable equality in their societies? As long as it's easy, and doesn't cost anyone anything, sure. Now apply this to factory farming. Ending it is not easy. It cannot be made easy. Like combatting the causes of climate change, or coping with the End of Oil and the End of Water, it is a hugely complex problem. The necessary change would be staggeringly expensive, and massively unpopular. Do we need activists to do the "holding actions" to mitigate some of the damage and to increase public awareness and affect public opinion on the need for change in these areas? Absolutely. Will that work, in and of itself, bring about sufficient change in these hugely difficult areas? Not a chance. We will change when there is absolutely no choice (we do what we must) or when it is dead easy to change. Give us compact fluorescent lightbulbs that cost the same per kilowatt-hour as incandescents and reduce energy consumption by 2/3, and it's easy -- you can then make incandescents illegal and no one will care. Same thing happened with getting rid of the CFCs in refrigerants. No problem. But reducing CO2 emissions to zero in two decades (necessary to get us down to 350ppm and avert climate catastrophe) will never be easy. Reducing oil and petrochemical consumption by 90% in three decades (necessary to avert The Long Emergency) is unfathomably difficult, if not impossible. Drastically reducing debts, waste, and consumption (necessary to avert a ghastly depression that will make the Great Depression look mild) is unimaginable, even with magical thinking -- the cure might be as bad as the disease. And likewise an end to factory farming would require the nationalization and breakup of industrial agriculture, an end to the $150B annual agriculture subsidies to some mighty powerful oligopoly lobbies, and a total, mostly involuntary, change to the way we eat, that would make food much more expensive and its preparation much more time-consuming. This is the antithesis of easy. These are wicked problems because it will never be easy to solve them. So no politician is going to impose change on the voters, because it would be political suicide. These problems will be solved politically or socially only when there is no other choice. And by then, as every previous civilization has discovered, it will be too late. Is there a technology fix? The magical thinkers are hard at work. They're planning on blasting $30B of tiny reflective metal into the stratosphere to deflect the sun's rays, to combat global warming. It's called geoengineering. They have no idea what they're doing, but when things get desperate enough they'll do it anyway. After all, it's easy. Oh, and they're also going to put all the carbon dioxide back into the Earth in a way that it won't leak out again. That's called carbon sequestration, and the technology doesn't exist (the engineers I've spoken to say it never will), but, hey, when you're magical thinking, go for it. Obama's giving them millions to invent it. Just make it easy for us, please. Whatever the problems, we just don't want to know. And the magical thinkers are going to give us high-efficiency wind and solar and geothermal and biomass and "clean coal" and "safe nuclear" to get us off our addiction to oil. No matter that even all of these together barely scratch the surface of what we would need just to keep consuming at current levels (China's energy use is growing 20%/year and they're building a new coal-fired power plant every four days). Hey, what happened to cold fusion? In the meantime, we'll stave off the problem for 4-5 years by turning an area of Alberta the size of Florida into a lunar landscape peppered with thousands of massive toxic tailing ponds. The kids will forgive us, right? We don't want to know. The magical thinkers haven't even put their minds to dealing with the coming economic collapse, or the obscenity of factory farming, because they're not even acknowledged as problems, let alone wicked ones. We don't want to know. Well, I want to know. And apparently a few others, mostly adult women, want to know too. Even if it means letting my heart be broken. Even if it means looking at a photo like the one above, which is offensive. I've been inside a slaughterhouse. I'm a vegetarian, but still not a vegan, so I'm complicit in what goes on in factory farms and slaughterhouses. I drive a car and fly too often, so I'm complicit in the Alberta Tar Sands holocaust. I know better, or at least I should. What's the matter with me, with us? What's the matter is that we're human. These things that don't change don't hit close enough. They're not personal enough. Slaughterhouses and factory farms and Tar Sands developments are private property, and they don't want you to know what goes on there. And what would you do, anyway? Well, perhaps you'd do whatever it took to shut them down. And perhaps, if you got together with enough other people with the same intention, you might come up with some ingenious ways to shut them down. Maybe even as ingenious as the ideas that got these "innovations" started in the first place. Do we really want to know the truth? I don't know. We're a curious species, we humans. If something can reasonably be done to make something better, or less awful, a lot of us seem to want to know what the problem is, and how we might do that. All I know is that, after a lifetime of turning away, of not wanting to know, I've now reached the point where I can't help knowing, and I can't turn away, and I have to do something more than the very worthy and necessary but insufficient things that activists do so valiantly and often at great personal risk and sacrifice. I have to stop these things. How? Don't know yet. Work with me, and we'll figure it out. Last words to Ms Kolbert, a much better writer than I: “Eating Animals” closes with a turkey-less Thanksgiving. As a holiday, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. But this is Foer’s point. We are, he suggests, defined not just by what we do; we are defined by what we are willing to do without. Vegetarianism requires the renunciation of real and irreplaceable pleasures. To Foer’s credit, he is not embarrassed to ask this of us. But is even veganism really enough? The cost that consumer society imposes on the planet’s fifteen or so million non-human species goes way beyond either meat or eggs. Bananas, bluejeans, soy lattes, the paper used to print this magazine, the computer screen you may be reading it on—death and destruction are embedded in them all. It is hard to think at all rigorously about our impact on other organisms without being sickened. And if we're sickened, then what? ---------- (For those who tried my 'Words to the Wise' puzzle yesterday, here are the answers: 1. stripper, 2. stag, 3. feud, 4. Noah, 5. tithes, 6. insole, 7. antler, 8. EKG, 9. rioted, 10. Emir, 11. URLs, 12. Mac, 13. italic, 14. baskets, 15. dognap, 16. ethers, 17. den, 18. diet, 19. y'all, 20. coasts, 21. starboard, 22. tenure, 23. ice rink, 24. pooltable, 25. triplets, 26. ham radio, 27. tag-team, 28. Magi) Category: Animal Welfare 1:42:50 AM  trackback []  comment []

	Saturday, October 31, 2009

Links and Tweets of the Week: October 31, 2009 (Scary Hallowe'en Edition) PREPARING FOR CIVILIZATION'S COLLAPSE Here Comes the End of Debt: Stoneleigh from Automatic Earth, in an interview with The Oil Drum Europe, argues that we're in for an unprecedented and prolonged deflationary period, and that while wages will plunge, so will prices of everything, even oil and gold as demand falls faster than supply: Credit bubbles [see chart above] are inherently self-limiting, proceeding until the debt they generate can no longer be supported. We have already passed that point and we are now two years into a contraction phase that is about to accelerate. As the aftermath of a credit bubble is typically proportional to the scale of the excesses that preceded it, we should be in for the largest economic contraction for at least several hundred years, and it will be global. Real estate, which is a major focus of the mania, should do particularly badly in the coming years (in fact the coming decades or longer)... As demand falls, and with it prices, investment in the energy sector is likely to dry up. Many projects will be uneconomic at much lower prices, meaning that the projects which might have cushioned the downslope of Hubbert’s curve (and the much steeper net energy curve), are unlikely to be developed. In this way a demand collapse sets the stage for a supply collapse that could place a hard ceiling on any prospect of economic recovery. That is a recipe for extremely high energy prices in the future… The scale of the problem has been temporarily concealed by a market rally and the shovelling of tens of trillions of dollars of taxpayer’s money into a giant black hole of credit destruction. This has done nothing to reignite lending, but the temporary (and entirely irrational) resurgence of confidence has restored a measure of liquidity. As that confidence evaporates with the end of the rally, that liquidity will also disappear. Deflation is ultimately psychological. Without trust we will see hoarding of the cash which will be very scarce in the absence of the credit that currently comprises the vast majority of the effective money supply. The combination of scarce cash and a very low velocity of money will be toxic. Money is the lubricant in the economic engine and without enough of it that engine will seize up as it did in the 1930s, when farmers dumped milk they couldn’t sell into ditches while others were starving for want of the money to buy food. There was plenty of everything except money, and without money, one cannot connect buyers and sellers… Big Oil Says Reducing Carbon is Impossible: Some interesting quotes from oil industry executives suggest they know, better than the average citizen, and more than the politicians are saying, that the only way to reduce carbon to levels that will prevent catastrophic climate change is to end industrial civilization. Thanks to Keith Farnish for the link. Here are quotes from various oil execs: The Copenhagen targets are basically completely illusory. There's no way to hit those targets and it would be very silly to think that we can... The world does not have the scale, time frame or economics to devote to the complete eradication of carbon emissions from sources of fuel within the next four decades... Nuclear doesn't have the flexibility to be a suitable option... Globally [renewables] will be too small to make a real dent in the targets... Just wait for one catastrophe and that will be the end of nuclear. And who really thinks biofuels will really work in the long run? You can't have food as an energy source. Mind the Gap: Climate Interactive Scoreboard graphically depicts (see above) the gap between what governments have pledged to do to combat climate change and what is needed. What is really needed (a reduction to 350ppm or perhaps even 280ppm within two decades) is, well, off the chart. Mind the gap: over the next year it will become an abyss. Thanks to Tree for the link. The Banks Have Just Stopped Making Loans: "The real economy is dying. This quarter is going to be a bloodbath" for the big banks, says yet another analyst. Thank to Sam Rose for the link. And in China, Apocalyptic Growth: An extraordinary award-winning photo-essay on pollution in China shows a nation plunging into toxic apocalpyse. And this is the world's largest and fastest-growing economy, on which the global industrial growth economy now depends for cheap labour, cheap materials (no standards), and new 'customers'. Thanks to Craig De Ruisseau for the link. LIVING BETTER Psst! Wanna Get Something Made?: 100k Garages will find and connect you with a job shop that will make anything you can imagine. And the Global Village Construction Set will help you design and fabricate anything that your community-based permaculture or transition project needs. Thanks to Michael Wiik for the links. CarrotMob Green Businesses: A great international initiative organizes local progressives to "mob" green, responsible businesses with new customers. Thanks to Tree for the link and the three that follow. "Agriburbia" Converts Lawns and Hinterlands into Gardens and Farms: A growing trend to make suburbs a little less dependent on imported food. Japan Pioneers Peer-to-Peer Car Rentals: A step beyond commuter car-sharing, this online reservation system allows people to rent their cars to others at times they don't need them, reducing the need for so many cars to be manufactured and parked. Free Do-It-Yourself Sustainability Books: A substantial resource of free online plans for renewable energy and other sustainability projects. A Crash Course on the Coming Crash: A 3-hour crash course in economics covers the essentials of the pending economic (debt), ecological (climate change) and energy (peak oil) crises. Thanks to Mireille Jansma for the link. POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AS USUAL US Official Resigns Over Obama's War: A foreign service leader quits in protest over the impossible war in Afghanistan, and urges Obama to bring the troops home. Thanks to Raffi Aftandelian for the link. Civil Liberties Watch: The Civil Liberties Defense Center (boy those Americans spell funny!) fights to overturn laws that outrageously restrict personal freedoms, such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (making it illegal to protest animal cruelty), aggressive use of tasers by police, and an Oregon law that made it illegal to protest old-growth forest destruction (they just succeeded in getting that ruled unconstitutional -- yay)! Thanks to Tree for the link. FUN AND INSPIRATION Visit a Third World Home, Virtually: Amazing photography and journalism lets you use your cursor to see 360-degree views of homes in slums in 5 countries, and hear their residents' stories. Thanks to Sue Braiden for the link. Animated Credit Reform: A great new cartoon from Mark Fiore spoofs the new fees that credit card companies are rushing in before new (tepid) anti-usury rules come into effect. Thanks to Mireille Jansma for the link. The Botany of Desire: Michael Pollan's new book explains how plants seduce us with their sweetness, beauty and intoxication. Link is to a PBS special on the book, viewable online. Thanks to Tree for the link. "You'll get so much candy you'll have to be towed." -- a fun poem about Samhain, the celtic/wiccan sister festival to our Hallow'een. Last Chance Texaco: Rickie Lee Jones sings one of her earliest, cleverest songs, about our dependence on cars, and love. THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK From Melissa Holbrook Pierson, bumper stickers from talk show host Chris T.: Why do you love animals called pets, and eat animals called dinner? Be nice to America, or we'll bring democracy to your country. (perfect one for a bicycle or car, for different reasons) This Too Shall Pass From Lydia Davis (in last week's New Yorker): HEAD, HEART Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this. I want them back, says heart. Head is all heart has. Help, head. Help heart. 4:38:00 PM  trackback []  comment []

	Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Maybe That's What It Takes As my retirement looms closer, I've been giving some more thought about exactly what I'll be doing with my days when I retire. In my previous post Intention to Practice I summarized the nine steps that I am following (and urging others to follow, in their own way) to make the world a better place, illustrated in the graphic above. To implement these practically into my new life, once I've moved, I have organized my day into three blocks of time: 10am to 1pm for reconnection practices, 2pm to 6pm for learning, facilitating action and model-creating practices, and 8pm to 12pm for reflection and writing practices. Starting with these three blocks of time, I developed the chart below that shows my long-term intentions, the long-term practices that "stretch toward" those intentions, and the short-term, daily intentions (exercises) in alignment with the longer-term ones. The long-term practices tie into the nine steps in my What You Can Do graphic above, and the colour (red, yellow, green) is from my 'scorecard' and shows how much work I have to do on each. Long-Term Intention Long-Term Practices Short-Term Intentions (Exercises & Projects) Hrs/day now Hrs/day intended A. Reconnecting with All Life on Earth, Instincts & Emotions Appreciation (1)  Presence/Paying Attention (2) Heart-Opening/Letting Go (3) 10am to 1pm: personal/group reconnection: - Forest/ocean walks - Presencing exercises - Gratitude exercises - 'Breathing through' meditation 0 3.0 B. Increasing Capacity & Competency (Personal and Collective) Understanding How the World Works (4) Capacity-Building (6)  2pm-6pm: learning/exploring: - presentation/conversation skills - demonstration skills - creative writing exercises - SSUQIOC exercises - balance and empathy practices 1.0 1.0 C. Undermining and Dismantling Civilization Activism (7)  2pm-6pm: facilitating action: - Open Space: Stopping the Tar Sands - Open Space: Ending Factory Farms 0 1.5 D. Creating Models of a Better Way to Live and Make a Living Model-Building (8)  2pm-6pm: creating: - novel: The Only Life We Know - film: Earth 2200: A Travelogue - workbook: Finding Your Sweet Spot - unschooling: personal practice guide 0.5 1.5 E. Joy, Understanding Self-Knowing (5) Being Myself (9) 8pm-12pm: - reflection/questioning exercises - blogging - play: drawing, photography, with animals (original play) 3.5 4.0 (activities not directly related to any of my intentions -- my Y-stuff) other hours: - self-care (sleep, exercise etc.) - networking; serendipitous reading - self-management (gardening etc.)  19.0 13.0 I'm now starting to drill down into what I'm going to do, especially to move from "red" to "green" in steps 1, 2 and 7. Here are some of the exercises I'm intending to do: Reconnecting Exercises (preferably, but not always, in company with others): Listening and talking with other creatures during forest/ocean walks -- paying attention to their songs and sounds, to try to understand, viscerally and intuitively, what they are saying, and 'talking back' to them in something like their own voice Spell of the Sensuous exercises -- those described in David Abram's book, connecting time past and future back into the present Sleeping in the wild Acknowledging my grief for Gaia, letting my heart be broken, and showing my broken heart to the word -- with others, using some of Joanna Macy's exercises like the truth mandella (taking turns speaking of these feelings of grief, anger, fear, pain and dread), and confessing sorrows to each other, drawing on Joanna's Six Principles: This world, in which we are born, and take our being, is alive. Our true nature is more ancient and encompassing than the separate self defined by habit and modern society. Our experience of pain for the world springs from our interconnectedness with all beings, from which springs also our powers to act on their behalf. Unblocking occurs when our pain for the world is not only validated, but experienced (i.e. it is not enough to listen to the bad news in the media). When we reconnect with all-life-on-Earth, by willingly enduring our pain for it, the mind retrieves its natural clarity (or as Derrick Jensen puts it "When you listen, really listen to the land, you will know just what to do.") The experience of reconnection with all-life-on-Earth arouses desire and intention to act on its behalf. Conversely, as long as we remain disconnected, we will remain unmotivated, helpless, part of the problem. Trust walks with others (taking turns blindfolded, guided by a partner, and sensing without seeing) Meditation in wilderness, especially guided meditations on the theme of affirmation and gratitude Intentional exercises (like this article, except done in groups) Artistic expression exercises -- drawing, painting, dance, composing music, sculpture -- including collaborative work Facilitating Action (organizing and enabling groups to design and take actions that will undermine the worst and most destructive facets of industrial civilization, with the goal of ultimately dismantling it): My belief is that this work must be collaborative, creative, and self-critical. It must achieve measurable results effectively i.e. without hurting others and hence creating martyrs of the supporters of our unsustainable systems, and without getting ourselves arrested. The results it achieves have to be more than public attention, even if that achieves some change in understanding, beliefs and behaviours. My two "starter" projects are to bring an end to factory farming (at least in Canada), and to halt the Alberta Tar Sands. We have to be more creative than chaining ourselves to tractors and "liberating" farmed animals. These are PR stunts and they don't achieve the results we seek: less (and eventually no) factory farming, and less (and eventually no) Tar Sands operations. We cannot rely on changing people's buying behaviour (I've learned what battery caged hens hellish life is, but even I still eat food with eggs from unknown sources of supply -- it's just too difficult under the current industrial agriculture system to bring about real change through consumer movements alone). We cannot rely on politicians or lawyers or changes to laws and regulations and enforcement. These are the clowns that have got us into this mess, and they are fully invested in keeping it going. We are not going to be able to embarrass corporations to behave better -- ExxonMobil is at once the world's worst polluter and the most profitable company in the history of civilization. We need to find better, more effective ways to bring these horrific practices to an end. What we need to do, I think, is bring together a lot of creative minds, with a great breadth of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding of how the Tar Sands and factory farms currently operate. And then we have to be methodical in identifying all the vulnerabilities of these systems and how they can be exploited. To that end, I think a good place to start is with Open Space as a methodology to enable a large group of invitees to self-organize to develop understanding and action plans, coupled with Donella Meadows' 12 Places to Intervene in a System, which can focus our attention on actions that will achieve maximum results. So, for example, how could we deprive tar sands and factory farm operators of critical sources of supply? How could we deprive them of funds? How could we disrupt production? How could we prevent them getting their 'product' to market? How could we reduce their market? How could we change the purpose of the energy sector from increasing supply of non-renewable energy, to reducing global carbon output to zero through sequestration etc.? How could we change the purpose of the farming industry from producing the maximum amount of food at the lowest price, to producing a healthy diet for everyone with minimal production and zero waste? How can we enable local energy and food coops to spring up and meet the needs of their communities so they have no need at all for the products of the tar sands or factory farms? I don't have the answers, but between us, with effort and shared knowledge and creativity, we do. There is a better way to live. We just need to seize the opportunity and power to create it, demonstrate it, and at the same time bring down the corrupt, cruel, wasteful, toxic, unnatural, irresponsible, unsustainable operations that the lawyers and politicians and corporations and educators and media have brainwashed us into believing is the only way to live. My job is to facilitate making that happen, and also to apply what I do uniquely well (imagining possibilities, and writing) to provoke the thinking that will bring these essential changes to fruition. That's some of what I intend to do, anyway. Category: What You Can Do 11:32:31 PM  trackback []  comment []

	Saturday, October 24, 2009

Links and Tweets of the Week: October 24, 2009 PREPARING FOR CIVILIZATION'S COLLAPSE Why Demonstrations Aren't (Nearly) Enough: Keith Farnish, who made the 'alternative' 350ppm logo above, argues that if we really think that participating in a 350.org event is going to achieve anything, we're delusional. "If an international grassroots movement holds our leaders accountable to the latest climate science, we can start the global transformation we so desperately need," trumpets 350.org. Keith's reply: "If you are planning to go to a 350.org event, then please go, but don’t go expecting the group’s aims to change anything: go with a view to helping people understand that only by rejecting the system that the group’s organisers are still pandering to, can the atmospheric carbon levels go below 350 parts per million. Either that, or the Earth will reject humanity." Exactly. Our Economic System is Now a 'Corpse': Ilargi points us to my friend Joe Bageant's brilliant rant about the Democrats' betrayal of working Americans: The solutions we aren't allowed to discuss: adoption of a Wall Street securities speculation tax; repeal of the Taft-Hartley anti-union laws; ending corporate personhood; cutting the bloated vampire bleeding the economy, the military budget; full single payer health care insurance, not some "public option" that is neither fish nor fowl; taxation instead of credits for carbon pollution; reversal of inflammatory U.S. policy in the Middle East (as in, get the hell out, begin kicking the oil addiction and quit backing the spoiled murderous brat that is Israel).  then Ilargi goes on to cite Paul Farrell's 20 reasons the capitalist system is poised to collapse, and then sums up with his own bleak assessment of how economic collapse will precipitate collapse of other systems: Our economic, financial, capital, and credit system is done and gone. What you're looking at today is a corpse propped-up by the promise of future tax revenues from millions upon rapidly increasing millions of homeless and jobless Americans. Unfortunately, that's just the beginning. Because the financial system has been allowed to infiltrate the political system to the degree in which it has (a full-scale take-over), America's political system is as bankrupt as its financial system is. It will take a long and hard time to replace. Hacking Industrial Civilization: There are three ways to make the world a better place: (1) Creating new working models of a better way to live and make a living (so we can opt out of industrial civilization's models); (2) Increasing our capacities and competencies (so we're less dependent on industrial civilization and more aware of its dangers); and (3) Acting to undermine and ultimately dismantle industrial civilization (without hurting anyone or getting arrested). We have to do all three, but for many, the third one is the hardest and scariest, and the one we least feel comfortable knowing what to do. The Yes Men show us the way with their brilliant punking of the shameful US Chamber of Commerce, Dow Chemical and others. In the same vein, Keith Farnish suggests 100 ways to hack industrial civilization (my favourite: print up stickers that say "energy waster", "made in sweatshops" etc. and stick them on appropriate products in stores -- I'm also going to make stickers that say "harmful to your health", "environmental hazard", "not locally made". and "there are green alternatives to this product"). LIVING BETTER What If You'd Been Born Someone Else?: A new educational tool lets you virtually 'live' the life of someone in Pakistan, or Uganda, or Rio, one year at a time, with life events based on the historical likelihood of that happening in real life. Thanks to Sue Braiden for the link. The Digital Evolution of the Book: Utne describes some innovations in online reading and e-publishing that go far beyond transferring content to a new flat medium. The article mentions CellStories, daily fiction you can read while you sip your morning coffee (and which will probably inform you better than the daily paper). I've always thought digital media would help us to read in more natural ways (the way we see, not the way books are commercially required to be laid out). Thanks to Paul Heft for the link. A Depression Diary: If we can't learn the lessons of history from textbooks, perhaps we can learn from stories. A new unedited diary of a man struggling through the Great Depression tells us a lot that the economics textbooks leave out. Thanks to Paul Kedrosky for the link. POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AS USUAL The Eco-Holocaust of the Alberta Tar Sands: A terrifying series of three short videos explains how, and at what cost, oil is extracted from the tar sands. (Sorry, I've forgotten who sent me the link to this -- if it was you, please remind me!) FUN AND INSPIRATION David Vaine sends up Knowledge Management, brilliantly. Thanks to Nancy White for the link. The amazing Chris Pureka singing Burning Bridges. Modern torch song with brilliant lyrics. "You can't choose who you love." Another heartbreaker by Sarah Bettens (K's Choice), 20,000 Seconds. THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK photo 'Under the Highway' by Dave Bonta. thump-thump. From the late Kurt Vonnegut: Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.' 10:35:42 PM  trackback []  comment []

	Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Nobody Knows Anything It's been forty years since I graduated from high school, and I've spent most of that forty years in the business world. Now I'm about to retire and I'm thinking back on what I've learned that will be useful as I begin my nine intentional practices that I hope will really make a difference in the world. I think the most important thing I've learned is captured in Charles Barsotti's cartoon above: Nobody knows anything. Because of our horrific overpopulation and exhaustion of our planet and its resources, we have entered into a period of chronic, massive, global stress, and it's made us all crazy, like rats in a lab fighting over the last few scraps of food. We've stopped listening to ourselves and started looking for saviours -- 'leaders' and 'experts' to show us and tell us what to do. The so-called 'leaders' and 'experts' I've met are mostly very intelligent people, but they haven't a clue. They're buoyed by their own press and by sycophants fighting their way up from the bottom or desperate to believe that someone is in charge, in control, and knows what needs to be done. These 'leaders' hang out with other people just like themselves, and their groupthink persuades them that they're right, they're important, that what they say and do and decide really matters. But it's all fraud, papered with self-delusion, self-aggrandization and hubris. What gets done in large organizations (corporations, non-profits, governments) is the sum of what everyone in those organizations does. The people at the top generally have no more real impact, and no more useful knowledge with which to make decisions, than the people at the bottom. The 'leaders' are responsible neither for the organization's successes, nor its failures -- a few people just don't make that much difference, except when they make some hugely expensive, incompetent decision or rip the company off so it goes bankrupt. Almost all mergers and acquisitions actually destroy value -- their only real purpose is to eliminate competition. The "competitive advantage" and "economies of scale" that big organizations lay claim to are a fiction. Their success is really mostly due to massive, incessant propaganda aimed at dumbed-down customers, subsidies, discounts and favours bought with political donations, the crushing of competition and innovation through legal intimidation and offshoring, cornering and squandering precious natural resources and treating the natural environment as a free dumping ground. Economists, financial 'experts', psychologists, consultants, pundits, celebrities, policy wonks, advisors, barons of industry, doctors -- none of these people really know what they're doing. They want you to believe they know what they're doing, so that they can justify what they're taking out of the system in salaries, bonuses, perks, commissions and fees. But they're making it up as they go along. They have come to expect bailouts when they fail financially, and indemnity from prosecution when they screw up, or get caught breaking the law. And they get away with it. It's all veneer. Beneath each $2000 suit, behind all the swagger, from the boardroom to the office of the commander in chief, there's an insecure, terrified little boy pretending to be in charge, faking it, and easily swept away by the first pretty young adoring intern who will go down on her knees before him. We would be much better off looking to the crowds for wisdom. The collective knowledge of employees, customers, community members, while far from perfect knowledge for decision-making, would at least be better than the staggering ignorance of megalomanic 'leaders' making decisions in their echo chambers and information vacuums. No one is in control. Obama isn't getting anything done, despite being the most powerful person on the planet, because he can't. The 'leaders' aren't going to deal with climate change or peak oil or pandemic disease or unsustainable debts, because no one has the power or authority to do anything, and because it would be political suicide to admit that the only solutions that might work will be radical, painful, and require a lot of sacrifice from everyone. So all you get is posturing, and it's just going to get worse. This is what unsustainable means. We have destroyed this planet for future generations and for all-life-on-Earth, and the worst culprits are still doing it, while we sit around stupidly watching them, wondering what to do, waiting for someone, anyone, to save us from us. We need to stop listening to these know-nothing, cowardly 'leaders'. We need to stop paying them. We need to stop working for them. We need to stop investing in them. We need to stop trusting them, and stop believing the nonsense they are telling us. We need to stop voting for them, and paying taxes to finance their backroom deals. We need to stop buying overpriced crap from their fat, mismanaged organizations. We need to send some of them to jail for criminal fraud and the rest out to pasture, and take back our society, our economy, our Earth from these thieves, these self-deluded con men. No more leaders. We could start, one community at a time, to know, again, what it means to live responsibly, meaningfully, modestly, sufficiently, sustainably. But we will not. We have become disconnected from all-life-on-Earth, and forgotten the simple knowledge of how to live as part of it. And we're too busy to think about what that means for our grim future, as the dark and gathering sameness of the world rolls over us, like an impenetrable fog. Category: Why Civilization is Unsustainable 11:58:42 PM  trackback []  comment []

© Copyright 2009 Dave Pollard. Last update: 11/4/09; 1:44:08 AM.