New subscriber edition of Planet Waves will be emailed to our clients and contributors at 9 am EDT. The edition covers the total eclipse of the Moon on Saturday and looks at the implications of the UC Davis pepper spray incident from three weeks ago. A new extended horoscope by Eric Francis is included, which covers the 12 signs as well as special subject areas.
To read this full issue’s clear insights on working with this eclipse — plus horoscopes for all 12 signs centered on this event — please use this link for individual purchase. To sign up for three months, which will cover the initial stage of whatever new patterns you are setting now, you may use this link instead.
Trying to rinse the dioxin out of chlorinated (i.e., bleached) paper products uses an ocean of water. It’s probably as much or more than what it takes to wash a cloth diaper, plus the plastic in the disposable type of diaper uses resources too, as does packaging and shipping it. It’s also question of where those resources are used. But as far as washing one diaper vs one disposable, that info should be easy to pull up. It’s certainly easy to ascertain scientifically.
reading this i am reminded of one of my most favorite quotes;
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
[from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert A. Heinlein]
My dad grew all of our food, butchered the meat, and polished our shoes, gave baths, etc. My husband cooks most of the meals at our house, but by and large, the woman is head of the house and decides what the family is going to do with the household income, and what food they will eat. I’ve heard more than one woman at work discuss giving permission for the big screen tv purchase.
Besides, what’s good enough for Anthony Bourdain is good enough for me. I imagine a lot of water goes into the making of pampers. Trees, trucks, warehouses, manufacturing, oil (plastic) and all the people it provides with an income. No easy answers.
“If you can convince women to return to planning dinner with their families…”
Why so few challenges to this as an assumption of ‘women’s work’? Don’t we all have a responsibility to be more conscious about what we eat, where it comes from, and how it was produced? Even if you are a bachelor eating on the fly you have to ‘plan’ whether to eat sme pre-packaged high waste fast food or something more wholesome.
“Out west here it is worse to wash them than to dispose of them; water shortages and all that.”
Hmmmm not sure where ‘out west’ is but this is another example of what I was talking about. We worry about water shortages and those shortages are real – not just out West but all over the world. And we do stuff like by Pampers because we don’t have to wash them (though ironically dishwashers and washing machines can be efficient uses of water).
We may even put buckets in the shower or only flush the toilet after every three uses because this is the received wisdom about what is ‘good’. BUT what is the real accounting of our water use? The virtual or embedded water in everything we buy buy that is never accounted for and is so much more profligate than that used for washing diapers (which can be washed with other clothes – I know I did it 20 years ago). This shadowy water is embedded at the point of ‘manufacture’ or during production.
If you are buying food from officially water-stressed areas or countries you are contributing a much bigger water shortage. In the UK the example often used is green beans. We import green beans from drought ridden Kenya when we can, and do!, grow them here. And there are zillions of other examples. A cup of coffee embeds about 140 litres (246 pints) of water, a cotton T-shirt about 2,000 litres, and a kilogram of steak 15,000 litres. A single sheet of paper embeds 10 litres of water!
On average we use a bathtub full of embedded water per person each day – more than enough to accommodate an extra load of diapers over the few years you may use them.
If we weren’t frittering away water on overconsumption of things we don’t really need and if there was no advertising telling us to ignore the facts and buy disposable diapers we might make very different choices.
I realise we’ve got off the astrology somewhat in this thread but for me it all comes down to taking intelligent responsibility. We don’t have to make the same mistakes over and over again, neither do we need to expect the world to ever be finished to unattainable perfection. But culture change isn’t so different from personal change – though it’s acted out on a much bigger and rather more complex stage. We do need to take an intelligent holistic view of where we currently find ourselves including confronting the massive shadows of the modern world of which embedded water, pepper spray, ADHD and the gap between the rich and poor are just a few examples.
“If you can convince women to return to planning dinner with their families, and to washing diapers instead of filling up the landfills with pampers, that would be quite an achievement. But I don’t think it will happen, unless something really devastating takes place.”
Out west here it is worse to wash them than to dispose of them; water shortages and all that. It is a real hard choice out here because washing that much takes up huge amounts of water. Maybe we should go the route of …was it the Uzbekistanis on No Reservations….. who use a cradle with a hole in the bottom and a basin to catch the baby’s waste. Not likely.
I didn’t say we have to go back to all that old stuff completely; just back to valuing people over profit and people over stuff.
The reason women won’t go back to planning dinner for their families is because the so-called “women’s movement” really just used the male default model and pushed for women to be able to be like that. It did not raise the value of what traditional women do so that it is equal to what men do. Both men and women devalue traditional “women’s work” such as meal planning and cooking. In other words, until our society values the traditional feminine arts such as homekeeping and all that, women will not want to do those thankless and unrewarding tasks.
Imagine what things would be like were traditional women’s work valued for the human capital investment it really is; complete with the same social safety nets that paid work has. But, but, that’s not “real” work right? Tell that to every woman who does it day in and day out. If we all stopped (and so many of us have abdicated those tasks to underpaid and under educated others that we have in essence stopped) a lot of the human capital would not be invested in very well. Mary Eberstadt makes a case that this is exactly what has happened.
As for me, I LOVE the feminine arts of cooking, meal planning, and all that unpaid, undervalued, human capital investment stuff. That’s not to say I am not a feminist; I am because I value equal pay and women’s free agency over their bodies and all that too. These are not mutually exclusive positions to have.
Advertising free means accountability between the readers and the content-makers. The price for is that if you can, you pay for a subscription so that we are funded (if you cannot, you get lots to read and listen to, and you can help by referring us readers and subscribers); the greater savings is that you don’t buy that thing you don’t need that slices and dices, or that drug, or that car, for far more than the cost of a subscription.
Accountability means that when I figure out that Gardasil is killing people, I can tell you the truth because I don’t have Merck as a sponsor.
One benefit of this is editorial freedom. I don’t have to tailor my content to please advertisers. I will give you an example. Recently I did an interview with a magazine and the interviewer asked me something like: where is the one place you feel you really stand out of the crowd, in terms of something you write about that’s really daring?
I said: I write about masturbation.
She said: I need you to cut that, because we have this ONE conservative advertiser who is going to be offended. So, I told her to cut that question and that reply; and her readers, who have been reading my horoscopes for years, will not get to know this one salient fact about my contribution to culture — unique in my field, by the way, and extremely rare among popular writers.
I promise you that you don’t just have mention of masturbation omitted from ad-sponsored outlets (though when was the last time you saw it discussed sincerely on network or cable TV? but we get plenty of bullshit about abstinence). You get endorsements for warfare, torture and Gardasil because that’s what advertisers want, and you don’t hear about many things that you might get to hear about and benefit from.
So when you look at Planet Waves and see the incredible diversity, depth and quality of our content, and the daring things we write about, and consider why you can trust what the writers here say, please think of two things:
ADVERTISING-FREE and SUBSCRIBER-SPONSORED.
For days now, way prior to listening to the podcast or reading this post, the word “liminal” was running through my brain on one of those centaurian repeating looops of which Len wrote. I looked at the definition again: of or relating to a sensory threshold; barely perceptible; of or relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase or condition: in between, transitional.
Another meaning comes from anthropology regarding phases and social structures, rights of passage.
So, in the eclipsed glow of the Gemini Full Moon, here we are a space between, a liminal space.
JannKinz
“Here is a link to a piece I managed to track down, written by a colleague of mine in 1992(!) http://www.eco-action.org/dt/recycle.html sadly still relevant today. It explains why recycling benefits manufacturers more than the average citizen. We unquestioningly internalise the message that recycling (or add any other ‘green’ magic bullet’ you like in that space) is good because it is backed by a continual PR push and its something we can do that takes relatively little effort and allows us to continue consuming and wasting at a spectacular level. ”
There’s two kinds of recycling: the kind patti is talking about here and the kind where instead of buying anything new, you buy USED. That is the kind of recycling that doesn’t push the PR and consumption-based manufacturing of goods with built-in obsolescence. Freecycle and bartering and thrift stores are the real recyclers as are compost bins and gardens.
“…we get rid of advertising.”
Yep and here’s how we do it: STOP WATCHING and most of all, STOP BUYING what it sells!
It really IS that simple and that powerful. They won’t keep spending on advertising when we stop watching and buying. It is a feedback loop and we CAN stop it.
That’s where the “live with less” comes in.
I agree that the kids have made their point but now it is time to
organize politically. The spraying of those kids/also in other cases
elderly people is totally wrong and undemocratic. I worry that those
arrested could possibly face felony charges and be unable to vote which
would be a disaster. They must now get ready to vote. All the
Republicans must go. In the absence and seeming impossibility of a third
party we must vote for Obama who has let his base down. We must support
people like Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee and there are
just a very few others. Barney Frank is not perect but is more on the
side of the 99% than most. Don’t blame him for getting out but it’s a
loss. This has to be, for now, a voter rebellion but eventually if that
does not work, a true Revolution will occur. This Bankster stuff cannot
go on. And most of the police action is totally bizarre and indicative
of the Mid-East Dictatorships and the result will be that the Arab Spring
will eventually turn against the USA/Israeli alliance. This is big.
Peace and light,
Marta
Afterthought: The best strategy, in my humble opinion, would be for all
of the Occupiers to join the Republican Party and vote for Ron Paul.
Then in the General Election, they could still vote anyway they chose,
but the choices would be more of a win/win–he is for some of the
objectives of the Occupiers, such as bringing the troops home, at least
auditing the Federal Reserve and has not expressed a desire to demolish
the so-called Entitlements in a unjudicious manner as he admitted this
would cause chaos. He is more honest than ANY of the other Republicans.
I have to agree with the Republicans that under Obama “things” will not
get better, BUT THEY DON’T SAY THAT UNDER THE REST OF THE REPUBLICANS,
THINGS WOULD GET WORSE.
I LOVE YOUR INSIGHTFULNESS AND ADMIRE YOU GREATLY.
Great thread. As to OWS, imo Medora nailed it. Many think in the old paradigm and just totally miss what is really happening there. It is NOT children throwing a temper tantrum (though the misguided certainly find their way to the occupy camps) but rather young people embodying true community and a way of being, calling us all to occupy ourselves and the earth responsibly, awakening the slumbering from the consumer spell, the trance, the mass hypnosis.
I see many doing as Carrie describes and agree we each have a part we will play, consciously or not. I personally have a long way to go on this journey. But I think, at least, I’m awake!
Kudos to Eric for his example of advertising free space with Planet Waves. In hindsight, the advent of advertising and broadcast media was the beginning of the corporate takeover of America.
I don’t think advertising should go away, really. It helps pay for the internet too. Did you know that periodicals (newspapers and magazines) were practically postage free before internet, TV and radio? The congress knew that we needed information to make decisions in the voting process.
What needs to happen is (IMHO haha) is the people’s shopping habits have to drive the business creation, but shoppers have to be educated. I’d be more in favor of mandatory home ec classes for high school and college students, and maybe even mandate a master gardener class with a real culinary garden at each grade school and high school. The example set by Mrs. Obama should be a model for everyone, and I am thrilled that this has happened. We have a local grade school that is doing this as well, and the children harvest the food for their lunches. How awesome is that?
YES YES YES, Eric! This may be the single most radical and ultimately enriching action we could take…
All great stuff and almost too much to get ones head around even in a couple of sittings. I have been dipping in and out so I’ll just pick a spot to start with, which is Alex’s first comment and jump of from there – and hope some of it is useful.
With respect Alex I disagree about recycling and feel this is illustrative of a wider point I was trying to make in my own tiny contribution to this thread on Friday about shifting the paradigm (though I know that phrase is nearly threadbare these days).
Here is a link to a piece I managed to track down, written by a colleague of mine in 1992(!) http://www.eco-action.org/dt/recycle.html sadly still relevant today. It explains why recycling benefits manufacturers more than the average citizen. We unquestioningly internalise the message that recycling (or add any other ‘green’ magic bullet’ you like in that space) is good because it is backed by a continual PR push and its something we can do that takes relatively little effort and allows us to continue consuming and wasting at a spectacular level.
Local councils encourage residents to to become an unpaid workforce to sort waste for them al in the name of environment and conservation and activism. When the price is right they sell it to scrap merchants and make extra money for themselves; when the price is low they export it to other countries to be buried or burned there instead of on our native soil. Shifting the toxic burden else where is not a solution. Recycling is the sort of thing (one of many) that the 99% should be actively questioning and asking whether there isn’t a better way.
One better way would be not to make and buy so much in the first place, to challenge the ‘benefits’ of ownership which we’ve had shoved down our throats for decades, perhaps insist on a system where major goods like computers and TVs and fridges are leased rather than owned (because then manufacturers would have to take the ultimate responsibility for the longevity, maintenance and end of life of the goods we use) and to demand an end to shipping unlimited amounts of goods around the world (thus reducing both primary and secondary packaging that needs to be recycled). Who’s up for that deep a shift?
My frustration with OWS is not that its heart is in the wrong place, but that it refuses to fully engage it’s mind with what I admit is a set of knotty global problems. There is still this demand for someone else to sort things out (as in the video that Amanda posted)which I find frustrating. But at the same time…
I understand that people find it hard to engage at a deep level. We are all busy and tired. But again isn’t this, in part, the story of how the concept of ‘activism’ has also been co-opted by the PR machinery? We can all be effective activists in our day to day lives? Really? I wonder. Can we all be brain surgeons? Daredevil pilots? Astrologers? But also there is a huge head-fuck schism between the apocalyptic problems we are told the world in facing and the ‘simple solutions’ we are all told will fix everything. Maybe people don’t engage with the solutions because they know, instinctively, they are a lie? or because they so often seem to involve buying something else; special recycling bins, new lightbulbs, a t-shirt – or a new tent?
Here’s a thought that I’m sure will be unpopular. Activism requires skill and thoughtfulness and some kind of vision and plan – yet we leave activism to a largely unpaid, unskilled, undirected workforce – one without a minimum wage or a union, and with a ‘staff’ turnover’ that would guarantee complete collapse in any other enterprise.
There’s a big difference between coming up with a good idea that inspires the public imagination and support and just hoping that in the muddle of bodies pressed against one another in one of the OWS gatherings some good idea will eventually emerge. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. In my darker moments pondering ‘activism’ I wonder if the protesting we are largely playing at plays right into the hands of those who like the appearance of change but have no commitment to actual change (an apathy shared by politicians, major corporations and average Joes everywhere).
More and more I am returning to the view that personal, inner change is the missing foundation for wider change and all the rest is just exhibitionism.
Carrie, to do that there is one thing and just one thing that needs to happen: we get rid of advertising.
It is the same with people who buy organic food at Whole Foods thinking they have a small footprint, when most of the food and products sold there are imported. My brother runs a produce stand and I’ve been with him on trips to the market at purchasing time. All of it comes in on a train from California – therefore, no train, no produce. There are organic markets here that get their produce from the same trains we get ours – same company trucks pull up and deliver the same produce we just purchased as walk-in retail buyers. You can buy organic and non-organic and satisfy both types of customers. Imagine the chaos if the trains were interrupted! Chaos! If you want to know what people from the Depression years ate, just ask them – cornbread soaked in a glass of milk was breakfast and lunch. That was pretty much it. My uncle’s wife said a piece of cornbread with a slice of onion was their normal evening meal. My mother’s family ate a little better I think, since they owned chickens. Imagine Americans eating like that today.
I still have my Beatles record collection, btw. The sixties was simple compared to today. The rush to extend credit to everyone began with Jimmy Carter, didn’t it? They wanted everyone to be able to own a car and house (or perhaps the banks convinced everyone that was for the good of the country). Next came NAFTA and the gigantic removal of all the jobs from the country so even the poorest people could afford toaster ovens and microwaves. What does a DVD player cost today, $59.00? In 1984, we paid over $500 for a VCR player. It was an incredible expense for our little budget. No-one forces any of us to spend the money. Now the DVD player has been replaced by internet downloads and cable, which costs a fortune, in more ways than one. All those satellites didn’t get there for free and they sure as hell aren’t green.
Patty, you say “they didn’t have cell phones, computers, mtv nor any other of the things kids take for granted today”. While it’s true that the world has become overwhelmed with technology and the pace of life is frighteningly fast, at the same time – I think some of the issue here is to do with the generation gap. We too did things and had things that our parents thoroughly disapproved of – and look what happened when Rock n Roll first hit the US, or Jimmy Hendrix and co in the 60s? There are indeed some ‘spoilt brats’ out there, but the ‘youth of today’ have been handed down a pretty raw deal, and if you go and talk to some of them you’ll find out that many of them are extraordinary human beings.
Carrie, when i was growing up in the 50s our birthday parties consisted of dinner and a cake made by my mom. My kids’ birthdays were similar actually, although I did normally buy a gift for them – but they didn’t have cell phones, computers, mtv nor any other of the things kids take for granted today. My kids are in the 30s, and their friends’ children are the ones that expect the Chuckie Cheese birthday parties, cellphones, computers, games, and nice clothing. Wasting a lot of money is a relatively new phenomenon because we just simply didn’t have that kind of income in the 70s. We didn’t even start using a credit card until the 80s.
If you can convince women to return to planning dinner with their families, and to washing diapers instead of filling up the landfills with pampers, that would be quite an achievement. But I don’t think it will happen, unless something really devastating takes place. Someone I know that works at the food bank said if you hand this age group a bag of noodles and box of tomatoes they will ask, “What am I supposed to do with this?” This is a pathetic generation coming along, who won’t be able to cope with we elderly and infirm. Woe is us for euthanasia is surely around the corner. I keep seeing all the glowing reports about the OWS crowd, but they look like selfish and self-centered brats to me.
Great observations again, Carrie.
Personally, I hold reservations about all anthropocentric views about life – it is a huge blind spot issue. Political and social analysis is always woefully lacking something when the major focus.
Stretching back the thoughts to Eric’s podcast with Elisa Novick brings something utterly crucial to the mix. Everything we do should be grounded in the fullest ecological context.
Sadly, such will only be conclusive once we have created consequences that affect everyone on the planet incontrovertibly. If we can’t commune with trees and insects etc how can we truly love our planet. We currently are steeped in anthropolatry (my neologism for the idolatry of the human as the touchstone of meaning, existence and purpose).
We specks of dust are incredibly arrogant about our place in the scheme of things. Humility is not self-abnegation however, it is knowing your place as merely an infinitesimally small part of all that is – a part that should be respectful and thankful to share in the joy of experiencing an amazing multiverse.
Instead we self-delude on our importance – but we shall be humbled. And the ones who supposed themselves to be Gods will know how far they have fallen when circumstance ensures they can no longer sustain their megalomania…
I mean think about this: what if everyone, EVERYONE, simplified their lives, scaled back some, lived with less, got only what they needed? I am not saying we go back to the low tech days and women-suppression of the 50’s. I am saying we go back to the family or people-centered living (but with the tech stuff within reason; no one needs every new iteration of each item) of the post-depression 30’s?
I recently read a piece written by an Irish visitor to America and his insights were wonderful. He listed the things he didn’t like about America and among these were several that had to do with how consumption has taken over all our lives but we are less happy and less content despite all the things and big, huge-carbon-footprint homes we have. He said he found it totally incongruous that someone would be desperate to get the Apple i4s and pay tons of money for it when the functionality was only marginally better than the regular Apple i4. That so encapsulates the problem.
Usually I dislike the “people need to take responsibility” phrase because it is typically uttered by one of the privileged to blame the underclass for their own misery. Yet in these issues we are facing, I do think we all can have some responsibility in enacting the change. Some shall be our voice- the OWS. Some shall be our workers- people like me. Some shall be our coordinators and informants – people like the writers here at PW. Some shall be facilitators- again like people here at PW. Each has their part in enacting and birthing the change.
“I’d just like to mention Carrie’s contributions on this thread. It is precisely her way of viewing this mess, and how to chime in, that we sorely need. Grounding consciousness within functional localities is crucial.
I’d add a further point from Taoism to make a bold observation..
Could you imagine if we IGNORED the oppressive power structure? If we so got with the constructive agenda that we wasted NO ENERGY on it and its UTTER IRRELEVANCE. If we can direct our *freedoms* toward creating communities that are no longer based upon divisions and differences but upon the things that we are persons grounded in localities wish to build together then we would surely discover in time that those values would healing to all those who need to see some contrast, some difference in experience, some warmth that they have never so far encountered within their isolated, materialistic worlds of deep freeze…”
[Note, this is broken up into short paragraphs to make reading it easier so it doesn’t follow the standard writing paragraphing. I have found this useful on other forums.]
Thanks, Alex! And the second point us the MOST important one if you ask me. That was what I was getting at but unable to articulate as well.
I still believe that one of the first things we all have to do is change how we live. As I watch programs on TV that show people buying homes, it strikes me that each of these programs is just an advertisement and programming for consumption.
I lived in a teeny village in the Occupied West Bank territory back in 1978. The building had four rooms. The bathroom was a shack on a hill outside but at night everyone just went out back and squatted. No toilet paper either; we used soft leaves or old paper. There was no running water but they did have electricity. As a privileged American, I learned to adapt fast. Our bedding was futon style and had to be rolled up every day. Doing the laundry was a big job of hauling water, hand scrubbing and rinsing, wringing it out and hanging it up to dry.
Yet through all that hard labor, there was a vast peacefulness that the unrushed life held for me. I have never forgotten it. The daily tasks, the people sharing these, the slow measure of time was amazing.
Looking at the stars in the deep black of the night, seeing the golden sunrise at dawn, making hats for the family little ones out of left over yarn I happened to have, hearing the Muslim call to prayer five times a day and the stillness as they all complied; these were amazing.
No amount of wall-to-wall carpeting, second bathrooms, dishwashers, square footage, THINGS could compare to the starkly beautiful desert and peaceful existence that I had lived then.
Those memories live within me right now and even as I look around at this rented home I live in with typical American amenities, I realize they have so much less value than my husband, my children, cooking for them, caring for them, sharing with friends. We need to show how all those intangible but so valuable things are better.
This is why I have a blog wherein I extoll the virtues of being a progressive housewife. Living with less, doing more, and seeing the beauty in simplicity is what I am trying to share with everyone.
In my circle of friends, I have started the trend of “buy-nothing” birthday parties. On the invitations (often via e-mail or phone call to save trees) I tell people “Your presence IS the present, please buy NOTHING.” I tell them that “expecting presents is against sustainability and excludes those friends who, through no fault of their own, are having economic hardships and might not come if they felt they could not afford the usually expected gift. It is far more important to us that we share this day with them than that we get gifts.” This is what I tell them all.
We then celebrate at home with homemade food, our own household dishes, and a cake we have baked and decorated. This means we are not buying paper products, decorations (unless we make these ourselves with stuff we already have aka recycling). We play games with old games we found at the local thrift store, do 3-d puzzles (also found at the thrift store) and hang out and enjoy each others company.
Group-think works; because I did it and touted the virtues of it, more and more of my friends have chosen to go the same route. See? ANYONE can set the tone, be an example, and live the way they want without insulting anyone or making “the oppressors” the focus.
If this housewife in a rural town can start a trend, why not YOU? (The collective “you.”)
That’s what it takes; practical, everyday, I-can-do-it-right-now ideas and actions. No oppressors in any of that; just smart, positive, earth-sustaining, community-building ways to live and change. Can’t get anymore grassroots than that!
Thank you, Eric, for your consistently thoughtful and important
writing on these times.
I am listening to conversations about the the OWS movement and
appreciate the passion and relief that people express about there
finally being a popular rising against what has been growing for such
a long time. I am curious about the motivation at times for the
outrage and am hesitant to engage when it feels like there is too a
vested interest in an old pattern of protest. I have been encouraged
by the creativity and the human compassion that is clearly part of the
OWS movement and also stunned by the level of fear and brutality that
the police express in response. I have not been involved myself –
mostly because I am in my own healing mode that reflects that sense of
petulance and childish hurt you so perfectly outliine – but also
because i distrust the flavor of the month mediazation that I am weary
of engaging. I am also sensing that the responsibilty factor you name
– maturing and guiding together – is a very potent element of how this
could truly revolutionalize the situation. And, as my teacher
cautions, be thoughtful of any sense of messianic purpose. Taking
care of my own shit and keeping an eye out for the place that I may
be the most use when it comes.
Learning to parent ourselves together as the authoritarian model
morphs is a potent idea. I have been missing the feminine voice of my
mother but I trust she will emerge with all of the other women who had
a stake in getting us born. I am listening and I am grateful for your
voice of encouragement.
Melanie Hegge
Glad you liked the Stornoway track, Huffy. This song shows a gathering of people who wish to share an inspiring experience around something most folk can relate to – it is an intrinsically positive expression, celebration and sharing of the drive/unction to change, to free oneself from some of the shackles of inauthentic living. A call to join the New Revolution to free the Battery Human that has nothing whatsoever to do with confronting power, but rather exploring and exercising different choices/possibilities!
Burning River, thank you for your supportive affirmation. I deeply appreciate the quality of your poetic tone in your response. Poetry is the ‘stuff’ of life. The spirit sings, we come alive and we move off of the plane of intellectual analysis – which has a place but which gets fixated on right/wrong…
Which brings me to Eileen’s email, posted below by Mr E. F.
Eric Traub’s rightness or wrongness is precisely beside the point. Regardless of the accuracy and comprehensiveness of his views there is a core observation about taking responsibility. Sure, this can be pushed too far and could be seen as harbouring drawbacks – but what view doesn’t? It isn’t possible for one view to cover every single base. The merit comes from pointing out some key points, easily missed. We don’t want to fall into the trap of being adolescent in our thinking generally – this does not mean being adolescent is BAD – it just means that the energy can get wasted or deployed less effectively than it might with a more rounded plan. Much adolescent behaviour challenges the comfort zones of the settled – even when ignoring the grey areas of human complexities.
The point as I see it is NOT to state definitive positions, true for all times and places, eternally binding etc but TO SEE THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THINGS – and build accordingly.
The salient points/issues require discernment followed by articulation. Perhaps most importantly, it is vital to interlink key observations in order to develop our understanding of the optimal personal and collective strategies – this means we must, at root, be committed to a CONSTRUCTIVE agenda.
To me, just to re-cap my point from earlier about the Uranus/Pluto square, we know these initial moves have been brought to you by Uranus on the Aries Point – you know, the lightning strike; like the Tower in the tarot. Pluto in Capricorn is the next hook up point we anticipate, when this revolutionary spirit hits the evolutionary unction of Pluto.
Now personally, I think Uranus is a super wrecking ball and perhaps clears the way for a gradual Plutonic rebuild made of weightier stuff. The very nature of Uranus is contradictory; square its own natal sun and opposite both its natal Saturn and natal Mars. It is in the very nature of Uranus to cast off the shackles of Saturnian tradition through the extreme of revolution without thinking about the consequences and without the recognition that something of value being released is the goal. Traditions and structures give containment – it is totally lacking sense to jettison the good in something just because one seeks to vanquish the bad. Uranus carries this in constant tension within its modus operandi. There is something here that has the feel of ‘Gods and mortals’ about it, not unlike the feel of Mercury and akin to the trickster Loki in the Norse pantheon – something double-edged, beyond good and evil, a necessary principle of disruption that is both healthy and unhealthy at the same time – and you can’t resolve the two from each other. They are two sides of the one coin.
This is why we require Pluto to balance out all the Karma. There can be no fudge, no deep rooted self-deceptions at this particular party – the stakes are too high. We are in something of a last chance saloon and all the detritus and infection within the collective unconscious is going to have to be flushed out.
As above so below but also as within so without..
I’d just like to mention Carrie’s contributions on this thread. It is precisely her way of viewing this mess, and how to chime in, that we sorely need. Grounding consciousness within functional localities is crucial.
I’d add a further point from Taoism to make a bold observation..
Could you imagine if we IGNORED the oppressive power structure? If we so got with the constructive agenda that we wasted NO ENERGY on it and its UTTER IRRELEVANCE. If we can direct our *freedoms* toward creating communities that are no longer based upon divisions and differences but upon the things that we are persons grounded in localities wish to build together then we would surely discover in time that those values would healing to all those who need to see some contrast, some difference in experience, some warmth that they have never so far encountered within their isolated, materialistic worlds of deep freeze…
Dear Eric,
Thank you for another thought-provoking essay.
Generally speaking, I think the steady diet of War propaganda has reshaped how we think and act and could explain the viscous and illegal pepper spray attacks on OWS protesters. Some current propaganda: If we cut back on defense spending we leave ourselves open to attack from terrorists. We have to militarized our locals police forces to protect us from ‘the enemy’, The enemy is whoever authority tells us it is.
After the Sixties and Seventies, it is hard to believe that eleven years into the 21st century Orwell’s ‘War is Peace’ rhetoric would be taking hold. As a culture we have become almost immune to acts of violence – police assaulting peaceful protesters with pepper spray is unconscionable, yet the media is treating it like maybe the protesters deserved it.
In terms of propaganda, the quote from the ex-FBI agent reinforces the belief that it is proper procedure to peppy spray or taser a “hostile crowd.” He, as an authority, gets to define the temperament of the crowd as ‘hostile’. Then he further tweaks the perception of the event by comparing the situation to a police officer having to release a prisoner. (A prisoner is a bad person.)
I agree with Traub to a point – I think he simplifies situations a bit, especially when he compared the OWS movement to children rising up against their parents, as if that were a bad thing. The unspoken, subconscious thought that comes across is if one supports the OWS protesters they will be labeled as immature or childish. This is a disguised way of saying peaceful demonstrations are immature and childish. If the protesters were bona fide adults, they would be out there creating “a new form of healthy, holistic leadership.”
What actions does Traub propose the protesters take to create “a new form of healthy, holistic leadership”?
Traub, speaking as an authority, instructs us on the healthiest form of parenting, known as authoritative, versus unhealthy authoritarian. Traub’s narrative made me assume he was endorsing the virtues of authoritative style. But then he delivers his critique of the OWS protesters in the style of an authoritarian. From Traub:
“We have to decide: do we truly want to effect change and accept all the implications of that change, including a far greater share of responsibility for making the world and its systems work, and the tremendous labors that entails? Or, do we simply want to protest and throw a collective tantrum against the way it’s been?…”
“We have to decide…” Traub orders, then subtly warns us that if we insist on change, we are responsible for whatever happens. I would compare this kind of logic to a parent saying to a child, “Sure, you can jump in the deep end of the pool, but if you sink it’s your responsibility to save yourself. So your choice becomes one to never jump in or jump in and drown. This seems an attempt to reinforce the fear of change.
Comparing the OWS protesters to children throwing a tantrum is a bit harsh. It looks to me like the OWS protesters are taking a stand against the status quo – the imbalance of wealth and resources and justice in America and in the world. And a protest against a nation of militarized police.
One of the messages I get from OWS is we’re all in this together. Interconnections are becoming more obvious. The movement seems organic, which I see as a positive, because organic movements crop up everywhere and cannot easily be stopped.
Lt. John Pike is the scariest figure to appear on the landscape since Darth Vader and Dick Cheney. Imagine him as your jailer. Cruel and heartless and above the law.
Eileen
Thanks for the wonderful song Alexander. Just loved it.
Alexander, as always. appreciate your viewpoint. Particularly, the splitting and draining of our personal energy and attention by so many factors calling to us as we attempt to survive and “thrive” in the lives in which we find ourselves. As always, I see the oligarchic influence as undermining the middle class financially that has demanded us to work more hours and more than one job in order to pay for health insurance and education etc. Plus more awareness of the pressing needs of society as a whole and the planet as our source calling for our attention and involvement.
I personally have found it foundational to heal the rifts within myself, as you suggested. In this process I have found energy and time occasionally to support the passions I have for tending to the healing needs of ”The Whole” Perhaps aging is bringing this wisdom and balance, but I pass it on when appropriate, including to my children, hoping it can be incorporated much sooner in their lives than I have. Every one in the end hears and sees what they want to hear an see.
Love your youtube link and your call to BE at the sunrise.
Just last night I was with my two sisters on a deserted beach of Lake Michigan as the surf pounded and roared from the howling drive of the west winds coming in. The waxing –into-phase culminating in the Gemini New Moon of this morning shone on us casting clear, well defined shadows on the frozen sand. Imprinted by the multitude of scenes like these burgeoning around me changes me . Always for the better.
I’ll be looking for you at my next sunrise.
+-+
Small footnote: All my remarks were aimed at the specific episode wherein the pepper spraying itself occurred. I thought the silent protest later that evening was absolutely phenomenal in its effectiveness and dignity. (By contrast, screaming “F*ck the police!” prior to the pepper spraying I thought was on the other end of the spectrum.) The great Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi, said, “Silence is unceasing eloquence.” In that way, I thought the students were indeed unceasingly eloquent that night. And for the record, I personally think the Police Chief, Capt. Pike, and the Chancellor should all resign or be fired over the incident. At least those three for openers, and then any other responsible parties in so-called leadership positions.
Eric, many many thanks for your rich multiple contributions (especially your last two that develop matters considerably and with moving unction). Little can be added and people would benefit greatly from soaking up your points until they hit home.
I wish to add something that requires some serious consideration. In my last post attention was drawn to the need to internalise our values after actually working out what they are (and not merely defined in contradistinction to faulty, yet hegemonic, ones within the oligarchy-defined *reality frame* we collectively inhabit) and also to observe the wisdom of the Tao in not creating counterproductive resistance by dehumanising agents of the oligarchy and not confronting power directly but by shaping our energies in a different direction.
After your two subsequent posts something further came onto my radar:
People are weighed down, pulled in so many directions at once, regularly cut in two. This has a huge impact on personal energy reserves and life force. One of the reasons that there is so much inertia within the ‘masses’ is in my view less to do with human nature and a longing for tradition to inoculate against scary changes but more to do with simply experiencing a deep lack of spare energy for any *surplus* thinking and doing on top of their already hassled lives. If you like, they seek peace and refuge from the onslaughts of life.
This perpetuates a new sort of dualistic ambivalence. Kind of like “Look I’d love to become some sort of Caped Crusader and save the planet, or even just give an hour a week to a local group looking at the issue, but I can’t justify it in the context of my already brimming over, packed existence.”
Here in the UK, many people have struggled to adjust to the advent of domestic waste recycling as just another imposed change to assimilate. Although once adjusted it becomes second nature to recycle, at first there is a MENTAL RESISTANCE, because it all seems like yet more tokenism that doesn’t really change very much very quickly, but feels like much is needed FROM ME to effect it.
And this is my point at this juncture. The psychology of resistance is everywhere, which is just a variant on the psychology of avoidance and we could follow that trail and its consequences on a personal level with its outflowing effects quite a way..
Now, if we could shift THAT would we not be looking at something tsunami-like on a life force release level?
This has me thinking about the old personal/political chestnut that so regularly holds sway over our personal/social/global *realities* and that PlanetWaves regularly addresses.
People don’t have time for *causes* generally, above and beyond their own. A false split exists in people’s thinking born of being irreducibly central to their personal existence. This is where most of the resistance is.
We need to heal that division FAST. I’m not sure that there is time for this to happen as a natural process before our planet is terminally wounded (please pardon any sensationalism here, it is not intended).
My feeling is that considerable work has to be done on a PR level that involves reducing any sense in the viewer that a movement exists outside myself. Now well I believe that ‘Occupy Yourself’ is a catchy slogan, a tagline worthy of any ideological movement, I remain unconvinced that this is sufficient to truly sell the product.
I think of Health Promotion campaigns and how they are so often unsuccessful in getting people to internalise the motivators for sustained change – you know ‘If this, then that’ sorts of consequence clauses that are short-lived – but that fall short in practice.
It seems to me that work needs to be done in healing the chasm that has opened up between a person’s parochial sense of their own world and ideas about the world outside or beyond self (which has become somewhat unreal in comparison to the reality of the person’s subjectivity – leading to the consequence of ‘out of sight, out of mind’) that align, Eric T, with your eloquent outlining of contemporary narcissism.
I know such an approach carries risks. But if collective self-interest has bequeathed to us our pressing problems is it more realistic to suggest that collective self-abnegation will reverse that impact or a different take/expression on/of self-interest?
Now, something concrete.
I’m not suggesting that we turn OWS into a neo-LiveAid concert with all the top bands in the world (that would ultimately play into the hands of the overlords) but maybe we can envisage creating conditions wherein folk actually commit to their own healthy process; because they have realised that is WHAT THEY REALLY NEED/WANT.
How many folk are oppressed by the many demands of modern life and would not be able to see the many personal benefits of a return to relative simplicity? Could this be a vein of gold to mine? I think so! Would it be too big a stretch to see local movements within art/culture and expression organise to celebrate simplicity and beauty and the natural things in life, like an early morning sunrise and all that it can inspire – FOR FREE!
I leave you with the following example of how a song about one’s own experience can represent a thing that anybody living any city could surely relate to:
“Mary” commented down below at around 12:00Noon today, and asked a few important questions that deserved a more complete answer than the long commentary I posted, so I wanted to add a few remarks more. Here is what I sent her in an email:
Frankly, I think there is still much more to say about the matters you raised. How will otherwise silent voices be heard? How will those who are powerless within our systems have any influence to improve their situation? How will we reorganize the infrastructure that shapes our lives to achieve a sustainable format?
I think questions like these are absolutely central the OWS movement and being avoided by most people because they are just too damn hard to answer. We have a tendency to steer around the hardest questions and answer the ones where we feel qualified, capable. Understandable, but unacceptable at this time. I think these are the questions that we have to keep asking together until we make progress with real solutions that are tested and proven over time.
Therefore, I would add to my other long response, which was geared to address many various comments all at once, that those of us who are street smart, politically savvy, articulate communicators, or just plain ballsy and committed, need to reach out to the power structures and strive to influence those in seats of power and governance. This goes way beyond sending emails or signing online petitions. We each need to stick our necks out further than we ever have before.
OWS may not have a clear-cut agenda, as many have criticized. But it could adopt a series of questions, investigations, dialogues that need to be explored in depth and detail. Protests, instead of being collective rage-fueled outcries against the system, could consist of unrelenting and vociferous demands for discussion. (Witness the video posted by Amanda Painter this morning where Anjali Appadurai demonstrates exactly what I’m describing here.)
There are ways to be heard if one is striving for a unilateral delivery of a message, you know, shoving the point down someone’s throat. And there are other ways to be heard if one is demanding conversation and mutual engagement. I believe OWS will be stuck in repeating cycles of noble inspiration but lack of accomplishment until the protests become the latter. The tactics used have gotten us to here, and here is amazing, but to go farther we need something more.
For each one of us, in my opinion, we need to bring the spirit of OWS to our everyday lives and worlds, and face the adversity wherever we find it. It takes tenacity and nerves to stay steady in the face of financial tyranny and bureaucratic suppression, and we run into all over the place in our daily lives. While we can’t stop and wage a full protest in every banking interaction or credit card company exchange, we can exert the effort to be unfailingly true to our principles when confronted with deception, fraud, and citizen/consumer exploitation. We need to pick our battles, but we need to put ourselves on the battlefield. because we are, whether we like it or not.
I think a large part of the answer is inciting people to occupy their lives in this way.
I hope this is satisfying to your question. Your questions couldn’t be more worthy.
ps a couple extra comments on Joan’s thoughts
– she did definitely (outside of the videotaped part) take on the topic of leadership, saying how it’s foolish to think that you can have a leaderless movement, and instead to address the fact that we do need leadership development, a well thought out process to help people move into their power
– also, what was interesting that maybe doesn’t get addressed, is the idea that we need to collectively work with our fear and yes, horror, at what is going on and where we might be headed. she talked about the importance of talking about this with other people, having a chance to actually get it out there/share it, instead of being paralyzed by holding it in. she referenced Joana Macy’s work/exercises on this, The Work That Reconnects. and talked about how many people might never get involved because of the barrier that is the risk of not winning, or being successful, in effecting change – of participating in something that may defeat you and beat you down/tear you apart
I don’t know that adding more words to this already voluminous conversation will add more value, but I’ll try. I have read all of the comments here and the related blog posts, including Amanda’s powerfully moving post and video from the U.N. Summit where youth delegate, Anjali Appadurai, outright demands that the leadership, “Get it done!” in regards to making the changes that will make the difference in climate change. Citing Mandela, she quotes, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” I believe that’s an accurate statement about where we are right now in OWS which is, in truth, Occupy Earth, our planet, our home. As Anjali so beautifully says, it will take “courage…. science, reason and calming compassion.” And, as she breathtakingly demonstrates, that can be delivered with an inner fire, healthy power, and gigantic human dignity.
I was asked earlier, “What is the forum [for making a difference in the matters being raised and address by the OWS Movement]? My answer is there isn’t one. That’s the point and that’s our first job, and what OWS is starting to generate: a conversation space for recognizing and engaging with the critical issues of our time. This is OWS’s first triumph, and a magnificent one it is. And though that is the first and most necessary step to take, it is not by itself sufficient. There is a lot of work to be done, and we have too figure out how to “get it done”, as the courageous youth delegate demanded.
I am merely a fellow human being to 7 billion like me, my brothers and sisters on this increasingly small island. So I am no position to say what anybody else should do to advance the aims of OWS, but I can be revealing about my own approach and hope that it contributes. I know that there is no other person, not even bankers and cops, politicians and stock traders, who should be denied their humanity in this process. They make mistakes and so do we; their egos run the show and sometimes so do ours. But if we, in leading this movement, adopt a dehumanizing stance as a move in reaction to them, then we are, IMHO, even more to blame because we especially should know better. Attacking each other is easily the stupidest thing we could do now. The Chancellor should have come down to listen and engage with the students. And as the Occupiers who would usurp the misguided governing structures, we better develop our LISTENING in a manner superior to theirs. Or we’ll all just slug it out, mutually deaf and dumb, driving it all downward until it’s nothing but a puddle.
My own first imperative has been to Occupy Myself and My Own Life, meaning something very different from narcissistic indulgence dressed up as caring about social change. I had to admit that I do not understand the causes and conditions that gave rise to the mess we’re in, the financial crisis, climate crisis, and the fundamental crisis of humanity’s shared future. Proposing solutions from the comfort of my armchair without adequate understanding is dilettantish at best, utter bullshit at worst. Therefore, my first task has been to endeavor to understand, to educate myself about the problem and how they came about, to reach a point where I can communicate intelligently about the issues so as to engage others at the best expressions of ourselves.
Next, I realize that nobody is coming to save our butts. We’re it. Full stop. We have an accountability, not merely a ‘sense of responsibility’ for the future of humankind’s presence on this planet. I insist on a sobriety from myself as though I got the call directly from somebody with the authority asking, “So what ARE we going to do to fix this mess?” and I have to give an answer. There will be no such call though, and no invitation to pull up a chair at the Big Table for The Conversation. I have to invite myself, plus anybody and everybody else I want in that conversation. This gig is by self-invitation only, so BYOV, Bring Your Own Voice, and get your ass in a chair, at a mic, on a blog, in a chat, on a call, email, grocery store line conversations — TALK NOW, and equally important, LISTEN HARD. We do not know what to do, none of us, not even close. But we better start asking the questions that make us squirm and using our exquisite human intellects to dig deeper and deeper until we do. We need to feel the heat of Anjali’s words day and night, over lunch and in our sleep: Get it done! And insist on answers from ourselves and those we can influence. No problem does not yield in the face of human persistence after the answer. Not one, ever.
Finally, I check my motivations every day. One very human cause I can readily observe that has led us into this growing state of crisis is a lot of action with little to no awareness of the motivations behind it, and even less attention paid to the consequences. I cannot afford the arrogance of being equally blind. So every day, before I lunge into the fray, I look myself in the eye to ask, “For what, towards that end, am I about to go do what I do today?” I have a profound accountability to my children to do whatever I can shape the world I will leave them. I have that accountability to everything alive now and yet to come. I do my damnedest to actually act, speak and think from that. Of course, I fail at it all day long, but I get back up, dust myself off, and refocus. And then I act, decisively, and knowing that it matters. I doubt anyone can argue that point: What we do at this moment in history matters, our choices will count, so we better make them with seriously rational awareness.
Watch “Inside Job”, several times. Or watch “Margin Call” for a faithful fictional account. Eric Francis is fantastic at elucidating many issues. Read and watch Matt Taibbi. Read, learn, understand, and then get into the arena. Make the arena itself, because it is only starting to exist at all. Cut the hypocrisy out of myself. Route out the unsustainable elements and systems that would lead to personal, familial, community instability or collapse as much as I can. Cut the crap in my own life so strengthen my moral platform to ask and/or demand likewise of others. And recruit others. The roster ultimately needs to include everybody with a pulse. And the inspiration of a few who no longer have one.
I hang my hat on Howard Zinn’s oft-quoted but nevertheless unarguably relevant statement:
“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
And I keep myself as honest as I can with this from Solzhenitsyn:
”It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes… We make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones.”
Onward. With fire and with compassion.
i’ve been doing ‘activism’/organizing for a while now,
and was really inspired by a new book by an old 🙂 activist
(not really too old, just well experienced)
but i think this excerpt from the book (p13) really sums things up:
Change activities that work do the following:
➜ They create vision and enthusiasm so that many diverse people want to be committed to the work; they build a growing base of support for an equitable society.
➜ They make understanding about and effective work on key issues accessible to previously uninformed and inactive people.
➜ They create and model sustainable alternatives for the provision of food, shelter, energy, transportation and the care of children, the disabled and the elderly; they re-create and protect the “Commons.”
➜ They establish multiplying numbers of relationships of respect for all beings and each other, kindness and dignity; they do not seek to increase public fear.
➜ By focusing on key contradictions in the system, they transform the power of predatory elites, redistribute wealth and establish equity.
Perhaps I should have included the progress that has been made – cooling the reactors on the surface to less than 100 degrees with constant watering. And things like that
Bien à tous et tout
Dualism, dichotomy, binaries etc. One does not need to be a feminist to notice the pervasive and disastrous effect of Cartesian rationalism upon contemporary society. There were many antecedents to Cogito Ergo Sum but the perceiving subject becoming central to the nature of reflection/expression upon what *is* has been cataclysmic.
Interestingly, we notice and expose these false dichotomies within conceptualities with impressive frequency in this space.
Yet, when it comes to this manifest polarity in specifically OWS – which is merely embodied expression of those mutually excluding conceptual binaries after all – there is a flurry of analysis that posits some deeper cultural malaise; portrayed as some passive/aggressive adolescence syndrome. Really? Quelle surprise!
We analyse both polarities and end up with fresh binaries! Doh! We replicate the problem for lack of clarity of focus.
There are a couple of glaring issues both specifically related to HOW we internalise our values (because if we don’t internalise them we merely talk and deceive ourselves).
First in Taoist terms, one will not overthrow dehumanised power structures on their own terms of reference. Once we dehumanise the opponent we act so as to resist naked power that simply resists us back. Power hides. You don’t root it out. It sacrifices its minions. Resistance does not work, never has and never will – and arguably, in a society such as ours with rampant global media exposure, is counter-productive to the cause.
But before people can internalise their values they need to know what they are. If those very *values* are merely rejected inversions of somebody else’s inadequate/toxic but culturally dominant values, then we simply garner/instate directionless resistance – which is at best pointless and at worst amenable to hijack by unthinking and potentially feral agendas.
I suspect that virtually all social thinkers and critics have failed to be radical enough in both their conception and articulation of what is at issue at the very core of any planetary (r)evolution – this is where we need to Pluto to temper Uranus, just to smuggle a little astrology into the mix.
Consider this: Why do we even require an entertainment industry?
There was a time when work was intrinsically productive and it produced items that were necessary. Now we have a massive service sector. People are paying something we used to think of as concrete, like money (except it is less so than it has ever been) for a ‘service’ like being entertained for a period of time.
These *items* are consumables. Money used to be tangible (coinage) and had some precious metal value to boot. The exchange was something tangible for something durable or at least for something necessary to sustain life – which is a bottom line for us all.
Currency has had to be made more virtual as more and more non-essential consumables are imbibed by an exponentially increasing global cohort – for which no tangible result is achieved apart from the staving off of boredom or might we say, fending off authentic, self-directed existence – which we have all become less adept at since being socialised into dependency upon the infrastructure of an incarnated monstrosity of not-life.
The only antidote that all humans, whichever side of the fence they happen to be living on, can share in, is a developing distaste for not-life. Once this awareness juncture is lost to our psychic radar (due to the decisive success of advertising propaganda) there remains only our shared sense of reliance upon basic, life-sustaining resources.
A significant orientation choice for us individual units is that between (1) opposing the destructive power of the powerful by every means and seeing the agents of said power as non-human or presenting and (2) enacting our own vision of health-giving living as something all humans benefit from. The latter DOES require organisational prowess and focus.
There is, for example, more than one way of addressing the current rampant global population explosion. We may choose more humane and sensible methods of reducing the planet’s burden, while the corporate psychopaths may continue at best with the food and water toxification programme (the more benevolent overlords that is) or at worst with the Logan’s Run cull scenario – after all you use pesticides on pests so if the pests are out of control….
By the way, these two approaches are not commensurable – so you’d better decide which side you’re on… if you know what I mean? 😉
Our two basic orientation choices do not exclude one another entirely, however. If power comes looking for you then some pretty crux decisions need to be made about how to counter any violations (uniquely personal decisions). But that is an altogether different matter than squaring up to the power base and making radical demands – such may not be unreasonable but it is surely grossly unwise.
We must set agendas for others by being impressive people in our own right. If Uranus wins the war there will be untold bloodshed. Let’s hope Pluto helps us do a more sophisticated number on that incarnated monstrosity of not-life.
This week’s subscriber edition was a real slam dunk Eric! Coincidentally I have also been re-reading The Sibling Society over the last couple of months and for me it is even more relevant now than when it came out.
What Traub is saying is absolutely spot on too and I love his thoughts on leadership. This is why I have been fairly restrained in my celebration of OWS. The problem with it as I see is that the protesters have not yet set their terms and demanded that other meet them and talk to them on those terms. It’s a issue I have with a lot of activism at the moment and part of a growing disenchantment/cynicism with the whole process that it always ends up talking and acting out of the existing paradigm rather than accepting responsibility for shifting the language and the behaviour (and being unpopular for suggesting ways in which it MUST shift…said the Scorpio who is dealing with that issue on a personal level).
We saw so much of this at the Ecologist – people grumbling about social change but then getting cold feet, or worse getting aggressive with us, if the reality of that change meant they also had to change as people or if it looked like it inconvenienced them in any way. The mirror side of that was environmental organisations increasingly crawling into bed with corporate bad-guys, accepting their money and justifying/deluding themselves with the idea that they could work form the inside to make changes.
The concept of ‘change’ has been so co-opted in our society I wonder if we even know what it is any more. We associate it more with fashion make-overs, phone upgrades and bigger TVs – or changing the air freshener in your home – than anything else. So meaningful, under the skin human-scale change that requires investing in something that we can’t buy is almost incomprehensible to us.
I posted a blog on OWS early on suggesting the protesters look at some of the concepts of change that had been floating around for decades and see how they ‘fit’ with their aims. Link here:
I’m sure I could be more eloquent but it’s been long day and I have a hungry son about to descend on me for the holidays on break from University!
Hope all’s good with you.
FYI I estimate I got just over 1000 visits to my IAQ site from Planet Waves so thanks very much for that!
Pat xx
i always look forward to your brilliant articles sent to my email…the quote from your friend, Eric, struck me as belittling & only partially correct…these protesters are also One w/ Source, and many know it, others are awakening Fast. Being also young students they are learning the language of resisting evil, and should not be demeaned as the Wall Street voracious Vampires do…but applauded…some things are worth resisting.
As you know, we are about to encounter far, far worse: Big Alert from an astrologer friend:
“Heads up everyone! Have you seen the National Defense Authorization Act? It allows for Americans to be arrested by the military, detained indefinitely, tortured and interrogated, and even killed — without charge or trial. Anyone can be arrested by the military as a possible “domestic terrorist” and be interrogated with waterboarding and other “advanced interrogation techniques” that are currently outlawed. This law passed the Senate 93 to 7. It has also passed the House of Representatives, but they are slightly different versions. Next they will meet to iron out the differences. I don’t know if Obama will veto it or not, although you can urge him to do so by goinghere.
What I do know is that Congress is playing with fire — firearms to be precise. This law is all that’s needed to arrest all the Occupy Wall Streeters and send them to detention camps (probably the so called FEMA camps) without charges or a trial. We’ve already seen plenty of guns and petrol bombs in the streets around the world with the Uranus square Pluto energies. The Middle East, Greece, Russia, and China have all experienced those type of protests. This law is likely to bring guns into the streets in the US.
Next year we get the first two of seven, exact peaks for the revolutionary energies of Uranus square Pluto. These will occur on June 24th and September 18-19, 2012. We’ve seen plenty of examples of the intensity of these energies in the Middle East and that was before that cycle was even close to peaking. In addition, Uranus will square the US Jupiter, a cycle that will peak in early – to – mid April. That cycle is already in range and it suggests that the Constitution is under attack (an understatement!), about to be disrupted or dismantled.”
The students, granted though they be immature and in need of In Loco Parentis, needed to be the more evolved human beings in that moment and they could have demonstrated something very powerful: that the ruling structures are unnecessary now; that we are rendering the old way of running this planet obsolete.
I agree with much of what your friend says. But I disagree with his conclusion. I believe those immature students did “get something accomplished”. The silent treatment of the college president as she walked to her car the next night was one of the more powerful events of this demonstration season. These students, immature as they were, put their bodies on the line to make visible the dark underbelly of the post-9-11 world in which the state has increasingly adopted violence to protect the machinery of a government drifting inexorably toward fascism. That’s what OWS is “accomplishing” at this point. It’s making visible what our current situation actually is, instead of what our political discourse, increasingly divorced from reality, says it is. Psychology tells us that the first step toward radical change is making visible what is currently invisible, what is unconscious, what Jung would call the Shadow. The Shadow of the “old way of running this planet” is deep, violent and ugly. OWS and other recent demonstrations (for example, against the XL pipeline) are shining sunlight on it in a way that has influenced our collective discourse more quickly and more profoundly than anything else has in recent years.
What I have read about OWS says to me that the more long-lived occupations demonstrate exactly what the author says he wants, that the old ways of running the planet are obsolete. The occupations, at their best, are demonstrations of governance by compassion, inclusion, civility, mutual responsibility and, yes, democracy in its truest sense. They are telling us what real community looks like, with messy cumbersome shared decision-making, libraries and food and shelter for homeless people.
I put this piece in the category of so many pieces being written right now by people still in the old paradigm, people who want to see the demonstrators “get something accomplished” in the “old way of running the planet”, even as they want to change that way. Those writers look at the OWS movement, but they don’t see it. They criticize OWS for not “getting something accomplished” in a way that has long since stopped working for the 99%. Strong opinions about what OWS should or should not do are understandable and inevitable. Many of us want radically transformative change desperately. We see the urgent need for change if we are to maintain anything close to the planetary climate that we know and have adapted to. Our opinions protect us from the terrifying void that opens up when the old system is falling apart. So, while I understand that making the Shadow visible will not be enough in the long run, in the short run, what OWS and other powerful and passionate demonstrations are doing is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, to lay the groundwork for whatever comes next. What that will be, none of us know.
Thanks for inviting comments, Eric.
Medora
Eric Traub’s extremely insightful comment on Occupy Wall Street is exactly the point why I haven’t considered at all joining this Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s a bunch of kids complaining about the system, yet offering up no solutions! No one is mature enough to try to ‘fix’ this system that they are complaining about or trying to offer a new paradigm, a new system to replace the old one. So what will all of this occupying really solve if you can’t solve or replace any of the old problems? That’s why I felt they didn’t really have a strong foundation on which to defend their arguments. It was just a bunch of complaints, yes all very valid, but if it can’t come from a new paradigm, which at least Eric see that new thinking & new ideas is what we need to do. These young people supposedly leading the force of the OWS movement do not seem do have the same force for changing ideas, changing & reforming outmoded ways of thinking, whether in the way our forefathers did in shaping & building this new country or in trying to re-shape the patriarchal way this society works. We need to move away from this capitalist, patriarchal way of thinking & living. But how & in what way? I don’t know. But it needs to happen now & soon or something is going to burst & I don’t mean OWS or the banking system or our economy. I mean our souls, at least my soul!
I see so many people still having children, thinking that they will raise up their children differently than the previous generation. Yet so quickly they fall into the same patterns, making the same mistakes, bribery, patriarchal routines, just the same old childrearing crap that we’ve all been through & just isn’t good enough. We do need to change this system, of parenting, of thinking, of working, of business, of economy, of just the way we do everything & anything on this earth in the way that Eric Traub was talking about, together, mutually, in a mature, grown-up fashion. Businesses would change, families would change, everything would change. How does that begin? With you, with me. With just a few families, parents, people like you & me, showing others how it can be done, fumbling through it, doing our best. It won’t be perfect, but it can be done. Work together, work for each others’ interested, work mutually & grow together. Something can change here. Ourselves & our planet.
Sincerely,
A simple girl in a complicated world.
Jamie
Here is the email that led to today’s edition of Planet Waves. It’s a response to an list post by someone formerly in law enforcement whose kid is a student at Davis. I won’t reprint the whole letter; I quoted it briefly in today’s edition. The post came with the Davis video, which was the second time a mentor had sent me the video within a few days.
====
Dear B——
Thank you for that document.
I have been analyzing and debating this one for a few days. I did half of my podcast on this yesterday, bringing in a number of points of view, including two that support yours (one philosophically unrelated to the incident and one a direct critique of the full video). We are looking not just at the conduct of police but at the societal roots of the incident. I have the video posted to my front page as of last night, though I will raise the visibility so that we get more comments.
While I understand the wisdom in these views (in particular, that the students acted like children and neither responsible men and women, nor responsible activists), I do not concur that chemical weapons should ever be used by campus police against unarmed students, nor that any weapons should ever be used against unarmed students.
The principle of In Loco Parentis, which is the rationale for a campus police department at all (which departments are designed to be closer to the students than town police), would support that. While a student editor I spent hours discussing this with campus police and university officials — I went to Buffalo by the way, which was the scene of many riots in the late 1960s and 1970. So there is a history. Campus police are the ultimate and often best (though sometimes worst) examples of community policing.
Before I begin I want to acknowledge that there are many facts that have yet to come out. The context is longer than 15 minutes. Much of the context happened behind closed doors and was not video taped. Part of the context is that UC Davis is a suburban school where this kind of thing is highly unusual, if not unprecedented.
Obviously the students are chanting and yelling, but that does not of its own constitute a physical threat to the police or to property. It was a civil disobedience protest; that is what people do at a CD protest (as opposed to an anarchist riot, looting situation, etc.) and police training should indicate that. I will include a 2005 photo of French national riot police — who deal with many student protests — expressing actual restraint as students pounded on their shields during a critical situation where a main traffic circle (Bastille) was blocked during the evening rush.
Police were under orders to stay cool. Nobody was harmed or arrested in this protest, and it was dispersed peacefully in a short time — typical of France when the protests are not in the peripheral ghettos. (I took the photo and sat right at the standoff point for hours; it is real.) Where unarmed students are concerned, attrition is a valuable ‘weapon’ if we don’t want anyone to get hurt.
There is also the view of Kamran Loghman, so far as I know uncontested as authentic, who helped develop pepper spray into a weapon for the FBI, who has said that the product was not meant to be used the way it was deployed in this incident. It is not intended to be used at point blank range. You have access to the training manuals and product instructions; let’s have a look at two factors: the specific conditions that constitute a threshold for deployment, and the recommended range of the weapon.
Loghman, who says he has done 4,000 police training seminars with the product, said, “Normally pepper spray is used when there is a physical threat to the police officers or bystanders or there is a possibility of property damage and you see that things are going haywire.” He added, commenting on the end of the video and not the yelling match, “They are not saying anything and they are not harming anybody and they are not being aggressive to police officers. So the use was just absolutely out of ordinary and was not in accordance with any training or policy of any department that I know of.”
We can see that some yelling has preceded the “sitting down pepper spray” segment of the video, however, I have not seen an analysis of the situation that addresses how police presence and conduct escalated the incident. A civilian investigation would certainly include that analysis.
We would need to really talk about the definition of “restraint” and have a working definition of that term. You might not agree with what I would have done were I the campus president, but I assure you that there would have been no cost to the university’s reputation, no litigation, nobody would have been injured, nobody would have been put on leave or fired and the whole thing would have ended on the same boring note that it began. There are going to be many of these incidents in the years to come, and there must be a strategy to not escalate them where they end up in disasters for students, cops and administrators.
When discovery is taken in the inevitable civil lawsuits, we will know a lot more, and I plan to track the cases. Abuse of pepper spray as defined by civil courts is old hat in California, and if nothing else the various costs of civil litigation, and costs to the reputation of the police, need to be factored into the mix.
Sorry for the long email. I’ve just been thinking about this for days. And — I got up to get a glass of water! it is way too early. As you can see I can write out of deep sleep on thirty seconds notice. At least now I have a good start on my Friday article, which I write on Thursdays. Thanks for the brain food.
See you soon!!
xx
ef
“Venting rage and frustration is extremely useful.”
Especially when it is vented using non-violence.
For some time I have been writing that we all have to stop spending, live with less, and bond with others to create supportive communities. That way we do several important things.
One: we rob the corporations of our money; money feeds them and without it, they will eventually collapse because Americans are their largest consumers
Yes, this will mean more job layoffs but that brings me to the second and third things we can do:
Two: Living with less means we require less so it takes less income for us to survive and
Three: building communities which are sustainable and which help one another mitigates the job losses and income losses.
Look at it this way: Suppose several families move near one another in a place that allows farming and raising livestock. Suppose they start a sustainable community farm together and share resources amongst one another. Instead of everyone needing a tractor, they share one in the community. They share a lawnmower, garden tools, food storage barns or silos, compost bins, food, goods, and so much more. Each family would need less and as families borrow and trade amongst one another, each family requires less income to survive. This scenario can happen and people are right now quietly working for that. It won’t matter so much if layoffs increase because we will all be helping one another and living with less.
There are already groups building such communities slowly, one family at a time.
It is called change from both attrition (robbing corporations of our money) and community building. It starts with living with less and getting to know your neighbors.
Venting rage and frustration is extremely useful.
As Joe Trusso says, “The opposite of depression is expression.”
What I am getting at is this: it is a serious mistake to think that nothing is being done to change things or that people are just “railing at Daddy.” People HAVE been doing things for some time now. Before Arab Spring, I have seen more and more local gardens spring up; community gardens where people create community and grow food to eat and donate to food banks. More people have been implementing Buy-nothing chapters, Freecycle groups, barter and trade groups, exchanges, sustainable communities, and more. These have been going on without the fanfare of OWS but they are an indication of the paradigm shift within society that is already happening.
People are quietly working at the local level to do things differently. That’s how change happens, one person at time, one small community at a time until it grows so much it becomes obvious.
I think there needs to be the understanding that protesting is the first part of several actions which must include making responsible choices. However, people ARE already making changes which are not being loudly proclaimed but which are profound small steps in the right direction.
For example; people who took heir money out of banks were doing an action that is not just protesting but actually makes a change. Without access to our money, banks will have to rethink how they do business.
People using their influence via social media to protest bank charges got these banks to stop levying them.
People who are currently working to build sustainable communities, grow their own food, shop only when necessary, and only shop locally are all doing their part.
People who use less, waste less, buy-nothing, support those in need in their communities are also doing the actions that are called for.
People who have created whole systems of barter and trade are creating a different model of how all of us can get everyone’s needs met.
I like to think of OWS as the “voicing of the grievances” while the rest of us DO the actions to redress them. We need BOTH to get things done. OWS is the loud voice that revs up the rest of us to change. They have the time and energy because too many of us are using that time and energy to support children, the elderly, run our communities and do the work of the change. Each has their place in the changes we are seeing.
Comparing OWS to “children” seems to denigrate their powerful voice and render them less effective. Let them rail; they are the mouthpiece for every one of us. They bring attention to the problem while many of the rest of us quietly change how we live. Not only that, but they take the attention away from the quiet changes we are all making which allows us to make them.
Sorry that sent itself
March 31 the nappe phréatique 15m under the station is highly contaminated by radioactive iodine like all the sea water immediately around the site
13 April 6h40 earthquake of 5,8 in North Japan – more than 400 since March 11 that have been stronger than 5
4 mai 9h Sea water 15km from the station has radiation levels 600 times normal
15 mai 16h NHK japonese TV chain announced it was the earthquake rather than the tsnami which provoked the loss of control at Fukushima. When the tsunami arrived the reactors were already out of control and levels of radiation were already enormously augmented
24 mai According to TEPCO the reactors 1,2,3 completely melted and took place between 60 and 100 hours after the earthquake
28 Mai 11H Greenpeace publish a map of the seabeds along the ‘litteral’ of japan – 300km including FUkushima and warn against eating seafood drawn from this area, and that the zone will get larger with time. the authorities confirm their finding and ban fishing in a large area
30 Mai 20h30 Martine Aubry (Paris region) says that the German way for coming out of nuclear is the one to follow – heavy investmentin renewable energy and work with experts in the field on the timescale, and work on the dangers presented by certain power stations
12 Juin Russian TV announces that levels of radiation 1000 times the limit have been measured 80km from Fukushima
2Sep Corinne Lepage returning from Japan denounced the silence of the french press. She confrimed the melting of the cores 1,2,3 and that the cuves ont etaient transpercées. that the treatment of millions of cubic metres of water was palliative that thousands of families wanted to leave the region but didn’t have the means. Worse everything was put in place to keep the farmers in place. Controls on food were insufficient. Drs no longer dared to speak. Levels of consummation of electricity have decreased overall by 23% and in Tokyo by 40% enabling Japans nuclear reactors to be shut down one by one for maintenace checks. Japanese ministers accept that japan is coming out of nuclear asap. CL said also that more than 80 000 people live in areas of exposure to radiation of 10-20 mSv. She had the impression of reliving the experience of Tchernobyl
5 sep According to Al-Jazeera (Qatar) radioactive mud via AREVA from water from Fukushima was stocked in sewage works mixed with others and spread on fields as fertiliser
20 sep TEPCO recognises that 2-500 tonnes of contaminated water goes into the ground each day
65% of japanese prefer electricity cuts to restarting nuclear power stations that have been shut down
29 Sep High levels of Césium 237 found in Gunma 250km SW of Fukushima. higher than in Fukushima city 60km NW and 3-8 times higher than the 37000bq/m2 for evacuation at Tchernobyl
30 Sep Plutionium found in the soil 45km from Fukushima at iitate. people not evacuated from there
17 October Reactor 1 completely covered by a polyester fibre sarcophage limiting radiation polution – rainwater no longer falls directly onto the reactor the radioactive particles travel less far. 2,4 giga bq come out each day from the site – normal functioning levels permit 0,8 gigabq per year. ie 1000x more
26 october Tokyo incinerators accumulate 2,15 miliards de bq each day intheir filters and 1,76 milliard in the ashes. That released into the air in not available… These stas explain why levels of radiation are so high in some areas of Tokyo
31 October. Best selling CD in Japan is entitled – radiations, no one can see them (Dare ni mo mienai) Reggae singer Rankin Taxi is the author
6 Nov Allain de Halleux – cinéaste in Japan talking with people there heard that the nuclear sector is in lien with the Yakuzas (Japanese mafia who closely collaborate with the American secret services)
15 Nov New map of fallen Césium 134 and 137 in Japan – now almost everywhere except the island furthest south. The mountains are the most contaminated and with the rain and the flow of water the agricultural land in the plains will receive it
….
That’s it very briefly. There is alot more about urine samples in children, cleaning playgrounds (taking 5 cm of surface away) and houses until the next rain (and where to stock the contaminated earth/water), meat and rice and tea production, earthquakes and typhoons, lots of day to day things about the reactors. The cost of clean up, changing rules about limited liability,
Very trenchant observations from you as usual and Eric Traub in particular. I think we all see that the techniques of the past – large demonstrations singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ – have a stale, quaint resonance for this era. My question for both of you is: what is the forum? how can people express their frustration? Please don’t say the ballot box! If you’re homeless, or about to lose your home, or unemployed, or drowning in student loans, or just plain see that the system is rotten, what is the way to express the frustration and facilitate change? It must be something collective to harness all this power, especially against the forces of entrenched greed and corruption and it must also prescribe solutions rather than just denounce what is. What does the expression look like?
My reply —-
Hello Mary
Check out last night’s Olbermann on Current TV (rebroadcast all day today) for some video of really innovative protests — the human red carpet for example.
That does not solve anything though — and voter registration IS essential, especially in light of current efforts to dump and deregister, impose Jim Crow poll taxes, gerrymander and so on.
We need to take a lesson from the Black Panthers and create both breakfast programs and weekend food programs for kids who starve all weekend because they’re not getting school lunches and dinners.
I think that both Eric T and my friend CT Butler are also talking about more realistic forms of leadership than “leaderless.” We have a long way to go. In truth, Occupy is the first step toward taking back all the “givebacks” that have gone on forever, whether you’re talking about the “givebacks” of civil liberties that came on strong post-911 or the onslaught of GMO and the FDA seizing organic dairies.
That is a lot to take back.
We absolutely need rapid response leadership training. CT would be the man.
This topic you’re raising is rich and could be the topic of PW series. I’ve copied in Eric in case he has some thoughts, I am sure he does
ef
Hello Eric, I could not agree more with your insights regarding our sibling society. I was recently sharing the premise of Robert Bly’s book with my youngest daughter, who voiced frustration that there seems to be a maturity lack within American society on all levels and not exclusive to her own, Pluto in Scorpio, generation. The phrase “Occupy Yourself ” becomes a potent reminder if one can invite burgeoning awareness fully into the day to day action. That is what seems to work for me. Not some ersatz drive for perfection but a deep confidence and new faith that is founded on the understanding that we all have our part ot play. I find that there is still a lot of “this or that” thinking that needs to be washed out. Like that line in Pink Floyd’s The Wall ” you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!”…when neither of those foodstuffs are really sustainable or tasty as a steady diet. So we need new menu items for a healthy future.
We need to put away our baby games and not succumb to every”peek-a-boo” distraction that come our way encapsulated in fear-mongering and other musty old, worn out ploys to keep people feeling like separate,alienated children sitting in a room with too many toys but no knowledge of ancestry or lineage or legacy. We need to wake up from naptime, stow our blankees, join together and as a society, leave the nursery.
I find it easier to maintain awareness with those two simple words”Occupy Yourself”, It’s an idea that bears repeating!Often.
I am currently living on a 5 acre farm and being a self- taught organic farmer. Our winter harvest consists of rainbow chard,spinach, carrots and romanesco. We are in our second year of this ongoing experiment and being tapped into raising healthy,extremely local food for family and friends is quite a “growth experience”(pardon the pun :o) but I do love puns so I had to throw it in)Thanks so much for being a validation point,a growth point, a fellow traveler…Enjoy this weekend. And again, thanks for all you do.
Thank you for this Eric. Stressville for me.
Right here we are. i read the Fukushima stuff and will begin to type out the most relevant stuff – there is pages and pages 5 or 6 hours reading.
The first thing is that radiation is still 1000 x the limit at Fukushima, contamination in Japan is aggravated by every rainfall and typhoon. The power stations moved 2,2m with the quake and were dug into the ground by 30cm. This was the major problem from the beginning.
18 March midday (French time) Alot of experts were surprised that the water and power source could be lost at the same time
23 march 06.50 The Japanese authorities forbid babies to drink tap water in Tokyo but a day later lift it – impossible to supply bottled water
25 March 22h40 Prof Hiroaki Koïde (univ tokyo) denounces the security measures. At Tchernobyl the forbidden zone was measured from 550 000 bq/m2 in the soil – 40km from Fukushima where the people aren’t even confined indoors
28 march 09.00 Forbidden to use rainwater pour la distribution d’eau in all of Japan.
30 March 16h Pollution of sea at the foot of Fukushima went in 3 days from 1850 to 3355 times normal
Trying to rinse the dioxin out of chlorinated (i.e., bleached) paper products uses an ocean of water. It’s probably as much or more than what it takes to wash a cloth diaper, plus the plastic in the disposable type of diaper uses resources too, as does packaging and shipping it. It’s also question of where those resources are used. But as far as washing one diaper vs one disposable, that info should be easy to pull up. It’s certainly easy to ascertain scientifically.
reading this i am reminded of one of my most favorite quotes;
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
[from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert A. Heinlein]
My dad grew all of our food, butchered the meat, and polished our shoes, gave baths, etc. My husband cooks most of the meals at our house, but by and large, the woman is head of the house and decides what the family is going to do with the household income, and what food they will eat. I’ve heard more than one woman at work discuss giving permission for the big screen tv purchase.
Besides, what’s good enough for Anthony Bourdain is good enough for me. I imagine a lot of water goes into the making of pampers. Trees, trucks, warehouses, manufacturing, oil (plastic) and all the people it provides with an income. No easy answers.
“If you can convince women to return to planning dinner with their families…”
Why so few challenges to this as an assumption of ‘women’s work’? Don’t we all have a responsibility to be more conscious about what we eat, where it comes from, and how it was produced? Even if you are a bachelor eating on the fly you have to ‘plan’ whether to eat sme pre-packaged high waste fast food or something more wholesome.
“Out west here it is worse to wash them than to dispose of them; water shortages and all that.”
Hmmmm not sure where ‘out west’ is but this is another example of what I was talking about. We worry about water shortages and those shortages are real – not just out West but all over the world. And we do stuff like by Pampers because we don’t have to wash them (though ironically dishwashers and washing machines can be efficient uses of water).
We may even put buckets in the shower or only flush the toilet after every three uses because this is the received wisdom about what is ‘good’. BUT what is the real accounting of our water use? The virtual or embedded water in everything we buy buy that is never accounted for and is so much more profligate than that used for washing diapers (which can be washed with other clothes – I know I did it 20 years ago). This shadowy water is embedded at the point of ‘manufacture’ or during production.
If you are buying food from officially water-stressed areas or countries you are contributing a much bigger water shortage. In the UK the example often used is green beans. We import green beans from drought ridden Kenya when we can, and do!, grow them here. And there are zillions of other examples. A cup of coffee embeds about 140 litres (246 pints) of water, a cotton T-shirt about 2,000 litres, and a kilogram of steak 15,000 litres. A single sheet of paper embeds 10 litres of water!
On average we use a bathtub full of embedded water per person each day – more than enough to accommodate an extra load of diapers over the few years you may use them.
There’s tons of information on this. Here is a ‘user friendly’ and US-oriented infographic from National Geographic: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/embedded-water/
If we weren’t frittering away water on overconsumption of things we don’t really need and if there was no advertising telling us to ignore the facts and buy disposable diapers we might make very different choices.
I realise we’ve got off the astrology somewhat in this thread but for me it all comes down to taking intelligent responsibility. We don’t have to make the same mistakes over and over again, neither do we need to expect the world to ever be finished to unattainable perfection. But culture change isn’t so different from personal change – though it’s acted out on a much bigger and rather more complex stage. We do need to take an intelligent holistic view of where we currently find ourselves including confronting the massive shadows of the modern world of which embedded water, pepper spray, ADHD and the gap between the rich and poor are just a few examples.
“If you can convince women to return to planning dinner with their families, and to washing diapers instead of filling up the landfills with pampers, that would be quite an achievement. But I don’t think it will happen, unless something really devastating takes place.”
Out west here it is worse to wash them than to dispose of them; water shortages and all that. It is a real hard choice out here because washing that much takes up huge amounts of water. Maybe we should go the route of …was it the Uzbekistanis on No Reservations….. who use a cradle with a hole in the bottom and a basin to catch the baby’s waste. Not likely.
I didn’t say we have to go back to all that old stuff completely; just back to valuing people over profit and people over stuff.
The reason women won’t go back to planning dinner for their families is because the so-called “women’s movement” really just used the male default model and pushed for women to be able to be like that. It did not raise the value of what traditional women do so that it is equal to what men do. Both men and women devalue traditional “women’s work” such as meal planning and cooking. In other words, until our society values the traditional feminine arts such as homekeeping and all that, women will not want to do those thankless and unrewarding tasks.
Imagine what things would be like were traditional women’s work valued for the human capital investment it really is; complete with the same social safety nets that paid work has. But, but, that’s not “real” work right? Tell that to every woman who does it day in and day out. If we all stopped (and so many of us have abdicated those tasks to underpaid and under educated others that we have in essence stopped) a lot of the human capital would not be invested in very well. Mary Eberstadt makes a case that this is exactly what has happened.
As for me, I LOVE the feminine arts of cooking, meal planning, and all that unpaid, undervalued, human capital investment stuff. That’s not to say I am not a feminist; I am because I value equal pay and women’s free agency over their bodies and all that too. These are not mutually exclusive positions to have.
Advertising free means accountability between the readers and the content-makers. The price for is that if you can, you pay for a subscription so that we are funded (if you cannot, you get lots to read and listen to, and you can help by referring us readers and subscribers); the greater savings is that you don’t buy that thing you don’t need that slices and dices, or that drug, or that car, for far more than the cost of a subscription.
Accountability means that when I figure out that Gardasil is killing people, I can tell you the truth because I don’t have Merck as a sponsor.
One benefit of this is editorial freedom. I don’t have to tailor my content to please advertisers. I will give you an example. Recently I did an interview with a magazine and the interviewer asked me something like: where is the one place you feel you really stand out of the crowd, in terms of something you write about that’s really daring?
I said: I write about masturbation.
She said: I need you to cut that, because we have this ONE conservative advertiser who is going to be offended. So, I told her to cut that question and that reply; and her readers, who have been reading my horoscopes for years, will not get to know this one salient fact about my contribution to culture — unique in my field, by the way, and extremely rare among popular writers.
I promise you that you don’t just have mention of masturbation omitted from ad-sponsored outlets (though when was the last time you saw it discussed sincerely on network or cable TV? but we get plenty of bullshit about abstinence). You get endorsements for warfare, torture and Gardasil because that’s what advertisers want, and you don’t hear about many things that you might get to hear about and benefit from.
So when you look at Planet Waves and see the incredible diversity, depth and quality of our content, and the daring things we write about, and consider why you can trust what the writers here say, please think of two things:
ADVERTISING-FREE and SUBSCRIBER-SPONSORED.
For days now, way prior to listening to the podcast or reading this post, the word “liminal” was running through my brain on one of those centaurian repeating looops of which Len wrote. I looked at the definition again: of or relating to a sensory threshold; barely perceptible; of or relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase or condition: in between, transitional.
Another meaning comes from anthropology regarding phases and social structures, rights of passage.
So, in the eclipsed glow of the Gemini Full Moon, here we are a space between, a liminal space.
JannKinz
“Here is a link to a piece I managed to track down, written by a colleague of mine in 1992(!) http://www.eco-action.org/dt/recycle.html sadly still relevant today. It explains why recycling benefits manufacturers more than the average citizen. We unquestioningly internalise the message that recycling (or add any other ‘green’ magic bullet’ you like in that space) is good because it is backed by a continual PR push and its something we can do that takes relatively little effort and allows us to continue consuming and wasting at a spectacular level. ”
There’s two kinds of recycling: the kind patti is talking about here and the kind where instead of buying anything new, you buy USED. That is the kind of recycling that doesn’t push the PR and consumption-based manufacturing of goods with built-in obsolescence. Freecycle and bartering and thrift stores are the real recyclers as are compost bins and gardens.
“…we get rid of advertising.”
Yep and here’s how we do it: STOP WATCHING and most of all, STOP BUYING what it sells!
It really IS that simple and that powerful. They won’t keep spending on advertising when we stop watching and buying. It is a feedback loop and we CAN stop it.
That’s where the “live with less” comes in.
I agree that the kids have made their point but now it is time to
organize politically. The spraying of those kids/also in other cases
elderly people is totally wrong and undemocratic. I worry that those
arrested could possibly face felony charges and be unable to vote which
would be a disaster. They must now get ready to vote. All the
Republicans must go. In the absence and seeming impossibility of a third
party we must vote for Obama who has let his base down. We must support
people like Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee and there are
just a very few others. Barney Frank is not perect but is more on the
side of the 99% than most. Don’t blame him for getting out but it’s a
loss. This has to be, for now, a voter rebellion but eventually if that
does not work, a true Revolution will occur. This Bankster stuff cannot
go on. And most of the police action is totally bizarre and indicative
of the Mid-East Dictatorships and the result will be that the Arab Spring
will eventually turn against the USA/Israeli alliance. This is big.
Peace and light,
Marta
Afterthought: The best strategy, in my humble opinion, would be for all
of the Occupiers to join the Republican Party and vote for Ron Paul.
Then in the General Election, they could still vote anyway they chose,
but the choices would be more of a win/win–he is for some of the
objectives of the Occupiers, such as bringing the troops home, at least
auditing the Federal Reserve and has not expressed a desire to demolish
the so-called Entitlements in a unjudicious manner as he admitted this
would cause chaos. He is more honest than ANY of the other Republicans.
I have to agree with the Republicans that under Obama “things” will not
get better, BUT THEY DON’T SAY THAT UNDER THE REST OF THE REPUBLICANS,
THINGS WOULD GET WORSE.
I LOVE YOUR INSIGHTFULNESS AND ADMIRE YOU GREATLY.
Great thread. As to OWS, imo Medora nailed it. Many think in the old paradigm and just totally miss what is really happening there. It is NOT children throwing a temper tantrum (though the misguided certainly find their way to the occupy camps) but rather young people embodying true community and a way of being, calling us all to occupy ourselves and the earth responsibly, awakening the slumbering from the consumer spell, the trance, the mass hypnosis.
I see many doing as Carrie describes and agree we each have a part we will play, consciously or not. I personally have a long way to go on this journey. But I think, at least, I’m awake!
Kudos to Eric for his example of advertising free space with Planet Waves. In hindsight, the advent of advertising and broadcast media was the beginning of the corporate takeover of America.
I don’t think advertising should go away, really. It helps pay for the internet too. Did you know that periodicals (newspapers and magazines) were practically postage free before internet, TV and radio? The congress knew that we needed information to make decisions in the voting process.
What needs to happen is (IMHO haha) is the people’s shopping habits have to drive the business creation, but shoppers have to be educated. I’d be more in favor of mandatory home ec classes for high school and college students, and maybe even mandate a master gardener class with a real culinary garden at each grade school and high school. The example set by Mrs. Obama should be a model for everyone, and I am thrilled that this has happened. We have a local grade school that is doing this as well, and the children harvest the food for their lunches. How awesome is that?
http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/2011/11/coming-in-april-2012-michelle-obama-gardening-book.html
YES YES YES, Eric! This may be the single most radical and ultimately enriching action we could take…
All great stuff and almost too much to get ones head around even in a couple of sittings. I have been dipping in and out so I’ll just pick a spot to start with, which is Alex’s first comment and jump of from there – and hope some of it is useful.
With respect Alex I disagree about recycling and feel this is illustrative of a wider point I was trying to make in my own tiny contribution to this thread on Friday about shifting the paradigm (though I know that phrase is nearly threadbare these days).
Here is a link to a piece I managed to track down, written by a colleague of mine in 1992(!) http://www.eco-action.org/dt/recycle.html sadly still relevant today. It explains why recycling benefits manufacturers more than the average citizen. We unquestioningly internalise the message that recycling (or add any other ‘green’ magic bullet’ you like in that space) is good because it is backed by a continual PR push and its something we can do that takes relatively little effort and allows us to continue consuming and wasting at a spectacular level.
Local councils encourage residents to to become an unpaid workforce to sort waste for them al in the name of environment and conservation and activism. When the price is right they sell it to scrap merchants and make extra money for themselves; when the price is low they export it to other countries to be buried or burned there instead of on our native soil. Shifting the toxic burden else where is not a solution. Recycling is the sort of thing (one of many) that the 99% should be actively questioning and asking whether there isn’t a better way.
One better way would be not to make and buy so much in the first place, to challenge the ‘benefits’ of ownership which we’ve had shoved down our throats for decades, perhaps insist on a system where major goods like computers and TVs and fridges are leased rather than owned (because then manufacturers would have to take the ultimate responsibility for the longevity, maintenance and end of life of the goods we use) and to demand an end to shipping unlimited amounts of goods around the world (thus reducing both primary and secondary packaging that needs to be recycled). Who’s up for that deep a shift?
My frustration with OWS is not that its heart is in the wrong place, but that it refuses to fully engage it’s mind with what I admit is a set of knotty global problems. There is still this demand for someone else to sort things out (as in the video that Amanda posted)which I find frustrating. But at the same time…
I understand that people find it hard to engage at a deep level. We are all busy and tired. But again isn’t this, in part, the story of how the concept of ‘activism’ has also been co-opted by the PR machinery? We can all be effective activists in our day to day lives? Really? I wonder. Can we all be brain surgeons? Daredevil pilots? Astrologers? But also there is a huge head-fuck schism between the apocalyptic problems we are told the world in facing and the ‘simple solutions’ we are all told will fix everything. Maybe people don’t engage with the solutions because they know, instinctively, they are a lie? or because they so often seem to involve buying something else; special recycling bins, new lightbulbs, a t-shirt – or a new tent?
Here’s a thought that I’m sure will be unpopular. Activism requires skill and thoughtfulness and some kind of vision and plan – yet we leave activism to a largely unpaid, unskilled, undirected workforce – one without a minimum wage or a union, and with a ‘staff’ turnover’ that would guarantee complete collapse in any other enterprise.
There’s a big difference between coming up with a good idea that inspires the public imagination and support and just hoping that in the muddle of bodies pressed against one another in one of the OWS gatherings some good idea will eventually emerge. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. In my darker moments pondering ‘activism’ I wonder if the protesting we are largely playing at plays right into the hands of those who like the appearance of change but have no commitment to actual change (an apathy shared by politicians, major corporations and average Joes everywhere).
More and more I am returning to the view that personal, inner change is the missing foundation for wider change and all the rest is just exhibitionism.
Carrie, to do that there is one thing and just one thing that needs to happen: we get rid of advertising.
It is the same with people who buy organic food at Whole Foods thinking they have a small footprint, when most of the food and products sold there are imported. My brother runs a produce stand and I’ve been with him on trips to the market at purchasing time. All of it comes in on a train from California – therefore, no train, no produce. There are organic markets here that get their produce from the same trains we get ours – same company trucks pull up and deliver the same produce we just purchased as walk-in retail buyers. You can buy organic and non-organic and satisfy both types of customers. Imagine the chaos if the trains were interrupted! Chaos! If you want to know what people from the Depression years ate, just ask them – cornbread soaked in a glass of milk was breakfast and lunch. That was pretty much it. My uncle’s wife said a piece of cornbread with a slice of onion was their normal evening meal. My mother’s family ate a little better I think, since they owned chickens. Imagine Americans eating like that today.
I still have my Beatles record collection, btw. The sixties was simple compared to today. The rush to extend credit to everyone began with Jimmy Carter, didn’t it? They wanted everyone to be able to own a car and house (or perhaps the banks convinced everyone that was for the good of the country). Next came NAFTA and the gigantic removal of all the jobs from the country so even the poorest people could afford toaster ovens and microwaves. What does a DVD player cost today, $59.00? In 1984, we paid over $500 for a VCR player. It was an incredible expense for our little budget. No-one forces any of us to spend the money. Now the DVD player has been replaced by internet downloads and cable, which costs a fortune, in more ways than one. All those satellites didn’t get there for free and they sure as hell aren’t green.
Patty, you say “they didn’t have cell phones, computers, mtv nor any other of the things kids take for granted today”. While it’s true that the world has become overwhelmed with technology and the pace of life is frighteningly fast, at the same time – I think some of the issue here is to do with the generation gap. We too did things and had things that our parents thoroughly disapproved of – and look what happened when Rock n Roll first hit the US, or Jimmy Hendrix and co in the 60s? There are indeed some ‘spoilt brats’ out there, but the ‘youth of today’ have been handed down a pretty raw deal, and if you go and talk to some of them you’ll find out that many of them are extraordinary human beings.
Carrie, when i was growing up in the 50s our birthday parties consisted of dinner and a cake made by my mom. My kids’ birthdays were similar actually, although I did normally buy a gift for them – but they didn’t have cell phones, computers, mtv nor any other of the things kids take for granted today. My kids are in the 30s, and their friends’ children are the ones that expect the Chuckie Cheese birthday parties, cellphones, computers, games, and nice clothing. Wasting a lot of money is a relatively new phenomenon because we just simply didn’t have that kind of income in the 70s. We didn’t even start using a credit card until the 80s.
If you can convince women to return to planning dinner with their families, and to washing diapers instead of filling up the landfills with pampers, that would be quite an achievement. But I don’t think it will happen, unless something really devastating takes place. Someone I know that works at the food bank said if you hand this age group a bag of noodles and box of tomatoes they will ask, “What am I supposed to do with this?” This is a pathetic generation coming along, who won’t be able to cope with we elderly and infirm. Woe is us for euthanasia is surely around the corner. I keep seeing all the glowing reports about the OWS crowd, but they look like selfish and self-centered brats to me.
Great observations again, Carrie.
Personally, I hold reservations about all anthropocentric views about life – it is a huge blind spot issue. Political and social analysis is always woefully lacking something when the major focus.
Stretching back the thoughts to Eric’s podcast with Elisa Novick brings something utterly crucial to the mix. Everything we do should be grounded in the fullest ecological context.
Sadly, such will only be conclusive once we have created consequences that affect everyone on the planet incontrovertibly. If we can’t commune with trees and insects etc how can we truly love our planet. We currently are steeped in anthropolatry (my neologism for the idolatry of the human as the touchstone of meaning, existence and purpose).
We specks of dust are incredibly arrogant about our place in the scheme of things. Humility is not self-abnegation however, it is knowing your place as merely an infinitesimally small part of all that is – a part that should be respectful and thankful to share in the joy of experiencing an amazing multiverse.
Instead we self-delude on our importance – but we shall be humbled. And the ones who supposed themselves to be Gods will know how far they have fallen when circumstance ensures they can no longer sustain their megalomania…
I mean think about this: what if everyone, EVERYONE, simplified their lives, scaled back some, lived with less, got only what they needed? I am not saying we go back to the low tech days and women-suppression of the 50’s. I am saying we go back to the family or people-centered living (but with the tech stuff within reason; no one needs every new iteration of each item) of the post-depression 30’s?
I recently read a piece written by an Irish visitor to America and his insights were wonderful. He listed the things he didn’t like about America and among these were several that had to do with how consumption has taken over all our lives but we are less happy and less content despite all the things and big, huge-carbon-footprint homes we have. He said he found it totally incongruous that someone would be desperate to get the Apple i4s and pay tons of money for it when the functionality was only marginally better than the regular Apple i4. That so encapsulates the problem.
Usually I dislike the “people need to take responsibility” phrase because it is typically uttered by one of the privileged to blame the underclass for their own misery. Yet in these issues we are facing, I do think we all can have some responsibility in enacting the change. Some shall be our voice- the OWS. Some shall be our workers- people like me. Some shall be our coordinators and informants – people like the writers here at PW. Some shall be facilitators- again like people here at PW. Each has their part in enacting and birthing the change.
“I’d just like to mention Carrie’s contributions on this thread. It is precisely her way of viewing this mess, and how to chime in, that we sorely need. Grounding consciousness within functional localities is crucial.
I’d add a further point from Taoism to make a bold observation..
Could you imagine if we IGNORED the oppressive power structure? If we so got with the constructive agenda that we wasted NO ENERGY on it and its UTTER IRRELEVANCE. If we can direct our *freedoms* toward creating communities that are no longer based upon divisions and differences but upon the things that we are persons grounded in localities wish to build together then we would surely discover in time that those values would healing to all those who need to see some contrast, some difference in experience, some warmth that they have never so far encountered within their isolated, materialistic worlds of deep freeze…”
[Note, this is broken up into short paragraphs to make reading it easier so it doesn’t follow the standard writing paragraphing. I have found this useful on other forums.]
Thanks, Alex! And the second point us the MOST important one if you ask me. That was what I was getting at but unable to articulate as well.
I still believe that one of the first things we all have to do is change how we live. As I watch programs on TV that show people buying homes, it strikes me that each of these programs is just an advertisement and programming for consumption.
I lived in a teeny village in the Occupied West Bank territory back in 1978. The building had four rooms. The bathroom was a shack on a hill outside but at night everyone just went out back and squatted. No toilet paper either; we used soft leaves or old paper. There was no running water but they did have electricity. As a privileged American, I learned to adapt fast. Our bedding was futon style and had to be rolled up every day. Doing the laundry was a big job of hauling water, hand scrubbing and rinsing, wringing it out and hanging it up to dry.
Yet through all that hard labor, there was a vast peacefulness that the unrushed life held for me. I have never forgotten it. The daily tasks, the people sharing these, the slow measure of time was amazing.
Looking at the stars in the deep black of the night, seeing the golden sunrise at dawn, making hats for the family little ones out of left over yarn I happened to have, hearing the Muslim call to prayer five times a day and the stillness as they all complied; these were amazing.
No amount of wall-to-wall carpeting, second bathrooms, dishwashers, square footage, THINGS could compare to the starkly beautiful desert and peaceful existence that I had lived then.
Those memories live within me right now and even as I look around at this rented home I live in with typical American amenities, I realize they have so much less value than my husband, my children, cooking for them, caring for them, sharing with friends. We need to show how all those intangible but so valuable things are better.
This is why I have a blog wherein I extoll the virtues of being a progressive housewife. Living with less, doing more, and seeing the beauty in simplicity is what I am trying to share with everyone.
In my circle of friends, I have started the trend of “buy-nothing” birthday parties. On the invitations (often via e-mail or phone call to save trees) I tell people “Your presence IS the present, please buy NOTHING.” I tell them that “expecting presents is against sustainability and excludes those friends who, through no fault of their own, are having economic hardships and might not come if they felt they could not afford the usually expected gift. It is far more important to us that we share this day with them than that we get gifts.” This is what I tell them all.
We then celebrate at home with homemade food, our own household dishes, and a cake we have baked and decorated. This means we are not buying paper products, decorations (unless we make these ourselves with stuff we already have aka recycling). We play games with old games we found at the local thrift store, do 3-d puzzles (also found at the thrift store) and hang out and enjoy each others company.
Group-think works; because I did it and touted the virtues of it, more and more of my friends have chosen to go the same route. See? ANYONE can set the tone, be an example, and live the way they want without insulting anyone or making “the oppressors” the focus.
If this housewife in a rural town can start a trend, why not YOU? (The collective “you.”)
That’s what it takes; practical, everyday, I-can-do-it-right-now ideas and actions. No oppressors in any of that; just smart, positive, earth-sustaining, community-building ways to live and change. Can’t get anymore grassroots than that!
Thank you, Eric, for your consistently thoughtful and important
writing on these times.
I am listening to conversations about the the OWS movement and
appreciate the passion and relief that people express about there
finally being a popular rising against what has been growing for such
a long time. I am curious about the motivation at times for the
outrage and am hesitant to engage when it feels like there is too a
vested interest in an old pattern of protest. I have been encouraged
by the creativity and the human compassion that is clearly part of the
OWS movement and also stunned by the level of fear and brutality that
the police express in response. I have not been involved myself –
mostly because I am in my own healing mode that reflects that sense of
petulance and childish hurt you so perfectly outliine – but also
because i distrust the flavor of the month mediazation that I am weary
of engaging. I am also sensing that the responsibilty factor you name
– maturing and guiding together – is a very potent element of how this
could truly revolutionalize the situation. And, as my teacher
cautions, be thoughtful of any sense of messianic purpose. Taking
care of my own shit and keeping an eye out for the place that I may
be the most use when it comes.
Learning to parent ourselves together as the authoritarian model
morphs is a potent idea. I have been missing the feminine voice of my
mother but I trust she will emerge with all of the other women who had
a stake in getting us born. I am listening and I am grateful for your
voice of encouragement.
Melanie Hegge
Glad you liked the Stornoway track, Huffy. This song shows a gathering of people who wish to share an inspiring experience around something most folk can relate to – it is an intrinsically positive expression, celebration and sharing of the drive/unction to change, to free oneself from some of the shackles of inauthentic living. A call to join the New Revolution to free the Battery Human that has nothing whatsoever to do with confronting power, but rather exploring and exercising different choices/possibilities!
Burning River, thank you for your supportive affirmation. I deeply appreciate the quality of your poetic tone in your response. Poetry is the ‘stuff’ of life. The spirit sings, we come alive and we move off of the plane of intellectual analysis – which has a place but which gets fixated on right/wrong…
Which brings me to Eileen’s email, posted below by Mr E. F.
Eric Traub’s rightness or wrongness is precisely beside the point. Regardless of the accuracy and comprehensiveness of his views there is a core observation about taking responsibility. Sure, this can be pushed too far and could be seen as harbouring drawbacks – but what view doesn’t? It isn’t possible for one view to cover every single base. The merit comes from pointing out some key points, easily missed. We don’t want to fall into the trap of being adolescent in our thinking generally – this does not mean being adolescent is BAD – it just means that the energy can get wasted or deployed less effectively than it might with a more rounded plan. Much adolescent behaviour challenges the comfort zones of the settled – even when ignoring the grey areas of human complexities.
The point as I see it is NOT to state definitive positions, true for all times and places, eternally binding etc but TO SEE THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THINGS – and build accordingly.
The salient points/issues require discernment followed by articulation. Perhaps most importantly, it is vital to interlink key observations in order to develop our understanding of the optimal personal and collective strategies – this means we must, at root, be committed to a CONSTRUCTIVE agenda.
To me, just to re-cap my point from earlier about the Uranus/Pluto square, we know these initial moves have been brought to you by Uranus on the Aries Point – you know, the lightning strike; like the Tower in the tarot. Pluto in Capricorn is the next hook up point we anticipate, when this revolutionary spirit hits the evolutionary unction of Pluto.
Now personally, I think Uranus is a super wrecking ball and perhaps clears the way for a gradual Plutonic rebuild made of weightier stuff. The very nature of Uranus is contradictory; square its own natal sun and opposite both its natal Saturn and natal Mars. It is in the very nature of Uranus to cast off the shackles of Saturnian tradition through the extreme of revolution without thinking about the consequences and without the recognition that something of value being released is the goal. Traditions and structures give containment – it is totally lacking sense to jettison the good in something just because one seeks to vanquish the bad. Uranus carries this in constant tension within its modus operandi. There is something here that has the feel of ‘Gods and mortals’ about it, not unlike the feel of Mercury and akin to the trickster Loki in the Norse pantheon – something double-edged, beyond good and evil, a necessary principle of disruption that is both healthy and unhealthy at the same time – and you can’t resolve the two from each other. They are two sides of the one coin.
This is why we require Pluto to balance out all the Karma. There can be no fudge, no deep rooted self-deceptions at this particular party – the stakes are too high. We are in something of a last chance saloon and all the detritus and infection within the collective unconscious is going to have to be flushed out.
As above so below but also as within so without..
I’d just like to mention Carrie’s contributions on this thread. It is precisely her way of viewing this mess, and how to chime in, that we sorely need. Grounding consciousness within functional localities is crucial.
I’d add a further point from Taoism to make a bold observation..
Could you imagine if we IGNORED the oppressive power structure? If we so got with the constructive agenda that we wasted NO ENERGY on it and its UTTER IRRELEVANCE. If we can direct our *freedoms* toward creating communities that are no longer based upon divisions and differences but upon the things that we are persons grounded in localities wish to build together then we would surely discover in time that those values would healing to all those who need to see some contrast, some difference in experience, some warmth that they have never so far encountered within their isolated, materialistic worlds of deep freeze…
Dear Eric,
Thank you for another thought-provoking essay.
Generally speaking, I think the steady diet of War propaganda has reshaped how we think and act and could explain the viscous and illegal pepper spray attacks on OWS protesters. Some current propaganda: If we cut back on defense spending we leave ourselves open to attack from terrorists. We have to militarized our locals police forces to protect us from ‘the enemy’, The enemy is whoever authority tells us it is.
After the Sixties and Seventies, it is hard to believe that eleven years into the 21st century Orwell’s ‘War is Peace’ rhetoric would be taking hold. As a culture we have become almost immune to acts of violence – police assaulting peaceful protesters with pepper spray is unconscionable, yet the media is treating it like maybe the protesters deserved it.
In terms of propaganda, the quote from the ex-FBI agent reinforces the belief that it is proper procedure to peppy spray or taser a “hostile crowd.” He, as an authority, gets to define the temperament of the crowd as ‘hostile’. Then he further tweaks the perception of the event by comparing the situation to a police officer having to release a prisoner. (A prisoner is a bad person.)
I agree with Traub to a point – I think he simplifies situations a bit, especially when he compared the OWS movement to children rising up against their parents, as if that were a bad thing. The unspoken, subconscious thought that comes across is if one supports the OWS protesters they will be labeled as immature or childish. This is a disguised way of saying peaceful demonstrations are immature and childish. If the protesters were bona fide adults, they would be out there creating “a new form of healthy, holistic leadership.”
What actions does Traub propose the protesters take to create “a new form of healthy, holistic leadership”?
Traub, speaking as an authority, instructs us on the healthiest form of parenting, known as authoritative, versus unhealthy authoritarian. Traub’s narrative made me assume he was endorsing the virtues of authoritative style. But then he delivers his critique of the OWS protesters in the style of an authoritarian. From Traub:
“We have to decide: do we truly want to effect change and accept all the implications of that change, including a far greater share of responsibility for making the world and its systems work, and the tremendous labors that entails? Or, do we simply want to protest and throw a collective tantrum against the way it’s been?…”
“We have to decide…” Traub orders, then subtly warns us that if we insist on change, we are responsible for whatever happens. I would compare this kind of logic to a parent saying to a child, “Sure, you can jump in the deep end of the pool, but if you sink it’s your responsibility to save yourself. So your choice becomes one to never jump in or jump in and drown. This seems an attempt to reinforce the fear of change.
Comparing the OWS protesters to children throwing a tantrum is a bit harsh. It looks to me like the OWS protesters are taking a stand against the status quo – the imbalance of wealth and resources and justice in America and in the world. And a protest against a nation of militarized police.
One of the messages I get from OWS is we’re all in this together. Interconnections are becoming more obvious. The movement seems organic, which I see as a positive, because organic movements crop up everywhere and cannot easily be stopped.
Lt. John Pike is the scariest figure to appear on the landscape since Darth Vader and Dick Cheney. Imagine him as your jailer. Cruel and heartless and above the law.
Eileen
Thanks for the wonderful song Alexander. Just loved it.
Alexander, as always. appreciate your viewpoint. Particularly, the splitting and draining of our personal energy and attention by so many factors calling to us as we attempt to survive and “thrive” in the lives in which we find ourselves. As always, I see the oligarchic influence as undermining the middle class financially that has demanded us to work more hours and more than one job in order to pay for health insurance and education etc. Plus more awareness of the pressing needs of society as a whole and the planet as our source calling for our attention and involvement.
I personally have found it foundational to heal the rifts within myself, as you suggested. In this process I have found energy and time occasionally to support the passions I have for tending to the healing needs of ”The Whole” Perhaps aging is bringing this wisdom and balance, but I pass it on when appropriate, including to my children, hoping it can be incorporated much sooner in their lives than I have. Every one in the end hears and sees what they want to hear an see.
Love your youtube link and your call to BE at the sunrise.
Just last night I was with my two sisters on a deserted beach of Lake Michigan as the surf pounded and roared from the howling drive of the west winds coming in. The waxing –into-phase culminating in the Gemini New Moon of this morning shone on us casting clear, well defined shadows on the frozen sand. Imprinted by the multitude of scenes like these burgeoning around me changes me . Always for the better.
I’ll be looking for you at my next sunrise.
+-+
Small footnote: All my remarks were aimed at the specific episode wherein the pepper spraying itself occurred. I thought the silent protest later that evening was absolutely phenomenal in its effectiveness and dignity. (By contrast, screaming “F*ck the police!” prior to the pepper spraying I thought was on the other end of the spectrum.) The great Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi, said, “Silence is unceasing eloquence.” In that way, I thought the students were indeed unceasingly eloquent that night. And for the record, I personally think the Police Chief, Capt. Pike, and the Chancellor should all resign or be fired over the incident. At least those three for openers, and then any other responsible parties in so-called leadership positions.
Eric, many many thanks for your rich multiple contributions (especially your last two that develop matters considerably and with moving unction). Little can be added and people would benefit greatly from soaking up your points until they hit home.
I wish to add something that requires some serious consideration. In my last post attention was drawn to the need to internalise our values after actually working out what they are (and not merely defined in contradistinction to faulty, yet hegemonic, ones within the oligarchy-defined *reality frame* we collectively inhabit) and also to observe the wisdom of the Tao in not creating counterproductive resistance by dehumanising agents of the oligarchy and not confronting power directly but by shaping our energies in a different direction.
After your two subsequent posts something further came onto my radar:
People are weighed down, pulled in so many directions at once, regularly cut in two. This has a huge impact on personal energy reserves and life force. One of the reasons that there is so much inertia within the ‘masses’ is in my view less to do with human nature and a longing for tradition to inoculate against scary changes but more to do with simply experiencing a deep lack of spare energy for any *surplus* thinking and doing on top of their already hassled lives. If you like, they seek peace and refuge from the onslaughts of life.
This perpetuates a new sort of dualistic ambivalence. Kind of like “Look I’d love to become some sort of Caped Crusader and save the planet, or even just give an hour a week to a local group looking at the issue, but I can’t justify it in the context of my already brimming over, packed existence.”
Here in the UK, many people have struggled to adjust to the advent of domestic waste recycling as just another imposed change to assimilate. Although once adjusted it becomes second nature to recycle, at first there is a MENTAL RESISTANCE, because it all seems like yet more tokenism that doesn’t really change very much very quickly, but feels like much is needed FROM ME to effect it.
And this is my point at this juncture. The psychology of resistance is everywhere, which is just a variant on the psychology of avoidance and we could follow that trail and its consequences on a personal level with its outflowing effects quite a way..
Now, if we could shift THAT would we not be looking at something tsunami-like on a life force release level?
This has me thinking about the old personal/political chestnut that so regularly holds sway over our personal/social/global *realities* and that PlanetWaves regularly addresses.
People don’t have time for *causes* generally, above and beyond their own. A false split exists in people’s thinking born of being irreducibly central to their personal existence. This is where most of the resistance is.
We need to heal that division FAST. I’m not sure that there is time for this to happen as a natural process before our planet is terminally wounded (please pardon any sensationalism here, it is not intended).
My feeling is that considerable work has to be done on a PR level that involves reducing any sense in the viewer that a movement exists outside myself. Now well I believe that ‘Occupy Yourself’ is a catchy slogan, a tagline worthy of any ideological movement, I remain unconvinced that this is sufficient to truly sell the product.
I think of Health Promotion campaigns and how they are so often unsuccessful in getting people to internalise the motivators for sustained change – you know ‘If this, then that’ sorts of consequence clauses that are short-lived – but that fall short in practice.
It seems to me that work needs to be done in healing the chasm that has opened up between a person’s parochial sense of their own world and ideas about the world outside or beyond self (which has become somewhat unreal in comparison to the reality of the person’s subjectivity – leading to the consequence of ‘out of sight, out of mind’) that align, Eric T, with your eloquent outlining of contemporary narcissism.
I know such an approach carries risks. But if collective self-interest has bequeathed to us our pressing problems is it more realistic to suggest that collective self-abnegation will reverse that impact or a different take/expression on/of self-interest?
Now, something concrete.
I’m not suggesting that we turn OWS into a neo-LiveAid concert with all the top bands in the world (that would ultimately play into the hands of the overlords) but maybe we can envisage creating conditions wherein folk actually commit to their own healthy process; because they have realised that is WHAT THEY REALLY NEED/WANT.
How many folk are oppressed by the many demands of modern life and would not be able to see the many personal benefits of a return to relative simplicity? Could this be a vein of gold to mine? I think so! Would it be too big a stretch to see local movements within art/culture and expression organise to celebrate simplicity and beauty and the natural things in life, like an early morning sunrise and all that it can inspire – FOR FREE!
I leave you with the following example of how a song about one’s own experience can represent a thing that anybody living any city could surely relate to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPqULzSuFI8
Alexander
“Mary” commented down below at around 12:00Noon today, and asked a few important questions that deserved a more complete answer than the long commentary I posted, so I wanted to add a few remarks more. Here is what I sent her in an email:
Frankly, I think there is still much more to say about the matters you raised. How will otherwise silent voices be heard? How will those who are powerless within our systems have any influence to improve their situation? How will we reorganize the infrastructure that shapes our lives to achieve a sustainable format?
I think questions like these are absolutely central the OWS movement and being avoided by most people because they are just too damn hard to answer. We have a tendency to steer around the hardest questions and answer the ones where we feel qualified, capable. Understandable, but unacceptable at this time. I think these are the questions that we have to keep asking together until we make progress with real solutions that are tested and proven over time.
Therefore, I would add to my other long response, which was geared to address many various comments all at once, that those of us who are street smart, politically savvy, articulate communicators, or just plain ballsy and committed, need to reach out to the power structures and strive to influence those in seats of power and governance. This goes way beyond sending emails or signing online petitions. We each need to stick our necks out further than we ever have before.
OWS may not have a clear-cut agenda, as many have criticized. But it could adopt a series of questions, investigations, dialogues that need to be explored in depth and detail. Protests, instead of being collective rage-fueled outcries against the system, could consist of unrelenting and vociferous demands for discussion. (Witness the video posted by Amanda Painter this morning where Anjali Appadurai demonstrates exactly what I’m describing here.)
There are ways to be heard if one is striving for a unilateral delivery of a message, you know, shoving the point down someone’s throat. And there are other ways to be heard if one is demanding conversation and mutual engagement. I believe OWS will be stuck in repeating cycles of noble inspiration but lack of accomplishment until the protests become the latter. The tactics used have gotten us to here, and here is amazing, but to go farther we need something more.
For each one of us, in my opinion, we need to bring the spirit of OWS to our everyday lives and worlds, and face the adversity wherever we find it. It takes tenacity and nerves to stay steady in the face of financial tyranny and bureaucratic suppression, and we run into all over the place in our daily lives. While we can’t stop and wage a full protest in every banking interaction or credit card company exchange, we can exert the effort to be unfailingly true to our principles when confronted with deception, fraud, and citizen/consumer exploitation. We need to pick our battles, but we need to put ourselves on the battlefield. because we are, whether we like it or not.
I think a large part of the answer is inciting people to occupy their lives in this way.
I hope this is satisfying to your question. Your questions couldn’t be more worthy.
ps a couple extra comments on Joan’s thoughts
– she did definitely (outside of the videotaped part) take on the topic of leadership, saying how it’s foolish to think that you can have a leaderless movement, and instead to address the fact that we do need leadership development, a well thought out process to help people move into their power
– also, what was interesting that maybe doesn’t get addressed, is the idea that we need to collectively work with our fear and yes, horror, at what is going on and where we might be headed. she talked about the importance of talking about this with other people, having a chance to actually get it out there/share it, instead of being paralyzed by holding it in. she referenced Joana Macy’s work/exercises on this, The Work That Reconnects. and talked about how many people might never get involved because of the barrier that is the risk of not winning, or being successful, in effecting change – of participating in something that may defeat you and beat you down/tear you apart
I don’t know that adding more words to this already voluminous conversation will add more value, but I’ll try. I have read all of the comments here and the related blog posts, including Amanda’s powerfully moving post and video from the U.N. Summit where youth delegate, Anjali Appadurai, outright demands that the leadership, “Get it done!” in regards to making the changes that will make the difference in climate change. Citing Mandela, she quotes, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” I believe that’s an accurate statement about where we are right now in OWS which is, in truth, Occupy Earth, our planet, our home. As Anjali so beautifully says, it will take “courage…. science, reason and calming compassion.” And, as she breathtakingly demonstrates, that can be delivered with an inner fire, healthy power, and gigantic human dignity.
I was asked earlier, “What is the forum [for making a difference in the matters being raised and address by the OWS Movement]? My answer is there isn’t one. That’s the point and that’s our first job, and what OWS is starting to generate: a conversation space for recognizing and engaging with the critical issues of our time. This is OWS’s first triumph, and a magnificent one it is. And though that is the first and most necessary step to take, it is not by itself sufficient. There is a lot of work to be done, and we have too figure out how to “get it done”, as the courageous youth delegate demanded.
I am merely a fellow human being to 7 billion like me, my brothers and sisters on this increasingly small island. So I am no position to say what anybody else should do to advance the aims of OWS, but I can be revealing about my own approach and hope that it contributes. I know that there is no other person, not even bankers and cops, politicians and stock traders, who should be denied their humanity in this process. They make mistakes and so do we; their egos run the show and sometimes so do ours. But if we, in leading this movement, adopt a dehumanizing stance as a move in reaction to them, then we are, IMHO, even more to blame because we especially should know better. Attacking each other is easily the stupidest thing we could do now. The Chancellor should have come down to listen and engage with the students. And as the Occupiers who would usurp the misguided governing structures, we better develop our LISTENING in a manner superior to theirs. Or we’ll all just slug it out, mutually deaf and dumb, driving it all downward until it’s nothing but a puddle.
My own first imperative has been to Occupy Myself and My Own Life, meaning something very different from narcissistic indulgence dressed up as caring about social change. I had to admit that I do not understand the causes and conditions that gave rise to the mess we’re in, the financial crisis, climate crisis, and the fundamental crisis of humanity’s shared future. Proposing solutions from the comfort of my armchair without adequate understanding is dilettantish at best, utter bullshit at worst. Therefore, my first task has been to endeavor to understand, to educate myself about the problem and how they came about, to reach a point where I can communicate intelligently about the issues so as to engage others at the best expressions of ourselves.
Next, I realize that nobody is coming to save our butts. We’re it. Full stop. We have an accountability, not merely a ‘sense of responsibility’ for the future of humankind’s presence on this planet. I insist on a sobriety from myself as though I got the call directly from somebody with the authority asking, “So what ARE we going to do to fix this mess?” and I have to give an answer. There will be no such call though, and no invitation to pull up a chair at the Big Table for The Conversation. I have to invite myself, plus anybody and everybody else I want in that conversation. This gig is by self-invitation only, so BYOV, Bring Your Own Voice, and get your ass in a chair, at a mic, on a blog, in a chat, on a call, email, grocery store line conversations — TALK NOW, and equally important, LISTEN HARD. We do not know what to do, none of us, not even close. But we better start asking the questions that make us squirm and using our exquisite human intellects to dig deeper and deeper until we do. We need to feel the heat of Anjali’s words day and night, over lunch and in our sleep: Get it done! And insist on answers from ourselves and those we can influence. No problem does not yield in the face of human persistence after the answer. Not one, ever.
Finally, I check my motivations every day. One very human cause I can readily observe that has led us into this growing state of crisis is a lot of action with little to no awareness of the motivations behind it, and even less attention paid to the consequences. I cannot afford the arrogance of being equally blind. So every day, before I lunge into the fray, I look myself in the eye to ask, “For what, towards that end, am I about to go do what I do today?” I have a profound accountability to my children to do whatever I can shape the world I will leave them. I have that accountability to everything alive now and yet to come. I do my damnedest to actually act, speak and think from that. Of course, I fail at it all day long, but I get back up, dust myself off, and refocus. And then I act, decisively, and knowing that it matters. I doubt anyone can argue that point: What we do at this moment in history matters, our choices will count, so we better make them with seriously rational awareness.
Watch “Inside Job”, several times. Or watch “Margin Call” for a faithful fictional account. Eric Francis is fantastic at elucidating many issues. Read and watch Matt Taibbi. Read, learn, understand, and then get into the arena. Make the arena itself, because it is only starting to exist at all. Cut the hypocrisy out of myself. Route out the unsustainable elements and systems that would lead to personal, familial, community instability or collapse as much as I can. Cut the crap in my own life so strengthen my moral platform to ask and/or demand likewise of others. And recruit others. The roster ultimately needs to include everybody with a pulse. And the inspiration of a few who no longer have one.
I hang my hat on Howard Zinn’s oft-quoted but nevertheless unarguably relevant statement:
“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
And I keep myself as honest as I can with this from Solzhenitsyn:
”It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes… We make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones.”
Onward. With fire and with compassion.
i’ve been doing ‘activism’/organizing for a while now,
and was really inspired by a new book by an old 🙂 activist
(not really too old, just well experienced)
it is ‘community organizing: a holistic approach’ by joan kuyek
you can read my review and video interview with her here:
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4262
but i think this excerpt from the book (p13) really sums things up:
Change activities that work do the following:
➜ They create vision and enthusiasm so that many diverse people want to be committed to the work; they build a growing base of support for an equitable society.
➜ They make understanding about and effective work on key issues accessible to previously uninformed and inactive people.
➜ They create and model sustainable alternatives for the provision of food, shelter, energy, transportation and the care of children, the disabled and the elderly; they re-create and protect the “Commons.”
➜ They establish multiplying numbers of relationships of respect for all beings and each other, kindness and dignity; they do not seek to increase public fear.
➜ By focusing on key contradictions in the system, they transform the power of predatory elites, redistribute wealth and establish equity.
Perhaps I should have included the progress that has been made – cooling the reactors on the surface to less than 100 degrees with constant watering. And things like that
Bien à tous et tout
Dualism, dichotomy, binaries etc. One does not need to be a feminist to notice the pervasive and disastrous effect of Cartesian rationalism upon contemporary society. There were many antecedents to Cogito Ergo Sum but the perceiving subject becoming central to the nature of reflection/expression upon what *is* has been cataclysmic.
Interestingly, we notice and expose these false dichotomies within conceptualities with impressive frequency in this space.
Yet, when it comes to this manifest polarity in specifically OWS – which is merely embodied expression of those mutually excluding conceptual binaries after all – there is a flurry of analysis that posits some deeper cultural malaise; portrayed as some passive/aggressive adolescence syndrome. Really? Quelle surprise!
We analyse both polarities and end up with fresh binaries! Doh! We replicate the problem for lack of clarity of focus.
There are a couple of glaring issues both specifically related to HOW we internalise our values (because if we don’t internalise them we merely talk and deceive ourselves).
First in Taoist terms, one will not overthrow dehumanised power structures on their own terms of reference. Once we dehumanise the opponent we act so as to resist naked power that simply resists us back. Power hides. You don’t root it out. It sacrifices its minions. Resistance does not work, never has and never will – and arguably, in a society such as ours with rampant global media exposure, is counter-productive to the cause.
But before people can internalise their values they need to know what they are. If those very *values* are merely rejected inversions of somebody else’s inadequate/toxic but culturally dominant values, then we simply garner/instate directionless resistance – which is at best pointless and at worst amenable to hijack by unthinking and potentially feral agendas.
I suspect that virtually all social thinkers and critics have failed to be radical enough in both their conception and articulation of what is at issue at the very core of any planetary (r)evolution – this is where we need to Pluto to temper Uranus, just to smuggle a little astrology into the mix.
Consider this: Why do we even require an entertainment industry?
There was a time when work was intrinsically productive and it produced items that were necessary. Now we have a massive service sector. People are paying something we used to think of as concrete, like money (except it is less so than it has ever been) for a ‘service’ like being entertained for a period of time.
These *items* are consumables. Money used to be tangible (coinage) and had some precious metal value to boot. The exchange was something tangible for something durable or at least for something necessary to sustain life – which is a bottom line for us all.
Currency has had to be made more virtual as more and more non-essential consumables are imbibed by an exponentially increasing global cohort – for which no tangible result is achieved apart from the staving off of boredom or might we say, fending off authentic, self-directed existence – which we have all become less adept at since being socialised into dependency upon the infrastructure of an incarnated monstrosity of not-life.
The only antidote that all humans, whichever side of the fence they happen to be living on, can share in, is a developing distaste for not-life. Once this awareness juncture is lost to our psychic radar (due to the decisive success of advertising propaganda) there remains only our shared sense of reliance upon basic, life-sustaining resources.
A significant orientation choice for us individual units is that between (1) opposing the destructive power of the powerful by every means and seeing the agents of said power as non-human or presenting and (2) enacting our own vision of health-giving living as something all humans benefit from. The latter DOES require organisational prowess and focus.
There is, for example, more than one way of addressing the current rampant global population explosion. We may choose more humane and sensible methods of reducing the planet’s burden, while the corporate psychopaths may continue at best with the food and water toxification programme (the more benevolent overlords that is) or at worst with the Logan’s Run cull scenario – after all you use pesticides on pests so if the pests are out of control….
By the way, these two approaches are not commensurable – so you’d better decide which side you’re on… if you know what I mean? 😉
Our two basic orientation choices do not exclude one another entirely, however. If power comes looking for you then some pretty crux decisions need to be made about how to counter any violations (uniquely personal decisions). But that is an altogether different matter than squaring up to the power base and making radical demands – such may not be unreasonable but it is surely grossly unwise.
We must set agendas for others by being impressive people in our own right. If Uranus wins the war there will be untold bloodshed. Let’s hope Pluto helps us do a more sophisticated number on that incarnated monstrosity of not-life.
This week’s subscriber edition was a real slam dunk Eric! Coincidentally I have also been re-reading The Sibling Society over the last couple of months and for me it is even more relevant now than when it came out.
What Traub is saying is absolutely spot on too and I love his thoughts on leadership. This is why I have been fairly restrained in my celebration of OWS. The problem with it as I see is that the protesters have not yet set their terms and demanded that other meet them and talk to them on those terms. It’s a issue I have with a lot of activism at the moment and part of a growing disenchantment/cynicism with the whole process that it always ends up talking and acting out of the existing paradigm rather than accepting responsibility for shifting the language and the behaviour (and being unpopular for suggesting ways in which it MUST shift…said the Scorpio who is dealing with that issue on a personal level).
We saw so much of this at the Ecologist – people grumbling about social change but then getting cold feet, or worse getting aggressive with us, if the reality of that change meant they also had to change as people or if it looked like it inconvenienced them in any way. The mirror side of that was environmental organisations increasingly crawling into bed with corporate bad-guys, accepting their money and justifying/deluding themselves with the idea that they could work form the inside to make changes.
The concept of ‘change’ has been so co-opted in our society I wonder if we even know what it is any more. We associate it more with fashion make-overs, phone upgrades and bigger TVs – or changing the air freshener in your home – than anything else. So meaningful, under the skin human-scale change that requires investing in something that we can’t buy is almost incomprehensible to us.
I posted a blog on OWS early on suggesting the protesters look at some of the concepts of change that had been floating around for decades and see how they ‘fit’ with their aims. Link here:
http://www.howlatthemoon.org.uk/index.php?p=1_49
I’m sure I could be more eloquent but it’s been long day and I have a hungry son about to descend on me for the holidays on break from University!
Hope all’s good with you.
FYI I estimate I got just over 1000 visits to my IAQ site from Planet Waves so thanks very much for that!
Pat xx
i always look forward to your brilliant articles sent to my email…the quote from your friend, Eric, struck me as belittling & only partially correct…these protesters are also One w/ Source, and many know it, others are awakening Fast. Being also young students they are learning the language of resisting evil, and should not be demeaned as the Wall Street voracious Vampires do…but applauded…some things are worth resisting.
As you know, we are about to encounter far, far worse: Big Alert from an astrologer friend:
I agree with much of what your friend says. But I disagree with his conclusion. I believe those immature students did “get something accomplished”. The silent treatment of the college president as she walked to her car the next night was one of the more powerful events of this demonstration season. These students, immature as they were, put their bodies on the line to make visible the dark underbelly of the post-9-11 world in which the state has increasingly adopted violence to protect the machinery of a government drifting inexorably toward fascism. That’s what OWS is “accomplishing” at this point. It’s making visible what our current situation actually is, instead of what our political discourse, increasingly divorced from reality, says it is. Psychology tells us that the first step toward radical change is making visible what is currently invisible, what is unconscious, what Jung would call the Shadow. The Shadow of the “old way of running this planet” is deep, violent and ugly. OWS and other recent demonstrations (for example, against the XL pipeline) are shining sunlight on it in a way that has influenced our collective discourse more quickly and more profoundly than anything else has in recent years.
What I have read about OWS says to me that the more long-lived occupations demonstrate exactly what the author says he wants, that the old ways of running the planet are obsolete. The occupations, at their best, are demonstrations of governance by compassion, inclusion, civility, mutual responsibility and, yes, democracy in its truest sense. They are telling us what real community looks like, with messy cumbersome shared decision-making, libraries and food and shelter for homeless people.
I put this piece in the category of so many pieces being written right now by people still in the old paradigm, people who want to see the demonstrators “get something accomplished” in the “old way of running the planet”, even as they want to change that way. Those writers look at the OWS movement, but they don’t see it. They criticize OWS for not “getting something accomplished” in a way that has long since stopped working for the 99%. Strong opinions about what OWS should or should not do are understandable and inevitable. Many of us want radically transformative change desperately. We see the urgent need for change if we are to maintain anything close to the planetary climate that we know and have adapted to. Our opinions protect us from the terrifying void that opens up when the old system is falling apart. So, while I understand that making the Shadow visible will not be enough in the long run, in the short run, what OWS and other powerful and passionate demonstrations are doing is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, to lay the groundwork for whatever comes next. What that will be, none of us know.
Thanks for inviting comments, Eric.
Medora
Eric Traub’s extremely insightful comment on Occupy Wall Street is exactly the point why I haven’t considered at all joining this Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s a bunch of kids complaining about the system, yet offering up no solutions! No one is mature enough to try to ‘fix’ this system that they are complaining about or trying to offer a new paradigm, a new system to replace the old one. So what will all of this occupying really solve if you can’t solve or replace any of the old problems? That’s why I felt they didn’t really have a strong foundation on which to defend their arguments. It was just a bunch of complaints, yes all very valid, but if it can’t come from a new paradigm, which at least Eric see that new thinking & new ideas is what we need to do. These young people supposedly leading the force of the OWS movement do not seem do have the same force for changing ideas, changing & reforming outmoded ways of thinking, whether in the way our forefathers did in shaping & building this new country or in trying to re-shape the patriarchal way this society works. We need to move away from this capitalist, patriarchal way of thinking & living. But how & in what way? I don’t know. But it needs to happen now & soon or something is going to burst & I don’t mean OWS or the banking system or our economy. I mean our souls, at least my soul!
I see so many people still having children, thinking that they will raise up their children differently than the previous generation. Yet so quickly they fall into the same patterns, making the same mistakes, bribery, patriarchal routines, just the same old childrearing crap that we’ve all been through & just isn’t good enough. We do need to change this system, of parenting, of thinking, of working, of business, of economy, of just the way we do everything & anything on this earth in the way that Eric Traub was talking about, together, mutually, in a mature, grown-up fashion. Businesses would change, families would change, everything would change. How does that begin? With you, with me. With just a few families, parents, people like you & me, showing others how it can be done, fumbling through it, doing our best. It won’t be perfect, but it can be done. Work together, work for each others’ interested, work mutually & grow together. Something can change here. Ourselves & our planet.
Sincerely,
A simple girl in a complicated world.
Jamie
Here is the email that led to today’s edition of Planet Waves. It’s a response to an list post by someone formerly in law enforcement whose kid is a student at Davis. I won’t reprint the whole letter; I quoted it briefly in today’s edition. The post came with the Davis video, which was the second time a mentor had sent me the video within a few days.
====
Dear B——
Thank you for that document.
I have been analyzing and debating this one for a few days. I did half of my podcast on this yesterday, bringing in a number of points of view, including two that support yours (one philosophically unrelated to the incident and one a direct critique of the full video). We are looking not just at the conduct of police but at the societal roots of the incident. I have the video posted to my front page as of last night, though I will raise the visibility so that we get more comments.
While I understand the wisdom in these views (in particular, that the students acted like children and neither responsible men and women, nor responsible activists), I do not concur that chemical weapons should ever be used by campus police against unarmed students, nor that any weapons should ever be used against unarmed students.
The principle of In Loco Parentis, which is the rationale for a campus police department at all (which departments are designed to be closer to the students than town police), would support that. While a student editor I spent hours discussing this with campus police and university officials — I went to Buffalo by the way, which was the scene of many riots in the late 1960s and 1970. So there is a history. Campus police are the ultimate and often best (though sometimes worst) examples of community policing.
Before I begin I want to acknowledge that there are many facts that have yet to come out. The context is longer than 15 minutes. Much of the context happened behind closed doors and was not video taped. Part of the context is that UC Davis is a suburban school where this kind of thing is highly unusual, if not unprecedented.
Obviously the students are chanting and yelling, but that does not of its own constitute a physical threat to the police or to property. It was a civil disobedience protest; that is what people do at a CD protest (as opposed to an anarchist riot, looting situation, etc.) and police training should indicate that. I will include a 2005 photo of French national riot police — who deal with many student protests — expressing actual restraint as students pounded on their shields during a critical situation where a main traffic circle (Bastille) was blocked during the evening rush.
Police were under orders to stay cool. Nobody was harmed or arrested in this protest, and it was dispersed peacefully in a short time — typical of France when the protests are not in the peripheral ghettos. (I took the photo and sat right at the standoff point for hours; it is real.) Where unarmed students are concerned, attrition is a valuable ‘weapon’ if we don’t want anyone to get hurt.
There is also the view of Kamran Loghman, so far as I know uncontested as authentic, who helped develop pepper spray into a weapon for the FBI, who has said that the product was not meant to be used the way it was deployed in this incident. It is not intended to be used at point blank range. You have access to the training manuals and product instructions; let’s have a look at two factors: the specific conditions that constitute a threshold for deployment, and the recommended range of the weapon.
Loghman, who says he has done 4,000 police training seminars with the product, said, “Normally pepper spray is used when there is a physical threat to the police officers or bystanders or there is a possibility of property damage and you see that things are going haywire.” He added, commenting on the end of the video and not the yelling match, “They are not saying anything and they are not harming anybody and they are not being aggressive to police officers. So the use was just absolutely out of ordinary and was not in accordance with any training or policy of any department that I know of.”
We can see that some yelling has preceded the “sitting down pepper spray” segment of the video, however, I have not seen an analysis of the situation that addresses how police presence and conduct escalated the incident. A civilian investigation would certainly include that analysis.
We would need to really talk about the definition of “restraint” and have a working definition of that term. You might not agree with what I would have done were I the campus president, but I assure you that there would have been no cost to the university’s reputation, no litigation, nobody would have been injured, nobody would have been put on leave or fired and the whole thing would have ended on the same boring note that it began. There are going to be many of these incidents in the years to come, and there must be a strategy to not escalate them where they end up in disasters for students, cops and administrators.
When discovery is taken in the inevitable civil lawsuits, we will know a lot more, and I plan to track the cases. Abuse of pepper spray as defined by civil courts is old hat in California, and if nothing else the various costs of civil litigation, and costs to the reputation of the police, need to be factored into the mix.
Sorry for the long email. I’ve just been thinking about this for days. And — I got up to get a glass of water! it is way too early. As you can see I can write out of deep sleep on thirty seconds notice. At least now I have a good start on my Friday article, which I write on Thursdays. Thanks for the brain food.
See you soon!!
xx
ef
“Venting rage and frustration is extremely useful.”
Especially when it is vented using non-violence.
For some time I have been writing that we all have to stop spending, live with less, and bond with others to create supportive communities. That way we do several important things.
One: we rob the corporations of our money; money feeds them and without it, they will eventually collapse because Americans are their largest consumers
Yes, this will mean more job layoffs but that brings me to the second and third things we can do:
Two: Living with less means we require less so it takes less income for us to survive and
Three: building communities which are sustainable and which help one another mitigates the job losses and income losses.
Look at it this way: Suppose several families move near one another in a place that allows farming and raising livestock. Suppose they start a sustainable community farm together and share resources amongst one another. Instead of everyone needing a tractor, they share one in the community. They share a lawnmower, garden tools, food storage barns or silos, compost bins, food, goods, and so much more. Each family would need less and as families borrow and trade amongst one another, each family requires less income to survive. This scenario can happen and people are right now quietly working for that. It won’t matter so much if layoffs increase because we will all be helping one another and living with less.
There are already groups building such communities slowly, one family at a time.
It is called change from both attrition (robbing corporations of our money) and community building. It starts with living with less and getting to know your neighbors.
Venting rage and frustration is extremely useful.
As Joe Trusso says, “The opposite of depression is expression.”
What I am getting at is this: it is a serious mistake to think that nothing is being done to change things or that people are just “railing at Daddy.” People HAVE been doing things for some time now. Before Arab Spring, I have seen more and more local gardens spring up; community gardens where people create community and grow food to eat and donate to food banks. More people have been implementing Buy-nothing chapters, Freecycle groups, barter and trade groups, exchanges, sustainable communities, and more. These have been going on without the fanfare of OWS but they are an indication of the paradigm shift within society that is already happening.
People are quietly working at the local level to do things differently. That’s how change happens, one person at time, one small community at a time until it grows so much it becomes obvious.
I think there needs to be the understanding that protesting is the first part of several actions which must include making responsible choices. However, people ARE already making changes which are not being loudly proclaimed but which are profound small steps in the right direction.
For example; people who took heir money out of banks were doing an action that is not just protesting but actually makes a change. Without access to our money, banks will have to rethink how they do business.
People using their influence via social media to protest bank charges got these banks to stop levying them.
People who are currently working to build sustainable communities, grow their own food, shop only when necessary, and only shop locally are all doing their part.
People who use less, waste less, buy-nothing, support those in need in their communities are also doing the actions that are called for.
People who have created whole systems of barter and trade are creating a different model of how all of us can get everyone’s needs met.
I like to think of OWS as the “voicing of the grievances” while the rest of us DO the actions to redress them. We need BOTH to get things done. OWS is the loud voice that revs up the rest of us to change. They have the time and energy because too many of us are using that time and energy to support children, the elderly, run our communities and do the work of the change. Each has their place in the changes we are seeing.
Comparing OWS to “children” seems to denigrate their powerful voice and render them less effective. Let them rail; they are the mouthpiece for every one of us. They bring attention to the problem while many of the rest of us quietly change how we live. Not only that, but they take the attention away from the quiet changes we are all making which allows us to make them.
Sorry that sent itself
March 31 the nappe phréatique 15m under the station is highly contaminated by radioactive iodine like all the sea water immediately around the site
13 April 6h40 earthquake of 5,8 in North Japan – more than 400 since March 11 that have been stronger than 5
4 mai 9h Sea water 15km from the station has radiation levels 600 times normal
15 mai 16h NHK japonese TV chain announced it was the earthquake rather than the tsnami which provoked the loss of control at Fukushima. When the tsunami arrived the reactors were already out of control and levels of radiation were already enormously augmented
24 mai According to TEPCO the reactors 1,2,3 completely melted and took place between 60 and 100 hours after the earthquake
28 Mai 11H Greenpeace publish a map of the seabeds along the ‘litteral’ of japan – 300km including FUkushima and warn against eating seafood drawn from this area, and that the zone will get larger with time. the authorities confirm their finding and ban fishing in a large area
30 Mai 20h30 Martine Aubry (Paris region) says that the German way for coming out of nuclear is the one to follow – heavy investmentin renewable energy and work with experts in the field on the timescale, and work on the dangers presented by certain power stations
12 Juin Russian TV announces that levels of radiation 1000 times the limit have been measured 80km from Fukushima
2Sep Corinne Lepage returning from Japan denounced the silence of the french press. She confrimed the melting of the cores 1,2,3 and that the cuves ont etaient transpercées. that the treatment of millions of cubic metres of water was palliative that thousands of families wanted to leave the region but didn’t have the means. Worse everything was put in place to keep the farmers in place. Controls on food were insufficient. Drs no longer dared to speak. Levels of consummation of electricity have decreased overall by 23% and in Tokyo by 40% enabling Japans nuclear reactors to be shut down one by one for maintenace checks. Japanese ministers accept that japan is coming out of nuclear asap. CL said also that more than 80 000 people live in areas of exposure to radiation of 10-20 mSv. She had the impression of reliving the experience of Tchernobyl
5 sep According to Al-Jazeera (Qatar) radioactive mud via AREVA from water from Fukushima was stocked in sewage works mixed with others and spread on fields as fertiliser
20 sep TEPCO recognises that 2-500 tonnes of contaminated water goes into the ground each day
65% of japanese prefer electricity cuts to restarting nuclear power stations that have been shut down
29 Sep High levels of Césium 237 found in Gunma 250km SW of Fukushima. higher than in Fukushima city 60km NW and 3-8 times higher than the 37000bq/m2 for evacuation at Tchernobyl
30 Sep Plutionium found in the soil 45km from Fukushima at iitate. people not evacuated from there
17 October Reactor 1 completely covered by a polyester fibre sarcophage limiting radiation polution – rainwater no longer falls directly onto the reactor the radioactive particles travel less far. 2,4 giga bq come out each day from the site – normal functioning levels permit 0,8 gigabq per year. ie 1000x more
26 october Tokyo incinerators accumulate 2,15 miliards de bq each day intheir filters and 1,76 milliard in the ashes. That released into the air in not available… These stas explain why levels of radiation are so high in some areas of Tokyo
31 October. Best selling CD in Japan is entitled – radiations, no one can see them (Dare ni mo mienai) Reggae singer Rankin Taxi is the author
6 Nov Allain de Halleux – cinéaste in Japan talking with people there heard that the nuclear sector is in lien with the Yakuzas (Japanese mafia who closely collaborate with the American secret services)
15 Nov New map of fallen Césium 134 and 137 in Japan – now almost everywhere except the island furthest south. The mountains are the most contaminated and with the rain and the flow of water the agricultural land in the plains will receive it
….
That’s it very briefly. There is alot more about urine samples in children, cleaning playgrounds (taking 5 cm of surface away) and houses until the next rain (and where to stock the contaminated earth/water), meat and rice and tea production, earthquakes and typhoons, lots of day to day things about the reactors. The cost of clean up, changing rules about limited liability,
Very trenchant observations from you as usual and Eric Traub in particular. I think we all see that the techniques of the past – large demonstrations singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ – have a stale, quaint resonance for this era. My question for both of you is: what is the forum? how can people express their frustration? Please don’t say the ballot box! If you’re homeless, or about to lose your home, or unemployed, or drowning in student loans, or just plain see that the system is rotten, what is the way to express the frustration and facilitate change? It must be something collective to harness all this power, especially against the forces of entrenched greed and corruption and it must also prescribe solutions rather than just denounce what is. What does the expression look like?
My reply —-
Hello Eric, I could not agree more with your insights regarding our sibling society. I was recently sharing the premise of Robert Bly’s book with my youngest daughter, who voiced frustration that there seems to be a maturity lack within American society on all levels and not exclusive to her own, Pluto in Scorpio, generation. The phrase “Occupy Yourself ” becomes a potent reminder if one can invite burgeoning awareness fully into the day to day action. That is what seems to work for me. Not some ersatz drive for perfection but a deep confidence and new faith that is founded on the understanding that we all have our part ot play. I find that there is still a lot of “this or that” thinking that needs to be washed out. Like that line in Pink Floyd’s The Wall ” you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!”…when neither of those foodstuffs are really sustainable or tasty as a steady diet. So we need new menu items for a healthy future.
We need to put away our baby games and not succumb to every”peek-a-boo” distraction that come our way encapsulated in fear-mongering and other musty old, worn out ploys to keep people feeling like separate,alienated children sitting in a room with too many toys but no knowledge of ancestry or lineage or legacy. We need to wake up from naptime, stow our blankees, join together and as a society, leave the nursery.
I find it easier to maintain awareness with those two simple words”Occupy Yourself”, It’s an idea that bears repeating!Often.
I am currently living on a 5 acre farm and being a self- taught organic farmer. Our winter harvest consists of rainbow chard,spinach, carrots and romanesco. We are in our second year of this ongoing experiment and being tapped into raising healthy,extremely local food for family and friends is quite a “growth experience”(pardon the pun :o) but I do love puns so I had to throw it in)Thanks so much for being a validation point,a growth point, a fellow traveler…Enjoy this weekend. And again, thanks for all you do.
Thank you for this Eric. Stressville for me.
Right here we are. i read the Fukushima stuff and will begin to type out the most relevant stuff – there is pages and pages 5 or 6 hours reading.
The first thing is that radiation is still 1000 x the limit at Fukushima, contamination in Japan is aggravated by every rainfall and typhoon. The power stations moved 2,2m with the quake and were dug into the ground by 30cm. This was the major problem from the beginning.
18 March midday (French time) Alot of experts were surprised that the water and power source could be lost at the same time
23 march 06.50 The Japanese authorities forbid babies to drink tap water in Tokyo but a day later lift it – impossible to supply bottled water
25 March 22h40 Prof Hiroaki Koïde (univ tokyo) denounces the security measures. At Tchernobyl the forbidden zone was measured from 550 000 bq/m2 in the soil – 40km from Fukushima where the people aren’t even confined indoors
28 march 09.00 Forbidden to use rainwater pour la distribution d’eau in all of Japan.
30 March 16h Pollution of sea at the foot of Fukushima went in 3 days from 1850 to 3355 times normal
31 March 23h TEPCO announce th