Civilization has always been practiced in cities. It's right there in the word itself. But a city might not be fundamentally necessary for the practice of civilization anymore, what with the web and all.
The model of civilization has been city-centric for few millennia now. As in, the produce of the countryside is sucked into the city, to fuel the business of civilization, in all its self-involved glory. The cities have justified this by citing the innovations they produce: political, economic, scientific, technical innovations that raise the whole system up.
But what if we've taken that pattern to its logistical and logical limit? What if all of the innovations of the cities have run their course, and no longer produce any marginal returns for the whole? What if the pattern of city-centrism has done everything it can do and now the places where the essential innovations need to happen are out in the country or even in the wilderness? Or in the urban gardens and other eruptions of the country within the city? What if the essential innovations that we need to make as a civilization have nothing to do with concentrations of humans, but in a fundamental re-thinking of the relationship between human civilization and nature?
This kind of innovation doesn't even have a name yet. It would be fundamental, as in changing the foundational pattern of civilization, from a strongly centripetal pattern to something more balanced. Changing the economic relationship between the city and the country, and between civilization and nature has profound implications for the health of eco-systems, for the psychological and physical health of humans.
And there are a bunch of people already working on it, feeling their way towards innovations they can't even name, and might not work out. Innovations that build on the best that the cities produce but that question the assumption that only cities and its citizens can do civilization and innovation.
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Everyday magic
The ability to perceive beauty in everyday life is a magic art that sets one free - free from the economic machine that corrupts one's desires to increase consumption. And ever increasing consumption is necessary to keep profits flowing to service the debt and keep the whole highly leveraged Ponzi scheme rolling along towards total resource extraction.
Finding everyday, wild, humble beauty - a wildflower, a cloud, the sound of the wind in the trees - to sustain your heart is an act of rebellion. And a survival skill. And a key to the doorway out of the machine. And therefore a magic art. You didn't know you had magical skills, did you?
Finding everyday, wild, humble beauty - a wildflower, a cloud, the sound of the wind in the trees - to sustain your heart is an act of rebellion. And a survival skill. And a key to the doorway out of the machine. And therefore a magic art. You didn't know you had magical skills, did you?
Trump, jihad, and eco-warriors
I actually feel some sympathy for the Trump fans and their rage at the machine. The ironic thing is that it’s the same rage that fuels the jihadis of ISIS that we have all vowed to exterminate. It’s also the same rage that any environmentalist has felt at least once, if not constantly.
I’m not saying that I sympathize with the barely concealed racial resentments of the Trump mob, or the violence of the jihadis. Or even the self-righteousness of the environmentalists.
But with their rage at the cold, efficient extractions of Western civilization, I have some sympathy. And can even find a bit of a silver lining in all of the ugliness that is emerging. That mote of dreaming for a better way that fuels the extremism is the strip of silver in all the darkness of violence and hate. And it is in danger of being extinguished in the necessary victory of common decencies.
If only all of this anger and energy can find a course to run that is not hateful, but constructive of radical but peaceful alternatives. Towards a caliphate that governs kindly, towards a global economy that is not self-cannibalizing and oligarchic, towards an environmentalism that is self-critical.
I know, that is seriously Pollyanna - naive about the role that American hegemony has played in bringing us to this pass and overly optimistic about human tendencies - but anything else will probably involve lots more mayhem.
Friday, October 14, 2016
Civilization is what you do, not what you are.
We all live in a simulation created by language, art, and symbolic thought. We all live within the social systems that symbolic thought makes possible: agriculture, trade, politics, technology, etc. We all live in the matrix we call civilization.
Our Matrix is not created by aliens, AI, or future versions of ourselves; it is created by our ancestors and by all of us together, by our consent and by our not knowing any other way to live our lives. Our matrix is created by our parents, our education, ourselves. It is the project we all work on, the thing we were all trained to do.
What you are is both less than, and more, than civilization tells you. Civilization tells you that you are human and special amongst all creation. Civilization tells you stories about yourself so that you think only in words and pictures. So that you see only other humans. So that you learn to compete with other humans to build the walls and screens of civilization ever higher.
What.you are is an animal, amongst animals, a creature amongst creatures, a pool of proteins, a city of cells that walk on its back legs. What you are, as are all things, is the inheritor of stars and eternal, a continuity of life in its unceasing transformations, unseparte from the farthest reaches of the universe, vibrant with the traces of supernovas and black holes. You are, it all is, much bigger than the little box that civilization puts you in.
But civilization is very entertaining.
Our Matrix is not created by aliens, AI, or future versions of ourselves; it is created by our ancestors and by all of us together, by our consent and by our not knowing any other way to live our lives. Our matrix is created by our parents, our education, ourselves. It is the project we all work on, the thing we were all trained to do.
What you are is both less than, and more, than civilization tells you. Civilization tells you that you are human and special amongst all creation. Civilization tells you stories about yourself so that you think only in words and pictures. So that you see only other humans. So that you learn to compete with other humans to build the walls and screens of civilization ever higher.
What.you are is an animal, amongst animals, a creature amongst creatures, a pool of proteins, a city of cells that walk on its back legs. What you are, as are all things, is the inheritor of stars and eternal, a continuity of life in its unceasing transformations, unseparte from the farthest reaches of the universe, vibrant with the traces of supernovas and black holes. You are, it all is, much bigger than the little box that civilization puts you in.
But civilization is very entertaining.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Constructing Human Reality
There are three phases of constructing reality among humans.
The first one is formed in the most basic human bonds to family members - mother, father, siblings. That is where we develop our fundamental relationship to our bodies and emotions; where we develop a sense of self and the interplay between self and other humans, as well as the interplay between self, other humans and the non-human world (the development of this three-way relationship is something we don't pay enough attention to.) This is when we learn the basics of human social rules as well.
The second phase is our more-or-less formal education where we are trained in the more specific social rules and technical skills of our society, such as the 3R's or memorizing sacred texts or craft skills or war-games. We develop our sense of self further and learn how to manipulate material and symbols to construct the shared reality called society or culture. (Here, too, formal education in a conscious relationship to non-human reality is seriously underdeveloped. We learn to do science but this art unfortunately has been warped into a technical exercise in maximizing human exploitation of "natural resources." Needless to say this is a very limited and childish conception of the relationship.)
The third phase is the autonomy that comes after formal education ceases, where we get to become a constructive member of society (or not). One is turned out in the big pasture, with the general population, to sink or swim. And if we are lucky, we get to spend quite a bit of time at it. This is when we really get to make our own lives: to choose what we do, who we spend time with, where we live, and what values we express in the jobs we take, the families we make, the life-worlds we build up. This is also the phase of maximum responsibility, if we are brave enough to accept responsibility.
(There might be a fourth phase, saying good-bye, but I haven't got there yet.)
Within the phases there are very particular things that we do to construct reality.
I say phases, but really they are three faces because they happen simultaneously all through one's life, but one face will be generally predominant during the different periods of a person's life.
The first one is formed in the most basic human bonds to family members - mother, father, siblings. That is where we develop our fundamental relationship to our bodies and emotions; where we develop a sense of self and the interplay between self and other humans, as well as the interplay between self, other humans and the non-human world (the development of this three-way relationship is something we don't pay enough attention to.) This is when we learn the basics of human social rules as well.
The second phase is our more-or-less formal education where we are trained in the more specific social rules and technical skills of our society, such as the 3R's or memorizing sacred texts or craft skills or war-games. We develop our sense of self further and learn how to manipulate material and symbols to construct the shared reality called society or culture. (Here, too, formal education in a conscious relationship to non-human reality is seriously underdeveloped. We learn to do science but this art unfortunately has been warped into a technical exercise in maximizing human exploitation of "natural resources." Needless to say this is a very limited and childish conception of the relationship.)
The third phase is the autonomy that comes after formal education ceases, where we get to become a constructive member of society (or not). One is turned out in the big pasture, with the general population, to sink or swim. And if we are lucky, we get to spend quite a bit of time at it. This is when we really get to make our own lives: to choose what we do, who we spend time with, where we live, and what values we express in the jobs we take, the families we make, the life-worlds we build up. This is also the phase of maximum responsibility, if we are brave enough to accept responsibility.
(There might be a fourth phase, saying good-bye, but I haven't got there yet.)
Within the phases there are very particular things that we do to construct reality.
I say phases, but really they are three faces because they happen simultaneously all through one's life, but one face will be generally predominant during the different periods of a person's life.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Treebeard's comment
I spend way too much time reading stuff on the internet. As a vice, it's only marginally better than watching television. But I did come across this eloquent and fiery comment by "treebeard" as a response to an interview with some very earnest folks building an intentional tribe/community:
A Sign...
of cultural disintegration. It was good hear about a group of people in a committed community, and very important work that is being done, but very sad in a way that we have come to this. That we have had to completely reinvent our cultural structures, invoking tribe as a means to create community that has all but disappeared.
We are just starting to understand the violence that we have done to ourselves based on our current set of beliefs that currently masquerade as "facts", but are still clueless to the cause. I have railed against our current paradigm so often here that I am being to dislike the sound of my own voice. But alas, I cannot stop myself. Survival of the fittest, competition, monetization, all products of a twisted psyche, that projects our own disorder into the world and calls them natural, part of evolution, ecology, economics, and psychology. All facts, "markets are self regulating, therefore corruption is impossible".
We are not immoral but amoral. We have chosen the "rational" over the good, we are all Nazi experimenters on our future generations, fretting over our retirement savings and who did what to whom as the planet burns. So our souls starve as we fill our bank accounts and become more insane. Are we intimate with anything anymore, a friend, our own bodies, the earth beneath our feet, the wind on our face, the blue sky in the morning, a bumble bee resting in a flower as the sun sets, our own hunger, emptiness.
How far into the dark night have we come, have we lost our way altogether. In the darkness, even without sight we can feel the vast emptiness of the abyss yawning open before us. We wake in a sweat in the morning before we drop off the cliff, but we lead the same life, day after day, as if we had all the time in the world. The ultimate illusion.
Strangely, this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, minor typos and all.
A Sign...
of cultural disintegration. It was good hear about a group of people in a committed community, and very important work that is being done, but very sad in a way that we have come to this. That we have had to completely reinvent our cultural structures, invoking tribe as a means to create community that has all but disappeared.
We are just starting to understand the violence that we have done to ourselves based on our current set of beliefs that currently masquerade as "facts", but are still clueless to the cause. I have railed against our current paradigm so often here that I am being to dislike the sound of my own voice. But alas, I cannot stop myself. Survival of the fittest, competition, monetization, all products of a twisted psyche, that projects our own disorder into the world and calls them natural, part of evolution, ecology, economics, and psychology. All facts, "markets are self regulating, therefore corruption is impossible".
We are not immoral but amoral. We have chosen the "rational" over the good, we are all Nazi experimenters on our future generations, fretting over our retirement savings and who did what to whom as the planet burns. So our souls starve as we fill our bank accounts and become more insane. Are we intimate with anything anymore, a friend, our own bodies, the earth beneath our feet, the wind on our face, the blue sky in the morning, a bumble bee resting in a flower as the sun sets, our own hunger, emptiness.
How far into the dark night have we come, have we lost our way altogether. In the darkness, even without sight we can feel the vast emptiness of the abyss yawning open before us. We wake in a sweat in the morning before we drop off the cliff, but we lead the same life, day after day, as if we had all the time in the world. The ultimate illusion.
Strangely, this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, minor typos and all.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Nature Red in Tooth and Claw
I was sitting by the window when I heard a bird screeching in distress, and looked up in time to see an 'io (a native hawk) implacably winging its way upward from my garden with a pink cardinal, crying piteously, clasped firmly in its talons.
That was painful, although there are not many things that I like to see more than an 'io balancing on the winds high above.
My own predation is so much more attenuated most of the time.
We had to euthanize a steer that had broken its leg a few weeks ago. Our ranch-hand dropped the steer with one shot in the center of the forehead, just as one is supposed to, and cut his throat, but the steer still took a while to die. Then we had to shackle the steer's hind legs to the forks of a front-end loader with a chain so that we could move the carcass out of the pen. Our ranch-hand's dad and uncle came with a trailer to take the carcass home and butcher it. Then we got back to work.
That was painful, although there are not many things that I like to see more than an 'io balancing on the winds high above.
My own predation is so much more attenuated most of the time.
We had to euthanize a steer that had broken its leg a few weeks ago. Our ranch-hand dropped the steer with one shot in the center of the forehead, just as one is supposed to, and cut his throat, but the steer still took a while to die. Then we had to shackle the steer's hind legs to the forks of a front-end loader with a chain so that we could move the carcass out of the pen. Our ranch-hand's dad and uncle came with a trailer to take the carcass home and butcher it. Then we got back to work.
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