The global uprising against the rich and the powerful is spreading to the United States. But it was not preceded by "a period of quiet".
When an uprising occurs, people tend to think of the uprising as activism (which it is), and the period before the uprising as a lack of activism (which it isn't). You'll hear comments such as, "The public finally couldn't take it anymore and they rose up." This is a mistaken description of what takes place. In between visible rebellions, organizers and activists, artists and writers, courageous community members -- in short, resisters of all kinds -- are working tirelessly on causes, with triumphs and defeats. The daily grind of fighting for our rights has little glamour and less thanks, but we all owe a tremendous debt to those who do that work. We would live in far worse conditions than we do without the thousands and thousands of people who find ways to stand up to power. Not only that, but a successful rebellion would be next to impossible without the structures, the organizations, the analysis, the strategies, the decision-making approaches, and the funds that activists develop year in and year out.
At the time of 9/11, the American people were the most mobilized they had been since the sixties. The Seattle WTO protests were a high-water mark of open resistance. But the rulers of this country were able to capitalize on the World Trade Center demolition to brazenly intimidate the leftwing and make visible resistance much riskier and more difficult. The resistance didn't stop, however -- not even big visible street actions stopped, as evidenced by the huge demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in 2008 that were repressed by police with violent brutality. The resistance during this past ten years has mostly been less visible but still tireless; the work of union organizers at hospitals, immigrant rights activists combating the Arizona mentality, feminists fighting the use of rape as a weapon of war, climate activists trying to keep us all from choking to death, anti-racist activists going all-out to stop the execution of Troy Davis, and on and on and on -- it has all been continuing.
Uprisings are exciting and important, but they happen in a context of long, arduous, committed work. Those activist efforts make uprisings possible, and make the gains from uprisings last -- otherwise whatever we win would just fade as soon as the uprising quieted. We need to remember to always honor the women and men who live the struggle all the time, and we need to join those struggles between uprisings. Showing up for the revolution is exciting -- and we need you there -- but it's not enough.
BY THE WAY: According to the Occupy Wall Street website, Mayor Bloomberg has declared that he is clearing the park starting at midnight tonight. Please visit the website to see actions you can take to support the protesters. And, for your knowledge and entertainment, read Delia Smith's Basic Blockading. It's not to be missed.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
A New Spiritual Community
I have decided to found a new spiritual community and spiritual movement, which I am calling Nature's Temple. I call the belief system Nature Mysticism. I have included the principles (there are quite a few) below. I hope you enjoy reading them.
The core beliefs of Nature’s Temple:
1) The human being is an animal. We are no more different from other animals than they are from each other. We are not a race apart. All the creatures of the earth are our sisters and brothers.
2) We gather to express and share our love of life and our deep pleasure in the beauty of the world in which we live.
3) We pursue an ever deeper and more ecstatic experience of life.
4) The pursuit of ecstasy is inseparable from the pursuit of love. We strive to make our hearts ever more open to the giving and receiving of love.
5) Ecstasy is about communion. The greatest ecstasy involves a euphoric and mystical sense of connection to all that is.
6) And, since the human race is part of all that is, communion with all human beings is part of the ecstatic experience. This understanding leads, in turn, to the inevitable awareness that justice, respect, equality, and freedom must be brought to all individuals, to all communities, and to all tribes.
7) Nature’s Temple strives to help each participant rediscover and deepen access to joy that does not come from possessing things. We pursue joy from love, from physical pleasure, from experiences of nature, from healthful food that is lovingly prepared, from music and theater and all of the arts, from dance, from touch.
8) We pursue equality and mutual respect, not just as words but as a deeply committed way of life. We renounce the outlook that some people are more valuable than others, that some people’s opinions should be taken seriously while others should not, that some people are worthy of having say and others are not. We will lovingly call each other on elitism and superiority where they creep into our own attitudes and communications.
9) Our gatherings are devoted to the pursuit of love, justice, and ecstasy.
10) Toward this end, we explore rituals, writings, music, and other forms that draw us upward toward elevated awareness, and downward toward rootedness, toward communion with the earth. Candles and other forms of fire, shared dances, songs, and prayers: these are examples of myriad avenues that we pursue and myriad aids to spiritual joy that we use.
11) We refuse the view that the attachment to the human body is the source of human suffering, or that dwelling in this physical and finite world brings pain that must be escaped. There is no need to transcend our animal nature; in fact, to do so is to reject who we are, to create alienation from ourselves and our surroundings, the world we were born of an into. Our joy and our meaning are right here.
12) The highest form of human life happens when we love each other and find ecstasy in our lives on this earth.
13) We proudly proclaim the beauty, sanctity, and purity of the human being and the human body, and of our inherent purpose, which is to be loving and joyful upon this earth.
14) We proudly proclaim the beauty, sanctity, and purity of the other animals on this earth, and of all forms of life with which we share our home.
15) We believe in the beauty, sanctity, and purity of body-based sensory pleasure, whether it be the feeling of the wind on our skin, the smell of an aromatic meal, the pleasure of a massage, the squish of mud between toes, the ecstatic sounds of music, the songs of birds, the warmth of the sun on our backs, the pleasures of lovemaking, dipping into cold water, sitting under a waterfall, rolling down a hill…
16) Moreover, if we lived reveling in these pleasures, there would be no need or desire to pollute and choke the earth, no need to accumulate objects, no need to enslave people and animals.
17) Work is inherently a joyful activity. It does not need to be avoided except when it takes up too much of our lives. Work only becomes drudgery under hierarchy: when it is controlled by others (bosses) and we lose our say, when we are isolated (having to work far away from the people we love, without community), or when it is unnatural (having to work indoors under artificial light, having to do work that harms the earth or its denizens, having to do work that does not enhance life).
18) Therefore, Nature’s Temple gatherings sometimes involve joyfully working together on projects that benefit particular people or that benefit us all, or that are good for the earth and its inhabitants.
19) We are eager to cooperate with other spiritual and religious groups on social action and resistance, community development and assistance projects, and sharing of ecumenical ceremonies / gatherings.
20) We do not believe that the naming of a belief as “religious” or “spiritual” makes that belief above moral and ethical examination and above criticism. We will not hesitate to speak out respectfully but forcefully against religious tenets that spread hatred, that demonize any form of non-exploitative love, that bring shame or rejection to the human body, or that propound the inferiority of any group, be it by race, gender, sexual orientation, age, tribe, or class. We also reject any form of torture or mutilation of children or adults, regardless of its claimed religious or spiritual significance.
21) The raising or hunting of animals to provide food for us must be carried out with the most kindness possible, and the decision to confine an animal or take its life must never lack seriousness or gratitude on our part.
22) The raising or capturing of animals to make them work for us is questionable ethically, and should be constantly reexamined.
23) The destruction of any animal’s habitat is only ethically defensible where it is essential to our survival or well-being. Such excuses as luxury, “progress,” technological advancement, “protecting our modern lifestyle,” “national security,” or the furthering of interests of investors, do not justify the killing of animals or the destruction of their habitat.
24) We have reason to believe that there is still time to save the earth’s people, animals, and other forms of life, if we move quickly into a loving, non-materialistic relationship to the earth, put our best thinking into finding solutions to the environmental crisis, and work from a basis of love and cooperation. Tremendous and rapid change will be required, however, both in how we live externally and in how we think and believe.
25) It is our inherent nature to live in a tribe or clan. Most human suffering can be traced to the destruction of the tribes. It is urgent that we respect and preserve existing tribes, and that we find ways to return to the tribal basis of life.
26) Deep spirituality is not just about pursuing true joy, but also about looking squarely at exploitation and atrocity. Spirituality is often not pretty. It involves gazing deeply into the harsh reality of the cruelty that has been done to individuals, communities, and peoples. It involves grasping and rejecting the excuses and justifications that have been made for those thefts of land, of ways of life, and of lives themselves. Spirituality is about deep connection to beauty; however, when one connects fully to beauty, one also finds the need to connect to what is destroying that beauty, and to stop it.
27) The basis of modern oppression (and perhaps of ancient oppression as well) is materialism, the belief that satisfaction comes from possession and control of things. The desire for possession is interwoven with the desire for power and status, and the desire to avoid doing one’s share of the work, especially the more difficult and unpleasant work. (An irony here is that materialism causes an inconceivably vast increase in the amount of miserable work that has to be done.)
28) Interacting with unnatural machines, including tiny ones, is an impediment to joyful and deep awareness. By unnatural we mean machines that contain unnatural or polluting materials, that pollute during their use, that pollute when they are disposed of, or that required pollution in their construction, which applies to all but a tiny portion of machines that we use in the modernized world. We strive to reduce to an absolute minimum the amount of our lives that we spend in such engagement.
29) Other animals do not spend the bulk of their lives suffering. In fact, suffering is much more the exception than the rule in the animal world. It is precisely in our decision to attempt to stop being animals that we have created lives of loneliness, starvation, violence, and oppression. Our joy can be found by returning to what we were born to be: physical creatures in a beautiful and pleasurable physical world.
If you find that you agree with most or all of what I've written here, please contact me about joining my Nature's Temple group (Western Mass.) or starting your own near where you live. Write to NaturesTemple@juno.com.
The core beliefs of Nature’s Temple:
1) The human being is an animal. We are no more different from other animals than they are from each other. We are not a race apart. All the creatures of the earth are our sisters and brothers.
2) We gather to express and share our love of life and our deep pleasure in the beauty of the world in which we live.
3) We pursue an ever deeper and more ecstatic experience of life.
4) The pursuit of ecstasy is inseparable from the pursuit of love. We strive to make our hearts ever more open to the giving and receiving of love.
5) Ecstasy is about communion. The greatest ecstasy involves a euphoric and mystical sense of connection to all that is.
6) And, since the human race is part of all that is, communion with all human beings is part of the ecstatic experience. This understanding leads, in turn, to the inevitable awareness that justice, respect, equality, and freedom must be brought to all individuals, to all communities, and to all tribes.
7) Nature’s Temple strives to help each participant rediscover and deepen access to joy that does not come from possessing things. We pursue joy from love, from physical pleasure, from experiences of nature, from healthful food that is lovingly prepared, from music and theater and all of the arts, from dance, from touch.
8) We pursue equality and mutual respect, not just as words but as a deeply committed way of life. We renounce the outlook that some people are more valuable than others, that some people’s opinions should be taken seriously while others should not, that some people are worthy of having say and others are not. We will lovingly call each other on elitism and superiority where they creep into our own attitudes and communications.
9) Our gatherings are devoted to the pursuit of love, justice, and ecstasy.
10) Toward this end, we explore rituals, writings, music, and other forms that draw us upward toward elevated awareness, and downward toward rootedness, toward communion with the earth. Candles and other forms of fire, shared dances, songs, and prayers: these are examples of myriad avenues that we pursue and myriad aids to spiritual joy that we use.
11) We refuse the view that the attachment to the human body is the source of human suffering, or that dwelling in this physical and finite world brings pain that must be escaped. There is no need to transcend our animal nature; in fact, to do so is to reject who we are, to create alienation from ourselves and our surroundings, the world we were born of an into. Our joy and our meaning are right here.
12) The highest form of human life happens when we love each other and find ecstasy in our lives on this earth.
13) We proudly proclaim the beauty, sanctity, and purity of the human being and the human body, and of our inherent purpose, which is to be loving and joyful upon this earth.
14) We proudly proclaim the beauty, sanctity, and purity of the other animals on this earth, and of all forms of life with which we share our home.
15) We believe in the beauty, sanctity, and purity of body-based sensory pleasure, whether it be the feeling of the wind on our skin, the smell of an aromatic meal, the pleasure of a massage, the squish of mud between toes, the ecstatic sounds of music, the songs of birds, the warmth of the sun on our backs, the pleasures of lovemaking, dipping into cold water, sitting under a waterfall, rolling down a hill…
16) Moreover, if we lived reveling in these pleasures, there would be no need or desire to pollute and choke the earth, no need to accumulate objects, no need to enslave people and animals.
17) Work is inherently a joyful activity. It does not need to be avoided except when it takes up too much of our lives. Work only becomes drudgery under hierarchy: when it is controlled by others (bosses) and we lose our say, when we are isolated (having to work far away from the people we love, without community), or when it is unnatural (having to work indoors under artificial light, having to do work that harms the earth or its denizens, having to do work that does not enhance life).
18) Therefore, Nature’s Temple gatherings sometimes involve joyfully working together on projects that benefit particular people or that benefit us all, or that are good for the earth and its inhabitants.
19) We are eager to cooperate with other spiritual and religious groups on social action and resistance, community development and assistance projects, and sharing of ecumenical ceremonies / gatherings.
20) We do not believe that the naming of a belief as “religious” or “spiritual” makes that belief above moral and ethical examination and above criticism. We will not hesitate to speak out respectfully but forcefully against religious tenets that spread hatred, that demonize any form of non-exploitative love, that bring shame or rejection to the human body, or that propound the inferiority of any group, be it by race, gender, sexual orientation, age, tribe, or class. We also reject any form of torture or mutilation of children or adults, regardless of its claimed religious or spiritual significance.
21) The raising or hunting of animals to provide food for us must be carried out with the most kindness possible, and the decision to confine an animal or take its life must never lack seriousness or gratitude on our part.
22) The raising or capturing of animals to make them work for us is questionable ethically, and should be constantly reexamined.
23) The destruction of any animal’s habitat is only ethically defensible where it is essential to our survival or well-being. Such excuses as luxury, “progress,” technological advancement, “protecting our modern lifestyle,” “national security,” or the furthering of interests of investors, do not justify the killing of animals or the destruction of their habitat.
24) We have reason to believe that there is still time to save the earth’s people, animals, and other forms of life, if we move quickly into a loving, non-materialistic relationship to the earth, put our best thinking into finding solutions to the environmental crisis, and work from a basis of love and cooperation. Tremendous and rapid change will be required, however, both in how we live externally and in how we think and believe.
25) It is our inherent nature to live in a tribe or clan. Most human suffering can be traced to the destruction of the tribes. It is urgent that we respect and preserve existing tribes, and that we find ways to return to the tribal basis of life.
26) Deep spirituality is not just about pursuing true joy, but also about looking squarely at exploitation and atrocity. Spirituality is often not pretty. It involves gazing deeply into the harsh reality of the cruelty that has been done to individuals, communities, and peoples. It involves grasping and rejecting the excuses and justifications that have been made for those thefts of land, of ways of life, and of lives themselves. Spirituality is about deep connection to beauty; however, when one connects fully to beauty, one also finds the need to connect to what is destroying that beauty, and to stop it.
27) The basis of modern oppression (and perhaps of ancient oppression as well) is materialism, the belief that satisfaction comes from possession and control of things. The desire for possession is interwoven with the desire for power and status, and the desire to avoid doing one’s share of the work, especially the more difficult and unpleasant work. (An irony here is that materialism causes an inconceivably vast increase in the amount of miserable work that has to be done.)
28) Interacting with unnatural machines, including tiny ones, is an impediment to joyful and deep awareness. By unnatural we mean machines that contain unnatural or polluting materials, that pollute during their use, that pollute when they are disposed of, or that required pollution in their construction, which applies to all but a tiny portion of machines that we use in the modernized world. We strive to reduce to an absolute minimum the amount of our lives that we spend in such engagement.
29) Other animals do not spend the bulk of their lives suffering. In fact, suffering is much more the exception than the rule in the animal world. It is precisely in our decision to attempt to stop being animals that we have created lives of loneliness, starvation, violence, and oppression. Our joy can be found by returning to what we were born to be: physical creatures in a beautiful and pleasurable physical world.
If you find that you agree with most or all of what I've written here, please contact me about joining my Nature's Temple group (Western Mass.) or starting your own near where you live. Write to NaturesTemple@juno.com.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Indoor School Is Prison for Kids
Children are prisoners. We are holding them in cells through half of their days, 180 out of 365 each year. During these days they are permitted to be outdoors for 40 or 50 minutes total (“recess”, though we might just as well call it “yard”) to see the sky, feel the breeze, watch leaves shimmering on a maple tree.
Then, to further enslave them, we give them additional work that they have to do at home at night. Some parents require children to complete their homework before they can play, so whatever might have been left of the light of day is further lost. We pride ourselves on being past the days of child labor, but we’ve only shortened the work week a little bit.
Children who become resistant to this imprisonment, who cannot sit still, or cannot stop looking longingly out the window, are labeled “troublemaker”, ”learning impaired,” or “bad apple.” I know a boy who, half way through elementary school, took up leaving his classroom and hiding in the bathroom for an hour at a time. When questioned on it, he would say he had an upset stomach. After two or three months of daily escapes by him, his parents were called in to talk with school personnel. At the meeting, the boy’s parents asked, “Is it possible that school just isn’t the right place for him?” The teacher and the school psychologist peered at the parents with baffled, uncomprehending expressions. Every child belongs in school, no? The psychologist went so far as to say, “It’s okay if he’s unhappy at school.”
Her statement speaks volumes about our view of children. How could it possibly be okay for a child to be unhappy five days out of the week? I’ll tell you the answer: It’s okay because we have decided that children – that childhood itself , in fact – can be sacrificed so that we may live our “modern lifestyle,” a technologized life which requires children to be indoctrinated and drilled into the information and habits that accompany an indoor life, divorced from nature and drowning in plastic possessions.
Children in the wild spent much of their days playing with friends, and the rest working with other community members on the tasks that kept everyone fed and warm. They carried water, they ran races, they prepared for festivals. And they were almost always outside, except in the most bitterly cold weather. They were around the people they loved all the time, and always had access to other children.
We don’t notice children’s incarceration because we have become inured to our own. During our work week, most of us barely see the daytime sky. (As a headline in The Onion reports, “Autumn Colors Appreciated On Walk To Car.”) Underlying our superficial acceptance of this reality we carry a submerged, heartbreaking sadness at the loss of the world that we have been plucked out of, the Mother we have been kidnapped away from. Adults and children share similar fates.
School teachers are in no way to blame for this situation. The best of them are giving children love and helping them feel excited about what they are learning. Thank heaven for them. But the essential problem remains.
At this point in history, we wouldn’t know how to free the children. Where would they go all day long? Who would look after them? Their parents, after all, have to be working all day for bosses, mostly indoors, far from the children’s home and friends.
However, it is our job – the job of the adult world, that is – to find the solution; there’s no excuse for keeping children locked away from our beloved world for most of their childhoods; what “lifestyle” could possibly be worth it, what conveniences could possible justify it?
Then, to further enslave them, we give them additional work that they have to do at home at night. Some parents require children to complete their homework before they can play, so whatever might have been left of the light of day is further lost. We pride ourselves on being past the days of child labor, but we’ve only shortened the work week a little bit.
Children who become resistant to this imprisonment, who cannot sit still, or cannot stop looking longingly out the window, are labeled “troublemaker”, ”learning impaired,” or “bad apple.” I know a boy who, half way through elementary school, took up leaving his classroom and hiding in the bathroom for an hour at a time. When questioned on it, he would say he had an upset stomach. After two or three months of daily escapes by him, his parents were called in to talk with school personnel. At the meeting, the boy’s parents asked, “Is it possible that school just isn’t the right place for him?” The teacher and the school psychologist peered at the parents with baffled, uncomprehending expressions. Every child belongs in school, no? The psychologist went so far as to say, “It’s okay if he’s unhappy at school.”
Her statement speaks volumes about our view of children. How could it possibly be okay for a child to be unhappy five days out of the week? I’ll tell you the answer: It’s okay because we have decided that children – that childhood itself , in fact – can be sacrificed so that we may live our “modern lifestyle,” a technologized life which requires children to be indoctrinated and drilled into the information and habits that accompany an indoor life, divorced from nature and drowning in plastic possessions.
Children in the wild spent much of their days playing with friends, and the rest working with other community members on the tasks that kept everyone fed and warm. They carried water, they ran races, they prepared for festivals. And they were almost always outside, except in the most bitterly cold weather. They were around the people they loved all the time, and always had access to other children.
We don’t notice children’s incarceration because we have become inured to our own. During our work week, most of us barely see the daytime sky. (As a headline in The Onion reports, “Autumn Colors Appreciated On Walk To Car.”) Underlying our superficial acceptance of this reality we carry a submerged, heartbreaking sadness at the loss of the world that we have been plucked out of, the Mother we have been kidnapped away from. Adults and children share similar fates.
School teachers are in no way to blame for this situation. The best of them are giving children love and helping them feel excited about what they are learning. Thank heaven for them. But the essential problem remains.
At this point in history, we wouldn’t know how to free the children. Where would they go all day long? Who would look after them? Their parents, after all, have to be working all day for bosses, mostly indoors, far from the children’s home and friends.
However, it is our job – the job of the adult world, that is – to find the solution; there’s no excuse for keeping children locked away from our beloved world for most of their childhoods; what “lifestyle” could possibly be worth it, what conveniences could possible justify it?
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Lost Tribe
I feel that I was born in the wrong era. I don’t want to sleep on a bed that is sitting on wood high above the earth; I belong on a mat that touches the ground. I don’t want to spend the great majority of each day, and for that matter of each week and month, far from the people I love the most. I don’t want to spend a half hour out of each day outdoors, and the rest inside away from the sky and natural light and the wind and the sounds. I was meant to live in a tribe, putting our heads together often to strategize and solve problems, watching out for each other’s well-being, accompanied most of the time, alone only by choice and not by default.
An unspoken assumption exists in the modern world that our current way of living benefits people, and that there are only a few people who don’t like it. People who dislike technology are characterized as “afraid of change,” or “old-fashioned,” or “technophobes.” Yet almost everything about how we now live is based on technologies that pollute, and that disconnect us from nature, including the entirety of electronic technology and the entirety of fossil-fuel driven technology. The so-called “clean technologies,” such as the computer industry, are among the most toxic ever; if you would like to read a blow-by-blow about what the electronics world is doing to the natural environment and public health, I encourage you to read In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander.
So I need to be perfectly clear: It isn’t that I fear technology, it’s that I hate it. Or, to be even more precise, my fear is not the fear of the unknown; it is the fear of something that has proven itself to be horrifically destructive to the quality of life, and to consciousness, and to all the plants and animals that we share the planet with.
I long for life in the wild, living as an animal, the way human beings have lived through the vast reaches of our history. Civilization, which has been disastrous, is a phenomenon of the quite recent past, meaning three or four thousand years at most (depending on what part of the world we’re talking about). On this continent, most people were still living in the wild just 250 years ago, a tiny blip in the hundred thousand years or so that our species has existed.
So I am writing today less from a political perspective and more from a personal one. My heart burns for the tribe I lost – for the tribe that was destroyed – two dozen or more generations ago back along my family tree. I have come to believe that we all carry with us this heartbreak of what happened when our particular tribes were destroyed, and this bottomless-seeming grief has been passed down to us through the generations. We are all feeling broken hearted without realizing it. We all need to grieve the tribes we once lost.
And then somehow we need to find a new tribe to which we can belong, living in love with this beautiful world.
An unspoken assumption exists in the modern world that our current way of living benefits people, and that there are only a few people who don’t like it. People who dislike technology are characterized as “afraid of change,” or “old-fashioned,” or “technophobes.” Yet almost everything about how we now live is based on technologies that pollute, and that disconnect us from nature, including the entirety of electronic technology and the entirety of fossil-fuel driven technology. The so-called “clean technologies,” such as the computer industry, are among the most toxic ever; if you would like to read a blow-by-blow about what the electronics world is doing to the natural environment and public health, I encourage you to read In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander.
So I need to be perfectly clear: It isn’t that I fear technology, it’s that I hate it. Or, to be even more precise, my fear is not the fear of the unknown; it is the fear of something that has proven itself to be horrifically destructive to the quality of life, and to consciousness, and to all the plants and animals that we share the planet with.
I long for life in the wild, living as an animal, the way human beings have lived through the vast reaches of our history. Civilization, which has been disastrous, is a phenomenon of the quite recent past, meaning three or four thousand years at most (depending on what part of the world we’re talking about). On this continent, most people were still living in the wild just 250 years ago, a tiny blip in the hundred thousand years or so that our species has existed.
So I am writing today less from a political perspective and more from a personal one. My heart burns for the tribe I lost – for the tribe that was destroyed – two dozen or more generations ago back along my family tree. I have come to believe that we all carry with us this heartbreak of what happened when our particular tribes were destroyed, and this bottomless-seeming grief has been passed down to us through the generations. We are all feeling broken hearted without realizing it. We all need to grieve the tribes we once lost.
And then somehow we need to find a new tribe to which we can belong, living in love with this beautiful world.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Small Changes Aren't Going to Do It
It's great to switch to compact flourescents. It's terrific to turn our computers off at night. It's valuable to drive a car that gets better gas mileage.
And none of these things comes close to giving us a chance at a livable future. We are going to have to make a sea change in how we live, and it will have to happen quickly. If we cannot accept upheaval in our lives now, by our own choice, then nature is going to impose that upheaval upon us, and we will have very little choice in how it plays out.
Scientists are telling us to move rapidly -- that the next ten years are critical to avoid going past the tipping point.
We are fossil fuel addicted, and as is true with addicts, it isn't going to work for use to "reduce" how much we use; we are going to have to get off the sauce altogether. We have to:
* stop laying down any new pavement at all
* stop cutting down any trees except to make way for other plantings (especially food production for local consumption)
* stop constructing any new buildings, and work only with remodeling or adding floors to existing footprints, because we cannot block off any more access to the earth by rainwater; the earth is our filtration system to have clean and healthful water
* stop using the private car for transportation, period
These are not "extreme" proposals -- though some steps are being proposed by some people that are indeed extreme. But the steps I've listed are simply the minimum we have to do, in line with the broad scientific consensus that has formed, to keep the planet livable for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And we can't take the action we need to take unless we start speaking bluntly, and operating in reality, about what those steps are.
And on the other hand, if we get real about what has to be done, we just might be able to do it.
(I will have more to say soon about these points, including specific suggestions at how you can get involved in bringing these changes about.)
And none of these things comes close to giving us a chance at a livable future. We are going to have to make a sea change in how we live, and it will have to happen quickly. If we cannot accept upheaval in our lives now, by our own choice, then nature is going to impose that upheaval upon us, and we will have very little choice in how it plays out.
Scientists are telling us to move rapidly -- that the next ten years are critical to avoid going past the tipping point.
We are fossil fuel addicted, and as is true with addicts, it isn't going to work for use to "reduce" how much we use; we are going to have to get off the sauce altogether. We have to:
* stop laying down any new pavement at all
* stop cutting down any trees except to make way for other plantings (especially food production for local consumption)
* stop constructing any new buildings, and work only with remodeling or adding floors to existing footprints, because we cannot block off any more access to the earth by rainwater; the earth is our filtration system to have clean and healthful water
* stop using the private car for transportation, period
These are not "extreme" proposals -- though some steps are being proposed by some people that are indeed extreme. But the steps I've listed are simply the minimum we have to do, in line with the broad scientific consensus that has formed, to keep the planet livable for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And we can't take the action we need to take unless we start speaking bluntly, and operating in reality, about what those steps are.
And on the other hand, if we get real about what has to be done, we just might be able to do it.
(I will have more to say soon about these points, including specific suggestions at how you can get involved in bringing these changes about.)
Friday, February 5, 2010
The Myth of Progress (Continued)
MYTH #2
"Technological advances have brought us greater comfort, leisure, health, and happiness – what we call our “modern lifestyle” – and have liberated us from mind-numbing, repetitive, boring work."
REALITY #2
You’ve got to be kidding.
We have to begin this discussion by looking at who exactly we are talking about when we say “we.” The march of industrialization, centrally controlled technologies, and pollution – in other words, the vast majority of what is termed "progress" – has had a sharply different effect for the world’s small, privileged elites than it has on everybody else.
The great majority of the world’s people have been forced by “progress” into longer and longer work hours at increasingly boring work compared to what their ancestors did, with less and less control over their work day, and with less and less right or ability to make decisions or use their creativity. Work has become more severely hierarchically controlled, and people are hired and fired at the whim of their employers. In addition, the general trend is for the world’s people to be forced to spend the bulk of their lives indoors or underground (in mines or basements). The human animal is left longing for the sky, the wind, the fields and hills, the air, that had been our surroundings most of the time through our hundreds of thousands of years of history.
So almost any celebration of what technology has supposedly done for “us” is misleading, because "us" refers to a tiny percentage of the world's population that has escaped the effects of "progress" that I've just described.
“Progress” has meant, above all, the forcing of people away from their land-based and communal ways of life, and into employment for a boss. In the process, we have also lost our extended networks of love, support, and companionship from relatives and community members -- our tribe. This is the essence of the change that has taken place over the past few thousand years, but most sharply over the past 500 years, and then more sharply again over the past 150 years, in how the human race lives.
I will not, for now, try to review further the global suffering that is, overwhelmingly, the primary impact that “progress” has had. Books and books have been written on the subject for those who can face the details of what has been wreaked in recent centuries. I will name just a few, for people who would be interested in places to begin: The West and the Rest of Us by Chinweizu (get it through your library -- it's out of print); In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander; Solar Storms by Linda Hogan (a novel, but in many ways brings the points home more effectively than pieces of non-fiction); The End of Nature by Bill McKibben.
But even for the more privileged…
Technology hasn’t really done for anyone what its promoters claim it does.
We are busier and more pressured than ever, and it is technology that creates this pace of life, so the claim of increased leisure is the opposite of the truth.
We do not spend less of our time in boring, repetitive activities – we sit for hours in chairs pointing and clicking, even on our non-work hours, and it’s making us all a little crazy. We spend parts of each day, sometimes many hours, literally strapped to our seats, like prisoners, as we sit in cars and airplanes. (I am strapped to my seat as I write this, and wishing I could get up to go the bathroom, but I’m putting off making the people next to me get up from their cramped, crowded seats and squeeze into the aisle.) We spend our days staring at screens. Life is getting more and more homogenized and repetitive, as more and more millions of our race spend our days doing the same thing – working at computer screens, and the screens of our cell phones and Blackberries.
We don’t have greater health. Besides the epidemic of cancer and heart disease, we have an increasing flood of mysterious complaints – fatigue, dizziness, aches and pains, that are hard to discover the origins of, because we are being exposed to so many substances and so many kinds of radiation (“waves”) that we have no way to know what’s causing what.
We – the privileged “we” – do have greater comfort, in the sense of less cold, less heat (for now), soft comfortable clean clothes, great mattresses. But new discomforts are taking the place of these, including chronic back and joint problems that result from our”lifestyle”, the health complaints I just mentioned, and intense restlessness from having to sit or stand in one place so much.
And anyhow, comfort isn’t everything. On the list of the factors that lead to a satisfying, meaningful, happy experience of life, comfort – except for the avoidance of severe discomfort – plays a pretty small role.
Which leads directly to the last failure of technology and progress: They haven’t made us any happier. In fact, there are numerous indications that the more industrialized and technologized the world gets, the less happy people become. But progress works like any other addiction, in that as it makes us more and more miserable, it also makes us more and more afraid to be without it. This is virtually the definition of how an addiction works, is it not?
What are the key factors that make human beings happy?
This is, in a sense, the most important – yet probably least asked and discussed – question of our times. So I will speak to it in detail in my next entry. The failure to look closely at this question is part of what makes it possible for technology to get away with marching forward, even when it is destroying our health, our land, and our communities.
The transition we have to make in the decades ahead will be, in many respects, a painful one, but it also has the potential, ironically, to be a transition back to a happiness, a subject to which I will soon return.
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Myth of Progress
We have been misled by a crushing weight of misinformation about our own history, in order to cajole and force us into accepting the modern world, or what I call The Climate Crisis Lifestyle. We have been steadily indoctrinated to believe that there is (and was) no good alternative to "progress" as it has been defined in the modern world, meaning ever-greater hierarchy, pollution, mind-numbing work, and destruction of communal ways of living.
In the weeks ahead I will examine the myths that I believe are most central to keeping us locked into this dangerous channel. Today I will begin with:
MYTH # 1
"Tribal people throughout human history have mostly lived hard lives of hunger, disease, cold, and other severe discomforts, and to cap it all off their lives were short. Industrialism and technology have saved us from this horror, making our lives more leisurely, more comfortable, more meaningful, and longer."
REALITY #1
Human beings are animals. Do you see any animal, living in its wild state, that spends most of its life starving, suffering pain, and working itself into unbearable exhaustion and boredom? Of course not -- for the most part animals do not live in this way, and there are certainly no entire species who live in bad conditions through the bulk of their lives. So why should we believe that wild humans did?
And the fact is that there is plenty of historical evidence to indicate that most tribal people, prior to being conquered by non-tribal invaders, worked far fewer days per year than we do, worked shorter hours than we do on those days that they did work, and devoted far more of their lives to leisure, festivals, crafts, and games. They suffered much less than we do from violence, loneliness, insecurity, and work-related illnesses and deaths.
My goal is not to idealize the human being in his and her natural, wild lifestyle. Tribal life included injustices, hierarchies, and violence (and perhaps even some boredom). But these ills were present at minute levels compared to what we endure in the current world with our supposed "progress." True human progress (which moved forward through most of the history of our species) actually stopped at precisely the point at which industrial and technological "progress" began, an ironic twist that I will be writing more about in the months to come.
A truly "wild" human being (who would never have survived alone, and so was always part of a group, tribe, or clan that worked partly or entirely cooperatively) was as magnificent, intelligent, skillful, and beautiful as any wild animal that we enjoy watching or learning about today, and he and she should be celebrated and revered by all of us. Those of us who long for the wild are actually longing for a far more interesting, leisurely, and accompanied life than the modern world allows us, our natural way of life that was taken from us long, long ago.
Can we find our way back to some version of that nature-based, wild way of life? It seems that we may have no other choice. The earth may not tolerate our presence much longer unless we can rapidly learn -- re-learn, actually -- how to live in full harmony with it. So it appears that we are beginning now, whether we like it or not, a transition to a new way of life, full of perils but also full of exciting possibilities.
In the weeks ahead I will examine the myths that I believe are most central to keeping us locked into this dangerous channel. Today I will begin with:
MYTH # 1
"Tribal people throughout human history have mostly lived hard lives of hunger, disease, cold, and other severe discomforts, and to cap it all off their lives were short. Industrialism and technology have saved us from this horror, making our lives more leisurely, more comfortable, more meaningful, and longer."
REALITY #1
Human beings are animals. Do you see any animal, living in its wild state, that spends most of its life starving, suffering pain, and working itself into unbearable exhaustion and boredom? Of course not -- for the most part animals do not live in this way, and there are certainly no entire species who live in bad conditions through the bulk of their lives. So why should we believe that wild humans did?
And the fact is that there is plenty of historical evidence to indicate that most tribal people, prior to being conquered by non-tribal invaders, worked far fewer days per year than we do, worked shorter hours than we do on those days that they did work, and devoted far more of their lives to leisure, festivals, crafts, and games. They suffered much less than we do from violence, loneliness, insecurity, and work-related illnesses and deaths.
My goal is not to idealize the human being in his and her natural, wild lifestyle. Tribal life included injustices, hierarchies, and violence (and perhaps even some boredom). But these ills were present at minute levels compared to what we endure in the current world with our supposed "progress." True human progress (which moved forward through most of the history of our species) actually stopped at precisely the point at which industrial and technological "progress" began, an ironic twist that I will be writing more about in the months to come.
A truly "wild" human being (who would never have survived alone, and so was always part of a group, tribe, or clan that worked partly or entirely cooperatively) was as magnificent, intelligent, skillful, and beautiful as any wild animal that we enjoy watching or learning about today, and he and she should be celebrated and revered by all of us. Those of us who long for the wild are actually longing for a far more interesting, leisurely, and accompanied life than the modern world allows us, our natural way of life that was taken from us long, long ago.
Can we find our way back to some version of that nature-based, wild way of life? It seems that we may have no other choice. The earth may not tolerate our presence much longer unless we can rapidly learn -- re-learn, actually -- how to live in full harmony with it. So it appears that we are beginning now, whether we like it or not, a transition to a new way of life, full of perils but also full of exciting possibilities.
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