P.D. Allen's Blog, page 28
August 4, 2012
Whirling Dervish
Quantum Meditation #1596
August 3, 2012
August 2, 2012
August 1, 2012
July 31, 2012
Hope for the Future
Hope for the Future
Dale Allen Pfeiffer
The most important article in this entire series is Under Shattered Skies of Our Own Design
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
download this article as a pdf (black print on a white background)
(pdallen.com) It would seem natural for the left to take up the topic of resource depletion, and Peak Oil in particular. These problems are indicative of the failure of our current socio-economic system and the need for change. We have squandered our resources in a mad rush of rampant consumption. One would think that the left would have a field day with this. Yet the left has gone out of its way to avoid this issue.
For the most part, progressive voices and alternative media outlets have resisted the message of Peak Oil. Even now that it is staring them in the face, they are reluctant to admit it and are making no organized attempt to deal with it. Instead, they have either been vehement in their denial of Peak Oil, or they have pointed to a techno-fix without taking a good strong look at the likeliness of such a solution.
This failure to discuss Peak Oil and its implications has left the field open to the other side of the political spectrum. Without so much as an argument from the left, the right will institute their own solution to the problem: a militant grab for the remaining hydrocarbon resources, the opening of protected wilderness to exploitation, corporate welfare, a push for coal and nuclear power, and a restriction of liberties for the general public. The opposition will be left to protest loudly against these tactics-something it has become very good at.
Yet the solution of the right is no solution at all, merely a vain attempt to stay the course and hold on to their position at the top of the heap. Ironically, a sustainable solution calls for many of the same goals which the left has long held dear. What is more, the public-as it wakes up to the problem-is frightened for their welfare and clamoring for a solution.
The Salvation of the Left
It is the duty of the left to point the way to a new sunrise. We must answer the cries of our friends and neighbors with soothing words of hope and promise. We must announce a new age of hope, compassion, quality of life, and freedom from the tyranny of corporate capitalism.
One way or another, energy depletion will spell the end of globalization and conspicuous consumption. Surviving the end of the oil age will require us to get to know our neighbors, to rediscover our local communities, and to become responsible stewards of our local environment. We will learn first hand the humane importance of family planning, birth control and freedom of choice. Are these not goals of the left?
The path will be fraught with hardship. But if we begin preparing now, we can ensure that the future holds a world where the values of freedom, equality and justice are known and cherished, a sustainable world in harmony with nature, a world rich with community and quality of life.
First the left must wake up to the reality of resource depletion. We must loudly and boldly articulate our vision for the future, and we must act to bring this vision to fruition. We need artists-painters, musicians, and above all storytellers-to paint this vision for us, to sound it out and give it substance. We need a renaissance of art, thought and action to bring us out of these dark days of corporate capitalism, conspicuous consumption and media monopoly.
As activists, we must learn that protesting is the least important of our activities. It is the duty of activists everywhere to organize locally and begin building the world of the future within the hollow husk of today.
12 Fun Activities for Activists
Community Vegetable Gardens
Lobby your communities and neighbors to allow you to plant up and tend vacant lots. If you live in an apartment complex with a suitable roof, lobby the management to allow you to build and tend planting boxes on the roof. This is an activity which can foster a strong sense of community between you and your neighbors.
Operation Johnny Appleseed
Take a cue from that activist of American folklore and just start planting. Always save your apple seeds, pear seeds, peach pits, grape pips, cherry pips, etc. Save them and plant them wherever you find a likely spot. You can do this with any hardy perennial-fruits, roots and a select group of vegetables. You can even donate a little money and time to the purchase and planting of saplings, vines (grapes), bushes and brambles (blueberries and raspberries), or runners (strawberries).
You could also take a tip from the American Indians and other native peoples and promote the propagation of beneficial wild plants. The study of permaculture lends itself to this activity.
Food Not Bombs
This is perhaps the best single idea to come out of the Anarchist movement in the last fifty years. What is wrong with the Salvation Army, soup kitchens and other charities? For one thing, the majority of food charities expect something in return, usually a religious conversion. But there is a more basic problem with traditional charities: they are charities. People who are well off are taking time to help the downtrodden. However well-meaning, those who come for the food are made to feel like beggars, beholden for the charity they receive and dependent on the charity of others.
In Food Not Bombs, fliers are passed out announcing an open picnic at a local park, or some such place. The food is prepared ahead of time and laid out where everyone can serve her or himself. And then everyone sits down to eat together.
Food Not Bombs picnics can be combined with educational tours to identify local edible plants. You can even show off the fruits of your free plantings or invite folks to help out with the local community garden.
Farmer’s Markets and CSA’s
If you can locate a nearby Farmer’s Market or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), then patronize the former or join the latter. CSA’s are farms dedicated to serving their subscribers. For a yearly subscription price, members are given a percentage of the produce. Subscribers sometimes pitch in with the harvesting and other activities. The farmers usually accompany their produce with advice for food preservation.
If you can’t find a local Farmer’s Market or CSA, consider organizing one.
Community Transportation Networks
This is an idea which is bound to become more popular as gas prices go up. Form a community car pool, not just for the commute to and from work, but to shopping centers and elsewhere. You can set up a local network to match up people who need to go to specific places at specific times, so that they can share rides.
With the US becoming increasingly dependent on foreign oil, and with US soldiers dying in oil wars, isn’t it unpatriotic for each single person to drive around by him- or herself?
Bicycle Co-ops and Bicycle Trails
Bicycle co-ops can maintain a fleet of bicycles for the use of members, or for temporary rental by non-members. The co-ops maintain the bicycles, collect them and return them to distribution centers. Bicycle co-ops can lobby local communities for bicycle trails and donate time to the maintenance of those trails.
Support Local Businesses, particularly Co-ops
How many local businesses are left in the wake of globalization? While supporting local businesses, press to ensure that those businesses are ethical and responsible.
Form Co-ops
There is no end to the essential services which can be provided through co-ops. Co-ops give a community control over the provision of necessities.
Organize Community Activities
Community entertainments such as barn dances, music and art festivals or community theatres not only provide entertainment, they provide venues where people can socialize. Here you can meet like-minded folks who would be interested in taking part in the other activities mentioned here. These concerts and festivals also provide forums for local artists to reach an audience and/or inspire them with visions of where they can take their community.
Other activities provide a pleasant setting for doing tedious work, or group support to get things done. This includes quilting bees, sewing circles, or fix-it fairs where everybody can bring old appliances to fix or salvage.
Community Refurbishing Co-ops
Such groups can help to remodel homes for greater energy efficiency, erect or refurbish community centers, or possibly erect shelters for the homeless.
Community Energy Production Co-ops
Such organizations can provide local, community owned and maintained, low level energy production. Depending on local conditions, potential power sources could be wind turbines, solar cells, hydroelectric, or even geothermal (in select areas).
Ecovillages
Here is the ultimate activity, an entirely self-sustaining community. This is the eventual goal towards which we must all direct our activities if we are to have a free, equitable and just society. That is, a society where the quality of life makes life worth living and where we can reside happy and contented to watch our children grow up in a positive and healthy environment.
This is the vision which the left can hold out to the public, a vision which cannot be matched by the right’s appeal to fear, anger and greed.
Emblems of the Left
The left also needs visible emblems to give them a sense of identity and help draw in the public. The right has thoroughly laid claim to the American flag and to the colors red, white and blue. These symbols have been imbued with nationalism, false pride, vengefulness, obedience to authority, selfish insolence, and even divine right. These symbols have been so thoroughly identified with the right in the public mind as to be inseparable from the attitude “My country right or wrong, love it or leave it, blessed by god.”
The left needs noble symbols that effectively appeal to higher values than base nationalism. We need symbols that evoke the cherished ideals of liberty, equality and justice.
To this end, I suggest we stake a claim to the bald eagle. Not a cartoon eagle in red, white and blue. Nor an eagle superimposed over a background of stars and stripes. We need images of eagles flying in a blue sky, of eagles flying over mountains and wilderness, with the words “Liberty, Equality and Justice for All.”
The bald eagle is not only the national bird, it is also the symbol of what is at risk – endangered wildlife and vanishing wilderness. In its association with the wilderness, it is the perfect symbol of freedom and justice.
Another emblem which could be claimed by the left is the stylized image of a circle of people holding hands, men, women and children of all colors. At the center of their circle could be a house to symbolize home and community, and/or a tree to symbolize harmony with nature. And around the outside of the circle, there could be words like: freedom, equality, justice, democracy, harmony, quality, sustainability. Or there could be a motto such as: “Let not fear, greed or anger destroy what we have.”
Conclusion
It is time for the left to step up to bat. There is no need to fearfully deny the reality of resource depletion. And we have every reason not to leave the field of action to the right and confine ourselves to protest and reaction.
There are hard times ahead, but there is no need to give up hope if we can stand together to meet what is to come. The left does have a positive vision to offer, but it must be trumpeted loudly and we must take the initiative.
Failure to do so will lead to a dark and dismal future. Let us reject the darkness and strive toward the light.
July 30, 2012
Salvation ~ Murderer’s Sky
The entire congregation ascended on the rhythm of gospel hymns, filled to bursting with joyous rapture. Their hearts soared over blazing clouds of glory, the knowledge of their imminent salvation surging through them in blessed paroxysms of holy fervor. And, as always, Reverend Chassey timed his entrance to the exact moment when their devotions reached the unsustainable heights of ecstasy.
As he walked down the isle beaming with righteous vigor and vitality, the congregation broke from song into tumultuous waves of love and adulation that crashed into the aisle and threatened to drown them all. Yet Reverend Chassey strode over the surface of that turbulent surf, a beacon to them all — the vessel of their salvation.
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
July 29, 2012
Loss of Soul
The Loss of Soul
by PD Allen
The most important article in this entire series is Under Shattered Skies of Our Own Design
Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback
download this article as a pdf (black print on a white background)
(pdallen.com) I may have the ability to enslave another human being, but that does not confer upon me the right to do so. Likewise, I might be able to exploit another person for my own gain, but that does not mean I have a right to do so. This assumption of right has been taken far too lightly by our society, largely because there is no perceived cost. The costs of exploitation seem to be intangible, while the benefits are very measurable. Our entire economic system is based upon the exploitation of people and the environment. It is through the exploitation of people and the environment that we generate profit and so enrich ourselves monetarily.
Our economy is hinged upon the justification that it is perfectly fine to exploit so long as it does not offend the conscience. In fact, such behavior is commendable and is rewarded through material enrichment. So long as the exploitation is subtle enough, or is hidden from public view, or can be justified in some way, it will not disturb the personal or public conscience. Over many centuries, our society has transformed such pernicious behavior into something admirable. In the business world, avarice, inhumanity and predation are all transformed into desirable qualities such as competitive drive. These qualities make for a successful businessperson, so long as he or she does not run afoul of the conscience. Ken Lay was the model of a successful businessman until his company over-exploited its own workers, investors and the citizens of California. Even so, he will not be punished as he would if he had been caught robbing a gas station.
The adage of success in our socio-economic system is: do whatever you want; just don’t get caught. And the system we live in aids exploitation by failing to take the full costs into account. That is because many of the costs are intangible or are distant in time and/or space from the benefits. But exploitation is not without costs, and in the end these costs will overshadow any possible benefit.
An ecosystem is more than the sum of its parts; it is the gestalt to which all of those parts contribute. Each member of an ecosystem contributes to the vitality of that ecosystem. And as you remove members, or damage or degrade them, so do you diminish the vitality of that ecosystem. The vitality of an ecosystem can be destroyed gradually in such a fashion, and the damage can be healed. But every ecosystem has a threshold beyond which it cannot be healed. Once the damage has exceeded this threshold, the vitality of the ecosystem will continue to diminish until it is entirely destroyed. In time, it will be replaced by a much poorer ecosystem, which is incapable of supporting the vitality and diversity of its predecessor, due to entropy.
No ecosystem stands alone. Even islands interact with the ocean ecosystems that surround them. All ecosystems are connected together in the biosphere, and beyond that in the gestalt of biological and geological processes that James Lovelock first referred to as Gaia. When the vitality of an ecosystem is diminished, so is the vitality of the biosphere and of Gaia. Whatever damage is done to the least part of the smallest ecosystem has its effect upon the whole of Gaia. Conversely, whatever is done to improve the health and vitality of even the smallest ecosystem, improves the health and vitality of Gaia as a whole. Likewise, when an ecosystem is enriched every member of that ecosystem benefits. Gaia is a complete feedback system from its smallest part to its totality and back again.
Exploitation results in degradation and diminishment. Whenever we exploit anything, we are ultimately exploiting ourselves. And we are inevitably degraded and diminished as a result. We benefit from the vitality of everything else, but by the same token, we are ourselves impoverished by the loss of that vitality.
Every time that we exploit anything, we are damaged a little bit internally as a result. This is the pain of conscience that occurs internally as an immediate result of the exploitation. This pain exists to teach us our boundaries. If it is not experienced and dealt with right away, then we are deadened a little by our exploitive behavior. Our conscience is numbed and we adjust to the pain. This internal damage can result in a positive feedback loop. The more we exploit, the more our conscience is numbed. But in the end we must deal with the pain and the guilt, or we will become sociopathic.
In circumstances where an individual is thrust into a situation where he or she must quickly become extremely exploitive in order to survive, the conscience can be completely submerged. The individual is thrown into a state of shock where he does not internally process his actions. But once the extreme situation is behind him, the individual will have to deal with his reemerging conscience and all the pain and guilt that went unprocessed.
This is what happens to soldiers when they are thrust into the middle of a war and forced to kill other human beings. Many of them do not get over it for the rest of their lives. Some fall into a cycle of exploitation and self-abuse. You can see this in the faces of many of the guards and interrogators at Abu Ghraib. Others harden themselves to the pain. They become the career soldiers and mercenaries. Or, if not so ‘gainfully’ employed, they become career criminals.
Yet, the society we have evolved has become very good at allowing us to distance ourselves from responsibility for our exploitation. Meat eaters evade responsibility for the mass murder of stockyards, and for the deplorable living conditions of factory farms. Banana eaters and coffee drinkers do not feel responsible for the terrorization of the indigenous peoples who were driven out of their lands to make way for plantations, or for the exploitation of the workers who toil in those fields. Shoppers at Walmart are unaware of the slave labor that has gone into their cheap products.
This evaded responsibility is perhaps the worst effect of exploitation, because it results in a sort of mass numbing that condones exploitation on a massive scale because no single individual is to blame. The result is a full-scale assault on entire populations and ecosystems, with the full vitality of Gaia at stake.
This evasion of responsibility could be termed the “rich brat” mentality. And it is most pronounced among the children of the affluent sectors of society. These are the people who benefit the most from our system of exploitation, and whose own lives are the most insulated from the effects of this exploitation.
We have evolved a system where those who are the most abusive are the most successful, and where they are allowed to evade the responsibility for their abuse. We have evolved a system where those least afflicted by conscience—the most sociopathic among us—rise to the top of the social stratus. Witness our supposed leaders, the Bushs, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condoleeza, the Clintons. There is not one among them who would not sell off his or her own mother for the sake of a greasy dollar, and feel not even a stab of guilt for it.
It could truly be said that we have gained the world but lost our souls. The time will come, however, when we will have to deal with what we have done. We will—all of us—have to let out a collective cry of guilt. We will have to feel the pain for what we have done, and we will have to find some way to exculpate our consciences. And we had best wake up to this pain and this responsibility as soon as possible, for the biosphere and Gaia itself are fast approaching the threshold beyond which the wounds of our exploitation cannot be healed. If we do not admit our pain and our culpability now, we will suffer then.
If we allow our exploitation to pass that threshold, the biosphere could lose so much of its vitality that it will no longer be able support us. In this event, we will be lucky if some remnant of humanity does survive. At the very worst, life will go on. There will be bacteria and insects, algae and plants, and eventually new ecosystems and a new biosphere will evolve. But it will most likely be an impoverished thing compared to the vitality we have on this planet now, due to entropy. And there will be no Van Gogh, no Mozart, no Shakespeare. The planet will be impoverished of the beauty of human creativity motivated by higher impulses.
This destruction is not inevitable. Every living creature contains feedback systems that keep it in good health, and which seek to heal imbalances. Just so, every ecosystem contains feedback systems to keep itself in good health, to heal it when it is ill and to steer it toward balance. Gaia as a whole has its own impetus toward health and balance. As we have produced the present imbalances through our exploitation, so we can aid Gaia in healing itself. It will take a massive effort on our part, and the redirection of our focus. But before we can make this effort, we have to admit our responsibility and feel the pain for what we have done to this planet and to ourselves.
We will not solve our problems by conducting a ‘War on Terror’. We will not solve our problems by invading other countries in order to secure their resources. Our problems will not be solved by mining the resources from our remaining wilderness areas. We will not find a way out of our dilemma by exploiting people or the environment. We will only dig ourselves in deeper.
We will only solve our problems by admitting our mistakes, and by striving to find another path that will allow us to coexist in harmony with each other and our environment. Such a path does exist. To find it, we must work our way through the pain of our conscience. Once we have begun to heal our conscience, we need only open ourselves to the possibility that this other path exists. If we can do that, then we just may find that this alternative path will lead us to a life much richer than anything we now have.
Song and Dance
Quantum Meditation #1590
