My hickory cane corn plants have survived the first light frost. I have harvested the first three ears to reach hard dry mature seed-replantable maturity. Even if they don’t all make it, at least three have so far. One looks very nice. Another looks pretty nice with the strange and unexpected feature of having two tiny little baby embryo corn ears coming off the vase of the one same shank which is bearing the main ear. I will plant seeds from that one separately just in case this a manifestation of actual genetic potential. Three ears of corn from one leaf-axil would be a pretty neat feature.
I also had planted a few beans of a kind called Cherokee Trail Of Tears. It is a vining pole bean. The two really successful vines have several sub-vines apiece and rambled around over the semi-tall goldenrod plants. Between the two vines I got 120 dry mature pods ( plus some green-bean-stage pods that I picked to eat). At an average of 5 beans per pod, that is 600 small black beans from two plants.
I have straightened the leaning-over end-cap retainer board at the end of a long bed. I dug up a couple of successfully growing Seven Top turnip plants and reset them right next to that board. If it rains tonight as predicted, they may survive in place. The space they have vacated is assigned to plant garlic, if I actually plant any.
I planted 8 small potatoes. I got back one small potato and 27 medium to large-medium potatoes, which is pretty okay for a first time amateur. If they last in storage till next late-spring, I will plant them out to see what happens.
In a rarefied environment this morning while filling offering bowls with saffron water the unbidden image of John Cain bouncing along a stage chanting bomb bomb bomb Iran popped into my mind complete with Beach Boy melody.
I thought, here we go again while keeping on task.
Always good to hear your garden report different clue.
Thinking about investing a chunk of change into Dollar General (DG) stock. It’s gone down so, perhaps, a bargain. Buy low; sell high and all that. Running about 3% return and a $.59 dividend. Not terrible even if it stays relatively flat. In 22 it was at $240 but now $77. Looks like plenty of room for growth if economy gets tight. If things boom and it drops to 2% I sell. At 3%/.59 profits will cover brokerage fees in a few moths so no harm; no foul.
I just read that Trump will not have either Pompeo or Haley in his new cabinet!! I never thought Nikki (“Birdbrain”) would get in, but so relieved no Pompeo (or Bolton). As unpredictable as Trump is, this is still a good sign.
It looks like he was at least somewhat sincere in claiming he’d be “the President of peace” when opposing his campaign to that of “Most Lethal military ever” Harris, & all her War Criminal supporters, the Cheneys (Dick & Liz), “the generals”, the CIA agents & their cut-outs, all the phony representatives of the Blob. I think Trump will certainly do this w/r/t Russia-Ukraine. Will the Blob let him? They’ll try to block it, may succeed.
As to the Genocide in Palestine (& the West Bank, Jerusalem, etc.) & the aggressions by the Zionist state against Lebanon, Iran and other neighbors, I’m less sanguine he will put on the brakes. But we will see.
Also, Putin is larding it on pretty thick with the MAGA faction, praised Trump for his “Manly” demeanor. I guess I’m not the only one who enjoys the ShitLibs’ tears.
Did I miss something here? Was the world put out that we are all supposed to pretend that industrial civilization is going to continue until we are all driving around in EVs powered by a grid that only uses hydro, solar, and wind power? A world that is bipolar. Though China will be a first among equals. But for some reason no one sent me an email or a letter that this is the line that I should support in order to delay the coming collapse of industrial civilization and the human extinction that will result from that collapse.
I ask because October 2024 was just as warm as October 2023 which does not mean that no warming has occured in the last year because now there is no El Nino effect. The temperature should have been colder overall.
I ask because we all here claim that science is a crucial method for knowing what is going to happen. At least when the scientists are honest and not lying to our faces.
Well engineers have done the calculations and the calculations show that the the earth is absorbing mush more solar radiation than it is releasing back in to outerspace.
There is no reason to be surprised by this finding. The earth’s level of sea ice in both hemispheres is at record low levels. We were warned decades ago that there were many feedback loops that would act as force multipliers for climate change.
Therefore it seems to me that to talk about a future in which China overtakes the Unites States while both of them will be plunging in to pit of molten lava seems to me to be a case of, whats it called, ummm dementia, no that is not quite it, as people with dementia can not remember anything. Old age ummm no it is not old age either. In old age people forget words that they should know.
Ah, I had to google this. Intentionally failing to use information suspected of being relevant and significant is committing the fallacy of suppressed evidence. Well I must say if there was ever a case for surpressing information that is both relevent and significant this would be it. But it would be interesting to know if people are doing this deliberatly or if they think that they are not doing it at all.
This is a a comment that is connected to my comment on the Open Thread from Eelection day.
And if that was a bit too basic a list of why things fall apart can be added.
1. Borders, humans cannot live with them, nor can they live without them. Trying to figure out where borders should be drawn leads to conflict.
2. Isms do not work. Most importantly neither capitalism or socialism work. A combination of the two might work. But there is no mechanism that works to figure out how a combination of capitalism and socialism might work.
3. Parents cannot be trusted to properly raise their children. No one else can be trusted to properly raise their children either.
4. Specialization of labor makes everyone stupid. That encourages people to lie to each other destroying trust in society.
5. If private organizations that disseminate information to the public try to hold governments accountable for abusing the public’s trust they become targets of the government and their ability to report facts will be damaged.
6. Special interest groups have a decisive advantage over everyone else. By making comparatively small investments they can reap huge rewards by taking small amounts on a per capita basis from everyone else. But the costs of everyone else to oppose the efforts of these special interests is always greater than the rewards returned.
What all of these factors from both comments lead to is inevitable chaos.
In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.
Toni Morrison, March 23, 2015
Christmas, the day after, in 2004, following the presidential re-election of George W. Bush.
I am staring out of the window in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. Then a friend, a fellow artist, calls to wish me happy holidays. He asks, “How are you?” And instead of “Oh, fine—and you?”, I blurt out the truth: “Not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything more in the novel I’ve begun. I’ve never felt this way before, but the election….” I am about to explain with further detail when he interrupts, shouting: “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”
I felt foolish the rest of the morning, especially when I recalled the artists who had done their work in gulags, prison cells, hospital beds; who did their work while hounded, exiled, reviled, pilloried. And those who were executed.
The list—which covers centuries, not just the last one—is long. A short sample will include Paul Robeson, Primo Levi, Ai Weiwei, Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, Dashiell Hammett, Wole Soyinka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lillian Hellman, Salman Rushdie, Herta Müller, Walter Benjamin. An exhaustive list would run into the hundreds.
Dictators and tyrants routinely begin their reigns and sustain their power with the deliberate and calculated destruction of art: the censorship and book-burning of unpoliced prose, the harassment and detention of painters, journalists, poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists. This is the first step of a despot whose instinctive acts of malevolence are not simply mindless or evil; they are also perceptive. Such despots know very well that their strategy of repression will allow the real tools of oppressive power to flourish. Their plan is simple:
1. Select a useful enemy—an “Other”—to convert rage into conflict, even war.
2. Limit or erase the imagination that art provides, as well as the critical thinking of scholars and journalists.
3. Distract with toys, dreams of loot, and themes of superior religion or defiant national pride that enshrine past hurts and humiliations.
The Nation could never have existed or flourished in 1940s Spain, or 2014 Syria, or apartheid South Africa, or 1930s Germany. And the reason is clear. It was born in the United States in 1865, the year of Lincoln’s assassination, when political division was stark and lethal—during, as my friend said, times of dread. But no prince or king or dictator could interfere successfully or forever in a country that seriously prized freedom of the press. This is not to say there weren’t elements that tried censure, but they could not, over the long haul, win. The Nation, with its history of disruptive, probing, intelligent essays sharing wide space equally with art criticism, reviews, poetry and drama, is as crucial now as it has been for 150 years.
In this contemporary world of violent protests, internecine war, cries for food and peace, in which whole desert cities are thrown up to shelter the dispossessed, abandoned, terrified populations running for their lives and the breath of their children, what are we (the so-called civilized) to do?
The solutions gravitate toward military intervention and/or internment—killing or jailing. Any gesture other than those two in this debased political climate is understood to be a sign of weakness. One wonders why the label “weak” has become the ultimate and unforgivable sin. Is it because we have become a nation so frightened of others, itself and its citizens that it does not recognize true weakness: the cowardice in the insistence on guns everywhere, war anywhere? How adult, how manly is it to shoot abortion doctors, schoolchildren, pedestrians, fleeing black teenagers? How strong, how powerful is the feeling of having a murderous weapon in the pocket, on the hip, in the glove compartment of your car? How leaderly is it to threaten war in foreign affairs simply out of habit, manufactured fear or national ego? And how pitiful? Pitiful because we must know, at some level of consciousness, that the source of and reason for our instilled aggression is not only fear. It is also money: the profit motive of the weapons industry, the financial support of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about.
Forcing a nation to use force is easy when the citizenry is rife with discontent, experiencing feelings of a powerlessness that can be easily soothed by violence. And when the political discourse is shredded by an unreason and hatred so deep that vulgar abuse seems normal, disaffection rules. Our debates, for the most part, are examples unworthy of a playground: name-calling, verbal slaps, gossip, giggles, all while the swings and slides of governance remain empty.
For most of the last five centuries, Africa has been understood to be poor, desperately poor, in spite of the fact that it is outrageously rich in oil, gold, diamonds, precious metals, etc. But since those riches do not, in large part, belong to the people who have lived there all their lives, it has remained in the mind of the West worthy of disdain, sorrow and, of course, pillage. We sometimes forget that colonialism was and is war, a war to control and own another country’s resources—meaning money. We may also delude ourselves into thinking that our efforts to “civilize” or “pacify” other countries are not about money. Slavery was always about money: free labor producing money for owners and industries. The contemporary “working poor” and “jobless poor” are like the dormant riches of “darkest colonial Africa”—available for wage theft and property theft, and owned by metastasizing corporations stifling dissident voices.
None of this bodes well for the future. Still, I remember the shout of my friend that day after Christmas: No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.
Toni Morrison – Recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize, member of The Nation‘s editorial advisory board and author of Love, Beloved, Paradise, Jazz and The Bluest Eye, among other books.
Thank you for the kind words. I hope other people will use the Open Thread to describe their gardening, or other survival-potential activities. Also, one hopes more people start gardening over the next few-couple years.
@different clue, as you probably recall Ian ran a weekly survival thread a few years back, and the comments ran into the hundreds, if not ultimately the thousands.
I didn’t contribute, although I have much to say about gardening and food preservation, not to mention food as medicine, food for pleasure, food for life.
In my younger years I tried to spread the word through cooking classes, essays, articles and down on the ground events.
Maybe I reached a Renton housewife or two, or maybe helped some cancer patients to heal through food.
For damn sure I’ve fed more people than I know and made a lot of people happy, even though it all turns to shit in the end.
We’ve got to keep on trying to feed the world good food, nourishing food, same and healthy food.
Speaking literally and metaphorically.
Do good whatever you do.
As far as I know the first warnings that human over population could outstrip the food supply did not come until the 19th century. That was far to late to be of any value.
But what if the warnings would have come in the first century AD. I think that the warnings still would have been to late because every the people of every nation or tribe on earth would have expected everyone else to do something about the problem while they remain free riders. No one would do anything until the consequences became a parent and then it wouid be to late to do anything about the problem. Just like it was with fossil fuels. And even if fossil fuels did not produce greenhouse gases we still would be on the road to a rapid extinction. Because the fossil fuels will run out and then if humans happen to still be around the forests will disappear before people do.
The ba ‘mButi Pigmies have been living in the Ituri Rain Forest for millenia at least without compromising the Rain Forest. Either we accept that shows that humans can live in a habitat without compromising it, or we discard the ba ‘mButi Pigmies as not being part of what we mean by “human”.
This story is only for entertainment purposes. My post about no one warning about the dangers of over population until the 19th century reminded me of something that happened to me in the summer of 1983.
On this summer evening I was introduced to the wife of a friend and coworker. At some point during the evening the conversation turned to Nostradamus who I had never heard of before. Needless to say I was really shocked that someone born around 1960 could possibly believe in such drivel. So I said well rather than tell me about all of the things that have happened in the past that Nostradamus predicted tell me a pridiction that he makes that will happen in the future. She said that Nostramdamus predicted that the World Trade Center Buildings would collapse before the year 2000 was over. Well I said that is pretty damned convienient. That is so far off that we will probably not even know each other by then and who is going to remember that we had this conversation in about 20 years. I also added that I thought the prediction was absurd as New York was not known for earth quakes and even the strongest hurricane that New York could be subject to would not knock them down. And well if they collapse due a nuclear war no one is going to be left around to care anyways.
But once the WTC did collapse i did remember the conversation. I then started doing research about Nostradamus on my computer. I could not find anything about Nostradamus predicting the fall of the WTC at any time, let alone around the year 2000.
By then I had not had any contact with the couple for many years. But I did manage to find contact information for him. It was not hard in those days. So much information was public and for free. I called him up and asked him if he recalled the conversation that I and his wife had. He told me that he could not remember the conversation. I think that he also told me then that they had divorced. But, that might not have happend yet.
So I thought to myself that there is a 50% chance that the conversation that I remembered never happened or a 50% chance that he was not present when the talk of the WTC towers falling happened.
Maybe this story is boring and stupid. Maybe it is inconcievable that the conversation could have actually happened. But I wonder if there is more to the story than meets the raven’s eye.
I really liked the way that I ended the story. It is like at the beginning of every Fargo story when they say that it is a true story. It makes it seem as if the story, though it may be exagurated is based upon true events.
Different Clue,
I am sceptical that this is the entire story. For example do any people of this rainforest tribe immigrate outside of the tribe. If that is the case then the example is invalid because if no one immigrated then eventually the trives population would be greater than the carrying capacity of its territory. Also what about trade with neighboring people. If there is any at all then the example is invalidated in my opinion anyways.
But even if this tribe is able to live sustainably I bet that if a vote were held among the 8 billion people alive today between living and dying like the tribe that you mention which could go on and on and on just like the ever ready battery and living and dying in an industrial society which would collapse on their grand children at the latest that 7 billion people would chose industrial collapse.
I myself would not choose to live like a member of this tribe. I might choose to live a sustainable life style if such a life style included, heated water for baths, fully sustainable bicycles, bike paths like roman roads, playing cards for card games, baseball fields, basketball courts, and volleyball fields.
I think paper would probably also be important. But I am not 100% sure about that. I have heard that primative societies could memorize long complex stories and pass them down from generation to generation. But what was the maximum that could be retained?
Related to this is the carrying capacity of the earth. Many pessimistss of which I am one think that the maximum carrying capacity of the earth is one or two billion people at most. I do not agree with that. The carrying capacity might be 9 billion. But not unless everyone, or the vast majority eat no beef and very little pork. I could live with that.
Also if the rainforst tribe that you mentioned uses any metal at all its society is actually unsustainable. It does not matter that metals can be recycled. Some is always lost during the recycling process. Therefore the use of metal is unsustainable. There is a limited amount on a planet and it is not infanitely recyclable. And on top of that large amounts of energy are required to mine and process it. Therefore any attempt to include metals is cheating in trying to claim that a society is sustainable. I think that the same goes for any significant amounts of natural rubber.
Thinking about taking a bath also made me think of pottery. I highly doubt that kiln produced pottery is a renewable product. To be able to take a bath of heated water in a sustainable society I, or someone else, would have to carve a tub out of a tree trunk with a stone tool. Does obsidian count as a rewable resource? If one lives close to an acitve volcano I guess that it does.
Oh wait there might be another way to take a warm water bath in a sustainable society. A birch bark canoe may also be able to serve as a bath tub.
Pay attention to the comment that is nestled inside of comment which is nestled inside of a comment. I panned this comment today from Climateandecology.com. I love stories that are nestled inside of stories that are nestled inside of stories.
Panopticon on November 14, 2024 at 6:52 pm
Thank you, Rob – another splendid rant. I wondered if anyone else has been using your “climate derangement” phrase, and came upon this review of an intriguing-sounding book:
“Book Review: The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh… after noting the ‘complexity of the history of the carbon economy’, he leads us to a conclusion in complete conformity with his historicising strategy: ‘our lives and our choices are enframed in a pattern of history that seems to leave us no-where to turn but toward our self-annihilation’.”
There is not going to be any transition from an industrial society powered by fossil fuels to an industrial society powered by sustainable energy. It will not even be close.
Below is a link done by engineers from Fineland explaning why this will not happen. They have done their homework. Though they do not state the conclusion of their work as bluntly as I do. God forbid if we destroy hope.
Even if the calculations done by these engineers about what would be needed for an energy transition is lower than they state, the resources required are clearly going to end up getting used for other projects like AI, Crypto Currency mining, and WAR!!
And even if all the neccessary resources were used effectively by the time all the plans can be finished around 2050 at the earliest the last human will have been dead for at least 5 years.
Humans are going to add 4 ppm CO2 this year to the atmosphere. Next year it will be 5ppm. The year after that 6 ppm. And the methane and nitrous oxide are going to rise in percentage terms at even faster rates.
A chinese car company out sold Tesla in all electric autos for the last full year. The chinese company sold 500,000 all electric cars. It also sold 3 million ICE cars.
At this point in history hope is flat out naive foolishness.
I referrenced the ba m’Buti only to note the mistaken confusion of “Industrial Civilization Man” with “species Man” itself.
I also would not like to have to try living at the ba m’Buti level. I would also like a nice life within the limits of eco-biophysical sustainability. I hope humanity in general can reduce its childbearing numbers and rate enough to float back down to a sustainable population level. I do NOT want to see the Ruling Classes enFORCE that level with their current slow-rolling Long Killoff plan, which is what we are living through now ( and some of us dying of it).
On the one hand, at 8 billion people and counting, NOTHing is sustainable.
On the other hand, ” I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun YOU.”
Different Clue,
Have fun trying to outrun a planetary distablized climate. I am sure it will be quite an adventure. A Mad Max movie on steroids perhaps. To be the last family or last man standing will require the application of lots of brutality and to be the benificiary of even a lot more luck.
different clue
Header: Little Garden Report.
My hickory cane corn plants have survived the first light frost. I have harvested the first three ears to reach hard dry mature seed-replantable maturity. Even if they don’t all make it, at least three have so far. One looks very nice. Another looks pretty nice with the strange and unexpected feature of having two tiny little baby embryo corn ears coming off the vase of the one same shank which is bearing the main ear. I will plant seeds from that one separately just in case this a manifestation of actual genetic potential. Three ears of corn from one leaf-axil would be a pretty neat feature.
I also had planted a few beans of a kind called Cherokee Trail Of Tears. It is a vining pole bean. The two really successful vines have several sub-vines apiece and rambled around over the semi-tall goldenrod plants. Between the two vines I got 120 dry mature pods ( plus some green-bean-stage pods that I picked to eat). At an average of 5 beans per pod, that is 600 small black beans from two plants.
I have straightened the leaning-over end-cap retainer board at the end of a long bed. I dug up a couple of successfully growing Seven Top turnip plants and reset them right next to that board. If it rains tonight as predicted, they may survive in place. The space they have vacated is assigned to plant garlic, if I actually plant any.
I planted 8 small potatoes. I got back one small potato and 27 medium to large-medium potatoes, which is pretty okay for a first time amateur. If they last in storage till next late-spring, I will plant them out to see what happens.
mago
In a rarefied environment this morning while filling offering bowls with saffron water the unbidden image of John Cain bouncing along a stage chanting bomb bomb bomb Iran popped into my mind complete with Beach Boy melody.
I thought, here we go again while keeping on task.
Always good to hear your garden report different clue.
Art
Spitballing here:
Thinking about investing a chunk of change into Dollar General (DG) stock. It’s gone down so, perhaps, a bargain. Buy low; sell high and all that. Running about 3% return and a $.59 dividend. Not terrible even if it stays relatively flat. In 22 it was at $240 but now $77. Looks like plenty of room for growth if economy gets tight. If things boom and it drops to 2% I sell. At 3%/.59 profits will cover brokerage fees in a few moths so no harm; no foul.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Mark Level
I just read that Trump will not have either Pompeo or Haley in his new cabinet!! I never thought Nikki (“Birdbrain”) would get in, but so relieved no Pompeo (or Bolton). As unpredictable as Trump is, this is still a good sign.
It looks like he was at least somewhat sincere in claiming he’d be “the President of peace” when opposing his campaign to that of “Most Lethal military ever” Harris, & all her War Criminal supporters, the Cheneys (Dick & Liz), “the generals”, the CIA agents & their cut-outs, all the phony representatives of the Blob. I think Trump will certainly do this w/r/t Russia-Ukraine. Will the Blob let him? They’ll try to block it, may succeed.
As to the Genocide in Palestine (& the West Bank, Jerusalem, etc.) & the aggressions by the Zionist state against Lebanon, Iran and other neighbors, I’m less sanguine he will put on the brakes. But we will see.
Also, Putin is larding it on pretty thick with the MAGA faction, praised Trump for his “Manly” demeanor. I guess I’m not the only one who enjoys the ShitLibs’ tears.
Richard Holsworth
For your friends who see moral equivalency in Israel/Palestine:
Howard Zinn- The Poisons of Nationalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/4/article/593908/pdf
Israeli Myths & Propaganda. Ilan Pappe
https://youtu.be/sIWvcBzbqVc?si=8I2TxW_rdRGMjpLW
anon
Clock is ticking: 2024 to be the hottest year since industrial revolution
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/clock-is-ticking-2024-to-be-the-hottest-year-since-industrial-revolution-18229858
Curt Kastens
Did I miss something here? Was the world put out that we are all supposed to pretend that industrial civilization is going to continue until we are all driving around in EVs powered by a grid that only uses hydro, solar, and wind power? A world that is bipolar. Though China will be a first among equals. But for some reason no one sent me an email or a letter that this is the line that I should support in order to delay the coming collapse of industrial civilization and the human extinction that will result from that collapse.
I ask because October 2024 was just as warm as October 2023 which does not mean that no warming has occured in the last year because now there is no El Nino effect. The temperature should have been colder overall.
I ask because we all here claim that science is a crucial method for knowing what is going to happen. At least when the scientists are honest and not lying to our faces.
Well engineers have done the calculations and the calculations show that the the earth is absorbing mush more solar radiation than it is releasing back in to outerspace.
There is no reason to be surprised by this finding. The earth’s level of sea ice in both hemispheres is at record low levels. We were warned decades ago that there were many feedback loops that would act as force multipliers for climate change.
Therefore it seems to me that to talk about a future in which China overtakes the Unites States while both of them will be plunging in to pit of molten lava seems to me to be a case of, whats it called, ummm dementia, no that is not quite it, as people with dementia can not remember anything. Old age ummm no it is not old age either. In old age people forget words that they should know.
Ah, I had to google this. Intentionally failing to use information suspected of being relevant and significant is committing the fallacy of suppressed evidence. Well I must say if there was ever a case for surpressing information that is both relevent and significant this would be it. But it would be interesting to know if people are doing this deliberatly or if they think that they are not doing it at all.
Curt Kastens
This is a a comment that is connected to my comment on the Open Thread from Eelection day.
And if that was a bit too basic a list of why things fall apart can be added.
1. Borders, humans cannot live with them, nor can they live without them. Trying to figure out where borders should be drawn leads to conflict.
2. Isms do not work. Most importantly neither capitalism or socialism work. A combination of the two might work. But there is no mechanism that works to figure out how a combination of capitalism and socialism might work.
3. Parents cannot be trusted to properly raise their children. No one else can be trusted to properly raise their children either.
4. Specialization of labor makes everyone stupid. That encourages people to lie to each other destroying trust in society.
5. If private organizations that disseminate information to the public try to hold governments accountable for abusing the public’s trust they become targets of the government and their ability to report facts will be damaged.
6. Special interest groups have a decisive advantage over everyone else. By making comparatively small investments they can reap huge rewards by taking small amounts on a per capita basis from everyone else. But the costs of everyone else to oppose the efforts of these special interests is always greater than the rewards returned.
What all of these factors from both comments lead to is inevitable chaos.
Chuck Mire
No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/no-place-self-pity-no-room-fear/
In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.
Toni Morrison, March 23, 2015
Christmas, the day after, in 2004, following the presidential re-election of George W. Bush.
I am staring out of the window in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. Then a friend, a fellow artist, calls to wish me happy holidays. He asks, “How are you?” And instead of “Oh, fine—and you?”, I blurt out the truth: “Not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything more in the novel I’ve begun. I’ve never felt this way before, but the election….” I am about to explain with further detail when he interrupts, shouting: “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”
I felt foolish the rest of the morning, especially when I recalled the artists who had done their work in gulags, prison cells, hospital beds; who did their work while hounded, exiled, reviled, pilloried. And those who were executed.
The list—which covers centuries, not just the last one—is long. A short sample will include Paul Robeson, Primo Levi, Ai Weiwei, Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, Dashiell Hammett, Wole Soyinka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lillian Hellman, Salman Rushdie, Herta Müller, Walter Benjamin. An exhaustive list would run into the hundreds.
Dictators and tyrants routinely begin their reigns and sustain their power with the deliberate and calculated destruction of art: the censorship and book-burning of unpoliced prose, the harassment and detention of painters, journalists, poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists. This is the first step of a despot whose instinctive acts of malevolence are not simply mindless or evil; they are also perceptive. Such despots know very well that their strategy of repression will allow the real tools of oppressive power to flourish. Their plan is simple:
1. Select a useful enemy—an “Other”—to convert rage into conflict, even war.
2. Limit or erase the imagination that art provides, as well as the critical thinking of scholars and journalists.
3. Distract with toys, dreams of loot, and themes of superior religion or defiant national pride that enshrine past hurts and humiliations.
The Nation could never have existed or flourished in 1940s Spain, or 2014 Syria, or apartheid South Africa, or 1930s Germany. And the reason is clear. It was born in the United States in 1865, the year of Lincoln’s assassination, when political division was stark and lethal—during, as my friend said, times of dread. But no prince or king or dictator could interfere successfully or forever in a country that seriously prized freedom of the press. This is not to say there weren’t elements that tried censure, but they could not, over the long haul, win. The Nation, with its history of disruptive, probing, intelligent essays sharing wide space equally with art criticism, reviews, poetry and drama, is as crucial now as it has been for 150 years.
In this contemporary world of violent protests, internecine war, cries for food and peace, in which whole desert cities are thrown up to shelter the dispossessed, abandoned, terrified populations running for their lives and the breath of their children, what are we (the so-called civilized) to do?
The solutions gravitate toward military intervention and/or internment—killing or jailing. Any gesture other than those two in this debased political climate is understood to be a sign of weakness. One wonders why the label “weak” has become the ultimate and unforgivable sin. Is it because we have become a nation so frightened of others, itself and its citizens that it does not recognize true weakness: the cowardice in the insistence on guns everywhere, war anywhere? How adult, how manly is it to shoot abortion doctors, schoolchildren, pedestrians, fleeing black teenagers? How strong, how powerful is the feeling of having a murderous weapon in the pocket, on the hip, in the glove compartment of your car? How leaderly is it to threaten war in foreign affairs simply out of habit, manufactured fear or national ego? And how pitiful? Pitiful because we must know, at some level of consciousness, that the source of and reason for our instilled aggression is not only fear. It is also money: the profit motive of the weapons industry, the financial support of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about.
Forcing a nation to use force is easy when the citizenry is rife with discontent, experiencing feelings of a powerlessness that can be easily soothed by violence. And when the political discourse is shredded by an unreason and hatred so deep that vulgar abuse seems normal, disaffection rules. Our debates, for the most part, are examples unworthy of a playground: name-calling, verbal slaps, gossip, giggles, all while the swings and slides of governance remain empty.
For most of the last five centuries, Africa has been understood to be poor, desperately poor, in spite of the fact that it is outrageously rich in oil, gold, diamonds, precious metals, etc. But since those riches do not, in large part, belong to the people who have lived there all their lives, it has remained in the mind of the West worthy of disdain, sorrow and, of course, pillage. We sometimes forget that colonialism was and is war, a war to control and own another country’s resources—meaning money. We may also delude ourselves into thinking that our efforts to “civilize” or “pacify” other countries are not about money. Slavery was always about money: free labor producing money for owners and industries. The contemporary “working poor” and “jobless poor” are like the dormant riches of “darkest colonial Africa”—available for wage theft and property theft, and owned by metastasizing corporations stifling dissident voices.
None of this bodes well for the future. Still, I remember the shout of my friend that day after Christmas: No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.
Toni Morrison – Recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize, member of The Nation‘s editorial advisory board and author of Love, Beloved, Paradise, Jazz and The Bluest Eye, among other books.
different clue
@mago,
Thank you for the kind words. I hope other people will use the Open Thread to describe their gardening, or other survival-potential activities. Also, one hopes more people start gardening over the next few-couple years.
mago
@different clue, as you probably recall Ian ran a weekly survival thread a few years back, and the comments ran into the hundreds, if not ultimately the thousands.
I didn’t contribute, although I have much to say about gardening and food preservation, not to mention food as medicine, food for pleasure, food for life.
In my younger years I tried to spread the word through cooking classes, essays, articles and down on the ground events.
Maybe I reached a Renton housewife or two, or maybe helped some cancer patients to heal through food.
For damn sure I’ve fed more people than I know and made a lot of people happy, even though it all turns to shit in the end.
We’ve got to keep on trying to feed the world good food, nourishing food, same and healthy food.
Speaking literally and metaphorically.
Do good whatever you do.
Net Neutrality
Thank you Chuck, that was inspirational.
Curt Kastens
As far as I know the first warnings that human over population could outstrip the food supply did not come until the 19th century. That was far to late to be of any value.
But what if the warnings would have come in the first century AD. I think that the warnings still would have been to late because every the people of every nation or tribe on earth would have expected everyone else to do something about the problem while they remain free riders. No one would do anything until the consequences became a parent and then it wouid be to late to do anything about the problem. Just like it was with fossil fuels. And even if fossil fuels did not produce greenhouse gases we still would be on the road to a rapid extinction. Because the fossil fuels will run out and then if humans happen to still be around the forests will disappear before people do.
different clue
@Curt Kastens,
The ba ‘mButi Pigmies have been living in the Ituri Rain Forest for millenia at least without compromising the Rain Forest. Either we accept that shows that humans can live in a habitat without compromising it, or we discard the ba ‘mButi Pigmies as not being part of what we mean by “human”.
Curt Kastens
This story is only for entertainment purposes. My post about no one warning about the dangers of over population until the 19th century reminded me of something that happened to me in the summer of 1983.
On this summer evening I was introduced to the wife of a friend and coworker. At some point during the evening the conversation turned to Nostradamus who I had never heard of before. Needless to say I was really shocked that someone born around 1960 could possibly believe in such drivel. So I said well rather than tell me about all of the things that have happened in the past that Nostradamus predicted tell me a pridiction that he makes that will happen in the future. She said that Nostramdamus predicted that the World Trade Center Buildings would collapse before the year 2000 was over. Well I said that is pretty damned convienient. That is so far off that we will probably not even know each other by then and who is going to remember that we had this conversation in about 20 years. I also added that I thought the prediction was absurd as New York was not known for earth quakes and even the strongest hurricane that New York could be subject to would not knock them down. And well if they collapse due a nuclear war no one is going to be left around to care anyways.
But once the WTC did collapse i did remember the conversation. I then started doing research about Nostradamus on my computer. I could not find anything about Nostradamus predicting the fall of the WTC at any time, let alone around the year 2000.
By then I had not had any contact with the couple for many years. But I did manage to find contact information for him. It was not hard in those days. So much information was public and for free. I called him up and asked him if he recalled the conversation that I and his wife had. He told me that he could not remember the conversation. I think that he also told me then that they had divorced. But, that might not have happend yet.
So I thought to myself that there is a 50% chance that the conversation that I remembered never happened or a 50% chance that he was not present when the talk of the WTC towers falling happened.
Maybe this story is boring and stupid. Maybe it is inconcievable that the conversation could have actually happened. But I wonder if there is more to the story than meets the raven’s eye.
I really liked the way that I ended the story. It is like at the beginning of every Fargo story when they say that it is a true story. It makes it seem as if the story, though it may be exagurated is based upon true events.
Curt Kastens
Different Clue,
I am sceptical that this is the entire story. For example do any people of this rainforest tribe immigrate outside of the tribe. If that is the case then the example is invalid because if no one immigrated then eventually the trives population would be greater than the carrying capacity of its territory. Also what about trade with neighboring people. If there is any at all then the example is invalidated in my opinion anyways.
But even if this tribe is able to live sustainably I bet that if a vote were held among the 8 billion people alive today between living and dying like the tribe that you mention which could go on and on and on just like the ever ready battery and living and dying in an industrial society which would collapse on their grand children at the latest that 7 billion people would chose industrial collapse.
I myself would not choose to live like a member of this tribe. I might choose to live a sustainable life style if such a life style included, heated water for baths, fully sustainable bicycles, bike paths like roman roads, playing cards for card games, baseball fields, basketball courts, and volleyball fields.
I think paper would probably also be important. But I am not 100% sure about that. I have heard that primative societies could memorize long complex stories and pass them down from generation to generation. But what was the maximum that could be retained?
Related to this is the carrying capacity of the earth. Many pessimistss of which I am one think that the maximum carrying capacity of the earth is one or two billion people at most. I do not agree with that. The carrying capacity might be 9 billion. But not unless everyone, or the vast majority eat no beef and very little pork. I could live with that.
Also if the rainforst tribe that you mentioned uses any metal at all its society is actually unsustainable. It does not matter that metals can be recycled. Some is always lost during the recycling process. Therefore the use of metal is unsustainable. There is a limited amount on a planet and it is not infanitely recyclable. And on top of that large amounts of energy are required to mine and process it. Therefore any attempt to include metals is cheating in trying to claim that a society is sustainable. I think that the same goes for any significant amounts of natural rubber.
Curt Kastens
Thinking about taking a bath also made me think of pottery. I highly doubt that kiln produced pottery is a renewable product. To be able to take a bath of heated water in a sustainable society I, or someone else, would have to carve a tub out of a tree trunk with a stone tool. Does obsidian count as a rewable resource? If one lives close to an acitve volcano I guess that it does.
Oh wait there might be another way to take a warm water bath in a sustainable society. A birch bark canoe may also be able to serve as a bath tub.
Curt Kastens
Pay attention to the comment that is nestled inside of comment which is nestled inside of a comment. I panned this comment today from Climateandecology.com. I love stories that are nestled inside of stories that are nestled inside of stories.
Panopticon on November 14, 2024 at 6:52 pm
Thank you, Rob – another splendid rant. I wondered if anyone else has been using your “climate derangement” phrase, and came upon this review of an intriguing-sounding book:
“Book Review: The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh… after noting the ‘complexity of the history of the carbon economy’, he leads us to a conclusion in complete conformity with his historicising strategy: ‘our lives and our choices are enframed in a pattern of history that seems to leave us no-where to turn but toward our self-annihilation’.”
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/07/20/book-review-the-great-derangement-climate-change-and-the-unthinkable-by-amitav-ghosh/
Curt Kastens
Here is another appropriate link.
https://lukasfierz.blogspot.com/2024/11/denial-anger-and-trump.html
Curt Kastens
There is not going to be any transition from an industrial society powered by fossil fuels to an industrial society powered by sustainable energy. It will not even be close.
Below is a link done by engineers from Fineland explaning why this will not happen. They have done their homework. Though they do not state the conclusion of their work as bluntly as I do. God forbid if we destroy hope.
Even if the calculations done by these engineers about what would be needed for an energy transition is lower than they state, the resources required are clearly going to end up getting used for other projects like AI, Crypto Currency mining, and WAR!!
And even if all the neccessary resources were used effectively by the time all the plans can be finished around 2050 at the earliest the last human will have been dead for at least 5 years.
Humans are going to add 4 ppm CO2 this year to the atmosphere. Next year it will be 5ppm. The year after that 6 ppm. And the methane and nitrous oxide are going to rise in percentage terms at even faster rates.
A chinese car company out sold Tesla in all electric autos for the last full year. The chinese company sold 500,000 all electric cars. It also sold 3 million ICE cars.
At this point in history hope is flat out naive foolishness.
https://tupa.gtk.fi/julkaisu/bulletin/bt_416.pdf
different clue
@Curt Kastens,
I referrenced the ba m’Buti only to note the mistaken confusion of “Industrial Civilization Man” with “species Man” itself.
I also would not like to have to try living at the ba m’Buti level. I would also like a nice life within the limits of eco-biophysical sustainability. I hope humanity in general can reduce its childbearing numbers and rate enough to float back down to a sustainable population level. I do NOT want to see the Ruling Classes enFORCE that level with their current slow-rolling Long Killoff plan, which is what we are living through now ( and some of us dying of it).
On the one hand, at 8 billion people and counting, NOTHing is sustainable.
On the other hand, ” I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun YOU.”
Curt Kastens
Different Clue,
Have fun trying to outrun a planetary distablized climate. I am sure it will be quite an adventure. A Mad Max movie on steroids perhaps. To be the last family or last man standing will require the application of lots of brutality and to be the benificiary of even a lot more luck.