What is with this medium, isn't it dead? And if it hasn't got us anywhere, isn't that where we're all going anyway?
I honestly find it bizarre that some people faithfully blog as if they started last month.
Genius and the Planet
The Greatest Wealth is that of All the Species of Life on This Earth. Save it for Ever and Always.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
What can you make someone else do?
What bad can you stop someone from doing?
What good can you start someone doing?
When the bad is the destruction of Nature, its habitats, and its species, and good is the restraint of human greed, where is the pyramid scheme we need to stop the bad and to start the good?
If your words are the only thing you make, but they stop bad and start good, and multiply as quickly as yeast, then do not hide your words.
What good can you start someone doing?
When the bad is the destruction of Nature, its habitats, and its species, and good is the restraint of human greed, where is the pyramid scheme we need to stop the bad and to start the good?
If your words are the only thing you make, but they stop bad and start good, and multiply as quickly as yeast, then do not hide your words.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Paul Kingsnorth in his Uncivilisation of The Dark Mountain Project
What is this Dark Mountain Project that Paul Kingsnorth has escaped to? What are these Uncivilisation festivals that he goes to?
I can understand why he has rejected the 21st century rhetoric of environmentalism. Environmentalism focussed too heavily on climate change, and then built up a huge myth of sustainability economics, which was reduced by the usual Global Human Economic Machine to aim for nothing more than maintaining and increasing the standard of living to which individuals had become accustomed.
Climate change environmentalism destroyed the focus of environmentalism on protection of wildernesses, wild animals, plants. insects, birds, fish , trees, fungi and all living things, most of which were as yet unknown to scientists. Instead the Global Human Economic Machine just rolled on, its juggernaut bulldozing, weedkilling, genetically modifying, depleting and supplanting whatever wild habitats were left on sea and land. While forests burned in Indonesia, Borneo, the Amazon and the Congo, environmentalists got stuck on climate change economics, the counting of greenhouse gas emissions of industrial conglomerates and domestic pedestrians. Siberian forests were raped, Albertan wilderness was scraped clean for tar sands oil and the Australian outback was stripped for iron ore and every mineral that China, India and Brazil needed to become the equals of the USA and Europe. Oceans were sieved by industrial trawlers for their fish, and even as the ice melted at the Poles, the once pristine marine habitats there were claimed by commercial fisheries.
What use is environmentalism if it does not save Nature, let alone restore it? What use was environmentalism when it became like Inspector Clouseau, sent on a wild goose chase while the looters and thieves get away with the murder of Mother Nature?
So it was that while interest faded in Global Warming, even after it was renamed to Climate Change, Paul Kingsnorth was one of the first standard environmental journalists to notice that they were wasting their efforts while Global Ecocide thrived. He withdrew from the fight. He went to the Dark Mountain Project.
Compare this to George Monbiot, another standard environmentalist, whose every beep is based on Climate Change, greenhouse gases, and plain old-fashioned lefty socialism. The man never takes an interest in wilderness, or whales, pandas, or nearly extinct tigers, while he can rant endlessly about the superiority of nuclear power as an energy solution that is free of fossil fuels. Yesterday, he was so disappointed in the newsworthiness of record Arctic Ice sea melt this year, that he announced August 28 was the day the world went mad. That is just ridiculous, because everybody knows that humanity has been mad for years, decades, centuries and millenia. He just can't accept that climate change environmentalism has lost ALL public appeal.
So back to the question, what is Uncivlisation, the Dark Mountain Project, and Paul Kingsnorth's retreat? Its Manifesto explains that civilisation in itself destroys Nature, and Mankind becomes so comfortable with civilisation that it becomes blind to the vulnerability of both its civilisation and the ecosystem on which it depends. Logically, then, it become morally essential to create an alternative to civilisation. Note that there is care taken not to attempt to destroy civilisation, since without any alternative, it will destroy itself. This alternative to civilisation is uncivlisation, and it declares
Okay, Number 1 has probably been true many times in history. So meaningless drivel there.
Number 2 is about rejection of faith in civilization. Painfully obvious.
Number 3 reduces uncivilisation to the realm of story-telling. Why stop there? I can think of many people who can inspire many more ways of being uncivilised.
Number 4 is about creating their own world in stories. Is that all?
Number 5 explains that Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet, and this will be explored through ART. Why not just explore this through LIFE, and not just ART?
Number 6 celebrates writing and art, while ignoring everything else that they consume, i.e. that they cannot produce anything that they consume.
Number 7 Silly.
Number 8 Some message of hope for the sort of people who have to believe that the World is always coming to an End.
Sorry, this is the most rubbish set of 8 principles you could ever set down to lay a basis for Uncivilisation. I cannot understand why Paul Kingsnorth is wasting any time on this. It is the poorest form of escape and a very immoral method of creating Uncivilisation. These people should be running around naked and shitting in the street if they want to inject uncivilisation into the world. The Dark Mountain Project to me is nothing more than another Rubbish Landfill.
I can understand why he has rejected the 21st century rhetoric of environmentalism. Environmentalism focussed too heavily on climate change, and then built up a huge myth of sustainability economics, which was reduced by the usual Global Human Economic Machine to aim for nothing more than maintaining and increasing the standard of living to which individuals had become accustomed.
Climate change environmentalism destroyed the focus of environmentalism on protection of wildernesses, wild animals, plants. insects, birds, fish , trees, fungi and all living things, most of which were as yet unknown to scientists. Instead the Global Human Economic Machine just rolled on, its juggernaut bulldozing, weedkilling, genetically modifying, depleting and supplanting whatever wild habitats were left on sea and land. While forests burned in Indonesia, Borneo, the Amazon and the Congo, environmentalists got stuck on climate change economics, the counting of greenhouse gas emissions of industrial conglomerates and domestic pedestrians. Siberian forests were raped, Albertan wilderness was scraped clean for tar sands oil and the Australian outback was stripped for iron ore and every mineral that China, India and Brazil needed to become the equals of the USA and Europe. Oceans were sieved by industrial trawlers for their fish, and even as the ice melted at the Poles, the once pristine marine habitats there were claimed by commercial fisheries.
What use is environmentalism if it does not save Nature, let alone restore it? What use was environmentalism when it became like Inspector Clouseau, sent on a wild goose chase while the looters and thieves get away with the murder of Mother Nature?
So it was that while interest faded in Global Warming, even after it was renamed to Climate Change, Paul Kingsnorth was one of the first standard environmental journalists to notice that they were wasting their efforts while Global Ecocide thrived. He withdrew from the fight. He went to the Dark Mountain Project.
Compare this to George Monbiot, another standard environmentalist, whose every beep is based on Climate Change, greenhouse gases, and plain old-fashioned lefty socialism. The man never takes an interest in wilderness, or whales, pandas, or nearly extinct tigers, while he can rant endlessly about the superiority of nuclear power as an energy solution that is free of fossil fuels. Yesterday, he was so disappointed in the newsworthiness of record Arctic Ice sea melt this year, that he announced August 28 was the day the world went mad. That is just ridiculous, because everybody knows that humanity has been mad for years, decades, centuries and millenia. He just can't accept that climate change environmentalism has lost ALL public appeal.
So back to the question, what is Uncivlisation, the Dark Mountain Project, and Paul Kingsnorth's retreat? Its Manifesto explains that civilisation in itself destroys Nature, and Mankind becomes so comfortable with civilisation that it becomes blind to the vulnerability of both its civilisation and the ecosystem on which it depends. Logically, then, it become morally essential to create an alternative to civilisation. Note that there is care taken not to attempt to destroy civilisation, since without any alternative, it will destroy itself. This alternative to civilisation is uncivlisation, and it declares
the eight principles of uncivilisation
‘We must unhumanise our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.’
- We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
- We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
- We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
- We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
- Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
- We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
- We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
- The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.
Okay, Number 1 has probably been true many times in history. So meaningless drivel there.
Number 2 is about rejection of faith in civilization. Painfully obvious.
Number 3 reduces uncivilisation to the realm of story-telling. Why stop there? I can think of many people who can inspire many more ways of being uncivilised.
Number 4 is about creating their own world in stories. Is that all?
Number 5 explains that Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet, and this will be explored through ART. Why not just explore this through LIFE, and not just ART?
Number 6 celebrates writing and art, while ignoring everything else that they consume, i.e. that they cannot produce anything that they consume.
Number 7 Silly.
Number 8 Some message of hope for the sort of people who have to believe that the World is always coming to an End.
Sorry, this is the most rubbish set of 8 principles you could ever set down to lay a basis for Uncivilisation. I cannot understand why Paul Kingsnorth is wasting any time on this. It is the poorest form of escape and a very immoral method of creating Uncivilisation. These people should be running around naked and shitting in the street if they want to inject uncivilisation into the world. The Dark Mountain Project to me is nothing more than another Rubbish Landfill.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Looking Back
I am here,
but he whom was me has gone
from all my memory
but for these pages.
Deep, deeper, deep down inside
the dim shadow of that spark hides.
A spark once warmed by spring and fuelled by summer,
languishes in this damp cool greyness.
I am not unhappy, but I am not on fire,
and the annual ritual of shining forth
is squeezed between two clouds,
one that rains words on this page
and the other that shies from big skies.
but he whom was me has gone
from all my memory
but for these pages.
Deep, deeper, deep down inside
the dim shadow of that spark hides.
A spark once warmed by spring and fuelled by summer,
languishes in this damp cool greyness.
I am not unhappy, but I am not on fire,
and the annual ritual of shining forth
is squeezed between two clouds,
one that rains words on this page
and the other that shies from big skies.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Paul Kingsnorth Warns You
Paul Kingsnorth wants to warn you about Neogreens who Could Destroy Nature in the name of the Environment. In case you are the sort of greenie or environmentalist who:
@paulkingsnorth I've done hard physical labour. That's why I hate it and am glad that so few others have to do it. Roll on mechanisation!
@paulkingsnorth What? You're serious? You're against mechanisation? Everything must be sweat of the brow? You actually mad or what?
@worstall But it can't have escaped even your attention that industrialisation has led directly to mass extinction and climate change.
- is stuck in the past, and/or
- is following the money, and/or
- was born yesterday, and/or
- doesn't know much.
This is Paul Kingsnorth's greatest article since I noticed him. It is timely. It is overdue. There are too many armchair and activist environmentalists whom are still bogged down in everybody else's Carbon Footprints. They had forgotten Nature, and while they lost sight of it, more of it was turned over to the bidding of Mankind.
What has made Paul a king's thorn in the backside of the Green world is that he believes it probably is too late to avert man-made climate change. I agree with his strategy - the strategy he calls "withdrawal". The juggernaut of the Global Human Economic Machine grows forever larger, whether or not it does so boldly or with the sinister silence of stealth technology. Withdrawal from trying to halt a juggernaut is just as effective as throwing pebbles at it, which is what most greenie environmentalists have been doing for years. Withdraw. Sing, laugh and play, and actively engage in the restoration of nature. It does not matter if economists (whom are torpid useless blobs incapable even of accountancy jobs) criticise Paul Kingsnorth as the leader of the Neopeasantry, as did Tim Worstall. These criticisms have moved onto Twitter, and the ridiculous argument is as follows:
It is bad enough that we have blogging, and television, and radio, and newspapers. The Global Human Economic Machine (GHEM) is now bogged down in piecemeal dialogues enabled by Twitter. When even Monty Don, bless his huge hands, has had to launch a digital entity to protect and enhance his public personality, the pervasiveness of instant yet time-wasting digital communications has to be considered total.
Because of the wetness and bad weather brought on by climate change, there have been few days this summer to hear the birds tweet, but the noise on Twitter has grown louder. There have been so few days suitable for insect flying, that bees and less popular insects are well below their usual numbers. When the sun has come out, so too have all of mankind, in its usual rush to show that it deserves to keep its job/contract, or to pander to the status system of suburban society. Yes, they have been mowing, strimming, hedge and bush cutting in every rare and precious moment when the weather was dry enough for bees to fly. I hate suburbanization. All the world will one day be a contiguous suburb, as barren as the one I know now. And all we have is Twitter to save us from a desert landscape worthy of a Jewish cemetery.
There is a contradiction of being a neo-Luddite. You have to embrace peasant technology such as scything, while maintaining excellence in GHEM high technology, whether it be in global communications, pharmacology, or genetic manipulation. It is obviously an uncomfortably broad spectrum of technology to master, but one where genius is essential. This is not anything that you will learn from the Olympics, now at the crowing and crowning peak of its medalling glorifications. Like the Roman peasants whom used to watch the gladiatorial games, a modern Olympic peasant does not understand his or her future, let alone the planet's future.
Because of the wetness and bad weather brought on by climate change, there have been few days this summer to hear the birds tweet, but the noise on Twitter has grown louder. There have been so few days suitable for insect flying, that bees and less popular insects are well below their usual numbers. When the sun has come out, so too have all of mankind, in its usual rush to show that it deserves to keep its job/contract, or to pander to the status system of suburban society. Yes, they have been mowing, strimming, hedge and bush cutting in every rare and precious moment when the weather was dry enough for bees to fly. I hate suburbanization. All the world will one day be a contiguous suburb, as barren as the one I know now. And all we have is Twitter to save us from a desert landscape worthy of a Jewish cemetery.
There is a contradiction of being a neo-Luddite. You have to embrace peasant technology such as scything, while maintaining excellence in GHEM high technology, whether it be in global communications, pharmacology, or genetic manipulation. It is obviously an uncomfortably broad spectrum of technology to master, but one where genius is essential. This is not anything that you will learn from the Olympics, now at the crowing and crowning peak of its medalling glorifications. Like the Roman peasants whom used to watch the gladiatorial games, a modern Olympic peasant does not understand his or her future, let alone the planet's future.
Friday, June 15, 2012
The economy between China and "The West"
I could also be writing about India, Brazil, and Russia, but each one of them is very different from the other, and China is bigger than any of the others.
Over the last 30 years, what has "The West" been exporting and importing? What has China been exporting and importing?
China gave up a lot of its best farm land to build factories and roads and airports and warehouses. China has become more dependent on the rest of the world for food. China imports more food than it did 30 years ago. China now has factories that make most of the consumer goods on which "The West" depends.
"The West" has been exporting much of this food to China. "The West" has exported its industry, (and the pollution that came out of the industry), to China.
You can see then, that the economy between China and the West has now reached the stage where even people in China are asking themselves, why are we doing this? Why are we polluting our best land, just to sell things to "the West", when now all we get back are Government bonds that are not even printed on paper? Now that we have got our electricity grid, our road network, our transport infrastructure, and all the basic tecnological know-how to go forward by ourselves, why should we get all the dirty work, while in "The West" all they do is grow cheap food for us to buy?
Isn't this why the Euro is collapsing? The Euro is in "The West", and is no better than the US dollar, especially since each one of its countries, Ireland, then Greece then Portugal and now Spain, has been struggling to roll over its government bonds. Even outside the Euro, the UK with its pound sterling is struggling to keep up the pretence at being worth lending money to. Today we have news that the UK trade deficit is still widening.
The only reason why the global economy has not collapsed yet is because the people who play with big sums of money cannot drag themselves out of the casino while they can still win money from all the little people. Meanwhile, everybody pretends that the little people need jobs, and governments and banks invent money to generate new ecomomic activity, even useless nonsense such as Facebook, just so that there are jobs to feed the little people. Surely socialism and communism, where little people were given handouts regardless of whether there were any useful jobs, deserves a look-in again compared with Facebookism.
How does China figure in all this? China is unique, because although it is not a democracy, it has the largest number of intelligent people whose interests are nonetheless protected by the state. Is China going to let this casino keep going, now that all its people can see themselves as the losers, and "The West" as the greedy winners?
It isn't politics. It is common sense. In the history of the World, we have never seen humanity come to this stage. We can only anticipate what happens next.
Over the last 30 years, what has "The West" been exporting and importing? What has China been exporting and importing?
China gave up a lot of its best farm land to build factories and roads and airports and warehouses. China has become more dependent on the rest of the world for food. China imports more food than it did 30 years ago. China now has factories that make most of the consumer goods on which "The West" depends.
"The West" has been exporting much of this food to China. "The West" has exported its industry, (and the pollution that came out of the industry), to China.
You can see then, that the economy between China and the West has now reached the stage where even people in China are asking themselves, why are we doing this? Why are we polluting our best land, just to sell things to "the West", when now all we get back are Government bonds that are not even printed on paper? Now that we have got our electricity grid, our road network, our transport infrastructure, and all the basic tecnological know-how to go forward by ourselves, why should we get all the dirty work, while in "The West" all they do is grow cheap food for us to buy?
Isn't this why the Euro is collapsing? The Euro is in "The West", and is no better than the US dollar, especially since each one of its countries, Ireland, then Greece then Portugal and now Spain, has been struggling to roll over its government bonds. Even outside the Euro, the UK with its pound sterling is struggling to keep up the pretence at being worth lending money to. Today we have news that the UK trade deficit is still widening.
The only reason why the global economy has not collapsed yet is because the people who play with big sums of money cannot drag themselves out of the casino while they can still win money from all the little people. Meanwhile, everybody pretends that the little people need jobs, and governments and banks invent money to generate new ecomomic activity, even useless nonsense such as Facebook, just so that there are jobs to feed the little people. Surely socialism and communism, where little people were given handouts regardless of whether there were any useful jobs, deserves a look-in again compared with Facebookism.
How does China figure in all this? China is unique, because although it is not a democracy, it has the largest number of intelligent people whose interests are nonetheless protected by the state. Is China going to let this casino keep going, now that all its people can see themselves as the losers, and "The West" as the greedy winners?
It isn't politics. It is common sense. In the history of the World, we have never seen humanity come to this stage. We can only anticipate what happens next.
Saturday, June 02, 2012
Genius and the Planet
A long time ago, when this blog was first started, it was given the name "Love and the City" as a means of countering the lovelessness of Western society that was then popularly described by the TV series "Sex and the City". Of course, Western civilization has been extremely loveless at times throughout its history, most recently during the First and Second World Wars, but even during the peaceful times of the late Twentieth Century, the wholesale indulgence in selfish pleasures was actively promoted for its measurable economic spending, until love had become a four-letter word less heard than the word f**k.
When this blog was renamed to its current "Love and the Planet", it reflected the attainment of economic globalization that was plundering vital resources all around the world, without any attention to protecting, caring and nurturing the planet. Love, in case you are one of the billions who do not understand, is about the action of "protecting, caring and nurturing". The primitive emotion that is normally assumed to be love is nothing but the urge to act in this way. The ability to love and the urge to love are two different things.
Now where are we, in 2012? The planet is not being loved much more than 7 years ago. Obsessed with monetary economic issues after the global financial crash of 2007/8, ordinary folk abandoned higher aspirations in a scramble to repair their financial foundations. This has meant that all things green and eco and environmental have slid into an abyss deep into the Marianas trench. Literally, considering that James Cameron, the director of the Avatar, dived down there back in March. Loving the planet has been a lonely, unrewarded, struggle during the past few years, and being alone in the cold and dark at the bottom of the ocean is exactly what it has been like.
Today the entire globe is obsessed with European disintegration, as if Word War 3 had already started and now consists of launching missiles of proper accounting and fiscal probity. Boring. This distraction from vital issues has furthered the destruction of natural environments and habitats in the developing countries, eg the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), by diverting capital investments out of Europe and into anywhere but Europe and the West.
There is no better time than to re-launch this blog as Genius and the Planet. Only genius can restore love to a world such as this has become. There is very little genius about, and it is drowned out by the mediocre minds of blundering wanderers.
When this blog was renamed to its current "Love and the Planet", it reflected the attainment of economic globalization that was plundering vital resources all around the world, without any attention to protecting, caring and nurturing the planet. Love, in case you are one of the billions who do not understand, is about the action of "protecting, caring and nurturing". The primitive emotion that is normally assumed to be love is nothing but the urge to act in this way. The ability to love and the urge to love are two different things.
Now where are we, in 2012? The planet is not being loved much more than 7 years ago. Obsessed with monetary economic issues after the global financial crash of 2007/8, ordinary folk abandoned higher aspirations in a scramble to repair their financial foundations. This has meant that all things green and eco and environmental have slid into an abyss deep into the Marianas trench. Literally, considering that James Cameron, the director of the Avatar, dived down there back in March. Loving the planet has been a lonely, unrewarded, struggle during the past few years, and being alone in the cold and dark at the bottom of the ocean is exactly what it has been like.
Today the entire globe is obsessed with European disintegration, as if Word War 3 had already started and now consists of launching missiles of proper accounting and fiscal probity. Boring. This distraction from vital issues has furthered the destruction of natural environments and habitats in the developing countries, eg the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), by diverting capital investments out of Europe and into anywhere but Europe and the West.
There is no better time than to re-launch this blog as Genius and the Planet. Only genius can restore love to a world such as this has become. There is very little genius about, and it is drowned out by the mediocre minds of blundering wanderers.
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