attempts to speciate a new culture (homo sustainabilis?)

A proposal for funding a blueprint of a village-based technology ecosystem

2012-02-05T11:18:00.000-08:00

Creating Local Economies for Basic Goods

Project Summary

This project will focus on providing the technological tools to enable a small (in terms of land and number of people) local, democratic, agrarian and craft-based economy as an alternative to the global, factory-based economy. It will provide this alternative primarily with regard to basic needs and services, which are defined as those associated with food, water, shelter, clothes, and healthcare. The project will test the hypothesis that individual freedom, creativity, healthy human interdependence, initiative, intellectual discourse and ecological sustainability can better exist within the context of a basic needs local economy than the current global economy. After a R&D stage, a village of about 200 people will be built, tools and land bought initially, but after two more years all basic goods will be produced in the village. Alternatively, an existing third world village will be given tools and training to produce all their basic needs locally in a way that encourages the above desireable qualities, Expenses not related to basic needs will be paid for by profitable businesses developed in the village.

Background

The industrial revolution has enabled a large growth in population and was partially motivated by ideas of a better standard of living for more people, but it has led to several problems. These problems manifest as lack of time to pursue creative endeavors, lack of ability to provide for one’s basic needs without having to sell one’s time in a non-democratic work environment, a widespread automaton-like conformity and lack of critical thinking abilities, lack of ability to have deep relationships with people on a village, tribal, family or community level, an infliltration of market values into all human relationships, an interest in power more than in truth, and manipulation of the masses by the most economically powerful. The latter two have existed prior to the industrial revolution, but have been enabled to unprecedented levels by tge industrial revolution. Though some of these problems are political, we claim that they can be partially solved by localizing production of basic goods.

There have been many critiques of factory-based industrial global economies, but few pragmatic proposals for alternatives (or proposals for piecemeal engineering, in Karl Popper's words). Before the industrial revolution in Europe, most people participated in a local craft and agrarian-based economy, at least for basic needs. There were serious problems with feudal governance, healthcare, and with the relative lack of individuation of medieval villagers. While not romanticizing such periods as the Middle-Ages, it may be that a modern adaptation and improvement of their craft-based production system could solve some of the problems that have been generated by the global economy. Local, craft-based economies have been proposed by Gandhi, Michael Schuman, Lanza del Vasto, Peter Maurin, Erich Fromm, E.F. Schumacher, Wendell Berry and many distributists. These proposals have almost never made it to the implementation stage, partially because of a technology and information gap. Given all that the human race has learned in science and technology since the Middle Ages and even since the time of Gandhi, it may be possible to improve on the technology of the Middle Ages while avoiding some of the social, psychological and environmental problems due to our global technology and economy. This is expected to require an initial investment of capital before a local economy can compete and offer an alternative to the global market economy.

Need for local economies

It is conjectured that a local, craft-based basic-needs economy may have the following advantages over the current, global economy:

Transparency, leading to humaneness and connection:

It is harder to hide what one is doing when the activity is in one's town rather than in a far-away land. There is growing evidence that much of the wealth of western countries is at the expense of the well-being and resources of third world countries. Rationalizations for the mistreatment of those people have been made, but they will be harder to make when one is confronted with exploitation in the concrete rather than in the abstract. ReferencesIt is expected that people will want to better treat their friends who share work and vision with them, than anonymous, abstract humans who are seen only as a labor pool. Refereces

A solution to the agency problem:

A local, basic needs economy avoids middle-men who are usually the agents referred to in the agency problem. Resources are directly produced and consumed by the participants of the local economy, with no need for an agent to allocate them, automatically avoiding the agency problem inherent both in global market capitalism and state socialism. It is proposed that the basic needs local economy will have a planned aspect (thus small scale socialism), and still allow participants to engage in the global economy for non-basic needs. The rise of self-interest in large scale bureaucratic institutions possibly originates from the tendency of humans to not care about each other as much in the abstract as in the concrete and be able to hide immoral behavior behind large institutions.

Psychological well-being:

Though a few people today are engaged in a livelihood that requires creativity and/or craftsmanship, the majority of people earn a 'living' as cogs in a machine, having work that is not conducive to psychological well-being. Their production is usually not beneficial to their community in obvious ways and their work is not something they can usually share with their families because its purpose is too abstract. Having an abstract job is better than being unemployed, but meaningful employment that produces basic needs and that can be shared with one's family even better. Ideally, people could participate in basic needs production and have a more abstract specialty if they desire. In contrast, a local economy can contribute to and support collectivist needs that are present in most humans and avoid the temptation to satisfy those needs with fascism, state communism/socialism or primitivism (see: http://culturalspeciation.blogspot.com/2011/05/open-society-and-its-enemies.html)

Freedom:

If one is dependent only on one's skill, work ethic and one's neighbors for a livelihood, one is harder to control than if one is dependent on an impersonal market which is unevenly controlled by large corporations and governments. If one owns the means of production and has a significant voice in production decisions, one is harder to exploit.

Ecological responsibility:

Companies that are tied to a place are more likely to treat that place well, in an environmentally responsible manner, than companies that operate all over the globe and see any particular place only in terms of profit and legal compliance.

Minimizing Uncertainty:

Being a much simpler system than the global economy, a local economy is easier to understand and easier to influence. Thus both the cognitive and manipulative aspects of consciousness that Soros identifies are going to be more accurate, less prone to fallacies.

Other similar efforts and charting new terrain with this project

There are many current small efforts to produce various components of local economies, mostly centered around local food, though these tend to be underfunded and disconnected from each other. The main shortcomings with the local food movement are that production is limited to a small percentage of the population who owns relatively large chunks of land, or a few inner city folks who do not have access to enough land to grow grains and beans or graze livestock. . Many inner city people are not very attracted to community gardens, which provide mainly vegetables. They are able to get cheap, salty processed food, consisting mainly of meat, grains, beans, dairy and fat, which are usually not possible to produce in community gardens. Community gardening is typically a hobby, and at best can only catalyze public interest. The farmers who are supplying local food are operating as part of the global economy and in order to survive in that economy have to charge more than what most people are willing to pay. In order to create a local economy that offers full democratic and meaningful employment, more land must be made available in order to practice extensive ecology-based agriculture, food processing has to be included in the economy, as well as maintenance and manufacturing of tools and equipment. Other aspects of a basic needs economy besides food have to be included. There are already some efforts at local manufacturing at Factor E Farm and Aprovecho as well as many individual inventors, but as with local food, they are underfunded and not well connected to each other. Rather than abolishing disempowering handouts and cheap processed food, it may be useful to create an equivalent "Manhattan Project” (not for building a nuclear bomb, but for building local economies in a serious, concerted way), bringing many current efforts together, funding them well and demonstrating a vibrant, ethical and environmentally responsible economy and community, leading by example.

Details and Timeline

During all stages, decision-making will be hierarchical, but with feedback from all, and weekly meetings for strategy, brainstorming and coordination of different departments. Each department will be assigned a manager, and each department will have daily or weekly (depending on need) meetings every morning to discuss what work is to be done that day and report on challenges from the previous day and anticipated challenges in the next few days.

In the initial stage (estimated to take one year), the goal is to research and plan a self-sustaining production and consumption system that does not need any more inputs from the global economy besides the initial ones described below. Engineers, craftspeople and tradesmen, entrepreneurs, farmers, systems programmers, historians of technology and artists (about 10-20 people) will be hired as consultants. A team headed by Iuval Clejan and Chris Theal (see page 9, “Project Management and Location”) will devise a plan for food, housing and other basic needs from local energy and materials, starting (but not ending) with tools, land, seeds and food that is bought from the global economy.

Examples of typical problems to be solved include:

-planning of a local agriculture that provides optimal nutrition and variety in a sustainable manner.

-how to employ both draft animals and simple machines

-how to efficiently make and maintain the tools and machines

-how to provide irrigation.

-how to preserve and store food, how to make the best stoves for cooking and heat.

-how to cut wood with hand-saws, and how to make them.

-how to make natural herbal medicine, and whether it is practical to purify antibiotics and other medicines.

-how to find talented people and get them to cooperate in a democratic, hierarchical, not-for-profit corporate environment.

- Evaluating the tradeoffs between hand tools and different machines.

Unlike the approach of Factor E Farm, this project will initially eschew electronics, high energy consumption and materials requiring much infrastructure and will only build tools that directly contribute to production of basic needs. It will start with pre-industrial technology and attempt to improve on it. It will start with food, shelter, medicine, clothes, and water, and branch out to technologies, tools and materials to support these. This is in line with Popper's idea of piecemeal engineering, except in this case what one starts with is not the current technology, but a pre-industrial technology which was already largely local. One then makes incremental changes to reduce labor, and distribute ownership of tools and land, based on criteria mentioned below . This approach is different than state socialist planned economies because it is local and hence not subject to the abuses of bureaucracy (abstraction, agency problem and one-size-fits-all). It is also different than current global free market capitalism for the reasons outlined above.

Though the initial stage is largely a theoretical, planning stage, there will be some experimentation with both hardware and software.

Next will be an implementation stage (estimated to take two years) for production of basic needs, recruitment of about 200 people, buying land and tools, and maintenance of tools. A portion of the initial consultants along with additional people will be recruited, trained and put to work in production of all basic needs (described above) for the community of participants. Though initially paid a conventional stipend, these people eventually will be paid by what they produce and enjoy (basic needs), not with money. Production goals will be established from the previous stage, based on a rational evaluation of nutritional, housing and other basic needs, with the goals of minimizing time per person spent on production (an initial goal for yearly average labor per person is 20 hours per week), full employment, democratic participation and encouragement of individual creativity and initiative. The basic needs economy will thus be distributist with some planning on a small village scale.

. Existing crop optimization software will be used to maximize nutrition and soil fertility, and to minimize water and labor.

The next stage (2 years) will involve continued meeting of production goals set during the first stage, but also implementation of maintenance of existing tools and housing, as well as building new tools and housing from locally available materials. Some technologies may need to be abandoned, some rediscovered and some invented. During this stage it is expected that no support will be needed from external sources, but that income will be generated from businesses and that income could be used for personal (non-basic) needs and for funding replica projects.

The last stage will be the propagation of the technologies used for the previous stage (ongoing) to those who might want to participate in such an endeavor.

Project Management and location

The project will be based at the Open Space Community in Atlanta GA (a non profit corporation, EIN number 271518327), and the Possibility Alliance in La Plata Missouri.

Alternatively, after the R&D stage, it can be based in a third world village.

It has so far been funded by private donations.

There will be three project leaders, members of the board of trustees:

Iuval Clejan, the Chief Science and Engineering officer, has been a physicist, an engineer, a molecular biologist, a farmer and an inventor. His experience has trained him to easily navigate between the big picture and details of implementation. He was born in Israel, which gave him a taste for the pros and cons of collectivism. He travelled a great deal in the US, which gave him a taste for the potential of freedom and individuals. He has started a household that gets electricity from solar panels, water from the rain (hot water from sunshine and wood stove), heat and cooking from wood stoves. He is trying to make a career by combining his love of science and technology with his love of people and nature.

Chris Theal, the energy, water, and ecological advisor, has been the facilities manager for Southface Energy Institute over 10 years. He has experience with many alternative technologies and the compromises that sometimes have to be made between vision and current realities.

Ethan Hughes, the director of human resources, has had much experience managing people in democratic work environments. He lives at the Possibility Alliance in La Plata, MO.

Clejan and Theal will interact with OSI by giving talks, going to conferences, having discussions, and challenging OSI on foundational issues (e.g. see the link to the blog on page 4).

Non-programatic expenses should be mostly travel related, less than $5K/year, plus recruitment, which could also be about $5K/year.

Metrics and Impact

This project does not seek to eliminate global trade and communication. Its scope is limited to production of basic needs on a local scale, in order to further individual freedom and vibrant communities. Metrics for evaluating success of the above proposal will be developed . The easiest kinds of metrics to quantify are calories produced and consumed from the land, how many other basic needs are provided by the land, how much food still needs to be bought, how many hours are contributed for the satisfaction of basic needs.

If the project is successful, it can be advertized by word of mouth and over the internet (minimal funds), so that besides an impact on US middle class society, there can also be impacts on developing nations which see an example of something sustainable they can replicate from the first world. Besides citizens of developing nations , an example of a vibrant life can impact disenfranchised people in the US, who can be incorporated into village economic, social and spiritual life, rather than being disempowered by handouts, or expected to join an economy that is partially creating the conditions that they find themselves in.

Possible pitfalls and solutions:

Pitfall: The project takes over people's lives and becomes a cult or company town

Solution: There is a 40 hour workweek (max) so people have time for other aspects of their lives. People have individual or familial living quarters when they are not working on the project.

Pitfall: The project employs people who can't work well together.

Solution: Careful applicant screening and reference checking of participants, and a probationary period.

Pitfall: Participants tempted to buy basic goods from the global economy (e.g. clothes) because they are cheaper than basic goods manufactured by the village.

Solution: A prerequisite for working on the project will be that all basic goods will be produced and consumed (except for surplus, which may be exported) on the premises. This is a social contract which will be mostly self-regulated, but the director of human resources could fire anyone who breaks the contract. The same mechanisms of government regulation and individual self-regulation operate when people in the global economy refuse to support slavery, even though products manufactured by slaves may be cheaper than those manufactured by wage earners. Market values have to be subordinated to ethical/moral values, not the other way around.

Pitfall: Participants do not have enough financial incentive, especially after the initial stages, when they stopped getting paid.

Solution: If the project is successful, the incentive for continuing to produce and consume basic goods locally is more time to pursue creative activities, deeper human relations, more individual empowerment and more connection to nature. If people want to make money in the global economy they will be free to do so as far as luxury goods (or surplus of locally manufactured basic goods), and may be subject to the financial incentives of the global economy.

Pitfall: Some people perform in a substandard manner.

Solution: Just like in any company, there are performance evaluations and opportunities to change direction. In the initial stages, people can be fired, but later substandard performance will be corrected by economic means, that is by participants not bartering with or buying from the substandard performers, just like in any free market.

Pitfall: Interpersonal conflict.

Solution: Conflict is unavoidable, but there are ways of dealing with it gracefully and these will be studied and implemented (e.g. Non Violent Communication). Also friendly competition can stimulate creativity.

Pitfall: The initial group may be exclusive and isolationist.

Solution: An attitude of service, philanthropy and social justice will be cultivated. Some initial isolationism and exclusivity is necessary to start the project, but will be detrimental if continued after the first few years. For more about why isolationism is not a bad thing for the initial stages, see the hyperlink on page 4.

Pitfall: Economists will balk at local economies because they think that they do not take into account comparative advantage, even for basic needs like food.

Solution: http://culturalspeciation.blogspot.com/2011/07/comparative-advantage-and-local.html

Pitfall: Strictly Local Production of the basic goods of food, water, shelter, healthcare and clothes will not be possible.

Solution: Some technologies are better than others when the strictly local constraint is imposed. If a technology leads to non-local production, it will be abandoned in favor of one which can be kept local.

Conclusion:

This is an opportunity for x to fund an innovative quest for solutions to some entrenched ills of the industrialized global economy and to preserve that which is best in our civilization in the face of dwindling fossil fuel supplies. With the risks of widespread social disruption from a financial or economic collapse, it is essential to develop diverse, local safety nets, which will protect and empower resilient communities of free individuals. Luxury lifestyles notwithstanding, the basic needs of a small group can be met with local, appropriate, environmentally benign technology. When this foundation of Local Economies for Basic Needs is laid, a society is more likely to stay open than slide into fascism.

technology and magic

2011-09-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

While I was working on this post, JMG posted another take on the same topic:archdruid

We are both discussing technology and magic, in reference to current cultural trends and Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

While I agree with JMG that the goals of some magic (and incidentally some forms of religion) are different than the goals of some forms of technology, I think there are common goals between some forms of magic (and religion) and some forms of technology.

I define magic (and religion) as the manipulation of symbols and consciousness. I define (material) technology as manipulating the material world. By this definition of magic, computer hackers and theoretical physicists and mathematicians are doing magic. Some people (like JMG) extend the definition to include a purpose: magic for the purpose of changing consiousness, technology for the purpose of manipulating the material world. But there are some other folks who think (erroneously perhaps) that manipulating symbols can also directly change the material world. This is what the God of ancient judaism and many other religions are supposed to do. This is what some new agers believe about their visualizations or affirmations. This is what most people who are alienated from production of material goods in a service economy, believe that their technology is doing. This is what economists do when they think that they can create oil with investment. This is what non-muggles do in Harry Potter's world. This is perhaps what some primitive peoples did with their rituals (e.g. raindance)

JMG forms a useful classification of magic and technology based on one purpose (I will propose another below), that of changing consciousness or directly changing the material world. He discusses 3 possibilities:
1. Using magic to change consciousness (what he and smart mages, advertizers, computer hackers, some religious people and mystics do)
2. Using magic to attempt to change the material word directly. The list of people who do this is above.
3. Using (material) technology to change the material world. This is what is done by an industrial infrastructure composed of complicated machines and mostly third world workers (some of them in the US). But it was also done by pre-industrial craftsmen and farmers. And it is also done by most people in mundane ways such as opening doors, driving cars and cooking.

There is a fourth possibility that JMG omits, which I mention here:
4. Using technology to change consiousness, which is what most people in the world (developed or not, modern or ancient) do with consciousness-altering drugs. In the modern world, people also use electronic media to alter consciousness. There is a disconnect between the makers of the electronics and the users, but that is another matter, to be discussed later.

There is another purpose which can be used for classification of both technology and magic/religion. I am thinking of magic, religion and technology which are intended to serve the human spirit and life in general (let's call that love/creativity), vs magic, religion and technology which are intended to serve the human ego (and its desire for power over nature and other people) and become idols that people give their life force to (let's call that power over). Technology and magic which serve life, vs technology and magic which rule life.

This brings up four more possibilities in addition to the ones mentioned above (think of a 2x2 matrix with the rows being material and spiritual and the columns being love/creativity and power. Each entry in the matrix is filled with both magic and technology. In this more sophisticated classification scheme, we have the following 8 possibilities (with a non-exhaustive list of examples):

1A.Magic to change consciousness with the purpose of love/creativity (great spiritual teachers, "white" magic, mystics and saints, most artists, Gandalf in LOTR, some computer hackers)
1B. Magic to change consciousness with the purpose of having power over nature or people (hate mongers, "black" magic, most advertizers, most economists, Sauron and Saruman in LOTR)
2A. Magic to change the material world directly, for love/creativity (new age thinking, the God of ancient Judaism, Gandalf in LOTR, some computer hackers)
2B. Magic to change the material world directly, for the purposes of power over (Harry Potter's world, some primitive magic, Sauron and Saruman in LOTR)
3A. Technology to change the material world for love ((pre-industrial, craft-based technology, luddites, distributists, the Shire in LOTR)
3B. Technology to change the material world for power over (military/industrial technology, Saruman in LOTR)
4A. Technology to change consciousness for love (inventors, some drug users, some electronic media users, ritualists)
4B. Technology to change consciousness for power over (???)

These distinctions are not mutually exclusive, but they are useful because most of the time there is a predominance of one or the other.

I would like if there were more cultures today where people had a balance between the world of symbols and the material world. Also where they were motivated more by love than by power. What are the obstacles to this?
First, there has to be a valuing of physical work, not just as an escape, but as a way to relate to the physical world with love rather than violence.
Second, there has to be an understanding of how technology works, at all levels, not just the functional.
Third, in order for this to happen, technology needs to stay fairly simple and local, and people need to participate in making what they use, not just using it. Abstraction may be useful in computer science, but not so much in the sociology of technology. Modern technology has become big, global and beyond the understanding of most people. Such a technology creates a feeling of powerlessness to changing not only the material world, but socio-economic conditions. The fear that primitive tribes had of breaking social taboos came from thinking that those were, like laws of nature, unchangeable. Similarly, the fear they had of the forces of nature, came from a lack of understanding of those forces. And that which is not understood, but which must be obeyed, can become a source of irrational fear.
Fourth, technology must be subjugated to the needs of man, including his need to feel useful and creative. A machine should not be created that would reduce creativity and usefulness, even if it appears to save labor. A machine that is involved in food, shelter, water, healthcare, clothes or local transport should not be created if it can't be created and maintained on a local level. Such a machine will destroy community, which is a basic need of people, unless people are strong enough to resist its use. The same might be said of machines that would replace the ability of communities to provide for their spiritual needs.

Erich Fromm and Wendell Berry

2011-09-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Erich Fromm was a brilliant psychologist, visionary and critic of twentieth century fascism, communism, industrial society, burocracy. He was typical of liberals who are convinced that industrial production is the most advanced form of production the human race has ever seen and that somehow it can be humanized. I just reread his The Sane Society, which I had read as a teenager and which has been a formative influence in my life. So much of that book has been internalized in my worldview. In neither of his chapters "Various Diagnoses" and "Various Answers" does he mention Gandhi (or american anabaptist communities). He does mention Thoreau and Tolstoy, but does not seriously consider the (obvious!) possibility (which Thoreau and Tolstoy considered) that the solution to many of his diagnosed problems might be to abandon the industrial mode of production in favor of an agrarian, craft-based one. Such an oversight is a great mystery for me. The current model of a service economy in the developed world and industrial production in the third world must give way to a local, craft-based economy in every place where people can regain sanity.

Two other major oversights:

1. His claim that the problem of production is solved has been disputed by environmentalists and leftists. Production has only been solved at the cost of destroying nature and the natural basis of production (forests, soils, oceans, rivers, human health), while employing non-renewable resources(so it can't go on much longer, and puts our progenitors in debt). It also keeps many in the third world in conditions that we would never want to produce under. Fromm uses the term "mastery over nature" and similar patriarchal language. Any production which includes aspirations to mastery over nature, must lead to alienation from nature, and all that is wild and soulful in humans. Better to work in cooperation with nature, within natural limits, to learn from nature.

2. He did not understand community as a necessary-for-sane-life form of organization, intermediate between individuals and states. He didn't understand the connection between land-stewardship and community and the connection between physical place and concretization (an antidote to the abstractification which he brilliantly diagnoses).

He mentions (as an example of the kind of human-scale socialism that he espouses) the Communities of Work in France which lasted no more than 30 years, and whose dissolution I could have predicted based on their total dependence on the global economy, and probably other things such as lack of communication technologies (e.g. NVC).

All three of Fromm's oversights have been expounded on by Wendell Berry.

On the other hand, based on my reading so far, W. Berry seems almost (but not totally) oblivious to the fact that small town USA has been largely parochial and xenophobic, while also benefitting from the exploits of the military and corporations (and not so long ago explicit slavery) which are ensuring mostly a one-way flow of resources from the third world into the nearby hardware stores and mechanic shoppes that he mistakenly identifies as being part of a local economy. He also does not address the problem of land distribution in the US, where most private land is left idle and most people do not have access to either land or training on how to use it wisely. So few people own so much of the land, and use it mostly for recreation, while so many are suffering from lack of meaningful work in cities (but also in rural places). What are you doing about that, Mr Berry? Can you show by example that land can be shared and stewardship can be taught?

critique of amish society

2011-08-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

Whenever thinking people encounter my proposals for local economies, they point out that this already exists with the amish, and why not go join them. Though there are many commendable things about amish culture (which I will discuss later), I want to explain why as a whole it does not appeal to me.

First of all, the amish are in Karl Popper's terms, a closed society. That means that they do not tolerate critique, that they are not open to other ways of doing things and other beliefs. A while ago, I saw a documentary in which an amish born therapist described how he was rudely attacked by an amish elder for having questions about something that was not up for questioning. I cherish the open aspect of our culture, as imperfect as it is (and open to improvement). Perhaps the amish are not totally closed, but change takes much longer in amish culture. Since not all change is for the better, perhaps that is not such a bad thing.

Some leftists will point out that our society may not be that much more open than the amish. Leftist critiques of our culture have pointed out that the kind of change that happens in our culture is superficial or negative, and that dissent can only go so far. Fashion and technology change, but the mode of production, consumption and ownership of goods has not changed in a while. One can critique all sorts of things about our economic system, but at the end of the day one is forced to participate in it or live in demoralizing and humiliating conditions. Of course it is not a black or white proposition and a minimal amount of participation is possible, without having to live in dire conditions. Nevertheless I think that the amount of influence most people have on their external circumstances is small, and the open aspect of our culture is not that helpful to change that (people who have been through state communism and fascism should read Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom before they disagree). Where the open aspect of our society makes more of a difference is to people's internal psychological states.

Second, it seems to me that the amish are rather subdued and tame. They have eliminated the extremes of human emotions in favor of a calm middle ground. They do not suffer from depression, but neither do they have ecstasy.

Third, the amish are not strictly a local economy, even for basic needs. They do trade with the global economy, sometimes pretending that they are selling their own products when it might be manufactured partially in China (I saw an advertizement for an amish made wood stove and when researching it more closely, the stove was made in China, and only a stove addition was amish made). They employ power tools and electricity from the global economy in their workshops.

Back to the commendable aspects of amish culture mentioned at the beginning of this article. There are two I want to discuss:
1. Intimate community and
2. Long-term community sustainability.

Is it possible that one of the necessary ingredients for both of these desirable aspects is a closed society? Having a foundation of values (usually religious) certainly seems to help form community intimacy, and prevent the ideological conflicts that lead to people leaving and communities breaking apart. I think this is the same issue in committed couple relationships (usually marriage) and possibly in larger groups of people such as nation states. I believe, but do not have empirical evidence, that though a non-negotiable foundation can be helpful for intimacy and sustainability, that love and commitment could form an equally strong foundation. And that a foundational belief could be the belief in openness and ability to question everything, in a loving, or at least civil way, with a desire to improve, not just to critique.

comparative advantage and local economies

2011-07-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Ricardo pointed out that each region has some resource or way of doing things that gives them an economic advantage over other regions. Coffee only grows in certain tropical areas, and many people in non-tropical areas want coffee. It is thus advantageous for people in tropical areas to produce coffee and trade the beans for something they want with the northern people who want their coffee.

While this makes superficial sense, it is not how things work in the global economy. What it assumes is an equal playing field, which is not the case. The coffee producers and sweatshop workers in the third world are in a much worse position than the people in the first world. If they don't produce their coffee or work in the sweatshops to produce our computers and tools, they starve or get shot. We work and live under much better conditions and we don't have to slave away under horrible conditions. If we choose not to work we can get unemployment or welfare. We have many pretty good options as far as work. In addition, the resources that many third world countries have are plundered by multi-national corporations. They effectively do not give any advantage to the third world people who live where those resources are. Those resources effectively belong to the multinationals and the third world people give them those resources at the pain of death and corrupt debt. This has prompted the perverse modification of Ricardo's original inentions by some economists. Now the comparative advantage comes from cheap labor. The third world has plenty of cheap labor and we don't. If we bring this to its logical conclusion, it can be used to justify slavery, which is the cheapest form of labor.

A local basic needs economy would circumvent this perversion of human life. If people come from a position of being able to produce all their basic needs locally within a village or region in a democratic manner, they will probably choose not to work in sweatshops or coffee plantations (unless the sweatshops and coffee plantations pay better and have better working conditions, but then they wouldn't be called sweatshops anymore).

It is important that people are producing their basic needs and not just being given them. Handouts are ultimately disempowering. People need to contribute to their own welfare, their families and their communities welfare and this empowers. The less abstract this contribution, the more empowering. In this sense, though we have our material needs provided for in the first world, we are disempowered in a spiritual and psychological sense as long as we are only providing for these needs with money. A wealthy financier or industrialist may feel a certain sense of power, but he is on one level deeply disempowered because his power comes only from the abstraction of money. A caveat is that if his money was gotten by creative work, there is some psychological sense of satisfaction in that.

Another misrepresenation of economists is that third world people have always "chosen" to go the route of western consumerism. Though this might be the case in numerous occasions now, historically tribal people and land-base people were enslaved, killed, their land taken away, their resources stolen. Of course after this rape and pillage, they might have either forgotten a better past or have to choose between death and starvation and a rosier seeming western lifestyle.

An objection to local economies is sometimes made that people will not have enough good things to eat unless they trade with the rest of the world. I don't think this is true because every region where food can be produced (and this is most regions, unless they are too mountainous or desertified) can produce good food. It seems to me that most of what people crave on a daily basis in the west--coffee, sugar, chocolate, is the result of addiction, an unhealthy lifestyle where some basic needs are not met and these imported goods are a poor substitute that never fully satisfies. It would be different if these goods where indulged in occasionally, as a luxury. No, they are clearly the manifestation of addictions. If they were luxuries, then people in local economies that did not produce them could trade for them as luxuries, but the objection above will lose its force.

Two ways of doing things

2011-07-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

There is a natural human tendency to take the easy way out when trying to build or make something. Experienced builders and craftspeople (or rather let's call them installers of factory manufactured goods, since there are very few craftsopeople left in the US) will say that if one wants to do things right, one has to avoid shortcuts.

If one goes to third world countries or poor neighborhoods, it appears that shortcuts and poor craftsmanship (or installmanship) are the rule. One might conclude that poor people in the US and abroad are lazy, and perhaps there is some truth to that. But there is another side to it. Often poor builders and installers do not have anywhere near the resources and tools that wealthier builders and installers have. They have to use more ingenuity with less resources. It may not look as good, but often times it works just as well. The wealthy are showing how empire works: after raping the rest of the world for resources, they are all brought to a local store. With enough rape, almost anything can be done "right". For everything you want to make, there is a product at the store. The product may be toxic, may have been toxic to the workers who made it, may require mountaintop removal, raiforest depletion, war, and confiscation of peasant land. The wealthy user of the product does not concern themselves with all this but with how good and powerful their project will look like, or how comfortable it will make them feel. The more power is used in installing, the better. The more chemicals, the better. Anyone who has ever studied primitive or medieval technology will be impressed with how much more elegance and finesse it exhibits than most modern technology.

But still, most ghetto and third world installations are not very pretty, even if they are clever at times. One of the things that impressed me at the Possibility Alliance is that beauty, not just function, is a priority. Despite having almost no resources from the global economy, most of what is built, installed and crafted there is beautiful, with attention to detail.Beautiul but not ostentatious, or into power for power's sake.

the open society and its enemies

2011-05-26T14:20:00.000-07:00

This is the title of a very influential book that was written before the end of WWII. I think it has influenced neo-liberal and conservative economists. It is a critique of Plato's sociology, but also an eloquent defense of democracy and individualism.

Popper casts a few concepts in a different light than what I see them as:
1. Empire
2. Trade
3. Tribe
4. Social engineering.

According to Popper, the greek empire (and neo-liberals can extrapolate to the american empire) did not arise in order to exploit and oppress other tribes, but in order to facilitate trade of material goods and ideas.
Trade is not a means of exploitation either, but a means of improving the material well being of everyone, of learning (by coming into contact with other cultures) that one's ways of doing things are not unique and thus becoming less bound by one's tribe or social group. Tribe is seen as an oppressive institution, limiting individual freedom, an infantile stage of human development that we must grow up from. Social engineering, if it is to improve matters, is only to be done in small increments (piecemeal engineering), as opposed to wiping the slate clean and starting over with sweeping changes (utopian engineering).

I will start my critique with common ground. Both Popper and I agree on the ethical point that the goal of any "good" social arrangement is to maximize the freedom and potential for happiness of individuals, in an equalitian way. This is to be contrased with fascist (or communist) views that stress the stability of the state and the superiority of a master race (or class), or familial views that stress the cohesion of the family or tribalist views that stress the cohesion of the tribe.
All such collectivist ideologies, when implemented lead to what Popper calls "closed societies", in which individuals are not free to choose how they live, but must adhere to predetermined social norms or laws. Social norms exist in "open societies" too, but they do not totally hamper the freedom and creativity of individuals. Another lynchpin of some closed societies is the theory (dubbed historicism) that history operates according to certain laws and/or certain ends which are beyond human intervention, similar to natural laws or god-given will.

I think Popper is aware of collectivism as a political and social arrangement or ideology, which leads to closed societies that are detrimental to individual liberty and happiness. The other meaning of collectivism is a psycho-spiritual need of individual humans. Popper is aware of this need, but underestimates its imoportance. Collectivism in this sense is a need to transcend one's individuality/ego and either merge with or commune with a larger life (e.g. God, Spirit, Nature, family, tribe, mate, mob, nation-state, tribe). Similarly, individualism(differentiation) is not only an ideology and a resulting social arrangement, but a psycho-spiritual need. Looked at this way, it is not wise to choose either collectivism or individualism, as Popper seems to think is necessary. Both must be acknowledged and different individuals may make different choices (depending on how strong the respective need is in them) to optimize their happiness. Indeed, the psycho-spiritual need preceeds ideology and influences it. Suppression of benign, readily available means for satisfying the need for collectivism will only lead to its eruption in the (sports, or political) mob or narcotic use and an increase in ideological fascism, communism, cultism, and (lately) anti-civilizationism and neo-primitivism. Suppression of readily available means to individuate will lead to creative anemia, lack of innovation and ideologies which over-emphasize individualism, such as objectivism. Popper made an important distinction between individualism and selfishness and between collectivism and altruism, whereas most of these ideologies confuse these and allow only two possibilities: 1. individualist and selfish or 2. collectivist and altruist. Popper allowed for two more possibilites: 3. individualist and altruist or 4. selfish and collectivist (as in I only care about my tribe or my class or my nation-state). But if we view these as psycho-spiritual needs of individuals, then there are two more possibilities: 5. selfish and altruistic and 6. individualistic and collectivist.
A good social arrangement would encourage 2, 3 and 6, or equivalently all 3 of individualism, collectivism and altruism. This means that tribes and families would be encouraged, not just individuals. Possibility 4 is also known as parochialism, but tribes or families need not be parochial.

From the point of view of psycho-spiritual needs, empire does not usually increase the possibility for individuation but has the opposite effect. The needs of individuals are best decided by the individuals themselves and their family and local community, not by a global empire (whether it be ruled by tyrants, special interests or corporations). Empire may start with good intentions (or perhaps only selfish economic interest), to promote trade, which would edify people materially and culturally, but it seems to always end up oppressive.

Trade in goods and ideas can decrease parochialism and promote open societies, but when global it can also destroy families, local communities and tribes, which is precisely what has happened with global trade when 1. most people only have their labor to trade in a global market (as opposed to also guaranteed access to basic needs and a democratic participation in their production) and 2. Nasty environmental and human rights abuses can be hidden far away from those who pay for them unwittingly. Ultimately, global trade is also destroying individual liberty, because one can be controlled by the most economically powerful. There are more stringent limits to economic power when production (at least of basic needs) and consumption are local and democratic. Though the intention of global trade starts as one of freeing people from tribal customs and natural and social dependencies, it ends up making people into over-specialized idiots who do not know hot to provide for their basic needs without a dependence on global corporations, lots of capital which is only under the control of the few, and national governments. It ends up destroying communities and nature and by so doing it deprives people of the basic need for communion and ego-transcendence. I think there is a way to remedy this situation by enabling local economies at least for basic needs, but that is the subject of a different post (and has been mentioned in at least one previous post).

Last, I wish to discuss Popper's idea of social engineering. The distinction between piecemeal and utopian engineering is a very useful one and I agree with him based on history that piecemeal engineering is more effective in bringing about desireable change. However, it will be useful here to look not only at the evolution of technology but also at the evolution of biological species for a fruitful analogy, in order to learn what works. Analogies are dangerous because people often forget their limitations, but they can also be useful. Social Darwinism was an analogy that was not that useful, but only because the people making it did not understand the biology of altruism and speciation. They only focused on competition and micro-evolution (as opposed to macro-evolution, aka speciation). Analogies are useful because many interacting systems have similar dynamics, a fact that is exploited in systems theory (physics) and category theory (mathematics).

In order to understand the following, it helps to have a visual picture of a "fitness landscape". Moving in an east-west and north south direction corresponds to changes in genes and geographical location (in reality there are alot more dimensions than 2, but for the purposes of visualization pretend like there are only 2 dimensions to move in). The topography corresponds to negative fitness. Negative fitness instead of positive fitness only so that we can conceive of the highest fitness (lowest negative fitness) at the bottom of a valley. A species can move around this landscape by mutating its genes (or moving geographically), and the fitness landscape itself is dynamic by virtue of other species changing their genes and location too, and non-biological changes (meteor hits, climate change, mountain erosion, sea level rising, etc). A species which has achieved equilibrium in this landscape is in a valley surrounded by mountains. It has maximized its fitness (minimized its negative fitness). The question now is how does a species evolve to something else?

While small random changes can lead to large changes over time (on the time scale of changes in the landscape which is the sum total of all other species in one's ecology and abiological changes) and to one mode of speciation (called chronospeciation), there are other ways that species arise due to relatively quick changes in particular genes that can regulate many other genes (called master genes or regulatory genes). Changes in most genes do not make much difference because of redundancy, or only affect small changes because most genes only influence a few other genes. Master genes, on the other hand influence tens or hundreds of other genes and mutations in master genes can have large effects. Even when chronospeciation is the mechanism whereby a species evolves into another species, master genes are probably involved. Besides the timescale, the main difference between chronospeciation and a species bifurcation into two species is the fact that in a species bifurcation reproductive isolation (which might result from the original mutation or from a different mutation) is needed between the incipient new species and the mother species. I think this is because a bifurcation can occur by 3 means (after the mutation in the master gene has occured).
1. The mountainpass scenario. The next negative fitness valley can only be reached through a mountainpass, which while crossed implies lower fitness, which implies a quick transition is needed, before everyone dies. While going up to the pass, there are two forces acting against the incipient species:A. The decreased fitness. B the genetic drift partially coming from mating with the old species. If B can be eliminated by reproductive isolation, the incipient species has a better chance of overcoming A.
2. The entropic barrier scenario. There is one or a few downhill paths to the next valley, but they are very hard to find with a genetic algorithm. There are many more paths leading to higher (or equal) negative fitness (lower or equal fitness). Reproductive isolation is necessary in order for the incipient species to acquire enough distance in fitness space from the mother species. Without isolation, the incipient species is constantly coming back to the old valley through random genetic drift. Though it has acquired a beneficial mutation, the mutation can be lost by breeding with the mother species. In this scenario, there are two timescales: the time for the incipient species to get far enough away going downshill so that reproductive isolation happens automatically. The other timescale is how quickly the beneficial mutation can be eliminated by drift. Chances are increased for the new species to form with a steep downshill direction and a relatively small reproductively accessible population in the mother species.
3. The tunneling scenario. The mutation is silent for a while, offering no selective advantage or disadvantage. If the reproductive isolation does not happen quickly the mutation will be lost before the incipeient species has a chance to tunnel through to the new valley, where the mutation is now beneficial.

In these 3 scenarios a small population (the incipient species) is involved in finding the new (negative) fitness valley. This population will be genetically swamped by the larger mother species before it makes it into the new valley unless in can reduce or eliminate exchange of genes with the mother species. The mother species (unless it has small numbers due to some catastrophe) cannot make any of these 3 transitions en masse, quickly. It has inertia. Only a small population can be "lean and mean" enough to make it quickly into the new valley. The mother species can make it into a new valley only over large timescales, timescales over which the whole fitness landscape changes (due mostly to other species changing and perhaps climatic and geologic changes) and allows a constant downshill path that is easy to find.

The analogy I wish to make is with new cultures evolving similarly to new species. Instead of genes, we have memes. Instead of reproductive isolation, we have cultural isolation. Cultural isolation is not the same as starting with a clean slate, anymore than a new species has to start with a new genome. Engineering can speed up the natural process of culture formation and direct it in desireable, less random ways. In order for social engineering to be effective, one must respect these three laws of social engineering:
1. Cultural isolation is necessary unless one waits for an uphill direction to become a downhill direction, which could take eons, or an environmental/economic catastrophe.
One has to make memetic changes with a small, somewhat isolated group. The resulting culture is not closed in Popper's sense (since an isolated culture can allow for critique and individual liberty to question norms), nor does it need to stay isolated forever. Only until it is stable enough to resist being swamped by the mainstream culture from which it arose.
2. Any change proposed must be in a master meme if one of the three scenarios of culture bifurcation happens. If the change is not in a master meme, then many other changes will be required to be implemented "by hand" instead of automatically and this would take too long to figure out, even if the change is not random but engineered. All the bifurcation scenarios require a quick timescale. A mutated non-master meme will usually lead to going uphill and then coming back to the original valley, either a case of micro instead of macro-evolution (this is the case when a proposed change leads to the same old problems) or no change at all.
3. Mechanisms for mutation must be ample--by analogy with biological speciation mostly through imperfect reproduction of memes. This is exactly the open society where democratic critique and non-totalitarian education are encouraged.

Unless one respects these laws, then any changes will be short-lived and/or superficial.

Here is an example of the first law. I am struggling with this here in Atlanta. While my housemates agree that we want to change the meme of dependency on the global economy to one of local production of goods, they find it hard to not be influenced by the memes of cheap or free food which requires little or no processing (unlike garden food which at least requires washing). By contrast, the Possibility Alliance in rural Missouri has no cell phones, TV (actually no electricity at all) cars or internet, only lets in a few guests at a time and have a buffer of amish farmers around them. They are not prone to memetic infections from the mainstream culture, but actually can infect visitors with their mutated memes. They have already bifurcated.

An example of paying attention to the second law of social engineering is if one wants to change the carnivorous diet meme to a vegan meme, it won't work. Carnivorous diet is regulated by many other memes, hence it is not a master meme. One such meme is the need for more protein in a blue collar (physically demanding) job than a white collar job. Another is the meme of religious and cultural associations with meat (e.g. dominion over animals with no souls). A third is the supposed unsustainability of current alternatives to meat in industrial agriculture (their production and transport). A fourth is the reduced labor per calory of food possible with meat and animal products in areas where vegetable farming is difficult or impossible. A fifth is the supposed need for animals even for sustainable vegetable production (e.g. need for animal manure).

update from Arkwright

2011-03-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

Infrastructure: We are off the electrical grid, and our solar panels and batteries (all donated) are serving us well. We are off the heating grid, using two rocket stoves that heat (relatively cleanly) with wood. We are also off the water grid. We have running hot water from the rocket stove, which so far we have used for dishes, but now that it is getting warm, we probably won't fire the stove up anymore. We also have running hot water from solar panels and a heating element which we use for indoor showers and dishes. We also have hot water from the passive solar outdoor (in the greenhouse) shower now that it is above freezing. We are taking showers and I am doing laundry with that water. We are still cooking mostly with propane from tanks, though occasionally I use my little rocket stove and a solar cooker. We are planning more cooking rocket stoves for an outdoor kitchen so we could get off the propane grid. Our greenhouse is working great--we have many starts and some have been transplanted into the garden already. We are digging many beds and should have about 1500 sq feet planted (which is not that much considering it would take about 4000 sq feet to feed a person needing 2500 calories for a year (maybe half that much with two successive plantings and 1/4 with excellent yields). Our greenhouse also kept the water from freezing. We have a shallow well pump plus 750 gallon cisterns (made out of wood and pond liner) that gives us running water, and an outdoor 300 gallon tank system plus diaphragm pump plus filters for our drinking water. Our fruit trees have many buds, so I am hoping for many plums and peaches. Our chickens were laying great until I thought to experiment and see if they really need that unsustainable commercial feed so I took them off it for a week, and sure enough, they stopped laying. After two weeks on feed they are laying 5-6 eggs/day again. We are experimenting with growing worms for them and are considering using the neighbors 2000 sq foot yard for growing them some food. We are debating whether to use roundup or not to remove the Kudzu. Jenell just built a chicken tractor and we should be putting the chickens there to help us tear up the kudzu. The chickens seem happy, they have a big area to roam in (and supplement their diet with bugs), encircled by both an electric fence and chicken wire (not counting the chicken tractor). I also hope to supplement their diet with nuts from our black walnut trees which last year did not produce good nuts, but which we might be able to revitalize. I gathered some nuts from another place and am trying to grow maggots in them before I feed them to the chickens, and then crack them once the other husk is off and feed them again to the chickens. Our batteries and solar panels plus electronics are a temporary measure to buy us time. We either need to figure out how to make them locally or get off them eventually.

Social/spiritual: We are currently 3 people living in a house and two people helping with bread labor who are not living there. A few people have not been a good fit for what I (I'd like to say "we", but can't at this point) am trying to create. The urban intellectuals who have a million ideas (mostly from UTube) but can't implement any of them or only want to work on the "sexy" ones which do not address our immediate needs (e.g. someone wants to work on a DYI mass spec!). The opportunists who just want a free place to live. The anarchists who believe that they should only do what they love doing (which might be feasible after a critical mass is reached, but not at this stage of our project). The individualists who cannot take helpful suggestions for improvement without having their egos hurt. Without getting too personal, I would say that this is the most challenging area. I would like to encourage deep connection with people, nature and the divine, creativity, scholarship, critical thinking and joy. Unfortunately the internet is still prevalent in our house and I believe does not foster most of these qualities but in some cases actually works against them. It is maybe better than television, so I should be grateful for the fact that we have no television. I decided not to use internet at home and just go to the library for my brief internet needs and we will see if we can achieve consensus on that (it also costs money). We do show movies once a month, which is OK, but I would like more active activities. We did have intelligent discussions the first few movies, but not lately.

I am trying to institute activities which would promote the above qualities, but so far people have not been able to participate in those activities. The mainstream culture is too strong and I sometimes feel like I need to start with a clean slate and people who have less of the mainstream within them.

Economy: No luck with any of the people I wrote to personally (James Cameron, Greg Mortenson and Kim Stanley Robertson). Will investigate George Soros, Ursula LeGuin and Michael Moore. We are selling Kombucha as a separate coop (for legal reasons), but in order to make significant money we will need someone to take on the business/legal side of it. We are investigating making drinking glasses out of bottles. We started bartering with a neighbor who is a blacksmith. We give him and his wife eggs and veggies (she makes her own Kombucha so doesn't need ours) in return for gardening tools and barrels for rocket stoves. We do get much food and materials from the urban waste stream.

Legal: I met with a lawyer to get advice on getting 501c(3) status and tax questions. He thinks we do not need to file taxes until we make some significant money. Jenell and I attended a workshop about fiscal sponshorship from existing tax-exempt non-profits. It would be good to find a fiscal sponsor.

Transportation: we are mostly off the car grid, using bikes and public transportation and a bike trailer to haul stuff.

the hundredth monkey

2011-03-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_Monkey for background. The story is apocryphal, a myth. But maybe something like that effect happens sometimes in evolution of species or of cultures. If it does happen, it could either be a speciation event or just a fixation of a mutant gene/meme within a species/culture. The part that is controversial is a proposed wholistic, global effect that does not involve local transfer of memes from monkey to monkey (or person to person). Something like collapse of a wave function or morphic fields. There is no data from evolutionary biology to support such a scenario, as far as I know, and I won't be discussing this scenario, as interesting as it might be. I will however discuss a way that critical population size could play a role in speciation or fixation of a meme/gene. Before we discuss how something like a critical mass could be essential for speciation (or for the fixation of a mutated gene/meme), we need to review 3 possible speciation scenarios.
1. The mountain pass scenario, when a reproductively isolated population needs to overcome a fitness barrier (mountain pass and think of negative fitness for the analogy to work) in order to then descend into a new valley where it can optimize its fitness and become a new species (splitting off from the parent species).
2. The tunneling scenario, when a reproductively isolated population has a hidden phenotype due to a genetic/memetic mutation and emerges into the other valley when it has traveled far enough in geographical and/or genetic/memetic space, without a fitness penalty (splitting off from the parent species).
3. The chronospeciation/entropic barrier scenario, when the whole population makes the shift (no reproductive isolation), going "downhill" (in negative fitness) all the way, finding a rare downhill path among mostly uphill paths. The downhill path may have been there for a while but was not found, or just emerged to to changing environment.

Keeping these speciation scenarios in mind, there are three posssible ways that a hundredth monkey scenario could operate:
1. When there is no speciation, but only fixation of a gene/meme, the mutated sub-population has reached a critical mass where the probability of being swamped out by genetic drift from the unmutated population is very small, and so the gene/meme almost certainly gets fixated in the population at large.
2. When there is reproductive isolation, a mutation in a master/regulatory meme, and a mountain pass or tunneling scenario, the small new species becomes large enough to be stable and not die out. This is once they have gone over the mountain pass or tunnelled through the mountain. In a mountain pass scenario, there is the possibility of a critical mass being necessary even while going up to the pass, because more people who are already manifesting some of the new culture might actually be able to lower the barrier or be able to handle and thwart the old culture manifesting in new people. I feel like this is the situation with my project (Open Space Church or Arkwright).
3. Perhaps a critical mass could be important in a chronospeciation event (no splitting into two species) without reproductive isolation in a scenario with entropic barriers. A few individuals go down the new path and thrive, but no one follows until a critical mass is reached because people (or monkeys) from the old species/culture are not going to notice the thriving people/monkeys in the new species or perhaps they notice and persecute or make it hard for those monkeys/people, being conservative in nature and apt to believe that the old ways are better. I think this might be the situation for the Possibility Alliance.

Stiffed-

2010-07-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

A charge often leveled at molecular biologists is that they are too focused on cells to understand organs, organisms, species and ecosystems. Particle physicists are similarly accused by condensed matter physicists or system theorists of failing to see emergent phenomena by focusing too narrowly. In the affairs of humans, new age psychologists could benefit from a sociological and historical viewpoint. Movements such as The Forum, or The Work seem to focus too much on individual psychology, without the benefit of the larger view. I am not a great scholar of psychology, and so I am only aware of two psychologists who had this larger viewpoint--Erich Fromm and Paul Goodman, and both were much more than psychologists. There were and are many feminist sociologists who also made forays into psychology.

I just read one of these, Susan Faludi's "Stiffed-The Betrayal of the American Man". Faludi is a journalist, but also a sociologist, as she goes beyond reporting to making hypotheses about her reporting. I found the book engaging and insightful, an example of how feminism is still vibrant. There are several hypotheses, skillfully hammered home by a plethora of supporting evidence, akin to molecular biology papers that support their hypotheses through multiple experiments until there are no objections (did you think of this possibility--yes, and here is the experiment) remaining.

The first hypothesis is that the economy in the US shifted from primarily producing things to primarily producing images.
The second hypothesis is that masculinity used to be defined, pre-WWII by being of use (of service) to one's community, by teamwork and loyalty to one's society and that as the economy shifted away from production towards image, it also shifted from teamwork and loyalty to individualism and competition with one's fellow workers.

Why is service so important? We seem to be deeply social animals who find serving others deeply gratifying. And what kind of service? Service to a family, to the state, to a community, to a planet? Or service to one's highest calling? These can sometimes be antagonistic. A community may not want to support a mathematician or artist when there are food shortages or enemies on the border. What the state demands may be antagonistic to what the best interest of one's offspring are. And there is a difference between voluntary service and socially or state- imposed service. The peasants in Russia would probably have loved to share if they hadn't been forced to. Similarly, if society expects a man to be a provider for his family just because he's a man, it may be counterproductive. Or when one is forced to have sex from economic necessity, it is not usually as pleasurable as when done out of love. Men naturally want to be useful, of service, but they have to figure out to whom and how by themselves, without social expectations.

The third hypothesis is that sons need fathers to teach them useful skills and a relationship with their fathers that this passing on of skills entails, and that barring such a relationship (brought about by consumer culture) they experience a lack of meaning and abandonment issues.

I pondered how all this fits into my personal life. My father was never a silent or unemotive man. Luckily I did not get that kind of gender curse. I don't feel betrayed by him, I don't feel betrayed by the culture (like it owes me a job or a community). I have been trying to create my own work, so I am not dependent on the culture, and my own community. But I do feel like the culture is messed up in many ways and that is not on the side of joy, peace and justice.

My son probably feels somewhat betrayed and abandoned by me, and the feeling is mutual. I would love to get him back from the Eye of ornamental consumer culture. I would love to leave him a world of life, instead of what I perceive to be a world of death. I would have loved to teach him physics or biology or even a craft, but I am not a craftsman. I would have loved to pass on to him the values of service and a community that he could be part of.

The fourth hypothesis is that masculinity changed into what feminists used to complain about: becoming not of use but used by commercial interests (or by other interests), as in on display. I am guessing that being used as a baby making machine or a sex object feels about the same as being used as an ATM--horrible.

In my own life, I feel used by the culture (with my ex-wife being but a pawn expressing the prevailing view) to provide money that my son does not need. I am reduced to an image of an ATM instead of being able to focus my energy on being of true use to my son, the planet and the larger community.

These hypotheses are nested like layers of an onion, which Faludi calls layers of masculine betrayal. Each deeper layer psychologically affects the shallower one above it. Men's economic privilege going down is the outer layer of betrayal. The useful, productive jobs are mostly gone, replaced by slaves abroad, machines or service jobs (but not so much service to people as service to corporations). Underneath this layer is the layer of loyalty to something bigger than oneself (community or corporation) and integrity. Underneath the betrayal of loyalty and integrity to and from the community or corporation is the layer of betrayal by fathers who are absent or silent, who did not pass on a patrimony. And underneath that layer is a layer of the Eye of Sauron (my analogy, not Faludi's), media culture, always observing, always objectifying, commodifying both men and women.

I think there is at least another layer of betrayal, underneath the eye of Sauron. Why is it that people buy into consumer culture and are so mesmerized by images? I think at the root is the need for comfort and security, of which I've written before. Consumer culture loses its power when one no longer seeks what it offers, or can find it in other ways.

Faludi's concluding fifth hypothesis is that instead of trying to fit social expectations of what it means to be a man, it is more gratifying (for a man) to seek to be useful to a community of men and women and to seek one's bliss, and that this is also the task of women that feminists have been pointing out for a long time.

Why is being an image so bad? It is because the image is two dimensional, it has no depth, and it does not come from a place of creativity and goodness. It comes from trying to make money or manipulation. It does not contribute to real wealth, but only fictitious money. It is not concerned with what is really happening to produce basic needs, if it hurts other creatures or people, it is selfish. Imaging might be something that happens naturally in conscious systems, but this culture has carried it to hellish extremes.

mathematics of speciation

2010-07-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

In standard evolutionary theory, every species is trying to optimize its fitness function, within a certain environment. But in reality, most of the environment is determined biotically by other species. Let's assume that for simplicity, for now. The situation is each species is trying to optimize its multivariate fitness function, where it only has control over a few variables (geographic location, DNA, etc) and the other species control the rest of the variables (food availability, CO2 concentration, predation, etc). It seems to me that there is only one fitness function since when two species diverge they have the same fitness function and so there is no reason to speculate more than one function with different domains. But one can consider a function of only the variables under a particular species' control, call it the reduced fitness function. These functions can be different for each species, and they are time dependent. The definition of a species is a domain around a local maximum of the reduced fitness function, separated from other maxima by mountain passes. This avoids all the problems encountered when one defines species only by reproductive isolation.Speciation can occur in two different ways.

In the first, there is a temporary reduction in fitness as an emergent species goes downhill for a while, through a mountainpass to another peak.

In the second, two populations which have the same value of the fitness function but are separated a bit by one or a few of the control variables have their reduced fitness function change in different ways due to other species attempted optimization of their reduced fitness function. They both go uphill at all times, with no need to reduce their fitness, unlike in the first case.

It would be neat to come up with actual numerical examples of how this could happen. Perhaps there are topological constraints making certain things impossible. Perhaps it is necessary to introduce an abiotic element (meteors, solar flares, etc) in order for the second situation to be possible.

Hunger Strike

2010-06-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a young, idealistic, big-hearted I fell in love with a woman. They got married, and after 2 years I realized that he had made a terrible mistake. The woman was greedy, materialistic and controlling, and had no understanding of him and what was important to him. Nonethesss, a few years later they had a child (I thinking it would make his wife happy, and generally liking children) and stayed together with his wife for a total of 10 years. When the child was about 4, I got a high paying job at Motorola in Austin TX, which his wife was happy about, but for I it was mostly an excuse to do his physics research at night, after work (Physics was his passion). During that time, he would fly to Boston to visit his wife and son every two weekends. He bought a house, to which he and a contractor added several rooms by carving out a basement with a jackhammer. His wife and son moved into the house, but that only lasted a year. The wife moved to Atlanta, the son soon followed. I fell in love with another woman, quit his job, sold his house at a sizeable profit, and paid off his wife to be able to get divorced after a year. He also agreed to pay an amount in child support that was commensurate with his income at Motorola(70K/year), knowing that he would quit that job the next month and probably not get an equally high paying job. His lawyer told him that he had no chance of getting custody of his son because he was a man and his wife was a woman and he was polyamorous.

For the next 4 years I saw his son on holidays, and for longer periods during summers (and kept paying $1000/month to his ex-wife, despite the fact that he didn’t think she was good for him, and that his income was now much less than what it was at Motorola). During that time he realized that even though he loved his job (he had switched careers into molecular biology, which was a new passion), had a great wife and lots of money, he was living a barren life and contributing to a culture that is destroying the earth and all that is good on it. His second wife who was unhappy with her job and her relationship, decided to go to DC for a job that seemed like greener pastures. I was heartbroken, especially so for his son, who loved and respected his step-mom, her being the only model he knew of a sane mom. Z’s mom in the meantime seemed to be getting more materialistic and more controlling, and when Z was 11 his mom beat him to pulp. I called the school, which called DFACS and she never beat him like that afterwards.

By this time Z had been indoctrinated into mainstream culture and did not like to visit with his dad over the summers since his dad took him to remote places that sometimes had no electricity or running water and insects that made him itch, though he did enjoy a few days at a rock concert that his dad took him to on his cool hippie bus. After Z was 14, I kept reminding him that he could legally leave his mom and offered to move to Atlanta to take care of him, but Z kept reassuring his dad that he was OK. Z seemed to be learning how to survive with his mom by lying to his mom and engaging in illegal but creative/entrepreneurial activities. After he was kicked out from his private school, I decided to cut his child support payments in half, because his ex-wife had plenty of money (which was now not going anymore towards a private school), because he got sick of spending so much money on someone who was messing up his son, because he wanted to save his money for a movement and a community, and because he was hoping his ex-wife would take him to court where the injustice of having to keep paying $1000/month for 10 years despite much lower or no income would be rectified.

After finishing his work in the lab and writing some papers, I decided that he wants to dedicate himself to making this planet a good place to be. He searched in many states for people whom he could work with to bring about this vision, and found a few. For the next few years, he searched in many states for land that he could afford or an existing intentional community that he could develop his vision at. After many false starts he found two existing intentional communities he thought he could contribute to and work with. He would have been at one of them today, had not Z called him while he was riding with the Superhero Bikers and asked him to come to Atlanta to help him with his situation. What had precipitated this change in Z was an event to which Z’s mom consented that sounded to I to be humiliating and horrible. I came to Atlanta hoping to help Z in whatever way was possible, postponing his settling at the Possibility Alliance.

For the next month I would go see Z 2 or 3 times per week and tutor him in math and physics. I at first tried to find housing near Z, but was disgusted both at the rents and the unsustainable living conditions that were available. After living in a radical eco-friendlier way for several years, I could not go back to middle class living. So he spent the rest of his money on a house with a ½ acre of land and with Dav he formed a non-profit to which he donated the property. They were going to try and build a local economy, and they set to work with zest. The house cost $12K more than I wanted to spend, but one of the people involved promised he would contribute this amount once he sold his house. This never happened and the person in question came up with an excuse of why he broke his promise. After I decided to cut his child support in half, he put his money temporarily in his girlfriend’s account, to protect it from the state. I’s girlfriend misunderstood something he had said and decided to take $5000 of I’s money to pay for her car expenses. He was hoping to have some money left for himself, until a local economy was created, but that was not to be. Z’s mom kicked him out of the house and at that point I and Z decided that Z needs to get away from his mom by I gaining custody of him. The rest of I’s money was spent on lawyers, court costs, and a bond that got him out of jail, after a Kafkaesque bungling involving bad advice from his lawyer to stop paying child support, mischeduling of court hearings and a judge that would not let I explain what was going on. I got a paying job he loves (making about $1K/month, whereas his ex-wife makes over $11K/month) as assistant custodian at an environmental consulting firm in order to be able to buy food, pay the water bills and have some money to support his son if he were able to gain custody of him. I would have preferred to support his son with healthy, home grown food, rainwater, a real life education (not the prison they call school) and a loving community.
Though the custody case was started at the beginning of February, the first hearing is scheduled for July 15th. The ex-wife realized at some point that this date is during an event she is much looking forward to and wanted I to consent to postponing the hearing. She does think that I owes her money (and the state agrees) since he cut his payments to $500/month last June, and stopped paying altogether in March, and every month is an extra $1K he owes. But I has no more money to pay both the accrued debt and the current payment, which his ex-wife was willing to accept as $500/month. If Z would be under I’s custody, then the amount the ex-wife would owe him would more than cancel what he owes her (unless the hearing is postponed much longer), but after his mom freaked out and probably used many carrots and sticks, Z decided that he does not want to go ahead with the custody case. I’s parents have offered to pay I’s bullshit debt off if I drops the case, but I does not want to do that. I does not want to give in to tyranny, whether in the form of Z’s mom or the state. I actually does not want to live any more in this culture, cowering from tyrants. I wants freedom and prosperity, not just for himself, but for all.

Our culture seems to believe, among other oppressive ideas, that the most important goal of a man should be to maximize his income, and give it to his family. I believe, on the other hand, that my first responsibility is to help bring about a culture of joy, freedom and peace. I don’t know what other people should do with their energy, but in general I think they should be free to choose what they do, especially if they are following their calling and bliss. One could envision really self-absorbed, selfish preoccupations, but it doesn’t seem to go that way with callings and bliss. Bliss wants to spread, to help, to serve life, one’s own, one’s family, humanity, the planet. When one is following one’s bliss, one wants to be truthful, even if this means pain to oneself. Mainstream culture wants us to constantly lie, in order to survive. It wants us to be preoccupied with our own and our family’s survival.

If one is serving life, then one’s own life may not always be worth preserving. A higher good can come from sacrificing one’s life than keeping it. I am trying to decide if this is the case for me at this point. I have lots of work left to do. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live as a slave, to give my energy to the mainstream, and not be able to do my work. I mostly love my life, though having seen how good life could be, but how far we are from reaching the promised land, I often feel sad. I grieve for what my son has become, what mainstream culture has done to him, recalling how beautiful he was before that exposure.

My friends want me to get an aggressive lawyer (with money from my parents), to bullshit the judge and pretend like I’m trying to get a high paying full time job, or to pay the ex whatever she asks for by asking money from my parents. I won’t do any of this. It would be giving in to a tyrant and keeping the status quo. It would lack integrity.

I want to see what a judge would decide. Is she going to send me to jail for not getting a high paying full time job, so that I can continue to pay my ex-wife a fictitious “potential income”? If so, then I am going on a hunger strike. Perhaps my death will do more good than harm. Perhaps I won’t die and enough people will raise a stink about this.

Some say I am crazy, or have a Messiah complex.
Some say I am stupid.
From the worldview of each person optimizing their own happiness, they are right, but I don’t share that worldview.
As Leonard says, roughly, I have lost my wives and children, but I have many friends.
I have tried to "ring the bells that still can ring" and focus on what positive things I can do. But there comes a time when ignoring the negative is cowardice and escapism. I have to face it like a man. There are complications with a hunger strike in jail, like I could be put on IV and restrained. Perhaps I should start the hunger strike now?

Pros of hunger strike:
1. maybe enough people would realize the system is broken and try to create a new system that encourages men to pursue their bliss. The law may change.
2. More people can be free.
3. I get to keep my integrity
Cons:
1. My son, parents and friends will be hurt.
2. The work that I could do for Life, that maybe only I could do, will be left undone.
3. I won’t experience joy, peace or freedom anymore

Does happiness come from within?

2010-05-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the last topic, I will talk about a different kind of foundation. The psychologist Abraham Maslow thought that happiness can't be achieved unless a hierarchy of needs are met(physical needs are the foundation, then psychological needs of various levels). The psychologist Victor Frankl, on the other hand thought that people can choose to be happy even if other more basic needs are not satisfied, as was often the case in concentration camps (basic needs not being satisfied). If one believes Maslow, then one is compelled to improve the physical, ecological and social conditions of the world, as happiness, one's own and others' depends on these external conditions. If one believes Frankl, then one may want to improve the world, but because it makes one's own life more meaningful, not because it will make anyone happier. I think they are both right. Frankl is right because we humans are adaptable and have some choice with regards to our states of consciousness. Maslow is right because certain conditions are more conducive to happiness, though it isn't a deterministic system. There is always a choice to be happy or not, even under stressful circumstances. If there is a choice, then sometimes it may be better (in a sense which we yet have to define) to choose unhappiness. It depends what one is trying to optimize. If one is trying to optimize one's happiness, then of course it is tautologically best to choose to be happy. If one is trying to optimize the world's happiness, or any other parameters, then sometimes it makes sense to choose to be unhappy.

Is happiness or communion internally generated? What does internally mean? We are living in a world, we are part of a system. Our neural system can generate experience, but we live in a culture and in a physical environment and we are constantly influenced by it. People who think they could choose to be happy or loving no matter what, usually break down when they encounter a life-threatening situation.

Franklites can choose their worldview in order to hide from things that would make most humans upset. I bet there are more Franklites than Maslowites in places where basic needs are met, such as middle class cultures across the world. Franklites might be happier in such places- they might have a selective advantage in a memetic pool--people might spread memes from happy, confident people more than from gloomy, self-doubting people. They might also have a selective advantage in places where basic needs are not met, such as a concentration camp, Frankl's original example. It is thus surprising that they haven't taken over the human population. Maybe this is because the human species as a whole is dependent on Maslowites to improve the human condition. Maslowites are altruistic.

Dav believes that the only problem in this world is that we are destroying it. He is a Franklite. I am a Maslowite, and believe that there are other problems, having to do with psychology, economics and spirituality all releted to each other and related to ecology. Psychology: alienation from the means of production, alienation from other people, alienation from nature. Economics: A non-local economy/technology promotes corruption, environmental destruction, concentration of power in the hands of a few, minimal freedom of expression for most, and opacity (lack of transparency). Capitalism promotes exploitation by those having capital of those that don't (so most landlords get much more than what they put in just for having capital). Spirituality: Instead of communion with other people and nature, people are usually stuck in their ego. The basic need to transcend one's ego is minimally met through drugs/alcohol/addictive sex. It is not true that people could just change if they chose to. The economic, psychological and spiritual system of which they are a part gives them constant reinforcement to maintain homeostasis. Even people who have been radicalized and woken up, still have trouble changing because it is real hard to make a real, sustainable change by oneself. The infrastructure needs to be rebuilt, and this can only be done by a community (many communities), not a lone individual or family. The concentration camps were not ended by happy Franklites, but by many factors, including defection of Nazi soldiers upon seeing atrocities committed against human beings (Maslowites?) who refused to be dehumanized, and the allies war effort.

Capitalism (and probably any complex and powerful enough system), as Herbert Marcuse
pointed out, tends to coopt and engulf any opposition. The opposition coming from the environmental movement is an example which has begun to show signs of being coopted, though the story has not been finished. I don't think any psychological maneuvering which is allied with capitalism can really solve the systemic destruction of out planet, because it is too tied in to economics, psychology, sociology and spirituality in ways that are contradictory to capitalism.

Even if it were possible to separate the environmental problem from everything else, and solve it, I wonder if Dav would really feel like everything is OK with the world if we did things sustainably but had slaves, or Jim Crow laws, or if we lived in a sustainable fascist state. What if we (or most people) merely live a living death, working at stupid jobs that do not use our highest potential and disconnect us from nature and each other, not being able to commune with people (but able to have superficial connection) because everyone is too stressed out or dumbed down or living too far apart and commuting to work and competing with everyone? We got alot of work to do to mend things and it's much more than fixing the environment and taking the Forum.

abundance on a firm vs rotten foundation

2010-04-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

We are working hard to create abundance. We dig the soil with a shovel and fork, we water with rain water and a solar-powered pump, we plant lots of vegetables. We are thinking about raising fish, we will definitely raise some chickens. Dav built some raised beds with lumber, galvanized sheet metal and soil from Lowe's and pond liner from an online source. We are building a solar shower with scrap PVC and black plastic hose. We have built two rocket stoves, with both scrap and bought stove pipe, bricks, perlite and barrels and local sand and mud for cob. We gather sticks and split wood that someone cut with a chainsaw. Also we split some scrap oak flooring. We have a room hooked up to the batteries, running LEDs and outlets. The rest of the house is just waiting for GA power to release their tentacles so I could safely go in through the main panel and hook up the inverter to the rest of the house. I am thinking about joining the local goat coop so we can get goat milk and make goat cheese. Maybe we could get some goats on the neighbors yard if we build a Kelvin Generator electric fence. We have many projects, all designed to create an abundance of food, water, energy, heat, shelter. I'd also like to have an abundance of ideas, love, discussions, workshops, skills, trade, dance, music. We have started a dance and a meditation.

Yet we have not forgotten that the foundation is still rotten. Almost all the materials come from environmentally destructive, people exploitive, war promoting sources. The money to buy those materials that we don't scavenge comes from companies (that have employed us in the past) that have questionable practices. The economic system (capitalism) is based on selfishness, greed, and making people into wage slaves, rent slaves, and dependents on whatever product or service the corporations are peddling to the masses. We are committed to fixing the foundation.

If one does not mind the foundation and builds or renovates a house on rotten sills, it matters not how wonderful the house is, it will still crumble. In the case of a culture, even if the culture survives a long time on a rotten foundation, the rot affects the souls of the people of that culture.

I am thinking of Ilse Koch, practicing abundance at Buchenwald. She had a horse-riding arena built, she rode horses, she had lots of fancy stuff in her home, like lampshades and soap, she had a zoo she had many lovers. The arena cost the lives of about 30 prisoners. The fancy stuff was paid for by stealing from the inmates. The lampshades were made from prisoner's skin. The soap was made from prisoner's fat. The zoo had a bear who would tear apart prisoners and an eagle who would pick the bones. Ilse's lovers murdered people routinely. Ilse committed suicide in the late 60s.

I am thinking of the Roman empire. I am thinking of antebellum Southern US. I am thinking of the Green sky novels. I am thinking of us.

It is one thing to continue to build on a rotten foundation, while trying to fix the foundation and doing everything so that one has the energy and resources to fix the foundation. It is another thing to pretend like the foundation is not rotten and to fill one's time with fancy stuff. One can be loving and spiritual, but if one's material foundation is rotten, the love will not be quite right. The material and spiritual are intricately linked, as in any complex living system. Perhaps a house is not the best analogy for such a system, not complex enough. An organism or ecosystem would be a better analogy for a culture. Instead of foundation, we can think of roots, or of photosynthesizers and fungi. On the other hand, if one's material foundation is sound but there is no love or freedom of thought and deed, that's not a good place to be either. We need to build a beautiful house on a firm foundation.

the hookworms of the system

2010-02-05T16:33:00.000-08:00

Most people don't want to create a new culture. Of those that do, most can't get beyond the wishing stage, because they are lazy and can't take the discomfort, both physical and emotional, that is necessary to do something revolutionary. Of those that can take discomfort, most do not have enough energy and time, after earning their livelihood and meeting their familial responsibilities, to put into creating a new culture. There is also the belief that children need to have the comforts of the old culture and that they need to be "put first". The obvious selfish gene/meme evolutionary advantage to putting one's children before other people's children and before any revolutionary program explains the morality that has developed around this meme. However, as in the prisoner's dilemma, acting in this selfish manner not only is currently worse for the planet (the "greater good"), but is actually worse for one's genes and children. Because everyone is "putting their children first" (translate--doing the short term culturally-normative things to provide for the children's comfort and security and so-called "education"), they don't have the energy to create an alternative to the culture that is destroying the earth and our souls.

For every joule of energy that the Possibility Alliance is losing by using human power instead of petroleum power, they gain about 5 joules of energy by not having the systemic hookworms sap their energy. No governments who sap their energy with zoning, board of health burocracy, and legal stuff. No ex-wives who sap their energy with "child support" payments. Children who contribute to the well being of the community and are involved in community work, learning and ritual, instead of parasitizing it in the name of the liberal (and originally well-intentioned) idea of no child labor. No planet/soul-destroying jobs to commute to. No cars that constantly break down and require huge sums of energy to purchase. No police and ambulance sirens, day and night. No air and water polution to destroy one's health. No beliefs of "me and family first" which are a poison to the human spirit. No computers or TV which shield people from real live human to human contact and promote ADD (how much energy is wasted because of ADD?).

You want to do well by your children? Then think of how to make things better for EVERYONE's children and everyone alive whether they are children, men, or women (I always bristle when people are outraged that someone is killing women and children, as if men are totally expendable). Sometimes this global view will cause some suffering to yourself, and even your children. There are tradeoffs to be made. What is good for your children in the short run often will be bad for the planet and other people's children in the long run, and vice versa. This selfish tendency to put oneself and family first is very hard to overcome. It is the same biological root of laziness, doing what is best here and now even if it makes things worse globally and in the future. But we humans can overcome laziness and we can overcome selfishness.

Oftentimes we can do both: take care of our children, and follow our heart path to heal the planet. Or help the homeless old man on the street and follow our vision. But when we can't and we choose heart path and vision, we are no less "responsible" than those who merely follow their biology and try to dress it up with morality. I have tried through the years to offer material and emotional support and guidance to my son. But after I started living responsibly and sharing resources with people who were not my biological family, it was difficult for him to spend time with me. I have asked him several times if I should come to where he lives and "put him first". Everytime until this summer, he said no, he understood that I am doing something important and he respected it and wanted me to keep doing it. This summer I came to help him, but I am not giving up on my work (and I mean life-work, not the prostitution that most people call work because it pays them money). He respects me more than his mom, who has done whatever the culture considers right except have a loving, respectful relationship with him (which the culture is split on-some say parents are just supposed to control their kids, drive them everywhere and make them planet-destroyers just like their parents) and model a good way to live.

It is possible that sometimes people go to the other extreme and get so caught up in their vision and heart path that they are blind to the suffering of their children and other people close to them. My friend Christina claims this has happened with her mom, who according to Christina neglected her.

An analogy (based on the mountainpass analogy mentioned in another post): We are 18th century pioneers trying to get from our valley (which has become hostile to humans) to another valley, where hopefully things are better. It takes alot of energy, not just in preparing the wagons but in crossing the mountainpass, where the weather is nasty. If we spend most of our time just surviving in our valley, we will never make it to the other valley. If we spend most of our time climbing the mountain, without stopping for rest and taking care of each other, we also may not make it, or we will make it alone and then perish. We need to do both to make it to the promised land.

avocation

2009-11-18T07:16:00.000-08:00

My main critique of the Possibility Alliance was that unless one was a gardener, animal husbander, cook or builder, there was not yet available the opportunity to pursue an avocation. Though serving others is a real important human need, the ability to engage in work which is creative, challenging, character-building, at times joyful; work that one can get better at over a lifetime; that engages the hands, the brain, and the heart; that is in line with one's values and does not exploit other beings; and that engages the material world, is also important and we can define it as avocation. Service is a way to help other people. Avocation is a way to serve the spirit that moves in all things, in unique ways.

The buddhist concept of right livelihood is an intermediate between avocation and livelihood. It has the part about work that is in line with one's values and ethical, but not necessarilly the rest.

Work as a means to personal fulfillment is a liberal western idea, relatively recent, although many artisans and peasants have had that idea for a long time before 19th century liberalism and the industrial revolution. Here is a quote from one of Gandhi's disciples, Lanzo del Vasta that contrasts work as avocation and (most) Mainstream work:
"A man makes himself by making something. Work creates a direct contact with matter and ensures him precise knowledge of it as well as direct contact and daily collaboration with other men; it imprints the form of man on matter and offers itself to him as a means of expression; it concentrates his attention and abilities on one point or at least on a continuous line; it bridles the passions by strengthening the will. But in order that work itself, and not just payment for it, shall profit a man it must be human work, work in which the whole man is engaged: his body, his heart, his brain, his taste. The craftsman who fashions an object, polishes it, decorates it, sells it and fits it for the requirements of the person he intends it for is carrying out human work. The countryman who gives his life to his fields and makes his flocks prosper by work attuned to the seasons is successfully accomplishing the task of a free man. But the worker enslaved in serial production, who from one second to another repeats the same movement at the speed dictated by the machine, fritters himself away in work which has no purpose for him, no end, no taste, no sense. The time he spends there is time lost: he is not selling his creation, but his very lifetime. He is selling what a free man does not sell: his life. He is a slave."

Let us examine the way that Mainstream Kult is defining work and career.

First, work is confused with livelihood, or more precisely with how one earns money.
When people ask "what do you do?" or "what do you do for work?" they mean "what do you do for money?".

Second, if money is the motivator, it is not the best way to motivate and to produce an excellent product, as Alfie Kohn claims in Punished by Rewards. For excellence, one needs intrinsic motivation, which is what the aspects of avocation listed above provide.

Third, the middle class concept of career is not incompatible with avocation as defined above, but career for most is more about social status than anything else. Also, most of the few privileged people who have careers that give them joy still fall short on connecting with the material world, because most careers now are computer or office related. My avocation has so far been science--mainly theoretical physics, which has the above shortcoming. I correct for that by engaging the material world with engineering projects, which although they fit the definition of avocation, do not give me as much joy as theoretical physics. I think most people who have a career do not have much time for anything else in Mainstream Kult. And most of the few privileged who have careers are not meeting the ethical standard of not exploiting other beings in their work, although the exploitation is usually indirect.

Fourth, avocation as defined above is somewhat of a masculine need, and the masculine references in Lanzo's writings may not have been only a relic of the 1940s. To work in order to have comfort and security is a feminine trait. I advocate balance within individuals, whatever gender they are. I will work to ensure food and shelter for me and all beings, AND I will risk my life/livelihood so that all people could also have the opportunity to have an avocation. I see most people working so that they and their families could have comfort and security, regardless of what that entails for other people (especially if those people are out of sight).

Fifth, work for money that is neither for service or for avocation is like prostitution or like slavery. Prostitution does not have to be about selling one's soul though, it could be an avocation; I am using the cultural connotation attached to that means of livelihood, where one does not only sell one's body, but one's soul. I would rather starve than prostitute myself.

Superheroes part 2

2009-11-17T10:51:00.000-08:00

We stopped at the gas station on our way out of town to regroup. While superheroes were regrouping, I went in to take a leak, leaving my bike in the midst of the mass of superheroes. When I got back, the mass had regrouped on the sidewalk, and Zing reprimanded me for leaving the bike where cars might need to go. This was not the first time Zing reprimanded me about something I did that was thoughtless or selfish, but for some reason I felt like I needed to talk to him more about it. The rest of the heroes went on ahead, since Zing was supposed to be sweeping, while Zing and I had our tete a tete. When we were done, a macho cowboy middle-aged republican type man came over with a chip on his shoulder and asked us what we were about. Zing told him we were the superhero riders, a service organization, full of love. The man repeated "a service organization, huh?" seemingly not believing Zing. A staredown ensued for a few long seconds, and finally the guy backed down and walked away. Zing the alpha male! Perhaps the owner of the campsite where we had stayed the first night in Pecos had spread a rumor that we were Rainbow Family, and somehow that was a bad thing, like the Rainbows are a terrorist organiszation or what? But most people in Pecos loved us, giving us unsolicited food and money and hospitality. I can't remember if I decided to change my superhero name to Mindful Chaos after that conversation with Zing, or if it was after I started off one time without my helmet from the Beloved Gallery.

It was relatively flat till lunchtime. We have one big hill, where we meet another superhero who pulls over in a car with a baby. She had been on a ride many years before and Zing and her have an joyous reunion (what are the chances?). Just when we stop for lunch, I get a call from a dear young friend asking me to come to Atlanta where he was subjected to an exorcism from a lunatic stranger with his mom's consent (she's no fundie, but she is pretty desperate about how to control his behavior), which from his description sounded violent, nonconsensual and the closest thing to rape a male can experience without being penetrated (but who knows, he does exaggerate sometimes). It was the last straw for him and so I agreed to come and see how I can help him with his mom and with his life. He said he could wait till I was done visiting the Possibility Alliance. The combination of thinking about his situation, an unrelenting headwind and steep hills made it hard for me that afternoon. On one hill I had stopped to catch my breath and pray for strength. Just then Superchili comes up from behind and starts telling me a joke. She tells me about zigzagging up and demonstrates. I found out later that her gears were not working. Even though the joke was not that great, I am now in love and get going again. SC tells me some more jokes (better than the first), biking by my side, and then she resumes her co-sweep duty and heads back to check on Crimson who is somewhere behind us (the other sweep). I go on ahead and catch up with One Earth Nun and Metta. Metta just smiles. One Earth goes at a really slow pace and I try to stay behind her, but can't go that slow (she has 24 gears, and I only 21...). I pass them and then catch my breath at the top of the hill as they pass me again. "I don't know if I can do this". "I have faith in you"--says One Earth. It doesn't get any better when a cute nun who almost bit my head off one time now has faith in me. Well, I go slower and they get way ahead of me, out of sight. I decide to wait for the sweeps. I wait 1/2 an hour and start getting worried. They are the youngest members of our troupe. They are young women alone on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere in the USA. So I head back, despite protocol requiring not to go back until all the group decides on it. I only last about 2 more uphills (which WERE downhills going the other way) before I am out of breath again. I break another protocol and use my cell phone to call Metta (well I figured she would give the phone to Ruby since she can't talk). Pea answers and I realize that this number I dialed is Metta's land line. He tells me that Rainbow Rider is recovering well. He tells me to just wait some more, and sure enough I see Superchili and Crimson Seeker over the horizon. Crimson had a flat and then lost her skewer, which SC helped her find. I get ahead of them (SC must be exhausted by now) and am met about 5 miles before the rendezvous point by the woman who met me in Albuquerque (forget her name). She has a camera pointed at me and says sorry but she is only interviewing female superheroes for some project, but offers me a burrito, which I decline, since I am not yet hungry. By the time I make it to the gas station, I am met with a party of superhero cheerleaders singing "Chaos, Chaos!", and I feel like I just finished the Tour de France. Hands come off the handlebars and go up in the air. A burrito is offered and this time accepted (after I get off the bike--not quite Tour de France). I thought they would be worried or upset that they had to wait so long, but no, they are cheering me on! The same ecstatic reception is reenacted for Superchili and Crimson Seeker a few minutes later. Superchili has already exhibited superhuman strength and so gets a ride from our hosts in Las Vegas (NM) for the next 5 miles. This was one time where we actually had a pre-arranged host in town. Our hosts were a couple and their daughter who knew Metta. We are all pooped and barely find enough strength to set up tents. Some folks stay in our hosts' house. The next day we are awakened by Zing rapping with guitar accompaniment. He is a good rapper and no rap would be better to wake up to. One Earth and I are on cooking again. One Earth stays to cook lunch. I also stay in the morning for a bit to prepare puri indian flat bread, and so am late to the Goodwill store where a clothes sorting party is going on. I tackle a bed which noone knows how to put together. Turns out it's a bunk bed but missing a piece. The manager of the store is in ecstacy after she gets the Imploding Supernova of Love, which I had to miss so I could go help with lunch.

I don't remember what else transpired that day, except games were played (I think we did the one where people write one line of a story on a piece of paper, put it in a hat, and then someone reads them randomly, inviting 3 people to tell a story using that line, but only one is true. Then the rest of the people have to figure out by asking a few questions of the storytellers, which is the true story), music was made and good food was cooked and eaten. I think it was also that day when superhero headquarters called to say that beloved Tamar was diagnosed with liver cancer. I had known her from visiting Dancing Rabbit, where she lives. I have fond memories of playing music with her for a maypole dance, and One Earth Nun also had met her and loved her at DR. But Zing was hit the hardest; he is a really good friend of Tamar's and he was grieving for the rest of the day. Why her, we thought? She tries to live so healthy. Memories of young Israeli boys dying in the war came back to me (Tamar was born in Israel, like me), nature's order reversed, with parents burying their children. But Tamar was not worried or upset, unlike all who have known her. She is still alive as far as I know, and may outlive me, living in the present.

The next day we had the best job: cleaning out public hot spring baths a few miles from Pecos! After figuring out the technicals of siphoning, we were hard at work scrubbing algae off walls (Zing stayed behind, still grieving, and Farfalu and Superchili (someone correct me here, did SC come at all to the springs?) went back after preparing lunch, to offer support). We had a great soak in different temperature baths, and Infinity Kid claimed that it was like a rite of passage for him to get in that scalding water and overcome his fear. After the soaking we had dinner with the woman who got us the hot spring job and her family at the World College. We met some of the students earlier--from all over the world, trying to learn about peace and sustainability. We each said something to them, but I didn't feel very inspired, leaving the PR to Blue, who loves public speaking. I wish I could show them what it means to live peacefully and sustainably, which I am sure that none of them do, being unrepresentative of most of their countries which are poor and could not afford to go to college abroad.

Neither One Earth nor I (we were on ritual team) remembered to bring superhero badges to give to our hosts (and she didn't get mad at me!). But we gave them a supernova treatment nonetheless. After supper, we went to listen to Frances Moore-Lappe. She is well meaning, but in my opinion she is not radical enough, flying and driving all over, writing books instead of growing food, sharing resources, and coming up with local technologies. Wealthy liberals love her though. She is like that mathematician from the joke I told Blue that morning about the engineer, physicist and mathematician who walk around the city putting out fires. In brief, the engineer puts out a fire with 3 fire extinguishers, without much thought, just pragmatically. The physicist puts in lots of thought and the fire almost gets out of control by the time he puts it out with just one short squirt of extinguisher in the place he calculated would be optimal. The mathematician thinks for a long time, does calculations, the fire is out of control and the building burns down, at which point she says that she has has proven a solution exists (or the way it plays out in our world is "Science and Technology will figure out a solution"). End of joke. Zing refused to even go listen to her talk, and I understood why after I heard it.

The next day One Earth and I were on hunting and gathering, with One Earth doing mostly gathering and helping the cooks and I took about 5 trips to the farmers market, because the cooks kept forgetting ingredients (or did I forget some too?). During that time there was one team which went back to the Goodwill store, while another team supposedly went to the dog pound to walk some dogs. I got to the dog pound late, no superheroes. They were across the street at the community center washing windows and sweeping floors. The first thing I see when I get there is a dejected Infinity Kid, washing windows in slow motion. "They want us to wash the upper windows where the bird poop is, but they have no ladder". I offer my shoulders to him instead, and he lights up, climbing up and picking up the pace. After a few windows I am tired. Ruby has just found a bird that might haver flown into a window and is not moving. We help her find a box and some water for the stunned bird and then we go look for Farfalu and Superchili who turn out not to be any lighter than Infinity Kid. But Farfalu is a brilliant engineer and realizes that if one person sits in a chair and another person stands on the back rest than not only will I not get tired from people standing on me, but we could parallel process, with two cleaners going on at once, with Ruby handing paper towels and cleaner spray. The windows cleaned, I headed back to help the cooks and see if they need any more supplies, taking the bird with me, only to have Superchili run out to say that Ruby would rather drive the bird on her bike. The bird recovered and flew away the next day.

Later that day (or was it earlier?), there was a radio show:
http://lvpeacecenter.org/radio/youth-radio-bicycle-superheroes
where Zing, Farfalu, Superchili, Infinity Kid and True Blue went while I was hunting and gathering. Ruby Hummingbird made a late appearance returning a headlight I had borrowed the night before for our bike trip back from the hotsprings, to the radio show host who was a friend of our hotspring host. It is worth listening to this show for more details about how superheroes make decisions (deep consensus), expenses ($35/week, unless you can't afford it, in which case other superheroes will cover for you), a gift economy, and other things I missed.

The next day we biked towards Taos, refreshed and rested, except Superchili was sick. Sagegal and Pea came for a few days. I found it much easier than the first few days even though there were some serious mountains to climb. I was yodeling and just happy to be using my body, breathing the clean mountain air, and seeing some beautiful sights. Superchili drove on ahead in Sagegal's car. We found a sign at the top of a mountain pass: County Line Dance. It was clear that SC wanted us to dance, and we did some Israeli folk dances--which when it works and people are in the mood is better than even good sex as far as I am concerned. We stopped at a blueberry farm which Superchili arranged for us.It was to be Zing's and my last night with the Superheroes. The next day we were to head back to catch the Southwest Chief to La Plata, MO, home of the Possibility Alliance and Superhero headquarters. People were somewhat sad. Metta decided to break her vow of silence, which shocked everyone. I convinced True Blue to let Infinity Kid sleep in her tent, hoping it would only lead to Good Things. One Earth Nun and I played some music together on our wind intruments.

I tried to say something happy and encouraging before I left, based on the producers of the LOTR movie version of Aragorn's speach at the Black Gate (of Mordor). Later I actually wrote down some more and here it is:

"Superhero riders! When I look into your eyes, I see the same sadness, the same grief, the same fear that freezes my heart. There may come a day when our hearts will harden for good, when the hearts of all people will give in to despair, but that day is not today. There may come a day when nature's beauty and balance will be spoiled by the greed and selfishness of men and women, but that day is not today. A day may come when war and destruction rule the earth, when people have been enslaved by machines, but that day is not today.

Today our joy will overcome sadness, our love will overcome fear, our courage will triumph over apathy. Hardened hearts will melt! Eyes will see God in each other! We ride now to serve and uplift all beings! We ride now for freedom, for love, for joy, for the earth, for spirit. Ride forth and serve!"

Report on the superhero bikers

2009-11-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

The idea of seeking out strangers to help directly goes at least back to Jesus. It is to be contrasted with the idea of sending money to a charity organization, where the help is through several layers of burocracy and often there is no direct connection between the helper and the one being helped. I have never been able to do charity because it presumes that I, a privileged westerner, have something better to offer to people of a different culture or of different financial resources. Since I don’t presume that, sending money to a charity would be hypocritical of me. But not helping at all is not the answer either, because anyone with a mammalian heart wants to be of service to at least some folks. There are two ways in which I am called to help other people. One is by creating a life that is indicative of my values and that I truly believe IS a better life than what is available to the people I presume to help. That is what I’ve been trying to do for the past 4 years and what Jesus, Gandhi and MLK and a section of the communard movement has been attempting and exemplifying for many years. The other way I am aware of is direct helping, with the helpers and helpees connecting directly as equal human beings, working side by side. The superheroes are about this means of helping people. About twice a year, a ride is planned somewhere in the world. Superheroes converge on the meeting place, with bicycles and costumes. Those without bicycles can usually be provided with bikes by the local organizers. Costumes are up to one’s creativity. I started out as Captain Chaos, because I seem to be at the eye of the hurricane a lot, generating much change in the lives of those whose paths cross mine. I also have an innate dislike of the western propensity to think that we can control the universe, nature, other people, or the western hubris of how much power we actually wield as individuals. And , I am working on a physics theory where there is intrinsic free will and non-determinism, even more so than in quantum mechanics. It has to do with a (mathematically characterizable) boundary/bridge between the (hypothesized) timeless and the timefull part of a 5D spacetime , where there is a mathematical singularity (of a different nature than a black hole though) where no equation of physics survives to predict the near future from the present and near past. I had painted some of the graphic elements of this theory on a T-shirt, attached a red pillow case to the back with safety pins, put on my elf shoes (pointy, curled-back toes fit snugly into the pedal straps), and with my wild beard and hair, I was ready to go.

I arrived in Albuquerque on a Greyhound after midnight, where a hospitable man I found on couchsuring.com offered me his studio. After a good night’s sleep we went out to breakfast where he told me about some of his work producing and teaching theater in Albaquerque. I then met up with super enthusiastic ****** who took me to another woman’s house where there were two boxes of vegetables donated by local restaurants. I took them with me for a short but very crowded train ride to Santa Fe, where I was met by the first bicycling superheroes, Rainbow Rider and her partner Perennial Pea—I immediately developed a fondness for their earthy intelligence and eagerness to help—agape at first sight. By the end of the trip I loved all the superheroes. They had brought my bike and a trailer to carry my pack and the veggies. They helped me hook up the panniers and off we went to Metta the Mime’s place, the local organizer. There we unwound for a bit—Metta was still in her talking phase and I had the same reaction to her and her partner Ruby Hummingbird. Ruby loves birds and had an easy going demeanor that put me at ease. Metta was busy coordinating logistics (she is an organizaing genius and one of the most selfless people I have ever met). Later Metta would put on her white mime face paint and not speak for much of the trip, until the evening before Zing and I left, shocking everyone. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Rainbow, Pea and Chaos (me) went to Green Dragon’s to spend the night. Green Dragon is a wise, kind woman, 62, looks like she’s in her 40s, small and fitter than most 20 year olds. We cooked dinner together, met her daughter and granddaughter and had a good night’s rest in a beautiful yurt. The next day Rainbow, Pea went to a farmer’s market, where we got to meet Farfalu and Super Chili. While I was buying some veggies and talking to a farmer about the benefits of every able-bodied person participating in agriculture, I lost SC and Farfalu, I would get a chance to fall in love with them later. I had a lovely lunch of bread, goat cheese and tomato and then went back to accompany Green Dragon on a mission to pick up The Zing from the Amtrak train station in Laramie, about 14 miles away. The ride over was difficult enough for me, probably because of the altitude and the fact that I hadn’t done any serious biking for many years. Dragon said that she might be dragging on the way back, but she was riding ahead of me to buffer the wind as I was having trouble on the way back. The Zing had an inspiring costume: blue spandex, a long ergonomically sewn cape with thunderbolt motif on the cape, the belt and the face. His helmet had some organic-looking spikes (symbolizing an Australian Echidna?) and he oozed charisma. The Zing had founded the superheroes about 10 years ago, and it is hard not to fall in love with him and want to follow him to the ends of the earth. We barely missed a rattler after a minute riding back, then the wind kept blowing towards us, then heavy hail rained down on us and I just had to stop and take cover under some bushes they call trees down in New Mexico. That evening I went back to Green Dragon’s and for the next few days we had training in superhero antics and bicycle safety and protocols. There were a few superheroes who did not bike with us, such as Loving Edge, who knew Jason from Auroville, whom I had met at Heathcote while he was in the US. There were superheroes who just biked and did service around Santa Fe: Expressiva, Sagegal, *** Bee and Turqoise Seeker. Sagegal opened up her house and yard for us to camp in.

I’ll describe the rest of the superheroes that rode with us all the way to when Zing and I had to leave to go back to the Possibility Alliance, as I got to know them and love them better than the ones who only stayed with us a bit. Oh and Sagegal (even though she only rode with us to the highway), who had everything we needed, including bike gloves and a hankie for me, bike fixing stands for all, a sewing machine for patching clothes and improving costumes, and an inspiring competence and easygoing sense of humor and hospitality. Farfalu, an old wise soul in a young body, a Buddhist practitioner with the best cape—fairy wings beautifully crafted! Superchili, hot yet sweet, full of jokes and warmth that came in handy when I thought I could not make it up the hills from Pecos to Las Vegas. Infinity Kid, who has the biggest, bluest, most loving eyes I had ever stared into, who did a lot of trailer carrying and who worked with me a lot. Crimson Seeker, who loves to cry, laugh, hug and understand the world and who persisted despite quite a few flat tires. True Blue, who is a healer with a big heart and kept us calm after Rainbow’s fall (see below).
We did a superhero birth ritual for everyone, we divided up into rotating teams—scouting/navigation, moral/physical support, cooking and cleaning, hunting/gathering and ritual. I ended up on a two-person team with One Earth Nun—we were the odd couple—she very collected, meditative, gentle, unhurried and calm (except when I rattled her a few times), dealing best as she could with my chaos. Our first breakfast was a bit of a challenge, she planning to take care of it the next morning and me throwing a monkey wrench into the oatmeal plan by soaking an excessive (more weight for the trailers) quantity overnight, without first checking with her. We had lots of rituals—the Great Eye who sees all and reports back on the days events, the Readings of the Great, the Huddle, Superhero recognition and badges for local helpee superheroes, Imploding Supernova of Love. We did a great spontaneous dance and rap which started with the Great Eye. Our first day of service we split up for 3 jobs-- at a food bank sorting food, at a mentally challenged adult home doing landscaping, and a third which I forget (because I wasn’t there). Sorting food had never been more fun. We had another small job trying to locate some escaped dogs but they were located later at the animal shelter. The next day we headed for Pecos but on the way down a long hill Rainbow Rider had the wobbles and lost control. We had a few minutes of collective worry as she lay on the pavement spewing blood and not being convincingly conscious. We called the EMTs and she was ambulanced to the ER. Metta and Pea went with her. We were all shaken and had lunch by the side of the road, after which a local medicine woman came out of nowhere in her truck and did a healing ritual/circle. We were all awed by that—she came with the dust and was gone with the wind as soon as the ritual was over. We rode back to Santa Fe to offer support to Rainbow and Pea.

Rainbow was OK, nothing too serious, but she and Pea decided to stay in Santa Fe to recover. So after another day we started again towards Pecos. I will now describe some of the highlights of the rest of my short journey with the superheroes—I may get the details of who did what wrong—superheroes who read this feel free to correct me. We made it before dusk, again in the hail. Metta found us an abandoned trailer to shelter in while she went ahead to find Ruby who somehow missed Metta’s bike on the side of the road and biked on ahead). We were all reunited in town, where navigation lined up two possible jobs, and found a wonderful grassy spot at a campground (the Benedictine Monastery was on retreat, so we didn’t get to stay there). While navigation and volunteers (Infinity Kid, Metta The Mime, The Zing and Farfalu) was busy, I taught a folk dance to True Blue, Super Chili, Crimson Seeker and Ruby Hummingbird. Pecos is beautiful, in a lush valley surrounded by real trees with friendly people. The cooks wipped up a wonderful meal on the camp stoves and we slept in our tents.

The next day One Earth forgave me for the oatmeal incident and gave me some chaos credits after I double bagged and dumped the plastic bag that our host provided to store our poop (a well-meaning, but misguided way to deal with humanure). That day, we painted a community center room, weeded a community garden and started building a greenhouse at the Beloved Pecos Gallery, working together with the organizer and her daughter. People were happy we were there and were bringing us food and other gifts. Zing, True Blue and I laid out the rectangle for the foundation, using a string, stakes and the Pythagorean theorem (I taught Zing and Blue how to do square roots without a calculator, realizing later that we should have done a 3,4,5 triangle to figure out right angles instead of the full length and width). Infinity and I were a good team gluing PVC pipe for the greenhouse frame. Zing and True Blue cut the pieces as well as cut some wood , made a door frame and put in rebar in the ground to serve as a foundation. Farfalu, Infinity, Ruby and I screwed the foundation to the PVC. We stayed with a couple who had a big back yard where we pitched our tents. We played Giants, dwarves and Elvis the next morning, then went back to finish painting and get as far as we could with the greenhouse. Superchili played a song on the guitar which I joined her on. Blue and Zing cut the plastic and everyone joined in to stretch it over the PVC frame. After a meal cooked by Infinity and Metta using a hay box, we stayed in a beautiful field on the edge of town, where we had a serious thunderstorm that sent some people to a house because of leaking tents. The next morning we got to see huge, gorgeous mandalas made by the late husband of a local farmer/artist whose land we were staying on. Then we rode onto Las Vegas.

To be continued…..

Report on the Possibility Alliance

2009-11-02T05:07:00.000-08:00

For three weeks I lived at a beautiful place in the green pastures of central Missouri, at the Possibility Alliance (PA). I had a wonderful time and am seriously considering living there when my son turns 18. There is no electricity except for flashlights and a landline phone (no solar panels, no hydro or wind, no internet, no batteries except for guests), and no fossil fuels (hence no internal combustion engines, no gas stoves). There are bicycles and horses (one horse-drawn buggy which is not used so far very much) for transport, candles for indoor light, human-powered saws for cutting wood, wood-stoves for heating and cooking, and much joy and consciousness. I did not miss electricity, the internet or cars at all while I was there. I needed no money while I stayed there. They produce most of their own food, except grains. Wheat is imported from Kansas City, not further than 200 miles, and rice is probably further. If I ever move there I will try to grow rice or wheat.

I first heard about the PA from Nathan at Dancing Rabbit. Ethan told me that they couldn't have me until Sep 21 because he was going to New Mexico for the Superhero ride. The superheroes are a service organization. They dress up as superheroes of their own making (I was Mindful Chaos), tour the country on bicycles and help anyone who needs and accepts their help. They make decisions using deep consensus, bring their own food and supplies and do not expect anything in return for their services. They give freely without any agenda except to be of service and try to connect with people. I decided to go with them, so I can get to know Ethan better, because I love to help people directly (as opposed to giving money to charities), and because it sounded like fun. I will write more about the superheroes and my adventures with them in another post. After two weeks of riding with the Superheroes, Ethan and I left them to go back by train to La Plata and the PA. La Plata is a small town in Missouri on the Amtrak route. We were met at the station by Rory who brought me a bike and a trailer for my pack. We rode for 5 miles through Amish farms. We stopped at one neighbor for the kids to inspect the bikes and talk to Ethan for a while. Ethan promised them some honey from the upcoming honey harvest. Then we rode home.

The physical/ecological layout
There are 80 acres, 20 of which are zoned wilderness (meaning one can't build or gather/hunt there, only commune with) woods, the rest being mostly pasture. There are apple, pear, and peach trees that the humans get much fruit from. There are chickens that the humnans get eggs, meat and insect-control from. The humans collect black walnuts and acorns for the chickens, and otherwise they are mostly free-ranging and find their own food. There are 4 female goats producing milk, some of which is drunk by the humans and made into cheese. Every few years they need to be "freshened", which means more goats are born, some of which will be killed for meat. There are horses which are used to haul heavy loads like fallen trees. There are some plans to use the horses for plowing, for grain production. There are fish in the pond, bluegill and bass, at a sustainable fishing ratio of 10:1. There is a house with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a pantry, a bathroom (used mostly as a cold room for food storage and sometimes for taking baths), a living room and a dining room. There is a barn for the horses and goats, for storing hay and straw, and for visitors to sleep in. Many visitors (including myself)--there are about 1000 per year, also sleep in tents.

The social structure
Every day there would be a morning meditation at 6:30, which I would usually miss because I would rather catch up on sleep in the morning. There was breakfast and morning meeting at 7:30. Breakfast usually consisted of cold oatmeal or rice with apples, pears, honey and flax. The morning meeting was fun: it would start with a minute of silence and tuning in, followed by a reading about a native plant or animal (“community member”) that recently interacted with someone, and a poem or inspirational reading. Then we would figure out what “bread labor” needed to be done that day. The people who have been there for a while generally had a better idea of that than people who have been there less time. After bread labor was decided, there would be a joke told, a magic trick performed, a dance move demonstrated or a riddle posed and then we would go, unrushed to our tasks. As the saying goes:”where there is vision with no task, it is a daydream. Where there is a task without vision it is drudgery, but when vision and task are combined, the world changes.” And that is my experience of work at the PA. Every task there, except one which I will get to in a moment, was a joy. There was a variety of tasks that needed doing, for reasons which were pretty simple and more or less obviously related to food production, water, shelter, or aesthetics. There were tasks related to health, education, and outreach. There were tasks related to inner peace and joy, and tasks related to communion with people or other beings. I gathered acorns, and black walnuts for the chickens, made a compost pile from hay, green garden "waste" and goat and chicken manure, harvested potatoes and sweet potatoes while learning Erithrean from Blen and teaching her Hebrew (many words are almost exactly the same!), I harvested carrots and herbs for Blen's meal, harvested and cut chili peppers for canning, basil for pesto I made. I played with Etta, Ethan and Sara's 2 year old daughter. I have an irrational fear about cooking for many people at once, though I love cooking, so I was an assistant to a few cooks. I washed my clothes by hand in a galvanized metal tub, wrung them out by hand and with a wringer, then hung them up to dry. I played fiddle and recorder for the open house (about 120 people from the neighboring farms and villages came over for human power and craft workshops), played duets with Sara, improvised with Ethan (he played guitar and sang) and Crea (she sang), sang amazing songs which we were teaching each other a capello, danced free style (Ethan is a great rapper and guitar improv player, we were all trancing out dancing to his music) and Israeli folk dances which I taught. I cut wood with Cory using a two-person timber saw--what a pleasure, then split it with an axe. I walked the goats to their pasture and collected felled branches for them to eat. I helped milk them. We all moved the composting toilet over a few feet, to feed another future tree. We covered some crops with straw one evening when frost was announced. Robert and I rode our bikes twice to help with a neighbor's sorghum harvest, syruping and yummy meal (we just ate the meal, didn't help prepare it). Bread labor was roughly from 8:30-noon, lunch from noon-1:00, siesta (An essential part of a balanced life)1:00-3:00, more bread labor 3:00-6:00. We celebrated one birthday with Pizza cooked in the earthen wood-fired oven, dancing, singing and cake eating. We told Megan everything we appreciated about her, and we did the same for visitors and interns who left, circling with an "imploding supernova of love". We had consensus meetings to talk about bigger issues, and readings from writers about peace and non-violence once a week. I rode into town on a bike with a trailer 3 times to pick up visitors (one time the visitor didn't come due to a misunderstanding, but I had a service call at an elderly woman who needed help moving out of her trailer). Beth taught me a cob plaster recipe and I was impressed by the outdoor covered bench with huge cob blue whale on the wall, and the outdoor kitchen with huge cob lizard on the wall which she cobbed. Specialization is for ants, as Heinlein would say. Well, not totally. It is so much fun to have varied work, yet, it is also a great human pleasure to have an avocation, a lifelong pursuit at which one gets better at. I didn't have much time or energy for theoretical physics or technology R&D, which are my avocations. Maybe in winter there would be more time, or after the community has existed for a while and infrastructure has been built. In the mean time the only avocations that are available most of the time are cooking, gardening, animal husbandry and building. Maybe some political activism.

Not everything went smoothly. On my second or third day I was sitting across from Megan at lunch. She had a women's studies T-shirt from the nearby college, and figuring it would be a good topic of conversation and a compliment, I commented on her dikey-looking glasses. I was surprised to find out she was offended by that comment. Later she forgave me, after realizing my intentions were good. I went to the Barn loft to get a bale of hay for the horses and only two days later did we find out that I grabbed a straw bale and the horses were hungry during that time. "That's what happens when you ask an engineer to do farm work"--quipped Rory. After every meal there was a "Blitz" where everyone was supposed to help clean up. I thought more than 3 or 4 people and more than one meal per day cleanup was excessive and I made my opinion known, which I think alienated some people. I have nothing against cleanliness and order, but I value physics, technology R&D music, dance and ritual so any time spent in (excessive) cleaning is less time spent on those other things. I want cleaning and organizing to be efficient and not make-do or OCD work, coming from damage and oppression. In addition to the blitzes, there is also a cleaning and organizing period on Friday afternoon, which I ended up enjoying because I felt like I was really accomplishing something instead of being oppressed by some woman's past oppression or nesting instinct gone awry, thanks to Ethan giving me good tasks to do.

Cutural Speciation
The PA is a place where a new culture is being born. They are focusing not on one thing, but on everything, perhaps through a few "master" memes. They have become somewhat memetically isolated by banning electricity (TV, internet, radio) and using only handtools, which I have claimed in past posts is a necessary condition for speciation in nature. They are not completely isolated because the interact with visitors, talk on the phone and go out to the world, but I hope they are isolated enough to survive the onslaught of Mainstream memes, and not too isolated so as not to be able to thrive and replicate.
The contrast between the two cultures is already great. I was mostly joyful in PA culture and am mostly nautious in Mainstream kulture unless I put on a psychic armor. Nausea was greatest when I left and rode a greyhound bus, and gradually diminished (replaced by a feeling of claustrophobia and unreality) although I occasionally get it back. I went to a Halloween party recently where the music was too loud to really hear anyone. There were flashy lights and a huge screen playing a zombie movie (I felt like I was relating to zombies indeed, with a few exceptions) to further reduce human to human contact, as well as alcohol to dumb people down and numb them to the pain of the unrelatedness. The music was aggressive (not just loud), there was not much architectural beauty or crafty human-made furniture, there were no plants or animals and it was cold. The dancing was typical individualistic, non-collaborative, ego-centric techno-industrial type (I did my best to enjoy it though). When I told this one guy that the superheroes help people, he thought “helping” was a euphemism for beating up and raping, as in the movie Clockwork Orange. The costumes were mostly from TV shows or movies, which shape the Mainstream Kulture in a way that would make Goebbels proud. By contrast, the PA environment and superhero costumes are decided by consensus, interaction with nature and individual creative process, encourage human to human contact, ethical global responsibility and local communion with nature. I love the people and other creatures I met there--I am filled with hope. I don't know if we need to completely give up electricity and petrol to live ethically, sustainably and joyfully, but I think it is a good place to start. If eventually we want petroleum and electricity (for labor saving and communication), we should be able to figure out how to have them without destroying the planet, exploiting people and destroying our souls. We can do almost anything we put our minds and hearts to. The next step at the PA is to build more buildings, and start making tools and materials. I hope to be making window glass and mason jars there out of recycled glass.

ownership of the means of production

2009-10-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Those with land or other capital will come up with rationalizations of why they can't share the resource. Let's focus on land for now. The owners will point out, correctly, that the dispossessed have no land management skills, while the land owners are good stewards of the land. That the masses will simply trash the land if it was made available to them. That the masses are too lazy to be productive and responsible. They are correct if nothing else changes--most people (including land owners, as history shows) do not have the knowledge or ecological values to be good land stewards. Most people (including landowners) will look for the easiest solution to a problem, the one that minimizes work for them in the short-run, unless they are inspired by a higher good. The commonly accepted solution is to deprive the masses of land and keep them powerless and distracted by boogiemen such as politicians, corporations, government and advertizers, or carrots such as houses, cars and money. Another solution (one that few landowners, whether they are environmentalists or not, are likely to try) is to offer free land to the masses, but in conjuction with training, not just in ecology, but in industry. And along with training, create a local economy which gives access to tools and materials to anyone who wants to participate and be productive. There has to be some discretion in who can join a land-based collective enterprise, but today most people who want to work the land are earnest and hardworking and should be given a chance. There are other factors that might interfere with someone's capacity to work with other people (too much ego for example).

The latest bout of environmentalism and interest in farming might be a smokescreen to keep the status quo, as it comes mostly from the owning class. Land redistribution solutions such as those advocated by Henry George have been subverted by the owning class so that land for use and production is even more out of most people's reach today than it was in Henry George's time. Land is available, but at the cost of indenturing most people who would buy it.

People who own land are either unaware of the option of sharing it, or afraid to. There are good reasons for the fear, besides the one mentioned above--loss of autonomy, conflict, and waste of time in meetings are real possibilities. But for each of these difficulties, solutions already exist and new solutions are waiting to be found.
Loss of autonomy: some loss of autonomy may be unavoidable, but not all autonomy has to be lost. In making decisions, retaining some autonomy can be achieved with any decision making model that gives everyone a voice, does not concentrate power, is local, and encourages deep listening and respect. Deep consensus, sociocracy, holocracy are possibilities I know about, and there may be others. As far as doing things, if people collectively made their basic needs, there would still be time for individuals to pursue their avocations without too much group involvement.

Conflict: there have been numerous conflict resolution technologies developed, such as NVC, Zegg Forum, Nakaima/Heart of Now. There have been numerous conflict prevention technologies developed such as folk dancing, playing music together, singing together, storytelling, sharing yoga/chi gung, skill-sharing and knowledge sharing workshops, rituals. Inner (individual) spiritual work and common vision are helpful. Romantic/sex partners (especially for young people) can help relax people. Good balanced work and connection with nature. Good decision making also can prevent conflict. An atmosphere of agape.

Waste of time in meetings: Good meeting faciliation skills and training in whatever decision making the group chooses are antidotes to time waste.

There are better reasons for sharing land than not sharing it, especially when the fears for not sharing have been calmed. Those reasons are:
1. It is the ethical thing to do, since the earth is a common treasury for all--just because your ancestors benefitted from stealing and murder of the natives who lived on that land, doesn't mean you "own" the land.
2. It is more joyful to work the land and celebrate with others sharing a common vision.
3. It is better for the children to have playmates close by.
4. It is more efficient due to economy of scale (I will say more about the deeper reasons for economy of scale in a later post) and to specialization.
5. It is good for one's ego to serve others and not always get one's way.

polyamory within the system

2009-09-04T16:44:00.001-07:00

Polyamory—a radical idea. The idea of loving more than one person at a time goes back to the early Christians and Greeks—they call it agape. With polyamory the new ingredient is sex and all the romantic feelings that go with sex (or sometimes without it). A few of the preceding topics in this blog made the point that a cultural system, just like a biological system is a highly interconnected system of parts, and that a change in only one part is not likely to be successful in any kind of evolutionary scheme. Either many parts have to change simultaneously, or the environment needs to change in such a way that a sequence of single changes is neutral and not selected against until the new subsystem of parts becomes functional and advantageous (and this second scenario seems to require some teleology, but I won’t talk about that here). I claim that polyamory cannot work in the present system on a large scale unless many things change besides multiple partner relating. Poly within the system will be more about accumulation than relation, status and shallow sex rather than deep love, quantity rather than quality. At least the following memes need to change for poly to thrive.

1. Economics and politics of scarcity— the system wants us to believe that romantic love is scarce. If resources are scarce, people can be controlled with fear of not having enough resources and kept busy chasing after those resources. The yearning for ego transcendence, and the extreme pleasure that comes with sex combined with romantic love is one of the biggest levers that the system has to control people. The dating industry, the romance book industry, the pornography industry all benefit from the image of scarcity and the drying up of monogamous relationships. The first required change for polyamory to work is a belief in the abundance of romantic love (and possibly other resources when they are shared). The second change would be a gift economy and a politics of sharing power.
2. Economics of consumerism—the smaller the economic unit the more consumption. Extended families have dwindled for this same reason. Polyamorous relationships where there is more than occasional sex between partners, where there is the kind of deep love that makes people want to share a large portion of their lives by living together or in close proximity makes for a larger and less consumptive economic unit where commodities are shared. On the other hand, the system has no problem with fuck-buddies and swinging, because these do not lead to significant economic sharing. The third change for polyamory to be selected is an economics of production for use, not for making money. The fourth change is a psychology of service and pleasure from non-material pursuits.
3. Economics of proprietary production—lack of transparency in production translates into lack of transparency in general. Larger, transparent production unit can be more self-sufficient. But in the present system the material means and information of production are owned by a few individuals and carefully guarded in order to compete in the marketplace. A transparent poly family which produces much of its needs doesn’t fit the present system. The fifth change necessary is transparency in production and sharing of the means of production to create more economic abundance. Also a psychology of pleasure in production (instead of making money off the exploitation of ant-like producers who are alienated from their labor) and sharing information leading to self-sufficient village-scale production.
4. Inheritance laws.—In a patriarchy, these work when paternity can be clearly established.
5. Decision making in patriarchy is hierarchical. Patriarchal polygamy works with patriarchy and hierarchical decision making, but polyamory requires consensus decision making. Consensual decision making goes with transparency, honesty, deep listening, deep caring for others

report from the trenches

2009-08-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

We are like soldiers camping out on the eve of battle. It’s been raining since last night and I am tempted by visions of labs, science colleagues and the Dionysian comforts and shared ecstasies of women in my arms. Also by the lack of ticks, chiggers and poison ivy. Scratching myself does feel ecstatic at times, but makes it hard to focus on anything else and is wearisome after a while.
During our meals, Chris talks about the liberals and how they need the government to take care of them. He rants about the evils of land ownership and capitalism. He bemoans civilization and how it does not meet the needs of men (freedom, adventure, variety, creativity), only of women (comfort and security). I understand where he’s coming from, though I don’t agree completely with him about his generalizations. I also disagree with those who claim that no generalizations can be made at all, that men and women are the same in their needs, that masculine and feminine have only historical meaning. Anyway, capitalism is not our enemy, nor are the liberals, the conservative, women, or any group of people, the bugs, the poison ivy or even the deer who eat our crops. Yet we are at war, in the rainy, bug infested trenches.

Chris tills the beds that Shelby dug long ago, when Shelby was a young man full of hope, with a family to support. They were overrun with grass and weeds when we got here. Shelby put some logs on the edges to rot. We removed the rotten logs from the edges, but then we found more in the middle of each bed, buried. There must be about 1000 logs, in various states of decay. We use a pickaxe to lever them out of the ground, then we pile them in the pickup bed, and from there we load them on the woodpile. I was worried that Shelby might get mad or melancholic about us undoing his work (though the nutrients probably have all left the logs and gone into the soil by now), so we do the piling right after each digging out. “Put them back”, Chris jokes, trying to imitate what Shelby might say. We know that what we plant we might not harvest, and all our work here might not be for us to benefit from.

I am really close to having a self-feeding rocket stove. It is smaller, cheaper and easier to build than the one in the book. I think it is also more efficient. My design keeps changing, and hopefully converging.

The deer are eating our crops because we have no fence. Shelby doesn’t like fences or going through gates. A fence would be yet another investment of money and time that we may not get a return for—who knows when we would have to leave (Shelby could kick the bucket any day and Sara said we can’t have more than just 4 people here—not the thriving community we have in mind, with hundreds of people). A Kelvin Generator fence would be cheaper and less work to put up, so I am looking for metal tubs with spouts—I offered Shawn some money for his, which he uses for washing vegetables from his garden. And then there is the issue that the KG fence is still experimental technology, with some bugs yet to be worked out, and Chris has no patience for that, being a Yankee farmer.

People keep telling us of possibilities for a few acres to buy, or a place to live on someone else’s land. Just yesterday I was helping install a big rocket stove (not my design) for Laura and she and Kent are trying to be so encouraging, but they don’t get it. They think we’re just trying to survive, to find easy opportunities for us to live, to be comfortable. We are not here to be comfortable, though sometimes we indulge in some comforts (like the hot tub made from a horse trough and kept warm with insulation and 5 gallons of propane-heated water every few days).

Though Chris doesn’t know it, my heart is heavy every time we watch a video. Not that the videos are not good, moving, entertaining, informative. It’s the vision in my head and the yearning in my heart for celebration that is much more active and vibrant, a sharing of souls, active vs passive, work mingled seamlessly with play. Like folk dancing after working in the fields together. Like sermons, rituals and workshops that uplift, music that is played collectively, outdoor games full of glee. The video, despite the best intentions of its producers, is a symptom of a society of consumption, extreme individualism, and specialization. It works well in this kind of society. The kind of folk dancing I have in mind does not work well in this society, it doesn’t fit the rest of the attitudes and ways of being and doing. It might be enjoyed by a few people, but without the other ingredients (group communion, shared work, less specialization, agrarian lifestyle), it comes up stale. I try to enjoy the sharing of this passive activity, because at least it is sharing something, though sometimes it feels like a mockery of my yearning, a form of soma in a Brave New World.

We aren’t here to survive, or because we want to be self-sufficient, or free or even happy. We aren’t here for our children, though we miss them as a tree misses its roots and are sad that the Culture has taken them. We are not here to be martyrs—we aren’t trying to get an ego boost from any discomfort or material lacks or suffering.

We are here because we care deeply about this world, because we know that there is something good, beautiful and true that transcends our existence or that of our children, something worth sacrificing our comfort and security for. Our enemies are laziness, ignorance, selfishness, stupidity, both within us and without. Chris thinks our enemy is private ownership of land, but I think that is not a root enemy. Our friends are everywhere, in the midst of our enemies.

speciation

2009-08-02T07:05:00.001-07:00

A puzzle in evolutionary theory: how can single mutations be responsible for the kinds of morphological differences among species? To add an extra toe, for example, requires many (10s or 100s) of different genes to be expressed at different times during development. To go from gills to lungs requires even more changes in gene expression and a few new genes. Mutating these genes sequentially, one at a time, is highly disadvantageous, since the original function will be disrupted. This is akin to going from a carburated car to a carburated car with a fuel injector between the carburetor and the intake manifold in the evolution of cars--the mutant won't run. In fact there is no path of single component changes in a car going between carburation and fuel injection, which won't kill the car. These changes have to be done all at once, in a single generation, to produce a viable car.

What if the new fuel injector is not connected between the carburetor and the intake manifold? There is some energy expended in building it, which presents a slight disadvantage to the manufacturer of the car. But if the manufacturer has some resources to do R&D, eventually a fuel injection system can be evolved. Of course the analogy breaks down here as there is no manufacturer in biology. But I think that the part about large changes occuring without a phenotype might happen in nature too, as in lungs being built without being used. Also, the analogy with the manufacturer is a regulatory gene, which controls the expression of many other genes. In technology, the manufacturer is not part of the car, but in biology the regulatory gene is part of the organism.

Several things have to happen in order to produce the multitude of beneficial changes leading to a new species, even after reproductive isolation. First, mutations occur in one or a few regulatory genes, as opposed to hundreds of genes. This enables many genes to change their expression with the mutation of only one or a few of the genes that regulate them, making the probability of change within a (consistent with paleontological record) short time reasonable.

Second, at least one copy of the unmutated regulatory gene has to continue to express normally and be dominant, in order that normal function not be disrupted. Since most genes are recessive, this requires gene duplication, an occasional occurence, followed by mutation in one of the copies, followed by homozygosity of the mutated gene.

Third, either the environment has to change or new phenotypically invisible mutations (either in the originally mutated gene or in cooperating genes) have to occur in order to provide a differential selective advantage for the new gene relative to the original gene. It is possible that the original mutation is good enough to provide an advantage (once the environment changes) relative to the original unmutated gene, with no new mutations, but to me this seems unlikely, even for a mutation in a regulatory gene. Such an event would seem to lead to a new variety or strain rather than a new species. Species are separated by barriers in multidimensional fitness space and most changes, even multi-gene ones, are unlikely to lead to a lower valley on the first try.

Fourth, a new mutation occurs such that the original gene is inactivated, or the new gene becomes dominant.

The fourth event happens many times, most of which are not preceded by the third step, in which case no new species arises. The changes involved in speciation are numerous and interdependent and must remain invisible to selctive pressure until the time is right.

Now I would like to argue that similar considerations apply to cultural evolution, as do to biological and technological evolution. Culture is a hereditable system composed of interacting memes, subject to selective pressure and variation. Gradual, non-regulatory mutations lead to different strains. Reproductive isolation is a necessary (see the entry on gradual vs quick speciation) but not sufficient condition for new species to arise. The four steps above might complete the ingredients necessary for cultural speciation to occur, although I may have missed some. In the pictures below I draw a simplified draft of an outline of the mainstream culture and a culture I would like to speciate into. I try to represent some regulatory memes in the center. These mutations have already occured but they are either conferring a disadvantage or phenotypically invisible. We need a community to work them out, largely isolated from mainstream culture, in an environment where the new culture would have an advantage.

A corollary to the above considerations is that small changes are not going to radically change the culture, even given an infinite amount of time. Herbert Marcuse already saw this many years ago with regards to capitalism, but it is a property of all stable evolutionary systems. In the next entry I will elaborate on why the following changes will not create a new culture.

mono->poly without changing capitalism
greener consumption habits without changing capitalism and empire
changing capitalism without localization
localization of food without participation in agriculture
localization of food without localization of industry
green building without changing attitudes about housing
shared housing without a common vision and common livelihhod
no electricity without common recreation
folk dancing without an attitude of group communion
communalism without consensus

the myth of follow your bliss economics

2009-06-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

There are seven reasons why I think that a collectively shared agriculture is a good idea. First, if we accept that a local economy is something to strive for (see Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, E.F Schumacher and myself among many for arguments pro a local economy) then there are still a few possibilities as to how to do it. There are those who believe that we should all follow our own bliss and everything will work out. That is, if everyone just does what they like and what they are good at, everyone's needs will be met. This is based on a myth that has taken over the imagination of most in this culture. It is a beautiful myth and it makes people feel good, but it is only partially true. It works for a few privileged people in the heart of the empire (but not most), and not for most of the world. The more cheap energy and resources are available to the west, the more "bliss work", i.e. luxury service work can be supported. But most people have to do non-bliss work, both in the west and the third world in the present global economy (the few people whose bliss is to farm and build are exceptions to the general rule that most people's bliss work is not hard physical labor, though hard physical labor can be fun for all in moderation and/or when shared). If energy and resources dwindle in supply, this will be even more true. And similarly, in a local economy that is not subsidized by exploitation of other parts of the world or theft from the future (in terms of non-renewable resources and debt that needs to be repaid in real energy), there is a significant amount of energy that needs to be spent on basic needs. Dividing that work roughly equally amongst all able-bodied people makes it more equitable. In this basic needs economy, there is room for some specialization, so not everyone has to make clothes, build make/maintain tools and do healthcare, but since the majority of labor will be agriculture, most people will have to do some agriculture to achieve an equitable number of hours worked.

Second, a gift economy for basic needs is unstable. It assumes that people who are toiling hard to provide basic needs are going to provide them for everyone out of love all the time. Those who are providing luxuries and not necessities are in a precarious position, dependent on the constant good will of the others to eat and to have shelter. Much better to have a less utopian vision of human nature and have everyone responsible for their basic needs collectively. That way, a gift economy for the "spice of life" can be on a firm foundation. People can follow their bliss knowing that with a bit of work on the foundation, they will be fed, sheltered, clothed, educated, and cared for when sick, old or very young. This is where specialization, trade and diversity of avocations and wants can flourish.

Third, working together on something that everyone needs and most can do, is more fun than working alone, and brings people together providing a basis for local culture.

Fourth, if one can produce one's basic needs oneself, one is harder to control. In the present culture, it is not the farmers who control people, but the market/corporations/media and a few wealthy folks who own the means of production. In a local economy where the farmers produce food for everyone and the builders and handypersons build and maintain shelter for everyone, it is they who accumulate power and can ultimately control everyone else. This is already starting to happen at Earthaven, where the farmers are getting private leases, except that the global food market is still competing with them so their power is still limited. To ensure freedom for individuals, they must be co-owners of the means of production, and not leave it to proxies, whether they are corporations, governments, wealthy landowners and industrialists, or farmers.

Fifth, the "follow your own bliss" myth is ultimately too egotistical. There is spiritual value in doing something that may not be your favorite thing, but that is helping others and needs to be done.

Sixth, shared agricultural work levels class distinctions that arise when some people do the hard manual labor and others do only intellectual work and easy manual labor.

Seventh, a shared agriculture, just like shared shelter and kitchen does with heating, storage, washing and materials, creates an efficiency of shared tools and if there are enough people, a labor pool able to respond to peak labor times (such as digging and harvest of field crops).

Note that only the third, fifth and seventh reasons argue for collectivization, whereas the other ones leave open the possibility of individual/family homesteads. There are some disadvantages to collectivization such as difficulty to coordinate people that might be traded off for these reasons (3 5 and 7).

Male privilege checklist

2009-05-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

Based on Peggy McIntosh's original checklist about white privilege, Ampersand created this male privilege checklist:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist

There are privileges which I would like everyone to have (positive privilege--which might be referred to as a right), and privileges which I would like no one to have (negative privilege). The privilege (which I have had) of having a good education and not being ruled by need, but having choices in how to spend my time is one I would like everyone to have. I don't see that as possible with the present economy and the present technology, and I don't see that changing even if we fight for any of the positive privileges in that list and against any of the negative privileges. There are also privileges that I would like some but not all to have (we can call these positive privileges too). The privilege to lead or manage for example, which should be based on talent and propensity. With that privilege comes responsibility.

How do we use our positive privileges? Do we just write about it and flagelate ourselves, or try to do something to make things better? Can we work for a world where everyone has a good chance to flourish? Can we be an example to the third world that affluence does not equal consumerism and exploitation? Or do we use our privilege to perpetuate the system that oppresses other people and rapes the planet? This reminds me of the (sometimes) christian tactic of continuing bad behavior by going to confession or admitting that one is a sinner. It's not enough to confess to being privileged. Let's do something positive with our (positive) privileges! I am trying to set up a system where everyone owns the means of production. That will not be enough--every individual will have to overcome selfishness and laziness--no system will be able to accomplish that.

I can empathize with women's experience of many of the positive privileges they don't have, but I don't feel like how I live perpetuates these privileges only for men; As far as the negative privileges, I don't have them and don't encourage anyone who does; on the contrary, I feel like there are more basic issues that perpetuate these things and other injustice and that I am trying to tackle. This list would have been revolutionary more than 40 years ago, but western society has moved on and there are more pressing issues.

It is hard for me to identify with many of these items, for example #1 (how do you know that sometimes job-competency is not higher in males on the average--e.g. auto-mechanic, especially jobs that were traditionally done by males? It might be hard to disentangle sexism in applicant selection from competency due to sex (by mostly cultural mechanisms). This does suck for women when they really are equal to or better than men at a job. I know one woman who really is better than most men at handyperson jobs. She faces some discrimination, but when she does get hired, her work speaks for itself and people then hire her because of her work. In any case I don't feel guilty if there are sexist male employers out there because I am a man. Should I feel guilty if there are racist brown-haired people because I am brown-haired?), #6 (I usually have reverse sexism about this one), #14 (I don't have any elected representatives) #20 (I don't watch TV or read newspapers) #26 (I don't buy much clothes), #27 (I don't expect anyone to groom themselves) #37 (I don't care about most religions), # 38 (That has not been my experience, except that I don't like vacuum cleaners or washing machines, would rather sweep and do laundry in a tub, and don't expect my partner to do it for me), #39 (not my experience), #40 (I have followed my 2nd wife to another state, giving up my career as an engineer), #43 (I was subject to violence from my first wife).

root causes vs symptoms
If you could wave a magic wand and get rid of male privilege, the system will still be there with all its nastiness. Not that you could do that, because male privilege is not a root cause, and so new weeds of enslavement will crop up from the roots of selfishness, laziness, empire, patriarchy, centralization of power, inability to produce basic needs locally, ownership of the means of production by a few people, and other roots.

some issues more important than male privilege--
empire privilege
We in the west have the negative privilege to consume slave labor goods and rob the third world of its raw materials.

privilege to not work at manual or dangerous or menial jobs by western women in empire
My first long-term relationship was with a woman who worked in an all-women's carpentry crew. I met her again, 25 years later. She is now a hypnotherapist. There are very few middle class (and in the US, though to a lesser degree, working class) women who take on manual labor or dangerous jobs and even fewer who stick with them. Some of that is because they are discouraged from it (and the psychological dimension of privilege is an important one), but another part is because they have the privilege not to. I think this has far greater reaching consequences for consumerism (as previously discussed in this blog), for social justice, and for environmental stewardship than male privilege. I would say something not too different about middle class men, although the privilege is not as glaring as for women--this is an example of what I call the feminization of capitalist society. One might argue that capitalism is now mostly a feminine-energy enterprise, with the abilities to sit back and rake in the profits while other people do the work, with its encouragement to have no limits on resource use. This brings up another issue: why pick on the (mostly effeminate) men in the west, when patriarchy is much stronger (and the balance of masculine/feminine energies is more towards the masculine) in the middle east or south america? This is a reactionary, middle-class feminism.

land privilege
After 3 years of being unable to find land to create a community where people share agricultural work and produce their basic food, shelter, education and healthcare needs, I feel like land ownership is a far more important privilege than male privilege. Most of the land that I saw that could have been shared with other people is under private ownership of women who are mostly interested in making money just from ownership of that land without doing much work.

privilege to have custody of children, be a lousy parent, and make a profit from it
I did not even try to gain custody of my son when I got divorced. It was clear that the courts were heavily biased towards mothers. I will have paid $232K in "child support" (this also includes the period before the divorce), whereas I think I could have raised my son under much better conditions, without the abuse that my ex-wife put him through, with giving him good attention and role models, for much, much less than that. Money energy that could have gone towards land, tools and buildings. Money that my ex-wife did not need, except to spend on her wardrobe, appliances, electronic gizmos that only last a year, vacations, and a private school that teaches my son about wealth privilege.

A general imbalance towards feminine energies in present day western culture
The pendulum has swung too far towards the feminine. This is partially responsible for consumerism, rising costs of healthcare, government debt, war. I will elaborate in another blog entry, or see the 4 ingredients entry.

Talking about male privilege takes energy away from doing something about these other issues--a distraction, a red herring.

selective pressures in the ecology of technology

2009-05-09T05:35:00.000-07:00

If technology and the economy of which it is a part are ecosystems subject to Darwinian evolution, then what are the selective pressures driving them? Also, does random variation occur, or are there some other mechanisms for achieving variation?

Variation
I can think of several engines of variation, and several selective pressures. Although looked at from a historical perspective the sprouting of new technologies may appear random (though building on previous technologies and thus becoming more complex), there are human motivation at work which do not seem random to me.

The first familiar engine of variation (since Adam Smith pointed it out) is selfish greed. This is not the same as profitability. Selfish greed is an engine of variation--it motivates trying a new technology. Profitability is a selection mechanism--someone may be greedy but his new mousetrap may not be profitable. That mousetrap will be selected against. Similarly, the mousetrap designer (and/or manufacturer) may be motivated by some of the other engines of variation below, not by greed, and the mousetrap may still be profitable and be selected for.

The second engine of variation is curiosity. We scientists and engineers need to know what would happen if...Curiosity is a harsh mistress, but she motivates many inventions.

The third is love. Love of the planet, love of humanity, love of friends and family, love of one's country, love of freedom, love of science and technology and maybe other kinds of love.

It is important to realize that in the present economy, most inventors of new technology are not primarily motivated by greed, but by love or curiosity. In contrast, the manufacturers of their invention (who in the present system also make most of the resulting money, or lose investment money) usually are motivated by greed. I know this personally--I have a patent for a process to make better transistors (these are the building blocks of computers) from when I was working at Motorola. Neither I nor the rest of the engineers who developed the idea were motivated by greed (we each got ~$500 for it). But the CEO of Motorola and the members of the board probably are motivated by greed (I don't know if Moto actually made money from that paten, but they certainly intended to). Yes, all the engineers were partially motivated by wanting a paycheck so they and their families can survive comfortably, so a little self-interest is present, but I wouldn't call it greed. But self-interest isn't a primary motivator for the typical inventor.

Selective Pressures

The first selective pressure is profitability. I don't have anything new to say about this one. It is the primary selective mechanism in the present economy.

The second is usefulness, which in capitalism correlates with profitability, but in another economy (ecosystem) we will see that a technology could be useful without being profitable.

The third is how human happiness, which also may correlate with profitability, and as with usefulness, in another kind of economy a technology could make people happy without being profitable.

The fourth is ecological sustainability. Societies which do not pay attention to this, well...are not sustainable en masse, not just their technologies. All it takes is one technology which is not sustainable (and for that technology to be selected for by one of the other 3 selective mechanisms) for the whole society to be selected against. In the present global technology this selection for ecologically destructive technologies is quite common, but in an economy where basic technology is local and where profitability is not the primary selection mechanism, that would be less likely (NIMBY).

What kind of ecosystem/economy do I have in mind where profitability is not the primary selective mechanism? One where individuals and small communities (~200 people) make all their basic needs. In that kind of ecosystem, a gadget will be manufactured if it is useful and makes people happy. There is no need for it to be profitable because people are making their OWN gadget and the compensation is for them, unlike in the current system where people make stuff for other people and so they need some other compensation, like profit. The variation/creation is still partially driven by a selfish desire to make life better for oneself and one's community, but the compensation is direct, measured mostly in happiness. It is still possible for someone in my village to not want for their home to make the improved stove that my friend invented and I made and to offer me something in return for making them a stove. In this example, one can think of the return I make for building the stove (whether money or some goods and services) as a profit, and wanting that profit (greed) will certainly be part of my motivation for wanting to build stoves for other members of my village, or other villages. But it is not the primary motivation for invention/creation of new technology (as we've seen it isn't even in the present economy) and it no longer is the primary motivation even for manufacturing of already invented technology. More significantly, unlike in the present economy, whether the stove gets built much will not be primarily determined by whether I make a profit on it. Anyone in my village and neighboring villages (which have access to similar materials) can now build this stove, they are not dependent on me. The usefulness of the stove and how happy it makes people are far more important selective mechanisms to determine how many stoves get built.

So far we have imposed the constraint of locality in production and consumption and argued that it makes profitability non-primary as a selective pressure. We have not tackled the problem of what natural mechanisms would induce a system based on globality, where profitability is the primary selective mechanism in technology, to evolve towards one where locality is a constraint.

The most talked-about selective pressure for locality is the dwindling supply of petroleum which raises the price of petroleum and makes transportation of goods less profitable. My concern with that is that if we don't prepare for locality and are forced into it by peak oil, then things could get pretty harsh and barbaric.

A local technology might evolve from the present global one because the interdependence that now exists among people does not encourage freedom for most on this planet (except for a few individuals, and even then for a price that they usually pay in their youth to acquire that freedom), whereas the more people can produce locally (under non-drudgery conditions), the freer they are. The author Neil Stephenson came up with the contrasting evocative words "seed" vs "feed" technologies. A seed technology is one that enables self-reliance of individuals and small communities, dependence on their neighbors and the local ecosystem, and decentralization of political and economic power. We have very few of these left, and even seeds are becoming feed-like (GMO seeds). A feed technology is one that encourages centralization of political and economic power, and disempowers local communities and individuals, at least as far as being able to be self-reliant. There will be a spectrum between seed and feed technologies, and one must consider the technological system as a whole to assess how seed-like or how feed-like it is. For example, solar panels are seed-like once they are manufactured, but their manufactuing is currently feed-like. Solar panels depend on batteries which are feed-like in their manufacturing, and since they don't last as long as solar panels, their feed-likeness is more serious. Also, some of them depend on being able to obtain distilled water, which could be feedlike or seedlike dependent on how it's done. A nuclear reactor is extremely feedlike in its manufacture, and even in its daily use -it requires centralization, and this probably won't change if it is a fusion reactor. Technology is not economically or politically neutral--there are feedbacks between these ecosystems.

In many people's minds there is a confusion of globalization with specialization, but specialization can be done on a local scale too (but not as much as on a global scale). If the social environment encourages transparency, and the technological environment is based on locality, anyone could learn all the specialties that make life possible and enjoyable, and benefit from not having to do everything because of specialization.

The freedom that comes from seed technologies is also a political one, making people harder to control by governments, corporations or advertizers. It might mean that people who now have no decent choice but to work in sweatshops, choose not to because they don't have to anymore. Many things that are currently cheap because of cheap labor may become more expensive.

Locality and self-reliance in basic needs does not mean that in a local technology/economy people do not form interdependent relationships, on the contrary they form those relationships based on love and affinity, not based on impersonal need and greed. So a selective mechanism for locality is human happiness, whether in the form of greater freedom, or improved personal relationships. However, as discussed in a previous entry in this blog, there is a barrier to overcome to get to a place in the ecological landscape from where we are now, to where locality is advantageous. Small changes will be inconvenient, possibly require more labor, and elicit ignorant punitive actions from govt agencies and local rednecks than just using the current global technologies. We might help locate the mountain pass in the evolutionary fitness landscape by investing our energy in creating, manufacturing and using local technology.

I don't think that most luxury technology (such as computers) can be manufactured locally any time soon, if ever. I have no problem with having a global technology/economy for luxuries. It seems to me that if people are no longer primarily motivated by greed in manufacturing of basic goods, that greed may dwindle in other aspects of life too. Love may become a stronger engine of variability/creation once basic needs are met and thus facilitate the evolution of a gift economy for luxuries.

Gender and consumerism

2009-03-13T06:19:00.000-07:00

Most feminist responses to what I have written about the connections between consumerism and gender have been angry or dismissive. Attempts have been made to silence, humiliate, ridicule or throw food at me. On the one hand, this makes me think that I may be onto something, because the same responses were given to early feminists like Margaret Fuller (with the exception of the food throwing) and other thinkers who have exposed what I call Naked Emperors—that is things about a culture that everyone in that culture knows at some level of consciousness, but ignores or represses on another. On the other hand, perhaps I am simply wrong. But then why the anger? People can say things that are wrong without eliciting anger—for example, if someone said the earth is flat. Maybe the anger is a reaction to all the oppression of women by patriarchy (and it’s mythical/religious manifestations), and a perception that I am only going to perpetuate that oppression with my theories. In other words, people may be thinking that I am a patriarchal reactionary. I think this is a misunderstanding, and I want to explain in detail why I think that.

Like most feminists, I share the following values. I would like it if:
1. People are free to express themselves in any joyful way without being constrained by their gender. In other words, I believe that gender fluidity is desirable, and I am not a biological or cultural determinist.
2. People could find an inner balance between masculine and feminine energies, so that they don’t project what Jung called “the Shadow” onto the other gender, but instead have a good understanding of both masculine and feminine energies, through their own experiences and introspection.
3. People are free to experiment with these energies not only within themselves, but within larger groups and relationships, such as dyads, triads, etc. In other words, much joy could be created if for example, one member of a dyad has more feminine energy, and another more masculine energy, then if both are more feminine or more masculine. Both these people could be male or female or trans, although it might be easier if the person with the predominant masculine energy is physically male, and the one with the predominant feminine energy is physically female, as there is more endocrine support for these energies that way.

Things that I am NOT saying (followed by clarification of what I am actually saying):
1. That biology has nothing to do with masculine or feminine energies. Like most sexually reproducing animals, humans are sexually dimorphic. It seems improbable that hormonal, morphological and gene expression differences would not be translated into some psychological differences. But this biological propensity is not deterministic, only correlative and historically originated the meaning of the words masculine and feminine. E. O Wilson had ice water poured over his head for stating the more general observation (which I agree with) that biology has consequences at the level of psychology and sociology.
2. That culture has nothing to do with gender differences. Many feminists and leftist thinkers think, at the other extreme, that differences are due mostly to culture. I disagree and take a more moderate position, but this is not critical to my analysis.
3. That women are responsible for consumerism, or that men are responsible for patriarchy. Both consumerism and patriarchy are systems with many interacting parts. I think the feminine energies of nest-building and the need for comfort and security, when out of balance with male energies, are major (but not only) factors in consumerism.
4. That men need to keep women under control with their testicular masculine energy. The best form of restraint is internal, so both men and women would be less consumptive if they exhibited more testicular masculine energy.
5. That advertising has nothing to do with consumerism. It does, but the advertisers are only successful because they understand basic psychology and appeal to primal things like the needs for comfort and security (in both men and women).
6. That comfort and security are bad. They are necessary for creativity and a good life. But there is more to life than comfort and security. Adventure, joy, curiosity and the comfort and security of others (including future generations) are also important. When comfort and security are everything, they murder the soul, as Khalil Gibran said.
7. That nest-building is bad. Nest-building is natural and beautiful. Only when it is not balanced by a bigger vision and an understanding does it become problematic.
8. That men do not need comfort and security. Of course they do, but less than women who are starting to think about getting pregnant, are pregnant or have children.
9. That men are not factors in consumerism. Of course they are, but I think the main reason is that they do not express enough testicular masculine energy in this present moment in this culture, and moreover are not expressing enough feminine energy within themselves, thus needing it from external sources, consuming mainly to obtain the comfort of female companionship.

The survey, the main experimental tool of sociologists would be useful in testing some of these hypotheses. The experimental procedure is fraught with obstacles though. In the first approximation, one could look for differences between men and women. It would be harder to test differences between masculine and feminine energies, or between the presence and lack of testicular masculine energy. Many controls would be needed, for example, men and women from middle eastern cultures (where men still have a lot of testicular masculine) who have immigrated to the West, could be compared to each other, and also to men and women from our culture. Motivations would need to be examined, not just money spent. For example, if a man buys a house, is he buying it for himself, or for his wife and children? Would he be content with a smaller house? Would his wife? How much money is spent on housing and related industries, vs other things and who cares more about housing, men or women?

tradeoffs and compromises

2009-02-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

Tradeoffs are what make optimization interesting, giving functions minima, maxima and saddle points. With only one dimension, one process can increase a utility function in the same direction in which another decreases the function, resulting in a maximum or minimum. In more than one dimension, a function can have a saddle point, which is a maximum in some directions and a minimum in other directions. In one model of system change, we can envision a mostly static environment, represented by a utility function. The system tries to minimize that function. There is a large applied math literature devoted to optimization in one or more dimensions, which is done mostly by computer nowadays. We know that a system can get stuck in a local minimum if the only strategy it employs for finding that minimum is going downhill in a local manner. If the environment changes once (but not continually--we will discuss a model for that later) and then is static again, what used to be a minimum may now no longer be one. In that case, a new minimum will be found, in a time depending on the efficiency of the system in locating the new minimum. The new minimum will not be too different from the old minimum unless a cataclysmic change in the environment has occured which destroyed some surrounding mountains of the old valley. To get to other valleys which might have a lower minimum, the best strategy is to go uphill for some time, to get to a mountain pass (a saddle point) which is the least uphill one has to go. But gradual change in a downhill direction will not get us there.

You can see the obvious application to social change in the age of dwindling petroleum. Insulate your house, purchase a greener car or appliance, build a cob/straw-bale house and a rocket stove all of which make your life more comfortable and you won't achieve much change. Much of the old culture is still right there with you--the exploitation of third world people, the exploitation of those without capital/land by those who own them, hierarchies based on power, egotism and greed, alienation caused by overspecialization and abstraction of production, etc. Any direction that has a chance of getting you to the mountain pass has to be somewhat painful, somewhat decrease your fitness, somewhat not work with the rest of the system as it currently exists. That is the (almost) static model of system change based on optimization. Note this has not much to do with dynamical systems theory where there is no function to be optimized in the dynamics, where you can get strange attractors and chaos. Human life does seem to have some function that it optimizes, whether it be fitness, happiness, freedom, or a combination of these.

Now for a dynamic environment model, where each component of a system influences the functions (environments) of other components by only controlling a few variables, whereas each function depends on all the variables.

In game theory, which applies not just to discrete games but to continuous systems with more than one component, competition in a zero sum game can be modeled nicely by each player (or component/cell/organism/species/culture) having a utility function to minimize which has a saddle point. Around this point, one player trying to decrease his function increases the function of his competitor (a simple realistic case for similar players competing for some resource is the same function with the variables interchanged). A compromise will occur at the saddle point, where though each player does not do as well as they could if they had control of their competitor's variables, the system utility function (defined as the sum of the individual utility functions) is minimized.
I am researching this, so I am not sure yet: if the functions to be minimized are not the same, situations could arise in which the strategy of each player minimizing his utility function with only control over his own variables can lead to being stuck at a point which is not a saddle point of his function. Whether the utility functions of different players are the same or not, it is possible to get stuck at a point which is a local but not global minimum of the system utility function. This can happen even in a cooperative domain (a win-win, not a zero sum) where the players reducing their own utility function are also reducing the other players' utility functions. In order to get out of a local minimum, just like in the static environment model, some players have to become altruistic, undergo some suffering and go uphill for a while in order to either reach a lower minimum for themselves eventually (temporary altruism, or altruism in time), or else they may never reach a better minimum for themselves, but reach a better minimum for the system utility function (altruism in space).

So we see that in both the static environment model and the dynamic environment model, a strategy of always going downhill can get the players stuck in a local minimum, and in order to get unstuck one must go uphill sometimes. It follows that changes that seem to improve things for people in the short run will not lead to a better situation for the whole culture.

Also, compromises which place one in the original valley are not worth making because one will still roll back down to the original minimum. Once the new valley has been reached (by going uphill for a while), all kinds of small changes which lead downhill, or compromises which keep one in the new valley may be made with no damage.

Tradeoffs around the local minimum are going to be different than tradeoffs around the global minimum. Around the global minimum it is possible to do better on both aspects of the tradeoff than around the local minimum, or perhaps much better on one aspect and only a little worse on the other.

What tradeoffs have I encountered?

Solitude vs people around: I like solitude. I can think more clearly, be more calm and grounded. However, having more people around, especially people I like, has some advantages like good conversations, good dances and music making, intellectual comrades, romantic partners, ability to do more of what I love because of specialization, more stability in the face of hardship, and energy/labor savings on shared heat, cooking, tools and building materials.

Freedom vs comfort and security. I would much rather spend time doing physics, dancing, working in the garden or on engineering projects than on having clean clothes, electronic gizmos, appliances and any convenience one can think of. The latter take time away from things I love, or vice versa--time is a limited resource and I would rather spend it doing things I love than being comfortable and secure (beyond a minimal level). Some comfort and security comes from being part of the global economy. Some comes from conforming to the norms of a group. Depending on the structure of the group, it is possible to do better on freedom and not much worse on comfort, so that the total happiness is increased. More generally, tradeoffs are dependent on where the baseline optimum is. I think it is possible to have alot more freedom, love and creativity for most people than in this culture, while sacrificing only a bit of comfort, security and convenience.

Freedom vs collective responsibility. I think that beyond basic needs, I would not want collective responsibility for everyone's individual needs in my community. This would cut down on most people's freedom. If someone needs their own cabin for artistic reasons, let them pay for it with their resources. If someone needs a lab, or expensive film equipment, a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, or alot of land for agriculture as an avocation or for making money, let them pay for it. I may support some of these and not others, depending on my affinities. On the other hand, I want the whole community to be collectively responsible for basic nutritional needs, soil fertility, tools and labor for the land that provides those needs, and basic communal shelter for people. The freedom each individual gains from such an arrangement seems worth it to me.

Feeding people vs protecting wildlife and biodiversity: I saw this tradeoff being bitterly discussed at Earthaven. I fall on the side of feeding humans first, protecting wildlife second. That does not mean that I don't care about wildlife and will try as much as possible to protect it. There is also the issue that relying on the current food system may be even more harmful to the wild than clearing some wilderness around us in order to feed ourselves.

Brook Farm and the repeating of history

2009-01-22T09:36:00.000-08:00

Some people may have heard of Brook Farm, an intentional community that sprouted during the 1830s, a time of much social critique and attempts at reconstruction of social institutions and paradigms, with such movements as abolitionism, feminism, perfectionism, communism, and transcendentalism. Of the many people who were associated with BF, the ones who are still widely known are Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau, but few have heard of the hero of this story, George Ripley.

Ripley was a unitarian minister who could not continue in his ministry because he felt hypocritical, seeing a higher calling than appeasing the guilt of his mostly wealthy congregation, when faced with sights of homelessness, meaningless employment and poverty on the same streets of Boston where he worked, signs of capitalism and industrialization that continue to this day. At the same time, he was aware of a disconnect between nature and culture, between thinking and doing, that was but a rivulet in his time, but has grown to a raging destructive river in our time. Thus the main goal of Brook Farm was to unite farmer and scholar in the same person. Thoreau and Emerson, though sympathetic to this goal, saw it best achieved on a solitary homestead instead of a collective.

Whether they achieved the goal is debateable. My take on it is that Thoreau was more successful than Emerson, but both were supported by many others including slaves, factory workers and farmers who did not have much time or money to engage in scholarly activities. Hawthorne tried to live and work at Brook Farm, but came to the conclusion that the desired union was impossible (expressed poignantly in his fictional piece "The Blithedale Romance").

A similar goal of uniting thinking and doing, or theory and experiment was proposed with the advent of science during the renaissance. It saw pure philosophy as impotent to find out how nature works and had many heroes such as Galileo, Newton, Hooke and other members of the Royal Philosophical Society, who were theorists and experimentalists united in the same person. Modern Physics is seeing a specialization into theorists and experimentalists and to my mind this is indicative of the degeneration of the field, whereas biology still has experimentalists who can formulate theories and hypotheses, and the field is still vibrant.

The rise and fall of physics parallels the rise and fall of civilizations and intentional communities. When theory is limited to simple hypotheses that can be tested and simple theoretical consequences are worked out and subjected to further experiments, science, intentional community and civilization thrives. When theory becomes complex and the theorists no longer try to test their theories, science, intentional community and civilization degenerates.

Social theorists like Scott Nearing have some success. Others, like Chomsky, Zinn and a myriad of bloggers and pundits, might inspire some people to test their theories, but unless those experimenters are flexible enough to formulate new hypotheses and theories as they go and posess inhuman amounts of energy, the experimenters peter out, as the experiments are either inconclusive, disprove the original theories and are extremely taxing of the experimenters' limited energies.

It is with this phenomenon in mind that I call upon all critiquers of civilization to start doing experiments testing the alternatives that they propose. I have done one myself, am engaged in another one, and am about to start a third. I say to you, as I say to the dead Emerson--we need you not just for your theories, but for the active participation in their testing. We need you for your land, for your money, for your stature and fame--please pick up a shovel and put down the keyboard for a while. Start sharing your land, your money and your time, not just your ideas. Sit around the consensus table, not just on your armchair. Get out of your isolated ivory tower or your pulpit and into the lab, the garden, the kitchen, the workshop, the trench. If you persist, you might end up like Emerson--railing against breaking out of prisons, only to find yourself in the prison of the scholar who cannot cooperate with others on matters of substance or do things in the material world.

Back to Ripley--in the end he was defeated and somewhat broken hearted. Those like Emerson and Greeley (a wealthy leftist newspaper editor) who said they would help, did not. A fire destroyed the new industry building. Fourierism turned out to be misguided. An epidemic (I think flu but don't recall now if it was more serious) reduced energy and morale. Inability to pay back loans due to distance from Boston Markets, the fire and (in my opinion) too much dependence on external markets culminated in Hawthorne suing for his loan getting repaid. Many other reasons may have been at play and I wonder if, dear George, you knew that your example will be an inspiration to future generations and your vision still alive long after you died.

gradual vs quick speciation

2009-01-08T07:34:00.000-08:00

The fossil record suggests that new species arise quickly, on geological scales. The evidence is consistent with even one generation. Even classic examples of gradual speciation (rare as they are) like the horse, when looked at closely show that there are spurts, where for example a new toe arises. The current explanation for the so called punctuated equilibrium model of speciation is that even though new functions and morphologies require changes in hundreds of different genes in a coordinated fashion, these changes do not occur by mutations in those genes (that would have 0 probability to happen over a small timescale), but by mutations in a few so called master genes which regulate 100s of different genes, or drastic chromosomal events like duplicating chromosome number (hybridization between diploid plant species to form tetraploid progeny, something that does not seem to happen in animals), large deletions, partial duplications, unbalanced translocations, etc. There might be other explanations like morphic fields, but there is not enough evidence for these to be accepted in mainstream evolutionary biology.
The other necessary ingredient for speciation to occur quickly is reproductive isolation. This means that either a small group is unable to mate with the larger group from which it originated, or that the larger group is reduced to a small group by environmental forces like famines, climate change, invasive species, etc. The second possibility is not usually considered an example of reproductive isolation, but since it is due to the same mechanism (which I will explain next), I consider it to be a special case of reproductive isolation. If a species does not split into two (and the process can iterate) but becomes a new species without a split(I think this is called chrono-speciation, which might have happened with some of our hominid ancestors), it requires a small population, for reasons which will become apparent below.

The reason why reproductive isolation is necessary is because
1. selection for beneficial mutations is not the only force in evolution and also
2. a mutation may not be beneficial until the right environment is reached.

Here is an explanation of each of these:
1. Another force, known as genetic drift occurs because many random events participate in the fixing of a mutation in a population, including
A. achieving homozygosity (most mutations are recessive--meaning their phenotype is invisible in heterozygotes) and so either at least two people, a male and a female in sexually reproducing populations, have to get the mutation simultaneously in their germlines, or some incest for which taboos have evolved in primate populations, has to occur) which is dependent on getting the heterozygotes to find each other, mate, and produce viable progeny.
B. Random death of the carriers of the mutation before sufficient reproduction,
C. Other possibilities, related to reason 2 below, where a mutation might diffuse through a population with no benefit to its carriers until the right time (which could be the occurence of another complementary mutation, or a change in the environment). This could be thought of as tunneling through the fitness mountain (or going through the Mines of Moria in LOTR), where the phenotype is invisible until you get to the other side, where another valley exists. Most of the tunneling process could be gradual, but the breaking through to the other valley is quick.

2. The right environment could be either external, or internal, as in all the other genes that cooperate and compete with the mutated gene. In fact, on short timescales, a mutation which would be beneficial in the long run might be actually harmful in the short run, or at least neutral. These two possibilities can be illustrated by the following model. Imagine that a village of blind people, nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains has an earthquake, which shifts the landscape. The inhabitants are most content at the lowest possible elevation, but now they are no longer at that lowest elevation. Some of them might be at a local minimum, having moved away from the main population when the whole valley was flat (a mutation which was neutral previously, and now is advantageous due to a shift in the environment). Most of those are not in the valley (of comparable or lower elevation to what they had previously) on the other side of the mountains yet because that is still too far away--neutral mutations give rise to different strains, or may be totally invisible, but almost by definition (or what should be the definition) of a species, drastic or at least very specific changes are necessary to get to the other side of the mountain. Those few who try drastic (or very specific, lucky but not drastic) shifts, (either in their internal memetic space or in their external geographical space) are selected against because they have to undergo some extra hardship to get to the mountain pass--the mutations are disadvantageous in the short run. Or they fail not only because of extra hardship at the higher elevations, but because their efforts are constantly diluted by the majority of the villagers who would rather be more comfortable (more comfortable than if they go up, but less comfortable than if they stay put or even go down to a valley that is still much higher than what they had before) and have evolved a conservatism that has served them well in times before the earthquake. A few may either have been lucky enough to be on the other side of the new mountain pass before the earthquake so that they are memetically isolated from the rest of the villagers, or they can persevere and make it to the mountain pass despite hardship. I suppose the neutral invisible memetic mutations that do not cause extra hardship could keep happening to people in the main village even after the earthquake, but there is not much time. As the population dwindles in the main village, the force of drift dwindles as well.

I part with mainstream evolutionary theory in that I consider reproductive isolation to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for speciation. Perhaps the sufficient conditions are mutations in master genes, environmental pressures, and significant functional and morphological changes. Anytime reproductive isolation has been achieved in the lab at a genetic level (so not just by separating the two populations), the result is closely related strains. Perhaps over eons they will develop significant morphological and functional differences, but since this doesn't seem to happen in nature, I doubt it would happen in a lab, even with the acceleration of mutation rates offered by radiation or chemical mutagens. My bet is that drastic genetic events will occur quickly, followed by further slow divergence.

As far as how these things concern us, people participating in cultural evolution, unlike organisms participating in biological evolution, we are not totally blind, but neither can we see very far into the realm of possibilities ahead. I agree with JMG that the more experiments/expeditions up the mountain or through the mountain are tried the better chance of finding mountain passes. Small, gradual changes are not likely to get us to another valley before being swamped out by the mainstream culture, unless we get lucky and find just the right master memes. Memetic isolation, despite seeming harsh, might be advantageous (do we have to give up the internet, movies, literature, economic interaction)--how much isolation is necessary? there has to be some interaction with the rest of the ecosystem and the analogy of the mainstream culture being the parent population breaks down--it is also an analogous major part of the ecosystem). Otherwise, we can wait for a large population decrease in order to make some progress towards a mountain pass, a possibility I do not savor given the alternative.

ingredients for a viable humanity

2009-01-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

Introduction
Motivation
This is not the age of treatises or manifestos or utopian theories. People have become suspicious of theories that promise them a better life, at least theories of the social change variety (as opposed to individual change). Here are possible reasons why. First, because such theories have historically failed to deliver. Second because people are more motivated by the kind of instant gratification they get from religion and emotionally charged images of heaven, hell, crucifications, etc. Third, because in the west, our stomachs are full, our minds are entertained, some people do what they love at least part of the time, almost everyone is too busy or stressed in their jobs to think much, and coupled with either a liberal or conservative ideology, that is enough for most people. And last, because there has been a growing realization that much (some would say all) human change is inward, personal and individual, there is no recipe for change that would work for everyone. Despite all this, there is also a growing realization that some change must happen, and that at least some of it will be on a social level.

As a scientist I have learned that we humans are just not smart enough (or it may not be even possible in principle) to predict the future too far ahead with our theories, so we try to go just a little bit further with simple hypotheses. I am trying to figure it out as I go along with experiments and a bit of theory. What I propose would be more likely to succeed if other people contributed ideas and actions.

Unlike millenarians, survivalists, peak oilers and anti-civ folks, I do not want to motivate by fear of having a collapse. What I propose would be more likely to succeed without a collapse, while certain resources are available and while most people in the west are not in survival mode (www.thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com).

I am writing this treatise for people who think that freedom, justice, sustainability, creativity and connectedness are also important, not just material goods and entertainment. Most of the third world may have forgotten this and so they will not be interested in what I have to say. They need to first get their bellies full, then go through a period of consumerism and preoccupation with material things before they might want to listen.

Hypotheses
The following four ingredients may be necessary for a free, just, sustainable, creative and connected future:
• Local technology and economy
• Sharing resources and cooperation
• Living more simply
• A spiritual alternative to materialism and consumerism

I am trying to test these hypotheses as I live. To test some of them (that a local technology, living more simply and developing spiritual alternatives to materialism and consumerism have the aforementioned effects) I don’t need anyone to help. One of them (sharing resources) I do need people to help test, as I obviously can’t do it on my own. But all of these hypotheses might be easier (and more fun) to test with other people to help. For example, one of my favorite spiritual activities (to me spiritual means anything that creates joy, zest, consciousness and connection) is Israeli and eastern European folk dancing, which I can’t do alone. But I’m trying to learn dances, so that when people come, I could teach them

Definition and historical background

The idea of a local technology may be unfamiliar to most people, whereas there have been discussions of local economies recently. What I mean by a local technology is a technology where all processing of goods and all materials come from places no more than a few hoursa few days walk away. I don’t believe there has been such a technology in the west for a very long time. Some native peoples have had such a technology and I think that partially contributed to their good way of living. However, as far as I know, (a friend who has visited a contemporary native tribe in Brazil disagrees) many native people may also not have had the time necessary to engage in much art and science, their technologies being mostly subsistence technologies. Even if some privileged members of a tribe had the time, this may have been partially possible due to the low population density at the time and availability of some resources that are no longer available today (clean creeks, many nut-bearing trees, buffalo, etc), and it was not an option available to most.. In some pre-industrial societies where patriarchy had taken root, something close to local technology may have existed but freedom certainly did not exist for most people (references).

Groups such as the Amish and Hutterites may seem to have something close to a local technology, but the Amish use commercial fertilizers and the Hutterites use tractors (they probably use a lot more from the global economy (referred to as GE from now on) than I know). They are closer to a local technology in the west than anyone else though, encouraging local trades such as blacksmithing, coopering, butchering, shoe-making etc. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that these groups are also big into resource sharing, simple living and spiritual activities substituting for material acquisition and that most of the inhabitants have a tangible joy (amish?). As I will try to show later, these four ingredients synergistically reinforce and encourage each other. However, their technology is not advanced enough to allow much individual free time. Most of the time is spent on survival. Perhaps as a result, they also do not have much appreciation for the arts and sciences and their society is narrow in its spiritual expression (not tolerating any other than Christian-based expressions) and in the free expression of women..

So the local technology I am advocating does not currently exist (especially in a context that encourages individual freedom, women’s rights, spiritual freedom and cares about the arts and sciences), and probably never has existed, but there have been several technological developments in that direction, and more are needed. I will talk about these soon.

The other thing about a local technology, is that it enables a local economy. It is absurd to talk about local economies that only produce some services and local currency when they get most of their material goods from other places. But when materials are obtained locally and goods are produced locally, the economy can be local, whether it uses local currency, barter, or even a govt issued currency, whether people have private property or not, whether decisions are made by consensus or elected managers, and even whether some services and goods are given to or obtained from travelers who come to visit.

The idea of a local technology and the local economy it enables stems from problems that exist and have existed when technology and economy are non-local, or global. These can be summarized as enslavement of other people, enslavement of ourselves, and trashing of the earth.

Historically, the industrial revolution in the US and Europe was accompanied by massive exploitation of most people by a few. Most people toiled in inhuman conditions. They were helpless to change these conditions much, because they could not take care of their basic needs themselves and were dependent on the capitalist owners, the market, other farmers far away, and other workers far away. The situation was improved for some by having slaves, whether official or wage slaves, and then by exporting the institution of slavery to the third world, and by enabling the taking of its resources by economic means. Besides the ethical desirability of such a situation, we still have people who are completely dependent on an abstact inhuman scale system, doing mostly meaningless jobs, dependent on a market which is in turn dependent on the greed of the many and the manipulative power of a few (unlike most liberals I don't blame only the corporations or government or advertizers, but everyone who participates in the system). The strikes of workers in the US in the past, the protests of activists (though motivated by good intentions) in the past and present all betray a helplessness which would be corrected if people could feed and shelter themselves, being dependent only on their own resources and those of their neighbors. Marx got close to this concept with his wish for the workers to control the means of production. But if that happens through global institutions, it still involves abstraction, which allows people to exploit each other (even if they don’t want to, as is the situation with the middle class of the US exploiting the third world) and the earth. Also, if I still am not directly involved with producing my basic needs, but am dependent on people far away to do so, it either becomes a logistical nightmare to figure out how much to produce for other people far away (socialism) and one then becomes dependent on burocrats, or else one becomes dependent on a global market, which is impersonal and does not care about our differences except on a shallow level. As an aside, I must say at this point that two of the core beliefs of socialism, that an equitable distribution of material wealth is desirable, and that a brotherhood/sisterhood of humankind is desirable, I agree with. What I’m opposed to is the implementation of these ideals through non-local political, economic and technological means. Similarly, I am not opposed to global trade, as long as people are not dependent on it for basic needs. If we (both in the first and third world) can stand on our own two feet locally, then we can trade globally from a position of power, not of helplessness. And I am certainly in favor of free, creative enterprise, as long as it is mostly local and does not rely on exploitation. Whether such (sustainable and just) global trade is possible these days, is an open question. The distinction between basic needs and luxuries is also a slippery issue, which I will not now address.

In addition to the enslavement of people in the west due to not being able to produce their own basic needs, there is another kind of enslavement that happens when one buys a car, a house and/or land for a price that one is unable to afford without a loan. Usually, the price of a house or land (or the cumulative rent that is paid for rental property) does not reflect the energy put into that land or house (which includes both cost and labor of the previous owner), but based instead on the ability of greedy people who have something to exploit other greedy people who don’t have something but want it (and if we trace the explotation back to the beginning, it involves outright stealing of land from native people).. Almost everyone in the west is both an exploiter and exploited in this sense. In order to pay for the high price, rather than wait till one can afford it, people usually take out a loan, which usually doubles or triples the actual price of the car, house or land, making them indentured often for life to the lender. I do think that lenders should charge some interest to get a return for their risk and labor in managing the assets, but apparently there is no risk, as the latest baleout of lenders by the government has shown. Even before that, the ability of a bank to foreclose on a house and resell it minimizes the banks’s risk. Living simpler, in small rooms or houses, sharing housing, land and tools, having fulfilling things to do so that one is not obsessed with nesting and creating a fortress against the world, and producing basic needs locally to minimize car use may stop this kind of enslavement. I will talk more about nesting later, as this is a complex subject.

So much for the enslavement of our souls. As far as the enslavement of third world people, I think that just like abolitionists of the 19th century, we must realize that right livelihood is not enough for an ethical life. No matter what you do for a living, whether a doctor, teacher, musician, activist, farmer, scientist, etc., you are still participating in a system dependent on slaves to produce your basic needs. The only ethical thing to do vis a vis this slavery as vis a vis confederate slavery is to work towards its abolition. Whereas this was possible through a civil war in the 19th century, that option is not available today. Legal means of influencing the rights of workers abroad haven’t worked so far, and in my opinion won’t work because the system needs the slaves. I will say more about the efficacy of fair trade in abolishing slavery later (more about difference with confederate slavery—how it was transformed to wage and domestic servitude).

Wage slavery--people needing to spend most of their time at a meaningless, boring, unfulfilling job, continues in our time despite past promises that technology will free people from menial labor and drudgery**. So far technology has freed some (most in the west) people from physical (not menial) labor while enslaving others (the third world), and at the same time keeping most people in the west in uncreative and unproductive jobs (or jobs like in the mental health field that try to fix problems that are mostly caused by the system) that take most of their time. So detaching from the GE and showing by example that we can live without the slavery is the only option I’m aware of.

In this treatise I do not discuss environmental issues much because I don’t have much new to say about these. One thing I will say is that environmentalism has obscured both the enslavement of third world people and the enslavement of our souls. I am not sure why it is easier for people to consider the abstraction of global warming, carbon footprint, destruction of the rainforest and declining biodiversity but ignore the abstraction of slaves making their stuff for them. It is interesting to me that a book which was mostly about the latter, had the title Confessions of an Eco-Sinner (probably because the publisher thought it would sell better than Confessions of an economic exploiter). There are a few who while caring about nature and conservation, also care about social justice and freedom—mostly young anarchists. My sympathies are with them, but I don’t think they have a viable program for extricating themselves (and thereby serving as an example to everyone) from the GE. I wonder if the concern with ecology sweeping the globe is not a smoke screen to prevent people from sharing resources, living simply and developing a local technology, as well as recognizing that their survival is dependent on enslavement of third world people, and that they themselves are thus enslaved. To recognize these things would mean going beyond the environmental brownie points attitude reminiscent of self-congratulating religionists, towards an orientation which requires fundamental change. When one comes from an attitude of how do we promote freedom for everyone (including the ecosystem of which we are a part), one is compelled to work on implementing the 4 ingredients (or other ingredients you might add to the poltluck). It doesn’t matter then if one has to travel (and thus contribute to carbon emissions), or use the internet (reduce travel but promote computer factories) in order to promote freedom. But it does matter if one is not actively working, even in the smallest ways, towards implementing the 4 ingredients, even if, say, one feels virtuous about not traveling much. A friend was accusing me of being more unsustainable by traveling as much as I have been, after I asked her for some mullein from her yard, that I wanted to plant closer to the bus, for my winter toilet paper. However, traveling by car or plane might actually promote the infrastructure of a free, just, sustainable, connected and creative future, for example by recruiting other people to help in the endeavor. It is an example of the ends justifying the means. Any way that we can use the resources available to us from the global economy to promote local living is fair game. The only relevant question in this respect is not “am I a good environmentalist?” but “how am I working towards implementing the 4 ingredients?” Also, we must not be too hard on ourselves as we continue to use the fruits of the global economy because we did not come from a culture that can support local living. We must use the infrastructure we have. Indeed to not do so would be counterproductive. Some people could use this as an excuse for continuing the status quo of their consumptive lives. It comes down to what is your intention and what concrete steps are you taking to achieve it. Is your intention to continue to bring in resources for yourself and your family, or is it to promote freedom, justice and abundance for all who wish to be responsible. Is your intention to relinquish personal responsibility for what you produce and consume and blame the advertisers or corporations, or is it to work every day towards more sharing of resources, local technology, spiritual activities and simple living. And does the overall pattern of your living demonstrate that intention?

Another thing I will say about environmental issues is that trashing the earth is usually not acceptable to people if the part trashed is close by to where they live (Not In My Back Yard).

Here are reasons why a local technology/economy would be a good thing:

Why a local technology

• Harder to hide exploitation, pollution, environmental destruction, and toxic dumping.
• Less incentive for resource wars (what about historical wars where that were local and yet went on merrily?)
• Harder to trash the earth, if the trashing occurs in one’s or one’s neighbor’s back yard (or better yet, if you share the back yard with a bunch of people)
• Ability to live more ethically as a result, without being forced to participate (usually indirectly) in these nasty activities just by having to survive in a system that depends on them.
• One becomes useful to one’s community in a concrete sense- production becomes about relation instead of alienation.
• One is harder to control by governments, corporations or advertisers if one and one’s community can produce everything locally
• No need for energy, CO2, trash-producing packaging, and time associated with long range transportation of goods.
• Freedom from being dependent on people who know you only abstractly and want to exploit you, or a system that cares not about your happiness or human potential.

Those familiar with permaculture will notice some similarities between the concept of local technology and permaculture-espoused technologies. But as far as I know, there is no general recognition of the importance of local technology in the permie literature. Nor is there much emphasis on resource sharing or spiritual activities. Perhaps as a result of these, most people who identify as permaculturists are completely dependent on income from the GE in order to buy their food, fuel and other basic needs. Usually they do this by teaching permaculture classes. This might not be a problem for them. After all aren’t we all dependent on the GE in one way or another? Yes we are but there is a difference between a continual dependence and an initial dependence of which one is working to abandon. All of us who critique the GE are hypocrites to some extent because we don’t want the GE yet we are dependent on it. But in one case we are dependent on it in order to live (and so we will continue to be dependent on it) whereas in the other case we are dependent on it in order to become independent of it, which seems a lesser hypocrisy. When it comes to food production, there is no one I am aware of who with forest gardens or other gardening ideas from permies, is able to get even close to self-sufficiency. I am not sure why that is, but I suspect it has to do with not placing enough importance on local economy/technology, on sharing resources and cooperation. There is also a tendency (and this not just among permies) to focus on luxury/value-added foods such as ferments, honey, wine, bread, jam, herbs, etc., before figuring out how to supply our nutritional needs in an efficient, sustainable way. Food luxuries are great and make life more enjoyable, but if we don’t give priority to high-calorie per unit area foods such as potatoes, and foods which store well such as peanuts, grains and dry beans and root vegetables, we remain dependent on the supermarket. Note that sometimes what is a luxury for some may be a necessity for others, as in making tempeh, which has the necessary vitamin B12 , which is hard to get for vegans (which may also be gotten from beer)..

Specific areas of local technology

Food production—efficient agricultural methods that use only human power have been developed recently, such as Biointensive. These can be supplemented by hunting and gathering in areas (such as the Ozarks where I live) where these are still possible, i.e. where a great diversity of animals and trees are still around. Obviously this kind of agriculture requires metal tools with wooden handles, and efficient hunting requires either guns or bows, whereas gathering requires containers. So we need to think about metal/wood/string and baskets. Gunsmithing may be too complicated to justify the investment if we can make good bows, but I don’t know. Cooking can be done in solar cookers and rocket stoves. Canning requires sealable glass containers and rubber/metal lids, and may be able to be done in solar ovens. Processing grain requires machines (not petroeum driven!) if it is to be efficient. We need to learn how to make and maintain these machines. They can be powered by pedal power.

Healthcare/medicine—we need doctors (such as the ones in Cuba) who help keep people healthy for barter or local currency, and people who live a healthy life, connected to others, nature, and pursuing their calling while participating in a productive life. Such people will be healthier than the average westerner. If they have accidents then local doctors can treat them without fancy machines that can’t be made locally. If they still get diseases they can still be treated without being robbed. If they get old and start getting sick, then maybe it’s time to die. Most childhood diseases can be treated with low tech. Antibiotics can be made with low tech. Optical glasses can be ground with low tech.

Computers, solar panels and phones—it will take many years or a technological breakthrough to make these locally. We need scientists and engineers to start working on this problem. Otherwise we either give them up (write letters instead of using phone), or make a compromise and share as much as possible to minimize our consumption and cost. We could limit the use of computers for special purposes such as mathematical computation.

Batteries--I don’t think it should be too hard to make lead acid batteries from old ones, but I don’t know.

Electronics (such as solar power controllers and battery desulfators)—we need to figure out how to make these out of discrete components and how to make these components locally, or give them up.

Micro-hydro generators—should be doable with low-tech metal work

Lighting-oil lamps using animal or plant oils? Learn how to make LEDs? Can we produce enough bees-wax sustainably for wax candles?

Glass—I think I might get into this one myself. If the ancient greeks could do it, so can we. Can we do it sustainably?

Metal—we need blacksmiths and tool sharpeners. Perhaps other metal workers like tinsmiths.and coppersmiths.

Pipes—we need to either make plastic or rubber, replace pipes with aqueducts, or find new materials.

Building materials—earthbags, straw bale, cob, hand-milled lumber, salvaged metal (like my bus)., locally made glass.

Transportation—locally made bicycles and very few shared cars/busses that can be maintained with locally made parts.

Heating-rocket stoves using small sticks that usually don’t even need cutting (and if they do it is easily done with a hand saw), and warm clothes

Cooling—open the windows, shade the house with trees in summer, jump in the river, lake, pond or ocean.

Washing—dishes by hand, clothes by hand and foot in washtub and then dry on clothes line. Make soap from oil and lye (from wood ash). Solar shower for the pleasure of warm water, and heat by wood stove when the sun is not out, it’s cold and you must bathe.

Clothes—we might do well to relearn the art of brain tanning deer hides. Otherwise, it takes a lot of cotton to make clothing. Perhaps there is potential for fiber crops such as Kenaf. In the mean time, there are plenty of clothes that will last a long time if they are taken care of, and if they are worn even after they are worn out. Patching is also a good idea.

Weapons for hunting and protection—I have a friend who thinks that the best defense is to give attackers booze with promise of more if they let you live. Studying the history of western civ makes me think otherwise. Pro-active pacifism (ala Ghandi, Jesus and MLK) might be the best solution.

Technofixism as a defense mechanism, decision-making and compromise

I am often amused and annoyed that people are more interested in the technological aspects of my vehicle/shelter than the sociocultural ideas that might require them to make an inconvenient or uncomfortable change in their basic lifestyle. They are impressed that my bus runs on used vegetable oil and that I have solar panels on the roof, but when I mention anything about sharing resources they get a blank look and quickly change the topic to some other technological topic like earthbag houses. Same reaction to the electric fence I built--how cool that we have one more techno-toy so we don't have to change anything fundamental about ourselves.

It is easy to be enamored with technology because in a way it is easier to deal with than the thornier issues of collective decision making and cooperation, especially in the culture of rugged individualism. My thinking on this currently is I advocate a minimalism when it comes to mandatory collective decision making and cooperation. Let us agree to cooperate on basic food production and preparation and basic shelter, but anything beyond should be left to individuals and voluntary subgroups to decide. And as far as food production/preparation and shelter, I have come to believe that despite some issues, consensus is the way to go. That way the minority does not get rolled over by the majority, and everyone feels really heard and if things go well, everyone is satisfied by the emergent third way (as opposed to democracy where compromise is the best solution to hope for). There are several prerequisites for consensus, such as clear agreement as to goals and values, respect, low egos, and skill in the formal consensus process. When one or more of these is absent, there will be problems.

There is another aspect to technofixism which I think is partially misguided, but also has some value. This is the idea that planning technology/economy is worthwhile-something all governments (not just the former soviet one) are engaged in. As far as planning a local technology/economy, there is a temptation to start with agriculture and shelter and then see if we can come up with a minimalist plan for a local technology and economy. As in, we need tools, therefore we need a blacksmith and a woodworker, we need greenhouses, therefore we need glass making capability, etc. We will quickly find that each of these technologies is currently tied to the global economy through materials not available locally or massive factories that take enormous and global resources. Every current solution to a technical problem that is needed for the implementation of these technologies could be considered and alternatives that involve only local materials proposed and implemented-but this process is complex and not guaranteed to work. Alternatively, we could start with more “primitive” but local technologies and see if we can improve on them to reflect current human population levels, pollution and decreased biodiversity. While some planning might be useful, a free evolution of technology, based on need and avocation may work even better, or may work better if combined with planning. This approach will undoubtedly generate much wasted effort (and wasted resources), but also involved everyone’s creativity, not just a few planners.

But until all things can be made locally, do we continue to buy them or do without? I say we continue to buy only if we have the money, not if we have to work much for it. What we need to work on is sharing resources, producing everything locally and substituting spiritual things for material ones. Giving our energy to the old system (aka working for money in the GE ) takes energy away from creating the new system.. It is also possible to work a little in the old system in order to make some money, but one needs to consider how much energy is taken away from creating the new system.

Why share resources and cooperate

• Less waste, more eco-friendly
• Less materials and energy per person, more eco-friendly
• Less labor per person for necessities, more free time.
• Can help group cohesion (if some conditions are right, for example agreements about tool maintenance) and connectedness.
• The advantages of specialization, something which also happens in the current global economy.

It is one of our biggest challenges to cooperate and share resources. The need for autonomy and individuation are real and natural. Part of what repels people from the GE is their feeling like cogs in a big machine, not able to produce much of anything without the implicit cooperation of thousands of others across the globe. Having the cooperation be impersonal actually makes it easier. Also, people have different standards and needs (These things, along with the convenience offered by the GE lulls people into bondage, an effect more powerful than the repulsion. One ring to bind them all—the ring is hard to resist).
For example, I don’t share what I consider a western middle class standard of tidiness and don’t need to wash windows more than once every few years unless some unusual obstruction of visibility happens. If washing windows often didn’t take any time from what I consider more valuable activities, I wouldn’t care. Why would I want to cooperate with someone who wants to wash windows once a month? It would be a less efficient way for me to live, time taken away from physics, music and dance. I will try to pick people who more or less share my concern for having an ethical, responsible, conscious life of creative endeavors, but even then there will still be differences in standards and needs. Thus I need to find compromises because I would like the advantages of sharing resources and cooperating. In the window washing of communal spaces example, we could agree on an intermediate washing frequency between once a week and once every few years. The obvious compromise of me doing some communal activity that the window cleanliness freak does not like to do in exchange for her washing windows does not work because I would still feel like I am subsidizing her with the extra time I spend on whatever task that she is not participating in because she is doing something I consider a waste of time. I may choose to subsidize her not only because of my own self interest in having the advantages of cooperation and resource sharing outweigh the disadvantages, but because I respect and value this person, knowing her on a face to face basis and realizing that she is different from me. This respect and valuing will hopefully be reciprocated when this woman realizes that I have different worthwhile needs that are in conflict with the window washing, and she may be more likely to compromise. Another possible compromise is that the window cleanliness freak now does more window washing than me but on her own personal time, not communal time, without feeling resentful or having expectations that I will do as much window washing as she does. I suspect the problem will become less acute as people start getting more in touch with their creativity and have better things to do than wash windows, as women start feeling more secure and don’t have to resort to make-do obsessive-compulsive work in order to gain a false sense of security, and as communal bonding and personal spiritual growth produce smaller egos and happier people.

Why live simply

• First two same as above
• Because the earth can’t support the whole population living like the western middle class.
• To have more time for the things that matter
• To have less stress
• Because it keeps one humble and humility is good for connection with others

Reluctance to give up the fruits of human ingenuity as manifested in technology and examples of how simpler living can be better living

We are so used to having labor saving devices, and luxuries which make life more interesting and comfortable, why would we want to give them up? We are so used to having such a great variety of food available most time of the year, why would we want to give that up? And some of us (like me) don’t want to give up the great adventure of science (yeah, I know it’s been misused, like anything else in a GE), and the technology that allows us to listen to music from far away, make and watch movies, or any art form that is (or its distribution is) made possible by technology. I am convinced that human ingenuity will in the long run make most of these things possible with local, sustainable technology. The inventors and engineers who figured out current technologies simply were not constrained by sustainability and localism. In the mean time, we can drastically cut back on luxuries by adopting the other 3 ingredients. As far as basic needs, it is clear to me from my own experience that we can have those with less labor by adopting all four ingrdients, including technologies which are local and sustainable.

I will give several examples from my own life, not to boast, but to hopefully bring the discussion to a practical level.

I use the humanure system which includes pooping and peeing in a bucket and composting outdoors using hay (I scythe it, but also collected hay that some neighbor bush-hogged). It avoids indoor plumbing and makes use of the organic matter instead of wasting it. It takes a bit more maintenance than just flushing, but maybe if you count the plumbing and material production for toilets and sewers/treatment plants, that isn’t true.

I don’t use toilet paper, except in winter or when away from my bus. I use leaves. No need to kill trees or pollute, or become dependent on the toilet paper company. Eventually I will plant enough Mullein or other big, soft-leafy plants to not nead tp in winter. Using the traditional Indian left-handed method might be an option…

I have an outdoor solar shower, that uses salvaged hoses and a black tank I found at a junkyard. Again, this eliminates the need for indoor plumbing, its complexifying effects on building, and its eventual destructive effects due to burst pipes (which is one of the top insurance claims).. I fill the shower tank with a gravity-fed hose from a spring when it gets empty. Once the temperature drops below freezing during the day, I have to heat water on the stove (see below) and bathe in a tub.

I cook on a rocket stove (it’s purring right now next to me), which I also use for heating. This eliminates the need for propane, a fancy appliance, chainsaws, and lots of wood. I built it out of mostly scrap parts, except for the stove pipe, the bit of ferrous cement, and a few cinder blocks which cost me less than $50, sand I dug up from the creek bed, clay I dug from a cave, and hay that my neighbor bush-hogged. The point is not that the stuff I bought was cheap (because the low cost is mostly a function of our empire’s ability to use slave labor abroad), but that I used mostly scrap parts and locally available materials. I could have done better by using rocks instead of cinder blocks, but that will be a future project—I can’t do everything perfectly the first time, especially when winter is coming--there was not much time. The other point is that I sacrificed some short term convenience that I could have had with a propane stove or a conventional wood stove, for long term sustainability. I actually still have some propane, which I intend to use till it’s gone. I need another stove for cooking outdoors, as I don’t like to use the indoor stove only for cooking if it’s not cold enough to need heat, and in the summer it would make the bus too hot. There is still a technical problem with the rocket stove—it needs feeding every few minutes and I am working on a simple mechanical, gravity-fed feeder.

I also use passive solar heating indoors, letting the sun store its energy in mason jars full of water, and under the bus by insulating with plastic sheeting and storing water underneath, creating an effective greenhouse.

I do have electricity, a luxury I have not wanted to part with so far. I use it for indoor lighting, my laptop, CD and tape player, fan, little water pump (a relic from the guy who sold me the bus, it pumps water from a 6 gallon tank into the kitchen sink through plastic tubing—when the pump breaks down and is unfixable, I don’t think I will miss it much, I will pour water into the sink by hand) and 5 cubic feet fridge, which I supplement in the winter with the outdoors. The electricity is from the sun, in conjunction with 3 solar cells and four batteries. The solar cells should last longer than me if they don’t break from falling tree limbs, but the batteries have a lifespan of about 10 years. I hope I have extended their lifespan by at least a factor of 2x by building a cheap circuit (~$30 in electronic components) called a desulfator which prevents sulfation, the main failure mode of lead acid batteries, from happening.

I have spent some of my days gathering wood, hay, nuts, apples and pears, cleaning the spring and protecting it, building the thermal bench for the rocket stove, insulating the bus, but most of my time is now spent thinking about a problem in theoretical physics, playing music, reading and writing. In the spring I will be more busy with gardening, but even then I hope to have time for activities that are not directly related to survival and comfort. If I can’t do physics, make music and dance, then the revolution will have failed. We must show that we can live more simply, yet have more time for spiritual activities, or our revolution will not inspire, will not overcome inertia, laziness and fear.

Although most of these comforts and luxuries were obtained at least in part by using non-local materials and technologies that I had to purchase, the dependence on the GE is mostly a one-shot deal, as opposed to a continual dependence. Compare for example solar energy with the energy that is purchased from the electric company. I pay up front for the solar cells, batteries and desulfator electronics, but then I am free. The power I get from the sun is enough for about 10 people at a cost of about $3000. Ten people purchasing power at an average cost of $100 per month per person would be paying $3000 every three months, indenturing themselves to the GE.

Compare making oil using a hand/pedal-cranked oil press, making flour using a hand/pedal-cranked mill which can also dehull grain, with using motor-driven presses and mills. Consider in general using pedal-powered tools vs power tools which get their power from the electric company, which gets its power producing pollution and war. The bicycle parts may be made in China until we learn to make them ourselves, but in the meantime, we are free after the initial purchase, instead of being dependent on the GE on a continual basis.

Or compare using hand tools, planting plants which act as natural insect repellents or decoys/attractants, creating a virtually weed-free bed with Biointensive methods, and recycling kitchen waste and humanure vs having to buy
petroleum and parts for power tools/tractors, fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides. The former is a one-time interaction with the GE, whereas the latter is a continual dependence.

With the use of plastic for insulation I do create a continual dependence, since plastic doesn’t last long and I can’t make it. Going to home-made glass would solve this problem. I am investigating how to make glass on a small scale, for local use, out of local materials and recycled glass

Though I’ve made a lot of progress on local technology and living simply, I need to make more progress on the local technology front. My first priority was agriculture during the last planting season, but I hardly got to harvest anything before I decided to leave due to interpersonal problems. I will continue to focus on agriculture, and perhaps one or two industries like glass and match-making. Just as important, I need to make progress on the other three ingredients. I need to find a way to attract other people, or join with others whom I’m aligned with, in order to share resources, spiritual activities like music, dance, ritual, and Chi-Gung, and intellectual activities like physics, anthropology, biology, literature and sociology. I may need to live more simply, like give up the computer if I can’t figure out how to keep this one going once it breaks down, or if someone doesn’t figure out how to make computers locally..

Why substitute spiritual activities for material goods and entertainment

• To proactively minimize the necessity for conflict resolution, a form of conflict prevention
• Because behavior is seldom changed through negative means. Positive alternatives work better
• Because life becomes more vibrant when one is engaged in spiritual activities—they truly satisfy the soul, as opposed to material addictions.

Many greens talk about the need for greener technology while ignoring the other three ingredients, assuming that one-household consumption is unalterable, and that greed and selfishness are part of human nature. Also, they still are thinking in terms of global market capitalism, whereas a system of production for local use before market would be more sustainable.

Some communitarians tout the benefits of sharing resources and possibly living more simply, while ignoring the other two or three.

Some spiritual groups talk only about spirituality or maybe also sharing resources, but ignore local technology and living simply. They thus continue to participate in a corrupt system which relies on slave labor and war, produces pollution/environmental destruction and contributes to alienation between people and between people and nature (although they will usually deny this and say that all problems are caused by ego, lack of compassion, insufficient consciousness, not giving oneself to Christ, not following the commandments, not following the Koran, etc).

The difference among these four is that we can share resources, live more simply and have spiritual alternatives to consumerism right now, whereas a local technology and economy might take a long time to develop. There are already people working on local technology, but there are many challenges that remain, especially with regards to alternative materials, complicated processes that are too energy, tool and material intensive (such as making computers).

Interactions between the four components

The 4 ingredients form a mutually reinforcing system:

Making most of our stuff locally would encourage

• sharing those things that we can’t make locally (such as cars and computers). Also the stuff that is hard to make would make sense to share so we don’t have to make a lot of it
• living more simply, as any extravagance would not be made by some far-off and abstract slaves, but by us and our neighbors and family. The cost would reflect the real energy involved, not based on exploitation or borrowing from the resources of future generations
• relationships between people, instead of thinking of them abstractly as consumers and producers, or markets. It would also encourage relationship with the land. These are the foundations of my kind of spirituality-relationship with one’s community and one’s land. Also an ethics that does not rely on slavery.

Sharing resources can encourage

• local technology because if someone has some tools or materials that I need for making something, I can use them instead of having to make or get them from scratch
• living more simply because it discourages hoarding for oneself and family, or consuming in order to feel superior/have higher status
• an atmosphere of good will and create more free time for people

Living more simply can encourage:

• people to look for ways of meeting their needs without needing to get a job in town, which means local technology
• sharing resources, because if someone already has something I need, I don’t need to waste time and energy making it or making money to buy it
• more free time to pursue a calling and to interact with people in uplifting ways (such as doing yoga together, folk dancing, and playing music(

Substituting spiritual activities for material goods and acquisition can encourage

• local technology like local musicians instead of piped music and local craftspeople to make the instruments
• sharing resources because one feels good about one’s community members if one interacts with them in spiritual ways instead of in purely utilitarian or quid pro quo ways
• simple living because one realizes that beyond a basic level, material goods can’t produce deep joy and the addiction to material things is replaced by the real satisfaction of spiritual ones.

Not only do the 4 ingredients reinforce each other, but if any one is missing, it is harder for the other 3 to thrive.

The desirability of some global commerce in order to have luxuries and pursue some science and art.

As long as the satisfaction of our basic material and spiritual needs is met locally, we are living free, not enslaving others, we are taking care of the planet and our souls. But some things might take a while to make locally that we need for our spiritual well-being, such as musical instruments, ink, film equipment, lab equipment or computers. In the short run, it may be necessary and desirable, in order to do science or art, to purchase tools and materials from the GE. The film maker needs a camera and film. The musician needs her instrument. The molecular biologist may need some lab equipment. I am all for sacrifice of personal comfort, but not art or science, although the scale of both could be pretty simple and not require much energy invested to obtain the tools for doing art or science. Similarly, a bit of chocolate from time to time, or a shared computer and internet may make sense In the long run, I see global trade of spices, inks, soda ash and other things which may be impossible to produce in some regions. But being a trade in luxuries, it will not have the same potential for abuse as trade in necessities.

Fair trade

I think global trade can be fair, but not the way things are set up right now. Though farmers and artisans do most of the work, they get the least money even with fair trade. The western retailers get the most money. Part of the problem is that it is not a level playing field. They need us for basic survival, they act mostly out of desperation, whereas we don’t need them at all for the trinkets and luxury items we buy from them. The same applies to cottage industries which make luxury items in the US, except that there is less transport and middlemen involved so they can charge higher prices. Global trade, whether called fair or not is still largely determined by market forces (see Confessions of an Eco-sinner for an example of this in the cocoa industry) which are rigged against those with little economic power in the third world. If everyone could make their own basic necessities locally, then they would bargain from a more powerful position: they could choose to not make those trinkets, or make them but only if they get a comparable deal as the western retailers currently get. They would not starve if they didn’t make them. Nor would they be dependent on luxury items that they have been brainwashed to think they need which currently come from the west. Even if trade for luxury items was fair, it makes very little difference as long as most trade (for everything else) is unfair.

Also, currently fair trade hasn’t happened with operations that require a lot of capital, because nobody has offered a lot of capital to build a factory or mining operation. Maybe the markups on products that require much capital are smaller than on luxury items and so there would not be much profit for the western retailers who would sell basic products if they were to be competitive with retailers who buy from unfair trade factories. With luxury items the western retailers can afford to make a bit less profit, but not so with basic products.

Any unfairness in trade is easy to ignore or rationalize if it’s happening on the other side of the globe.

Local trade tends towards fairness on the average because free people who can take care of their basic needs won’t tolerate unfairness when it is staring them in the face. If you see how much time people are putting in, how much skill and care, you don’t want to short-change them, especially if they are your friends.

Global Economic vs Global Ecologic systems

The GE is a system which like all sufficiently complex systems, tries to perpetuate and preserve itself. There is no need to postulate conspiracies for the purpose of self-preservation. The smoke screen of goody-two-shoes environmentalism is an example of a systemic attempt to divert attention from an aspect of the system which would elicit revolt from most people. Life on earth (ecology) is another system which tries to maintain and perpetuate itself. Its interests though are opposed in many instances to the economic system, not just because of global warming, decreasing biodiversity and pollution, but because the GE is killing the life force of humans

Obstacles to implementing the 4 ingredients
Excuses
First, there are excuses for the enslavement of the third world that people make, mostly liberal people. These excuses were probably made by all ruling empire dwellers, including the Romans, the Confederate South, and the Nazis for their slaves:

The first excuse is that those people would starve, die, be less free or do much worse without the sweatshops that we provide for them. This ignores the fact that before the west came and expropriated the means of livelihood of those people (from the land they lived on), they were doing better than now. If you only look at the recent past, before the sweatshops, but after the stealing of land, then sure, they are better now (a possible analogy is jews who were moved from a concentration camp to a factory or from a harsher concentration camp to a less harsh concentration camp—of course they had it better in the factory or the less harsh concentration camp, but they had it better during the period before they were put in concentration camps in the first place. Or another analogy is confederate slaves being sold from a harsh master to a kinder master, or from the field to the house) The question to ask is what was life like for native people before there land was stolen. The answer to this question that most westerners give also exposes the bias of what a good life is. The ability to provide for one’s family/tribe with few material possessions, have a rich social and spiritual life and be connected to nature is considered poor and bad by this viewpoint, whereas those people may have considered themselves to be happy and wealthy. Even in conditions where empire and /or patriarchy has existed for many years before the western empires came (like in China), it is not ethical to continue the enslavement of people. Even if some people are freer (like most women coming from a patriarchy) in the sweatshops, ask yourself if you are a woman if you would want to work there, and if you are a man if you would want your mother, sister, wife or women friends to work there. And then ask yourself if the freedom to shop at a mall or have a TV or be able to look a man in the eye is good enough, the best that the west can offer those women. We should be able to offer them the freedom to be artists, doctors, engineers, scientists and scholars. But the way the economy and ecology of this world are right now, that is impossible for most of them.

The second excuse is that we bring them medicines or education, or other western goodies. That is kind of us, but it is no excuse for enslavement. We could bring them the medicines without enslaving them. We also take medicines from them, does that mean that we should be THEIR slaves?

The third excuse is that they often choose to work in the sweatshops, or low paying agricultural jobs. If the choice is between starving and working in a sweatshops, then of course they will choose to work in a sweatshop. But if they had the choice to go back to how things were before their land was taken away, perhaps they would choose to be free instead of slaves. Also, the fact that some of those people can be greedy and seduced by the extravagance of the west does not make it right to take advantage of their gullibility.

The fourth excuse is that their lot will improve (i.e. they will join the middle class). This one was not made by previous empires—it is mostly untrue. Most of them will remain slaves. The extravagance of the west needs slave labor to persist. If all those workers became like middle class westerners (this is impossible also because the earth can’t support our western footprint even when we are a small fraction of the world’s population), who would supply the cheap labor that we depend on to have cheap stuff?

The fifth excuse, and this one is unconscious, is that we need our cheap stuff and we really don’t want to mess with the system that brings it to us. It is just too abstract for most people to think of where their stuff comes from and much more gratifying to just consume the stuff.

Comfort and security
Second, whether due to nature or culture, I have been surprised to find out over the past 5 years that in general (but not always) women over the age of 30 are more concerned with safety and comfort for themselves and their children (if they have any) than men. Also from my study of history it seems to me that men nowadays are more concerned with comfort and security than men 200 years ago. The first observation makes evolutionary sense because pregnant women and women with young children are not as able to take care of themselves without help—they are more vulnerable than men during that time. In a more general sense, we can correlate feminine tendencies with maintenance of the status quo, and masculine tendencies with variation and getting out of the status quo. What our culture evolved from these basic biological facts was first women who were oppressed and made completely dependent on men to provide them with basic necessities. After the feminist movement, we have both men and women who are mostly dependent on the third world for their basic necessities, but in a position of consumers who are indirectly oppressing the third world and unable to produce almost anything on their own. There are a few men in the west who either professionally or as a hobby engage in building and related activities, but women in the west have mostly chosen not to be involved in the physical infrastructure of houses and instead to either pay men or get their partners to do it. The reasons don’t really matter for the purposes of this discussion.

The way that this division of labor is relevant to comfort and safety is that if a woman does not have to build and maintain (and produce materials for) her house, which is the main symbol of comfort and safety (and the main relic of the nesting instinct), if she does not know what it takes, in human labor and ecological impact, to build/maintain/produce materials for her house then she will not have much incentive to curb her appetite for bigger houses, remodeling the kitchen, buying more appliances and furniture to stuff in it (and she is also not participating in the making and installation of the appliances and furniture). The abstraction of labor and materials does away with a negative feedback loop that regulates consumption. This abstraction has become more or less true for men employed in white collar professions, so they also have no incentive to curb their wives’ needs for comfort and security. And more generally, even blue collar tradesmen are not aware of the labor and ecological destruction that goes into getting them the raw materials for their trade. Most factory work has been exported to the third world. Out of sight, out of mind abstraction is good for consumerism, but bad for living simply and forming deep connections. The men also have comfort and security needs, but they manifest differently than the women. For the men, acquiring or keeping women is a manifestation of the need for comfort and security—and that currently implies providing the women with material comforts and security.

For us this symbiotic partnership to provide the women with material comforts and the men with women is bad news—it is a reactionary drag on creating a new locally based economy and culture and simple living because in order to get there from here, some discomfort and less safety has to be experienced. There may be comfort and safety once we get there, but they will be less of material nature and more of a social and spiritual nature. Material comforts will be simple and home made (or at least made by people we know), and activities that foster connection to people and nature will largely substitute for consumerism, shopaholism, coffee, cigarettes, and other addictions. The pursuit of material comfort and safety invariably becomes an addiction, because material comforts beyond a basic level are just a substitute for our longing for connection, peace, adventure and creativity, And that is what I define as addiction: something which we try to substitute for a basic need, but can’t because our bodies and spirits won’t be fooled (and hence it never satisfies for more than a few moments)

How can we overcome this reactionary (but also nurturing and maintaining) tendency (I need my healthcare, my coffee, my imported wine, my fancy food, my car, my big house, my appliances, my (wo)man, etc)? One possibility is a temporary separatism where a few pioneering men build up the new economy and culture without women (and also without young children, old people, pets, and anyone who is incapable or unwilling to pull their load and thus is a burden which can be more easily accommodated once the initial infrastructure is built). But men who are willing to give up women are rare (I might have trouble with that one…). Perhaps we could do it with gay men? Unfortunately many of those men have the same reactionary need for material comfort and safety. No, we either need to buck up and give up the comfort of women for a while, or find women who are exceptional, willing to undergo some (hopefully temporary) discomfort and insecurity in order to achieve our goals.

In a way, the consumeristic quest for comfort and security are also a reaction to an ugly dangerous world, a reaction ineffective in achieving the goal which motivates it, like all addictions. We need to convince women and men to pursue the 4 ingredients in order to achieve these goals. We need to reclaim the natural, beautiful instinct to nurture and nest and redirect it towards these 4 ingredients.

These statements may be taken as misogynistic, or scapegoating women for consumerism. Although I do think that consumerism is mostly driven by a nesting instinct gone awry (but see below for a refinement of this idea) and that the nesting instinct is stronger in women than in men, it is a systemic problem, as I suggest above. But let me say more about this. In the following I borrow ideas and nomenclature from Rudy Balantine, author of Radical Healing, based on a lecture of his and personal conversation.

If archetypes or energies influence the outlook and behavior of people then we would be advised to understand the so-called masculine and feminine archetypes. These are only called masculine and feminine because in our culture men manifest more of the masculine energies and women more of the feminine ones. Not that this is an immutable pattern, or a desireable one. In my opinion a more desireable state of affairs is one where individuals balance these energies within themselves instead of projecting them onto the other sex. This is an instance of the more general Jungian principle of incorporating the shadow, which Jung referred to as getting in touch with the anima (in men) and getting in touch with the animus (in women). Bringing a magnifying glass onto the archetypes, we see that at a finer level of resolution there are two types of masculine and two types of feminine energies. The first type of masculine energy, which could be referred to as the Penile Masculine, is the driven, unrelenting, penetrating energy which can build houses but also destroy rainforests and kill. It had gotten out of balance with the first kind of nurturing, creative feminine energy (which may be called the Uterine or Nursing Feminine) and brought about the feminist movement and later the assigning of responsibility for war and ecological destruction. The second type of masculine energy, which may be called the Testicular Masculine, is a protective and restraining energy. It provides limits on the unbounded creativity and need for resources of the Uterine Feminine. As in “sorry honey but you can’t have a bigger house, unless we figure out a sustainable way to do it. Think of the destruction of rainforest that will provide the floor boards. Think of all those who are expropriated in order to get and process that wood, steel and copper. Maybe we could build out of local materials? Maybe we could share with others? What is it you really need?” realizing that this conversation between the Testicular Maculine and Uterine Feminine can happen within one person, not just between men and women or butch women and femme ones, or masculine and feminine men. It is not then that there is something wrong with the Uterine Feminine (of which the nesting instinct is one manifestation) that is the cause of Consumerism. The imbalance of our present society is one of not enough Testicular Masculine. It is a psychological imbalance within individuals, which manifest itself on the larger level of the system known as culture.

And what of the second kind of feminine energy? This one we might call the Cervical Feminine or Kali. My understanding of Kali is different than Rudy’s. I see this energy as an emergent global effect, being built out of numerous unbounded and unbalanced (by the Testicular Maculine) individual greeds for resources without knowing what it takes to extract, transport and transform those resources into products. Rudy sees it as an individual energy which has a ragingly destructive but cleansing (and hence ultimately constructive) effect.. Rudy thinks this energy is also out of balance and we need more of it. He could be right, but I would like to see Kali energy (according to Rudy’s nomenclature) coming out more from men, who have been repressing and have been repressed from that aspect of themselves.

Our vision has been clouded by correct but limited theories trying to link the evils of this world with patriarchy, so that we were blind to these issues, which I consider to be one of the biggest naked emperors in the history of empires, because most people don’t see it even though it is obvious once they recognize it.. The exposition of a naked emperor, or more generally of hidden injustices and hypocricies (nakedness not being an injustice, but pretending nakedness is clothed is a hypocrisy) which are the result of imbalances is usually rewarded with hemlock through the veins, nails through the limbs or a bullet through the head, or less dramatically through shunning and ignoring, unless it is done through the indirect path of art and parables, but even then...A positive alternative (restoration of balance) must be offered while exposing the naked injustice and hypocricy.

Another obstacle is a confusion between the natural reality of a global ecosystem (the Gaia Hypothesis) and the man/woman-made misguided reality of a GE. People see the beauty of an interconnected natural world, and the beauty of global communication and think this implies that a GE is also desireable.. There are and have been spiritual philosophers (e.g. Wilber, Hegel, Aurobindo, Gebser, de Chardin) who envision a global or integral consciousness and this also is somehow confused with the desireability of a GE. I say communicate globally, but produce and consume locally, at least for basic needs.

Dangers of enslavement by local community instead of market, govt, capitalists, burocrats or corporations

Sometimes I worry that unless egos are kept small, the potential for power play and even enslavement is there even with a local technology/economy. Yet, I hope that the other 3 ingredients can prevent enslavement. If, in order to get my basic needs, I only need to work an average of 10 hours per week, I am hard to enslave. If everyone lives simply and does not accumulate material goods, it is hard for them to enslave others (as with land or factory owners). If we share production of basic needs, who will be the oppressive owner? I suspect that power-trips will arise occasionally, but enslavement will not.

Who is likely to help

Though being open to surprise and possibility (like in those two epic battles in Lord of The Rings, friends and allies may come unexpected), I find that it may be useful to understand who is most likely to help, in order to focus attention on that group. Let us consider a few subgroups of people and see if they may be interested in these ideas:

Women, as we have already mentioned, are not likely to come, because they are more interested in short term comfort and security for themselves and their families than grand visions of freedom and joy for humanity. They may come later, when things are more safe and when there is a culture to plug into. There are a few blessed exceptions.

Hippies, existing communitarians and liberal people who are deeply entrenched in the system through job, house, or trust fund are not likely to come initially, because they are entrenched in the system, and because they are too soft to endure the hardships necessary to build up infrastructure. They may also be too stoned to work, or too dogmatic about consensus. Later, if they see something working well, they may come, or duplicate what we have done.

Young anarchists are not likely to come because most of the energy they get from being anarchists would dissipate if they stopped protesting and started doing something constructive. Some of them might have a waking up experience if they start thinking about why there are so few OLD anarchists, realizing that without a constructive alternative to work on, the old anarchists become absorbed in the system, through job, house, and family.

Those inspired by the Christian Gospels and other mystical, ecstatic traditions, may come if they have not built philosophical fortresses around them to spare them the pain of having to take (at least partial) responsibility for change, instead of leaving it up to Jesus, Collapse, UFOs or another savior.

Liberal military people are my favorite bet. This is because they already understand through experience what it means to build trust and live simply in a communal situation, to get things done efficiently through a hierarchical decision making process, to care about freedom, and to have the testicular masculine balancing the creative feminine. Some of them may have also come to understand the economic causes of war and want to work proactively for a joyful peace.

If there is little hope, then let us build, plant, dig, harvest, invent, dance, make music and write plays anyway and die like humans with dignity, instead of awaiting our death like sheep being led to slaughter. There is no cause for depression if the vision does not come to be in our lifetime. Identifying one’s ego with the vision can cause depression, but we realize that this vision, like all visions worth their salt, do not come from the ego, but from the collective subconscious, the greater system of life, God, or whatever you want to call it.

**When there is vision, some autonomy and variety, jobs that would have been considered menial without them, become joyful. One of my favorite jobs is making compost, which can include raking and dumping animal or human manure.

background

2009-01-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

I wrote the following in Septemer.
For approximately a year I was looking for land in MS, and though twice I almost bought land, there was always something wrong with it, so I ended up not buying any. I then decided to join VOL, because they appeared to have similar goals and needed help. Also, I came to the conclusion (you can find the reasoning behind it in a powerpoint presentation on the yahoo group) that some isolation would be good for creating a new culture--the VOL is in the middle of a national wilderness area. Most of the time it is impossible to drive in and it takes 1-2 hours to hike down a steep mountain by foot. There are a few buildings already built, there is plentiful water both from a spring and from the Hurricane creek, there is plenty of cleared land for gardening. There is only one person (D'Coda) who has been living there full time for 10 years, and at first I thought she was a visionary. I immersed myself in fixing and pretifying the place, which was falling apart and neglected, with the help of my friend Christina. I focused on food production, planting a trial biointensive garden which would have been ramped up to produce 100% of nutritional needs for one person after 3 years. One of the main problems out there is that the deer and bear were getting into the garden before I got there and so I first put up a trelis netting fence that went 8 feet high, then an electric fence powered by a Kelvin Generator that I built and optimized (I hope to publish an article on this in Permaculture Activist-the generator is made out of scrap parts and requires no batteries, solar panels or electronics, just falling water) and then trifoliate orange which should be effective as a thorny live fence upon maturity in 5-10 years. I built rocket stoves for cooking (mostly out of scrap parts and wood ash), got a humanure system going, planted apricot trees, started producing oil with an oil press I had bought from Holland, converted our hand-cranked grain mill into a dehuller which I used on the oats I had harvested with a simple public-domain invention from someone in Colorado, and which I was hoping to use on the rice I had planted. I had hoped that by building up an infrastructure whereby all basic needs could be gotten from the land plus honest work, that people who did not have much money would be able to live there and not need a job to make money. I also carried in on my back a satellite dish and installed it so we could have internet, which might mean some income for some people, without having to commute to town, which was impractical (after hiking out for an hour there is another hour drive to the nearest reasonable sized town, Russelville). In the meantime I was buying food every 2 or so weeks and sharing it with DCoda. There was also food that other people have hiked in who have since left,unable to live with DCoda (I have been in communication with 2 of them).
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>I found that I was mostly gardening by myself in the supposedly communal garden. The two times I was gone for more than a few days DCoda did not keep up with the bugs or weeding. When I got back from Oregon the sunflowers were knocked down and seem to be dying (due to wind according to DCoda's fatalistic pronouncement), a rabbit was eating the peanuts (I trapped him and released him on the other side of the creek) and a deer had gotten in through a hole in the fence (which I fixed). Christina helped a few times, but she was too busy with construction, toxic waste removal (some people have brought drums of gasoline which has gone bad, as well as standard solvents, oils and other toxics which were starting to leak on the once pristine wilderness land and go into the river) and demolition projects. D'Coda, I had found, did not seem to like to work with others, or even work much at all. She spent most of her time reading books, on the internet researching far out fringe pseudscience or end-of-civilization scenarios, puttering with herbs and her guinea hens, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. I also found that she was lying about quite a few things, that she was lazy *(see below), that although she theoretically promoted good communication skills and methods such as NVC, she didn't practice them. I came to the conclusion that she preferred to live alone and only wanted other people to pass through in order to bring her food and other resources. From the beginning Christina noticed that there was something amiss in D'Coda's telling of what happened to the other people who have passed through: there was always something wrong with them, and she had no responsibility in their leaving. Christina guessed that something really horrible had happened to her and that she came to the woods to heal, but she couldn't trust other people and interpreted most of my actions as attacks on her. Yes, I did get angry with her a few times about lying or laziness or extravagant water or wood use (for heating) or gullibility combined with ego concerning matters scientific, or passive aggressive behaviors. Yes, I did read two of her emails about me, thus invading her privacy. Yes, I did go into her room to confirm that she was lying about doing humanure and some other trivial thing having to do with parmesan cheese that she had bought with our money the one time she was in town and pretended that it was to replenish Forest's supply. I am flawed and am sorry I did those things. I found that I was getting less generous and more paranoid. One of the last straws for me was after Christina spent at least two days rebuilding a chicken coop, and I spent a few hours finishing up, and then D'Coda told me that it was not going to be used for chickens but for her 3 unproductive guineas, who already had a coop (but this one was much better). She said we had not talked to her about putting chickens in there. I gave her the benefit of the doubt by asking her if it's possible that she forgot, and she said that she memorizes all conversations word for word after she has them going over them in her head, so it's not possible. Exploitation starts at home...
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>So I think this is a case when one person can spoil a whole community at the onset. However, if there was a better system for decision making, this may not have happened. Majority vote or consensus minus one effectively means that the crazy person(s) gets to make the decisions when the crazy person is the only member or even if there are very few members (in which case if there is only one crazy person, maybe consensus minus one would work). The other members associated with the community who live in town do not get involved with decisions much. If I could have gotten competent, low ego people to come help and act as managers in different areas, we could have diluted D'Coda's incompetent, high ego influence. But none would come (except Christina)--all the people who had been interested over the internet, even my friend and co-worker Chris Greene did not step up to the plate and heed my calls for help. D'Coda told me at the membership review a few weeks ago that if I can't start respecting her that I have to leave, that our relationship is not a good seed for a community (which is true). I have been recently to a community of 12 in Oregon who live in joyful unity and love. They have a spiritual teacher and a council of elders. They have not given up their individuality or capacity to think independently, like many in cults, but their individuality is not the enemy of the community. They do not need NVC to resolve conflict because they communicate from the heart and work and play together as a way of conflict prevention. I wish we could learn from them about how to relate to one another. Unfortunately they still live an unsustainable, extravagant yuppie lifestyle (except for the resource sharing and internet business part), so I wish I could cross fertilize them with a community like Earthaven which is trying to get serious about food production and is pretty good about using resources, but still has problems with egos.

*Note on laziness: I used to believe that laziness was an epiphenomenon, like evil. That the real phenomenon was lack of motivation. Now I think that even if people are motivated, they usually choose the path of least resistance and inconvenience unless threatened, and THAT is laziness, a real phenomenon, a design flaw for us which though present in other animals besides Homo "Sapiens", is not a flaw for them because they are not at the top of the food chain and nature takes care of them with its checks and balances, or they go extinct. Wisdom (which is more general than altruism, which is present in other species as well), what is supposed to be the distinguishing characteristic of our species, and the compensatory feature that nature gave us to balance our cold intelligence, is the ability to see the bigger picture, in both time and space, and to find a path which might have us going uphill in order to get to the valley of our heart's desire, going sometimes in a direction of inconvenience and hardship for a while, a direction which may be even detrimental to our own selves or families, but beneficial for the species or the planet, over a mountainpass, instead of taking the local path of least resistance into a ditch. I would even hazard to say that wisdom is a masculine archetype, and that the imbalance of our feminized culture(as opposed to truly patriarchal cultures like the Taliban) and the root of its consumerism is no longer one of too much dominator masculine energy (as many have been telling us for a while), but insufficient masculine, protective, guiding wisdom energy, and that all genders need more of it. I do not claim to have much wisdom or to not be lazy (I'm striving)--there might be only 2 people I know well who are not lazy and have some wisdom and one of them (a balanced woman) lives in MS.
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>End of rant. My plans now are to either try again, buying land in Arkansas in Murray Valley (a place where old hippies are mostly homesteading, living on SS or jobs in town and two East Wind refugees have let me park my converted veggie oil, solar paneled bus/home), to join Earthaven in NC or the LLF in Oregon. I am currently visiting my son in Atlanta, then I will head out to MS to get Christina.