how to save the world

mutts comic strip by Patrick McDonnell; Patrick is a huge champion of animal rescue and shelter animals, and his book The Gift of Nothing is a classic for all ages

A woman I know once told me that the reason I come across as arrogant is that, while I say “we’re all doing our best”, I really don’t like spending time with most people. It implies, she said, that “our best isn’t good enough for you.”

I can see how that comes across, but my misanthropy doesn’t come from any sense of superiority or judgement. My instinctive aversion to most people is pretty much the same as my instinctive aversion to junkyard dogs. They’re doing their best. They’ve been conditioned to be threatening and violent. They’re tragic figures. Like a lot of people I know. But that doesn’t mean I want to be around them.

Last summer, in dismissing the argument that humans are innately violent, I referred to the late Canadian naturalist John Livingston’s remarkable 1994 book on human nature, The Rogue Primate:

John argued that humans have domesticated ourselves, possibly because our species appears to have all the qualities needed for easy domestication: docility and tractability, a pliable or weak will, susceptibility to dependence, insecurity, adaptability to different habitats, inclination to herd behaviour, tolerance of physical and psychological maltreatment, acceptance of habitat homogeneity, high fecundity, social immaturity, rapid physical growth, sexual precociousness, and poor natural attributes (lack of speed, strength, and sensory acuity). We share these qualities, he argued, with most of the creatures (and many plants) we have domesticated. The only difference is, we domesticated ourselves.

Domesticated creatures, he said, are by definition totally dependent on a prosthetic, disconnected, surrogate mode of approaching and apprehending the world, to stand in the place of natural, biological, inherent ways of being. Such creatures see the world through this artificial prosthesis, instead of how it really is, and this self-domestication is what we call civilization.

When you can’t see the world as it really is, but only through an artificial, distorting lens, it is not hard to become untethered. I watch with dismay as incompetent pet owners try to “train” animals by yelling at them, hitting them with newspapers or choking them with chain leashes. Melissa Holbrook Pierson in her book The Secret History of Kindness explains how and why this negative conditioning invariably backfires. And, she says, it is precisely this kind of (usually well-intentioned) conditioning that makes humans the way we are — for better and for worse.

Domestication is defined as “adapting a wild species for human use”, though a more generous definition might be Cambridge’s “the process of bringing animals or plants under human control in order to provide food, power, or company”. These definitions might just as easily apply to the word “slavery”. Despite romantic notions that dogs and humans, for example, “domesticated each other”, domestication is necessarily a coercive process, where the once-wild species is forcibly deprived of its freedom by its domesticators — us. The Dawn of Everything explains what happens to a species when it loses its freedom.

When you live in a high-stress, high-competition, high-scarcity (artificially created) modern culture, and when all those around you live in a situation of constant precarity, it’s not surprising that our conditioning of each other — our self-domestication — produces in us mostly the human equivalent of traumatized guard dogs.

I dream of a world in which it is otherwise. There is no reason why the human experiment has turned out the way it has. In the world of my dreams, as in the world of wild creatures not yet diminished, threatened and encroached upon by the human plague, there is no disconnection, no distrust, no sense of precarity. If, awakening from such dreams, I suppress my emotions, it is perhaps because I cannot bear to think that we might all be living in such a world, had we not, while all doing our best, fucked up the planet, and each other, so badly.

So when I get even a small taste of all the suffering in the world, as when I see or hear a domesticated animal being neglected or abused, I have no choice but to turn away. I could never work in an animal shelter — I would either kill someone or go mad with grief.

And so, instead, I make up characters in my writing, characters who are more interesting, more bearable than the ‘real’ people I meet, ‘real’ people who are struggling impossibly to heal from trauma, or who have so cut themselves off from their feelings and awareness of the world (not so hard to do, as our conditioning makes this easy and acceptable) that they feel almost nothing at all. ‘Real’ people who, thanks to their conditioning, cannot (and perhaps dare not) imagine a world different or better than the one they live in. ‘Real’ people who live lives of quiet desperation with a veneer of coping and cheerfulness, convinced that, as it cannot be otherwise, their lives must be good.

The characters I create in my writing are, to the best of my ability, unrestrained by domestication — they are free, uncivilized, connected, un-traumatized humans. The kind of people I would like to meet, and learn from. Not that they would have me, I suspect.

And I also make up funny, wild, implausible stories about people I see sitting nearby in tea houses or walking on the street. And I turn off the sound of movies and TV shows to create my own plots and characters, which I find far more imaginative, more interesting and less maudlin and infantile than the manipulative, self-indulgent, simplistic, preachy, predictable, juvenile pap that Hollywood churns out.

My invented-but-not-impossible characters are the kind of people I want to surround myself with, to engage and imagine and laugh and play with, and to love. I don’t blame the world of ‘real’ people for not being that. They have had no more choice than to turn out the way they have, than the junkyard dog has had. The chains go on at an early age, and, unless you’re incredibly fortunate, never come off.

I guess that makes me a misanthrope, but not a condescending one.

I have been one of the junkyard dogs most of my life — conditioned by fear and anger, easily triggered. And that despite the fact everyone in my life has been doing their best, including their best to help me, to be what I really wanted to be — free, mostly. In recent years, for reasons I do not understand but which probably stems from privilege and good fortune in the form of the unusual people in my life, it seems the chain is no longer there, though, cautious and cowed and distrustful, I still act as if I am chained, restrained now by an ‘invisible fence’ of my own invention. I am afraid of exactly what I have always wanted. Why? Aha; that is the question.

Before, it was easy to bark and snarl at the junkyard dogs around me. Now, they just make me sad. I cannot bear what our self-domestication has done to our too-smart-for-our-own-good species, and how the mutual self-conditioning of 7.8B others keep us in thrall, keeps us believing, keeps us yanking hopelessly at the chain, keeps us believing that this is the only way to live.

Though, even more sadly, that reinforced, endlessly and relentlessly conditioned belief now means it almost assuredly is the only way for our species to live, until it collapses, soon enough. And after that, who knows? Maybe like Robert Sapolsky’s extraordinary baboon troop that lost all its brutal alpha males to poisoning and became a peaceful matriarchy, our next societies will be differently conditioned, perhaps even undomesticated and uncivilized. We can dream. I cannot bear to think otherwise.

The Alberta Tar Sands in 2015, twice the size it was in 2008 and soon to cover an area larger than NY State; its toxic sludge ponds alone are large enough to be visible from space. Photo by Dru Oja Jay, Howl Arts Collective, for The Dominion CC-BY-2.0

I very rarely repost articles I’ve written in the past. I prefer to just link to older articles if I think they’re still useful and pertinent. But a recent email from Christopher Van Dyck had me rereading a 13-year-old post about my meeting with Nina Simons and Kenny Ausubel at Bioneers. Their insights about what constitutes effective activism remain, to me, the most useful guide on the subject I’ve ever heard, and at a small, informal “kitchen table” discussion back in 2008 they just laid it all out for us in less than an hour. Here is what they advised, pretty much unedited:

1. Developing Holistic Change Frameworks & Approaches: The changes we are trying to accomplish are in systems that are all complex and all interrelated. We cannot isolate approaches to just environmental sustainability, or social justice, or health and nutrition, or quality affordable housing, or media reform, or education, or poverty, or women’s rights, or racial equality, or economic reform. We need to realize that change needs to occur in all of them, integrally, or no enduring change will occur in any of them. What is required is a coordinated “movement of movements”, a whole ecology of collaborative, shared ideas and activities. These efforts need overarching “big picture” frameworks that show the interconnectedness of the problems we face and how efforts in one area can reinforce (or impede) efforts in another. For example, we need to appreciate that many health problems have social (e.g. addiction), educational (e.g. ignorance of nutrition) and environmental (e.g. food toxins) problems underlying them.
2. Focusing on Two Common Causes: Many of the aforementioned connected problems have our separation from nature and the weakening of local community at their root.
3. Reaching Across Ideology to Find Shared Values: Our belief systems by themselves are not enough to bring about change. The movement has to be about more than shared ideology. It needs to build bridges, and “reach across” cultural divides to find common cause. Our opinions are not as important as what we value, because many people who differ in opinion share values.
4. Using the Leverage Points: To be effective, we need to find the leverage points in the system, the places where the need for change is understood, where change is relatively easy to achieve, and where that change will provoke positive changes elsewhere.
5. Relocalizing and Connecting: The change must be rooted in community, in a massive relocalization and decentralization and de-institutionalization of attention, connection, understanding, power, and effort. Communities need to coalesce, self-organize, and do things for themselves, and then connect with other communities to share their success stories and lessons learned. At higher levels, our political states are bureaucratized, disconnected, unmaneuverable, corporatist, and corrupted, and trying to reform them is largely a waste of time, money and energy.
6. Making Change Easier: We need to focus on making it easier for people to change. We prevented an ozone layer disaster by simply making CFCs illegal, so refrigeration companies found and invented non-ozone depleting coolants, because they had no choice. Likewise, by ensuring that only energy-efficient light bulbs can be sold in the market, and that only energy-efficient, healthy new homes can be certified for sale, we make it easier for citizens to do the right thing. Working models that let people see how and why they work, and how to replicate them, are likewise useful.
7. Educasting: A major obstacle to change is the public’s ignorance and lack of capacities to bring about needed changes. We need to start using the new media for “educasting” public information to inform and build capacities. While we should not give up trying to reform public education and mainstream media, we cannot rely on either to support educasting, so we need to work around them.
8. Delivering to Those in Need: We need a renewed focus on delivery systems for change, so that resources get to where they’re most needed.
9. Thinking Generations Ahead: We need long range thinking so that we always know roughly where we are going, balanced with pragmatism and effective, sustained implementation. Example: The 50 Top Future Crops for New Mexico is a long-range program that inspires and directs thinking and action about long-term food production and nutrition in that state.
10. Speaking in Understandable, Inclusive Terms: We must make sure the language we use is inclusive and accessible to people outside our circles of activism. Jargon can be a useful shorthand but also an impediment to communication and persuasion. The terms “environmentalist” and “activist” are not helpful because of connotations of “otherness” and anger (which is why, for example, the more inclusive, positive term “Bioneers” was coined). Stories, of course, are immensely useful in increasing understanding.
11. More Listening and Facilitating: We need to substantially and continuously improve our active listening and facilitation skills.
12. Taking the Responsibility That Comes With Privilege: We have to understand that our privilege — just being in an affluent nation, white, working, healthy etc. — imposes on us a responsibility to help those without such privileges, and even more importantly, to take risks that, in the interest of fairness and egalitarianism, may jeopardize our own comfort or security.
13. Learning What We’ve Forgotten from Aboriginal Cultures: We have an enormous amount to learn from indigenous communities, who still retain, and whose stories bring, important knowledge, capacities and values we have lost or forgotten, or never knew.
14. Bridging the Generations: Our projects and thinking and collaboration must involve all generations, to bring different perspectives and cross-pollinate ideas and knowledge. This is harder than you might think. (Did you know more people visit zoos each year than attend sporting events?)
15. Self-Knowing: Effective activism requires self-knowledge and self-awareness. We each need to discover our purpose, develop our capacities and focus our effort on the work we do best, not just what is most needed. And self-knowledge also allows us to recognize our biases and triggers and hence cope with the emotional stress and grief that activists necessarily deal with every day.
16. Dealing With Religious Groups: In dealing with organized religions, we must deconstruct and separate their spiritual, social and political components, and use our common cause with adherents’ spirituality and social goals to enlighten them politically.
17. Preparing for Economic Collapse and Enabling Volunteerism: As economic collapse deepens, funding for important work will get scarcer. We must be prepared to tap into more volunteer work; one advantage of unemployment is that it frees up time. Instead of sitting listening to boring lectures, why don’t we get students out repairing watersheds? How can we find space for retired people aching for something meaningful to contribute?
18. Connecting With Social Entrepreneurs: We must get past our aversion to business and ‘profit-making’ enterprise and realize that many entrepreneurs are (or could be) part of the solution not part of the problem. The current model of psychotic capitalism is not the only model for successful enterprise. The new model is cooperatives and community-based, community-owned business.
19. Overcoming Learned Helplessness: Too many people are still looking for people (and governments) to do things for them, to lead them, and to tell them what to do and how to do it. Activists need to activate by getting people past reliance and dependence and learned helplessness, to believe in their collective capacity to decide what needs to be done and to accomplish anything they set out to do. The new ‘leadership’ model is not hierarchical and adulating, it is one of reciprocal mentoring, balancing critical and creative thinking, supportive and challenging conversation. Finding and deploying power through, not over, people.
20. Making the Movement Political: Holistic environmentalism needs to move from a cultural phenomenon to a political movement, like the movement for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery. To do this means both resisting and creating, fighting against regressive and repressive forces while innovating and acting at the local level to show how we can accomplish real change. But this does not mean becoming politicians, it means influencing and educating the politicians. And it can’t stop at petitions and protest demonstrations: We need to take Direct Action.
21. Creating Holistic Coalitions: We need to engage cross-disciplinary innovators and knowledgeable people to help us address the intractable problems that are blocking progress. Example: If birth control pills are polluting struggling nations’ waters, rather than fighting amongst ourselves (family planners versus water conservationists) we should be tasking and helping the medical and pharma profession to innovate green solutions to this.
22. Embracing Biomimicry: The answers are out there. We just need to ask nature.
23. Developing a Practice of Gratitude and Kindness: We must resist the tendency to anaesthetize ourselves against the grief, anguish and pain that comes from facing hard truths and grim realities about our current world. We have to be empathetic and give each other permission to feel the powerful emotions that we will inevitably feel in our work. This is a long-term, challenging task. We need to acknowledge and feel the pain, and at the same time we must be patient, appreciative, joyful, supportive, kind to ourselves and each other, and ‘grace-full’.
24. Balancing Pessimism, Realism, and Hope: This work, as important as it is, depends on us being true to ourselves, self-appreciative, giving ourselves permission to take risks, learning to accept compliments, “smelling fear and heading straight for it”, and managing our own and others’ expectations. We have to balance idealism and realism, perseverance and pragmatism, masculine aggressiveness and feminine perceptiveness and resilience. We must see that the glass is half full and half empty. We have to get past the internalized oppression that we carry inside us, the fear of saying and talking about what we most care about, even though doing so makes us vulnerable and may expose us to disbelief and even ridicule.

Those of you who read yesterday’s post on this blog and may hence find the tone of this post surprising, you should know that Dave #2 and Dave #3 were not consulted in the decision to repost this one. They insist that it’s too late, or impossible, for any action stemming from the above to make any difference in where we are now headed. They are probably correct, and our ‘progress’ since I posted this article in 2008 is certainly not encouraging. But Dave #1 insists that if it is still possible to make a difference, this is how it will be done.

view out my window, of Lafarge Lake with holiday lights all around it, photo taken the other day

I’m like a wolf, brought up in the city, out of its element
And now uncomfortable, anxious, wherever I go.
I hide in the shadows in places I will not be noticed.
In this odd, ill-fitting, anonymous clothing
I pace the streets, at night, and, just as warily, during the day
Never having learned the art of survival, anyplace
I am a stranger here, and everywhere

For how much longer?

COLLAPSE WATCH

Thomas Cole’s ‘Destruction’, the fourth of his five-panel series ‘The Course of Empire‘, 1836 (referred to in the essay by Ed Simon, linked below). Public domain.

Letter from the collapse: Ed Simon writes a moving, mourning elegy for our collapsing civilization and its victims. It concludes as follows:

I’m only a writer, and the most recondite type, an essayist. Could there by any role for something so insular at the end of the world? In The Guardian, novelist Ben Okri recommends “creative existentialism,” which he claims is the “creativity at the end of time.” He argues that every line we enjamb, every phrase we turn, every narrative we further “should be directed to the immediate end of drawing attention to the dire position we are in as a species.”

I understand climate change as doing something similar to what Dr. Johnson said the hangman’s noose did for focusing the mind. It’s not words that I’m worried about wasting, but experiences. What’s needed is an aesthetic imperative that we somehow live in each moment as if it’s eternal and also as if it’s our last. Our ethical imperative is similar: to do everything as if it might save the world, even if it’s unlikely that it will. Tending one’s own garden need not be selfish, though if everyone does so, well, that’s something then, right?

I’m counting the liturgy of small blessings, noting the cold breeze on a December morning, the crunch of brown and red and orange leaves under foot, the sound of rain hitting my office window, the laughter of my son and the chirping of those birds at the feeder who delight him. I’ve no strategy save for love.

“The world begins at a kitchen table,” writes Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, in a lyric that was introduced to me by a Nick Ripatrazone essay. “No matter what, we must eat to live.” Harjo enumerates all of the quiet domestic beauties of life, how the “gifts of earth are brought and prepared” here, and “children are given instructions on what it means to be human” while sitting at this table, where “we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and/remorse. We give thanks./Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and/crying, eating of the last sweet bite.”

That, finally, is the only ethic I know of as the oceans flood and the fires burn, to be aware of our existence at the kitchen table. When the cicadas come back in 17 years, I wonder what the world will be like for them? I hope that there will be bird song.

The end of growth, deferred but still on track: Richard Heinberg’s latest ‘Museletter’ reviews our ‘progress’ over the past decade at ruining the planet’s capacity to sustain life.

LIVING BETTER

cartoon by Will McPhail from his website

Will South Korea be first to introduce UBI?: The current leader in the March 2022 race for president, Lee Jae-myung, is proposing to introduce a UBI, a land tax to reduce inequality and homelessness, and a substantial carbon tax to address the climate crisis. Politics in that country are notoriously volatile, though, and Lee has only a narrow lead over a Trump-style extreme right-winger.

Cuba shows the way on the climate crisis: Cuba, which has learned resilience in the face of decades-long, cruel embargoes from US ideologue governments, survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had helped them deal with the embargoes, by revolutionizing its agricultural practices, and now looks likely to handle climate collapse better than any other country. Its Tarea Vida program is decades ahead of other nations, writes Dr Helen Yaffe, who has made a documentary about the program. Thanks to John Whiting for the links.

Building peace through laughter: Israeli comedian Noam Shuster shows how comedy, and the disruptions of CoVid-19, have helped build bridges between some Palestinians and Israelis. Thanks to Raffi for the link.

Cascadia’s indigenous forest gardens: New ecological studies of the north Pacific coast reveal that forest gardens were planted and maintained there that are as elaborate and advanced as those previously found in Central America. Thanks to Kavana Bressen for the link.

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS AS USUAL

BC CDC CoVid-19 data for the last two weeks, by vaccination status; data for other jurisdictions tells the same story, even in the US, though its reporting in some US areas is now seriously lagging

Is the ‘Great Resignation’ a thing?: Derek Thompson in the Atlantic thinks it is here to stay, and so do Dorothy Wickenden and Cal Newport in The New Yorker. But they seem to see it only as a CoVid-19 phenomenon and a back-to-balance power shift. Could it be a symptom of a larger ‘walking away’ from capitalism, and from the broken, foundering civilization that now depends on it?

Why the supply chain ‘problems’ aren’t going away soon: A truck driver explains who benefits, how we all lose, and the perils we face, if we don’t address the crisis that has paralyzed our seaports and transit terminals. Thanks to Paul Heft for the link.

The New Misogyny: Christine Rosen describes how some of the supposedly ‘progressive’ demands of trans extremists are hostile to all women and could, unless arrested, lead to a form of “female cultural erasure”, setting back many of the women’s movement’s most important accomplishments. It is truly sad that it’s right-wing journals, not progressive ones, reporting on this important subject, and sometimes using it as a ‘wedge’ issue. Progressives, wake up, you’re being played!

Corpocracy, Imperialism & Fascism: Short takes:

• • In a breaking of ranks of sorts, NYT reporter Dave Philipps tells NPR that ‘rogue’ American forces knowingly and recklessly killed thousands of Syrian civilians by bypassing approval procedures for drone strikes. Chilling revelations.
  • I’m reasonably convinced that 5G doesn’t pose a hazard to human health. I’m less convinced that it doesn’t pose a hazard to commercial airplane navigation. Thanks to Paul Heft for the link.

Inequality: Short takes:

• • Indi Samarajiva explains how easy, and sad, it is to pamper our children when we live in situations of privilege, forgetting how so many children have to do without. A powerful bit of writing.

CoVid-19 Becomes the Pandemic (mostly) of the Unvaccinated: Short takes:

• • The US CDC really has become a “dumpster fire”, according to the Atlantic’s Katherine Wu — incompetent, inconsistent, unclear and self-defeating guidelines, and lousy communications that jeopardize the health of US citizens. Her colleague Ed Yong summarizes the blunders and lays the responsibility on the erratic and often incoherent director, Rochelle Walensky. And Zeynep Tüfekçi weighs in on the director’s latest missteps. This is what happens when public health agencies are starved, for years, of adequate resources and professional (especially communications) staff.
  • Testing is easy to get in a few places, and still difficult-to-impossible in most places, due to chronic government screw-ups just about everywhere. Good-quality masks are also still very hard to come by in many areas, for the same reason.
  • So here it is again, short and simple: First, look at the chart above.
    • Get vaccinated and boosted.
    • If you are lucky enough to have access to adequate, affordable testing in your neighbourhood, get tested before and after any risky (ie crowded, maskless, extended close-proximity, and/or indoor) activities.
    • Wear a properly fitting N95 or similar medical-quality mask, or double-mask if N95’s don’t work for you or aren’t available near you, whenever you’re indoors with other than immediate family for any significant period of time. Here are the best-rated reusable masks, one of which will certainly work for you, if it’s available.
    • Here’s what to do if you get omicron, and what not to do/take. Obviously, isolate for at least 5 days (10 if you can), and wear a mask and wash your hands regularly for 10-14 days, but if your symptoms aren’t mild, then short of hospitalization there are now some additional options, along with all the quack cures, explained in the above link.
    • Omicron is considerably less serious than previous variants, but that doesn’t mean it’s not very dangerous, especially if you (or those you’re in close contact with) haven’t been double vaxxed and boosted. And then there’s the risk of Long CoVid to consider, even if you’re asymptomatic.  (Thanks to Kavana Bressen for most of the links above.)
  • Omicron case rates are peaking in many areas, and hospital rate increases are slowing. A month from now we should again be on the downside of the curve in most places, barring additional variants.
  • Socially distancing, while less critical than vaccination, masks, and frequent testing-and-isolating, is still useful, especially when you’re near people who are or may be infected. Proximity matters. It’s not unreasonable to assume that in areas with high case rates, as many as one of every 20 strangers you encounter could be infected. If they’re unmasked, or poorly masked, or talking loudly, keep your distance. Thanks to John Whiting for the link.
  • A legal, inexpensive, and easy-to-produce acid from hemp plants has shown great promise in preventing coronavirus infections. Stay tuned.

FUN AND INSPIRATION

New Yorker cartoon by Liana Finck — she has a new book coming out too!

It wasn’t my character’s fault: Have writers and filmmakers overused the hero-or-villain-as-victim-of-childhood-trauma plot?

All depends how you ask the question: In a recent survey, where the questions were asked in a rather deceptive manner, a majority of Republicans opposed teaching of Arabic numerals in schools, and a majority of Democrats opposed the teaching of the Big Bang theory of the universe’s creation. Thanks to John Whiting for the link.

On the edge of non-duality: I’m fascinated to read Caitlin Johnstone’s occasional forays into non-duality, squeezed between her articulate tirades against corporatism and imperialism. Now, another of my favourite political essayists, Indi Samarajiva has written a post on non-duality. I’d love to meet them and explore how they deal with the cognitive dissonance: Clearly, to me at least, if there is no self, there can be no free will, and if that’s so, how can we blame anyone, no matter how iniquitous their actions?

How writing is like cricket: In another fascinating article by Indi, he shows how the sport of street cricket is an essential part of the culture of his native Sri Lanka.

Our calendar makes no sense: Hank Green hilariously proposes a more sensible one.

The ‘superior mirage’ phenomenon: In which an iceberg is seen floating off the coast of BC. The mountains in question can be seen from my window, and, despite the recent ‘atmospheric river’ here, show no signs of becoming maritime anytime soon.

Fat-phobia consequence, eight letters: New Yorker puzzler Anna Shechtman explains how crossword puzzles became part of her coming-of-age story.

The tree of life: OneZoom shows the entire tree of known life on earth, on one highly zoomable chart. Humans, delightfully, are an insignificant part of the tree, a twig on one ordinary branch. Thanks to Ben Collver for the link.

Science goes to the dogs: A Canadian science reporter engages a much larger audience by including his dogs, and his scientist guest’s dogs, in his ‘pawdcast’. You can hear all the episodes here, featuring Bunsen the Berner.

THOUGHTS OF THE MONTH

from the Memebrary; *last line added by Kavana’s friend Karon’s sister

From Anahid Nersessian, in NYRB:

It’s all very well to say “capitalism turns us into commodities, that’s degrading, human beings shouldn’t be degraded.” But how should we be treated, and how should we live? What would love and sex—among other things, like health care or having a job—look like in a good world? It’s important to take the risk of answering those questions, even if the answers are messy and provisional.

From The Beaverton: “Artist, paid in, dies of, exposure.”

From Michael Parenti, via Caitlin Johnstone, on public opinion:

“But they [military industrial complex] don’t care about what we think. They turn a deaf ear to us,” some people complain. That is not true. They care very much about what you think. In fact, that is the only thing about you that holds their attention and concern. They don’t care if you go hungry, unemployed, sick, or homeless. But they do care when you are beginning to entertain resistant democratic thoughts. They get nervous when you discard your liberal complaints and adopt a radical analysis. They do care that you are catching on as to what the motives and functions of the national security state and the US global empire are all about at home and in so many corners of the world. They get furiously concerned when you and millions like you are rejecting the pap that is served up by corporate media and establishment leaders.

By controlling our perceptions, they control our society; they control public opinion and public discourse. And they limit the range and impact of our political consciousness. The plutocrats know that their power comes from their ability to control our empowering responses. They know they can live at the apex of the social pyramid only as long as they can keep us in line at the pyramid’s base. Who pays for all their wars? We do. Who fights these wars? We do or our low-income loved ones do. If we refuse to be led around on a super-patriotic, fear-ridden leash and if we come to our own decisions and act upon them more and more as our ranks grow, then the ruling profiteers’ power shrinks and can even unwind and crash—as has happened with dynasties and monarchies of previous epochs.

We need to strive in every way possible for the revolutionary unraveling, a revolution of organized consciousness striking at the empire’s heart with full force when democracy is in the streets and mobilized for the kind of irresistible upsurge that seems to come from nowhere yet is sometimes able to carry everything before it.

There is nothing sacred about the existing system. All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic.

From WH Auden:

The Fall of Rome
(for Cyril Connolly)

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.