The potential carbon emissions from the oil, gas, and coal in the world’s currently operating fields and mines would take us beyond 2°C of warming.
The reserves in currently operating oil and gas fields alone, even with no coal, would take the world beyond 1.5°C.
With the necessary decline in production over the coming decades to meet climate goals, clean energy can be scaled up at a corresponding pace, expanding the total number of energy jobs.
As such, McKibben points out the duplicity of the Canadian government in its current fossil fuel plans; it simply is not compatible with a healthy world, despite the rhetoric of the Paris goals.
And McKibben is not even as aggressive in his suggestions of “war-time mobilization” as is The Climate Mobilization of which I am an advocate.
What will it take for a wide-spread demand for effective responses? More super-storms? A national/international catastrophe? Likely Canada will not act until the USA acts.
At this time in history, we need states-persons, not politicians! States-persons look to what is needed in the future (not simply what is wanted); politicians look to the next election!
Bill McKibben of 350.org has now named the issue. In a New Republic article, A World At War, he leads with “We’re under attack from climate change — and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.” The article is worth reading in its entirety, and there is a summary on Common Dreams, also worth reading.
Thus the leadership is mobilizing. McKibben proposes that, following the American election, the new president will mobilize American society. Hopefully!
But I see a number of deficits.
First, McKibben’s 350.org is only one organization of many. We need a concerted effort to have all the major players come together in a cooperative movement, all demanding a war-like mobilization. Perhaps then the political machinery will listen.
Second, as I have been saying, “Leaders lead — followers create the change.” It remains to be seen if the followers will also engage. Worldwide!
Third, and perhaps most important, the leadership has not yet had the courage to name what must follow if we “win the war.” After WWII, there came the deluge of consumerism. We cannot have such as that to occur again.
We must be willing to challenge the entire basis of our civilization. Our entire culture balances between the ravages of domination and the desire for cultural maturity. It is time to move beyond this pattern.
I am currently re-reading The Parable Of The Tribes: The Problem of Power In Social Evolution. At the end of the first chapter, the author names what I consider to be the crucial issue:
The laws of man require power, for power can only be controlled with power. The challenge, therefore, is to design systems that use power to disarm power. Only in such an order can mankind be free.
In a mature culture, all would contribute authenticity.
Daily life in a mature culture — the last posting I painted a picture of major uniformity. I suggest that this is necessary so as to keep the human impact to a minimum, and that such life could still be very satisfying, although the emphasis would be on authenticity, as compared to becoming more competitive in the marketplace.
So what else about living under these conditions? First, some loose ends (which could become major postings if expanded).
Home and work life
Guaranteed resources: health, nutrition, education, child care
Stuff? We have too much stuff
Home and Work Life would both be based upon community interaction. Given robotics and electronic communication, much of work life could actually be performed within the “village” settings.
Then, if desired, external work interaction would be by choice. For example, food production by extensive local gardening might well be performed because people actually wanted to engage with the soil.
Much industrial productivity would be automated, but there would still be many tasks that required direct interaction, especially in the development of new technology that had not previously been explored.
The automated productivity would be relegated to products that no longer needed innovation. For example, how many brands of toothpaste are really needed? (Yet go into any modern “drugstore” and you will find dozens if not hundreds of brands. What nonsense!)
Many aspects of community life would be guaranteed.
The provision of nutrition and health care will be universal.
Education in the future will be universal, and must emphasize personal development, especially the development of wisdom and governance.
Historically education has emphasized skill development, especially the transcribing of religious texts, and has been restricted to only certain societal groups.
In general as well, human beings are experiential learners, with age-appropriate processing to an experience so as to learn from it. What seems to work best is to have a brief exposure to a problem, engage in a physical experience related to resolving the problem, study the outcome (especially since first attempts are seldom successful at resolution), and then further engagement in problem solving (until resolution).
Child care would be guaranteed. In particular, we must find ways to optimize child care.
It is becoming well-recognized that early child development, especially in relationship to attachment needs, is central to the development of healthy adults (healthy both physically and mentally). We can no longer afford the erratic child care provisions of our modern society where we expect young parents, struggling with a multitude of issues, to provide effective child development on top of their other stresses.
Sorenson (1998), in Preconquest Consciousness, emphasizes how “groups of people can be simultaneously individualistic and collective — traits immiscible and incompatible in modern thought” (p. 82), but at the same time he noted how such cultures shrivel “with alarming speed when faced with harsh emotions and coercion” (p. 80), traits common to our current society.
Stuff? We have too much stuff.
A huge aspect of modern life is the provision of stuff for consumption, with little attention to the actual cost of production and the cost of the garbage created when the stuff is outmoded.
We cannot afford this! Everything in a future world must be recyclable.
Given our population density, we cannot afford garbage on a finite planet.
I suspect that if a society truly valued appropriate productivity, most of what we “consume” would be provided free as modular recyclable units, standardized to fit the needs of the product, efficiently designed for long-term usage.
A small aspect of productivity could then be applied to two areas:
innovative development of truly new products
creative development of individual artistic products.
when people moved (from job to job for example, or for educational training), they would simply take their clothes and their artistic products with them, and leave the rest to the next occupant.
The status associated with “new, improved” would not be part of the cultural milieu.
Your thoughts? (Remember, my musings are only intended to stimulate thinking about what really matters to a mature culture.)
I’ve been reading some of the articles accessible through The Climate Mobilization website, especially those concerning what we are now learning about the risks of global warming, even at our current level. It is so much worse than I thought! And I regard myself as well-informed in this area. For me, the issues are so related to the acedia of our civilization.
Gradually we are shifting. More and more leaders are speaking out for the need for profound change. However, all that leaders can do is lead! It is followers that create the bulk of the change. We need the majority of our culture to speak out.
And there is some evidence that the cultural majority are aware of this need. Recent research suggests that 54% of people in four Western countries acknowledge high risk of our civilization ending, and 24% recognize the risk of human extinction, all in the next 100 years.
Acedia and Evil
In this post I want to finish with the topic of acedia, in particular the nature of evil.
In The Hope: A Guide To Sacred Activism, Andrew Harvey tells the story of a major agribusiness CEO who knew exactly what destruction he was causing to the lives of thousands of people, but proceeded anyway simply for the sense of power that it gave him. When I reflect on modern tragedies such as
the duplicity of British Petroleum in the 2010 Gulf environmental disaster,
ExxonMobil being aware of the impact of fossil fuel on global warming in the 1970s, and deliberately hiding this information (presumably for profit to the company),
the Koch brothers’ massive manipulation of the American political system,
and many other political-economic-environmental disasters of recent years,
I cannot but consider these actions as evil — the active antagonism of what life offers, the hiding for political-economic power. Such actions must be identified, and stopped, but there is the danger of focusing on these issues, rather than looking at the system (the Cultural Lie, including myself as part to this system) which allows such actions to develop.
The Banality of Acedia and Evil
I also know from Hannah Arendt’s work on the banality of evil and Milgram’s work on obedience to authority, that the possibility of evil is a fundamental human characteristic. I consider evil as the end-point of the spectrum of acedia, as shown in the accompanying diagram. The manifestations of acedia (self-righteousness, laziness, fearfulness) are not evil per se, but they set the stage for evil, especially the acceptance of evil acts by others, wherein acedia displays as an attitude of “it doesn’t matter,” “who cares?,” or “it can’t be helped.”
Yet the fundamental difficulty of evil is the attempt to eliminate evil — it sets a false dichotomy of us against them, and if only we eliminate them, things will be fine. When we as individuals fail to recognize how our silence and/or tokenism in the Climate Lie perpetuates the system, we support the evil of actions such as above.
As a culture, we have enjoyed the benefits of technology, and have been unwilling to recognize or pay the costs. We live gross inequality, with massive world poverty (amidst conclaves of richness), extensive hunger (especially starvation of children), mistreatment of minorities (especially women in underdeveloped countries), waste and pollution (our garbage accumulates), amongst other inequities. We live the acedia cycle, especially in our lack of charity in resolving these issues. We have extensive “charitable organizations,” yet as a culture we lack the charity to resolve these difficulties.
So what to do? Most of the power is held by those who are creating the inequality, mainly the leaders of the multi-national corporations. (Likely only a small minority of these corporations — I presume most are honorable, but we must find a way through so as to disempower those that create the most disruption of equitable society. And in any event, I am not interested in created the us versus them dilemma.)
The Need for Civil Disobedience
Gier (2006), in Three Principles of Civil Disobedience: Thoreau, Gandhi, and King, notes that effective civil disobedience requires that:
one maintain respect for the rule of law even while disobeying the specific law perceived as unjust;
one should plead guilty to any violation of the law; and
one should attempt to convert the opponent by demonstrating the justice of one’s
I believe that civil disobedience is the only route that we can take. To engage in evil to combat evil will not lead to a mature culture. We have made attempts, such as the Occupy movement, but they need to continue.
Are we worthy of being a mature culture? I hope so.
As part of my commitment to social change, I offer this free program on Anger Management. There is a huge amount of anger in our culture, some overt but mostly hidden. — it is the ‘canary in the coal mine’ of the pain and dysfunction of our society. It is only by managing our own lives that we will be able to respond to the difficult days ahead.
I originally offers this set of posts as a free email program for anger management; subsequently, I placed it here on my blog as as to be available to anyone interested. The information and tasks are suitable for any emotional issue. Simply use your own issue whenever anger is mentioned. If you want personal work, I am still available for coaching.
Please go to Postings > Anger Management for the complete series: a set of 30 ’emails’, each with a brief concept and a simple task allowing exploration of the importance of the concept.
If you want individual coaching, let me know via this email link:
(I originally sent this out as part of the email program.)
Hi.
Thanks for showing interest in the Angry? Change your life in 90 days program.
First of all, let me congratulate you for showing this interest. As I reflect on the state of our current world, I am surprised that so few people are willing to admit how angry they are. Recall all the stories of road rage, the frequent mass shootings, and other forms of anger — these are instances that show what is happening to us as a culture, of how angry we really are as a people. But it must be the other guy, right?
In my own case, I grew up in a family in which alcoholism was rampant, and for me, childhood was an extremely painful affair. (I suggest that anger is a major component of alcoholism; one of these days I will do a post on that to my blog.) Yet for most of my early adult life I was not aware of how angry I was. It was only when I got into my 40s that I was able to acknowledge this to myself. That is long past for me, although I do remain angry with the insanity of our culture — that has created (and for the most part currently denies) the issues of global warming. The major difference though is that I am not caught in my anger.
Be that as it may, this program is not about global warming. It is about how to work through your issues of anger, so as to achieve the kind of life you want to live:
how to recognize when you are angry,
how to be more peaceful, living the Serenity Prayer, and
how to have better relationships, amongst other components.
And, as opposed to my usual writings, it is not about understanding anger, nor why you are angry — overall, that kind of understanding is the booby prize. This program, this set of emails, is about skill development, and what to do, not what to think.
The program will provide you with 30 emails over approximately 90 days, one email twice a week, usually Mondays and Thursdays. Why 90 days? Well, two of my previous mentors, both world-class therapists, indicated that change requires approximately three months of consistent application (one said three months, the other 13 weeks!) — after 25 years of practice in my own practice, this is also my own experience.
Can this really change your life, for the better? Absolutely. I am not saying that everything will be fine in 90 days; I am saying that in 90 days, you can be consistently moving in a new direction, one where the light at the end of the tunnel is not just another train.
Be aware it will take work, probably at least an hour a day, perhaps more. And it may bring up a lot of pain — after all, you are angry for many good reasons, and your anger likely protects you from this pain. But at the same time, I do not intend it to be too onerous — you won’t do it if it is. I strongly believe that people learn best when they are having fun; thus, I will do my best to keep it light. Still — it will require effort.
If you desire, I am available for coaching,
and I still require you to work through this material.
So, are you still interested? If you are, click the following link, and send me an email ([email protected]) or give me a call (604-725-4707). Predominantly I work with people over Zoom so distance is not an obstacle. We can discuss what you want and, as part of our conversation, my fees. I’m open to negotiation largely because I seek a more healthy society, not a focus on income. Still there is the adage: ‘You get what you pay for.’
You are welcome to print these ’emails’, and use them in any way you wish. If you pass them onto others, my only request is attribution. If useful, I can provide a Word document or pdf to allow easy printing. Simply let me know your need.
Note also that, in these emails, there will be occasional attachments, and links to my blog. Mainly these will provide diagrams that I believe you will find useful in understanding the tasks (the diagrams will also be in the Word document), but the separate image files may be of some use to you also. Simple emails are not a good way of sending such information, so look out for them please.
MacQuarrie Email #07 — The Blowing Out Process, Part 1
A time bomb needing release.
Two more emails (plus a summary email), and then we start the process of skill development as to how to explore and manage your anger. I hope by now you are starting to recognize that the concepts thus far allow you to get a handle on your anger, but I also imagine you want more specifics — coming!
As mentioned, the concepts of the previous emails became the process I call Blowing Out®, a method of utilizing unpleasant experience so as to create positive outcomes. For most people, when something unpleasant happens, they get stuck. The something reminds them of their past (their values, beliefs, memories, expectations, what I call their VBMEs), and they feel powerless. They label the something as some kind of conflict, and they don’t feel safe. Perhaps they are angry, or some such emotion, but lacking safety, they are also afraid or say to themselves, “I shouldn’t feel this way” — the sailors in action. So they stuff their energy — but eventually that doesn’t work, and they become a time bomb of some kind (the pressure cooker). This goes on over time, and eventually they explode outwards (family violation or social massacre) or inwards (depression or suicide). Not a pretty scene, but common in our society.
Create safety, then release in any way that works.
Safety for all is absolutely essential.
In my personal pain, I too recognized that this process of getting stuck did not work, and that the most important aspect was safety — for all! Instead of blowing up or blowing down, I discovered that I could blow out, like blowing out a candle — but instead of blowing out the light, I could blow out the darkness of my pain (the basis of my first book Blowing Out The Darkness).
We get stuck essentially because we mismanage our energy! First, because we are not safe (both with ourselves and with others around us), and second because we do not safely discharge our emotional energy — we generally dump it on someone else in some inappropriate fashion. We somehow believe that we have to resolve the conflict before we can manage our energy.
This is not only nonsense — it is also a recipe for disaster. We hold the energy inside ourselves; the conflict is outside. We can separate ourselves from the conflict, and manage our energy — in so doing, we can then decide if the basic issue is what others are doing (the conflict), or is it what we are doing to ourselves (our powerlessness) because we are caught in issues from our past.
Don’t take my word for this. Think about how you feel and act when you get to the edge of your rage. In some fashion, is this not how you act?
Task: So your task for this email is to think about what else you could do with your energy. And test out these possibilities; don’t just think — act! safely! Re-read Email #2 What is Anger? so as to really get No SAD and STOP. (You have probably noticed that all the tasks I assign are really focused on observing yourself — not for the purpose of self-criticism, but for recognition of how you actually create your own experiences. Over time, this will become your most important skill.)
Some hints: you can discharge energy silently, or you can make lots of noise. You can discharge privately, or you can do it in the presence of others. But if you are going to do it when others around, those others must agree to the parameters of No SAD and STOP — otherwise, they will not likely be secure and because of that, you will criticized! As such, it is very likely that you will shut down, and the time bomb scenario will resume.
The second most important aspect of Blowing Out is that the conflict must be resolved. Even if you discharge your energy, all that you will be doing is emptying the pot. It is essential that you then stop the pot from filling again.
My stance is that I can empty the pot in 10 minutes (I likely need another 10 minutes to process what happened that the pot was stirred — powerlessness or conflict?). Stopping the pot from filling again may take weeks or months of work — but I can keep the pot empty while I do this work! I need not stay stuck with a full pot — ever!
I take this term from what I read in The Climate Mobilization website — it refers to:
Our society is living within a massive lie. The lie says, “Everything is fine and we should proceed with business as usual. We are not destroying our climate and, with it, our stability and our civilization. We are not committing passive suicide.
The lie says we are fine—that climate change isn’t real, or is uncertain, or is far away, or won’t be bad enough to threaten humanity. The lie says that small changes will solve the problem. That recycling, bicycling, or closing the Keystone Pipeline will solve the problem. The lie allows people to put climate change in the back of their minds. To view it as someone else’s issue—the domain of scientists or activists. The lie allows us to focus on other things. To proceed with business as usual. To be calm and complacent while our planet burns.
… [The lie is] sustained by people living within the lies. Our lie is a lie co-created by the government, corporations, the media, and the people. These organizations encourage the lie, but it only exists because we, the people accept it and choose to live within it. The basic lie is “We should continue with business as usual, for everything is fine. There are three major ways that the Climate Lie operates: intellectual denial, emotional denial, and environmental tokenism.
I agree that all this is the climate lie, and I suggest the problem is even bigger — it should be called the Culture Lie, subsuming scientific materialism and consumerism.
The Difficulty of the Climate Lie
It is so hard to write about — it is so big, and so entangled, that I cannot do justice in this small space. Yet I strongly urge the reader to take the time to read the key documents on The Climate Mobilization site. They are well-written, but long, and require a lot to time to digest.
And that is the weakness — the intricacy of the Climate/Culture Lie is such that the average person is likely to give up — it takes too much effort. Frequently I give up — I am forced by time and despair to accept descriptions that I cannot adequately validate nor can I understand their complexity, but yet the descriptions seem to make imminent sense in how they describe the complexity. Examples for me include my attempting to understand the older Keynesian economics and how they were replaced by neoliberalism, both of which have led to the destructive consumerism of modern culture.
Acedia and the Lie
It is this giving up that pushes me towards my own acedia, and I suspect underlies the vast acedia of our culture. In my PhD research, I proposed that the internal conflict that precedes acedia is a force field of many factors. On the positive side are the processes that could lead to resolution (phronesis): wisdom (sophia), discipline, hope and playfulness, all of which are disparaged in our present culture.
A balance of forces, heavily weighted to acedia
On the acedia side are the ways in which we treat ourselves. Inherently we are pain avoiders (basic biology), but our cultural models generally push us to self-deprecation (especially self-criticism when we do not fit the cultural models of size, shape, success, etc.), familial trauma (as families struggle with many internal and external demands of success, personal satisfaction, finances, etc.), and cultural trauma (in the many subtle ways in which we struggle with the failed promises of technology and economic life). And from this stance, we treat the planet: we allow world hunger, the maltreatment of women and children, the subtle maltreatment of men (witness the farmer suicides of India), environmental disaster after disaster — the list goes on.
What a mess! It is the mess that requires long-term correction to take us to a culture that intrinsically values all human life, and all of creation.
But the first order of priority is to stop global warming, and its immediate antecedents, the fossil fuel industry in its many pervasive forms. If we do not do that, the rest doesn’t matter.
If you are like me, you probably have never heard of the concept of acedia. I had not until I started my PhD, this despite more than 50 years of extensive reading. In this post, we look at the nature of acedia, and how it is the cultural norm; next post, I will tie it into how we maintain the Climate Lie.
What is acedia?
Why has no one heard of it? For one thing, the word has been in and out of the English language since its inception in ancient Greek, frequently labeled as archaic; its history is documented in my book Acedia. Originally it was a monastic term, and it did not survive the philosophic shift from religiosity to scientific materialism. Acedia described the condition of objecting to the effort of living, of being loving or charitable.
It was replaced by terms ranging from ennui to depression — less depth and breadth though; acedia is a better choice for me. I came to regard acedia as any combination of laziness, fearfulness and self-righteousness, all terms that block the individual from authenticity or spiritual maturity. And even these terms are easily misunderstood, usually with scorn — as noted, acedia objects to the effort of being authentic.
When people encounter a painful situation, they inherently want to resolve the pain; they want to authentically feel good and be satisfied with life. They ponder the issues, and if they have enough wisdom (as depth of understanding of universal truths, what the Greeks called sophia), they move to resolution (so-called practical wisdom, or phronesis) — and feel good. If not, they are usually in some kind of internal conflict — they want resolution, but they also want the pain to go away. If they have enough discipline, they work through the issues, again to resolution. If not, they shift to avoidance — still, if they have enough hope, they again find a way to move to resolution. In all of this, the skills of awareness (recognition) and of playfulness further aid in movement to resolution.
If none of this occurs, they move into some means of numbing the pain, some form of acedia manifest as laziness, fearfulness, or self-righteousness so as to overwhelm or transmute the pain into something familiar, some way to avoid. Then they cycle back into the patterns, with a different kind of pain, but one that they can mask.
It works! If it didn’t, we wouldn’t do it.
The problem is that acedia does not lead to long-term resolution, just avoidance. And in our culture, it is not easily challenged; it is judged inappropriate, but not shifted. Nor do we as a culture give much value to any of the needed skills: wisdom (sophia or phronesis), discipline (except for engaging in sports), hope (wishful thinking, yes; authentic hope, no), or playfulness (when do you really authentically play?).
Acedia as cultural norm.
So how has this become the cultural norm? I suggest that since the beginning of civilization, we have traumatized ourselves and each other. In The Parable Of The Tribes, Schmookler links the inherent difficulties of domination with the very nature of civilization. Since the very beginning (about 12,000 years ago), civilization has been a two-edged sword, with empire as the foundation. To have an empire means winners (dominators) and losers (subjects). The Greeks developed democracy, but were a slave culture. Fast forward to the Renaissance with the development of science and the Industrial Revolution, and industrial slavery and the rise of alcoholism. The 20th century brought technology and the valuing of women, and consumerism. The 21st century has given us the valuing of diversity, and global warming.
Look around. How many people do you know who are truly happy? How many alcoholics do you know? What about domestic violations? Or world hunger? Or the numerous political-economic betrayals of the past 50 years? We have a strange culture, certainly not a mature one.
I’ve been ill for the past week, still somewhat frail — it has given me an opportunity to think about what I really want, and why I am writing this blog. Succinctly, I believe that as a species we are on a suicide mission, and as a culture we are incredibly angry; you only have to look at the American politics to see how angry we are, and you only have to look at other situations to see how frustrated. I want to have a positive impact in changing all this.
Therapist: anger management
For almost 25 years, I taught anger management, and I was good. A judge would sometimes specify my weekend program as part of his judgments, to the exclusion of other better-known programs. A Probation Officer send me more that 60 clients for domestic issues over the years — he could only recall two who re-offended (after a while, he kept informal count, and eventually he gave me detailed feedback, published in my book Blowing Out The Darkness). Not all angry people end up with probation issues, but only two poor outcomes out of sixty is astounding.
During my career, I generally noted that my long-term clients fell into two groups. One group was very active in personal growth, and would change their lives in astounding ways; personal growth itself can be painful — these people would work through the pain, arriving at places in their lives where they were deeply satisfied.
My Acedia Clients
The second group was inactive. I came to characterize them as lazy and/or fearful. I am not intending to be pejorative, simply descriptive. By lazy I mean they would say they would do the work, and then produce no results other than excuses. By fearful, they would talk about how painful the work would be if they did it, and that they were afraid of the consequences (they were fearful — this was not fear!).
I eventually came to the conclusion that these issues were a broad reflection of their (unconscious) refusal to be authentic (so-called existential issues) and/or a refusal to engage in the profound beauty of life (one of my definitions of spiritual). I also know that I had no tools to offer — laziness and fearfulness were choices, and all I could do was to challenge the client to live authentically. (Actually, if the client accepted the challenge, the therapy became easy.)
PhD: Climate Change
After about 25 years, I recognized that I needed a break from my career, and the opportunity came for me to do my PhD at a university that emphasized authenticity. I decided that here was my opportunity to study laziness and fearfulness, and started on that journey. (I soon added self-righteousness, and subsumed all three under an ancient word acedia.)
Early in the course work, we were talking about the current state of our society, especially global warming. Given my first university degree was in physics, I easily understood the science and mechanics of global warming — I recognized we were on a suicide course, the extinction of the human species, no ifs! It is that serious. I was devastated, and it took me almost two years to get out of my despair (now long gone, but with residual sadness). So my dissertation became the relationship between acedia and global warming, eventually resulting in my second book Acedia, The Darkness Within, and the darkness of climate change.
Travels
For the next few years, I travelled, and saw a lot of the Caribbean, South America, and some of Europe. I also pondered one of my favorite expressions: “As individual human beings, we are capable of incredible greatness, but as a species, we are psychotic.” (Introverts, especially hermits, are very good at pondering.)
Global warming is a technological issue, but we do not resolve it. We have known about the issues for approximately 50 years, but we have continued on a path of denial and greed, such that now it might be too late. I hope not, and I intend to live as if it is not too late.
And global warming is simply the outcome of our hubris as a species. For perhaps millions of years, the Homo species has lived as hunter-gatherers. Ten thousand years ago (a drop in the bucket), we started to create civilizations through the dynamics of power. Eventually came scientific materialism, our marvelous technology, with hidden costs. And in our hubris, we did not want to pay the costs. Hence, we are where we are . . .
What I Want
About a year ago, after much vacillation, I decided this was not good enough. This is not how I want to spend my life, pondering. I have skills that are important to this whole struggle.
The world needs to mobilize its forces to deal with the ills of civilization. I can assist with this, although it is not my strong point. First, it must be mobilized to resolve global warming, likely at the level demonstrated in the States at the beginning of their direct contribution in the 1940s (see The Climate Mobilization). Second, we must create a more humane culture, one that honors the whole of the planet.
My skill is in being a resource to people who want to do the work. I believe there is a huge amount of anger in the world, even in the people who are doing the work. There is nothing wrong with anger, provided it does not lead to violation, but anger poorly managed leads to burnout, and burnout is not useful to doing the work. And I am very good at the management of both anger and burnout.
Next: What underlies global warming — the nature of acedia.
This post is part of what I am calling the core posts for understanding what I am attempting by this blog. For other core posts, click here.
Glitzy and exciting, but urban sprawl has major disadvantages.
Daily life in a mature culture — now that we have looked at the possibility of a Victory City, what would daily life actually be like in such a city? As noted, I am proposing that the high-rise buildings would consist of a large number of village-like settings, where people would actually live much of their day-to-day activity.
Let me flesh it out a lot, with a bit of imagination. I’m in a dilemma though — I want to provide details of my vision, mainly to have something to bounce against, but I am also fearful that I will lose the reader if I get too detailed, too utopian, to hold interest. But I do so because such visioning is what I am encouraging in our society — we need a sustainable vision so as to more forward to what we want, not away from what we don’t want. Such is life!
Here is an overview. I strongly value Herman’s characteristics of individuation, relationship as primary, face-to-face democracy, and the need for a mythic narrative. So, for me, the needs are:
personal development of individuals,
relationships that maximize diversity and cooperation,
village life as the source of interaction,
the ending of consumerism, and
the sustainability and resilience of our planet.
To accomplish this, I suggest we must maximize both:
modular production of consumable products (minimizing footprint and waste while preserving effectiveness of function), and
individual creativity and expressiveness.
A tall order. Utopian in many respects, but still for me a vision of a creative life. There could be a lot of uniformity in the mundane areas of life (extensive modular design would keep the industrial impact to a minimum), and there could be much creativity and diversity of the smaller aspects. For example, buildings throughout the world could be quite uniform, but the manner in which they were decorated, externally and internally, could be incredibly diverse.
I am assuming that, if:
the basic needs of food, shelter, education, and health were provided, and
people throughout the planet were orientated to a balance of diversity and community, placing high value on personal development and creativity rather than consumerism,
then there would be little need for money and private property, and a large need for individual creativity.
Suppose, then:
the planetary population was one billion (1,000,000,000) people
there were 5000 cities of 200,000 people each
each city would occupy about 10 square miles (much smaller than current cities today), with extensive wilderness surrounding.
the wilderness areas would be available for exploration, provided the human impact was well managed.
each city would specialize in a limited number of activities (in modular fashion) required by the world population.
these might consist of some kind of industrial production, or some kind of artistic production such as film or theatre, all of which could be distributed to other cities, either in physical form (industrial) or virtual (artistic)
each city would consist of 40 high-rise buildings of 5000 people each
there would be another 40 low-rise buildings for such activities as food production, transportation, maintenance, et cetera
all buildings would be green buildings (see the Manchester Retrofit of the previous post)
most mundane activities would be automated to a major extent, but activities enjoyed by human personnel (e.g., garden care and cooking) would be encouraged
each high-rise would be 90 floors
15 floors for high-rise common area, such as schools and hospitals, and/or industrial activity.
full medical and educational facilities would be present in each high-rise, with advanced facilities located in some of the out-buildings.
most industrial activity would be automated, requiring only limited supervision and/or the equivalent of sophisticated machinists. Much could be done under remote control with sophisticated electronics.
75 floors of village-like living groups
every 3 floors would be a village of 200 people
each village would consist of 2 floors living area, with 1 common floor sandwiched between
connections within high-rises and between buildings would all be by high-volume, high-speed elevators and walkways, minimizing travel time within the city, and almost eliminating the use of personal vehicles.
I will continue next post with the characteristics of these village sandwiches.
