Fixing Human Political Systems
A very intelligent man proposes we use the constitutional convention to make one or more amendments that would prohibit privately-funded elections in the United States.
As I’ve been pondering how best a movement can overthrow The Man in the Twenty-First Century since the Occupy movement started to radicalize me some months back, I was inclined to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it came to US politics.
That’s to say, I was persuaded by Noam Chomsky’s opinion that the nation-state system is a failure. I’m inclined to agree with him, and also with Derrick Jensen. Jensen desires a world of thousands of (presumably technologically primitive) cultures inspired by their landbases. I don’t completely agree with Jensen, but Chomsky really resonates with me.
As Chomsky says,
the nation state is pretty much a European invention, I mean there were similar things, but the nation state in the modern form was largely created in Europe over many centuries. It’s so unnatural and artificial that it had to be imposed by extreme violence. In fact that’s the primary reason why Europe was the most savage part of the world for centuries. It was due to trying to impose a nation state system on cultures and societies that are varied and if you look at them had no relation to this artificial structure.
He also admits that he has no idea what type of socio-political structure should replace the nation-state. I don’t know either, but I do know that the centralization and monopolization of power and control is the single greatest threat to human beings, and the planet’s other life-forms. Thus I’m inclined to say we need some kind of system whose power is decentralized, whose communities are rooted in bioregions, and which practices direct democracy to the greatest extent possible.
the world is in flames
The international climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, succeeded two weeks back. Succeeded, that is, in putting Africa, Australia, the world’s small island states, and much of Asia on the deathlist.
“Saving tomorrow Today” runs the slogan of the 17th Conference of the Parties. What came of the 16-day sweat- and anxiety-laden event? (An event that the Obama Administration consistently sabotaged.) This: a pledge by all countries to accept binding emission cuts by 2020. Twenty-twenty? As Australia and Russia burn, killing tens of thousands? As Pakistan submerges? And as CO2 emissions surpass scientists’ worst-case predictions? As the United States faces record-breaking extreme weather events?
The political and economic elite, manic at the helm of their decades-antiquated model of “development,” industrial capitalism, have logjammed once again humanity’s only chance at reconciliation with the planet and our own psychosis.
International Director of Greenpeace Nami Kaidoo remarked: “The chance of averting catastrophic climate change is slipping through our hands with every passing year that nations fail to agree on a rescue plan for the planet.”
More from Common Dreams:
Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, said: “Delaying real action till 2020 is a crime of global proportions.
“This means the world is on track to a 4C temperature rise, a death sentence for Africa, small island states and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. The richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%.”
Climate chaos a -- a'now. (The Energy Collective)
I pray that by now you don’t read this post’s title with skepticism that it’s “alarmist.” No, quite literally, it’s an accurate statement of fact and a useful metaphor for the state of us.
The United States of Corporations
I Pledge Allegiance
To Dismantle
The United States of Corporations
And to the Profits for Which They Stand
One Nation, In Dispute, End Tyranny and Torture on All
Eu Presto Juramento
Desfazer
Os Estados Unidos da Corporação
E aos Lucros para que Eles Existem
Uma Nação, Em Disputa, Pôr Fim à Tirania e Tortura de Todos
All for one, One for One
Dress that Pheasant. Dress it good!
The Head of the Beast. The Hand in the Jacket
Here at Killruddery the wwoofers (volunteer farmworkers) get to learn many different skills.
We used pliars to force the leg out with tendons attached; easier to eat that way.
Today we skinned 2 pheasants and 2 wood pidgeons using the all-powerful Youtube. All specimens were killed and collected on the Killruddery premises. Talk about getting in touch with your food and where it comes from! As you can tell, working here expands my skill-set as regards sustainable food production, from farming to cooking. And besides, I get to play with Lord Ardee's behbehz, Nora and Aldus. Good times.
Soon we will build a tire-dragon. Stay tuned!
That pheas' is totes skinless. Also, I paid my respects for its sacrifice
The residents of Casa Tabernak: the conscientious Senhor Junji and yers truly
On Violence, Part I
This:
Our whole society tells us that it’s OK to have police with guns, and armies with bombs, and prison guards and hospital orderlies and dance club bouncers using force for the common good, and we think nothing of it; but when someone suggests it might be OK to shove a cop, to sabotage a missile silo, to spike a tree, then suddenly it’s a betrayal of principles, a dance with the devil, a moral crisis. (1)
Prieur continues by stating that the violence stigma stems from a “fear of the unpredictable,” although in the forseeable future, our species’s present course has us destined to effect the “near-extermination of the Earth and everything on it.”
In the sequel to that essay, he writes
Attacking tools that are about to destroy a piece of land with which you have a deep relation is like shooting the gun out of the hand of someone about to kill your family… since most corporations are continuously actively destroying the earth, well-chosen anti-corporate sabotage is like attacking a man who’s strangling your mother
It’s too much GOOD, yo
The hip, progressive GOOD Magazine has engaged its readers with a 30-day health challenge series, each day featuring a different prescription. Though I agree with them on most points, like “Taking a Siesta,” “Replacing Happy Hour with Physical Exercise,” and “Eating Local Food,” I took some time to criticize constructively their advice for everyone to drink 8 glasses of water per day.
My comment follows.
————————————————
Dear GOOD!
I think that a blanket recommendation to drink 8 glasses of agua per day is unwise, and potentially harmful for the following reasons.
First, everyone has a different make-up, lifestyle, and lives in different climates that require different degrees of water consumption.
Second, drinking too much water can deplete the body of minerals.
So, why not recommend people learn to listen to their bodies more instead of prescribing a One-Rule-Fits-All? I propose the following guidelines for folks interested in, er, ‘perfecting’ their water consumption:
(1) Drink a glass of water upon waking, as the body’s usually dehydrated first thing in the morning. Though doesn’t most everyone do this anyway?
(2) Limit liquid intake at meals to soups/stews/sauces, and a tea/coffee after the meal. Drink water 30 – 60 min before mealtimes to prepare the body for digestion. Drinking lots of liquid at mealtimes impairs digestion by diluting stomach acids.
(3) Pay attention to how you’re feeling 1-2 hours after meals. Ask yourself, “Am I feeling hungry?” If so, you’re probably mistaking hunger for thirst. Consider drinking water about 1-2 hours after mealtimes to facilitate digestion.
I think these rules fit better than a blanket statement of “8 glasses per day or else.”
Is “Sustainable Growth” an oxymoron?
Derrick Jensen thinks so.
AI! My bad, I forgot to introduce to you one of the most thought-provoking leaders of the global justice movement’s environmental wing: the philosopher, writer, and educator Derrick Jensen.
In a recent essay, he posits that most Euro-americans have ingrained the idea that the following two things are inherent qualities, and thus the destiny of, humanity:
1) Limitless technological expansion, and “its cousin”
2) Infinite economic growth
I like his thinking. The following bit struck me as well:
“…what, after all, is production? It is the conversion of the living to the dead…. And what, then, is gross national product? It is a measure of this conversion of the living to the dead. The more quicklwhat, after all, is production? It is the conversion of the living to the deady the living world is converted into dead products, the higher the GNP.”
Read the full article here and see how he answers the question above fully.
Resurrecting ‘Ruddery…
Three days of downpours. Below 10C temperatures. Woodfire stove our only hope… except it smokes us out, causing us to open the windows and door, canceling out the warmth.
Welcome to Hibernia, the Land of Winter.
That’s what the Romans called this place, commonly enshrined as the Emerald Isle. Indeed, without all the moisture, this island probably wouldn’t have such a unique, cold-ass hardly-bearing-the-class “temperate” climate. And I doubt this place would be so lush were it not so wet.
I find myself volunteering at Kilruddery House, one of Ireland’s largest estates, and site of the island’s largest gardens.
Home to the Earls of Meath since 1618, the estate is more like a village, with at least 20 people living on the premises. The staff of 30, including a groundskeeper, “Livestock Manager” (more sanely referred to as shepherd by yours truly), and the head gardener. HeritageIsland.com lauds the place as “the most significant revival Elizabethan mansion in Ireland.” The site goes on: “Killruddery is unique in having one of the most extensive early formal gardens, in their original style, surviving in Ireland today.”
I haven’t taken fotos of the gardens or grounds themselves because nothing would do them justice save seeing them in person. If you really wanna take a gander, I recommend looking up “Kilruddery gardens” in Google images.
However, I have taken other photos and uploaded them onto Flickr! If you wanna see ‘em, just let me know and I’ll invite you to the fotostream.
Also, we filmed an Apple Extraction Process. It’s on Youtube. Do check it out (and watch my senior recital if you haven’t already 
. Click here to watch the 1-minute vid.
Observations:
1) Agriculture, whether small-scale gardening or large-scale schemes, is rather violent. As a member of the food movement, I notice folks romanticizing “going back to the land” and “tending the land.” Though I think these activities are very important for breaking the cultural trance of consumerist-capitalism, and for reconnecting with nature, it’s important to maintain perspective, folks.
For example, in my work here on the farm, I’ve noticed violence in every process. As I break up wood mulch, I disturb millions of organisms living there. I give veritable heart attacks to centipedes, roly-polies, and other small animals, destroying their homes. I shock earthworms unintentionally, often severing their bodies. I watch them writhe and squirm.
Essentially, I think vegans are somewhat jaded. Their thinking epitomizes a kind of romantic, highly-unrealistic and frankly distorted idea of the Earth: that we humans can endure long without doing harm to other organisms. In their attempt to respect all living things, they perpetuate a romanticized idea of the planet as a benevolent metaorganism, when in fact it would wipe us off the face of the Earth, if it had a chance, for what we’ve done to it. Vegan ideology violates a fundamental rule of nature: human beings need food from animals to thrive, let alone survive.
Which brings us to my point: long-term human survival relies upon the slaughter of low- and higher-order organisms both plant and animal for nourishment. We need to directly kill animals to harvest their nutritious flesh, and we need to indirectly kill animals to farm in an ecologically-sound manner.
That is the reality of the human condition on Earth. All peoples through time knew this, and those who rejected the circle of life — if there were any vegan societies ever — obviously perished. In fact, I’d say our hunter-gatherer cousins, many of which subsisted mainly on flesh, lived far more sustainably than your average hemp-gorging Amazonian soy milk-downing vegan of the 21st Century. There is not one single traditional culture on the planet that eschews animal foods entirely. From my learning, those that do not consume much dairy, eggs, seafood or meat only do so out of poverty (excepting Hindus, Jainists, and other veg-head groups).
(The largest traditionally vegetarian group, the Hindus, could not have survived without fat-soluble vitamins and calcium in ghee, whole raw milk, yogurt, cheese, and in some cases eggs. But how can you practice ahimsa as a Hindu vegetarian having to purchase tainted milk extracted from diseased, stressed out, and confined cows fed on Who Knows What? Such is our broken food system in the States.)
End pro-Circle of Life diatribe.
Thanks for reading! Also, if you have a moment, stop by the other blog I contribute to, Nutrition by Tradition.
The dome at left is of the Orangery, a kind of 17th Century glass-walled discotheque.
Vonnegutian Nuggets
From arguably the most important United Statsian novelist of the 20th Century: Kurt Vonnegut. Four quotes from his final book, Timequake:
The best thing to be when free will kicks in, probably, is a Mbuti, a Pygmy in a rainforest in Zaire, Africa.
Should the nation’s wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistriubted to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.
The Three Horsemen of the Oncologic Apocalypse: Surgery, Chemotherapy, and Radiation.
I asked my friend how many people on the whole planet had what we had, which was lives worth living. Between the two of us, we came up with *seventeen percent.*
I welcome your thoughts.
Vonnegut's signature, replete with clever missive
Update Éireannach
I wrote the following to a dear friend recently. Let it serve as an update written in colloquial Colin, where capital Is don’t exist.
Ireland couldn’t be better.. Spent 2 months down in Castletownbere on the Beara Peninsula stocking industrial food in my uncle’s supermarket, earning plenty of dough to … go support the organic food movement through Wwoofing for a few months! Cruel irony? This is my last week on my first Wwoof farm, Mill Little. I couldn’t have asked for a better first wwoofing experience, Alexon. Christine moved out here to West Cork (Coomhola specifically, near Bantry town) to live off the land as simply as she could. To make a few “bob,” she opened an English school here. That has sustained her very well, bringing much richness to her life it seems. She was one of the pioneers of this farm-English-school model, apparently.
I could go on and on about what i’ve learned! Lots about Irish music, culture, history, about growing vegetables in Ireland. For example, in this extremely wet, often very cold climate, and through an exceptionally cold summer (caused of course by global heating), Christine still managed to grow – tomatoes! Can you guess the only thing separating the tomatoes from Ireland’s harsh climate? A plastic sheet. Awesome! As far as livestock go, I learned how to tend (feed, shepherd, etc) goats, chickens, and ducks as well as basic gardening skills. I also did a bunch of breadmaking (like made 9 loaves in a single afternoon, jaysus chrai’), cooking, and even learned how to felt (made a rather druidic bag). I think my cooking skills have improved too. I’ve gotten faster. Everyone seems to like what i whip up… but i think it’s really still hit or miss with ‘t.
Alexon, you would DIE at this Farm. Christine (the owner’s) website does not lie when it says Mill Little’s a “little paradise.” The 7 acre part-farm, part-wildlife reserve teems with life. Christine single-handedly planted a small woodland here, and on the western side of the property she’s planting an entire forest. Lining the eastern edge is the gorgeous Coomhola River with multiple waterfalls, moss-covered rock faces, and swimming holes (plural), and easily-pluckable plastic detritus.
We get 6-9 eggs per day as well as up to one liter of milk! It’s actually quite challenging consuming it all. As much as i like dairy products and eggs (TONS), i’m not a fan of uncooked milk, which means lots of puddings and custards to be had.
I can feel myself maturing here, as this – my fourth and last week has me looking after all 7 acres of the farm. That really only translates to watering the polytunnels (plastic greenhouses), twice daily feedings of all the animals (did i mention the two cats?), and guarding Christine’s friend Andy as he milks the goats in the morning.
Among the things i’ve learned:
- To qualify as a farmer here and thus get grants (*erhem*… subsidies), you need to have at least 11 goats.
- Owning a few livestock is a terrific way to get fresh, super-high quality animal food whether dairy or eggs, and it’s generally low-maintenance,
- On smaller scales, goats are favorable over cows because the latter require lots more land to graze on and are much more likely to tip over, quite honestly (though goats have massively wide abdomens as if there were a huge sack of organs wrapped in a bag and tied at two ends of a feeble stick (the spine), so the two animals are neck-and-neck as far as tippability goes).
- Overall, Ireland has much fresher air than the US thanks to constant cleansing from precipitation and way fewer people/cars/industry.
- The Irish are extremely sarcastic and relish teasing one another. In fact, it’s better culturally speaking to demonstrate how much you care about someone through “takin’ de piss outta dem” than cheap compliments.
- The island ain’t called Emerald for no reason, and it deserves its popularity as one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Every little nook and cranny here – small dirt roads leading to glens, simple brooks and streams too insignificant to be mentioned in tourist brochures – has a depth of beauty that you just have to see and feel. And i’m not romanticizing.
- The Irish speak Hiberno-English, a completely different dialect from American or British. With lots of loanwords and sayings directly translated from Gaelic, there’s lots to say about the language, so you’ll have to ask me in GChat, or accost me until i write an entire blog post about it, or something.
Meanwhile, in the Colinosphere, the weather’s been very reflective, full of a type of nostalgia Portuguese speakers call sausages – wait, i mean saudades. These are fond memories of experiences you can’t relive. The ones i’m relapsing into are of the past 5 years. I met such dynamic, unique people (yourself!) and left having formed several friendships that i intend to make last because my life just wouldn’t be the same without ‘em. I’m really happy to have stayed a 5th year; that was when my bonds were sealed with said friends (sister!). The breadth, depth, and diversity of the college years – from protesting Prop. 8 in Long Beach 2008, to us marching out onto the streets of Irvine against the tuition increases in 2010, to the inspirational classes, though few. UCI leaves me dazed, but i’m determined not to let it have been the best years of my life. Unfortunate when people say that college was the best time of their lives, no?
Anyway, plans for the next 2 months: continue wwoofing near Dublin and Wicklow National Park, visit Spain for a bit, hang with the relatives in London, Wales, and Yorkshire, and finally visit Grace on my way back to Cali. With a possible trip to see the Swede. I may stay until past Christmas, if i can stretch the funds or earn a bit more cash along the way.
All the best, yaw!
