Yes, we have choices

There is food for thought for those people who have been wracking their brains while trying to find an Xmas gift item for people who already have everything (within a reasonable price range) they want or need. Maybe they should finally realise that they are looking full in the face at the so obvious wastefulness of our consumerist system.

Can we do more with less? Certainly we can. Do we need to buy a $50,000 vehicle every few years simply because it's been engineered to start breaking down by that time?

I happen to believe that a techno-fix for over-consumption in almost every facet of our life-style is possible, and that the only thing standing in the way are businessmen gov'ts dedicated to destructive, ever-growing GNPs.

These people and their policies will always deliver the "meltdowns" we are seeing today, and as they exploit the percieved natural "surplusses" beyond sustinability, one after the other, the meltdowns are becoming more routine.

Chaos, as the article suggests, looms in full view ahead.

Blame the advertising!

Chaos is coming!
As long as the media is driven by commercial interests, the masses will keep believing that nothing can go wrong!

At the moment they accept a bit of a setback, but unless they themselves are hurt, they feel assurred that given a year or two we can go back and become complacent again.

Complacent really describes the average Joe, as the article points out here at Xmas time we realize that everybody has more "stuff" than they know what to do with.

We have reached a time where it is difficult to dispose of perfect stuff, because nothing but the latest version is acceptable to anyone.

If change is to happen it will take world-wide control, to stop the influence of commercial interests, and to start a new campaign to make people begin to live sensibly.

In a world where no two nations can agree on much, it seem impossible that we can get anything but chaos.

Think of a Better Name for It

Quite frankly, we have already embraced mediocrity. That is the problem. We use a lot of resources creating a lot of crap. What we need to do is produce less using few resources and produce better results.

Cheap energy and resources have made us lazy and stolen our creativity. This has created mediocrity. The way forward is to demand excellence.

Yes rac, screw mediocrity

If we dispense with the frills that substitute for quality, excellence can once again become the goal of wise spending that I remember from my childhood days.

Check your head on this "New" Idea: Part I

I was willing to entertain the hypothesis until I read this sentence: "the big rock you inhabit is as ordinary as phlegm."

...and it is a sentence that I disagree with and find objectionable. First, desipte the bold assertion, where is the evidence from the author of the actual existence of even one planet other than Earth that is so teeming with life, so filled with genetic biodiversity, so full of natural capital and ecological services as this planet. Not one iota of evidence, except the assertion that "300 distant' planets have been found by Hubble. The mere fact that 300 distant planets has been found, is no grounds to resort to the patently unreasonable & speculative assertion that "the rock we inhabit is as ordinary as phlegm". That is why I disagree.

As to why I object to the assertion is that the metaphor is similar to what was used by Ronald Regan, who in authorizing increased industrial logging of the Redwood forests was reputed to have said" if you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all". In fact, underlying the deconstructionist assertion that this earth is as common as phlegm is an attitude that asserts that because it is so common, we are free to legitimize corporations/governments and ourselves to carry on unbelievable destruction of multiple, even global ecosystems in the name of material "progress" and consumerism, we are free to throw away this planet, throw away hundreds of animal & plant species, and throw away just like "phlegm" countless billions of people who constitute the poor, the excluded, the homeless. It is an attitude that says, since Earth is so common we can just do whatever we want for the material "god of progress", to benefit the privileged few, because there is always another place to steal and commodify where the grass may be greener, where there is a $ to be made, where externalities need not be counted. This is not a New Idea, it is an old consciousness, an old mediocrity, an old myth that needs to be ushered out the door together with Stevie Harper, neo-liberal capitalism and its adherents in the scientific and university world.

Check your head on this "New" Idea: Part II

What is a New Idea, is that Earth is a pretty special place, it is equally home to all species, including human, that its bioproductivity and biodivesity is incredible, it has a rich and diverse human culture and that we need to stop being greedy kids with limitless 'wants' and grow to our full potential as a mindful and compassionate species. We need to shift from the mediocrity of treating this planet, other species and the billions of impoverished excluded humans as "common pieces of phlegm/" to trash and throw away. We need to shift our consciousness away from mediocrity to an attitude of mindful compassion that gets it" that for all species on Earth there is no place called "away", there is but one Earth, and we need to cultivate much more respect, tolerance, a lighter ecological footprint, and much more sustainable and mindfully compassionate human presence on this planet....and in doing so we will be happier, wiser, and will have fulfilled more of our positive and creative potentials as humans. Perhaps this article was meant as satire, but whatever, I say check your head before accepting this "new" idea. This is not, in my estimation a new consciousness for the new year or a new century. Tyee, you can do much better!

Live Richly

Evolution, after a hideously long start, finally resulted in the emergence of a species--homo sapien sapiens--which is capable of doing something other than participate in the eat or be eaten "ethos" that was the only story the universe had to tell 'til that point. Nothing should be treated with disrespect, but neither the Earth nor the Universe is to be looked to for wisdom.

The way forward is to imagine life as something we deserve to enjoy very richly. It is to continue to see in the everyday so many new opportunities to play and grow. We should treat those who feel the need for dopamine fueled episodes of narcissism--I'm King of the World, type stuff (forgive me James Cameron--I very much still did enjoy your movie!); but also those who feel the chronic need to downplay their own life's gains, to characterize the life they *prefer* to live, as mediocre.

Conservation vs Exploitation

All my life, I seem to have been waiting for people to realize what Daniel Woods is explaining here about the finite nature of the planet we live on.

And all my life in B.C., I have seen and lived the struggle between the conservers and the exploiters. Who's winning? Well, just look at who's running the province right now and what they're doing to the basic elements: the rivers, the forests, the oceans. Especially look at the relentless struggle to preserve the A.L.R.

Therefore, these are the lines from this excellent article which scare me most:

"As Homer-Dixon sees it, there are two human options for the future: 1) capitulation to drastic worldwide regulations and limits…or 2) chaos.

"To achieve the former, there'd have to be restrictions on consumption and on freedoms that -- to use Homer-Dixon's phrase, "would be Holland -- times 10." It would be a world of unimaginable technocratic order, enforced mediocrity, and eco-police."

How easy, with a keyboard, to describe the future world that way.

But anyone can see that it's Organized Crime that already has the upper hand on order, mediocrity, and police ... and judging by what we already know, we should assume that -- unless we get our Good Guys act together -- Organized Crime will have an iron grip on a future of unimaginable, enforced mediocrity. The signs and symptoms are all in view, right now. The Bad Guys are winning here, there, everywhere.

There's still time for caring people to reach out and trust one another -- to s.t.f.u. and unite to do better.

But if we can't face the visible reality of Organized Crime ... we are providing the prerequisite for that unimaginable regime to be ushered in officially and permanently.

Lightbulb?

Why are you using a light bulb that is a proven mercury hazard to promote your ideas?

http://www.truthout.org/122308E

Let's Not Conceal the Criminal Dimension of the Financial Crisis
Tuesday 16 December 2008
»
by: Jean-François Gayraud and Noël Pons, Le Figaro

Deploring the imbrication of crime and criminal monies in the financial system, authors Jean-François Gayraud and Noël Pons quote Paul Newman's character Henry Gondoff in "The Sting," "No sense in being a grifter if it's the same as being a citizen."

Jean-François Gayraud, divisional commissioner of the National Police, and Noël Pons, adviser at the Central Service for the Prevention of Corruption, establish a connection between criminality and the financial crisis.

No one contests that the subprime crisis has both structural (the orgy of credit) and cyclical (the bursting of the real estate bubble in the United States) dimensions. However, no one appears to see the criminal aspects of this globalized financial crisis. A surprising omission, since history teaches us that all financial crises "contain" a criminal dimension, either by the intrusion of organized crime, or by the repetition of criminal operations committed by normal market actors; and sometimes also through the association of these two universes. In our comments, we desire neither to reduce a systemic crisis to gangsterism, nor to flush out any improbable scapegoats, but rather are concerned to remind everyone that crime - whether organized or not - infiltrates everywhere where money reigns, including the financial markets.

Also see below:
Economic Crisis and Criminality •

... Crime accompanies, amplifies and sometimes provokes financial crises. Besides, how can one not be troubled by the strange public alert American Attorney General Michael Mukasey launched in May 2008 on the growing threat to national security represented by "organized crime's penetration of the markets?"

Practically everyone seems to have obscured the fact that the Western world has already lived through two big crises with a strong "criminal smell" during the 1980-1990 period, also in a context of careless real estate lending and market deregulation ...

Two Paths and Mediocrity

Of the two roads from which humanity could choose, chaos has already been chosen -- logic having long since been left in the dust by a fickle, foolish, duped North American public leading the rest of the world over the cliff's edge. To my reckoning, that happened just about the time of the creation of the atomic bomb and the advent of the new, post-war industrial age.

As for embracing "mediocrity"... I prefer to call it "the small." Living the simple, good life - healthy gardening practices, close community, supported by local, renewable crafts and industry - doesn't have to be mediocre - but could be beautiful, inherently workable, and yes, small.

The best 2 lines in anything I've read this entire year come from Wood's essay above:

"As he leaves the store, he admits that he doesn't have much hope for the future. But he does, he says, have faith… in the potato."
I say Amen to that.

Not Wanted On This Journey

Alda says: "Living the simple, good life - healthy gardening practices, close community, supported by local, renewable crafts and industry - doesn't have to be mediocre - but could be beautiful, inherently workable, and yes, small."

Sounds excellent, but can I bring my Xbox? I don't want to spend all my time knitting.

The Planet Pleasantville Prophecy

Rent George Lucas' THX 1138 and see another take on how human relationships might be shaped in some future Pleasantville.

Tyee doing great!

Peter Dimitov, a few commenters back..... I liked your take on this article and think that the author agrees with you, but was taking a different tack.
For this, I disagree with your last comment, "Tyee, you can do much better." Your great comment was fostered by this article, and such an interplay of ideas is what Tyee strives for. Yeah, Tyee.

the mediocrity of mass appeal/globalization

For me, this article is based on a false assumption - that embracing mediocrity will somehow act as a redeeming force. Quite the opposite I think.... for to embrace the principle of mediocrity expounded on here one would have to see a violet as quite an ordinary thing, the long epic journey of butterflies as rather ho-hum and the liquid mercury splendour of the moon reflecting on the ocean at night as...well, "predictable."

I think it is more that we have lost our sense of wonder.

We no longer recognize what is truly extraordinary...and we have replaced the wonder and "the rush" that comes with that wonder with... to use a biblical phrase: "false gods".

Most of our precious and irreplaceable...and very short "time" on this wondrous earth is now being spent on the selling and worship of those "false gods."

That's gotta be mediocrity itself...not to mention real stupidity.

The Gardening Lion--Maybe If We Continue to Aspire and Dream

It's too bad that in order to be Progressive you've apparently got to love nature too. Myself, I don't much like swamps. I'm not sure if I'm all that big on fir trees, either. I guess when it comes to nature I'm mostly in the Annie Dillard camp--you know, amongst those that see quite a bit of amazing beauty in nature, but a good hunk of absolutely horrifying muck as well.

It'd be cool to be allowed to be progressive and really prefer cities, urban landscapes--wo/man made stuff. It'd be nice to be able to count oneself as progressive and most be focussed on all the amazing particularities and beautiful variances in high end designer goods, rather than those in nature.

It'd be nice to know that no one could say of progressives--"You've seen one progressive, you've seen them all"--and be readily believed.

And I still think that progressives ought to be those who, when they see some poor starving lion snacking on some poor baby antelope, would find themselves drawn to think, "you know, we've really got to stop all that needless suffering. " Who'd hear talk of the beauty of ecosystems and the horrors of human intervention, and still find themselves thinking, "you know, I'd still prefer it if those starving lions stopped munching on those baby antelopes--Maybe we could encourage them to garden..."

Do tell indeed

"..the eat or be eaten "ethos" that was the only story the universe had to tell 'til that point."

- What point was that? This has changed?

Madoff/Enron/bcrail/Eron/etc.,etc.,etc.

Is there in fact more than one used planet in our cosmos already? I am sure we don't live on the same one.. Do enlighten me, someone..

Dorothy

Hi Dorothy. Happy holidays!

If you are human and are treated kindly, lovingly in your childhood--the reptilian part of your brain not withstanding--you will be a wholy (possibly sic) loving "entity." Most progressives have received a fair bit of love in their childhood--the "universe" they came to know at birth (and even before, in the womb) was often a very loving, fun place. They can be counted on to want others to experience the same and to do enormous good. And, ultimately, as they are the most creative/playful and least demon-haunted/fearful people about, the future is with them (thank God).

So to your list, I counter: Jim Henson/the Tyee/Greenpeace/Obamanation/the low-key, peaceful, recycling generation/etc. etc. etc. And also centuries of gradually improving standards for the treatment of all living things, despite periods of terrible regress.

The development of homo sapien sapiens, a species which has the capacity to be and, though in patches, is becoming, an entirely loving species, and the universe they are in the process of remaking, is best evidence that the truest story of the universe now is a love story. ("A coming-of-age tale" would be a very distant second.) Before true empathy emerged, there was simply darkness, naught but a horror story.

patrickmh

for everything there is a season...

Just to add one thing in regard to the mediocrity principle - a principle which has, I think, the potential to evolve into a kind of puritanism.

It is not excess itself that is bad. Great art, great music, great loves and great ideas are often borne out of excess...excessive desire, excessive hunger...on and on.

The need for diversity and multiplicity are at the core of addressing this as well....that we don't value just one thing....to the detriment of all else. Like continually playing one note on the piano - 'til there is no music only noise....which is what globalization has done....produced a one-note hunger for sameness.

(And if like Patrick urban landscapes are your thing...and why not....just help to make the landscape you choose a livable humane one.)

Legalised theft.

Can our economic system be fairly called a criminal one? I can hear some of my friends snorting in derision at the idea. And a few hours ago I would have too, before I saw some posters state it above. One of them added the necessary word "deregulation" which flipped on the light for me. Beyond any question, what we are witnessing now is legalised theft, and all that is missing is the general recognition of it.

In the normal sense of the word, today's business practices are perfectly legal and therefore not "criminal". But very few of us here, I think, would argue that although the events which led to the meltdown were indeed legal, the perpetrators were far from following the high moral principles they and we profess to hold.

And so we've come to the full realisation of what happens to a society which loses its reliance upon ethical principles and comes to instead rely only upon legality for sorting out the differences between "right" and "wrong".

In rejecting the false morality that religiosity delivers, we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater by putting legal definitions in its place. The essential flaw in both systems is that they come to rely upon authoritarian force rather than persuasion to make their laws work.

That in turn opens the door for religious and political ideologues - authoritarians both - to take control of the system and use it to foster their own selfish ends, while promoting the false notion that what is good for them is necessary for the good of everyone.

This is particularly obvious in the political philosophy and practices of the Reformers who have duplicitiously co-opted the Conservative banner Federally, and the Liberal flag In BC.

These are the same people who have long railed against "Nanny gov't" intruding into people's lives, but who are all the while slowly introducing ever more regulations that constrict our freedoms. They want more and stricter laws to make us behave, even while they "deregulate" laws designed to keep business under control.

While these Reformers continue to thump their Bibles, they brazenly loot our natural resources to suit their Corporate donors and ignore even their own rules for proper governance, in actual fact blithely acting contrarily to all their professsed Christian beliefs.

What seems perfectly obvious is that for them Christian practice is what happens when you go to church, while business and political ethics are completely divorced from any observance of their so-called "faith".

Now see here...

Capacity I will buy. It's just that so darn much can get in the way and too often does. We can be so incredibly perverse and projecting, not to metion inept or dumb or mean or petty.

Empathy? Some cannot afford it/muster it/ find it. I have a 'thing' that haunts me: A picture of a little girl, looking up, completely trusting, at whoever is 'up there', while she sits on the floor. Knowing what, or who, she did in fact meet with, and how it happend that she is not with us any more, this can make me toss and turn painfully.

There is such a long way to go. We need to remember that, or we will underrate the task.

And, you CANNOT go home again, neither to Kansas nor anywhere else. Home is something you create where you are, for yourself and others. Makie everybody feel at home, that is my agenda always.

Mediocrity

As Homer-Dixon sees it, there are two human options for the future: 1) capitulation to drastic worldwide regulations and limits…or 2) chaos.

To achieve the former, there'd have to be restrictions on consumption and on freedoms that -- to use Homer-Dixon's phrase, "would be Holland -- times 10." It would be a world of unimaginable technocratic order, enforced mediocrity, and eco-police. Flagrant extravagance would be a crime.

That is the good option. To achieve the latter -- chaos -- Earthlings just have to keep doing what we're doing now.

And there it is, exposed for all to see, the sick enviro-fanaticism driving the eco movement today. Where eco-police will force you to conform, to save the planet. Exactly what dictators from the beginning of time have done, use a crisis to enforce their will upon the people.

Dorothy

Quote:

"Make everybody feel at home, that is my agenda always."

That's a lovely thought, Dorothy...and a great principle in itself.

Merry Christmas to you.

start with santa claus?

People are reviled for refusing to do the Santa dance with their children.

Santa is about training children to pretend to believe the preposterous in order to get a material reward, however destructive and brain-sucking the "reward" may be.

Margot

Well, if the material reward is an Xbox 360, it can stimulate the brain and maybe even provide spiritual uplift. Have you ever played Star Wars' Battlefront? I know, I know--it's an old game, but it's still my very favourite!

Battlefront?

Battlefront? I rest my case. I'd rather children sat on the snow by the river and watched swans.

Taking it Out and Chopping it Up!--Battlefront!

Margot, river-side, swan watching might be just the thing gardening lions might one day come to prefer, but for children already half frozen by the after-shocks of 9/11, better parenting advice comes from those such as Royal Tenenbaum, who advocate unrestrained, active, mobility:

"I'm not talking about dance lessons. I’m talking about putting a brick through the other guy’s windshield. I’m talking about taking it out and chopping it up!"

Lynn

Thank you, and the same to you. You should also know, that your forthrightness and ability to see an issue all the way into the obscure corners and put that insight into words, has many a time made me feel more at home!

Nick-names and such

“Santa is about training children to pretend to believe the preposterous in order to get a material reward”

I believe the first preposterous thing they have to believe in is the figure himself! And preposterous he is; he could be likened to a bear with a siphoning tube going into his gall-bladder, held captive to accommodate the raw greed of men (and women – OK?)

‘Santa’ started as a chieftain/priest of sorts, red-and-white clad (in order to commemorate the psilocybin-laden plant that could send him flying), who would do some magic stuff somewhere in the Eurasian steppes to mark the winter solstice and entreat the powers that be, to once again let the sun ‘turn’ and give his people another summer and growing season.

The sad story of how he ended up as the big-bellied entity we are now seeing in stores and such places, peddling goods, is too long to tell here, and probably most people know at least snatches of it from here and there. I only want to send you a link to a look at the real thing, which you may choose to show your children, thereby opening a new line of possible ‘education experience’, which is supposed to be the thing right now.

In a mound grave around Porogi in the Ukraine, dated to the first century ACE, remains of the costume shown in this drawing was found, together with tools and belongings marking the buried person as being of high rank. Gerry Embledon drew the picture based on the finds in the grave. Osprey Publishing in Oxford holds the copyright, and the picture may not be reproduced elsewhere without their permission. But you can show it to your children and tell them the story:

http://www.verasir.dk/

The whole web site is in fact wildly interesting, but most of the text is written in Danish. I have said before, that English is a Danish dialect, so matybe it is possible to get quite a bit of information out of it. The pictorial stuff is grrreat.

Don't like the choices offered? Try this...

‘..there are two human options for the future: 1) capitulation to drastic worldwide regulations and limits…or 2) chaos.’

Nah, none of them sell to me. I like this one better:

“He is a people in himself, and has no need of building up an artificial whole by the massing of numbers together. As soon as he has settled in a place, for a little while or for a length of time, a law-thing shoots up out of the ground, and about it grows a community. Whether his sense of social order finds scope to form a kingdom, or is constrained within narrower bounds, it is a tendency deep-rooted, part and parcel of his character itself.”

From The Culture of the Teutons, written by Vilhelm Grönbech, in 1931, can be found here:

http://www.northvegr.org/lore/gronbech/titles.php

Now if we could bring up lots of leaders of such type in the next generation, mediocrity would not be a necessary cop-out for mankind. But it would require a shift from the right to be a couch potato in style as the highest reward for hard work, to never really thinking one ‘needs a vacation’.

The quality School program, which had some wind in its sails here a number of years back, but has now been reduced to an obscure fringe effort, had some of the seeds for such a training: the ‘reward’ (the philosophy does not believe in externally applied rewards) for good work was not a gift or a gold star, but added access to tools to do even more advanced work. This progressive support was known as ‘validation’.

Same as the Teutons: When you had proven your skill with a wooden sword, you were given one made of steel. In our society, you do not spend years tinkering with and driving an old, cheaply bought jalopy, you either have the new shining Accord, or you have nothing. It’s the rules and regs, you see. They got us by the balls. It is about finding places ‘they’ haven’ t got to yet, if you want your children to grow up with some backbone and air under their wings. But ‘they’ do not like it. Reflect once more on all those ‘compund’ situations, where people are holed up, and our finest hone their hunting instincts. The crime of the inhabitants more often than not are not so much the couple of unregistered guns or the unpaid water taxes (although they’re idiots for making themselves so vulnerable), but rather that they don’t need anybody else in order to live heir life. Can’t have that. We always hear how ‘reclusive’ these people are. What’s the harm in being reclusive? Think about it, and reply if you think of an answer.

The NEW-BIBLE Thumpers - The Religious LEFT!

Hallelujah baby, these eco-lefties are not only going to be the New Progressive Dictators but they are the ground troops for the Religious Left. They're coming down from The Mountain with The Truth and if the Relious Right though they were special then that's too bad whackos, your time's up. Now it's the Religious Left that have it right and they are here to "save humankind from its own bloated sense of superiority and greed." How could any heathen disagree?

The hymnbook is being written as we speak.

"The Earth today is facing one of those planetary catastrophes that Gould and his doom-saying associates have often spoken about.

The planet's systems are breaking down: global warming, economic disintegration, energy and food crises, the accelerating extinction of species, rampant pollution, AIDS, regional economic ghettoization (sic), and the threat of worldwide terror.

It's beginning to look as if the wackos carrying the placards reading "The End Is Nigh‚" are right. Unless… UNLESS: This planet's brainiest inhabitants accept that The Mediocrity Principle applies to them.

As Homer-Dixon sees it, there are two human options for the future: 1) capitulation to drastic worldwide regulations and limits…or 2) chaos.

Mediocrity eschews the snobbishness of Calvin Klein for the practicality of Sears. Mediocrity does not go ga-ga over miniature summer squashes, when there are plenty of zucchinis -- grown locally, of course.

Mediocrity embraces home haircuts, tap water, elbow patches, Scrabble nights, and naps."

Might be a good time to take a look at Sears Roebuck stock, it's trading at a quarter it was a year ago but according to the Religious Left Sears is kosher.

Tops,yoyo`s and slinkies

Are my toys not educational? What better gift than a soccer ball,it promotes togetherness,teamwork.People shouldn`t get stuck on the "gift" My favorite gift is a heart squeezing emotional hug or a homemade blueberry pie.

Have you heard the story of the guy selling hot air balloons? The hot air balloon salesman makes his pitch,"hot air balloons 10.000.00$ come em get one"---Customer " What would I do with a hot air balloon" ----Salesman" Psst, we have a big sale on today, 2 for the price of one"---Customer " SOLD "

Boxing day sale,new years sale,1/2 price junk

As for watching swans,I would prefer to watch re-runs of the TRAILER PARK BOYS or GILLIGANS ISLAND, anyways,I have new underwear to try on and where the hell am I going to park 2 hot air balloons?

P.S. The balloon salesman is a great hugger!

Merry Christmas all,remember to give to the food bank.

Let's hope they tell us...

...so we can get in at the bottom.

"Unless… UNLESS: This planet's brainiest inhabitants accept that The Mediocrity Principle applies to them."

Please Daniel, do keep us posted as to what these wonderful brainiest inhabitants of the planet decide, I'm running out of fingernails to bite!