Energy Hogs Drowning in a Lake of Iraqi Blood
Introduction: The Paradox of the Open Secret
How can something be a secret, and yet at the same time be publicly available information, like peak oil?
Peak Oil is accepted scientific theory. Those who proclaim to be intellectually opposed to Peak Oil, such as Daniel Yergin and Peter Huber, have discredited themselves by acts of intellectual cowardice and sheer whackiness, respectively. Daniel Yergin, the head of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, takes the cowardice prize for refusing a generous offer to make his case at a conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, which was held in the neighboring city of Boston. Peter Huber earns the kook award for saying that wasting fossil fuels is a good thing, because it would "force us to develop new sources of energy."
The implications of Peak Oil are literally the end of American civilization as presently constituted, and the transition to a new American civilization will be extremely painful. The economic and social infrastructure of America depends on 20 to 22 million barrels of oil every day. There are 42 gallons of oil in a barrel, so that's 840 MILLION GALLONS of oil per day! Just in this country. When we are confronted with an economy that is forced to get by on considerably less than 20 millon barrels of oil per day, that means a Great Depression that will make 1930 look like a picnic.
Ninety nine percent of Americans live in blissful ignorance of this looming disaster, even though the information is readily available. Isn't that curious? That is the paradox of the Open Secret.
It's all about Paying Attention
Our problems are complex, but I boil them down to these three facts:
1. Our problems are a result of the American people not paying attention, so the rulers do as they please.
2. The American people won't pay attention until material goodies are no longer doled out in automatic abundance.
3. By the time things are bad enough to force us to pay attention, it may be too late.
What Political Activism of the 21st Century Needs to Look Like
We here are concerned about politics; we are also concerned about the culture; we are also concerned about the economy.
Economics shapes our culture, and culture shapes politics.
For example, ours is a culture of passivity that is letting Bush wage war against foreign people, and against us. The prison industry and the drug war is a low level war against us.
Where does our culture of passivity come from? I'll tell you. Our culture of passivity comes from our way of obtaining our material needs. Like this -- go to the supermarket, pick out all the magical, perfect food, then "BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP," OK, here's my magic paper, or my magic plastick card, thanks for the magic food!
Then we get in our car and make a slight push with our right foot. And the car rockets forward, and magically brings us wherever we want, almost like the Arabian "MAGICK CARPET."
And of course the MAGICK TEE VEE plays out perfectly scripted tales in magical detail, and we watch with childish passivity as the MAGICK TEE VEE expertly manipulates our thoughts and feelings.
What's left for us to do? Beep beep, VROOM, and click. Millions of our fellow citizens have lives that boil down to those three activities. Shopping, driving, and watching.
Nothing is going to change until this changes, and this can change in one of two possible ways:
One We are forced to change because of economic and social collapse.
Or Two:
We organize a Local Economy before things get desperate; when it's still possible to whip out the Magick Paper or Plastic and get equipment, when we can do local farming without worrying about starving if we fail.
At the end of this lecture I want to talk to those of you who are interested in organizing a local Economy here in Willimantic. I have a few ideas for you, such as learning fermentation skills and cheesemaking over at Zok's, delivering newspapers and perhaps whatever else needs to be delivered on a utility recumbent bicycle to show that cars aren't necessary.
Utility recumbent bicycles can be used to prove that we don't need cars.
Energy Hogs drowning in a Lake of Iraqi Blood.
If you laid all the dead Iraqis end to end, it would stretch from Willimantic to New York City.
An adult human body has 1.5 gallons of blood on average. The blood of the dead Iraqis would fill an Olympic Swimming Pool.
The American Lifestyle which Dick Cheney calls "non-negotiable," is the reason the Bush administration gets away with the Iraq war and tax cuts for the rich. Even as the American Lifestyle is less and less rewarding for ordinary Americans, they are trapped in it. They all think they have to keep up appearances with a high energy, high consumption lifestyle, and most of them are in terrible credit card debt.
So we have two inter-related problems; the Armed Robbery in Iraq, and an American populace that is trapped in an energy hog lifestyle in order to keep up appearances. Basically we're killing Iraqis to keep up with the Joneses. It's that simple. It's a textbook example of the banality of evil, and we are ALL complicit.
Sometimes it's hard to wrap your head around the simple and the obvious. We want to think it's more complex, and requires more thinking, so as to put off the necessary action. But it's not more complex. We are all guilty of murdering Iraqis, every one of us. Now I'm not big into guilt complexes over things that happened in the past; but I think it's very useful for all of us to feel responsibility for what's being done in our name in Iraq right now.
If weapons technology was not as advanced as it is, for example, if this was still the age of muskets and cannon, I think that there would already have been an armed civil insurrection against the Bush administration. Some people in this room would likely have participated in it, or be participating in it at this moment. It would certainly be justified if it had a prayer of working.
But it doesn't. We couldn't even get close.
However, I have some good news. There is a possible bright side. According to the book, "War of the Flea; The Classic Study of Guerilla Warfare," by Robert Taber, it's the accountants who end wars. Time and time again in history, the accountants, with their double entry ledgers come along and tell the president, or the king, or the dictator, "Sorry, we don't have any more money for the war." And that's it. The war isn't over until the accountant whines, or perhaps many accountants from big box stores and oil companies and agribusiness corporatiosn whining in chorus across the country.
And that's where we come in. Creating a Local Economy that self-replicates and spreads like mold in cheese across the country could make those accountants scream in agony and horror! The potential is certainly there. A Local Economy is the first step towards taking back control. We have to start with the little things, and be patient.
Seventy Percent of the US Economy is consumer spending. Think about that. Seventy Percent of the whole damn thing is just us buying new junk at Walmart, or groceries at Big Y, or a car at the dealer, or gasoline at the gas station. And a lot of this is unnecessary spending. There's a lot of waste in this economy. That waste is keeping the corporations fat and happy. That waste is keeping the accountants happy, and pro-war.
Ironically, at the same time, Americans are enduring a worsening financial situation. So there's an incentive for ordinary Americans to revolt against this situation. But they don't know how, they don't think it can be done. Really, what they need is for someone to come along and set the example.
And that's why I'm here. My proposed solution to war and consumerism is economic relocalization. Easier said than done, of course.
The Infrastructure of Compliance (spatial anchor 4 feet to the left)
Right now, we are living in an Infrastructure of Compliance. We are living a nightmare of utter material dependence on the Corporatist System. Can you see how we are helpless as babes in the woods?
Suppose things get bad enough for a National Strike? Suppose people were ready to just park their cars on the highways and shut down I-95. The anti-war community and the peak oil community talks about a National Strike on the Internet. The attitude is getting desperate out there. It could happen!
Suppose things got bad enough that 50 million Americans sae what the hell, let's shut the country down until they bring the troops home from Iraq. Do you think that would scare George Bush? Hell, he'd laugh at us from his well stocked bunker, while we starved!
Think about it. If we actually rose up against the System, they'd just stop trucking food to the supermarkets. What would we do? Our food comes from thousands of miles away!
Do you think local farms can feed the millions of people around here? Don't even make me laugh. The local farms could feed about 5% of the local population at best, and those 5% who didn't starve to death would be involuntary anorexics. It's bad. It's real bad. I have a 3/4 of an acre under cultivation on my mini-farm, and I work with a few other mini-farms in the area and I have seen how utterly helpless we Americans really are nowadays. It would be monstrous if the System shut down even for a month!. We'd be eating our dogs and cats. No joke. And then we'd be eating the grass on our lawns, like the North Koreans.
I've heard people say, "Well, if it came to that I'd just start growing a garden!" ever the sunny optimist, as if that's something a person could do on a moment's notice! Like you could just throw seeds on the ground, and food will come magically bursting forth, like something out of a Disney movie. That's how Americans think.
The fact is, it honestly takes at least one year, and more realistically 2 or 3 years to get a serious garden that will actually feed you through the winter around here. The soil here in Connecticut is hard packed clay with very little organic matter in it, and New England has never been known as a bread-basket. We don't have the 12 feet of soil that the glaciers pushed onto the US Midwest and Ukraine. If they stop trucking food and medicine to the supermarkets around here, most of us would die of sickness and starvation just like the Mayflower settlement of 1620. That's how bad it is. Actually, it's worse, because there's a HELL OF A LOT more of us, and our environment is far more degraded than the environment that the Mayflower Pilgrims found in 1620.
So how could we possibly resist George Bush and Dick Cheney? They could just starve us as a last resort, and then if they need to give food to those people who agree to inform against us, charge us with terrorism, give us a short show trial, and then hang us to set the example. We're not in any position to make any sort of Revolution. Right now, we're a joke, and George Bush is smirking at all of us.
Think about it. Imagine a National Strike against the War. What would that be like? I mean hell, we're committing mass murder because it would be inconvenient to do otherwise. Al Gore called his movie, An Inconvenient Truth and that's what it really comes down to. Inconvenience on the one hand; mass murder on the other. It would really be inconvenient for us to stop killing Iraqis!
But it would be worth it, wouldn't it? A National Strike? Shut down the country?
So you wake up tomorrow; the highways are shut down, blocked by striking truckers; the cities are on fire! It's fun! It's the biggest news since 911!
But the day after tomorrow, and 100 tomorrows after that, it's no fun any more. Just ask the Iraqis. You just want running water and electricity and something to eat. You'll accept any leader. You'll kiss George Bush's arse just for a little comfort and normalcy. Please, President Bush, please, bring back the good old days! We'll give you anything you want! We adore you!
Yeah, it could come to that! Every one of us could find himself saying that if he's hungry and cold and desperate enough.
It may come to this any way. Our infrastructure is very badly designed, like a clapped together McMansion. It wasn't designed to last for you, it was designed to make lots of money for the swine that own the corporations that built it. Nothing in America is built to last; not the cars, not the washing machines, and by the way, not the whole damned infrastructure either!
So America may at last fail on its promise of endless prosperity and endless fun, and this may force us to get serious again. Then what? Then we starve. And freeze. And leave a stiff corpse on the street, like the road kill we see everywhere. That's the way we're going right now, in Christmas Present.
Now that you know the problem, can you Visualize Building an Infrastructure of Resistance? (spatial anchor 2.5 feet to the right)
Right now, the economy is like a rushing river. Money flows into you, and flows right back out of you, back to the corporations. Like beer -- you don't buy it, you just rent it.
Think of the economy as a river. All along this river you have beaver dams that slow down the flow of water, and make an area of the river that's more like a lake. It's an ecosystem that suits the beavers that built the dam, and no, it doesn't hurt the ecology of the river. Salmon are not blocked from spawning by beaver dams.
Man has come along and decided beaver dams and beavers didn't suit them. Beaver dams impeded river barges, or slowed the flow of water towards hydro-electric generators, and so they broke up the beaver dams. Globalization did the same thing. We used to have local, self contained, mini-economies that were exactly like beaver dams on a river. When 100 dollars came into the community, maybe 70 dollars stuck around, and 30 flowed back out. That's how you develop a middle class, and for that matter, that's how you develop a sane and civilized society. And then Globalization came along and quite purposely wrecked our beaver dams, our little, local mini-economies. And what'd we do? We just shrugged, like cowards, and said, "Oh well, that's just the free market in action. We'll find something else." The capitalist bullies took our lunch money, and we went along with it because we've been taught that capitalists are like demigods, forces of Nature, destined to rule over the rest of us, and we're just mere mortals following the Divine Plan of capitalist development
Well, it's time to commit deicide. The Global economy is the God that failed. It deserves to be killed. You have to look at it as a war. We are all here in favor of world peace, but we have to MAKE WAR ON THE WARMAKERS. I can't emphasize that enough. We can't wage peace on the warmakers. That's silly. We have to WAGE WAR on the WARMAKERS. If there was ever a just war, it's the war on Bush.
I don't mean shooting war. That won't work. I mean ECONOMIC WAR. You know that ECONOMIC WAR is a real thing don't you? The economic sanctions against Iraq caused the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. Madeleine Albright famously said that the half million dead Iraqi chiildren "was worth it."
So you see, ECONOMIC WARFARE is real, and it's legal, mostly. It's illegal to boycott the nation of Israel, but otherwise, so far, ECONOMIC WARFARE is still legal, and it's very possible. The reason it's still legal is because we Americans don't dream of actually waging it. If we do, maybe they'll start outlawing it. Let's make them outlaw it. Let's force thier hand.
If economic warfare against Bush started working, he'd outlaw it and up the ante. This would be a good thing. We want George Bush to escalate his warfare against the American people, in order to turn the country even more against him. That's how guerilla warfare works. We want to force George Bush to punish Americans for doing a local economy. Then we fight his new laws. That's when people will start taking to the streets and talking of National Strikes.
But we can't begin to fight Bush until we are out of his household. A 20 year old kid who's still living at his parents house isn't in a position to rebel against them. Economics comes from the Greek word Oikos, which also meant household. We are like kids in George Bush's house so long as we are dependent on the global economy.
Economic re-localization might stop the war. Remember what I said about how accountants end wars? We can't fight the Beast, but maybe we can starve it by a combination of Boycott and National Strike. Basically, massive non-participation in the Corporate Consumer Economy, which, remember, is 70% of the US Economy.
But we can't do this until we have an alternative! Otherwise we starve and freeze to death in the street and George Bush smirks and wins.
That's why building a Relocalized Economy is a Revolutionary Act.
A Re-localized Economy is the Infrastructure of Resistance, whereas a Global Economy is an Infrastructure of Compliance.
The Infrastructure of Resistance accomplishes two very important things at once.
Number One: It starves the Beast. Local Economic Exchange starves corporate profits, and reduces tax revenues. That's why the Bosses, the Bush family and so on, centralized and globalized EVERYTHING. Economic exchange that is long distance and anonymous is more likely to profit large corporations, and pay the taxes. The people in this room, if you were all producing in your own homes and buying and selling from each, you wouldn't contribute to the profits of Citibank or Walmart, or Halliburton, or Blackwater, and only a bare minimum of the wealth you generate would flow into the coffers of the government as taxes. Globalization IS NOT more efficient; it's just a better system of CONTROL. Globalization keeps capital flowing like a raging river, and it breaks up the beaver dams of local economies. The only way to fight back against this is to relocalize our economies as much as possible, and Starve the Beast.
It's like building a beaver dam on the river. In the current system, money rushes right through us. In the Infrastructure of Resistance, money flows into us, and some of it, as much as possible, stays in. The river is weaker downstream -- that is, weaker corporate profits. If enough Americans participate in Economic Relocalization, it will crash the economy. Corporate profits will crash, and the accountants will start screaming. Polls will be taken about why Americans aren't spending any more. The public answers, "No more war, no more tax cuts for the rich." And there you go. The accountants across the country start screaming at Bush to stop the war and repeal the tax cuts.
Ever wonder why our votes don't matter any more? Because most people don't vote and don't care. However, an Infrastructure of Resistance is one that pays attention. The Infrastructure of Compliance has people like lab mice pushing the lever to get the cheese; it reinforces passivity and apathy. The Infrastructure of Resistance will require initiative, hard work and cooperation, facilitating conversations between people rather than people watching television, and therefore more active participation in the world. We should be having riots over elections, even if the vote isn't stolen. We should be making life hell for the politicians just on principle. The Infrastructure of Compliance has let the politicians get away with MURDER. Literally!
2. The second benefit of a Local Economy is laying the groundwork for a National Strike. Suppose they decide they need troops, but a draft will make George Bush look like the blood engorged, unelected dictator that he is. Sending mercenary police forces out door to door to grab young people for the draft is really a last resort. It wouldn't look good. It would be better for Bush to simply make the economy so awful that young people enlist because there's no other jobs out there. But we built the Infrastructure of Resistance and have such a large Underground Economy that we can provide jobs to young people, so they don't feel pressure to enlist. Then they might take off the kid gloves, and start going house to house with the draft. And when they up the ante, so do we. That's when we block the highways and set up barriers and fighting positions around our cities and towns. But we have to be able to hold up. We have to be able to survive blockade, and siege. In the Medieval Ages, a siege of a castle, or of a walled city was effective because the people inside the castle would eventually run out of food.
So we need to be able to hold out. People laugh at survivalists and end of the world fringe religious nuts. Individualist survivalism is kind of stupid; but group survivalism; community survivalism, is very necessary. We should be preparing for the end of the world! The end of Bushworld, that is!
It's perfectly legal and morally justifiable to start building a Local Economy and laying the groundwork for a National Strike, or a violent overthrow of the government and war crimes tribunes for them, or whatever comes along. One thing you can count on, as surely as night follows day, something cataclysmic is going to happen to this country.
Now Back to Earth
For now, things are more or less calm. Let's suppose my visions of doom don't happen, and the status quo just chugs along, maybe a slow decline like we have now. Then what?
Well, speaking in the terms a typical American would understand, Economic Relocalization has the potential to make all of us a little wealthier, and a little more empowered.
Think about it. How much does your job suck? You have no freedom of conscience, you aren't allowed to be a full human being. Employment is becoming more and more like being an animal in a factory farm. Just as livestock are treated like food machines, we are treated like profit-machines. That's no accident. We tolerated mistreatment of livestock, and so eventually it comes around to us, and we get mistreated too.
There are two aspects to implementing Economic Relocalization; Cooperative Thrift, and Home Based Business.
I'll talk first about Cooperative Thrift.
We Americans aren't thrifty because we live single serve lives. We'd save money if we knew how to share. The automobile is a good example. Imagine if you shared a car between five friends. Sure you'd be a little inconvenienced, but think of all the money you'd save. I've tried to convince Americans to do car sharing, and they all say it would be too inconvenient. They say, "I want to be able to drive where I want, when I want." Of course, they work so many hours to keep that car, that if they ran the numbers and compared it to their actual convenience, they would find that they worked more hours for the car than the time they saved from a car sharing arrangement.
I want all of you to start thinking like accountants. Because there's a lot of things we are all doing, that just don't make financial sense. I was delivering newspapers for the Norwich Bulletin for like 2 years until I realized that after expenses, I was making only about 4 dollars an hour, maximum. All those people delivering newspapers in their cars are financial illiterates. Basically volunteers. And that's just one example.
If you want to convince an American of something, show him or her that they are losing money. Even if they get mad, that will bother them and in a few days or weeks they'll agree with you. No one wants to be a sucker, and I mean NO ONE.
So let's talk about the private car. Let's assume a conservative expense of 4500 dollars a year, or 375 a month, or 93.75 a week. Because if you have a new car, you're making payments, and if you have an old car, you're making repairs. Let's also a assume a rather healthy after tax wage of 12 dollars an hour. Anybody want to do the math?
Here's the math. At a very conservative estimate of 93.75 dollars a week, you work your first full day of EVERY workweek , JUST FOR YOUR CAR! OK, OK, for those math wizards, there's 2.25 cents left over. That's your lunch money to buy a few bags of chips and a soda from the vending machine. That's 32 hours a month! That's 4 days of one workweek, just to pay for the car! So it takes a week or more to pay your rent, and almost another week to pay for your car! What do you have left? In a year, you worked 384 hours, or 48 workdays, just for VROOM VROOM VROOM! Just to keep the automobile and oil industry and insurance industry in caviar and champagne. In 10 years, that's over 480 workdays. That's 2 years out of ten years of your working life, just working for the privilege of sitting in traffic and being an accessory to the murder of over a half million Iraqis. What a deal, eh?
With 5 people sharing the same car, you are paying 900 a year, instead of 4500. That's more like it. That's only 18 dollars a week. You pay for your car by mid-morning on Monday. The whole month is only one workday to pay for the car. Much better, eh?
Now let's go talk about Home Based Business in conjunction with Cooperative Thrift.. If you are very careful and prepare your own food from the Co-op, you can spend only 50 dollars a week on food. If you aren't careful, and don't take the time to prepare your food, then the "preparation expense" jacks your food bill way up. And if you eat prepared junk foods from fast food restaurants, eventually that will catch up to you in medical expenses. Finally, you are enriching Agribusiness and corporate America by eating at fast food restaurants.
Not all of us have time to prepare food. However, there are stay at home moms and perhaps retired people who might like to make extra money preparing food for us. A lot of people would just love to work out of their home. Going to a job just sucks.
Here's how it could be done. There are some hobby farms and Community Supported Farms around Connecticut that would love to have regular, reliable business. But Americans always say they don't have time to prepare and process the large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables they get from local farms. So what we need to do is subscribe to local community farms, and employ these people who want to do a home business to process and prepare food from the farms in their homes. There's certainly plenty to do - canning tomatoes, curing cabbage into sauerkraut, breadmaking, cheesemaking, beer making, fermenting wine, pickles, as well as preparing cooked meals. There is a book called "Cook for a Day, Eat for a month." These home based entrepreneurs could have chest freezers full of prepared meals that they sell out of their houses to us busy working people!
Wouldn't you rather pay or work for a local farmer for the raw food, and then pay a local person to prepare it for you? That money will come back to you. It'll come back to all of us.
Those are just two examples. If we have 30 people damming up the river to create a local economy, it's worth it for us to all pay each other MORE for goods and services, than to pay LESS for the same goods and services from corporations. Because the money will circulate among us.
Eventually the relocalized economy will start providing full time jobs. Eventually the relocalized economy will need its own bank or credit union. We'll know who's a good business risk because we'll be doing business with them all the time. Suppose someone makes excellent cheese, and decides to stop bootlegging it illegally out of their home kitchen. We all know that person is a good risk, and 30 people invest 100 dollars each for the cheesemaker to get fancy equipment and start renting a space such as a defunct restaurant that already has the equipment for that sort of thing.
If our model of a Relocalized Economy is financially successful, and it serves people rather than shareholders, others will want to join. It will spread beyond the organized progressive community, to the recently dispossessed middle class and working class. If we want to prevent it from becoming a corporation and taking on a life of its own and doing the opposite of what we originally intended, we would have to keep it decentralized. Basically we show the newcomers how to do it, and let them do it themselves.
But my point is, there is a lot of waste in the US economy for us to cut out, and in the process, cut corporate profits.
And I have one last point. Even if we don't voluntarily do this now, something like this is going to happen anyway out of pure necessity. The American economy is in a Death Spiral. The Second Great Depression or worse is here. The First Great Depression was not recognized as such until four years after the crash of 1929.
Hard times are here, and it's only going to get worse and worse. The Relocalized Economy is a fait accompli. It's going to happen one way or another. However, if we start now, BEFORE it becomes necessary for basic survival, we will have a chance to suffer a little less, and have a little more influence, and maybe a little more push-back power against the Bush regime. And we can tell our grandchildren that we at least tried to do something to stop the mass killing of Iraqis.
The Importance of Food Processors and the Potential for Home Businesses
We need to have a situation where we can grow a massive amount of food, and have it all get processed and purchased or traded locally.
I could see a businesses where someone sells cheese out of their house. I could see someone selling prepared frozen meals out of their house -- just have them put a deposit on the casserole dishes until you get them back, or they provide you with their own.
And there's market space for more than one of each of these. We probably need one cheesemaker for every 50 people or so. Same for the processors.
Eventually you may raise capital and get a building and all the licenses and such. That would be great, so long as you didn't turn to the dark side and start ripping off the farmers and consumers.
But this is all about replacing the supermarket and agribusiness system. I mean we're going to have to replace it anyways . . . or die. It will be a lot easier to start now, and you might even make a living out of it.
We've got a soapmaker in the room, by the way. Say hi, Bob! The slaughterhouse in Canterbury has to pay to have the by-products of animal slaughter and butchery hauled away. We buy beef suet from them real cheap and Bob makes soaps out of it.
And just think how nice it would be to work for yourself. No more piss tests, no more schedules, no more office politics.
And best of all, no more COMMUTING! God I hate commuting.
And don't think this isn't needed right now. You see the kids nowadays? Did you know it's possible to be obese and malnourished at the same time? There's a lot of that going around. People weren't mean to eat partially hydrogenated corn syrup, or high fructose corn syrup.
Most packaged, processed foods are just a way to get rid of the corn surplus. It would be more appropriate to call it "feed" as in "feed for us human livestock," than food.
Feed for human livestock leaves us obese and malnourished. Parents are looking at their kids and starting to realize something is wrong. Those of you who become frozen-food chefs with chest freezers WILL GET BUSINESS from these busy parents with obese kids.
The Simple Life, versus the Thin Gruel of Mass Media Entertainments
I was born in 1969. So I grew up a "TV baby," like so many of us.
Eventually, I got bored with Tee Vee, and bored with the people around me who were still transfixed by it.
I took up fiddle playing, archery, riding a bicycle, learning a foreign language, reading history and literature, among other things. I did this largely as a rebellion against being a TV baby. I wanted to prove that there were other things to do.
The response of people who were still entranced by Tee Vee was "those things are boring, and they take too much effort." A few other things they did besides watch television was play video games and race around on a motorcycle or one of those 4 wheeler ATV things.
What the TV generations (I say generations in plural, because it's already several) require is intense stimulation for very low effort.
Of course, they don't even get that. You've seen the kids who've been watching TV for hours. They say, "I'm bored," but they don't want to tear themselves away from the video game or the cartoons.
Now I have my own child, an 8 year old daughter. She's NOT a Tee Vee baby. She's not a video game baby either.
In her free time, she plays piano, or does her gymnastics on the furniture, or she goes outside with me to shoot bow and arrow, or go bicycle riding. She can ride my recumbent too. We take her to gymnastics, dance, piano lessons, singing lessons, and soccer. Her grandmother takes her out to dinner, and she gets into political debates with my mom's friends, often middle aged Republican ladies and shocks them with her knowledge of politics and the war, and she will say that Bush stole the election and she would have voted for Ralph Nader if she could vote. Her line about the Iraq war is, "You don't teach people democracy by killing them."
So this is the way I discovered to approach life, and to raise children -- it boils down to making yourself happy with simple things. Like loosing an arrow towards a bullseye, taking a bike ride with the family, playing piano, singing -- all this stuff people did before television came along.
Tee Vee and ATV's and video games are thin gruel -- they promise intense stimulation with less effort, but leave people bored and discontented and trapped in modern idiocy, and I mean idiocy in the old Greek sense. From Wikipedia:
"Idiot" was originally used in ancient Greek city-states to refer to people who were overly concerned with their own self-interest and ignored the needs of the community. Declining to take part in public life, such as (semi-)democratic government of the polis (city state), such as the Athenian democracy, was considered dishonorable. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters. Over time, the term "idiot" shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment–individuals who are "stupid".
Mass media makes people idiots in this classical Greek sense of the term. It turns them inward, and makes them consumers instead of citizens. The most egregious expression of American idiocy was the watching of the invasions of Iraq as just another form of entertainment. The Fox News televising of the invasion of Iraq was when the analogy to the decline and fall of Rome could no longer be dismissed. The people of late Rome, cheering on their favorite gladiator or watching Christians being fed to lions, were paragons of virtue compared to us now!
But it all begins with the kids. I have annoyed a lot of moms out there by telling them they should cancel their cable and force their kid to do real things. It's like electricity. Electricity will take the path of least resistance. If there is a path from the electricity straight to what's called "ground," or "neutral," electricity will go straight to ground and spark out. That's what's called a "short to ground," or an "electrical short." It means that the electricity found neutral without going through a useful load, like a light bulb or a motor.
For electricity to work, you have to make the only path for it to go through a useful load, like the light bulb or the computer. Otherwise it will be all too happy to take the path of least resistance and short out.
Children are the same way. If they have access to cable TV, Pepsi and Doritos, that's what they'll take, even if there are better things available. Just like electricity, children will take the path of least resistance. When you see children transfixed in front of a video game or TV shows or video movies, think "electrical short to ground." That kid is sparking out -- his life energy is being wasted, rather than being put through a useful activity. And those who are TV addicts as kids, usually grow up to become TV addicts as adults.
However, if the kids grow to adults without the TV and video games, as adults they won't have a taste for it. They'll find TV boring as hell, and prefer to engage in real life. They won't accept TV propaganda either. They'll be disgusted by televised military invasions. And they'll have more success and happiness in life. Real success -- not just a lot of money, and real happiness, because they'll be able to content themselves with simple things like shooting a bow and arrow and playing a piano.
With all the wealth of this country, we could have peace for a fraction of the defense budget. I'm fantasizing here, I have a vision of a better world, and I'll briefly describe it to you. The children are raised doing the arts, and the single most prevalent employment is in organic farming slash permaculture.
One Last Point -- Working with the high school educated locals
Most of us here probably have a college education and are aware of global issues.
There is a habit of thinking that only people like us are angry about the situation, and that those with a mere high school education are happily watching NASCAR and racing around on ATV's. This used to be the case; but less so now.
I know some high school educated locals in my town of Plainfield, and I was surprised at how angry they are! They are absolutely furious at how farms are getting developed into McMansions and shopping malls. Many of them own hobby farms, though they prefer raising animals to growing vegetables.
Now these locals aren't going to start working with us based on fancy rhetoric. They need to see results before they come on board.
Practically speaking, the hardest part about creating an Relocalized Economy is getting the thing going in the first place. Starting from a standing stop is the hardest part.
Once we've built something, there are thousands of people in Windham County who will want to participate. It's not just selling something else. Everyone gets sold things. Cooperative Thrift and Home based hobby businesses is a chance to socialize with others. In case you haven't noticed, people in New England are very lonely, and they don't know how to break out of their shells of loneliness. This loneliness and lack of community is the main reason we all live single serve lives -- hence we are utterly dependent on the Predatory Corporations for everything!
Human frailty can be a problem. People can have personality clashes. Some people will rip off others. These bumps in the road should be expected, and you shouldn't be discouraged by them. Just do damage control as best you can and move on.
posted by Windham_County @ 4:28 AM
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