|
|
|
 Tom Englehardt writes: In fact, one of the strangest things about the American empire has
been this: Between 1945 and George W. Bush's second term, the U.S.
economy, American corporations, and the dollar have held remarkable
sway over much of the rest of the world. New York City has been the
planet's financial capital and Washington its war capital. (Moscow,
even at the height of the Cold War, always came in a provincial
second.)
In the same period, the U.S. military effectively garrisoned
much of the globe from the Horn of Africa to Greenland, from South
Korea to Qatar, while its Navy controlled the seven seas, its Air Force
dominated the global skies, its nuclear command stood ready to unleash
the powers of planetary death, and its space command watched the
heavens. In the wake of the Cold War, its various military commands
(including Northcom, set up by the Bush administration in 2002, and Africom,
set up in 2007) divided the greater part of the planet into what were
essentially military satrapies. And yet, the U.S. military, post-1945,
simply could not win the wars that mattered.
Because the neocons of the Bush administration brushed aside this
counterintuitive fact, they believed themselves faced in 2000 with an
unparalleled opportunity (whose frenetic exploitation would be
triggered by the attacks of 9/11, the "Pearl Harbor" of the new century). With the highest-tech military on the planet, funded at levels no other set of nations could cumulatively
match, the United States, they were convinced, was uniquely situated to
give the phrase "sole superpower" historically unprecedented meaning.
Even the Assyrians at their height, the Romans in their Pax Romana centuries, the British in the endless decades when the sun could never set on its empire, would prove pikers by comparison.
In this sense, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice,
and the various neocons in the administration were fundamentalist
idolaters -- and what they worshipped was the staggering power of the
U.S. military. They were believers in a church whose first tenet was
the efficacy of force above all else. Though few of them had the slightest military experience, they gave real meaning to the word bellicose. They were prejudiced towards war.
With awesome military power at their command, they were also convinced
that they could go it alone as the dominating force on the planet. As
with true believers everywhere, they had only contempt for those they
couldn't convert to their worldview. That contempt made "unilateralism"
their strategy of choice, and a global Pax Americana their goal (along with, of course, a Pax Republicana at home). ...
Of course, both the Pax Americana and the Pax Republicana
would prove will-o'-the-wisps. As it turned out, the Bush
administration, blind to the actual world it faced, disastrously
miscalculated the nature of American power -- especially military power
-- and what it was capable of doing. And yet, had they taken a
clear-eyed look at what American military power had actually achieved
in action since 1945, they might have been sobered. In the major wars
(and even some minor actions) the U.S. military fought in those
decades, it had been massively destructive but never victorious, nor
even particularly successful. In many ways, in the classic phrase of
Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, it had been a "paper tiger." ...
If all roads once led to Rome, all acts of the Bush administration have
led to destruction, and remarkably regularly to piles of dead or
tortured bodies, counted or not. In fact, it's reasonable to say that
every Bush administration foreign policy dream, including its first
term fantasy about a pacified "Greater Middle East" and its late second
term vision of a facilitated "peace process" between the Israelis and
Palestinians, has ended in piles of bodies and in failure. Consider this a count all its own.
Looked at another way, the Bush administration's Global War on Terror
and its subsidiary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have, in effect, been a
giant Ponzi scheme. At a cost of nearly one trillion taxpayer dollars to date (but sure to be in the multi-trillions when all is said and done), Bush's mad "global war" simply sucked needed money out of our world at levels that made Bernie Madoff seem like a small fry.
Madoff, by his own accounting, squandered perhaps $50 billion of other
people's money. The Bush administration took a trillion dollars of ours
and handed it out to its crony corporate buddies
and to the Pentagon as down payments on disaster -- and that's without
even figuring into the mix the staggering sums still needed to care for
American soldiers maimed, impaired, or nearly destroyed by Bush's wars.
With Bush's "commander-in-chief" presidency only days from its end, the
price tag on his "war" continues to soar as dollars grow scarce, new
investors refuse to pay in, and the scheme crumbles. (01/06/09) |
|
|
|
|
 BBC Medical Science -- Females are less physically active at both ends of life than their male counterparts, two studies suggest. Researchers studied activity levels in school children and the over 70s - and in both cases found males tended to be more active.
The studies are being presented at the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine annual conference. Liverpool John Moores University found girls take part in 6% less vigorous playtime activity than boys. The researchers, who focused on 10 and 11 year-old children in the school playground, found that boys and girls tend to play differently.
Girls tended to spend time in smaller groups and engage in verbal games, conversation and socialising. Most boys, however, played in larger groups, which lend themselves more to physically active games, such as football.
Researcher Dr Nicky Ridgers said: "It is a concern that girls' activity levels are lower than boys and, although it is just one piece in a complex picture, this could be contributing to girls being overweight and obese. Schools should be aware of the differences between the way girls and boys behave in the playground and the fact that girls tend to favour small group activities. They could then consider the availability of equipment and provision of playtime activities that would encourage girls to take part in more vigorously active play."
The gender difference was mirrored in a second study, led by the University of Bristol, which looked at activity levels among the over-70s. In general, levels of physical activity were very low among most people of both sexes aged over 70. More than 70% of the people who took part in the study walked for fewer than 5,000 steps a day. However, women were more likely to be less active than men. (01/06/09)
|
|
|
|
|
 BBC Earth Politics -- The US is to establish what it calls "the largest area of protected sea in the world" around its Pacific islands. Commercial fishing and mining will be banned in the protected zones which include the Marianas Trench, the deepest area of ocean on the planet. The area totals 500,000 sq km (190,000 sq miles) of sea and sea floor.
While welcoming the protection package, environmental activists said that without curbing climate change, the other measures would be meaningless.
President George W Bush will formally announce the measure during an address on Tuesday evening in Washington. Briefing journalists in advance, his environmental advisor James Connaughton said the move meant the US was "setting the mark for the world with respect to effective marine management".
"The conservation action is going to benefit the public and future generations through enhanced science, knowledge and awareness, and just good old-fashioned inspiration, because these places are exceptionally dynamic when it comes to the marine environment," said the chairman of the White House council on environmental quality.
The areas covered include some of the islands most remote from the world's large populations centres, which have not so far encountered the intense fishing present across much of the oceans. They also encompass some of the most biologically diverse places on the planet, undersea volcanoes and hot seafloor vents, and submarine pools of sulphur thought to be unique on Earth. (01/06/09) |
|
|
|
|
 BBC Astronomy Science -- Our galaxy is much bigger than once thought, according to research presented at a major astronomy meeting this week. The results suggest the Milky Way is roughly the same size as Andromeda, the largest galaxy in our local group. What is more, it is moving 15% faster than earlier predictions.
The greater mass means that future collisions with nearby galaxies could happen sooner than thought, according to the researchers.
Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, US, and his colleagues made use of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to deduce the Milky Way's size and speed. Dr Reid was speaking at the 213th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Long Beach, California. The VLBA is a system of 10 radio telescopes scattered across and around North America that together allow unprecedented resolution in astronomy measurements.
This resolution, according to the CfA, is equivalent to being able to read a newspaper in Cairo from an armchair in Edinburgh.
By using the VLBA to measure the apparent shift of far-flung star-forming regions when the Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun, the researchers were able to measure the distance to those regions using fewer assumptions than prior efforts.
"These measurements use the traditional surveyor's method of triangulation and do not depend on any assumptions based on other properties, such as brightness, unlike earlier studies," said team member Karl Menten of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. The results show that the Milky Way is about 15% wider than previously thought.
Tiny shifts in the frequency of the radio emission that arise because the regions are moving gave the researchers an estimate of how quickly the Milky Way rotates around its centre. They estimate this to be about 914,000km per hour, significantly higher than the widely accepted value of 792,000km per hour. That speed, in turn, allowed the astronomers to calculate the total amount of dark matter in the Milky Way - the invisible component that makes up the majority of the galaxy's mass.
The researchers estimate that the Milky Way contains about 50% more mass than earlier predictions - putting it on a par with the Andromeda galaxy, previously thought to be our much bigger neighbour and the largest in our Local Group of galaxies. (01/06/09) |
|
|
|
|
 Jay Hanson is the Paul Revere of the Peak Oil Story. His view of
reality is
occasionally quite dark, but there is always a lot of truth to be
found by examining his viewpoint.
As you may know, the Greeks and the Chinese were intrigued with the
word and concept of CRISIS.
The Greeks said that CRISIS was always filled with danger, but there
was opportunity if you saw
a better way.
The Chinese combined the
ideogram for danger and the
ideogram for opportunity
together to form
the new ideogram for CRISIS.
Most of us are beginning to see the danger of our present crisis, but only a rare few of us have noticed any
opportunity.
Jay is putting together a new study group to seek a solution to this crisis. He is seeking the opportunity in this crisis. The stated mission and goals
seem laudable. Take a look and see what you think. It might be quite
interesting.
In the following invitation, Jay Hanson invites thinkers to join him in finding a solution to the financial crisis of 2009:
PEAK
CAPITALISM:
Capitalism died
on, or about, 2007
(production
fell with prices climbing!)
Oil
prices roses in 2007 with Brent gaining $7 a barrel (11%) to average
$72.39 for the year, but global oil production fell by 126 thousand
barrels per day, or 0.2% to 81.5 million barrels per day! In July and
August of 2008, while oil prices were still very high, global crude
oil production fell nearly one million barrels per day! M.K. Hubbert
was right.
Capitalism
is dying.
"Peak
oil" now limits global economic growth (in the physical sense) and
any attempt to surpass previous levels of global economic activity
will cause oil prices to spike again, driving the world back into a
recession. Moreover, no viable alternative exists to replace
petroleum. [1]
On Jan.
14, 2009, the "Killer Ape" Yahoo group will initiate a discussion
based on the assumption that President Obama will ask us for advice
on how to form a new "sustainable" (one that will last last
longer than 1k years) way of life here in the United States to
replace moribund capitalism.
When the
first free trade episode
(1846-79) ended, it led to WW1 & WW2. [2]
Our leaders realize that 2007 marked the end of the second
free trade episode and are concerned that it could lead to
WW3. We are pretending that our new president will take our advice,
and that he has the absolute power to do anything he feels is right.
We will
begin with a discussion of background material from Plotkin's
EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT IN PSYCHOLOGY. [3]
We will spend up to two weeks on Plotkin's material so we all can
understand the basics of human thought. Then we will move on to
designing our new "sustainable" society.
Where
would we start? First, we need a definition. Here's one for
discussion:
A
"sustainable society" is one that intentionally limits both
consumption and population to stay within its territorial "carrying
capacity."
The
preceding definition seems like a reasonable, simple definition. But
what's "carrying capacity?"
"An
environment's carrying capacity is its maximum persistently
supportable load (Catton 1986)."
Footprint
analysis [4] shows us that the United
States is over carrying capacity. In other words, we cannot support
our present way of life with our own natural resources. To be
sustainable we must live a less wasteful lifestyle or lower
population, or probably both.
We
will look at HUBBERT'S
PRESCRIPTION FOR SURVIVAL,
by Robert Hickerson http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/hubecon.htm
and my SOCIETY
OF SLOTH http://www.warsocialism.com/unnecessary.htm
Do we
really need a new economics? If "economics" is invariably
"political," why isn't it called "politics?" Are economists
simply trying to avoid responsibility for their political activity?
We will
look at the work of William Ophuls. What were his suggestions? How do
they hold up in light of evolutionary psychology?
Did Marx
and company have any good ideas worth incorporating into our new
political system? Do we have anything worth saving in our present
form of government?
One of
our tasks will be to understand what is "natural" (supported by
genetic material) and what is "not natural." Obviously, any
social system that doesn't account for genetic algorithms will fail.
For
example, the desire for "private property" (things) is natural,
but the desire for unlimited amounts of fiat money is obviously a
social construction. That's more-or-less what Locke said, and I
believe he was correct.
The
desire for higher social status is genetic but culture largely
determines how high status is achieved (e.g., Potlatch ).
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol2/iss2/art11/#Abstract Perhaps
if people were limited to only the "things" they could
comfortably place on a standard house lot - AND those things were
constructed for durability - AND advertising in the mass media were
banned (or something like that) - AND we completely redid our food
production systems - AND (several other things we will think of once
we get started...), then perhaps a sustainable society could be
constructed.
Obviously,
the difficult part will be human nature. If we can identify a few key
sustainability principles that can be accepted by realistic people,
then the rest will be easy to imagine.
Our
discussion concerns "theory" only!
We are not going to discuss
implementation!
Language
that promotes violence will not be tolerated!
I
am making the starting date for our new discussion Jan. 14. I hope
you all will do your homework. If you are already a member of the
killer ape list, you do not need to resubscribe. If a new person
wants to join my list, they must send me a message at
http://www.warsocialism.com/j.htm
After
On Jan. 14, no new people will be added to our list!
Once we
get going, I WILL allow constructive criticism, but I WILL NOT allow
sarcasm and pointless bitching. I will not allow talk promoting
violence! If you don't want to contribute, then just keep quiet.
Do your
homework,
Jay Hanson
[1]
http://sfbayoil.org/sfoa/myths/index.html
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Report_Coal_10-07-2007ms.pdf
http://www.warsocialism.com/rr-jhanson-16kbps.mp3 [2]
"By the end of the seventies the free trade episode (1846-79) was
at an end; the actual use of the gold standard by Germany marked the
beginnings of an era of protectionism and colonial expansion… the
symptoms of the dissolution of the existing forms of world economy -
colonial rivalry and competition for exotic markets - became acute.
The ability of haute finance to avert the spread of wars was
diminishing rapidly… For another seven years peace dragged on but
it was only a question of time before the dissolution of nineteenth
century economic organization would bring the Hundred Years' Peace to
a close." [p. 19]
The origins of the cataclysm lay
in the utopian endeavor of economic liberalism to set up a
self-regulating market system." [p. 29] THE
GREAT TRANSFORMATION, Karl
Polanyi; Beacon, 1957;
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807056790/
http://www.warsocialism.com/polyani.htm
[3]
http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Thought-Psychology-Blackwell-Histories/dp/1405113782/ [4]
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_for_nations/ (01/05/09) |
|
|
|
|
 Robert L. Hickerson writing about M. King Hubbert in 1995:
Clark writing in Geophysics in February 1983 states:
"In recent
years, he (Hubbert) has assaulted a target -- which he labels the culture
of money --that is gigantic even by Hubbert standards. His thesis is that
society is seriously handicapped because its two most important
intellectual underpinnings, the science of matter-energy and the historic
system of finance, are incompatible. A reasonable co-existence is possible
when both are growing at approximately the same rate. That, Hubbert says,
has been happening since the start of the industrial revolution but it is
soon going to end because the amount the matter-energy system can grow is
limited while money's growth is not.
"I was in New York in the 30's. I had a box seat at the
depression," Hubbert says. "I can assure you it was a very educational
experience. We shut the country down because of monetary reasons. We had
manpower and abundant raw materials. Yet we shut the country down. We're
doing the same kind of thing now but with a different material outlook. We
are not in the position we were in 1929-30 with regard to the future. Then
the physical system was ready to roll. This time it's not. We are in a
crisis in the evolution of human society. It's unique to both human and
geologic history. It has never happened before and it can't possibly
happen again. You can only use oil once. You can only use metals once.
Soon all the oil is going to be burned and all the metals mined and
scattered." That is obviously a scenario of catastrophe, a possibility
Hubbert concedes. But it is not one he forecast. The man known to many as
a pessimist is, in this case, quite hopeful. In fact, he could be the
ultimate utopian. We have, he says, the necessary technology. All we have
to do is completely overhaul our culture and find an alternative to money.
"We are not starting from zero," he emphasizes. "We have an
enormous amount of existing technical knowledge. It's just a matter of
putting it all together. We still have great flexibility but our
maneuverability will diminish with time."[2]
A non-catastrophic solution is impossible, Hubbert feels, unless
society is made stable. This means abandoning two axioms of our
culture—the work ethic and the idea that growth is the normal state of
affairs.
Hubbert challenges the latter mathematically and concludes the
exponential
growth of the last two centuries is the opposite of the normal
situation.
"It is an aberration. For most of human history the population
doubled only once every 32,000 years. Now it's down to 35 years. That is
dangerous. No biologic population can double more that a few times without
getting seriously out of bounds. I think the world is seriously
overpopulated right now. There can be no possible solutions to the world's
problems that do not involve stabilization of the world's population."
Hubbert's ideas about work are even more heretical. Work is
becoming, he says, increasingly unimportant. He thinks it is conceivable
that the future work week might be on the order of 10 hours. Indeed,
because production will have to be limited by increasingly limited mineral
resources, that might be inevitable. And that, Hubbert stresses, could be
the foundation of an earthly paradise.
"Most employment now is merely pushing paper around," he says.
"The actual work needed to keep a stable society running is a very small
fraction of available manpower."
The key to making this cultural alteration is to come up with a
limitless supply of cheap energy. Hubbert feels the answer is
obvious--solar power--and he does not feel more technological breakthroughs
are needed before it can be made universally available. His faith is not
that of a knee-jerk trendy but that of a doubter who did much studying
before his conversion.
"Fifteen years ago I thought solar power was impractical because I
thought nuclear power was the answer. But I spent some time on an advisory
committee on waste disposal to the Atomic Energy Commission. After that, I
began to be very, very skeptical because of the hazards. That's when I
began to study solar power. I'm convinced we have the technology to handle
it right now. We could make the transition in a matter of decades if we
begin now."
On June 4th, 1974, Hubbert testified before Representative Morris K.
Udall's Subcommittee on the Environment. (01/05/09) |
|
|
|
|
 James Howard Kunstler writes: There are two realities "out there" now competing for verification among those who think about national affairs and make things happen. The dominant one (let's call it the Status Quo) is that our problems of finance and economy will self-correct and allow the project of a "consumer" economy to resume in "growth" mode. This view includes the idea that technology will rescue us from our fossil fuel predicament -- through "innovation," through the discovery of new techno rescue remedy fuels, and via "drill, baby, drill" policy. This view assumes an orderly transition through the current "rough patch" into a vibrant re-energized era of "green" Happy Motoring and resumed Blue Light Special shopping.
The minority reality (let's call it The Long Emergency) says that it is necessary to make radically new arrangements for daily life and rather soon. It says that a campaign to sustain the unsustainable will amount to a tragic squandering of our dwindling resources. It says that the "consumer" era of economics is over, that suburbia will lose its value, that the automobile will be a diminishing presence in daily life, that the major systems we've come to rely on will founder, and that the transition between where we are now and where we are going is apt to be tumultuous.
My own view is obviously the one called The Long Emergency.
Since the change it proposes is so severe, it naturally generates exactly the kind of cognitive dissonance that paradoxically reinforces the Status Quo view, especially the deep wishes associated with saving all the familiar, comfortable trappings of life as we have known it. The dialectic between the two realities can't be sorted out between the stupid and the bright, or even the altruistic and the selfish. The various tech industries are full of MIT-certified, high-achiever Status Quo techno-triumphalists who are convinced that electric cars or diesel-flavored algae excreta will save suburbia, the three thousand mile Caesar salad, and the theme park vacation. The environmental movement, especially at the elite levels found in places like Aspen, is full of Harvard graduates who believe that all the drive-in espresso stations in America can be run on a combination of solar and wind power. I quarrel with these people incessantly. It seems especially tragic to me that some of the brightest people I meet are bent on mounting the tragic campaign to sustain the unsustainable in one way or another. But I have long maintained that life is essentially tragic in the sense that history won't care if we succeed or fail at carrying on the project of civilization.
While the public supposedly voted for "change" this fall, I maintain that they underestimate the changes really at hand. I voted for "change" myself in pulling the lever for Barack Obama. I regard him as a figure of intelligence and sensibility, but I'm far from convinced that he really sees the kind of change we are in for, and I fret about the measures he'll promote to rescue the Status Quo when he moves into the White House a few weeks from now. (01/05/09) |
|
|
|
|
 BBC Medical Science -- US researchers say they have harnessed the power of gold nanoparticles to devise a better way of delivering drugs to treat diseases such as cancer.
The fledgling system could release a number of drugs in a specific part of the body at desired intervals, the MIT team wrote in the journal ACS Nano.
The device makes use of the fact that different particles melt when exposed to different levels of infrared light.
Different drugs on the particles could thus be released in a controlled way.
One of the advantages of being able to deliver drugs directly to a specific site within the body is that you can use relatively toxic drugs without fear of causing widespread damage to other, healthy tissue.
A number of trials are using nanoparticles, sometimes as small as one nanometre - or a billionth of a metre - to take drugs directly to the site of a tumour and avoid many of the side-effects associated with traditional chemotherapy.
Near-infrared light is shone on the site, penetrating the skin to reach the tumour. At the right temperature, it causes the particles to heat up and release the drugs contained within.
But conditions such as cancer or HIV/Aids often require complex treatment with a number of drugs which have to be taken at different intervals. ...
The device developed by the MIT team involves two differently shaped
nanoparticles which have separate melting points, meaning the drugs can
be released in a controlled fashion at appropriate intervals.
(01/05/09) |
|
|
|
|
 BBC Ocean Science -- Coral growth in Australia's Great Barrier Reef has slowed to its most sluggish rate in the past 400 years.
The decline endangers the species the reef supports, say researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
They studied massive porites corals, which are several hundred years old, and found that calcification has declined by 13.3% since 1990.
Global warming and the increasing acidity of seawater are to blame, they write in Science journal.
Coral reefs are central to the formation and function of ecosystems and food webs for tens of thousands of other marine organisms.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest in the world, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands.
Dr Glenn De'ath and colleagues investigated 328 colonies of massive Porites corals, from 69 locations.
The largest corals are centuries old - growing at a rate of just 1.5cm per year.
By looking at the coral skeletons, they determined that calcification - or the deposit of calcium carbonate - has declined by 13.3% throughout the Great Barrier Reef since 1990.
Such a decline is unprecedented in at least the past 400 years, they write.
The researchers warn that changes in biodiversity are imminent, both at the Great Barrier Reef and at other reef systems throughout the world's oceans. (01/05/09)
|
|
|
|
|
 BBC Physics -- Jim Al-Khalili writes: Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.
But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science.
Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.
Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method.
As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data. ...
While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I
interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered
work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy.
It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics,
explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual
work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. (01/05/09) |
|
|
|
|
 E. O. Wilson writing in 2002: The
20th century was a time of exponential scientific and technical
advance, the freeing of the arts by an exuberant modernism, and the
spread of democracy and human rights throughout the world. It was also
a dark and savage age of world wars, genocide, and totalitarian
ideologies that came dangerously close to global domination. While
preoccupied with all this tumult, humanity managed collaterally to
decimate the natural environment and draw down the nonrenewable
resources of the planet with cheerful abandon. We thereby accelerated
the erasure of entire ecosystems and the extinction of thousands of
million-year-old species. If Earth's ability to support our growth is
finite--and it is--we were mostly too busy to notice.
As a new
century begins, we have begun to awaken from this delirium. Now,
increasingly postideological in temper, we may be ready to settle down
before we wreck the planet. It is time to sort out Earth and calculate
what it will take to provide a satisfying and sustainable life for
everyone into the indefinite future. The question of the century is:
How best can we shift to a culture of permanence, both for ourselves
and for the biosphere that sustains us?
The bottom line is
different from that generally assumed by our leading economists and
public philosophers. They have mostly ignored the numbers that count.
Consider that with the global population past six billion and on its
way to eight billion or more by midcentury, per capita freshwater and
arable land are descending to levels resource experts agree are risky.
The ecological footprint--the average amount of productive land and
shallow sea appropriated by each person in bits and pieces from around
the world for food, water, housing, energy, transportation, commerce,
and waste absorption--is about one hectare (2.5 acres) in developing
nations but about 9.6 hectares (24 acres) in the U.S. The footprint for
the total human population is 2.1 hectares (5.2 acres). For every
person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption with
existing technology would require four more planet Earths. The five
billion people of the developing countries may never wish to attain
this level of profligacy. But in trying to achieve at least a decent
standard of living, they have joined the industrial world in erasing
the last of the natural environments. At the same time, Homo sapiens
has become a geophysical force, the first species in the history of the
planet to attain that dubious distinction. We have driven atmospheric
carbon dioxide to the highest levels in at least 200,000 years,
unbalanced the nitrogen cycle, and contributed to a global warming that
will ultimately be bad news everywhere.
In short, we have
entered the Century of the Environment, in which the immediate future
is usefully conceived as a bottleneck. Science and technology, combined
with a lack of self-understanding and a Paleolithic obstinacy, brought
us to where we are today. Now science and technology, combined with
foresight and moral courage, must see us through the bottleneck and out. (01/01/09) |
|
|
|
|
 Ellen Brown writes: Bernie Madoff showed us how it was done: you induce many
investors to invest their money, promising steady above-market returns; and you
deliver – at least on paper. When your clients check their accounts, they see
that their investments have indeed increased by the promised amount. Anyone who
opts to pull out of the game is paid promptly and in full. You can afford to
pay because most players stay in, and new players are constantly coming in to
replace those who drop out. The players who drop out are simply paid with the
money coming in from new recruits. The scheme works until the market turns and
many players want their money back at once. Then it’s game over: you have to
admit that you don’t have the funds, and you are probably looking at jail time.
A Ponzi scheme is a form of pyramid scheme in which
earlier investors are paid with the money of later investors rather than from
real profits. The perpetuation of the scheme requires an ever-increasing flow
of money from investors in order to keep it going. Charles Ponzi was an
engaging Boston ex-convict who defrauded investors out of $6 million in the
1920s by promising them a 400 percent return on redeemed postal reply coupons. When
he finally could not pay, the scam earned him ten years in jail; and Bernie
Madoff is likely to wind up there as well.
Most people are not involved in illegal Ponzi schemes, but
we do keep our money in accounts that are tallied on computer screens rather
than in stacks of coins or paper bills. How do we know that when we demand our
money from our bank or broker that the funds will be there? The fact that banks
are subject to “runs” (recall Northern Rock, Indymac and Washington Mutual)
suggests that all may not be as it seems on our online screens. Banks
themselves are involved in a sort of Ponzi scheme, one that has been
perpetuated for hundreds of years. What distinguishes the legal scheme known as
“fractional reserve” lending from the illegal schemes of Bernie Madoff and his
ilk is that the bankers’ scheme is protected by government charter and
backstopped with government funds. At last count, the Federal Reserve and the
U.S. Treasury had committed $8.5 trillion to bailing out the banks from
their follies.1 By comparison,
M2, the largest measure of the money supply now reported by the Federal
Reserve, was just under $8 trillion in December 2008.2 The sheer size of the bailout efforts
indicates that the banking scheme has reached its mathematical limits and needs
to be superseded by something more sustainable. (01/01/09) |
|
|
|
|
 Christopher Cooper writes: "Somebody got murdered on New Year's Eve; Somebody said dignity was the first to leave." They tell you in writing classes, I think, that it's poor policy to open an essay with a quotation. It makes your writing look weak. Your readers assume you couldn't find much within yourself so you had to go borrow something fine and shiny from a better writer. Maybe so, and maybe no shame in knowing when to ask for help.
But maybe, too, you might consider, if the author excavated down into his own sad soul here as the murky night of the dying year congeals into the hard and bitter beginning of this desperate and dangerous dawn, he'd drag out some hurts and fears so bloody and black that none of us would want to watch them writhe or hear their screams.
So how was it for you? 2008. Did you lose your job? Your health insurance (with its high deductible, offensive co-pay, various restrictions and exclusions, and extensive paperwork and frustrating telephone contacts with incompetent and uncaring company employees)? Or did your retirement fund evaporate or just reduce by half or so? Still think you can make a profit selling your house (or perhaps even sell it at all)? Do you think 2009 will be better?
It was a good year, '08, if you have a sense of humor. ...
Well, I never had the money to invest in some shaky Wall Street instrument designed to keep me in my luxurious lifestyle through my golden years, so I didn't lose a nickel in the great stock market unraveling. So I could laugh all the way to the bank, so to speak, as the rest of you were redeposited in reality by your bursting bubble. They're coming fast aren't they-the bubbles? Dot-coms, housing, investment. And then to cap the quarter, some sleazoid running an outfit called Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (that would be Mr. Bernie Madoff his own self) indeed made off (I don't make this up, people!) with fifty billion dollars or so of money he'd sucked up in a giant, yet simple, classic Ponzi scheme, while Federal regulators were busy not regulating.
They had, in fact, spent the last three or four presidential terms deregulating because, haven't we been told since Ronald Reagan ran the show, "The Market knows best." Probably so. Bill Clinton assured us "The era of big government is over." The business of government is not to help the hurting and helpless, after all. Unless the sick and injured are giant corporations. Or investment banks. Or insurance companies.
But you were there. You saw the deals go down. You gasped in disbelief as professorial, careful Ben Bernanke and goofy, loose-canon Henry Paulson teamed up to deliver a few trillion dollars of money you and I haven't even earned yet to the crybaby capitalists who sat sadly before them and said it just wasn't fair that they should have to live or die according to market forces, however appropriate that might be for those of us picking hemlock boards off the green chain in the mud at N.C. Hunt's sawmill or sweeping the aisles and stocking canned goods at the Hannaford grocery conglomerate at three a.m.
At least we aren't fretting about the cost of our wars any more. And what a relief. Some hundreds of billions to prop up incompetent, crooked regimes, blow up wedding parties, and give the neighbors something to fight against. At least we don't have to kill those miserable creatures in Gaza ourselves, this Christmas. Israel is gunning down those it hadn't already starved. The score after some weeks of Hamas rocket fire and two days of Israeli bombing: about 270 to one. So much for eye-and-tooth proportionalism. Ah, but it's the Middle East! What can you do about that mess, after all? Just keep funding it, I guess.
And who cares about any of those old problems we briefly discussed back in the Sixties? Population growth, resource depletion, chemical pollution. No, it's gotta be death and destruction or profit and loss to get our attention now. (01/01/09) |
|
|
|
|
 BBC Medical Science -- People who scrimp on sleep are more likely to develop hardening of their arteries, a precursor to heart disease, research suggests. Calcified arteries were found in nearly a third of people who slept fewer than five hours a night. This dropped to around one in 10 for those who slept an extra hour, the Journal of the American Medical Association study of 495 adults found.
Experts said getting enough sleep was important for good heart health.
In the study, the volunteers underwent two CT scans, designed to assess the build-up of calcium in the heart's arteries, five years apart. They also filled out sleep questionnaires, kept a sleep diary and wore a wrist monitor for six nights that measured movement to give an estimate of how long they were actually lying still and asleep.
At the first scan, none of the volunteers had any calcification in their arteries but five years later 61 of them did. This calcification appeared to be linked with lack of sleep. The risk was lowest for those who regularly had more than seven hours sleep each night.
Lead researcher Dr Diane Lauderdale, of the University of Chicago, said there were several possible explanations for the link that they found. Firstly, there may be some factor not yet identified that can both reduce sleep duration and increase calcification. Or it might be down to blood pressure - high blood pressure increases the likelihood of calcification and blood pressure goes down during sleep. Alternatively, stress or a stress hormone like cortisol, which has been tied to decreased sleep and increased calcification, may play a role. She said: "Although there are constant temptations to sleep less, there is a growing body of evidence that short sleep may have subtle health consequences. Although this single study does not prove that short sleep leads to coronary artery disease, it is safe to recommend at least six hours of sleep a night." (01/01/09) |
|
|
|
|
 BBC Plant Science -- Plants have never been as important to the environment, the director of Kew Gardens has said, ahead of the London conservation site's 250th anniversary. They were vital to reduce the impact of climate change and "vast numbers of humans" needed them for medicine and food, Professor Stephen Hopper added.
Several major events will be held in 2009 to celebrate Kew's role as a world leader in plant science. The first of these sees free public entry to the gardens on New Year's Day.
"We believe that at no other point in history have plants been so important to people," said Professor Hopper. "They have importance as carbon sinks in a time of climate change. We have to care for what remains and address the serious business of repairing and restoring vegetation if we're going to have the buffers to climate variation that plant life offers." There was an urgency to protect the plants which were essential to human welfare and quality of life, he added, as well as continuing to care for "green companions".
More than seven million preserved specimens of plants from around the world can be found in Kew's Herbarium.
An extension to this will open in 2009 to coincide with the 250th anniversary, helping Kew to cope with the 30,000 new specimens it receives each year. (01/01/09) |
|
|
|
|
(01/01/09) |
|
|
|
|
 Timothy Wilken, MD
writes: How will we make decisions in a synergic future?
In today’s
world 2008, it is assumed without question that majority rule democracy
is the best way to organize humanity. But what if there were something
better? ...
Unanimous Rule Democracy or Synocracy is a much more powerful mechanism of decision making than the majority rule of present day democracy. Synocracy
is a synergic decision making system. Synergy means working
together—operating together as in Co-Operation—laboring together as in
Co-Laboration—acting together as in Co-Action.
However Synocracy,
which gives us humans the opportunity to accomplish more together than
we can accomplish separately, also requires more from us. It requires synergic consensus.
For any group of humans, synergic consensus can provide a much more
powerful mechanism of decision making than even the best majority rule
democracy carefully following Roberts Rules of Order. Synergic
consensus occurs when a group of humans sit as equals and negotiate to
reach a decision in which they all win and in which no one loses. In
synergic science this is called heterarchy.
That means all members of the deciding group sit on the same level as
“equals”. All decisions within a truly synergic group are made within “decision heterarchy”.
A decision heterarchy is made up of a group of humans with common
purpose. The minimum number is 2 the maximum number is presently
unknown. I believe the ideal size may be ~six or seven individuals.
The
group is organized horizontally with all individuals sharing equal authority and equal responsibility. Synergic consensus occurs when a group of humans sitting in heterarchy negotiate and reach a decision in which they all win and in which no one loses.
In a synergic heterarchy, all members sit on the same level as
“equals”. No one has more authority than anyone else. Every one has
equal responsibility and equal authority within the heterarchy. The
assignment for the heterarchy is to find a plan of action so that all
members win. It is the collective responsibility of the entire
heterarchy to find this “best” solution. Anyone can propose a plan to
accomplish the needs of the group.
All problems related to
accomplishing the needs would be discussed at length in the heterarchy.
The proposed plan of action for solving a problem is examined by all
members of the heterarchy. Anyone can suggest a modification, or even
an alternative action to solve the problem. All members of the
heterarchy serve as information sources for each other. The heterarchy
continues in discussion until a plan of action is found that will work
for everyone. When all are in agreement and only then can the plan be
implemented. The plan insures that all members of the synergic
heterarchy win. ...
Originated in the Netherlands in 1945 by Kees
Boeke, a Dutch educator and pacifist, Sociocracy was a way to adapt Quaker egalitarian principles to secular organizations. It uses the decision-making process of consent which
is different than most systems of 'consensus'. Consent looks for
disagreement and uses the reasons for disagreeing to come up with an amended proposal
that is within everyone's limits.
Consensus looks for agreement. If a
group wants to paint an outbuilding, consensus would require everyone
agreeing on a color. Consent would require everyone defining their
limits and then allowing the choice to be made within those limits. The
painter might end up with three colors that are acceptable to everyone
and then choose from those. (12/29/08) |
|
|
|
|
 Timothy Wilken, MD
writes: When a task is larger than the abilities of a single individual
it requires co-Operation. If you want to lift a thousand pound sofa you
will need help. Two individuals working together can accomplish more
than one individual working alone.
One thousand individuals working
together can accomplish much more than the same individuals working separately.
Interdependent systems are much more powerful than independent systems.
Humans are the most complex form of life in known universe, and we spin
a web of complex relationships to meet our needs and wants. They allow
for division of labor. It is by dividing labor, and becoming
specialized, that we humans are able to increase our standard of living
almost without limit. If each of us had to provide all our own needs
and wants, we would have to be the jack of all trades, and the master
of none. We humans joined together to gain the advantage of the
division of labor. When we divide labor, each individual can become
master of one trade. The individual can then produce a single product
much more efficiently then he could produce hundreds of different
products.
We humans have created complex webs of interdependence based
on our division of labor. Division of labor can be quite simple, as
when the husband agrees to carry out the trash, while his wife cooks
supper. Or it can be very complex, as in a large company, where the
tasks are divided among hundreds of thousands of employees.
For
humanity, our choice was simple. Become interdependent or retain the
quality of life of the plants and animals. Our mothers and fathers, our
grandmothers and grandfathers, our great grandmothers and great
grandfathers – they have already made the choice for us.
We modern
humans are bound together in total interdependence – this means we are
totally dependent on each other. Whether we like it now or not, really
doesn't matter. Look in your pockets, we can't go back 10,000 years
now. We don't know how to live in a true world of independence.
We
could not survive without the tools of our interdependence. The animals
live their lives without the tools of interdependence. They live life
naked with no possessions. They catch their food with tooth and claw –
killing and consuming plants and animals to survive. They are dependent
on plant and animal tissue for survival.
We humans share the animal
body and are no less dependent on animal and plant tissue for our
survival. However, our intelligence and our interdependence allows us
to cultivate the plant and animal tissue we need in our gardens, farms,
ranches, nurseries, and hatcheries. ...
Abraham, Buddha, Confucius, and
Jesus understood the underlying connectedness of all humanity. Their
admonitions to us contain high awareness of our human INTERdependence.
This is why they taught us not to kill, not to steal, not to molest,
not to fraud, not to coerce.
They understood that the conflict of
Adversity was not for humankind. They understood that the indifference
of Neutrality was not for humankind. They understood that humans were
meant to be Synergists.
So, they taught us to be our brother's keeper. (12/29/08) |
|
|
|
|
 Letter to the President-Elect Barack Obama
Dear Farmer-in-Chief Obama, Congratulations
on your victory and welcome to your new home on Pennsylvania Ave.
Knowing how much you love fresh vegetables, we'd like to help you tear
up the lawn and plant an organic garden! In the
tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden and inspired by Michael
Pollan's vision in the New York Times Magazine, we humbly suggest
planting a Hope Garden on the White House Lawn. In these days of rising food prices, global climate change,
and deteriorating health, the President's Hope Garden could grow as a
model of sustainability for the nation and, indeed, the world. It's a
model of a simple way to enhance food security while reducing our
ecological footprint and improving our families' health with fresh local food. We nominate ourselves to be the White House's "First Farmers." Here's our vision: - Serve
fresh organic Hope Garden produce at State dinners and to the First
Family, to lead by example and improve White House food "security";
- Give
tours of the Hope Garden to journalists, students, and other visitors
as a means of educating the nation about healthy eating, organic
techniques and the power of growing your own food;
- Use
the Hope Garden to support urban gardening initiatives in the D.C. area
to show that eating local is possible for anyone anywhere;
- Donate surplus Hope Garden produce to local food banks to feed those without gardens;
- Produce a variety of organic heirloom fruits and vegetables all year round, using cold frames and hoop houses.
We are Peace Corps Volunteers about to return home after three years of service in Paraguay,
working to improve food security & nutrition, promoting gardening,
and helping Paraguayans diversify their farms sustainably. We have
studied these issues at the University of Wisconsin's Nelson Institute
of Environmental Studies. More than just avid organic gardeners, we
also have experience in science & environmental education,
research, and program management. And, perhaps most importantly, we are
filled with hope and excitement about working with you! Sincerely, Justin Mog, Ph.D. & Amanda Fuller, M.S. Lets hope it receives a positive response. (12/29/08) |
|
|
|
|
 The Independent/UK -- Geoffrey Lean writes: One billion people will go hungry around the globe next year for the first time in human history, as the international financial crisis deepens, the United Nations has told The Independent on Sunday. The shocking landmark will be passed - despite a second record worldwide harvest in a row - because people are becoming too destitute to buy the food that is produced.
Decades of progress in reducing hunger are being abruptly reversed, dealing a devastating blow to a pledge by world leaders eight years ago to cut it in half by 2015. Rich countries have failed to provide promised money to boost agriculture in the Third World; the financial crisis is starving developing countries of credit and driving their people into greater poverty, and food aid to the starving is expected to begin drying up next month. Development charities recently called on US president-elect Barack Obama to put the escalating food crisis "front and centre" of his priorities.
Some 963 million people are now undernourished worldwide, according to the most recent survey of the crisis by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the UN body expects the situation to worsen with the recession. "The number will rise steadily next year," an FAO spokesman told the IoS last week. "We are looking at a billion people. That is clear." The FAO fears the tally will go on increasing for years to come. This directly contradicts an undertaking by the world's leaders at a special summit in September 2000 to "reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger" from 1990 levels by 2015, as part of an ambitious set of Millennium Development Goals.
At the time, and for several years afterwards, the goal looked achievable, if challenging. Between 1990 and 2005 the number of undernourished people stayed more or less the same at between 800 and 850 million, even though world population grew by 1.2 billion, meaning that the proportion of a rapidly increasing humanity that went hungry was steadily falling.
Several countries - including Ghana, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Jamaica and Costa Rica - actually exceeded the target years ahead of time, while others such as Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Mozambique were on track to achieve it. Twenty-five developing nations looked as if they would be able to halve the absolute number of their hungry - not just the proportion of them in their rising populations - by the target date.
But over the past three years that progress has been thrown abruptly into reverse, with the first steep and sustained rise in hunger in decades leaving another 115 million people short of food. The increase began when prosperity was still increasing and has continued despite bumper harvests; a new FAO report shows that this year's grain crop is set to grow by 5.4 per cent to 2,241 million tons, following a 6 per cent rise last year - ahead of population growth.
So the growth in hunger is not occurring, as in the past, because of shortage of food - but because people cannot afford to buy it even when it is plentiful. The main reason has been that high food prices have priced the poor out of the market. (12/29/08) |
|
|
|
|
 BBC Food Science -- A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of "new fundamentals", according to a leading food expert. Tim Lang warned that the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing "structural failures", such as "astronomic" environmental costs. The new approach needed to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation, he added.
Professor Lang is a member of the UK government's newly formed Food Council. "Essentially, what we are dealing with at the moment is a food system that was laid down in the 1940s," he told BBC News. It followed on from the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia. At the time, there was clear evidence showing that there was a mismatch between producers and the need of consumers."
Professor Lang, from City University, London, added that during the post-war period, food scientists and policymakers also thought increasing production would reduce the cost of food, while improving people's diets and public health. As he explains:
"But by the 1970s, evidence was beginning to emerge that the public health outcomes were not quite as expected. Secondly, there were a whole new set of problems associated with the environment."
Thirty years on and the world was now facing an even more complex situation, he added. "The level of growth in food production per capita is dropping
off, even dropping, and we have got huge problems ahead with an
explosion in human population."...
Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion
people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental
challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity,
rather than raiding and pillaging it? ...
Professor Lang outlined the challenges facing the global food supply system: "The 21st Century is going to have to produce a new diet for people, more sustainably, and in a way that feeds more people more equitably using less land." (12/29/08) |
|
|
|
|
  BBC Medical Science -- The facial expressions we make to show or hide our emotions are hardwired into our brains rather than learned during life, a study has concluded. Blind and sighted athletes made the same expressions when they won and lost, US researchers found.
The athlete on the far left is blind. The athlete near left is sighted. They have both just lost their contests.
This, the study reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology study suggests, meant the expressions were not picked up by watching others. The researchers believe they could be remnants of evolutionary history. The idea that facial expressions are in-built is not new - scientists have suggested it since the 1960s. However, the study at San Francisco State University provides some of the strongest evidence yet to support it.
Professor David Matsumoto and his team compared 4,800 photographs, capturing the expressions of sighted and blind judo athletes at medal ceremonies at the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In each case, the faces of gold and silver medal winning athletes were scrutinised. The researchers concluded that sighted and blind competitors showed or controlled their expressions in exactly the same way.
Professor Matsumoto said: "The statistical correlation between the facial expressions of sighted and blind individuals was almost perfect. While the winners frequently showed genuine joy at their victory, those in the lesser medal positions often produced "social smiles" - smiles involving only mouth movement, indicating that they may be artificial rather than spontaneous.
"This suggests something genetically resident within us is the source of facial expressions of emotion.
"Losers pushed their lower lip up as if to control the emotion on their face and many produced social smiles - individuals blind from birth could not have learned to control their emotions in this way through visual learning, so there must be another mechanism.
"It could be that our emotions, and the systems to regulate them, are vestiges of our evolutionary history." (12/29/08) |
|
|
|
|
 BBC Environmental Science -- The past year has been one of the most devastating ever in terms of natural disasters, one of the world's biggest re-insurance companies has said. Munich Re said the impact of the disasters was greater than in 2007 in both human and economic terms. The company suggested climate change was boosting the destructive power of disasters like hurricanes and flooding.
It has called for stricter curbs on emissions to prevent further uncontrollable weather scenarios.
Although there were fewer "loss-producing events" in 2008 than in the previous year, the impact of natural disasters was higher, said Munich Re in its annual assessment. More than 220,000 people died in events like cyclones, earthquakes and flooding, the most since 2004, the year of the Asian tsunami. Meanwhile, overall global losses totalled about $200bn (£137bn), with uninsured losses totalling $45bn, about 50% more than in 2007.
This makes 2008 the third most expensive year on record, after 1995, when the Kobe earthquake struck Japan, and 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina in the US.
Torsten Jeworrek of Munich Re said the pattern continued a long-term trend already observed. "Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes," he said. (12/29/08) |
|
|
|
|
 In his sermon on the mount, Jesus of Nazareth
taught: “Love our enemies, do good to them that hate us, bless them
that curse us, and pray for them that despitefully use us, I say unto
you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of
the judgement. Go be reconciled with thy brother.”
Jesus of Nazareth may have been the first human to embrace synergy.
His words seem to capture the very essence of synergic morality.
Synergic morality is more than not hurting other, it requires helping
other. Jesus was the first human to state the fundamental law of
synergic relationship. It is known as the Golden Rule: “So in
everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this
sums up the Law.”
What would you have others do to you? The best one
word answer I can find for this question is help. “Help others as you would have them help you.”
Whether you believe Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ fortold in the Old
Testament, or just a man, his words bring wisdom to all humanity. (12/25/08) |
|
|
|
|
 Timothy Wilken writes: Recently it has become politically incorrect to wish your fellow humans a Merry Christmas. We are supposed to use the generic term Happy Holidays
to avoid religious discrimination and hurting the feelings of others.
...
So who are we offending by wishing someone a Merry Christmas?
There
are those Christian religions that are purists. They believe in Christ
and Jesus of Nazareth, but are offended by the pagan contamination
surrounding Christmas. This includes the Jehovah's Witnesses.
And while
the Jews believe in the Old Testament chapters of the Bible, and even
in the coming of Christ, they do not accept that Jesus of Nazareth was
that foretold messiah so Christmas is out for them.
And then there are
the many religions who do not accept the Bible so the Old Testament's
foretold Christ has no meaning to them. This includes the Hindu's,
Buddhists, and Muslims.
And, don't forget the Agnostics (the existence
of God is unknowable) and Atheists (God does not exist) who naturally
don't believe in Christ, and so therefore might be offended when wished
a Merry Christmas.
And, I am sure the reader can think of many others
who may be offended that I have left out. (12/25/08) |
|
|
|
|
 Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Making money is not the same as creating life support. Elsewhere, I have defined mutual life support to be synergic wealth. Money was defined as neutral wealth. We humans are an interdependent species. We meet our needs by making exchanges in the marketplace. Supply and demand often determines the value of things that we need. High demand raises the value of a particular good, as does low supply. It is scarcity that gives everything its maximum value.
The laws of supply and demand were originally formulated by Adam Smith before the invention of advertising. Advertising is a powerful tool designed to create demand. This tool is a constant and insideous companion to modern life. It is enormously effective at creating demand. You can’t watch television, listen to radio, read a magazine, or even drive on the public highways without being bombarded with advertising. This prolific advertising creates a strong demand for products and services that have little or no benefit to humankind.
Most of this advertising created demand is for our wants not for our needs. Wants and needs are not the same.
I want a Mercedes, but I need transportation.
I want a gold Rolex, but I need to know the time.
I want Gucci loafers, but I only need shoes.
I want a million dollar architectually designed home, but I only need safe, comfortable housing.
Our present culture is dominated by the idea that more is always better than less–that expensive is always better than inexpensive. Two phrases in common use today encapsulate this attitude: “The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.” and “He who dies with the most toys wins!”
Scientists have discovered that Nature is always seeking more for less–always seeking maximum efficiency in all that she does. R. Buckminster Fuller called this principle of seeking more for less the “dymaxion” way.
This is of course simply another way of stating the "Principle of Least Action". In science the most elegant solution is the one that explains the most with the fewest variables. A synergic culture will be dominated by the dymaxion ideal. The best will be that which accomplishes the most with the least.
Doing more with less will makes more available to help others. Helping others so that you are helped in return is the operating basis of synergic culture. There our human wants will move towards congruence with our human needs.
But, back to the present world, today’s wants are not only more than we need, but they often are not even good for us.
I want a cigarette, but what I need is to relax.
I want a drink of alcohol, but what I need in to reduce the stress in my life.
I want an extra dessert, but what I need is more lov | | |
![](http://downloads.redjupiter.com/users/images/bryanbell/shim.gif"){kind=spacer}
