I am inspired by Jean Freemen's comment to "Lifetime Social Justice 6/9/08 regarding when do people recognize that a problem exists? That is a question that has confounded most thinkers through the ages. My own 90 years has taught me that we don’t respond to any predicted catastrophe until it is on top of us. Take the floods that are drowning the cities all along the Mississippi. They were supposed to be brought under control by the “Army Corps of Engineers.” For a long time that title made people feel comforted that this group of very smart engineers who can conquer and bring old mother nature to her knees. That has been the dream of human beings since the beginning of written history. After all, that would mean humans win this great undeclared war.
Jean Freeman rightly asks “shouldn’t we be talking once again about population issues?” That’s not an issue that directly effects us daily. By contrast, the increase in the price of gasoline or home heating oil smacks us directly in the pocketbook and we are ready to bring our politicians to their knees in demanding “solutions,” like eliminating the tax on gasoline and diesel fuel for the summer. Is that a solution? Of course not. It’s not even a band aid. It does not address the problem that is called “the US addiction to oil.” We simply refuse to recognize the finite nature of fossil fuels. To do so would force us to make fundamental changes in the way we live.
In a number of casual conversations with locals about the oil crisis, I was told “not to worry. The scientists and techies will come up with a solution.” I have thought about that answer and it amounts to nothing more than classic “denial.” Somebody somewhere out there is going to figure it out and everything will be just honky dory. Dream on, dream on. But that dreaming keeps us from ever looking into the abyss. So we go happily on until food prices go out of this world and somebody makes the observation that we have so many people on this planet and it can’t feed us all. I call it, “The Planet Hits Back.”
There are a whole number of areas where The Planet Hits Back phenomena is taking place. The food shortage brings up the population explosion, but it also raises the issue of water, an essential for all living things. In my youth it was a common element. I remember cold water springs all over the countryside. We used to just stop and have a nice cool drink. First water became polluted. Then the natural springs slowly dried up as the aquifers supplying the springs became overused and drained. The reaction back then was the same, “We just have to drill deeper wells. There’s plenty of water down there.” Now we have learned how to desalinate ocean water. And since the oceans are big enough, “what’s to worry about?” It takes a lot of energy to desalinate water. That’s what to worry about.
I do believe that future wars may well be fought over who gets the water. Here in the US we continue to expand housing in the Arizona Nevada desert. The issue of water not only for crop irrigation but for all those golf courses and swimming pools will emerge as flash points. Developers in the Southwest want to tap the Great Lakes for all that fresh water just sitting there being used to move ships around. “The Planet Hits Back.”
With global warming comes changing weather patterns. Floods where there used to be droughts and droughts where there used to be floods. Tornadoes where there never were any and forest fires in places that never heard of them. The Arctic and Greenland ice melting, raising the worldwide ocean levels. The first hit are poor people living in low lying areas where nobody should have lived in the first place.
Okay, so here’s an example of forward looking people. The Dutch, who have had considerable experience with the ocean water as a threat to survival, have decided that people living in low lying coastal flood zones will be moved to permit natural flooding to take place. Wow, what can the rest of us learn from that? Well, in fairness to the Chinese, they have been trying to hold down their population with the one child limit to a family. That has not worked too well as they mostly want boys. There will be a severe imbalance between the sexes in years to come. It’s a great example of unintended consequences. (Chinese boys can come visit the US where there will be a great number of Chinese girls from all the adoptions that have taken place these past many years.)
I really wish I had something more encouraging to say to Jean Freemen in her wish for a more rational world. In many ways we humans remain slaves to our evolutionary inheritance. As individuals we really do think that if we outwit everyone else “me and mine can survive no matter what.” It is only when our thinking becomes a group phenomena, as it has in Holland at least around the rising ocean problem, that we can address these problems with some level of rationality. We all hope for leaders who might effect the kind of changes needed to face up to our rapidly changing world. We don’t see much of them, largely because we are not receptive to news that requires serious change in our collective behaviors.
My friend Hugh Jones, who wrote the guest blog “Peak Oil,” has never in his life planted a seed. He now has a “victory garden” from which we ate a delicious salad last Thursday. If the price of eggs keeps going up, we will seriously consider a couple of hens for our own egg supply. This may be the trick. As things seem to be sliding down hill, try to develop your survival strategy together with your neighbors, like group car rides to the supermarket or solar panels on your roof to cut your dependence on oil.
We would love to hear any ideas. Click “Comments” at the end of this blog. Type your comments in the “Leave your comment” box. If you have trouble with the Google sign in, you can put your name in the “Leave your comment” box (if you want) and just hit “Anonymous” under the “Choose Your Identity” column. Then hit “PUBLISH YOUR COMMENT.” Or just send us an email and let us know if you would like us to put it on the blog for you.
Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Internet and the Brain
In August 2007 (On Becoming a Blogger) I wrote about my joys of discovering all that the Internet could do for me. I also expressed some concerns about the effects of the rapid fire responses of Google, Wickopedia, etc. My concern was and is the impact of instant information on real learning. Being an old Geezer I wondered, does learning require some hard work on the learners part or can it be just a few strokes of the keyboard away? I continue to worry about that. Now comes a very revealing article in the July-August issue of the Atlantic Monthly titled “ Is Google making us Stoop-id? Subtitle “What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” by Nicholas Carr.
As I have enjoyed my journey into the cyberspace world I have also had an underneath queasy feeling that I was losing something. I could not be more specific but there it was. Maybe it was just missing those seemingly endless hours in the library stacks looking for some obscure article about work in the 14 century Manchester England. A successful hunt in the stacks for some obscure piece of knowledge seemed to be a victory of learning over ignorance.
Carr relates his Internet experience, “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry reprogramming the memory.” Further he says, “I am not thinking the way I used to think.” Carr is concerned that he has lost the art of reading a serious long book and thinking about what it has to say. My experience has been a far less effort to read understand, and make my own critical judgments. It is now so easy to get all the answers off the Internet, No need to read the whole thing just go to Wikopedia and Bingo you can get the answer to anything. Yes, just about anything. So what’s the matter with that? I am not sure. But let me guess.
I use to tackle big books as an adventure of discovery of learning and critical judgement. Most important was the latter as it was an exercise in thinking. That’s what made you wade through a bunch of ideas, facts, notions, hypothesis, and the authors conclusions. If I were to pick out the single most important exercise it was critical thinking. You were forced to figure out your own analysis of what was presented. Therein lies the great divide between now and before the Internet BTI. The internet is our new knowledge source as against the old musty smelling library stacks with their independent thinking and conclusions.( I really do miss that musty smell.)
Carr quotes Maryanne Wolf a developmental psychologist at Tufts. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the Internet is a style that puts ”efficiency” and immediacy” above all else. It may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex prose commonplace. When we read on line, she says we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Finally she suggests that, “Our ability to interpret text to make the the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.”
There is much more in the Carr article of interest. Like the impact of the invention of the clock on our lives. How that machine made us slaves to the clock that told us exactly what to do and when. For those of you who are concerned, puzzled or just curious, I suggest reading the whole piece.
I will certainly continue to use the Internet, but with more suspect regarding the information I am given. That at least might send me into my own little stacks of reference sources in my home or the local library. The all engrossing affect of the spin factor may be how we got to where we are in the information explosion. Stop and think how does your mind processes information as a result of the Internet experience? A good exercise might be to take a little time to comment on this blog.
Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y. (especially on your birthday.)
As I have enjoyed my journey into the cyberspace world I have also had an underneath queasy feeling that I was losing something. I could not be more specific but there it was. Maybe it was just missing those seemingly endless hours in the library stacks looking for some obscure article about work in the 14 century Manchester England. A successful hunt in the stacks for some obscure piece of knowledge seemed to be a victory of learning over ignorance.
Carr relates his Internet experience, “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry reprogramming the memory.” Further he says, “I am not thinking the way I used to think.” Carr is concerned that he has lost the art of reading a serious long book and thinking about what it has to say. My experience has been a far less effort to read understand, and make my own critical judgments. It is now so easy to get all the answers off the Internet, No need to read the whole thing just go to Wikopedia and Bingo you can get the answer to anything. Yes, just about anything. So what’s the matter with that? I am not sure. But let me guess.
I use to tackle big books as an adventure of discovery of learning and critical judgement. Most important was the latter as it was an exercise in thinking. That’s what made you wade through a bunch of ideas, facts, notions, hypothesis, and the authors conclusions. If I were to pick out the single most important exercise it was critical thinking. You were forced to figure out your own analysis of what was presented. Therein lies the great divide between now and before the Internet BTI. The internet is our new knowledge source as against the old musty smelling library stacks with their independent thinking and conclusions.( I really do miss that musty smell.)
Carr quotes Maryanne Wolf a developmental psychologist at Tufts. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the Internet is a style that puts ”efficiency” and immediacy” above all else. It may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex prose commonplace. When we read on line, she says we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Finally she suggests that, “Our ability to interpret text to make the the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.”
There is much more in the Carr article of interest. Like the impact of the invention of the clock on our lives. How that machine made us slaves to the clock that told us exactly what to do and when. For those of you who are concerned, puzzled or just curious, I suggest reading the whole piece.
I will certainly continue to use the Internet, but with more suspect regarding the information I am given. That at least might send me into my own little stacks of reference sources in my home or the local library. The all engrossing affect of the spin factor may be how we got to where we are in the information explosion. Stop and think how does your mind processes information as a result of the Internet experience? A good exercise might be to take a little time to comment on this blog.
Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y. (especially on your birthday.)
Monday, June 9, 2008
Lifetime Social Justice Award
Friday I attended a Conference at Stony Brook University on “How Class Works.” Under the leadership of Professor Zweig, this has become a biennial international event. I participated in a panel discussion of the Labor Movement After WWII. That same evening at a banquet I was given an award for “Lifetime Contribution to Social Justice for Working People.”
In my many years in a variety of organizations I have been given awards, but never paid much attention to them. Why? Because I always had a strong feeling that my accomplishments were highly dependent on those around me who made my achievements possible. This award was different as it reflected on a whole lifetime of social action.
My old friend Stanley Aronowitz spent many hours on a Friday night traffic crawl to get to the Conference to introduce me to the attendees. He cited my book, “Wasn’t That a Time,” MIT Press, for those interested in my life story in the struggle for social justice. Stanley and a group of new social justice fighters are working on a new Left Manifesto. I sure look forward to that.
In accepting the award I told a very enthusiastic audience that my social action consciousness came from my German Anarchist father who jumped ship to stay in the US, specifically Brooklyn NY, to avoid service in the Kaiser’s army. Growing up in a world of socialist dreamers taught me the importance of seeing social injustice wherever it was, and the need to take action against it.
I told the audience of my earliest experiences of sitting on my father’s shoulders while welcoming Eugene Victor Debs when he came out of prison; of the 1927 candlelight vigil in Union Square for Sacco and Vanzetti who had been put to death that very night; of my time in the UAW; the TUUL Plumbers Helpers Local; the International Association of Machinists from which I was expelled three times; and in Montana for the Mine MIll & Smelter Workers.
In looking at our present situation, my plea to the gathered was for all of us to recognize the emerging energy crisis and its implications for working people. The Independent truck drivers road blocks protesting over $5 a gallon for Diesel is just the tip of the iceberg. The cost of all commodities that are oil dependent are about to go sky high. This will bring severe deprivation for those who can least afford it. Gasoline, food, heating oil, kerosene for cooking, plastics, medicines, and so many other everyday things are dependent on oil.
\
If we don’t find constructive ways for people to direct their bitterness and rage over the skyrocketing cost of living, they will turn on each other. This is precisely what we witnessed in South Africa in the last few weeks. Black Citizens of South Africa turning on Blacks from Zimbabwe, Malawi, and other neighboring countries to vent their rage over their own frustration on innocent people who are also in desperate straights trying to find a place to make a living.
It is our responsibility to develop ideas about how to deal with this emerging crisis. Organizing people in support of those ideas is the social justice agenda for our time. To my pleasant surprise that brought the whole hall to its feet in applause. For a brief moment I thought I was back in 1938 making a speech to the unemployed on a street corner in the Bronx.
I thank the “How Class Works 2008 Conference” for that opportunity. And I do so heartily hope we can rise to the occasion.
I especially thank Kate for her support of the conference logistics. N.H.W.Y.
In my many years in a variety of organizations I have been given awards, but never paid much attention to them. Why? Because I always had a strong feeling that my accomplishments were highly dependent on those around me who made my achievements possible. This award was different as it reflected on a whole lifetime of social action.
My old friend Stanley Aronowitz spent many hours on a Friday night traffic crawl to get to the Conference to introduce me to the attendees. He cited my book, “Wasn’t That a Time,” MIT Press, for those interested in my life story in the struggle for social justice. Stanley and a group of new social justice fighters are working on a new Left Manifesto. I sure look forward to that.
In accepting the award I told a very enthusiastic audience that my social action consciousness came from my German Anarchist father who jumped ship to stay in the US, specifically Brooklyn NY, to avoid service in the Kaiser’s army. Growing up in a world of socialist dreamers taught me the importance of seeing social injustice wherever it was, and the need to take action against it.
I told the audience of my earliest experiences of sitting on my father’s shoulders while welcoming Eugene Victor Debs when he came out of prison; of the 1927 candlelight vigil in Union Square for Sacco and Vanzetti who had been put to death that very night; of my time in the UAW; the TUUL Plumbers Helpers Local; the International Association of Machinists from which I was expelled three times; and in Montana for the Mine MIll & Smelter Workers.
In looking at our present situation, my plea to the gathered was for all of us to recognize the emerging energy crisis and its implications for working people. The Independent truck drivers road blocks protesting over $5 a gallon for Diesel is just the tip of the iceberg. The cost of all commodities that are oil dependent are about to go sky high. This will bring severe deprivation for those who can least afford it. Gasoline, food, heating oil, kerosene for cooking, plastics, medicines, and so many other everyday things are dependent on oil.
\
If we don’t find constructive ways for people to direct their bitterness and rage over the skyrocketing cost of living, they will turn on each other. This is precisely what we witnessed in South Africa in the last few weeks. Black Citizens of South Africa turning on Blacks from Zimbabwe, Malawi, and other neighboring countries to vent their rage over their own frustration on innocent people who are also in desperate straights trying to find a place to make a living.
It is our responsibility to develop ideas about how to deal with this emerging crisis. Organizing people in support of those ideas is the social justice agenda for our time. To my pleasant surprise that brought the whole hall to its feet in applause. For a brief moment I thought I was back in 1938 making a speech to the unemployed on a street corner in the Bronx.
I thank the “How Class Works 2008 Conference” for that opportunity. And I do so heartily hope we can rise to the occasion.
I especially thank Kate for her support of the conference logistics. N.H.W.Y.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Love Affair 2
There are so many things happening I am hard pressed to make some choices. I will certainly be back on the coming dirty tricks campaign being hatched against Barack Obama. But for the moment let me stick to the oil crisis.
In Love Affair 1 I wrote about my admiration for the internal combustion engine (ICE) and what precipitated its origins, i.e. the need for pumps to drain the water from the British coal mines that lead to the invention of the steam engine. That in turn sparked the development of the ICE and so on.
Okay, so here is the point of all this. It was the start of the Industrial Revolution. We, the western civilization, have been the privileged beneficiaries of that revolution. Our high standard of living for the past century is directly attributable to the dramatic increase in industrial productivity brought on by that revolution. There is a serious price to pay for that big long party and it is called the environmental degradation of the planet.
We have before us a living demonstration of what the industrial revolution might have looked like in Manchester England in the late 18 hundreds or Pittsburgh in the early 19 hundreds. Dirty coal burning steam engines, mill furnaces, home heating coal made the air unfit for humans. Want to see what it was like? Go visit China. They are in the cusp of an industrial revolution. People want to be off the farms into the cities with jobs that might let them afford a car, a home with television, microwaves the whole panoply of goodies that come with the new technology.
Unfortunately for the Chinese and other developing countries, they are late on the scene. The earlier industrial development didn’t know from air, water, or land pollution. So we went merrily along until we began to discover the down side of our great party. We did have some great achievements in overcoming our really bad habits. We were able to bring Lake Erie back to life after a hundred years of treating it, and so many waterways, as our sewer systems. Same is true of our improvements in cleaning up the air by installing emission systems in our cars. We still have not dealt with the pollution of our own coal-fired electric generating plants.
The Chinese are saying, “Heah, you guys dumped all your shit into the atmosphere, the lakes and the rivers, so now it’s our turn.” Precisely because of what we have learned from our disregard of the planet, we would like to see the developing countries not repeat our very costly mistakes. That idea does not seem to be well received.
We are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to lecturing the developing world on the consequences of the industrial explosion. Their very understandable reaction is, who are you folks to lecture us after you have been enjoying that almost endless party for a 100 years. It is a very sad dilemma that we are now caught up in. The hard fact is our party is coming to an end. That will have the effect of stalling the emerging industrialization of the developing world. The big issue is the increasing demand on the-declining amount of oil.
A previous blog talked about the “social unrest phenomena.” We are beginning to see unrest as a result of the rising cost of oil. Truckers in Europe and the US blocking highways in protest over high diesel oil prices. Food prices spiraling out of reach of the poorest in the world.
Perhaps it was the first walk on the moon that began an awareness of the planet as a unified system that affects us all. Big difference from back in Dickens time when all we saw was our own backyards. Now cleaning up the air in Beijing is as much the world’s problem as it is the Chinese. We need an international agency with clout that can lead in reducing the negative effects of industrialization. The challenge is made difficult because now is also when oil is starting to run out. We ain’t seen nothing yet!
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
In Love Affair 1 I wrote about my admiration for the internal combustion engine (ICE) and what precipitated its origins, i.e. the need for pumps to drain the water from the British coal mines that lead to the invention of the steam engine. That in turn sparked the development of the ICE and so on.
Okay, so here is the point of all this. It was the start of the Industrial Revolution. We, the western civilization, have been the privileged beneficiaries of that revolution. Our high standard of living for the past century is directly attributable to the dramatic increase in industrial productivity brought on by that revolution. There is a serious price to pay for that big long party and it is called the environmental degradation of the planet.
We have before us a living demonstration of what the industrial revolution might have looked like in Manchester England in the late 18 hundreds or Pittsburgh in the early 19 hundreds. Dirty coal burning steam engines, mill furnaces, home heating coal made the air unfit for humans. Want to see what it was like? Go visit China. They are in the cusp of an industrial revolution. People want to be off the farms into the cities with jobs that might let them afford a car, a home with television, microwaves the whole panoply of goodies that come with the new technology.
Unfortunately for the Chinese and other developing countries, they are late on the scene. The earlier industrial development didn’t know from air, water, or land pollution. So we went merrily along until we began to discover the down side of our great party. We did have some great achievements in overcoming our really bad habits. We were able to bring Lake Erie back to life after a hundred years of treating it, and so many waterways, as our sewer systems. Same is true of our improvements in cleaning up the air by installing emission systems in our cars. We still have not dealt with the pollution of our own coal-fired electric generating plants.
The Chinese are saying, “Heah, you guys dumped all your shit into the atmosphere, the lakes and the rivers, so now it’s our turn.” Precisely because of what we have learned from our disregard of the planet, we would like to see the developing countries not repeat our very costly mistakes. That idea does not seem to be well received.
We are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to lecturing the developing world on the consequences of the industrial explosion. Their very understandable reaction is, who are you folks to lecture us after you have been enjoying that almost endless party for a 100 years. It is a very sad dilemma that we are now caught up in. The hard fact is our party is coming to an end. That will have the effect of stalling the emerging industrialization of the developing world. The big issue is the increasing demand on the-declining amount of oil.
A previous blog talked about the “social unrest phenomena.” We are beginning to see unrest as a result of the rising cost of oil. Truckers in Europe and the US blocking highways in protest over high diesel oil prices. Food prices spiraling out of reach of the poorest in the world.
Perhaps it was the first walk on the moon that began an awareness of the planet as a unified system that affects us all. Big difference from back in Dickens time when all we saw was our own backyards. Now cleaning up the air in Beijing is as much the world’s problem as it is the Chinese. We need an international agency with clout that can lead in reducing the negative effects of industrialization. The challenge is made difficult because now is also when oil is starting to run out. We ain’t seen nothing yet!
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
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