My life has changed a lot. (Our lives are always changing.)

School is back in session. The number of boats is thinning in the marina. Playground equipment stands empty in the rain, and leaves are beginning to turn and fall. Autumn is a season of change more obvious than the gradual changes of summer.

The rest of the United States, when it recognizes the name Bruce Catton, thinks “Civil War historian.” Here in Michigan (especially northern Michigan, where Catton spent his boyhood and youth), we know him as one of our own, not only the writer of books about the Civil War but also author of an engaging and moving history of Michigan, as well as his beautiful and much-loved memoir, Waiting for the Morning Train. 

 

Catton had a tragic sense of history. His thesis in Michigan: A Centennial History can be stated simply, if metaphorically: “We are all Indians.” With this phrase, the author was not taking on the colors of a wannabe and dressing up in literary pow-wow regalia, pretending to be something he was not. This is not cultural appropriation. What Catton meant is clear to readers of the book: the relentless march of American history, the tide of white Europeans invading and claiming ancestral tribal homelands, which meant cultural destruction to Native American tribes, bringing change faster that the native peoples could adapt to it (had the Europeans even allowed them to adapt, which is another story) – that kind of rapid, destructive cultural change is the fate of us all, whether we realize it or not. One example from Michigan history is the destruction of old-growth white pine forests: in the short term, the timber industry provided jobs locally and lumber to rebuild Chicago after the fire, but the resulting fields of stumps provided nothing for the many young lumber towns that rapidly fell into decay.

Perhaps being overcome and left behind is the fate of the older generations everywhere in the world where change is rapid. In this Western “civilized” world, certainly, we are (and have been for generations) overdriving our headlights – and we are also, simultaneously, the deer in the headlights, those bringing change no more in control of the future than those overwhelmed by changes wrought.

In my own life, for a long time, there were certain things I did every year and naively thought I would always do, and now I find myself falling away from many of what used to be annual personal traditions, while at the same time unforeseen developments have come into my life, complicating and changing it irrevocably. One recent development is the dog we call Peasy.  I knew I was adopting a shy dog, a dog with “issues,” but I had no idea what it meant to live with a “reactive” dog until, as we got to know him better, I began reading more about the special needs this little guy has, which is why I now say that he is “my comfort and my challenge, companion and burden, solution (to some of life’s problems) and problem (on his own, in many ways).” Fortunately, I am not alone in dealing with the challenges Peasy presents, however, because the little dickens has managed somehow to worm his way into the Artist’s heart, as well. How amazing! 

“He’s so full of life! And he’s so grateful to us! It would be churlish not to love him,” says the Artist (who adds that the last thing he wants to be is a churl). When Peasy trots proudly into the bedroom carrying one of his toys to show us, we dissolve in laughter. He plays joyfully and brings his joy to us, another of his treasures and one he shares happily. If only he could spread his joy and love around to other people, as Sarah did! But that, sadly, is not his nature.

Nikki was a shy little plain Jane, “pure mutt,” as I used to say when people asked. Sarah was a beautiful, calm, very sociable Aussie-border collie mix. The world was a scary place for Nikki, but with us she had a good, long life. Sarah was the easiest puppy and dog in the world to live with and loved just about everyone and everything in the world. Neither of those dogs prepared us for Peasy. But although the accommodations necessary for dealing with him and friends and family at the same time are sometimes a real pain in the neck, he loves us so much that we can’t help loving him back.

 

So that is one big change in our life. Another, creeping on us gradually, but more speedily with each passing year, is that we are getting old. Us! Whoever thought that would happen? It doesn’t mean a thing that it happens to “everyone,” because what has “everyone” to do with us? 

 

I began this post with Michigan history, zoomed in on my personal life, and now want to pull back again for a wider, longer view. Northport. Leelanau County. Traverse City. Northern Michigan. In Traverse City, change has been bigger and faster than out here in the county, such that if we don’t go to town for a couple of weeks, we hardly recognize the place. Okay, slight exaggeration. But really! High-rise hotels and motels have taken the place of old mom-and-pop tourist cabins, and enormous condominium buildings sprout like giant mushrooms from outer space along the Boardman River and Grand Traverse Bay. We look at what we see there now and recall to each other how the same place used to look forty, fifty, sixty years ago, when Traverse City really was still a small town. 

 

Well, Northport is still a small town. We have our dog parade in August and homecoming parade in the fall. In the summer, there is the farmers market and, on Friday evenings, Music in the Park. There is a blinking traffic light at the south end of the village, and there are parking lots but no parking meters. Yet change is inevitable everywhere, and Northport is no exception. Will our little village be able to accommodate change and retain its friendly small-town atmosphere, or will the atmosphere itself be changed? No one, I think, wants the latter possibility to be realized. Those of us already here like our town the way it is, and new people come because they like it, too.

 

When I posted on Facebook that I had a couple copies of the book Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, two village council members put dibs on those copies (so I should probably order more). Is it possible to limit growth? How do we do it?

 

It’s bow season right now for deer, to be followed by firearm deer season, and slowing down on county roads is a good idea. Maybe slowing down in other ways is a good idea, too. Easy for me to recommend slowing down, though: I’m getting old. How do you feel about change and speed?

 

P.S. Please see here my pitch for the kind of support that counts with booksellers, whether you like life fast or slow. Thanks!

“How Big Are We?”

Peasy sends greetings.

 

I’m not writing about dogs at all today. Peasy is only there to draw you in. But let me wade into my big, sprawling topic slowly, coming at it from an oblique personal angle. 

 

More and more, conversations the Artist and I have at home are concerned with memories and reminiscences. We recall past adventures and travels taken together, look back on days with children, and fondly (to put it mildly) remember our wonderful old dog, Sarah, “she who could do no wrong.” We also share with each other years before our meeting, his growing-up years in Detroit and mine in Joliet. We tell each other of friends the other may never have met, and we also repeat stories of friends we both have known and loved, some now gone forever except in the hearts and minds of those of us who loved them.

 

Our lives are finite. We will not live forever. And the older we get (those of us fortunate enough to live to be old), the clearer that vision of the end limit becomes, with more life behind than ahead of us, every day more and more precious.

 

Old friends had a show of their art this past weekend, the work of husband and wife Gene and Judy Rantz on display at the Northport Arts Building on 3^rd St. The work was beautiful, the occasion poignant, Gene and Judy not present. Gene had written a statement about their life together, going back to their meeting in 1985, then noted that this would be their “last show together.” It was clear in the show that their respective art had developed along with their relationship, Judy’s work ever-evolving through the years and Gene’s most recent painting a break-through tribute to her.

 

I wanted to edge into my larger topic from the personal angle rather than opening with a quote from the economics book I’ve been reading for the last couple of weeks, because – really! How many of you want to read about economics, even at secondhand? But while Herman E. Daly’s distinction between growth and development is crucial for communities – and that’s where I want to go next – it seems to me that the distinction can be seen in our individual lives, as well. Babies grow and develop. Adults mature. After maturity, normal physical growth ceases (although cells are replaced, we do not continue to grow taller and taller), but moral, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and artistic development can go on and on. We may not learn as fast, and we may not remember as much of what we learn late in life, but in these other ways continued development often more than compensates for losses.

 

A usually very upbeat and positive friend was uncharacteristically crabby the other day. “I danced too much last night,” he said, but still he continued in a curmudgeonly vein to insist that “Northport is ruined!” Oh, dear!

 

It’s true that I have never seen as many people in Northport as are here this summer. Our village has never before experienced parking as a problem, outside 4^th of July evening, but now lots fill up and people have to walk more. (But that’s okay, isn’t it? I remember a faculty member saying once that the university did not have a parking problem but a walking problem.) Seating and being served is no longer immediate but usually necessitates waiting. Still, if people don’t have time to wait while on vacation, when would they have time to wait? Patient, good-natured, happy visitors are very welcome everywhere!

 

There’s been more of a brouhaha, to tell the truth, in both Northport and Leland, between long-time, year-round village residents and owners of big, new houses who have built adjacent to street ends, which are legally public access spots to the water. Another (perhaps milder) controversy focuses on Timber Shores, a proposed RV park south of town on land that was a public campground years ago. Again, adjacent property owners are adamantly opposed, as are a few village residents worried about increased traffic and congestion. The Northport-Omena Chamber of Commerce supports the Timber Shores plan, seeing it as a way to bring more visitors to the area so that our community can “grow and prosper.” 

 

The truth is that population pressures are being felt almost everywhere in the world. We humans have multiplied exponentially! And accelerated growth can be disconcerting. I feel it myself whenever I go to Traverse City, where it seems another huge condominium building or hotel pops up along Grand Traverse Bay every week. But we are not talking about condos with the Timber Shores plan. We’re not talking about million-dollar McMansions for seasonal residents, either. The RV park, which would include a section for tent campers, would complement the campground at Leelanau State Park in providing a way for non-property owners to have an Up North vacation.

 

My first Michigan experiences began when I was 12 years old and my parents and sisters and I began our summer camping life, all up and down the Lake Michigan coast. We camped at state parks in Orchard Beach, North Muskegon, Pentwater, Traverse City and Interlochen, and our two annual weeks in Michigan were the high point of our family year.

 

Herman Daly advocates a steady-state economy because economic growth cannot go on forever. The basic natural resources of earth and its minerals, clean air and water, and surface land space are not unlimited. We hesitate to put limits on population or economic growth, he says, because the alternative is sharing (instead of a second pie, we share the one pie we have) and we in the most advanced country of the world when it comes to producing material goods and waste are very reluctant to share, it seems, even with each other.

 

Our disgruntled friend on Saturday was railing against former plans for the Timber Shores property, plans that would have built condominiums on both sides of M-22. Nothing like that is in the current plan! Ironically, the people most opposed to the RV park are not at all opposed to condos. Population and economic growth are fine with them, as long as it’s growth of a particular kind – the kind with a high price tag, out of reach for most would-be vacationing families. I've written about the old campground and the sadness of its absence before.

 

I've also been to places in American, towns in beautiful natural settings, where only the wealthy can now afford to live, while those working in businesses that support those communities – shops, restaurants, bars, building trades -- must live long commutes away. That is certainly not growth I want to see for Northport. I would much rather see us continue to develop the community sharing ethos that makes this village such a delightful place to live and work.

 

“I worked hard to earn this!” one irate homeowner adjacent to a street end shouted as he tried to chase a grandmother and her granddaughter away from the public access. What does that have to do with anything? Besides, not all who work hard become rich (my hardworking grandmother always in my mind), and not all wealthy people have worked hard (though others have). The fact is that no one is in control of every twist and turn of fate. Everything accumulated is not the result of choice and sweat. 

 

And what about noblesse oblige? We who live here have great good fortune. Whether or not our individual households would be called “wealthy,” whether we’re still working into our “golden” years or retired and enjoying perennial vacation, if we’re here at all we are blessed. We are very, very lucky! 

 

Honestly, have you never vacationed in a place other than your home? How did you want to be treated when you were there? I try to make visitors to my bookstore feel welcome by extending the kind of helpful friendliness I have received and enjoyed in the U.P., in Arizona, in Montreal, and even – yes, true, believe it or not! -- in Paris, France.

 

I am reluctant to sign onto a simplistic “grow our community” agenda, in that I have no desire to see the village get bigger and wider and taller and spread out at the edges. But I have no problem with the idea of an RV-tent campground. The way I see it, this is development – at least, the potential for development, as Daly sees the distinction. It gives us a chance to share generously and gracefully with others what we are fortunate enough to have. In turn, it means jobs for the young people of our community. Why not?

P.S. Books read since last post: 94. Waxman, Abbi, THE BOOKISH LIFE OF NINA HILL (fiction); 95. Trethewey, Natasha. MEMORIAL DRIVE; A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR; and 96. Lively, Penelope. THE PHOTOGRAPH (fiction).

And So September Continues

Kitchen time!

Labor Day weekend was busy. Sun, rain, company at home, many holiday-makers in Northport, meals and sleep, lots of books going to new homes, with here and there some quiet time for a dog walk or, lower on Sarah’s priority list, a short grooming session. Reading, too, of course, even if it had to happen at 3 a.m. while the rest of the world slept.

American Stranger, a novel by David Plante, came to me as an ARC from Delphinium Books. While it was enjoyable reading, I have to say I expected more. Nancy’s parents fled the Nazis in Berlin but never speak of those days. She grows up believing that her parents’ furniture came with them from Germany and only learns as an adult that they bought it all in New York. But that is the extent of the revelations from their old life. There is a vague reference to “the president” asking people what they can do for their country but no more politics than that. I understand that the novel had to do with Nancy’s life, not the life of the greater United States. Still, it seems odd that the world around her wouldn’t seep into her thoughts now and then. I would have liked to get out of the bedroom more, I guess.

Pause en route

From fiction I turned to another book on economics and am finding that fascinating and very, very important. I’m trying to think back to my days as an office worker at Western Michigan University and topics covered in the interdisciplinary Environmental Studies course: Did those students perhaps read Herman Daly? The first edition of Steady-State Economics came out in 1977, so it’s entirely possible. I’ll have to ask my friend who was the program advisor, but if I knew the name back then I’d forgotten it.

My introduction or re-introduction, whichever it was, to Herman E. Daly in the 21^st century came, as does much of my environmental/scientific news, by way of Acres USA, a magazine that calls itself “The Voice of Eco-Agriculture.” With their Eco-Update and Industrial Ag Watch news sections, I keep abreast of developments that don’t necessarily make NPR or the top newspapers in the country, but another fantastic feature is the interview in every issue. (I’m trying to get the editorial people to pull a few years’ worth of interviews together into a book. I would be thrilled to have that for sale at Dog Ears!) September’s interviewee was Herman Daly himself, and I was so impressed by what he said in the magazine pages that I tracked down a few of his books.

Daly went from being a professor of economics to senior economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank. He co-founded and was associate editor of the journal Ecological Economics. As emeritus professor from the School of Economics, University of Maryland, he currently serves on the executive board of the Center for the Advancement of Steady State Economy. The essays in Steady-State Economics do not form a quick or easy read, but they are clearly written and understandable to any educated person willing to take the time.

Daly holds his opinions strongly and with good reason. In his preface to the second edition ((1991), he notes the omission of serious consideration for any works of “even remotely ‘Malthusian’” economics, including his own, by the majority of American economists who reject such theories and such works without examination. He quotes Daniel Raymond’s rejection of Malthus, Raymond who wrote simply that “the mind instinctively revolts at the conclusions....” Daly goes on:

It might be said in Mr. Raymond’s defense that one is not obliged to accept an unwanted or counterintuitive conclusion just because one cannot immediately find a logical or factual error in the argument leading to it. One might legitimately say, “I need to think about that.”

The thing is that they didn’t bother to think about it or examine it or consider it, and here Daly is stern:

[T]o refute an argument one must find either a factual error in the premises or a logical error in the reasoning. If after an extended time no such error can be found, then, contrary to Mr. Raymond’s view, one must bow to the conclusion of the argument. If the reader is annoyed with me at this point for unnecessarily reminding everyone about the elementary rules of argumentation, then I am glad. But experience has taught me that many people cannot distinguish an argument from a fulmination and are equally convinced (or unmoved) by either, depending only on whether or not the conclusion fits their established mind set.

(Is anyone else reminded here of the Heath and Heath book I brought forward recently? The well-supported contention in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard that logic is not enough, that people also need a motive to change their minds and behavior? Well, that is an important insight, but for now I only bookmark it and suggest to those who missed the earlier post to check it out.)

The one big, big, big idea underlying steady-state economics is that “the economy” (an abstraction with no clear real-world referent) is not a closed, man-made system but an open system depending on low-entropy inputs from the natural world. Human beings convert raw material matter-energy into more artifacts and more people -- we reproduce ourselves as well as adding to the world’s “stuff” -- and output waste of all kinds. Some of our waste is recyclable, but even recycling takes time, so that even recyclable waste builds up, while a lot of our waste is nothing nature is equipped to recycle at all. The goal of unending economic growth, therefore, nothing more than a recipe by which we will bury ourselves in waste and ecological disaster.

Why have most economists not seen this?

Because they are too enamored of abstract mathematical models to allow the intrusion of the biosphere into their schemes, too committed to what Daly calls (and I love his dark humor) “crackpot rigor,” “scientistic pretension,” and the “blind aping of the mechanistic methods of physics,” at the same time that they ignore the laws of thermodynamics that would alert them to natural limits.

And because no one wants the bad news. “Growth” is seen as positive for two reasons. First, it’s the basis of power for nations; second, it’s an alternative to sharing. Daly puts it pithily: “It offers the prospect of more for all with sacrifice by none....”

Take the question of American agriculture “feeding the world.”

The drive to increase agricultural productivity leads to the replacement of low-yield species by newly developed high-yield species, which results in greater homogeneity of crops, that is, in a reduction in the diversity of the genetic stock and consequently a greater vulnerability to future pest and disease mutants. The increased vulnerability of the monoculture calls for even more protection by pesticides. [GMO seeds modified to be resistant to pesticides have only accelerated this vicious upward spiral.] In addition, more inputs of fertilizer and fresh-water irrigation are required by “green revolutions,” with resulting problems of water pollution and shortage.
 

It isn’t only farmers whose livelihood depends on soil and sun and rain. Everyone on earth is in the lifeboat together. Look at today’s newspaper. Any day's news!

"National Minstrel"

One of the reason I am so proud to sell so many used books is that these ‘artifacts’ (in Daly’s language) are still fulfilling their purpose as human artifacts, still conveying the ideas of their authors, still useful, not waste. And because I know how long books can live, when properly cared for, I feel good about selling new books, too. Here are a few places where I’ve written about questions of and books about resource use, production, “stuff,” books, etc.:

All Stuff Is Not Equal, Part I

All Stuff Is Not Equal, Part II

I Am Not a Luddite

Copyright 1836

Enlightenment vs. Proust – and Other Oppositions

Don’t allow events to leave impressions inside of you. -      Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself (New Harbinger/Noetic, 2007) 

Singer’s following sentence in the book reads, “If you find yourself thinking about them later on, just let go.” I’m reading these sentences early on Sunday morning, less than 24 hours after putting up a long post on Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (well, Swann’s Way, the first volume of RTP), and while much of what I’m reading in Singer’s book is a message coming to me at exactly the right time, just when I needed it, I can’t help pausing over certain bits and asking, Really? I mean, had Proust been enlightened throughout his entire life, we would not have his work at all, would we? Some people (and you know who you are, S.C.!) might think that a good thing, but others of us can imagine only deprivation, had Proust never written.

Singer’s basic message is that we human beings are all psychologically paralyzed by fear, by what we perceive as threats to our ability to control the world of our experience. We react by constructing what we think are protections, but those self-protective reactions actually function as walls requiring constant, vigilant monitoring, and thus we become our own prisoners. This is undeniable for most of us, I think, and I don’t fault the author for repeating his message in different form from page to page and chapter to chapter. I for one certainly need the repetition. It isn’t by hearing or reading this message once that I’ll see how to relax my guard and stop trying to control situations that threaten my sense of psychological well-being!

You will get to a point in your growth where you understand that if you protect yourself, you will never be free. It’s that simple. Because you’re scared, you have locked yourself within your house and pulled down all the shades. Now it’s dark and you want to feel the sunlight, but you can’t. It’s impossible. If you close and protect yourself, you are locking this scared, insecure person within your heart. You will never be free that way.

In our household, we refer to the constant, endless, sleepless chewing over of unresolved issues or fears for the future as “squirrel-caging.” It goes nowhere but around and around and around. It’s wildly counter-productive, and it’s painful, too – paradoxically, since its psychological object is to defend against pain. Let go of those thoughts? Escape the squirrel cage? Good idea!

Of social situations, Singer writes:

When you approach the edges [of the cage you have built to protect yourself] you feel insecurity, jealousy, fear, or self-consciousness. You pull back, and if you are like most people, you stop trying. Spirituality begins when you decide that you’ll never stop trying.

This can be interpreted also, I think, to say that “Freedom begins...” or “Growth begins....” Leave behind insecurity, jealousy, fear, and the kind of self-consciousness that stands in the way of forward movement and growth? Yes, I would like to do that, and this book has given me some tools with which to begin the task.

One thing I can’t help wondering, though, is where justice fits into all this.

Obviously, an acquaintance who hurts my feelings by failing to failing to grant me the attention I desire or feel I deserve is not doing me an “injustice,” and such an interpretation is clearly one I need to let go of, to let pass through me and evaporate in thin air, rather than clinging to it pointlessly. But what of true injustices that exist not only elsewhere on the globe, in far distant countries, but within our own communities? And what of very real and important issues threatening the future of the earth for generations to come? None of this, as far as I can see, is addressed  from the high spiritual ground of detachment and spiritual enlightenment. Seeing the world as nothing but energy and determining to “let it all go” – I can’t help thinking that while this might a sanity-saving strategy for people who feel absolutely powerless (cultural origins of religions and philosophies are always worth paying attention to: where did the idea of enlightenment arise, and what were the social circumstances surrounding it?), it can also be a convenient abdication of social responsibility on the part of materially comfortable, physically and politically safe Westerners whose only experiences of fear have been psychological and self-generated.

The emphasis on achieving endless, uninterrupted happiness strikes me as not only unrealistic but even a repulsive goal, given certain very real and horrible human (but inhumane) situations.

If they starve you and put you in solitary confinement, just have fun being like Gandhi. No matter what happens, just enjoy the life that comes to you.

When I reached these sentences, I wanted to ask the author: What if you’re not put in solitary confinement but thrown in among violent criminals and gang-raped, are you supposed to “have fun” with that? If not only your house but all your family are blown to smithereens by incendiary bombs, are you supposed to “have fun” with that? To my mind, this admonition to “have fun” with whatever happens is a slap in the face to those who suffer not through negative self-talk but through the violence of others. I would also argue that neither Jesus nor Gandhi nor Martin Luther King, Jr. practiced “nonresistance.” What they practiced and taught was “nonviolent resistance,” which is entirely different and which does address issues of justice.

And if everything in existence and process were already as it should be, what would be the point of changing even ourselves?

As a philosopher, argumentation is part of who I am, and critical thinking is not something I want to give up. While I can see that putting energy into defending my own poor little psyche is clearly a waste of time, I cannot and do not want to say the same of putting energy into opposing injustice, violence, and destruction of the natural world. “We must cultivate our gardens,” Candide says gently at the end of Voltaire’s tale. Indeed. Inconsequential as our tiny planet is in the midst of interstellar space (an image the book repeatedly asks us to contemplate), it is our only home, the nurturing environment in which our flesh and blood evolved, and it requires our active care.

Then there is art, and there is memory. Without memory, there is no art, and probably without art only very short-lived memories.

Our intrepid Ulysses group’s Fearless Leader feels that immortality consists in being remembered and that he, both as a lover of music and as a musician, participates in the immortality of Beethoven. In the same way, all of us who loved and read Swann’s Way may be said (if you accept our FL’s view) to participate in the immortality of Proust. What a privilege! To walk, in imagination, along that blossoming hawthorn hedge and tarry alongside the beautiful waterlilies in the private park of the Guermantes way! To feel in our own hearts, as we call up magical place names in our own lives, an echo of what the name ‘Balbec’ meant to young Marcel! I know that for several of my readers far from Leelanau County on this cold November morning, ‘Leelanau’ itself is one of those magic names.

“Don’t allow events to leave impressions inside of you”? Be empty of memories? Those beloved images of the past? Wouldn’t that truly be to lose time, to lose one’s very life?

I would be overjoyed to escape my foolish psychic walls but never to give up justice, art, and memory.

Doubtless, veteran seekers after enlightenment will tell me I’ve misinterpreted and misrepresented the practice. I’m open to that possibility. But I also reflect that no religion or philosophy or system of thought ever devised by mankind was completely free of contradiction, so even within my interpretation I can choose to embrace the contradiction in the idea of enlightenment, and I can let go of what I want to lose while holding onto what I value. It may not be everyone’s way, but it is mine, and I am free to choose.

The book, anyway, is worth reading and a potential springboard for wide-ranging discussion. I’d love to be a fly on the wall, listening to what other people would say!

Guest Blogger: Laurie Attends a Video Conference in Spain

My friend Laurie in Kalamazoo writes as follows:

All--

Here are notes I took on a video of an excellent Master Class speech given by Chilean economist and environmentalist Manfred Max Neef.  The talk was given at the International University of Andalucía (Huelva, Spain), on December 1, 2009. Says Wikipedia,  

Max Neef, in 1982, won the Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, for his work in poverty-stricken areas of developing countries. He has worked with the problem of development in the Third World, describing the inappropriateness of conventional models of development that have contributed to poverty, debt and ecological disasters for Third World communities.

Here’s a link to the video of the conference http://cuva.uta.cl/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1042:600-a%C3%B1os-de-un-mundo-sin-hambr

Below are the notes I jotted. (I apologize for any glaring errors – I was listening in Spanish and jotting in English.) Well worth reading. 

Laurie Kaniarz

THE WORLD ON A COLLISION COURSE


Manfred Max Neef


(Laurie’s Notes)



When FAO (Food & Agriculture Organization) announced in October [2009] that 1 billion people around the world are hungry, and it would take $30 billion in aid annually to save these lives, at the same time, 6 Central Banks (US, EU, Japan, Canada, England, Switzerland) injected $180 billion into financial markets to save private banks, and have continued to do so, so that, as of September 2009, they’ve injected $17 trillion into the private banks.  $17 trillion is enough to save the world from hunger for 600 years. Where is that money now?



(Regarding the law of supply and demand: there’s much more demand for bread than plastic surgery, more need for a cure for malaria than haute couture dresses.  We need a referendum: do we want to save lives or banks? There’s never enough for those who have nothing.  Always enough for those who have everything.)

This is the most repugnant news I’ve ever heard.

There’s a 4-way convergence:


1. Exponential climate change


2. The end of cheap fuel


3. Diminishment of genetic natural resources: fresh water, energy, forests, fishing, wildlife, subsoil, coral reefs


4. Gigantic speculative bubble – 50 times greater than the real economy (interchange of goods and services)



The causes of this convergence:


1. The predominant paradigm of present-day economics is that we tend toward economic development at any cost, and this stimulates corporate greed.


2. Devouring fossil fuels propels that economic greed


3. Promotion of consumerism as the road to happiness


4. Destruction of traditional cultures and values to improve the industrial economic model


5. Scorn for the planet with the production of waste



There is danger in this for the environment and society.  Global warming implies the loss of productive soils, storms, hurricanes, desertification – all having implications for the poorest people on the planet. All systems are dependent on fuels.  There will be a further diminishment of species by 50% in the next decades.

 We have to accept the limits of what the earth can handle.

 We must move from “efficiency” to “sufficiency,” and solve inequality, because without equality, peaceful solutions are not possible.  We must replace the dominant values of greed, competition and accumulation with solidarity, cooperation and compassion.  Adjust ourselves to lower levels of production/consumption, favoring local economies. LOOK WITHIN once again, rather than outward.



We’re in the 21^st century, trying to solve our problems with 19^th century economics, even though we no longer use 19th century physics, biology, anthropology, medicine, etc.

 Economic “neo-liberalism” is a pseudo religion.  It conquered the world in a few decades, which religion [Christianity, Laurie?] couldn’t do in 2000 years.



Myth 1: Globalization is the only way to development.  Between 1960-1980, “don’t import what you can produce at home.” Between 1980-2000 this was replaced by deregulation, privatization, elimination of international trade barriers, and full openness to foreign investment.  Between ’60-’80, the poorest developing countries grew 2%.  Between ’80-’00, they had declined 0.5%.



Myth 2: Greater integration in the global economy is good for the poor. But it causes the poor countries to look outward rather than at their own people’s needs.  The 7 richest countries are 50 times richer now than the poorest 7.



Myth 3: Comparative advantage is the best way to ensure prosperity – “free world trade.” Prices can be lower, but 
costs to society & environment are enormous.



Myth 4: More globalization + more jobs. There are fewer jobs in countries of origin, more sub-employment in the outsourcing countries.



Myth #5: Globalization is democratic and transparent. Decisions about world commerce are made by unelected bureaucrats who work behind closed doors in Geneva [World Monetary Fund - WMF].  Their decisions cannot be appealed.  If a country that receiving translational investment has an inconvenient law, it must abolish the law. This affects the very idea of democracy if it has to adapt to the interests of the corporation. 

The WMF has no rules about child labor or labor rights.  All rules benefit the corporations.  Poor countries are prohibited from producing their own generic drugs, for example: they’re obligated to buy from transnationals. Africa has the resources, but can’t produce its own drugs.  The WMF is dedicated to ensuring that corporations govern the world.  Imports and exports are not between countries but between corporations.

Myth #6:  Globalization is unavoidable. ANYTHING arising from politics is reversible. What needs to be done is to take back local decisions that bring consumption back to the local market.  A human-scale economy.

New rules could be: 

- Profits flow back as much as possible to their place of origin.  Unsustainable – taking up huge amounts of resources – is transport over huge distances. In Chile, in the huge, state-of-the-art dairy producing region of the country, I unwrapped a butter packet that came from New Zealand.  It’s cheaper if you look at it from the point of view of an economist, but prices never tell the truth.  The cost of the environmental impact of shipping, to economists, has a value of “0.” Plus, the shipping was subsidized by New Zealand – also a value of “0.” The fact that local producers will go bankrupt – “0.” Same with energy: “This type of [alternative] energy is more expensive.” End of story.

But it’s only “more expensive” depending on how you make the calculation.  If you give value to the impacts, that which is deemed “more expensive” becomes cheaper. 

- Bring back safeguards to local economies with tariffs and quotas to avoid monopolies.

- Ecological taxes.  Taxes on energy use that causes pollution and negative impacts.  We’ve created a “fun” society and we pay taxes on that.  We should pay taxes on the bad, too. They tax you for working, for investing, but not for dirtying, polluting, destroying – you get to do that for free. You should be taxed for how many kilowatts you use rather than on how much you earn.  This would have a formidable impact on world economy.  They are doing this in Scandinavian countries.

- In Sweden, eco-municipalities receive the benefits of income tax, not the State.  You pay your tax and immediately see – and have influence on – how it’s used, in the place where you live.



I propose this new economy for the 21^st Century, with 5 principal postulates:



1.  The economy should serve the people – the people should not serve the economy.


2. Development has to be with/for people, not objects


3. Growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily need growth.


4. No economy is possible at the exclusion of the services provided by ecosystems.


5. Economy is a subsystem of a great system – the biosphere – and so permanent growth is impossible.



A fundamental principle value I propose to sustain the new economy:

 No economic interest, under any circumstance, should ever be held above the reverence for life on the planet.

 But what we have today is exactly the opposite of what I have postulated:



- We’re in a world in which each of us is at the service of economic interests, not the opposite.


- We identify economic development as who has the most cellphones, computers, etc.  The human being disappears in the process.


- There is an obsession with growth as the only measure, but growth is a quantitative measure, and development is a liberation of creative potentials.

 All living systems grow until they stop growing, but they don’t stop developing. We’ve all stopped growing, but we’re in this room [at the conference] because we haven’t stopped developing – more ideas, more information.  Growth has limits, development doesn’t.



My hero, a man I consider the greatest thinker, Kenneth Boulding, said, “Anyone who thinks permanent growth is possible on a finite planet is either crazy or an economist.” [Kenneth Ewart Boulding (January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an economist, educator, peace activist, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher. He was cofounder of General Systems Theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science. - Wikipedia]

No economy is possible at the exclusion of the services provided by the ecosystem.  The economy is a closed system that doesn’t relate to families or nature.  Economists think they don’t need to know about pollination.
 Growth can’t be infinite on a finite planet.  If I want to blow up a big balloon, I can’t blow it up bigger than the room I’m in.

There is a need for reverence for life. Too many people say, “Life doesn’t mean anything … as long as I can do business.” Millions of children are slaves. According to UNICEF and other organizations, in the 21^st century, there are more slaves in the world than when slavery was abolished in the 19^th century. Tens of millions of slaves, two-thirds of them children.  It doesn’t show up in the news.  “With so many kids in the world, who cares?”  Why doesn’t it show up?  SLAVERY IS GOOD BUSINESS – YOU CAN MAKE GOOD MONEY AT IT.

Don’t expect the solution to come down from Mt. Sinai.  It’s up to us.  It starts with each one acting according to his/her belief system and loves.  Don’t ask yourself, “But what can I do?”  That’s defeatist.  ANY ONE OF US can do something at any moment that could change history.

 Examples:  Gandhi got sick of being discriminated against as “colored.” He started out being a nobody, a lawyer, but defeated the most powerful nation on earth. Rosa Parks sat in the white section of a bus and said, “I’m too tired to move.” She was [considered] less than nobody, but sparked the civil rights movement.  They both acted according to their beliefs. 

This won’t happen to you if you always adapt to what you don’t believe in.  Don’t act according to what’s best for you – advice we all get – but what’s best for all.  We all get this bad advice – I’ve given it myself, and I apologize to anyone I’ve ever given it to: “You’ve got to see your goals clearly to know where you want to go.” If you look toward one fixed goal, you won’t see the people you trample on to get there.  It’s a miserable life if you do what you “should” rather than what you MUST do.  The way you can have a happy life is living according to your beliefs.



Here’s some better advice: Drift and steer in a state of alert/attention.  This doesn’t mean you’re at the mercy of the current.  Life is like surfing: you can’t decide where you’re going to end up on the beach because you can’t predict what the waves will do.  But if you’ve got all your antennae up, if you make judgments about what to do as each condition comes up, you’ll end up somewhere along the beach. 

Creativity encourages us to create a world in which we are all relatively happy.

People who know where they’re going never discover anything because they’re obsessed with where they’re going.  But “obstacles” are all the adventure.


Manfred Max Neef’s bibliography includes:

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A (1992) (pdf). From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. pp. 208. ISBN 1-85649-188-9. http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max_Neef_From_the_outside_looking_in.pdf. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A; Antonio Elizalde, Martin Hopenhayn (1991) (pdf). Human Scale Development. The Apex Press. pp. 114. ISBN 0-945257-35-X. http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max neef_Human_Scale_development.pdf. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A; Paul Ekins (1992). Real-Life Economics: Understanding Wealth Creation. Routledge. pp. 432. ISBN 0-415-07976-4. http://www.gettextbooks.co.uk/search/?isbn=9780415079761. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

Laurie Kaniarz is a graduate of Kalamazoo College. She has lived and traveled in Spain and South America and is currently employed by Foods Resource Bank in Kalamazoo. FRB is not an emergency aid organization but works to move people in poor countries toward long-term, sustainable food security.

...old photo of Laurie and me in Leland's historic Fishtown....