Last Saturday, I published a post under the title of Slotting right in! It was an introduction to ten of the most beautiful slot canyons featured on Mother Nature Network.
Then less than a day later, Rob from Transition Town Payson, sent me a link to the following essay. Regulars will recall that Jean and I lived in Payson for a while before moving to Oregon; indeed were married in Payson.
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The Place Where Water Runs Through Rock
Antelope Canyon located in Northern Arizona is well known around the world!
Antelope Canyon lies just outside of Page, Arizona.
Just outside of Page, Arizona lies Antelope Canyon. Located on the Navajo Indian Reservation. The Dine (The People as the Navajos call themselves), manage the use of the canyon as a Navajo Nation National Park. Antelope Canyon is broken into two sections, Upper Antelope is known as Tse bighanilini which means “The place where water runs through rocks” (aka The Crack), and lower Antelope Canyon is Hasdestwazi or “spiral rock arches” (aka The Corkscrew). Both of these canyons are an awesome display of natural forces at work. Carved by flash floods that are common to the area, this Navajo National Park has been accessible only by Navajo Permits since 1997. The permit system came after 11 tourists from around the world were killed by a flash flood in Lower Antelope Canyon!
For more information on these Canyons go to the following links;
The Navajo language is very descriptive and their words often describe things that they see in the natural world. Hence the name for Upper Antelope Canyon “The Place Where Water Runs Through Rocks”. The language was one that was used by a few heroic Navajo veterans to help win World War II. For example, a Battleship was translated into the Navajo word Lo-Tso which means “Whale”, while a Cruiser was Lo-Tso-Yazzie which meant “Small Whale”.
See the following link for the dictionary they used;
The use of Code Talkers was kept secret for many years!
The Code Talkers were kept secret for 23 years after the end of WWII. President Ronald Reagan gave them a Certificate of Recognition and made August 14, 1982, National Code Talkers Day. On December 21, 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded the surviving Code Talkers Congressional Gold Medals and Silver Medals to the approximate 329 surviving heroes.
The Canyon is 140 feet deep at it’s deepest point!
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The Sandstone Walls are Cut into Mysterious Shapes.
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The Canyon is so Narrow in places only two people can walk side by side.
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The Heart of the Canyon.
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The Sands of Time.
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Sunlight lights the exit.
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Just a magnificent set of pictures. If you ever find yourself in Northern Arizona then don’t hesitate to visit the canyon. The address is: Antelope Canyon, 5975 Hwy 98, Page, AZ 86040.
I saw this on Mother Nature Network not too long ago and made a note to share it with you. “It” being some stunning photographs of slot canyons around the world. The article opens:
Geological wonders
Slot canyons are narrow, naturally formed canyons with towering walls and a width no wider than your arm span, if that. If they weren’t so mesmerizingly beautiful, they would make you feel claustrophobic. Found around the world, these geological formations usually occur in places with low rainfall, and many of the most well-known are in the American Southwest, including Wall Street (pictured here), which lies in a section of The Narrows in Zion National Park. Check out the beauty of the world’s most stunning slot canyons — it will make you want to pack some hiking gear and get traveling. (Text: Jaymi Heimbuch)
Wall Street Canyon Photo: kan_khampanya/Shutterstock
Now I don’t have permission to reproduce this article but hopefully the one above and this one below will entice you to look through them all starting here.
Antelope Canyon Photo: holbox/ Shutterstock
Antelope Canyon, Arizona
Perhaps the most famous of all slot canyons, Antelope Canyon is found near Page, Arizona. There are two separate sections, known as Upper Antelope Canyon and Lower Antelope Canyon, or more affectionately, The Crack and The Corkscrew. Formed by the erosion of sandstone from flash flooding and other processes, the slot canyons have curvaceous, strangely angled walls. The beautiful colors, textures, curves and spectacular lighting — particularly during the summer months — are a major draw for photographers and sightseers. They are located within the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo Nation and have become a significant source of tourism for the Navajo tribe.
Fabulous! Don’t miss out – see the full set of twelve pictures here.
A pleasure to highlight the creative work of Ira Wiesenfeld DVM
Earlier on this week, we were fortunate in having a long-term friend of Jean and her late husband, Ben, stay with us. In distant times, Ira, him being the friend, had been a horse veterinarian but many years ago had changed course. As he explains on his web-site:
I grew up the scientist in an artistic family. I didn’t discover my right brain until midlife; my left was burned out and a crisis was upon me. First came the craft of blacksmithing, which I found therapeutic and immensely satisfying. Then a style of work developed that was biomorphic, botanical and branching. Finally a passion for sculpture evolved, made from forged, found, and fabricated metal.
Ten years ago I decided to get serious; I gave up my day job and began working full time in my smithy. Now I like to say that I forge and weld furniture, sculpture and anything in- between. I especially enjoy working in that in-between space, where aesthetics, function and narrative meet.
Ira was en-route to an exhibition in Portland which gave us the opportunity both to have him stay and for us to browse over some of the pieces he had with him.
Ira
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My impromptu picture-taking didn’t do justice to this piece. A much better version is the one below taken directly from Ira’s website Circle of Iron Forge.
Iron and Copper Nestbowl.
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Ira discussing with Jean what could be done with an old iron pulley-wheel we found here at home.
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Just missing the water and fish!
Have to say that I was very impressed by both Ira’s creative artistry and his metal-working skills.
Let me leave you with one more example of Ira’s work, taken from his web-site and his contact details in case any of you dear readers are motivated to be in direct touch with Ira.
Empty Nest Forged and welded steel, copper, bronze, and stainless steel.
Ira Wiesenfeld DVM
Tucson, Arizona
Treeira@hotmail.com
520-742-5274
A powerful and compelling post from friend and follower: John Hurlburt.
Anyone who can compose phrases such as “an enlightened interest in the quality of the harvest of our transitory lives” deserves to be listened to! Our friend, John, from our Payson, AZ, days, is a regular author of essays that arrive here in Hugo Road via the mail. It’s always a pleasure to read John’s words and frequently I feel the need to share them with you, dear reader. So it was with John’s latest.
I’ll say no more except to promise you that you will be enthralled.
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Arrogance ‘R Us
We hear the drumbeat of steadily increasing global, national, state, regional and local problems every day. When common-sense solutions are offered for any of these problems, the solutions are immediately demonized as actions which would aggravate the problems they would logically solve. This sort of nonsensical circular argument is both a paralyzing paradox and a guaranteed death spiral for our relatively young biological species.
We imagine that we know far more than we do. The Earth doesn’t need living species in order to regenerate life. Human beings continue to need the Earth from which we are made and which sustains our consciously aware being. Some of us believe that having money is the answer to all our problems. Actually, the imaginary power of human “money” is killing life on Earth from the bottom of the food chain up.
Every government in the world competes with every other government in the world for power and control to one degree or another. The richer the nation, the greater it’s illusion of power. We’ve forgotten about responsibility, morality and faith in the power of Nature. Change is a constant. Failure to adapt to change is a death knell for living beings.
We live to learn. Why? Is death a finality or a new beginning? Both classic and quantum physics recognize Conservation of Information and the exchange of energy and matter at the level of fundamental forces. How much of the energy of our lives is absorbed by the cosmos and how much is recycled as life energy? We have no earthly idea of the answer.
Aye, there’s the rub.
We do know that everything fits together. Otherwise, we’d be random atoms. We also know that the cosmos does not exist for the pleasure of human beings. To the contrary, if the cosmos were even minimally different, life as we know it would not exist. We are an infinitesimally small part of Reality.
Statistically, we’re not alone as consciously aware life forms in our universe. When we release ourselves from the bondage of our biological limitations, we connect with the living energy of our planet in harmony with the geo-magnetic network of our planet, our living galaxy, and our living universe. We realize that other life on Earth shares conscious awareness in varying degrees.
Don’t believe it? That’s a matter of choice. Consider that denying the facts of reality is a foundation for ignorance. Letting go is a gateway to enlightenment.
Those who do not accept change profess to believe that the immensity of a universe beyond our inclusive comprehension has existed since the beginning of time solely for their personal benefit. Their corporate slogan is “Arrogance ‘R Us”.
More precisely, the statistical probability of human conscious awareness being unique in the universe is so infinitesimal that it would be laughable if it weren’t for our present species peril.
Not only have we amassed enough fire power to turn the earth into a burning sphere overnight, we are now proceeding to systematically and efficiently eliminate the natural resources we need to live.
We can’t eat computers or opinions. Clean air, clean water, clean food and clean energy are more than slogans. They’re essential for human life. Are we a swarm of predatory locusts or are we stewards of the blessings of a life we don’t fully understand?
Money has dissolved the human contract with Nature which began about 14 million years ago on a planet that’s been around in one form or another for roughly the last 14 billion years. Preservation, sustainability and natural efficiency are enemies of our present delusional global economic system. No living species on Earth is safe from the ecocide being committed by human insanity. We’re experiencing a systemic failure and treating it as a side-show.
We’re suffering from a fatally immoral addiction to what we may personally consider to be the good life. It’s time for our conscious awareness to transcend self and species. We need to combine our spiritual awareness, our natural awareness, our moral awareness, our cultural awareness, our social awareness and our common sense for the immediate purpose of preserving, sustaining and accepting the natural efficiency of our pale blue dot in a universally remote solar system.
So, where do we begin? We begin wherever we are. Today is the tomorrow we dreamed of yesterday. What is our vision of tomorrow? Is it an Earth that is unchanging in the midst of constant change? Is it an Earth that is scorched and barren? Perhaps it can become an Earth that continues to grow and nurture our existence.
The choice is made by our daily actions. Time is not currently in our favor. Freedom is not the exclusive privilege of wealth. Freedom is everyone’s responsibility. Poverty is the deadliest form of violence. Seven trillion dollars of worthless derivatives tick like a time-bomb in dank Wall Street sub-basements. Environmental bankruptcy threatens all life on Earth. It’s more than past half-time to face our shared Reality. There’s no place to hide.
We grieve our former lives. We begin with the suppressed anger we have self-generated through fear until it has become a traumatic syndrome. The antidote for fear is faith. What do we believe? What are our values? Are we moral, semi-moral, immoral or amoral? Do we believe we are the purpose of the Cosmos or a relatively young animal living on a garden planet far from the heart of an emerging universe? Is our immediate gratification more important than any long-term purpose?
Global recovery depends upon inclusive personal recovery and the ability to recognize the urgency of our common purpose. Personal and cultural recovery begin by surrendering the illusionary cocoon of “self”. Stepping stones include daily humility, hope, study, acceptance, inventory, amends, sharing and compassionate service. The result is a new lease on life.
We surrender our politics. We learn to think for ourselves. We question authority. We test our ideas and follow the evidence. Science belongs to all of us. We reserve judgment. We realize that our imagination is nothing in comparison to the majesty of the truth of our shared Reality. We become creative rather than destructive.
We build a global resource management system based on the concepts of common well-being, strategic preservation and strategic efficiency. Our objective is to maintain, grow and recycle natural resources utilizing our technology as a constructive tool rather than as a weapon.
The concept of ownership needs to be replaced by the idea of strategic access to what we need as opposed to what we may superficially believe or think we want. We stop competing and start co-operating as the result of an enlightened interest in the quality of the harvest of our transitory lives.
As we live and learn together, we realize that love is as important to life as air, food, water and shelter.
Peace beyond all understanding,
an old lamplighter
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Fabulous essay! Breathtakingly so! Making it clear that there is so much for us humans to learn! Yet offering a clear pathway to that learning. Starting with unconditional love and openness! Now where’s a dog to learn from!
Hazel teaching us openness and love through her eyes.
Further information on the subject of being grounded.
Just to set the scene, so to speak, last Saturday week I published a post on our reaction to the book called Earthing authored by Ober, Sinatra and Zucker. I said that we had been sufficiently convinced to order the half-sheet kit. Then on the 23rd., I wrote of our experiences after having spent 5 nights on the earthing sheet.
The half-sheet kit.
I promised to provide more information today. We have now been sleeping on the earthing sheet for eight nights. All the positive effects written about on Monday continue and, frankly, strengthen.
The website GoingBarefoot.org has much information, including real-life experiences from customers. That website suggests it is the work of Martin Zucker, one of the authors of the book. It also offers this testimonial video:
There is another website Earthing.com that offers much the same information as the GoingBarefoot site. (Indeed, I just called the Earthing company and they confirmed that there was no difference in service between the two websites.)
One of the items in the kit, as shown in the photograph, was a 74-minute, professionally-made film that was fascinating. Guess what! That film is available as a YouTube video.
The film was the product of Kroschel Films and their website is wonderful. You must go there. These two pictures came from there.
Isis, January 2013 – Photo courtesy Dr.Vic Walker
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Steve Kroschel spends some quality time with Lennox the Lynx, Nov.3, 2013
Then a web search brought to light a company with the name of Mercola. Their website has a page with earthing products even including, towards the end of the webpage, instructions on making your own earthing mat. The following video comes from that website.
So I do hope this is of interest and, please, if you have any thoughts or experiences, do please offer them as comments to the post.
(Oh, I guess I should mention that I am not affiliated with any of these companies and stand to gain no advantage if you choose to purchase a product mentioned on Learning from Dogs. Please verify for yourself the potential advantages in using any earthing product.)
How to close?
This seems as good a way as any.
Standing Bear.
There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unknown, secret place.
The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. Their teepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing.
That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly.
He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
Hoping that this story of rescuing some young birds may be of help to others.
Last Saturday afternoon we were sitting outside under the shade with the ‘kitchen’ group of dogs enjoying themselves.
Jean and I noticed Casey taking a great interest in something on the ground. Casey is a keen explorer as this photograph from earlier in the year demonstrates.
Casey demonstrating a dog’s focussing skills!
The something that had caught Casey’s attention was a small baby bird that had fallen from a nearby nest. We called Casey away and went across to see the tiny creature whereupon Jean picked up the baby bird.
The patch of ground where the birds were found.
Frankly, we didn’t have a clue as to what to do but called Wildlife Images, just a few miles away from where we live. As the Wildlife Images website explains:
Our guiding principles are the foundation for “why” we do what we do. These principles guide us in our work, our relationships with each other, our guests, supporters, sponsors, and vendors.
PURPOSE
Saving Wildlife
VISION
Wildlife Images Rehabilitation and Education Center is the educational leader of a healthy co-existence with our wildlife neighbors by rehabilitation sick, injured, and orphaned animals.
MISSION
Involve – people to share in our vision.
Educate – children and adults about the personal benefits of taking care of wildlife entrusted to our care.
Inspire – the public to engage in our rehabilitation and education efforts.
Jean and I had previously visited the centre and been impressed with their dedication to saving wildlife.
Over the phone we were told that the best thing to do was try and find the old nest and replace the baby bird within the nest. If all else failed then bring the bird across to Wildlife Images.
Frankly, we struggled to find the nest but at least got a ladder up against the likely tree from where the bird had fallen.
It was as we were getting the ladder in place that we discovered another tiny bird on the ground in amongst the dead leaves and ground cover. Now we had two birds and knew we were struggling to do the right thing for these vulnerable creatures.
We drove across to Wildlife Images and they advised us to build an artificial nest and hang that up in the tree. The call of the baby birds would attract the mother and, with a bit of luck, the mother would return to feeding the chicks again. We were also told to speak quietly around the baby birds so that they wouldn’t imprint on our voice. Apparently that was the greater risk of them being rejected rather than the smell of humans on their little bodies.
So back home we went and soon had a makeshift ‘nest’ in place.
Would it work?
Once the ‘nest box’ was in place, it was time to place the youngsters in their new home.
Good luck, my little things.
We left the birds in peace and went inside for a while. Our fear was that they might try leaping out.
Then curiosity got the better of us and we needed to see if they were still alright. So a couple of hours later, I took the following photograph.
Against all odds!
The evening approached and we feared for their fate.
Then miracle of miracles we saw the mother come to them and start feeding her offspring.
We retired for the day content that we had done all we could.
Then on Sunday morning, bright and early, we went outside again. Had they survived the night? Had the mother returned to feed them this second day?
We heard nothing: saw nothing. Feared the worst.
It was no good, I had to climb the ladder and take a peek.
Still alive!
They were still in the land of the living!
Yet, there was still no sign of the mother.
Jean and I sat under our nearby gazebo and tried hard not to fear the worst. My camera was on my lap.
Then Jean saw a flash of feathers. It was the mother arriving to feed her young.
I was able to take the following picture.
Not the best quality picture but so what! It’s proof the birds are being cared for by their mother.
In the scheme of things, rescuing a couple of small birds doesn’t add up to much. But I’ll tell you! When Jean and I saw the mother feeding her young both of us were a little wet around the eyes!
On Saturday, the 14th June, I published a post Are you grounded? That post was a reaction to this book that Jean and I had recently read.
I also explained that we had ordered an earthing sheet for the bed and that I would report further upon our findings.
Today’s post is that further report.
The slim box containing the half-sheet kit was delivered on the 18th June, five days ago at the time of writing this.
The next photograph shows more clearly what was included in the kit.
From left to right: Case histories from users, an earthing rod above, the earthing half-sheet, and below the sheet, an outlet ground checker, the earthing connection cord, the book, and a full-length DVD of a film on the subject of grounding.
It was then a case of laying the sheet on the bed as recommended in the instruction guide.
Then upon testing that we had a safe earthing connection via the ground pin on our nearby outlet, it was a case of connecting the earthing sheet to ground, as may be observed in the next photograph.
I’m writing this yesterday. We have both slept on the earthing sheet for four nights now.
So what are the results so far?
Jean
Jean has had leg muscle cramps each night for months and months. Often just enough to waken her but frequently sufficiently severe to require her getting out of bed and walking around the room. I can vouch for the latter!
Jean has had those four nights totally free from cramps!
Plus Jean has reported sleeping more soundly.
Me – Prostate
In recent months my bladder has been showing ‘old man’s bladder control’! Certainly, over the last year I have been getting up for a pee two times, frequently three times, during the night.
During the day, I could hardly take a hot drink without the need to pee within minutes. It had got to the stage where I would avoid having a drink before Jean and I went out unless I was certain that there would be public restrooms available. I was taking a natural prostate medicine, morning and evening, but still starting to think that it wouldn’t be long before I would need to see a medical specialist.
Since sleeping on the earthing sheet, I have gone down to getting up just once during the night. But it’s better than that!
I have stopped the prostate tablets. During the day, my bladder control is hugely improved. I hold my breath that this is going to continue.
Me – Memory
Like many of my age (I’m 70 in November), my short-term memory is not what it used to be. I have not noticed any improvements in this area.
But I am sleeping much more soundly, which is never a bad thing.
But get this!
Being an old Englishman with a sense of connection to the ancient customs of Stonehenge, especially observing the sun’s dawn on the morning of Mid-Summer’s Day, I had looked up the exact local time equivalent of the moment of the Solstice here in Oregon.
Stonehenge at Dawn. On the morning of Mid-Summer’s Day the sun rises exactly over the heel stone.
Early in the hours of the morning of June 21st, ergo Mid-Summer’s Day, I woke unexpectedly. I lay there wondering what had awoken me. It wasn’t to jump out of bed and have a pee. How strange!
I lay there for what felt like ten minutes and then curious as to the hour reached across and pressed the illuminate button on my bedside clock. It read 3:48 am.
3:48 am!! How could that be! I could hardly believe it!
Let me explain.
The previous afternoon, I had been curious as to the exact time of the 2014 Summer Solstice. Had looked it up online. In the United Kingdom that precise moment was 10:41 am. The equivalent time of the Summer Solstice in Oregon’s local Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) was 3:41 am.
I knew that was when I had woken up.
Now that’s what I call being grounded to the Planet!
OK, that’s enough for today but there is much more information about the whole business of being grounded to the planet. I shall return to the subject in Wednesday’s post.
First of all a Very Happy Summer Solstice wherever you are (in the Northern Hemisphere!)
Neighbour Larry sent me a link to a delightful story about solving the problem of a yacht, with a mainmast stretching 85 feet above the water level, passing under a bridge that had a clearance of 65 feet above that same water level.
Here’s a picture to whet your interest. (Notice I wrote ‘whet’ not ‘wet’!)
A case of lateral thinking!
The story was reported in UK’s The Daily Mail newspaper nearly three years ago. So I shall take a chance and republish it for you.
Beats going the long way round! How sailors got their 80ft mast under 65ft bridge
It may not look like an entirely safe practice – but it sure beats going the long way round.
These sailors came up with an ingenious way to get their boat – complete with 80ft mast – under a 65ft bridge on the Intracoastal Waterway. A video posted on YouTube shows how the sailors keeled the boat over by dangling containers filled with two tons of water from the mast.
But it is not a solution for the faint hearted.
Any miscalculation with the weight has the potential to send the whole boat crashing into the water.
The sailor ‘hunterparrot’ who posted the video said he initiates the roll by fixing the containers to the mast and slowly turning to port. The severity of the roll is then controlled by letting the ropes affixed to the mast out gradually with a cockpit winch.
The intracoastal waterway is a 3000-mile network of waterways that run up the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the U.S. It runs from New Jersey, around Florida to Texas.
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The photographs in that Daily Mail article may be viewed here.
Really? If the bridge clearance is 65 feet and the mast height is 80 feet, then the cosine of the heel angle would be 65 / 80. This corresponds to a heel angle of about 36 degrees; the mast is 54 degrees above the horizontal. Still, a pretty impressive maneuver.
If the bags are full of water, then his setup is self-limiting. As the bags start to immerse, the pull on the halyard is reduced. This means he would be nearly unable to capsize unless he winches the bags WAY too high. I think he has done this trick before.
I think the reason he is sitting on the high side is twofold: He can see the masthead more easily and it is more comfortable
The weight of one person really doesn’t make much difference when you are trying to heel that big a boat that far.
If someone had to do this sort of trick a lot, would it be worth putting a small video camera on the top of the mainmast? This would make it easier to judge clearance.
Two days ago I published a rather introspective post called The temptation to turn ever inwards. It was the result of reading three disturbing essays about the ‘affairs of man’; essays by Tom Engelhardt, Jim Wright and George Monbiot. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting a great response either in the form of ‘Likes’ or written replies. However, the first reply, a long reply, came in from Patrice Ayme. I made the decision to reply to Patrice via a new post; ergo today’s post. Since making that decision a further comment came in from Sue Dreamwalker, also republished today.
What I am going to do is to reproduce Patrice’s comment but interspersed with my replies.
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The biosphere evolved over billions of years. Now it is taken over by critters who live for just a few years. Solution? Make it so that said critters live longer, thus attaching a greater value upon survival.
I presume that the ‘said critters’ refer to humans? The average lifespan of humans has increased hugely. From a life expectancy of 30 years [1] at birth in Medieval Britain, back in the 13th Century, to an average of 67.2 years for humans worldwide in 2010. [2]
That’s an increase of 124% in a little over 700 years. Yet despite that incredible increase in lifespan, humans have shown no interest in attaching a greater value to their survival: far from it! One might even muse that humans have attached a greater value to those things that actively harm our survival.
For all the (over-) elaborate set-up of dear Monbiot, it’s simpler than that. Instead of going back to Baby Thatcher, Baroness god save the queen knows what, let’s grab a clear and present example.
I’m unclear as to what is meant by “the over-elaborate set-up” but as a long-time reader of Mr. Monbiot‘s essays I applaud both his commitment to the highest standards of journalism and to the UK’s Guardian newspaper for publishing so many of them over the years. I would invite Patrice to give an example of over-elaboration coming from the pen of George Monbiot.
Britain, and many of the Brits, say our dear friend Chris Snuggs, a participant to your, and my, site, have said that they hated Europe, because Europe was not democratic enough. However, one of the latest improvement of the European Constitution is now effective: the head of the EC, the European Commission, is now to be elected by the just elected European PARLIAMENT. Guess what?
Chris Snuggs is more than a participant to Learning from Dogs, he is a close friend of many years. Yes, he has strong views about Europe but those views are expressed in a declared, personal manner.
Chameleon Cameron, came out of the woodworks to bark, in the clearest way, that it was out of the question to do things differently from before, and now dare to have the European Parliament to elect (what is basically) the European Prime Minister.
Never mind that Britain voted for that European Constitutional change.
Never mind that in representative democracies, the leaders of the executive are elected by Parliament.
So what do we see here?
Contradiction within moods and thoughts systems (Britain agreed to the democratic change, and now does not). We also see erroneous ideas imposed (leaders of the executive says Cameron should be nominated undemocratically, that’s erroneous).
The same sort of things is also perking up in Iraq: the USA caused the mess there, committing several major war crimes in the process. Precisely because those war crimes were not prosecuted, a strong push has been exerted on Obama to duplicate Bush, and go back to attack Iraq some more.
Thus, it is simple: there bad ideas out there, and they need to be destroyed. And bad moods too (an example of bad moods is the enormity that the American population was made, by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., into an accomplice of the most major war crime there is, war of aggression. Now that this war is in the process of being lost, some clamor to have the war pursued with renewed vigor.
We are now the stewards of the biosphere, whether we like it, or not. We can’t just sit on our rumps, strokes dogs, and whine we will attend to our garden (Voltaire style). By doing nothing, we leave criminals such as Bush, or their spirit, or their mood, in power. And thus we become accomplices.
There is total agreement for the idea that humans are the stewards of the biosphere. But if the “sit on our rumps, strokes dogs and whine we will attend to our garden” is aimed at me, as it appears to be, then I strongly disagree. Living as simple a life as we can is a long way from “doing nothing”.
So go out there, and engage in combat, bad moods, and bad ideas. That’s what even very old alpha monkeys, covered with age spots, do. We don’t want to let very old monkeys be examples of moral rectitude we cannot emulate.
A last point: Monbiot does not realize the contradiction he engages in. In the guise of criticising the opposition, he puts it on a pedestal, and engages in its very propaganda. Monbiot, and many like him, bemoan a “shift towards conservatism”. Nothing could be more false. People who destroy the biosphere are NOT conservatives. They play conservatives on TV. In truth, they are just the opposite. They are destructionists.
I am of the opinion, totally so, that George Monbiot is not playing at conservatism.
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So, dear reader, there is little in the comment from Patrice that has me nodding my head. Don’t get me wrong! Patrice Ayme is an individual of extreme intellect as even a dip into his blog will confirm. I am a regular reader of the writings over at that place.
However, there is one major stumbling block for me, one that I have communicated privately to the said Patrice, and that is the issue of anonymity. Because Patrice Ayme is a nom-de-plume. Despite following ‘his’ writings for some time and sharing the occasional private email, I have almost no idea about who the person is. Yes, ‘his’ writings are often very strong and highly critical of many aspects of modern life, especially the American political system. But that is not unique. There is a long line-up of writers doing the same, and doing the same over their signatures: Tom Engelhardt, Jim Wright and George Monbiot and many, many others
For me, hiding one’s identity so securely behind a ‘virtual’ mask yet writing so passionately about many of the issues critically affecting the future of mankind, doesn’t work. If one can’t or won’t be honest about who they are, then better, perhaps, that they keep their thoughts and ideas close to them. There is no shortage of people openly being critical about the American Government and much else across the world, and being critical openly.
Later, Sue of Sue Dreamwalker added a comment. That resonated perfectly with me and it, too, is reproduced in full.
Paul sometimes I despair at how Mankind plays out his life in the world Paul… We bemoan lots as we sit in our homes as the virus of hate, greed, and disaster pours into our living rooms via the BLACK BOX of FEAR tricks… Which helps depress, make us anxious, fearful,…. It insights anger, aggression and the spiral of thought escalates out via the Web… Internet at our fingertips- instant reactions…
Some times I wonder as I ponder… at the soup being remixed… as only this week we hear of ISIS another branch of the terrorists we are now supposed to fear… As the UK now makes friends with its long time enemy Iran.. reinstating diplomatic relationships again.. The Saga runs on an on… With Oil as the major players .
That’s why turning inward is sometimes Paul the only thing we can do… As we can only live our lives… While I so want to save the world.. The world has also got to want to save itself…
I can only live my own life and stop the petty squabbles, the judgements, the criticisms as I mend my own world to live at peace within it…
Once we all realise its our thoughts which in fact we send out, in fear, in anger, as we judge and condemn that are reflected back …
WE create the world.. We consume its products, We want to live in the lifestyles that demand this World to exploit others for riches.. And yet condemn the conditions of the haves and have nots…
We have lost sight of our basic values in life Paul…
So yes I often retreat inwards… I have too.. Because I worry too much about the kind of Earth we are leaving our Grandchildren to grow up in…
~Sue
In final reply to Patrice, I shall reproduce this well-known quotation [3]:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.“
3.This saying is widely attributed to Voltaire, but cannot be found in his writings. With good reason. The phrase was invented by a later author as an epitome of his attitude. It appeared in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall under the pseudonym Stephen G. Tallentyre.
A run of essays that, collectively, deeply disturb me.
My seventieth birthday is fewer than six months away. Indeed, it will be just a little over two weeks after we celebrate the second anniversary of our arrival to this beautiful homestead back on October 25th, 2012. Two years: Seventy years! Time seems to run through one’s fingers like the proverbial sand. It’s difficult to avoid the irony that comes with recognising the two journeys. The one journey bringing me to living here on our rural Oregonian acres, with stunning scenery, wonderful animals and so much love in the air. The other journey bringing me to the realisation that this is the Autumn of my life and the sense, the keen sense, of my own mortality.
What, may you ask, has brought this feeling, these words, to the surface?
Well, I’ll tell you.
It’s been the coincidence of essays from three authors across the ‘blogosphere’ that I have recently read. Taken together, they paint a picture that disturbs me. Very much so. They sing out to me that mankind is spiralling ever downwards to oblivion and that the dark forces of greed, power and control will never be stopped; well not by man that is!
Here are the links to those essays.
The first was from Tom Englehardt. It was an essay entitled: A Record of Unparalleled Failurepublished on June 10th. That opened:
The United States has been at war — major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts, and covert actions — nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began. That’s more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions.
Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in the face. They are, however, the words that can’t be said in a country committed to a military-first approach to the world, a continual build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and occupations to counterinsurgency, proxy wars, and back again.
The second was from another American, Jim Wright, who is the author of the blog Stonekettle Station. Jim describes himself as:
I’m a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer. Nowadays I live in Alaska where I spend most of my time working in my woodshop or fishing. I occasionally consult for the Military. I have delusions of becoming a full time writer – or conquering the universe, whichever is easier…
Thanks to Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism, I followed a link to a recent essay from Jim under the title of Absolutely Nothing, published on the 14th June.
I’m not going to quote from it, not because I don’t approve of his essay, far from it, but because there are many tough, profane words and I do not wish inadvertently to upset my readers. But it is very strongly recommended.
The third essay is from fellow Englishman, George Monbiot, whose work has been regularly republished on Learning from Dogs.
While his essay is not specifically about war, unlike the other two, it does, nonetheless, contribute to my feelings of not wanting to engage with anything that is outside being a better husband, landowner and animal lover. It is called The Values Ratchet and is republished here with the generous permission of George Monbiot.
ooOOoo
The Values Ratchet
June 10th, 2014
How to ensure that nations slide ever further into selfishness, and ever further to the right.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 11th June 2014
Any political movement that fails to understand two basic psychological traits will, before long, fizzle out. The first is Shifting Baseline Syndrome. Coined by the biologist Daniel Pauly, it originally described our relationship to ecosystems(1), but it’s just as relevant to politics. We perceive the circumstances of our youth as normal and unexceptional – however sparse or cruel they may be. By this means, over the generations, we adjust to almost any degree of deprivation or oppression, imagining it to be natural and immutable.
The second is the Values Ratchet (also known as policy feedback). If, for example, your country has a public health system which ensures that everyone who needs treatment receives it without payment, it helps instil the belief that it is normal to care for strangers, and abnormal and wrong to neglect them(2,3). If you live in a country where people are left to die, this embeds the idea that you have no responsibility towards the poor and weak. The existence of these traits is supported by a vast body of experimental and observational research, of which Labour and the US Democrats appear determined to know nothing.
We are not born with our core values: they are strongly shaped by our social environment. These values can be placed on a spectrum between extrinsic and intrinsic. People towards the intrinsic end have high levels of self-acceptance, strong bonds of intimacy and a powerful desire to help other people. People at the other end are drawn to external signifiers, such as fame, financial success, image and attractiveness(4). They seek praise and rewards from others.
Research across 70 countries suggests that intrinsic values are strongly associated with an understanding of others, tolerance, appreciation, cooperation and empathy(5,6,7). Those with strong extrinsic values tend to have lower empathy, a stronger attraction towards power, hierarchy and inequality, greater prejudice towards outsiders and less concern for global justice and the natural world(8,9). These clusters exist in opposition to each other: as one set of values strengthens, the other weakens(10,11).
People at the extrinsic end tend to report higher levels of stress, anxiety, anger, envy, dissatisfaction and depression than those at the intrinsic end of the spectrum(12,13,14). Societies in which extrinsic goals are widely adopted are more unequal and uncooperative than those with deep intrinsic values. In one experiment, people with strong extrinsic values who were given a resource to share soon exhausted it (unlike a group with strong intrinsic values), as they all sought to take more than their due(15).
As extrinsic values are strongly associated with conservative politics, it’s in the interests of conservative parties and conservative media to cultivate these values. There are three basic methods. The first is to generate a sense of threat. Experiments reported in the journal Motivation and Emotion suggest that when people feel threatened or insecure they gravitate towards extrinsic goals(16). Perceived dangers – such as the threat of crime, terrorism, deficits, inflation or immigration – trigger a short-term survival response, in which you protect your own interests and forget other people’s.
The second method is the creation of new frames, structures of thought through which we perceive the world. For example, if tax is repeatedly cast as a burden, and less tax is described as relief, people come to see taxation as a bad thing that must be remedied(17). The third method is to invoke the Values Ratchet: when you change the way society works, our values shift in response. Privatisation, marketisation, austerity for the poor, inequality: they all shift baselines, alter the social cues we receive and generate insecurity and a sense of threat.
Margaret Thatcher’s political genius arose from her instinctive understanding of these traits, long before they were described by psychologists and cognitive linguists: “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.”(18) But Labour and the Democrats no longer have objects, only methods. Their political philosophy is simply stated: if at first you don’t succeed, flinch, flinch and flinch again. They seem to believe that if they simply fall into line with prevailing values, people will vote for them by default. But those values and baselines keep shifting, and what seemed intolerable before becomes unremarkable today. Instead of challenging the new values, these parties keep adjusting. This is why they always look like their opponents, with a five-year lag.
There is no better political passion killer than Labour’s Zero-Based Review(19). Its cover is Tory blue. So are the contents. It promises to sustain the coalition’s programme of cuts and even threatens to apply them to the health service(20). But, though it treats the deficit as a threat that must be countered at any cost, it says not a word about plugging the gap with innovative measures such as a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions, a land value tax, a progressively-banded council tax or a windfall tax on extreme wealth. Nor does it mention tax avoidance and evasion. The poor must bear the pain through spending cuts, sustaining a cruel and wildly unequal social settlement.
At the end of last month, Chris Leslie, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, promised, like George Osborne, that the cuts would be sustained for “decades ahead”(21). He asserted that Labour’s purpose in government would be to “finish that task on which [the Chancellor] has failed”: namely “to eradicate the deficit”. The following day the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, sought to explain why Labour had joined the political arms race on immigration. In doing so, he revealed that his party will be “radical in reforming our economy” in support of “a determinedly pro-business agenda”(22). They appear to believe that success depends on becoming indistinguishable from their opponents.
It’s not quite as mad as the old tactic among some Marxist groups of promoting inequality and injustice in the hope that popular fury would lead to revolution, but it’s not far off. Quite aside from the obvious flaw (what’s the sodding point of voting for a party that offers no substantial change in policy?), it evinces a near-perfect psychological illiteracy. When a party reinforces conservative values and conservative ideas, when it fails clearly to expound any countervailing values, when it refuses to reverse the direction of the Values Ratchet, what outcome does it expect, other than a shift towards conservatism?
1. Daniel Pauly, 1995. Anecdotes and the Shifting Baseline Syndrome of Fisheries. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10. 10:430.
2. Stefan Svallfors, 2010 Policy feedback, generational replacement, and attitudes to state intervention: Eastern and Western Germany, 1990-2006, European Political Science Review, 2, 119-135.
5. Shalom H. Schwartz, 2006. Basic Human Values: Theory, Measurement, and Applications. Revue Française de Sociologie, 47/4. http://bit.ly/1hL1JFJ
6. Frederick Grouzet et al, 2005. The structure of goal contents across fifteen cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 800-816. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/89/5/800/
9. Kennon M. Sheldon and Charles P. Nichols, 2009. Comparing Democrats and Republicans on
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Values. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2009, 39, 3, pp. 589–623.
12. Tim Kasser, 2014. Changes in materialism, changes in psychological well-being: Evidence from three longitudinal studies and an intervention experiment. Motivation and Emotion, 38:1–22. doi: 10.1007/s11031-013-9371-4
20. “We will be cutting departmental spending in 2015-16 and not raising it, with no more borrowing to cover day-to-day spending”
“The fundamental principle of the Zero-Based Review is that all spending is in scope and all budgets will be challenged. The review will cover all areas of public spending, including those that have been protected in the current Spending Review such as health”.
Learning from Dogs 