There was a wonderful reader reaction to yesterday’s post and it seemed so utterly appropriate to repost something back from November, 2012. Simply because it underscores the reasons why if anyone is looking for a dog, to please consider a rescue dog first.
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More on the beautiful and inspiring ways of the dog.
(First posted on the 20th November, 2012.)
Back at the beginning of July, I wrote a post about Jasmine. Jasmine was a rescue dog that turned out to be a natural ‘Mother hen’. That post was called Letting go; a dog lesson and, as the post explains, “Jasmine was truly one of a kind. She mothered many of the sanctuary’s residents back to health including Bramble the roe deer, Humbug the badger and two of the other sanctuary dogs, just to mention a few.”
But, guess what? More evidence of the benefits of having a dog in your life (or in our case make that 10 dogs!). [Ed. Now 9 dogs.]
Babies who spend time around pet dogs have fewer ear infections and respiratory ailments than those whose homes are animal-free, reported a study.
The study, published in the US journal Pediatrics, did not say why but suggested that being around a dog that spends at least part of its day outdoors may boost a child’s immune system in the first year of life.
Cats, too, seemed to convey some protection to babies, though the effect observed was weaker than with dogs.
The article goes on to say,
The research was based on 397 children in Finland whose parents made diary entries each week recording the state of their child’s health during the infant’s first year, from nine weeks to 52 weeks of age.
Overall, babies in homes with cats or dogs were about 30 percent less likely to have respiratory infectious symptoms — which included cough, wheezing, rhinitis (stuffy or runny nose) and fever — and about half as likely to get ear infections.
And concludes,
The most protective association was seen in children who had a dog inside at home for up to six hours a day, compared to children who did not have any dogs or who had dogs that were always outside.
“We offer preliminary evidence that dog ownership may be protective against respiratory tract infections during the first year of life,” said the study.
“We speculate that animal contacts could help to mature the immunologic system, leading to more composed immunologic response and shorter duration of infections.”
The improvement was significant, even after researchers ruled out other factors that could boost infection risk, such as not having been breastfed, attending daycare, being raised by smokers or parents with asthma, or having older siblings in the household.
In addition to having less frequent ear infections and respiratory infections, babies near dogs tended to need fewer courses of antibiotics compared to those who were reared in pet-free households, it said.
Previous research has shown conflicting results, with some studies finding no benefit for young children being around furry pets and others finding that animal contact appears to offer some protection against colds and stomach ailments.
The study authors said their research differs from previous analyses because it focuses solely on the first postnatal year and does not include older children.
Yesterday, I read the latest from TomDispatch, an essay entitled Eduardo Galeano, A Lost and Found History of Lives and Dreams (Some Broken).
I wasn’t sure if I had vaguely heard of Eduardo Galeano before but whatever, I had no idea of the power and beauty of his writings and was simply blown away when reading them. As Tom introduced the writings:
Who isn’t a fan of something — or someone? So consider this my fan’s note. To my mind, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano is among the greats of our time. His writing has “it” — that indefinable quality you can’t describe but know as soon as you read it. He’s created a style that combines the best of journalism, history, and fiction and a form for his books that, as far as I know, has no name but involves short bursts of almost lyrical reportage, often about events long past. As it turns out, he also carries “it” with him. I was his English-language book editor years ago and can testify to that, even though on meeting him you might not initially think so. He has nothing of the showboat about him. In person, he’s almost self-effacing and yet somehow he brings out in others the urge to tell stories as they’ve never told them before.
Despite Tom’s blanket permission to republish his essays, I’m not going to do so in this case, there’s a small niggle in the back of my mind that the copyright issues are rightfully protecting Mr. Galeano’s publishing rights.
So just going to offer this single extract and trust that you will go here and read Tom’s full essay: please do!
Century of Disaster
Riddles, Lies, and Lives — from Fidel Castro and Muhammad Ali to Albert Einstein and Barbie
By Eduardo Galeano
[The following passages are excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s history of humanity, Mirrors (Nation Books).]
Walls
The Berlin Wall made the news every day. From morning till night we read, saw, heard: the Wall of Shame, the Wall of Infamy, the Iron Curtain…
In the end, a wall which deserved to fall fell. But other walls sprouted and continue sprouting across the world. Though they are much larger than the one in Berlin, we rarely hear of them.
Little is said about the wall the United States is building along the Mexican border, and less is said about the barbed-wire barriers surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast.
Practically nothing is said about the West Bank Wall, which perpetuates the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and will be 15 times longer than the Berlin Wall. And nothing, nothing at all, is said about the Morocco Wall, which perpetuates the seizure of the Saharan homeland by the kingdom of Morocco, and is 60 times the length of the Berlin Wall.
Why are some walls so loud and others mute?
See what I mean!
There is much more about Eduardo Galeano on the web as these two following links prove.
Eduardo Galeano
Wikipedia have an entry here that is informative. Then there is an in-depth article about the man over on The Atlantic website, that starts thus:
Eduardo Galeano is regarded as one of Latin America’s fiercest voices of social conscience. Yet he insists that language — its secrets, mysteries, and masks — always comes first.
November 30, 2000
“The division of labor among nations,” Eduardo Galeano proclaimed in the opening sentence of Open Veins of Latin America, “is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.” A native of Uruguay who was forced into exile under the country’s military regime during the 1970s, Galeano has always identified with the losing side. Open Veins, originally published in Mexico in 1971, employed captivating, elegiac prose to chronicle five centuries of plunder and imperialism in Latin America. Radically different in style, though not in content, from Marxist-oriented “dependency theory” of the 1960s — which held that Latin America had been systematically marginalized by the world economy since the colonial era — Open Veins quickly became a canonical text in radical circles, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the Southern Hemisphere. In a period of social upheaval, guerrilla warfare, and dictatorship, the book, composed in three months of intense labor, was routinely treated as samizdat: when Open Veins was banned by the Pinochet regime, a young woman fled Chile with the book stashed in her infant’s diapers.
Going to close by musing on the fact that in today’s visual, technological age, the sharing of words, in all ways, shapes and sizes, across so many parts of our global society, is a pure miracle. Such creativity out there!
Yesterday evening we had close friend Don Reeve staying with us. To put this into context, it was Don and his wife, Suzann, who in 2007 invited me to spend Christmas with them at their Winter home down in San Carlos, Mexico. That, in turn, led me to meeting Jean, Suzann’s best friend, and look where that got me! 🙂
(Can’t resist adding that Jean and I were born in London, some 23 miles from each other!)
Fr. Dan Tantimonaco with the newly weds! Payson, AZ. November 20th., 2010.
Thus you can understand the pleasure it was for Jean and me again to see Don; albeit for a brief overnight stay.
What was an extra, unanticipated pleasure was meeting a young, rescue dog that Don had adopted in recent weeks. Her name is Margarita and she was found and rescued by Suzann from the streets in San Carlos. What was so glorious was to see the love and hope for a better future that flowed between Don and the sweet, young Margarita. It resonated so perfectly well with Suzan’s post published here on Monday: Rescued dogs are life-savers.
By the time I sat down at my desk yesterday, I was conscious of a) not having a clue as to what to write, and b) inspired by the sense of hope that dogs offer us humans. Serendipitously, the theme of hope led me to a post written by Jennifer Broudy de Hernandez over on her Transition Times blog. It was called Warriors for the Planet and was the most beautiful essay.
I’m delighted to reblog that here with Jennifer’s approval.
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Warriors for the Planet
Another summer, another war. I wonder how many summers there have been in the last 5,000 years when human beings were not occupied with killing each other?
Correction: not “human beings,” “men.”
Let’s be frank: even though there may be women in the armed forces of many countries now, war still remains a masculine activity and preoccupation. The women who serve as soldiers must adhere to the masculine warrior code and become honorary “bros,” for whom the worst insult is still be called a “girl” or a “pussy.”
I have been reading Anne Baring’s magisterial book The Dream of the Cosmos, in which she gives a detailed account of the shift, around the time of Gilgamesh, from the ancient, goddess- and nature-worshipping “lunar cultures” to the contemporary era of solar, monotheistic, warrior-worshipping cultures.
In her elaboration of this shift, I read the tragedy of our time, enacted over and over again all over the planet, and not just by humans against humans, but also by humans against the other living beings with whom we share our world. I quote at length from Baring’s remarkable book:
“The archetype of the solar hero as warrior still exerts immense unconscious influence on the modern male psyche, in the battlefield of politics as well as that of corporate business and even the world of science and academia: the primary aim of the male is to achieve, to win and, if necessary, to defeat other males. The ideal of the warrior has become an unconscious part of every man’s identity from the time he is a small child.
“With the mythic theme of the cosmic battle between good and evil and the indoctrination of the warrior went the focus on war and territorial conquest. War has been endemic throughout the 4000 years of the solar era. The glorification of war and conquest and the exaltation of the warrior is a major theme of the solar era—still with us today in George W. Bush’s words in 2005: ‘We will accept no outcome except victory.’ This call to victory echoes down the centuries, ensuring that hecatombs of young warriors were sacrificed to the god of war, countless millions led into captivity and slavery, countless women raped and widows left destitute. It has sanctioned an ethos that strives for victory at no matter what cost in human lives and even today glorifies war and admires the warrior leader. This archaic model of tribal dominance and conquest has inflicted untold suffering on humanity and now threatens our very survival as a species.
“The cosmic battle between light and darkness was increasingly projected into the world and a fascination with territorial conquest gripped the imagination and led to the creation of vast empires. It is as if the heroic human ego, identified with the solar hero, had to seek out new territories to conquer, had to embody the myth in a literal sense and as it did so, channel the primitive territorial drives of the psyche into a Dionysian orgy of unbridled conquest, slaughter and destruction. We hear very little about the suffering generated by these conquests: the weeping widows, the mothers who lost sons, the orphaned children and the crops and patterns of sowing and harvesting devastated and disrupted by the foraging armies passing over them, the exquisite works of art pillaged and looted….The long chronicle of conquest and human sacrifice, of exultation in power and the subjugation of enemies might truly be named the dark shadow of the solar age” (118;124).
Like Baring, I see our time as a critical era in the long history of homo sapiens on the planet. There is still hope that enough of us will be able to detach ourselves from the pressures and busyness of our lives—will become conscious of what is happening to the planet and human civilization writ large—will understand that there are other ways to relate to each other and to the Earth, ways that will seem increasingly possible and obvious once we focus on them and begin to put our energies into manifesting our visions of a creative, collaborative, respectful mode of being.
Baring ends her disturbing chapter on the ascendancy of the solar warrior culture with a hopeful quote from The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas, from which she springs into her own positive vision of the potential of our time.
“’We stand at the threshold of a revelation of the nature of reality that could shatter our most established beliefs about ourselves and the world. The very constriction we are experiencing is part of the dynamic of our imminent release. For the deepest passion of the Western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its being. The driving impulse of the West’s masculine consciousness has been its quest not only to realize itself, to forge its own autonomy, but also, finally, to recover its connection with the whole, to come to terms with the great feminine principle in life; to differentiate itself from but then rediscover and reunite with the feminine, with the mystery of life, of nature, of soul. And that reunion can now occur on a new and profoundly different level from that of the primordial unconscious unity, for the long evolution of human consciousness has prepared it to be capable at last of embracing the ground and matrix of its own being freely and consciously.’
“As this deep soul-impulse gathers momentum, the ‘marriage’ of the re-emerging lunar consciousness with the dominant solar one is beginning to change our perception of reality. This gives us hope for the future. If we can recover the values intrinsic to the ancient participatory way of knowing without losing the priceless evolutionary attainment of a strong and focused ego, together with all the discoveries we have made and the skills we have developed, we could heal both the fissure in our soul and our raped and vandalized planet” (130-131).
My heart aches for the suffering of the innocent civilians trapped in the crossfire in Gaza this summer, and for the grieving families of the passenger plane heinously shot down by warriors who were either poorly trained or just plain evil.
I am heartsick when I think about the holocaust that is overtaking living beings on every quadrant of our planet as humans continue to ravage the forests and seas, to melt the poles with our greenhouse gases, and to poison the aquifers and soil with our chemicals.
This is where the solar cultures, with their “great” warrior kings, have led us. And yet, as Baring says, they have also presided over the most amazing advances in science and technology that humans have ever known in our long history on the planet.
We don’t need or want to go back to the simple innocence of ancient lunar societies. We don’t have to bomb ourselves back into the Stone Age.
What we need is to go forward, wisely and joyously, into a new phase of consciousness, in which the masculine warrior spirit is used for protection and stewardship rather than destruction, and the Earth is honored as the Mother of all that she is.
Never let anyone tell you it can’t be done. It is already happening.
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May I tempt you to go back and re-read that penultimate paragraph. A sentence that I cannot resist emphasising:
What we need is to go forward, wisely and joyously, into a new phase of consciousness, in which the masculine warrior spirit is used for protection and stewardship rather than destruction, and the Earth is honored as the Mother of all that she is.
It is the differences between us that are to be praised.
On the 10th August, Alex Jones, he of The Liberated Way, published a post under the title of Wisdom comes out of calm. I read it and approved of the sentiments expressed. Here’s a flavour of what Alex wrote:
My attitude towards dogs, and everything I do, is it is better to act in harmony with my world than impose violent control upon it. Nature is my teacher, and calm is one of its teachings. Calm is the sister of patience and tolerance, letting nature flow at its own pace and in its own way. When I planted acorns, I was unable to force them to grow, they acted in their own timing, at their own pace. I am like a parent rather than the master of eight strong oak saplings. I provide my saplings with opportunity through water, sun and good soil; protecting them from caterpillar and fungus; they follow their own nature in becoming fast growing little trees.
Well, Paul, the entire essay answered why it’s wrong to equate calm with wisdom, as Alex does. If it was only him, it would be an interesting quirk. However, it’s pretty much a mass mood.
That philosophy of boiled vegetable leaves the plutocrats free to do a home run, home being, for them, hell. Part of the program is biospheric annihilation.
I didn’t agree with Patrice and my immediate reaction was try and take sides. Yet both writers were the authors of many fine essays. What to do? As I expressed to Alex:
I have read both posts and, frankly, are bemused. It feels as though each is describing something utterly different to the other. I have a number of hours of electrical work today but will also give the matter a ‘coating of thought’ while working and offer my humble conclusions later on.
Serendipitously, the answered then arrived.
I’m about a third of the way through an audio course on Building Great Sentences delivered by Professor Brooks Landon, Professor at the University of Iowa English Department. Professor Landon talks about style and how difficult it is to define a particular author’s style.
It was at that moment that a flashbulb went off in my mind. Wouldn’t literature be incredibly plain and boring if there were no real differences in the styles of all the many authors; past and present!
It brought me back to Patrice and Alex and, by default, hundreds of other authors of blogs right across the ‘blogosphere’. Of course they express themselves differently! Of course they hold different opinions! It is those differences that are critical, utterly so, to each and every reader coming to their own conclusions; conclusions to a wide range of subjects and topics.
This was hammered home to me as I watched our dogs playing so well together. The differences in each dog’s backgrounds and experiences contributed to the wonderful, unconditional way that they played and lived together. The power of their unconditional love.
It is those differences that offer us insight into our own beliefs and prejudices. It is those differences that allow us, and dogs, to make sense of ourselves. One might argue that it is the differences that deliver truth.
Yesterday, the guest post published by Suzan from Romania touched many of you. In that guest post there was mention of the dog Joe.
Take Joe. Joe had been sold on Facebook and bought by dog-baiters, bitten so severely vets thought he would die. You’d think that’s turned him off to humans? But no! He was a beautiful 6yr-old Collie. He was awesome. He obeyed, loved and cherished us, giving cuddles, playing gently … I’ve never had such a beauty under my roof.
I also wrote that I would publish more today. Taken directly from Mrs Skeats’ blog.
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Joe died but his death is still carrying a message.
It’s 19th June 2014. Joe died 6 months ago on 23rd December 2013.
Joe was a 6 year old beautiful boy taken from us after only 10 months by a cruel twist .. an accident due to a lack of information .. so I started a mini campaign. And I’ve just read about another poor soul, a friend of a friend, having to wait to see if his dog will survive a stick injury. Heartbreaking.
Ok so writing about it channelled my grief but the whole thing goes beyond that.
What was to be thought a rare, freak accident turned out to be all too familiar to vets and families worldwide. What was thought to be a personal kick in the nuts turns out to be a case of ignorance that is most definitely not bliss.
I received hundreds of comments on my first post after Joe died. I received hundreds of facebook and twitter comments too. The current ‘WordPress’ views are at over 139,000 which is great, and yet not enough. Dogs are still being treated for nasty stick injuries, vets see a few each month. I can’t preach and say stop it, but I can let anyone and everyone who cares know what a potential danger stick throwing is: better than being totally ignorant of the risks.
What happened to Joe, and happens to dogs all over the world at a frighteningly too-often rate, was borne of ignorance, stupidity, even years of “that’s what we do with dogs”. We simply never thought about the consequences it could bring.
Historically, when man decided to have dogs as pets and not merely working companions (not all that long ago in the UK) chasing a stick was a favourite game. We’ve all seen the old adverts in faded yellows and reds with a boy, stick in hand and his faithful dog panting happily as he waits for the ‘toy’ to be thrown. Why should we think it’s dangerous? We see things like celebs on the One Show with their dog, happily throwing it a stick, or in videos…. Dogs and stick throwing seems synonomous.
These are but a few stories of reasons why we should try and change this ……………..
Please think twice before you throw a stick for your dog to chase.
In memory of a beautiful dog, whose life will not ever have been in vain, but will mean so much more if we save others from pain.
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Please follow those links that Suzan included and read the articles. The message is clear. If you are the owner of a dog or play with dogs, don’t ever throw them a stick to catch.
As with yesterday’s post, please share this as widely as you can.
Jean would be the first to tell you that I’m always remarking to her how this funny old world of blogging creates links and friendships right across the world. Many of the kind people who follow Learning from Dogs are themselves the authors of blogs and in the vast majority of cases when I read their posts I sense a kindred spirit.
T.O.R.A Rescue shelter to close – Dogs need homes Foster or Adopt
TORA will close. This is indeed sad news for me but devastating for the dogs still left at the rescue shelter. My beautiful Annie came from there. Rescued off the street as a frightened puppy: Just look at her now.
Beautiful Annie.
TORA, like many other rescue shelters in Romania have been fighting against all odds to get dogs off the streets, and now out of the public shelters since the killing law has been passed. Dogs are in public shelters for only a short time before they are put to sleep. There are horrific stories and pictures around. Some may see it as practical, culling the population. That’s a valid opinion but not one I and thousands upon thousands of dog/animal lovers can share.
All TORA asks now though is for people to view the site on Facebook or contact them [Ed. via that Facebook link] and foster or adopt one of the remaining dogs. If there are dogs left in October when they must close, then they will be returned to the public shelter to receive their fate.
EVEN IF YOU CANNOT HAVE A DOG YOURSELF, please share, someone somewhere will, and for each one that does, another beautiful dog is safe. They didn’t ask to be thrown on the streets. They didn’t ask to be cast out like vermin. All they want is a chance to have a human family and a life of kindness.
ABOUT ASOCIATIA
T.O.R.A. is a small non-profit dog rescue organization that is based in Bistrita, North of Romania (Transylvania). TORA is dedicated to the rescue and placement of stray dogs.
We are an animal charity of 2-4 volunteers, with funds available only from public support, with a shelter of 20 spacious kennels, 11 indoor & outdoor and 9 only outdoors ones. We have a vet attending the dogs daily and a caretaker.
All of our dogs get neutered, (with the exception of puppies under the age of 6 months old and very old dogs), vaccinated, microchipped , defleed and dewormed prior to adoption.
T.O.R.A. shelter cares for the rescued dogs entirely from donations received from private people, that’s why there is a constant need of support whether its financial, material (food or medicine donations, beds, dog clothes, etc) or by sharing and promoting the dogs to find good homes so that space becomes available to help others .
T.O.R.A. helps an average of 40-60 animals at any given time.
Many who follow my scribblings know that of the nine dogs we have here at home, seven are rescues. When I first met Jean down in Mexico she was rescuing feral dogs off the streets and finding homes for them. Over the many years, Jean estimates that well over two-hundred stray dogs had been found loving homes. Indeed, when Jean and I moved from Mexico to Payson, AZ., we came with fourteen dogs of which thirteen were ex-rescues! Pharaoh being the notable exception!
Anyway, back to Mrs Skeats.
I was so moved by what I read on her blogsite that I implored her to write a guest post for you, dear reader. Suzan was gracious enough to agree and here is her post.
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Rescued dogs are life-savers.
by Suzan.
Paul asked if I would post as a “guest” after reading my post(s) about dogs that have been or need to be rescued from some quite awful conditions. “OH here we go again” some of you will say. Well, then it is your choice to read on or close the page.
I hope you read on as this is not about begging for funds or equipment or even a home for these lovely creatures. It’s about what THEY can offer you.
I love animals – not just dogs. I’ve cared for many in my time, but dogs have to be top of my list. Dogs love to love. They don’t know how to be any other way until they are mistreated in some way.
Dog’s are like having a permanent 3 years old around you, with the exception they don’t answer back (often) and are usually not quite so stubborn. I’ve had 7 children under my roof in the years (hence the menagerie at times) – I know.
Dogs look to their human companion as leader, feeder, soul mate, room mate, walker, talker, and all they want to do is to please …. literally their life is lived for you. But rescued dogs do this to a deeper level than dogs raised from a pup. Not just me but thousands of others find this.
Raised dogs are no less loyal, please don’t think I say different. There’s just something about a dog that has had a bad start, lonely, captured, mistreated … whatever. These dogs reach deeper into your heart and aim to please as if they are desperate to say thank you. Perhaps they have a fear that the person who has been so lovely will leave if they misbehave. I can’t say, I’m not a dog.
I do know as I have had both kinds; from a pup and rescued from kennels. My last ‘pup raised’ dog, Dizzi, was with me 18 years and a star in her own right, but my rescues … it’s hard to say, but they love me in a different way, unique to rescues.
Take Joe. Joe had been sold on Facebook and bought by dog-baiters, bitten so severely vets thought he would die. You’d think that’s turned him off to humans? But no! He was a beautiful 6yr-old Collie. He was awesome. He obeyed, loved and cherished us, giving cuddles, playing gently … I’ve never had such a beauty under my roof. [Ed: Joe’s early and tragic death will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.]
Annie is a Romanian street dog, rescued age 9 months from under a pile of pallets in the cold Romanian winter, never having had a home. Now two, and she too has a special love for us. I swear if we’re annoyed with her she cries (not the doggy whine – I mean from the heart) and she’ll do ANYTHING to get a hug from us. Not once has she ever messed in the house from day 1, she goes to bed when told, sits politely for treats or her lead and wags herself to death when we come in the front door. Very rarely has she “got it wrong” and is so sorrowful if she does, her worst misdemeanour being chewing her bedding when she was about 14 months old, and obviously bored.
I could go on, I’ve had 5 rescues and two from pups…..
All I’ll now say is if you’re looking for a dog to share your life with – consider very carefully as they love you warts and all for a long time – then get a rescued dog. Once you look into those soulful eyes, and hold that paw, you’ll connect and feel the love and be very humbled ……. but you won’t regret it.
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Please share the message as much as possible! These dogs need to find loving homes. Thank you.
I have written previously on Learning from Dogs about the future having to be local if we are to stand any chance of coping with what is ahead. So it was a delight to read this post from Alex’s blog The Liberated Way. In my opinion, Alex is spot on the mark.
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The rise of localism
Posted on August 6, 2014
Globalism and central control is coming to an end.
Bees are localised, sustainable and self-reliant, something humanity will learn the hard way.
The first of a series of debates on Scottish independence from the UK took place yesterday, the vote for independence takes place next month. The campaign for Scottish independence is part of a larger paradigm shift away from globalism to localism around the world. Cornwall, Wales, Mercia, Yorkshire and Wessex are all campaigning for independence in the UK. Even in my town of Colchester we want to take back control of highways from external authorities.
The European elections this year resulted in a surge in anti-EU nationalistic parties doing well. UKIP which wants the UK to leave the EU was the clear winner in the UK in the European elections. The UN is increasingly seen as ineffective in the face of international crisis, often used by a few powerful nations, and ignored by practically everyone. Israel recently expressed the contempt nations now have for the UN by bombing UN schools in Gaza.
The USSR has broken up into small nations, as has Yugoslavia. Sudan split into two and Georgia into three nations. There is talk of California in the USA breaking into six states, and a growing but still small movements for other states breaking away from the Union altogether. The fighting in East Ukraine is as much about local Russians wanting to determine their own future as the international games of chess between the superpowers.
Flanders is seeking to break from Belgium; Catalonia and the Basque Country want to break from Spain; the city of Venice wants to break from Italy; Quebec is looking to break from Canada; Kurdistan and many other Peoples are seeking to form their own nation states out of the chaos of Iraq, Syria and Libya.
New forms of local currency such as the Totnes pound and electronic currencies such as Bitcoin challenge the bankers. Until recently my local council Essex Council was talking about creating its own bank for local people. Corporates such as Starbucks are considering creating their own currencies, in effect becoming their own banks. Multiple non-banking payment systems such as PayPal are now part of internet commerce. In the face of sanctions Russia has created their own version of VISA for citizens to pay their bills.
The internet has helped to break up the power of information monopolies where the citizen blogger is as effective as a journalist in the New York Times. The internet places greater power in the hands of the individual on the local level.
Water, energy, food and debt are the four great forces now driving the world politically, economically and socially. The many chasing a diminishing amount of resources drives people to fight or conserve their resources. Huge growing public and private debt is destroying nation states, driving the momentum to think local rather than global. The Greek economic crisis drove local people back to the land, to become self-sufficient, and create systems of trade outside of the global financial system.
I support localism, and I designed my business with localism in mind. The growing international crisis will force people to become local, sustainable and self-reliant. As the money runs out nations, communities and individuals will quickly learn that it is down to themselves to live or die.
Yesterday, I published a post under the title of Just to focus our minds. It featured a chart that demonstrated how long Planet Earth would take to ‘recover’ if the human race disappeared today.
Why today’s post seemed a perfect companion was because it explores how we could think better. For if the human race doesn’t quickly find a way to think better, then that aforementioned chart may not be such an academic abstract after all.
The post is more or less a copy of what appeared on the Big Think blogsite, a site I have been following for some time now.
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Want to Make a Difference in the World? Think Small
Stephen Dubner
Ambition can work against you by leading you to set unrealistic and overwhelming goals. Want to make a difference in the world? Think small. It’s much less complicated, you’ll have easier access to the data that you’ll need. Most importantly, you will preserve one of your most precious resources: optimism.
Having the will to attack an issue at its root—from launching a socially conscious business to demanding more green spaces in your neighborhood—requires energy and enthusiasm to see the project through. By being less ambitious in your plans you’re more likely to stick with them and be successful.
Besides, when you first developed your problem-solving skills you were small—a child. Stephen Dubner, the co-author, with economist Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics and Think Like a Freak, wants you to go back to that way of thinking:
One of the most powerful pieces of thinking like a child that we argue is thinking small. So I realize that this runs exactly counter to the philosophy of the arena in which I’m appearing which is thinking big, Big Think, but our argument is this. Big problems are by their nature really hard to solve for a variety of reasons. One is they’re large and therefore they include a lot of people and therefore they include a lot of crossed and often mangled and perverse incentives. But also a big problem – when you think about a big problem like education reform. You’re dealing with an institution or set of institutions that have gotten to where they’ve gotten to this many, many years of calcification and also accidents of history. What I mean by that is things have gotten the way they’ve gotten because of a lot of things a few people did many, many years ago and traditions were carried on.
Want to break those traditions and build something new and forward-thinking? Then curb your ambition. Start to look at the world again with the eyes of a child.
Stephen Dubner talks about [that YouTube link reveals the transcript of the talk. PH] the importance of thinking small in order to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems piece by piece. Dubner is the co-author of Think Like a Freak
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Stephen Dubner and economist Steven Levitt co-authored the book Freakonomics. If you are interested, the Freakonomics website is here.
Over this day, the number of subscribers to Learning from Dogs has gone from 1,048 to 1,052!
Usually when a new person opts to follow these scribblings of mine, I have the opportunity to email them or go to their own blog and leave a note of grateful thanks.
But for reasons unknown, these recent new subscribers have signed up ‘anonymously’!
So whoever you are, I want you to know that readers and subscribers are the only reasons this blog has gone on for more than five years.
The more that man tries to interfere the more that man screws up.
Jeannie and I subscribe to Time Magazine. This week’s edition had a pretty eye-catching cover that required a second look.
Illustration by Justin Metz for Time. Photo reference for emerald ash borer courtesy of PDCNR—Forestry Archive, Bugwood.org
That cover referred to the lead article concerning invasive species, “From giant snails to Asian carp, alien wildlife is on the move.“, written by Bryan Walsh. The essence of the article is that man’s global activities are responsible, albeit often unwittingly, for the movement of a wide range of species across national borders. My own reaction to the article was that it was typical of the many ‘scare’ stories the media present but that at the end of the day, nothing will change. However the last two paragraphs of the article did resonate with me.
Human beings have become the dominant force on the planet, so much so that many scientists believe we’ve entered an entirely new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. We have already been shaping the planet unintentionally, through greenhouse-gas emissions and global trade and every other facet of modern existence. The challenge now is to take responsibility for that power over the planet and use it for the right ends – all the while knowing that there is no single correct answer, no lost state of grace we can beat back toward.
How we respond to the thickening invasions that we ourselves loosed will be part of that answer – which is only just. There is one species that can claim to be the most dominant invasive of all time. From its origins in Africa, this species has spread to every corner of the world and every kind of climate. Everywhere it goes, it displaces natives, leaving extinction in its wake, altering habitat to suit its needs, with little regard for the ecological impact. Its numbers have grown nearly a millionfold, and its spread shows no sign of stopping. If that invasive species sounds familiar, it should. It’s us.
Thus with that article from Time in mind, it was very pertinent to see the latest essay from George Monbiot. It reinforces, in spades, the sentiment expressed by Bryan Walsh in those paragraphs above and is republished here on Learning from Dogs with the generous permission of George Monbiot.
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A One Way Street to Oblivion
As soon as an animal becomes extinct, a new bill proposes, it will be classified as “non-native”.
By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 21st July 2014
Can any more destructive and regressive measures be crammed into one bill?
Already, the Infrastructure Bill, which, as time goes by, has ever less to do with infrastructure, looks like one of those US monstrosities into which a random collection of demands by corporate lobbyists are shoved, in the hope that no one notices.
So far it contains (or is due to contain) the following assaults on civilisation and the natural world:
– It exempts fracking companies from the trespass laws
– Brings in a legal requirement for the government to maximise the economic recovery of petroleum from the UK’s continental shelf. This is directly at odds with another legal requirement: to minimise the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions
– Introduces the possibility (through Clauses 21 and 22) of a backdoor route to selling off the public forest estate. When this was attempted before, it was thwarted by massive public protest.
– further deregulates the town and country planning system, making life even harder for those who wish to protect natural beauty and public amenities
Enough vandalism? Not at all. There’s yet another clause aimed at suppressing the natural world, which has, so far, scarcely been discussed outside parliament. If the Infrastructure Bill is passed in its current state, any animal species that “is not ordinarily resident in, or a regular visitor to, Great Britain in a wild state” will be classified as non-native and subject to potential “eradication or control”. What this is doing in an infrastructure bill is anyone’s guess.
At first wildlife groups believed it was just poor drafting, accidentally creating the impression that attempts to re-establish species which have become extinct here – such as short-haired bumblebees or red kites – would in future be stamped out. But the most recent Lords debate scotched that hope: it became clear that this a deliberate attempt to pre-empt democratic choice, in the face of rising public enthusiasm for the return of our lost and enchanting wildlife.
As Baroness Parminter, who argued unsuccessfully for changes to the bill, pointed out, it currently creates
“a one-way system for biodiversity loss, as once an animal ceases to appear in the wild, it ceases to be native.”
She also made the point that it’s not just extinct species which from now on will be treated as non-native, but, as the bill now stands, any species listed in Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
Among those in Schedule 9 are six native species that have already been re-established in Britain (the capercaillie, the common crane, the red kite, the goshawk, the white-tailed eagle and the wild boar); two that are tentatively beginning to return (the night heron and the eagle owl); and four that have been here all along (the barn owl, the corncrake, the chough and the barnacle goose). All these, it seems, are now to be classified as non-native, and potentially subject to eradication or control.
After the usual orotund time-wasting by aristocratic layabouts (“my ancestor Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, who was known as the great Sir Ewen … killed the last wolf in Scotland” etc), the minister promoting the bill, Baroness Kramer, made it clear that the drafting was no accident. All extinct species, it appears, are to be treated as non-native and potentially invasive. At no point did she mention any of the benefits their re-establishment might bring, such as restoring ecological function and bringing wonder and delight and enchantment back to this depleted land.
Here is a list, taken from Feral, of a few of the animals which have become extinct recently (in ecological terms) and which probably meet the bill’s new definition of non-native: “not ordinarily resident in, or a regular visitor to, Great Britain in a wild state”. Some would be widely welcomed; others not at all, but it’s clear that a debate about which species we might welcome back is one that many people in this country want to have, but that the government wants to terminate. There’s a longer list, with fuller explanations and a consideration of their suitability for re-establishment, in the book.
European Beaver: became extinct in Britain in the mid-18th Century, at the latest. Officially re-established in the Knapdale Forest, Argyll. Unofficially in the catchment of the River Tay and on the River Otter, in Devon.
Wolf: The last clear record is 1621 (not 1743 as commonly supposed). It was killed in Sutherland. As far as I can determine, neither Sir Ewen Cameron nor any of the other blood-soaked lairds and congenital twits from whom Lord Cameron of Dillington is descended were involved.
Lynx: The last known fossil remains date from the 6th Century AD, but possible cultural records extend into the 9th Century.
Wild Boar: The last truly wild boar on record were killed on the orders of Henry III in the Forest of Dean, in 1260. Four small populations in southern England, established after escapes and releases from farms and collections.
Elk or Moose (Alces alces): The youngest bones found in Britain are 3,900 years old. Temporarily released in 2008 into a 450-acre enclosure on the Alladale Estate, Sutherland.
Reindeer: The most recent fossil evidence is 8,300 years old. A free-ranging herd grazes on and around Cairn Gorm in the Scottish Highlands.
Wild horse: The most recent clearly-established fossil is 9,300 years old. Animals belonging to the last surviving subspecies of wild horse, Przewalski’s (Equus ferus przewalskii), graze Eelmoor Marsh in Hampshire.
Forest bison, or wisent: Likely to have become extinct here soon before the peak of glaciation, between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago. A herd was temporarily established at Alladale in 2011.
Brown bear: probably exterminated around 2000 years ago.
Wolverine: survived here until roughly 8,000 years ago.
Lion: the last record of a lion in the region is a bone from an animal that lived in the Netherlands – then still connected to Britain – 10,700 years ago.
Spotted hyaena: around 11,000 years ago.
Hippopotamus: it was driven out of Britain by the last glaciation, around 115,000 years ago, and hunted to extinction elsewhere in Europe about 30,000 years ago.
Grey whale: the most recent palaentological remains, from Devon, belonged to a whale that died around 1610 AD.
Walrus: late Bronze Age, in the Shetland Islands.
European Sturgeon: possibly as recently as the 19th Century.
Blue stag beetle: probably 19th Century.
Eagle owl: the last certain record is from the Mesolithic, 9,000-10,000 years old . But a possible Iron Age bone has been found at Meare in Somerset. Now breeding in some places, after escaping from collections.
Goshawk: wiped out in the 19th Century. Unofficially re-established in the 20th Century, through a combination of deliberate releases and escapes from falconers.
Common crane: last evidence of breeding in Britain was in 1542. Cranes re-established themselves through migration in the Norfolk Broads in 1979, and have bred there since then. Now breeding in two other places in eastern England. Re-introduced in 2010 to the Somerset Levels.
White Stork: last recorded nesting in Edinburgh in 1416. In 2004 a pair tried to breed on an electricity pole in Yorkshire. In 2012 a lone bird built a nest on top of a restaurant in Nottinghamshire.
Spoonbill: the last breeding records are 1602 in Pembrokeshire and 1650 in East Anglia. In 2010 a breeding colony established itself at Holkham in Norfolk.
Night Heron: last bred here in either the 16th or 17th Century, at Greenwich. Today it is a scarce visitor.
Dalmatian Pelican: remains have been found from the Bronze Age in the Cambridgeshire Fens and from the Iron Age in the Somerset levels, close to Glastonbury. A single mediaeval bone has been found in the same place.
These and many others are now to be classified as officially non-native, unless this nonsense can be stopped.
Incidentally, determining what is and isn’t a native species, let alone what “should” or “should not” be living here, is a much more complicated business than you might imagine, as Ken Thompson’s interesting book, Where Do Camels Belong?, makes clear. He also points out that some species which are initially greeted with horror and considered an ecological menace soon settle down as local wildlife learns to prey on them or to avoid them. Sometimes they perform a useful ecological role by filling the gaps created by extinction. He overstates his case, and glosses over some real horror stories, but his book is an important counterweight to attempts to create a rigid distinction between native and non-native wildlife.
Many species introduced to this country by human beings are now cherished as honorary members of our native wildlife. Here are just a few I’ve come across. How many of you knew that they were all brought here by people?:
Brown hare
Little owl
Field poppy
Corncockle
Crack willow
Greater burdock
Pheasant’s eye
Cornflower
Wormwood
Mayweed
White campion
Isn’t this an interesting subject? Unfortunately government ministers seem to know to know nothing about it and to care even less. They are crashing through the middle of delicate interactions between people and the natural world like bulldozers in a rainforest.
I will close today’s post with another, very recent, story in The Guardian, that opens, thus:
Wild beaver kits born in Devon
Thursday 17 July 2014
One of the first wild beavers to be seen in England in centuries and due to be taken into captivity has given birth to three young.
Local retired environmentalist Tom Buckley captured the three young beavers climbing all over their mother. Photograph: Tom Buckley/Apex
A wild beaver due to be taken into captivity has given birth to at least three young.
The young, known as kits, were born to the family of two adult and one juvenile European beavers (Castor fiber) that were spotted living on the river Otter in Devon earlier this year, in what was believed to be the first sighting of the species in the wild in England in 500 years.
All that is left for me to do is to quote a little from a recent letter from John Hurlburt.
Our future depends on the air we breathe. Our lives depend upon rivers of living water. Our health requires the blessings of organic agriculture. Our energy streams through us from the cosmos.
We are warrior animals. Peace must come from within. Non-violence is our best choice. We have the magnificent opportunity to wake up as an animal that is grateful and sings in harmony with the Earth.
The present is surrounded by the past and the future. We float on the wings of compassion and wisdom with a sacred responsibility for the Nature of all Creation.
Learning from Dogs 