12 April 2007Bill Bothwell is a good old friend from Springfield, Missouri - now in Los Angeles. Over lunch at the Argyle Restaurant at Aviara in Carlsbad, California, we updated the last 35 years of our lives and learned of Shambhala Tibetan Buddhism. In his view, it is essential to be mentally and spiritually awake in order to address the inescapable challenges of our troubled materialistic age. In my view, it was good to spend three hours together. (Marcel Proust would have enjoyed this discussion.)
6 April 2007
This topic is a bit off the beaten track with respect to my usual blog entries. However, the topic is in fact closer to my heart than I usually disclose.
I will grant you that I have limited time to read the new science fiction literature or even to follow many of the new movies, though I more often have 2 hours to spare for a DVD than 10-20 hours to read a novel.
Here is my complaint. Very little of what is being released in the name of science fiction is in fact science fiction at all. So-called science fiction movies tend to be suspense, action, adventure or even horror films in science fiction disguise. You don't need me to name them for you – the titles abound in the so-called science fiction sections of the neighbourhood and online video stores.
Similarly, science fiction literature rarely has much to teach us about science these days. And this, in my view, is the intent of what I call true science fiction – that is, to explore the possible future places where science might take us, given both what we know – and what we know that we do not know – about the vast and mysterious, multi-dimensional universe that we inhabit.
I will accept the burden of proof for demonstrating what true science fiction is by proffering examples for your consideration.
In the area of science fiction as literature, I present the body of work of Robert Heinlein as perhaps the purest science fiction writing of which I am aware. While Heinlein had a number of peers whose work was similar in many respects, for example, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and somewhat later, Frederick Pohl and Larry Niven (Doris Lessing is another category herself), I believe Heinlein extended the genre to the furthest reaches of its potential during his era.
What Heinlein was able to do, that perhaps no other writer has done so well, was to propel the reader into a conceivable future world that has been shaped by the imagined evolution of one or more scientific principles, and then create sympathetic characters with believable dilemmas to inhabit this imagined world.
In my view, Heinlein's consistently best-conceived works were in fact his juvenile novels, commissioned in large part by the Boy Scouts in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Such titles as Space Cadet, Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Citizen of the Galaxy and Tunnel in the Sky painted imagined futures in vivid and challenging detail for young readers whose intelligence Heinlein consistently respected (and never underestimated).
Heinlein was not by any means rigid in restricting himself to the known realms of science. He had no difficulty imagining faster than light space travel (managed with slide rules, as computers of any power had not yet been conceived), time travel, space warps and in some cases telepathy. Virtually every planet was inhabited, and usually with creatures of intelligence equal to or greater than our own. So giant leaps of the imagination beyond known science were well within Heinlein's comfort zone.
However, Heinlein never neglected the scientific aspects of the technologies he imagined, and his work rarely contradicted what was known scientifically at his time – this allowed him to imagine Venus as a steamy tropical jungle populated by a multicultural human society – as well as by alien natives – rather than what we know it to be today, a burning oven surrounded by a caustic sulphuric acid atmosphere.
Given that Heinlein was (in my view) the master of authentic recent science fiction, it is telling, and disappointing, that so little of his work, and none of his best work, has ever been translated to the cinema. Two minor novels – The Puppet Masters and the controversial Starship Troopers – have been translated into mediocre movies, both of which hint at, but fail to capture, Heinlein's much wider-ranging vision.
Until Heinlein's better works have been translated to the cinema – and I fear this is now unlikely half a century later – I shall remain somewhat pessimistic about the prospects for science fiction cinema.
I do not by any means claim to have kept up with the 50 years of science fiction literature beyond Heinlein. Speaking on a personal basis, I have read only two contemporary science fiction authors whom I regard as writing in Heinlein's league, and these are William Gibson, whose cyberpunk stories attempt the same task as Heinlein (creating an imaginable science-based future), though his work is centred around much more self-preoccupied (and therefore less sympathetic) characters, and Jonathan Lethem, whose occasional science fiction works in my view fully measure up to Heinlein's efforts, particularly his novel Girl in Landscape.
Interestingly, Gibson has also seen two of his works translated to the screen, one of which I am familiar with. Unfortunately, that is the science fiction “B” movie, Johnny Mnemonic. This movie is based on one of his very minor stories, and fails by virtually any measure in capturing Gibson's vision of a future society whose inhabitants move – at times imperceptibly – between a familiar but twisted natural world and a seductive and mysterious virtual cybernetic world.
Are there, then, true science fiction movies being made today?
The gratifying answer is yes – some.
Once again, there have been a number of credible efforts in the direction of creating an authentic science fiction cinema, though the genre as a whole is so regularly disappointing as to leave the true science enthusiast reflexively anticipating multiple compromises before ever entering the theatre or pressing the play button on the DVD player.
Interestingly, a number of the better efforts in science fiction film date back to its earliest days in the 1950s, though few of the best science fiction films have ever experienced a wide viewership.
As I am not an expert, I'm certain I will unintentionally pass over many of the better science fiction films, and I apologize for this in advance. I will attempt to name some of the obvious (and perhaps not so obvious) examples of better science fiction in the cinema.
One of the early classics that still stands out is Forbidden Planet, the story of Shakespeare's The Tempest re-made as science fiction, and built around a somewhat spurious but conceivable Freudian theme – which does in fact require both thought and exercise of imagination on the part of the viewer.
Some other titles which explore authentic science fiction themes, almost always in somewhat flawed ways, include such original efforts as This Island Earth (I have not viewed this one in many years), The Man Who Fell to Earth (whose amoral protagonist challenges us to imagine alien ways of thinking that are not so unlike our own), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (in which science fiction serves primarily as a contrasting and playful backdrop in service of grim historical fiction), and some low budget specials from out of the past, including the Original George Pal version of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Henry Levin’s 1959 Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
There are a couple of films I feel I should mention that I have not so far seen, but which have come well recommended. These include The Brother from Another Planet and Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos).
In another category, which I might call the time-travel morality story, there is Ken Grimwood’s eminently readable popular novel, Replay, and on a very similar theme, the Bill Murray film, Groundhog Day. Neither is primarily a work of science fiction by any means, but they are worthy of our interest and attention.
Several more recent films have done some credit to the science fiction genre. I am not including the original Star Wars trilogy, which, though well done, falls more under the rubric of science fantasy, nor A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is more a social commentary (and comedy) using science fiction as a vehicle to comment on the human condition (much like Kurt Vonnegut’s series of science fiction novels).
The majority of authentic science fiction films have failed at the box office, and many of these are deeply flawed, despite their at least partial fidelity to science fiction’s core purpose, which again is to invite us to imagine a world changed by the progression of scientific knowledge and technology in areas which are presently either only partially known or unknown.
A number of action/thriller/horror/adventure crossovers have at least brushed past the great ideas of science fiction, and here I include the Alien series, the original Jurassic Park (and perhaps some other Crichton adaptations), The Matrix series (primarily the original episode), the Back to the Future series, several of the Schwarzenegger films, and perhaps also Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, Outbreak, Dark City, Aeon Flux and The Astronaut’s Wife (there are many others which could be listed here), In all cases, however, science fiction is secondary to the purpose of these films.
Some more recent, passable, and in some cases commendable, science fiction films (and I am including some box office flops and bankruptcy-engendering failures as well as more popular efforts), include Contact (one of the best true science fiction films of all time), 2001: A Space Odyssey (another classic), Mission to Mars (a true science fiction story), Outland (High Noon in outer space, though with a somewhat devolved action-oriented conclusion), The Chronicles of Riddick (Pitch Black, the first in the series, is a true science fiction film, despite its flawed fundamental science), The Thirteenth Floor (in my view, the most successful virtual reality film so far crafted), the delightful Riverworld pilot (which sadly never went on to production), A Sound of Thunder (true science fiction based on a Bradbury story, but a box office disaster that was released with the special effects tragically incomplete), and quite recently, and truly a magical and classic science fiction story, The Last Mimsy – which on my recommendation is not to be missed – in theatres today.
Having written this, I am in fact now feeling more hopeful, as I can look back and see that a veritable garden of credible written and filmed science fiction, though in many cases highly compromised, has somehow managed to blossom in the cracks of the pavement of our concrete-thinking world, despite the seemingly anti-scientific mindset of media decision-makers and the general public whose tastes they measure, target and ultimately serve.
We are a long way from the utopian world I envision, in which the public at large might be so intrigued by the mysteries of science that their minds are recurringly stimulated to imagine how our lives might be changed by its further evolution, thereby creating a rich science fiction literature and an imagination-stretching library of science fiction cinema titles.
Be that as it may, something has in fact been accomplished in the cultural domain of science fiction literature and cinema, and what has already been created may yet aid us in exploring further where science could take us over the upcoming century and millennium.
If history is any guide at all, then it is a virtual certainty that the places to which science ultimately takes us will extend far beyond our present imaginings. This knowledge makes me wish only that I could imagine more than I am presently capable of imagining – and be aided in doing so by further developments in science fiction literature and cinema.
Perhaps the advancements I hope for will emerge as the uprising of the future brings with it yet more unanticipated, often destabilizing and yet still promising developments. The inherent nature of the mysteriously and surprisingly unfolding future itself could therefore augur well – if perhaps unexpectedly – for a renewal and blossoming of the science fiction genre in our third millennium.
5 April 2007
I will be the first to admit that I am over my head on this topic. So I will defer to Jim Sinclair, who has been around to call the entry and exit points on the gold bull and bear markets since 1967. Mr. Sinclair has just issued a warning that "total disaster" is near for the US Dollar. Mr. Sinclair's chart is here. I honestly don't know when or if the US dollar will fall below the critical .80 figure on the international US Dollar Index (its all-time low), but I do know that if that happens, it will be Mr. Bernanke's first real test.
At its recent .8240 level, it is clear that the US dollar is in critical condition. At the same time, a historic fall below the .80 level will be a signal event, and no global decision-maker is going to allow this level to be compromised in the absence of a contingency plan.
The fall of the US dollar makes it less attractive to global policy-makers (particularly the central bankers of the countries most heavily committed to holding US dollars – specifically, China, Japan and some of the Arab states). However, the primary central bank holders of the US currency have no interest in seeing its value diminish, as this will compromise the worth of their international reserves.
Thus, the international face-off may continue to play out in complex and difficult to predict ways.
Specifically, the US dollar's primary holders will at some point desire to be rewarded for holding this declining currency, and stable or lowering interest rates will not address their needs.
On the other hand, if Mr. Bernanke continues raising interest rates (to reward the international investors in US dollar bonds who daily prevent a US dollar débâcle by adding to their holdings), then he risks bringing the US economy to a stalling point, which will undercut the attractiveness of US general equities (stocks) to foreign investors.
(N.B. The US must sell $2-3 billion dollars per day in bonds so as to cover the massive US current account deficit, which runs at 5-7% of US GDP. This level of imbalance is typically seen only in countries whose currency values are breaking down.)
Given the present stalemate situation, Mr. Bernanke would prefer neither to lower nor to raise US interest rates, and he may be able to extend this no-win game for a lengthy period – so long as the US dollar does not fall below the critical .80 level and the US economy does not crash and burn.
Most all of those in the gold camp expect Mr. Bernanke at some point to lower rather than raise US interest rates under pressure, but this will weaken the US dollar further.
Hang on for the ride – as Mr. Bernanke cannot preserve the present stalemate situation indefinitely.
My advice – hang on to gold for its ability to provide security in times of turmoil!
P.S. By the way, if the US dollar falls below the .80 level, my guess is that we will gradually start pricing gold in terms of currencies other than the US dollar. For example, even Canadians almost never consider the Canadian dollar price of gold.
At some point, whether sooner or later, Mr. Sinclair will be proven right on his call. We will then start to look at the price of gold more in terms of our own national currencies, and less in terms of the US dollar – as it will no longer function as a single global reserve currency. For example, Canadians are buying gold in pooled accounts on Kitco today at $782.38 Canadian. These numbers will gradually become more familiar to us as the US dollar wanes in global significance.
19 April 2008: For more recent opinion on the fundamental problems with the US dollar, click here or here. ($9000 gold as the US dollar collapses? Click here)_
3 April 2007
I extend my commendation to the leadership at Paramount Energy Trust in their struggle with Jim Flaherty of the Conservative Party of Canada over the regressive and counter-productive taxation measures announced by Mr. Flaherty on Halloween Day, 2006.
Paramount is doing the right thing, and they are offering a reasonable proposal.
Mr. Flaherty – and Mr. Harper – are you listening?
The Conservative Party purports to be the party of business in Canada. Were they to follow Paramount's proposals, they might in fact demonstrate the truth of what they claim.
The Paramount Proposal follows:
Paramount Energy Trust (PET) is continuing to work to try to effect change to the Conservative government's October 31, 2006 announcement with respect to the change in the tax treatment of existing Trusts effective January 2011. Throughout this process, we have been extremely disappointed by actions of the Conservative government and the lack of action by elected Members of Parliament who have not responded to the concerns of thousands of Unitholders who have contacted them because they have been negatively impacted as a result of this issue.
The federal government's Standing Committee on Finance (the "Finance Committee") initiated hearings beginning January 31, 2007 to review the proposed changes to the tax treatment of income trusts, despite efforts of Conservative and NDP members to dispel such a process. It is ironic that while the Conservative election platform strongly promoted the issues of transparency and accountability, the government has provided no concrete evidence to support its claims of a $500 million per year tax leakage. Instead, only heavily censored documents have been provided to the public.
In fact, several expert witnesses provided detailed calculations countering the government's claim, and the government has not rebutted these assertions to date. In the absence of government research into the role the energy trusts, the Coalition of Canadian Energy Trusts ("CCET" or the "Coalition") collected data and prepared a detailed report documenting the unique role that energy trusts play in the Canadian economy. During the Finance Committee hearings many reputable experts testified in support of the energy trust sector. These expert witnesses supported our own findings, concluding as we did that energy trusts do not cause tax leakage, but rather they enhance government revenues.
Energy trusts are an effective vehicle for maximizing production from maturing oil and gas assets and for securing Canada's role as a global energy player, particularly considering the current expansion of the equivalent to the energy trust sector in the United States. It is important to note that witnesses who were opposed to the trust structure in general all acknowledge that the trusts have a role to play in specific sectors, including the oil and gas sector.
Nevertheless, the Finance Committee has put forth researched and reasoned recommendations, which PET believes would allow the government to further its goal of a fair and neutral tax system that promotes growth and competitiveness while also returning much of the tens of billions of dollars of value lost by Canadian investors. The primary recommendation for change to the government's proposals submitted by the Finance Committee is that the federal government should implement one of the two following strategies:
a. Reduce the proposed distribution tax to 10% from 31.5% (instituted immediately, but refundable to all Canadian investors), but continue the moratorium on new trust conversions while remaining open to representations from sectors that feel they may be well suited to the trust structure; or
b. Extend the proposed transition period to 10 years from four years.
PET is encouraged that a forum was established to receive evidence on this matter. The Finance Committee review considered expert testimony on many sides of the issue and the committee found compelling evidence to put forward positive recommendations for change. Now, we hope the government will not treat the process with disdain but rather listen to the findings and modify its position. The Government of Canada has not yet responded to this report. PET encourages the Conservative government, an administration that has been clear on its pursuit of democratic reform in Canada, to adhere to the democratic process and accept the result of open and transparent review, and to adopt the recommendations of the Finance Committee.
The government's proposed taxation plan has been extremely harmful to all Canadians and PET continues to urge all Unitholders to take action and contact their Member of Parliament, the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister directly. Further, PET encourages all Unitholders to join the advocacy group that was formed to be the voice of concerned Canadians and individual investors, the Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors ("CAITI"). Unitholders and concerned Canadians can register online at the CAITI website. Information is available on PET's website as well as the CCET and CAITI websites to assist Unitholders in their efforts to gather facts, formulate opinions and voice concerns.
Although PET continues to believe that energy trusts should be exempt from the proposed legislation for many reasons outlined in the detailed report prepared by the CCET, PET encourages Unitholders to voice support for adoption of the recommendations of the Finance Committee, in the absence of the government accepting further input on this matter. Your voice is important and we encourage Unitholders to ensure it is heard in respect of this significant issue.
25 March 2007
It has been perhaps decades since television programming was primarily about spoken language.
There was a time when what television personalities had to say was the single most important element of television programming.
If you find this incredible, then George Clooney has done you a favour. He has documented the story of Edward R. Murrow’s almost single-handed media battle with Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin in the mid-1950’s.
The story is told in Good Night, and Good Luck.
Let us say that the odds were formidable.
Murrow’s weapon?
His carefully selected use of language to dismantle and ultimately refute Sen. McCarthy's campaign of fear against freedom of thought and association in the United States in the post-war era.
Here is a small sample of Mr. Murrow’s mastery of our language (referring to Sen. McCarthy):
“His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.”
Congratulations, Mr. Clooney. This is a worthy tribute to Mr. Murrow’s pioneering work in television journalism.
25 March 2007 
OK. I have little in common with Marcel Proust.
I am a workaholic. He hardly worked.
I am a fitness buff. He laid in bed, sneezed at every draft, and never went out without a fur coat and scarf.
When Proust spent an evening with James Joyce, he had nothing to say or to enquire of Joyce. I would have plied Joyce with dozens of questions, had I the opportunity to do so.
Why then is Marcel Proust my role-model at the present time?
I suspect it is the differences which intrigue me.
Perhaps I have been working too hard. I would be interested in savouring some of the leisure that was available to Proust.
I have no time for idle chit-chat in my life. Proust was perhaps one of the greatest conversationalists who ever lived.
Everything I do is rushed, hurried and harried. Proust had time to consider every word. He re-read and re-wrote the million and a quarter words constituting his epic work, In Search of Lost Time, on an ongoing basis.
I find it easy to talk about work and task-related matters. Mere conversation is more difficult. What is there to say if there is no defined objective? What do people talk about anyway? This is a difficult matter for me.
Marcel Proust knew what to talk about with people during moments of leisure, and he had no end of such moments available to him.
Proust was adored by his friends, both male and female, who described him as generous and fascinating – and always original (Proust deplored clichés in all contexts).
It is time for me to refocus my life – away from the accomplishment of tasks – and towards the enjoyment of leisure, conversation and relationship.
I recognize that my friends may be skeptical, as I have made such pronouncements before. However, my life circumstances are gradually changing, and it will soon be unnecessary for me to work this hard to pay the bills. Therefore, what better use of my time than to explore the world of leisure, conversation and relationships?
There are also books I desire to read, including those of M. Proust.
I am in search of lost time in my own life.
Marcel Proust is the forebear to whom I now look as a guide.
I go forward in the hope that Proust can change my life. (See Alain de Botton’s more recent work of similar title.)
23 March 2007
Without further comment.
More evidence that the Harper government is not only mean-spirited and socialistic, but also short-sighted.
Canada is for Sale, Part Two.
22 March 2007
Credit to CBC Radio for yet another great story.
It turns out that David Suzuki, Al Gore and Michael Moore are ethically flawed.
I hope that you are not entirely shocked by this news. However, the problems are truly serious, particularly in the case of Michael Moore, whose work, in my view, is essentially undone.
What is the scoop?
Let’s begin with David Suzuki, whose global warming crusade is presently being powered by a “polar bear killer rock star” mega diesel bus that is flooding the atmosphere with hydrocarbons on a continuous basis as Suzuki travels the continent with 5 to 6 companions, spreading the news that humans are causing global warming by flooding the atmosphere with hydrocarbons on a continuous basis. Oops.
How about Mr. Gore? Hmmmm. It turns out that his personal electrical bill for power to operate his (obviously lavish) home in the Tennessee Valley is running 13-20 times the national average, at about $1300.00 per month. And what is Mr. Gore’s core message? That we must stop placing inordinate demands on the earth’s environment, as this causes the atmosphere to be flooded with hydrocarbons, which are causing global warming. It appears that Mr. Gore and Mr. Suzuki are suffering from the same problem.
In Mr. Moore’s case, the problem is more serious. Mr. Moore is simply a liar who invents scenes which are dramatically interesting in order to bolster his message that morally inferior people are engaging in unethical behaviours in order to foist their questionable agendas on a susceptible public.
The problem is, Mr. Moore’s scenes are designed to make his enemies look bad and Mr. Moore look good. But – and this is an important but – the scenes were staged, and entirely false. For example, Mr. Moore, in an early film, depicted Roger Smith of General Motors as being unwilling to talk with him. In fact, Mr. Smith spoke with Mr. Moore twice. But this was inconvenient to the narrative which Mr. Moore wished to weave. So he dispensed with the truth and staged a lie.
Now a group of independent documentary filmmakers are documenting Mr. Moore’s story. Guess what? Mr. Moore is perpetually unavailable to talk with them – unlike his former nemesis, Roger Smith, who in fact was willing to speak with Mr. Moore about General Motors. Mr. Moore, welcome to your own club. You are a morally inferior person engaging in unethical behaviours in order to foist your questionable agenda on a susceptible public.
So, are Mr. Suzuki, Mr. Gore and Mr. Moore hypocrites?
Well, it would certainly be easy for any of their critics to make such a case against them. Their weak rejoinders constitute a somewhat pathetic defense. Mr. Suzuki and Mr. Gore purchase carbon credits to atone for their sins. Mr. Moore just likes to tell a good story – so why not blend art and politics in the making of film documentaries?
However, it is not my present wish to enter the particular – and all too obvious – charge of hypocrisy against any of the above three quite evidently hypocritical gentlemen.
My argument is different than that.
Personally, I am not deeply troubled that Mr. Suzuki burns diesel to spread the news about global warming. His message may be important enough to justify the environmental cost. I am also not that troubled by Mr. Gore’s voracious carbon consumption in the Tennessee Valley. Mr. Gore is a public citizen whose personal life must be larger-than-life in order to do what he does. I am somewhat more disturbed by Mr. Moore’s liberty with the truth. He may or may not stand the test of time as an artist of significance, but we can no longer think of him as a documentary filmmaker based on the current revelations.
What then is my criticism?
My far deeper concern is that all three public crusaders, each in his own way, has wandered somewhat off track due to a fundamental conceptual error. Each is focused primarily on what other people do, and in the case of each, this has made what he does, personally and individually, of lesser importance than what other people do. And this fundamental fact troubles me. Hypocrisy – its presence or absence – or its degree – is in this case a secondary concern.
Mr. Gore and Mr. Suzuki imagine that what they do – to persuade others to change – is of such importance that it might justify their personal carbon-lavish lifestyles. Perhaps they are correct in their thinking. But their own behaviour is obviously somewhat contradicting, and therefore undercutting, their mission.
I would assign Mr. Moore to a different, and deeper, level of hell. He is simply a liar, purporting to be a documentarian – and justifying it how? By the capacity of his films to influence the behaviour of others – while the core message – to be ethical and responsible for your actions – obviously does not apply to him in a personal kind of way.
What is the core problem with focusing our efforts – perhaps even our missionary zeal – on persuading others to change? I submit that it is fundamentally a problem of balance.
The heightened focus on the other is accompanied by a diminished focus on oneself. Why is this a problem? Because it in fact is the problem – at least the one that I have been railing about on these pages.
Personal and political agendas which seek primarily to change others are inherently self-defeating, and ultimately dangerous. This is a case I have presented in previous posts, and I will not reiterate it here.
What then might these gentlemen consider doing differently?
Let me proffer the case of an entirely different way of promoting a change agenda.
For over 30 years, I have been interested in the life work of Helen and Scott Nearing. These (also flawed and sometimes hypocritical) individuals launched on a change crusade that was different in one critical respect from that of Mr. Suzuki, Mr. Gore and Mr. Moore. They determined to change themselves.
How is that different?
In 1932, as I recall, Mr. Nearing had burned several bridges behind him. The author of what was then North America’s leading economics textbook, and a professor at the prestigious Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Nearing alienated his employer by espousing communism – at that time an idealistic crusade in a desperate world struggling to find answers. In my view, communism was the wrong answer, and the communists apparently had the same idea. Almost simultaneously, in both cases due to his independent thinking, Mr. Nearing was ejected from his position with the University of Pennsylvania, and also from his standing as a “card-carrying member” of the communist party. In essence, he had no allies left.
So Helen and Scott, possessing few personal resources at the time, set out to live an honest and simple life in close harmony with the land.
For 20 years, they made their living in the sugar bush of Vermont, producing maple syrup by traditional methods and living in a hand-built stone home with few modern comforts. Then, for somewhat more than an additional 30 years, they moved to the coast of Maine and did the same thing all over again, making their living by growing blueberries.
Did the Nearings have a cause to promote? In fact several.
During their off-time in the winters, they traveled the country in a station wagon loaded with books and pamphlets, speaking to small groups who were interested in hearing what they had to say – about living simply, lightly on the land, healthily and happily. They never became celebrities, though as they travelled from place to place, there were always those willing to hear what they had to say.
In fact, somewhere near my tenth year of life, I happened to meet them as they travelled through my home town of Springfield Missouri, where they spoke at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship which was attended by my parents. I recall that natural food snacks were served at the casual gathering which followed their presentation.
The Nearings had no super diesel bus, nor did they have a lavish, energy-guzzling home to return to. They had a simple lifestyle and a simple message. They were not media superstars, and their work was not widely known.
However, something that the Nearings did do (with a zeal akin to that of Suzuki, Gore and Moore) was carry on with their simple way of life, and they were willing to entertain visitors who were personally motivated to travel first to the mountains of Vermont, and then to the coast of Maine in order to spend time with them and to learn something of how the Nearings lived. In turn, the Nearings put their visitors to work, building stone walls, and digging gardens and ponds. The Nearings also fed their guests and chatted with them. They were willing to put their way of life on display for others.
The Nearings were far from perfect or morally consistent. They maintained some pension income about which they rarely spoke, and they hawked Scott’s books avidly to visitors, generating income to enable them to make ends meet and carry on with their not-entirely-simple simple life. In some years in the 60s, 70s and 80s they received thousands of visitors, sometimes dozens in a day. It was not always so simple.
In fact, I was one of those visitors, having travelled to their home on the Maine coast in the spring of 1981, two year’s prior to Scott’s death. At age 98, Mr. Nearing took me outdoors with him to saw the day’s firewood, and then the two chatted with me for an hour or two, before I went on my way. I found them hospitable and gracious in response to my intrusion.
What is different about Helen and Scott Nearing and the three gentlemen whom I profiled earlier? Several contrasts are possible, one of which is of particular interest to me.
Helen and Scott Nearing set about changing themselves. They were willing – in fact eager – to tell others about it, but this was secondary to their purpose. They made a decision to live a certain way, went about doing it, and were willing to take some pains to tell others about it, both by entertaining thousands of visitors, and by driving thousands of miles each winter. But the message always started and stopped from their home and from their way of life.
The message was about how they lived, and it was always borne out of their day to day lives.
I wish now to close with a single idea.
Much lower profile than Al Gore, David Suzuki or Michael Moore, Helen and Scott Nearing were, in my opinion, infinitely more effective.
Suzuki, Gore and Moore are in the business of promoting a message with the primary intent of motivating others to change. The Nearings were in the business of changing their own way of life, and then sharing their experience with others who responded with interest to what they saw the Nearings doing.
The Nearings changed themselves and got it right. Suzuki, Gore and Moore are focusing on changing others, and getting important pieces wrong in the bargain.
The course of the Nearings is in my view both the wiser and the more effective course.
Would you like to learn more?
Visit the Good Life Centre here.
Learn about Helen and Scott Nearing here.
19 March 2007
Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley is on a roll. He is paying attention to a story that we should all be following. The title of his post, "Unstable, Unbalanced, Uncoordinated, and Unsustainable," is a direct quotation from China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao. This is unusually blunt language for a national leader under any circumstances. Mr. Wen is describing the present state of the Chinese economy, and stating his clear intention to do whatever it takes to slow it down. Read Stephen Roach's comments here.
18 March 2007
In Canada, the Liberals have just proposed to tax Canadian industries to resolve the problem of global warming. In my book, this places them in the same unredeemable category to which the Conservatives assigned themselves when they determined to assure continued government revenues by taxing income trusts.
The layers of hypocrisy behind the notion that industry should foot the bill for the problem of global warming are mind-boggling. As though industry is not providing goods and services consumed – and desired – by the general public!
I am not one of the skeptics that human activity causes global warming. I think the balance of probabilities is that it does. But it is a separate matter entirely to suggest that this is yet another problem that we bill to industry. In Canada, the Liberals have a lengthy history of such boondoggles, and the present situation now offers no political choice, as the Conservatives are punishing industry and investment by taxing the income trusts, and the Liberals propose to tax productive companies to settle the account for our guilt-offering for global warming.
I have studied enough ecology to recognize that human activity impacts the environment, and there is no doubt that human activity is ecologically disruptive. Asia has now joined the wave of rising expectations, and the ecological impact of Asian economic growth will be unimaginable, as well as uncontainable.
I think I may be in the minority in believing that we need smaller numbers of people on our planet living better. Perhaps that would be the ultimate human challenge – to decide how to limit out population – without resorting to the coercive tools of dictators (among whom I include the Liberals and Conservatives of Canada). How would free people choose to limit their population – and do so cooperatively?
I know the Chinese are just now coming out of their period of the one-child policy, yet there are some estimates that the Chinese population could be as high as 1.5 billion souls. Believe me, we will not have 1.5 billion Chinese living a North American lifestyle without far-reaching and damaging global ecological consequences.
I do not believe it will work to tax or otherwise punish people for having children, so there has to be some other scheme to bring about voluntary population reduction.
The Africans are solving the problem by indiscriminately sharing communicable diseases with each other – often under coercion, as well as by engaging in seemingly interminable ethnically and ideologically-based genocidal atrocities. I see this as the most undesirable of all responses to the population problem.
The rising socialist governments of Latin America are doing it by robbing from the rich to pay the poor (most of this being filtered by government agents on its way down). Mr. Mugabe in Zimbabwe has demonstrated definitively that this policy does not work (and Mr. Putin will demonstrate it yet again in the new Russia).
The Arab nations are failing in their efforts to distribute the wealth of the oil boom, and this, along with Western reactionism, is feeding the mood of jihad across the Muslim world.
The desperate solutions of the third world represent in my view the worst of all possible answers to the problem. The danger signals are loud and audible, and the first world is no more secure than the so-called third world.
Yet there is also no leadership in the first world – if we may still call it that – only shallow, ideologically-based “politically correct” reactionism in which one politically-motivated entity shifts responsibility for addressing the problem to another politically defined group – with the hope that by doing so their hands will be washed clean of the implied personal responsibility for responding to this gradually unfolding but all too evident crisis. The first world solutions, from UN bureaucracies to legislated carbon emission levels to Canadian corporate taxation schemes, are every one of them reactive, coercive, punitive and ultimately counter-productive.
Every proposed scheme is patently doomed to fail, and the shortcomings of the proposals are so apparent that any child could see the certainty of their failure before their implementation is begun.
If there is a solution to global warming, it will inevitably have to address the fact of ineluctable human population growth, as well as individual human lifestyle choices. More difficult still, any workable solution will have to affix the problem at the level where responsible action is possible – in the sphere of individual human choice.
The necessary end – human population reduction and voluntary lifestyle change – will certainly be enforced by nature if it is not first advanced through human action.
Therefore, the problem will be solved, whether passively, through the “blowback” of natural systems in response to human disruption of the ecosystem, or, also undesirably, by the failure of human civilization through global warfare or anti-globalist and inwardly-focused nationalism, regionalism or ethnocentrism, or – and this is what I very strongly desire – actively, through voluntary and collaborative human action.
I prefer the latter option, though I do not know how it can easily unfold. That is, I am not sure how it is even possible to get “there” from “here.”
How would individual humans voluntarily determine to limit their reproduction, as well as, moreover, to live a simpler and more local way of life with reduced environmental impact, simply because it would assure human quality of life and our survival as a species? Our daily decisions are, in essence, never based on such considerations.
I have no grand scheme to offer. I do not think the solutions will be either comfortable or easy in the reflexive sense. This is not because the solutions would fail to improve our quality of life. We would certainly all live better – both locally and internationally – were we to decide, on a globally collaborative basis, to limit human population growth and with it, environmental disruption through human activity.
The conundrum is that at the individual level we are entirely capable of exactly the type of selfless action required to resolve our unfolding ecological crisis.
Individual humans are, in my experience, infinitely accommodating and generous under the correct circumstances. The challenge is that we are incapable of acting in a yielding and self-giving way when we organize ourselves politically.
This is another problematic facet of the bane of the political correctness of both the left and the right. Neither side can act – collectively – in a self-giving way. And this creates exactly the conditions that block the type of yielding and accommodating individual human action that is required to answer to the dilemma of international human population growth and ecological disruption.
What we fail to do every time, in my observation, is to ask individual humans to take voluntary personal action to solve the problem. Again, I have no grand solution to offer.
But if there were some process by which our leaders could enter into dialogue with us as citizens about how each of us, individually, could limit our impact upon this fragile earth, I suspect that solutions would begin to emerge. They would vary from person to person and from locality to locality, but I believe that something would arise and begin to grow which would be workable. We simply lack the processes to carry out popular actions of this kind.
I am not suggesting that changes and innovations in government policy would not be required. It certainly makes no sense to reward and subsidize population expansion and wasteful consumption of finite natural resources. But I am suggesting that our government policies, both nationally and internationally, should emerge in response to the requests and initiatives of individual citizens who are in some way enabled to carry their share of the responsibility for global problems.
The answer is not to shift responsibility for the problem of global warming – which in itself is merely one aspect of environmental degradation – from one politically-defined entity to another, but to restore responsibility to the level of individual human action and choice, and from there, to rework our government policies in response to citizen initiatives.
I cannot predict what this will look like because a process of this kind is, by its very nature, unpredictable. It will depend on the generosity and selflessness of 6.6 billion humans around the globe. Obviously we are not there yet. But perhaps it is now time to decide that this is in fact where we want to go.
