Entertainment

Buddhists speak of ‘eight difficult births’ – if you are born in these places, ‘it is difficult to come to practice of the Way’. One is the realm of hungry ghosts, who (rather like giant acquisitive corporations) are defined by their insatiability. Another is ‘in Utturakuru, the continent north of Mt. Sumeru in Buddhist cosmology where everyone is always being entertained’ (Leighton and Okumura 1996, 57).

Entertainment is whatever passes the time instead of living the time.

Sleep again

Sometimes you can get to sleep by pretending to be asleep. But you can never wake up by pretending to be awake.

Bubbles

The current credit bubble – which has hardly begun to burst – inflated because systematic inflation was a way for clever and powerful people to make money instead of providing real goods or services to others.
—Good for what? Service to whom?
Nothing permanent, that's for sure.
Mutual good or service depends on differences.
Even the web of life is a bubble, held together by surface tension.
Yes, it's bubbles all the way down.
I think the Buddhists call this ‘emptiness’ – or ‘interbeing’.
It's the source of inspiration, which Jesus calls the bubbling spring that I have tended (Gospel of Thomas 13.5)

Take a deep breath.

A brief political interlude

Woke up this morning at 6 to a starry sky, glittering with that brilliance which is unique to cold, clear winter nights. City dwellers never get to see this spectacle – another good reason for living in the woods. Maybe that's why politicians, who are nearly all city people, have such a shortsighted view of the world …

Here in Canada, political history was made yesterday when the Governor General agreed to shut down Parliament for 7 weeks at the request of the Prime Minister. (The technical term for ‘shut down’ is prorogue – a verb suddenly in wide use by millions of people who didn't know what it meant a week ago.)

Here's my perspective – broadened by starlight, i hope – on how this situation came about.

All over the world, and most notably in the United States, the political trend is finally turning toward a more sustainable economy. The recent bursting of the credit bubble and stock market crash has reversed the trend toward deregulated, free-swinging, robber-baron capitalism. The Friedmanite Shock Doctrine (as Naomi Klein calls it), which has destroyed so many lives, seems to be on the way out. This is a first step toward waking up to the dangers of the consumptive economy, which widens the gap between rich and poor while degrading ecological systems. But the government of Canada continues to distinguish itself by lagging behind the global trend toward economic accountability and democracy.

PM Stephen Harper – a ‘lite’ version of George Bush, you might say – is still at the service of the wealthy and the big corporations, fighting a rearguard action against socio-political-economic reform. In the recent election, the Liberal platform included a carbon tax, while the NDP campaigned for a cap-and-trade system. Without getting into the question of which is better, it's clear that one or the other is essential to any policy that will be viable over long term. But Harper managed to pull the wool over many voters' eyes with fraudulent claims that the Liberal plan would take money out of their pockets. Both Harper's Conservatives and the NDP made gains in the election, at the expense of the Liberals (the Green Party was also a factor in the election but didn't win a seat in Parliament).

After the election Harper, who didn't get the majority he wanted, talked in a vaguely conciliatory fashion about cooperation with the other parties; but his government's first presentation to Pariament after the Throne Speech, an ‘economic update’ as they called it, made it clear that he is more determined than ever to impose his brand of economic ‘shock treatment’ on Canada. The position taken by the government was so extreme that it united the opposition parties, a feat which would have seemed impossible a few weeks earlier. In a matter of days they put together a Liberal-NDP coalition which could have taken power, with the support of the Bloc Quebecois, after the government was brought down by a non-confidence motion to be presented next Monday. So Harper chose to shut down Parliament rather than face the non-confidence motion, and the Governor General went along with that – something unprecedented in Canadian history.

If a more viable economic policy – one which addresses the real economy, not just corporate profits, and looks beyond the next election – comes out of all of this political maneuvering, then it might be worth closing down the business of government for 7 weeks. But i will be very surprised if the Harper government comes up with anything close to that; they will more likely try to break the coalition, or come up with some scheme for clinging to power. And even if the coalition does take over and manages to stay together – which in itself would be quite a political feat – the addiction to economic ‘growth’ will probably still take top priority, in the form of some ‘stimulus package’ which gives insufficient attention to renewable energy sources. Canadians will have to kick the consumption-and-debt habit for themselves rather than waiting for any government; and many will find this hard to do because they are employed in resource-extraction industries. As for the politicians, too many still think – some of them quite sincerely – that ‘growth’ is the solution, when in fact it's the problem. And they are too wrapped up in power struggles to have any realistic vision of the future.

God grant us the serenity of the stars looking down on all this, and a steadier light to live by than the creed of greed.

Who's here?

Who am i really? An imaginary being, like the square root of -1.
O, and u2? No wonder we get along so well together!

We tend to push our way along, with the illusion that while liberally whispering, smoothly saying, and shouting messages back and forth at will, we are effectively communicating, though we are by and large oblivious to our frequent backfires, misfires, and blanks.

— Floyd Merrell (1997, 244)

Freesup and uncover (a pack o' lips)

Ah but sure it can't be a real bubble without it finally breaks and Finnegan Wakes.

Meltdown and cover-up

It's remarkable how the term meltdown has come to dominate all references to the current financial crisis. It's very apt, in a sense, because it's caused by an ‘overheated’ economy — the financial world having apparently forgotten that in our system, money is made of debt, and becomes ‘hot money’ (cf. ‘hot air’) when the debt which constitutes the currency grows to several times the total value of goods and services produced in the real economy. But it's equally apt to call this inflation of the money supply a ‘bubble’, since it is so insubstantial. When the bubble breaks, though, ordinary terms like ‘pop’ feel too light to suit the seriousness of the situation. ‘Correction’ would be technically correct, since the credit bubble was a kind of delusion which is now being revealed for what it is; but using it would be an admission of having been deluded, if you're a financial speculator, and the term is too bland to catch on in the popular media. ‘Crash’ on the other hand evokes vague memories of the Great Depression, which is maybe too serious for folks to contemplate — though the fallout from this crash could actually turn out to be worse than the 1930s version.

Meltdown works because it sounds both serious and substantial, and the word isn't associated with an earlier financial collapse because it only entered the lexicon with the rise of nuclear technology. (Like fallout, which i found myself using in the previous paragraph … ) I wonder how many of today's children will grow up thinking that the word refers ‘literally’ (i.e. primarily) to a financial collapse, or to this one in particular, and only by extension does it mean the kind of major nuclear accident that happened at Chernobyl. Or maybe we'll be lucky and there won't be any more meltdowns of nuclear reactors.

But there, perhaps, is the real reason why the people most responsible for the ‘meltdown’ like the term so much: it makes the whole thing sound like an accident, something that couldn't be foreseen. Calling it a ‘meltdown’ amounts to a cover-up of the fact that it was inevitable (though the exact timetable of events was unpredictable) and could have been foreseen by anyone who understood the post-Bretton Woods financial system. It was allowed to happen because the system, while it lasted, was very profitable for those in charge of it. The bailout packages are designed mainly to squeeze the last bit of financial gain out of the situation, before handing over the insupportable debt to those already impoverished by it — the American taxpayers, and their counterparts around the world.

Turning point for America?

Well, the two elections of which i wrote in my last post are behind us now. Americans at least have voted for a change. But the task of electing someone other than a white man as president, enormous as it seemed a couple of years ago, pales in comparison to the challenge of reversing the headlong U.S. drive toward self-destruction — which is rapidly taking the rest of planet down with it. The Democrats may be in charge now, but they are taking over a government that is insolvent in the technical sense of the term, just when the resources which could have been used to make the transition to a sustainable society are nearly all used up.

In my last post (about the real economy), i neglected to mention the real effects which the money economy can have on both natural and social ecosystems. That was partly because i don't know much about economics, especially on the national or global scale. Since then i've learned a lot from an online ‘crash course’ which explains the situation in terms accessible even to dummies like me. It's a series of 22 talks by Chris Martenson, illustrated with graphics and totalling a bit over three hours; you can go through it in whatever time-slices suit your schedule. I highly recommend it, unless you already know how the United States came to be scores of trillions of dollars in debt, and how the American people have been systematically hoodwinked into burning their bridges before them.

I don't think any president has ever taken office with the country in such dire straits — we can only hope that Obama and his colleagues have the right balance of hope and realism to make a difference. They might start by telling the American people the truth about the situation they're in (and no, it can't all be blamed on Bush and the Republicans, the roots are much deeper than that). Even that would be an unprecedented revelation.

Elections and the real economy

With federal election campaigns under way in both Canada and the U.S., this is a good season to be noticing rank abuses of language. One example, which has become so familiar as to render us oblivious to it, is the way politicians (and the corporate media) talk about ‘the economy’.

The real economy is the structured flow of materials, energy and information through the systems that sustain and enhance our lives — that is, through our bodies and those extensions of them which constitute our communities. When the real economy is healthy, our communities and most of us are healthy too, by definition. The most basic and essential economic reality is the global ecosystem and its energy source, the sun. That's where all the wealth on this planet comes from — but we have managed to conceal this reality from ourselves by devising artificial means of measuring wealth.

This was inevitable, i suppose, once we learned how money, as a medium of exchange, can help to facilitate the flow of wealth. But it also facilitates the accumulation of wealth by some people at the expense of others. Money makes it possible to extract wealth from the real economy without contributing anything to it (other than toxic waste). In the past century, this process has been enormously accelerated by the invention of artificial ‘persons’ called corporations. These have now grown into gargantuan entities with almost unlimited power to manipulate the real economy while also insulating their owners from the consequences. Now the movement of money consists mostly of currency trading and other manipulations almost wholly divorced from economic reality. The stock market, as an index of ‘the economy’, amounts to a vast delusion.

All of this is just common sense for any adult citizen these days, but you wouldn't know it from the way most politicians talk about ‘the economy’. Coming from them, it's really a code for corporate profits. They try to conceal this by talking about ‘jobs’, as if every ‘job’ were a genuine means of subsistence for some real person or family, rather than a means for the corporate employer to extract wealth from the real economy (as most jobs are nowadays). Political images, advertising and careers are routinely bought and paid for by the same corporations who dominate the delusional ‘economy’.

The current financial shakeup in the U.S. could be an opportunity for people to wake up from this delusion and reassert democratic control of the real economy. But this can only happen if we turn our political attention to the real economy. Fortunately there are nonpartisan resources for doing this; one of them is the Vote Environment website hosted by the David Suzuki Foundation, which includes briefing papers on the vital issues and a blog for discussing them.

The Science Delusion

All is not well in the House of Science. It is increasingly evident that some of the research reported in the popular press, and even some of that published in peer-reviewed journals, has been bought and paid for by corporate interests with the aim of promoting their own products. The result is what we might call vulgar science, a debased imitation aiming to sell something by capitalizing on the authority granted to science in the mass media and the popular mind.

The most obvious example is (or was) the ‘research’ purporting to show that climate change is not occurring, or that human activity has not been a significant cause of it. Until a year or two ago, this was taken as a reasonable, evidence-based position by many people, perhaps a majority. This example is obvious because that position is now discredited in the public mind; another (older) example is the ‘research’ funded by tobacco companies on the effects of smoking. Less obvious—and therefore still effective—are other examples, such as ‘research’ and publicity about genetically modified organisms funded by the likes of Monsanto. The gullible public are still taken in by this kind of vulgar science.

Yes, there's always a minority who are capable of critical thinking, and thus can discriminate between real and bogus science. But there is no hope that the majority will ever reach this level. We can only conclude that the whole scientific enterprise is beyond redemption, and refuse to consider seriously anything presented in the name of science. It's time to expose, once and for all, the Science Delusion.

Now, some will question the wisdom of this proposal. At least, i hope so! The logic of it boils down to this: Debased and vulgar science is a reality, therefore science itself is a vulgar delusion. The strange thing is that when the same logic is applied to religion—the God Delusion, as Richard Dawkins calls it—some otherwise reasonable people are inclined to take it seriously. Some apparently think it worthwhile to debunk the most vulgar uses and expressions of religious belief. Watching such a zealous crusader carry out this kind of secular jihad is a bit embarrassing, like watching people shoot fish in a barrel and call it sport. It's even more embarrassing than listening to the self-appointed prophets and gurus who think they know the Answer to all the world's problems. Those gurus may be deficient in critical thinking, but at least they offer us something worth criticizing.

Besides, sometimes prophets offer advice that holds up well under critical scrutiny and passes every pragmatic test. For instance: Cast out first the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to cast out the mote from your brother's eye.