[This paper isn't due until Monday - I finished it Thursday night. Enjoy!]

Executive Summary: Impediments to Establishing Global Sustainability

Ron Khare

The purpose of this paper is to identify and clearly explain the single largest challenge to the establishment of global sustainability.

Our working definition of “global sustainability” is the perpetuity of natural resources. The definition of “civilization” is ever-increasingly complex urbanization. This is distinctly different from “community,” with which it is often confused.

Summary

The only real factor that prevents global sustainability is civilization, or more specifically, the cities upon which civilization is based. Civilization’s basic structure is exploitative, destructive and unsustainable. The continued rise of civilization is the only true source of the destruction in the natural world. No amount of topical solutions will fix its fundamental need, which is to take, by any means necessary, the resources it cannot provide for itself.

Primary Threat: Civilization Itself

Civilization is marked as the shift of mankind from nature to city. As far as human pursuits are concerned, this may be for the best – higher concentrations of people and access to the benefits from the resulting greater division of labor have led to some amazing advances of arts and sciences.

Cities, by design, have one deadly flaw – they cannot support their dense populations with the resources contained within them. In order to survive, then, resources (like food) must be brought in from their surroundings.

Historically, the resource base for a city was strictly limited to what could be walked in by carts or by beasts of burden. The needs of these cities were fewer and simpler – food, primarily, followed by raw resources to be used by craftsmen.

This may seem innocuous at first, but the system of violence, imperialism and oppression is already firmly established in this model. The city relies entirely upon the ability of farmers to farm significantly more than they themselves need, and then expend the energy necessary to transport those heavy, time-sensitive goods to a city center. What follows is a list of the inherit problems with this system.

Resource Redistribution and Loss

In a sustainable agricultural model, most (if not all) of the nutrients in the soil stay on-site, and are eventually re-incorporated into the soil. The nutrients that cannot be recaptured can be replaced by drawing on established wild areas – leaf litter from forests, for example.

Pushing the lands to their limit for exportation to the city destabilizes the soil. The nutrients leave the farm in the form of produce, only later to be discarded by the city-dwellers in the trash or down a sewer system – never to return to the farm. This one-way flow of nutrients means the farmer becomes increasingly reliant on external fertilization means – the farmer becomes a threat, in turn, to the wild areas as his need to replenish the soil increases.

Soil is just one example of the problem with city consumption – any and all natural resources are subject to this one-way flow. The cities take these natural resources and produce ever-increasingly sophisticated and specialized items for human needs – or may lead to better knowledge, science and art. In any case, the resources themselves are never returned to the land from which they came.

The Rise of Civilization is the Death of Nature

Cities, by their nature, are unsustainable – although it is possible that a small city working with the people who live on the nearby land can last for a very long time. However, a successful city (by the common understanding of success) will become increasingly sophisticated, efficient and, in all likelihood, grow.

The city lifestyle is removed from natural processes, even while understanding of those processes may increase from higher learning and observation. Cities are lit up at night, creating an unnatural daytime effects. Roads and sewers are built to efficiently funnel traffic and sewage to predetermined locations. Soil is covered with stones or concrete. Waterways are straightened, and rainwater is flushed away. Views are obstructed by large buildings and walls. Sounds and smells are all of human origin. Animals are either slaughtered for food, domesticated as pets, or killed as pests. Vegetation, if it is allowed, is contained and cultivated for aesthetic properties. City gardens are typically herb gardens or small supplemental plots. As a city expands and increases in infrastructure and sophistication, it further removes those living therein from the natural world. At the same time, it continues to put increasing demands on the surrounding “wild” resources – and those who gather from or farm them.

Eventually, the needs of the city exceeds the yield limit of the immediate land. While it is possible that the city could take efforts to reduce its population, this is almost never the case. Instead, the answer has always been to reach father out, gathering resources from most distant lands.

It may be that those nearby farmers may have some sort of allegiance to the city based on economic or defensive purposes that could justify the loss of their resources. The farther you travel from the city, however, the harder it is to offer benefits that offset that loss. When the city realizes it must have those resources in order to survive and prosper, all too often the answer has been to take them by force.

There is no logical reason that someone living off of a piece of land should voluntarily create a one-way stream of resources off that land. Either those living on the land must be indoctrinated with an established set of illogical principles that support resource exploitation, or those resources must be taken by force. Either way, those living on the land that has city-valued resources is on the losing end of the deal – true sustainability precludes the perpetual exportation of resources.

Symptoms are Not Causes

Every threat to civilization Lester R. Brown mentions in his book Plan B 4.0 is symptomatic of an underlying planetary disease. The problems with climate change, war, water usage, agriculture, energy generation, transportation, peak oil, over-population, failing states and the like are merely the result of a firmly established “civilized” mindset. Resource extraction has advanced to the stage where many people can no longer live on their land – half of the world’s population have followed the flow of their resources to the cities. (source)

Civilization has had a few thousand years to perfect its justification for existence, downplay or re-word resource extraction, and so far remove people from nature that many people today believe that our only hope for sustainability is in the further development and refinement of civilization itself. One-way resource extraction and the exploitation necessary to continue that flow will abate, people say, if we can advance civilization just a little bit more.

Yet, in all the thousands of years that mankind has been developing cities, there has never been a satisfactory way to resolve the fundamental issue: too many people on too little land to support them. There is no guarantee that, if techno-idealist visions of “eco-cities” are realized (making even the largest mega-cities fully self-sufficient) that humanity will abandon the long-entrenched goals and values of civilization itself.

More importantly, even if every symptom of civilization was solved through the application of miraculous new technology, the disease of civilization will only continue to grow. New resources will be found vital to further development, leading once again to extraction, exploitation and scarcity, resulting in more advanced problems in sustainability that we’ve yet to fathom.

I’ve been asking myself this since I started: What is the Sustainable Living Coalition? What does it do? Why does it exist? Who benefits? How do we fit into the larger picture? So let me ask you….

Is the SLC:

1) An Educational Organization, with the primary purpose of providing workshops and classes for the benefit of the community?

2) A Center where start-up, off-grid businesses can start?

3) An Educational Campus, where interns from around the state and country can live and learn about Sustainability?

4) An Umbrella network, which connects various Sustainable Organizations with the community?

5) An extension of Fairfield’s Go-Green Initiative?

6) An extension of MUM’s Sustainable Living Department?

7) An extension of Eco-Village?

8 ) A Showcase of various permaculture  design and natural building techniques?

9) All the above?

10) None of the above, or some sort of mish-mash?

I’ve been asking myself these questions for a while now. I need to know the definitive answer – the exact, concise purpose of the SLC – before I can move forward on any of the hundreds of projects that need to be done around here. There’s a nearly-unlimited amount of things to do, and because of that, I must know where my time, energy and skills will be put to best use. More to the point, I must know what the SLC truly is, and what I can do to help it achieve those specific goals.

Everything is up in the air with me right now, as I try to sort through the vast amount of information that has come my way. I spent over four hours talking to Steve Cooperman, Brian Robbins and Jim (uh… I forget how to spell his last name), just going over things – incorporating my research into the Board Group emails, what various Board members have told me, plus talking to Briggs, Ashley and several other people.

I was asked to take control of this place and run it like I would if it was mine… and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing, just as soon as I figure out what it is.

Final Paper for Deep Ecology, Part 1: Personal Myth

Ron Khare

This is who I was:

When the imagination of the Great Unmanifest stirred and brought forth the potential for all of Creation, I came into existence. I am, or was, the expression of pure geometry, crossing lines inside a perfect circle. For a moment I simply existed, one design out of the nearly infinite possible designs. Then the Creator breathed life into the world, and I began to vibrate – I became alive.

This design is called, among other things, the “sun cross.” Like the sun, it has a radiant center that spreads energy outwards, intense and unrelenting. From a distance, or when it is small, it gives and nourishes life. Embedded in every design was motion; underlining each of my brother and sister shapes were unexpressed values of energy. Mine looks something like this:

The sun cross is a repeating design – at mathematical intervals the circle and cross reappear. Exponentially.

As I became alive, more and more alive, I expanded and grew. My power grew with me, as I began to crowd out my brother and sister designs. Each jump to a larger form expanded my vision – I started smaller than an atom, and soon grew to the size of an ant, the ocean, the planet, the sun, the solar system. My vision became cosmic as I kept growing, expressing my inherit nature, being who I was. My energy became radiant, effulgent, intense, burning. Stars became grains of sand as I hummed, burning brighter. I began to see the edges of Creation, but I grew on – growth was the only thing I knew. I was the Ever-Expanding Sun Cross, and I would destroy all darkness, and with it, Creation itself.

I was close to the Edge, a boundary I had no concept of, when Shiva appeared. He stood, dark and radiant, a terrible and serene mountain, looming like a giant before me. He stood outside of Creation, like it was hardly worth His notice.

I watched in awe – the Divine, the faint light in nothing. He raised his foot and stepped down upon me, like I was nothing more than a tiny pebble or patch of dirt. I was pressed down, down, down…. When He lifted His foot I was the size of a dinner plate. I had become this:

I was stuck! The mandala structure prevented my energy from re-forming in ever-expanding circles. I had known nothing but expressing that value of growth before, but now I simply existed, static but still alive.

I cried, shaken and horrible, and I cried. I went to Shiva and asked to be free of this horrible cage. Why had He done this? What wrong had I committed? I only expressed the potential inherit in my design – if that was wrong, then the fault lay with the Creator, not His Creation! Why should I suffer, being bound forever, for the sins of God?

Shiva sat in silence, absorbed in the Self, and did not hear my cries.

Confusion clouded my being. I no longer knew who I was, and I became muddled. I fell from that lofty realm and began getting mixed up. Who am I, then, if I cannot be who I was? Am I this? Am I that?

I fell into ignorance, and began to incarnate. I passed from rock to rock, plant to plant in what seemed like a blur of lifetimes, each one yielding just one bit of wisdom: “not this.” I lived a lifetime as every plant, and then moved through tiny bugs, ants, spiders.

Each life lived provided more insight, more wisdom: Not this, I’m not this, I’m not this. I moved through the animal kingdom like a joyous race, shedding the skins of misconception. I was not an alligator, not an ape, nor an elephant. I became human after an instant of millions of years, and progressed through humanity, from a crazy beastly person to ever-growing radiance, exploring the darkness of evil and the brightest light of goodness.

I used the last few lifetimes to pierce the veil, to look back upon myself beyond the superficiality of Creation. I explored the forms of the Circle, the Wheel of Dharma. I studied the mysteries of the Cross. I found, in different ways and manners, a way to get back to what I had lost, my Self beyond form. The mandala had prevented me from expanding, so I used my remaining freedom – I turned within.

This could be my final incarnation, as I’ve found my “true” form again. But unlike the mindless expansion when I was young, I carry with me knowledge, experience and wisdom. I have seen this Glorious Creation from every angle, and from the perspective of every living Being.

My lesson, it seemed, was to understand my place and purpose here. I could expand to absorb everything in Creation, but to what end? If Creation brings joy to the Creator, then I should dance in that purpose – I can add to this life by communicating rather than conquering, by playing instead of dominating. Within my form I hold many more, forms that I can nourish and protect inside my circle-with-lines, which is blessed inside of Shiva’s gift.

A coronation occurred when Shiva’s foot pushed me down. My prison was actually a crown, and like a crown it is a symbol, useful but not necessary. The sun cross can safely live outside those boundaries now – I take my proper place among the decorations at Shiva’s glorious Feet.

Final Paper for Deep Ecology, Part 2: Ecosophy Sun-Cross

Without knowing exactly who I am, how can I be expected to know where my place is in the cosmos? Of course, this begs the question: How can you truly know yourself as an independent entity? Arne Naess’ Deep Ecological argumentⁱ about the importance of intrinsic relations between one thing and another (to the point where, without that relationship, those two things are different) seems woefully lacking in the most basic way – that is, what is the relationship between our individual selves and the Unmanifest – the transcendental field, pure consciousness?

Answering such a question is beyond the scope of this paper, but I must insist here that my form, as the sun cross, can exist outside the boundaries of manifest relationships. Now, it does have a relationship with every manifest thing in Creation: Using Naess’ idea of identity-by-relationship, the sun cross has a nearly infinite number of things it could be. Its relationship with the unmanifest, however, shows its purity, and can be summed up thus: “the form is.”

By being confined and made ignorant, and having passed through all the levels of existence (and all the various way of experiencing), the form has matured (or expanded, if you will) into an trans-universal entity. The active memories of being all things may not be present. However, the “proof is in the pudding,” as it were – the design works within itself, radiating power and goodness in a gentle-yet-powerful manner, in harmony with Creation. The fact that such a powerful design has not destroyed the universe is testament to some form of wisdom and self-awareness.

So what does that mean for me? Where do I fit in the human world, and the “more-than-human world?”ⁱⁱ My place is to simply be – radiate light, destroy darkness, protect and nurture the forms I hold inside me, play with those outside of me. I make no real distinction between the natural world (“Nature”) and any other place – Nature is Creation. Man has influenced every bit of the natural world, to greater or lesser degrees – but even then, the sterile lab and the most remote wilderness mountaintop are still Nature, still part of the Creation. Why should I adopt a new “mode of being” between them? Should I be any less myself, or any more myself, in the human or natural worlds? Nonsense.

Understanding this brings me to the true amoral state. The circle is present, fully, in every direction – up, down, left, right, light, dark, good, evil, life, death. Kant’s “beautiful action”ⁱⁱⁱ is beautiful for the Taoist ideal of “wei wu wei”^iv – that is, flowing with the Tao, effortless action. It does not guarantee any particular action, and that is precisely why it makes a terrible basis for solving large-scale societal problems. It’s not anarchy in the truest sense – every individual is bound to the laws of their own hearts. On just the societal level, however, it is pure anarchy.

If I am only bound by my undeveloped sense of self, then I grow to consume the universe. It took an externally-imposed restriction to further my development of self. This external, objective “morality” turned out to be a great blessing, both for Nature (as I would have destroyed Nature without it) and for myself – the universe would not be enjoyable if I was the only thing in it. A similar parallel can be drawn between the undeveloped individual and those externally-imposed ethics as expressed by cultural norms and laws.

The unexpressed morality embedded in trans-personal ecology fails to address this point: some beings are designed, from the start, to kill, to dominate, to grow, to destroy. It seems to be missed on Naess, who, while speaking in Australia in 1984, said “I’m not much interested in ethics or morals. I’m interested in how we experience the world…. Ethics follows from how we experience the world. If you experience the world so and so, then you don’t kill.”^v (emphasis mine) The assumption that we can achieve anything “better” in society than what we have right now by personal “growth” willingly ignores the vast potential in humanity. That is: “I experience the world as such-and-such, and now I kill.”

This is why I agree with Murray Bookchin’s statement: “Nothing could seem more wholesome…. than this “we are all one” bumper-sticker slogan. What the reader may not notice is that this all-encompassing definition of community erases all the rich and meaningful distinctions that exist not only between animal and plant communities but above all between nonhuman and human communities.”^vi This distinction between things is the very essence of life and Creation – everything is One at the Source, so why should we try to merge things together (in a trans-personal sense)? The only reason Creation started at all was to express and explore the concept of duality, of separateness! Laws don’t drive a wedge between man and nature – they serve to highlight the differences.

I believe that we can do more for Nature by strengthening and celebrating these differences, rather than trying to merge and unify under the umbrella of goodness-through-identification. “…it’s certainly possible to provide equality while also living true to your masculine or feminine core.” writes David Deida in The Way of the Superior Man. “For sexual polarity, you need an energetic polarity, an attractive difference between masculine and feminine.”^vii To truly embrace our humanity, however, we have to embrace that destructive tendency to rule and dominate. We have to embrace our isolation, our terrible burden of being Kings and Queens of Nature, if we are to live up to our duality and celebrate Creation as enlightened beings.

Plotkin’s use of Nature as a metaphor for human development seems unfortunate – while we can try to describe an animal’s development in human terms, it always seems somewhat silly, because those descriptions seem to lack a clear understanding of what it is to be that animal. A young cat is just that, not “going through a human-teenager stage of development.” So to describe the transformation process in late adolescence as a “cocoon” may be a somewhat demeaning attempt to artificially merge humanity to the “natural world.” We can use human terms to describe human things.

Humanity is a part of Nature, as much as anything, and I believe it is a disservice to try to fill a perceived lack of connection by attempting to “merge” on a superficial level. The attempt is noble – this is ecology, after all, and we are trying to save the natural world. But moving the heart and mind to a level of identification with the natural world is throwing away our only gift – our very separate and unique individuality.

It is only once this entity we call “me” is strengthened and refined by contrast to the natural world that we come to a place where we can help preserve it. Nature naturally provides the almost endless possibilities, the Other, the vital “I’m not this, I’m not this.” We must fight to preserve the diversity of the natural world – otherwise the ever-expanding humanity will learn the lesson I learned long ago, as Shiva’s foot comes down upon us.

Part One: The Beginning of Time to the First Settlers

Part Two: The First Settlers to Today

It took me significantly longer than I anticipated to write these things. First, I put considerably more effort into writing them – I don’t think I put that level of research into any academic paper I’ve had. Second, I kept getting sidetracked by interesting stories and information that didn’t make it into (or had almost nothing to do with) the article.

For instance, upon reading how Central Park (the Square) was considered to be the center of the county (although it was off by a mile or so), I stopped reading, found a map, and traced from the original survey to the actual center spot. THEN I read that the county borders expanded at some point, throwing my original spot off… some hours later, by finally going off the current county borders, I found the place. …but so what? I guess I did use it for a picture, but I could have easily used a photo of the Square – learning where the center of the count was for my benefit, because I wanted to know.

It was a good project, on the whole, and I think people have been enjoying the fruits of that effort. I certainly feel enriched, being able to bust out facts and “did-you-knows” about relevant historical events during conversations with friends. Check ‘em out, maybe you’ll enjoy them too!

I know it’s a myth, the idea of pioneers and settlers “discovering” the land, when people have been living here since 10,000 BCE. And, of course, what happened to the Native Americans was freaking tragic.

But the settlers themselves didn’t really think about that. To them, this land was new, and they were effectively the first people on it. The things they did – build a cabin, apply a name to an area, survey an plot of land – was the first time, for them, that anyone did these things. The names they used still apply today, the groundwork and structures they constructed have lasted over 200 years.

In this day and age, however, there is no “unclaimed” land, no unexplored areas (in harsh and deadly areas, perhaps, but certainly not around here). Everything we do in this day and age is within the framework of the settlers – by all accounts, people no different from you or I, other than their position in time.

It seems rather unfair that I, being born in this time, can no longer explore and settle. If I gain land, it’s within the Jefferson County, maybe even part of Fairfield, certainly part of the United States. The forms and structures available to me are the same that are universally enforced across a 3,000-mile stretch of land, throwing me into a group that I neither understand or particularly wish to be associated with. However, any attempt to break free of this structure would result in my immediate land loss and possible death.

I certainly understand the reasons why a society would choose to enforce itself so intently – but without the ability to try something new, innovation and the drive to experiment is lost. We’re running on a 200+ year old document not because it’s the best thing ever, but simply because we’ve been unwilling to find a better one. Some might say “that’s because there IS no better system!” but how could we know this, scientifically, without running experiments? How can we really know American Democracy is the Best Ever, without allowing modern Americans the option to try something else?

Maybe, lurking deep inside of every American, is a better American, a person who adapts quickly and prospers greatly within the framework of a new system of government we haven’t conceived of yet? It’s easy to enforce one uniform system with an iron fist and say “hey, it works!” Of course  it works. No one is debating that. Over time, however, as our understanding and maturity as the human race grows, we have to grow and adapt with it – the easier and quicker we can do this, the better chance we have to survive into the future.

If we do not, if we simply sit and assume we’ve the best system ever, then at some point someone with a better idea will overtake us. Our stagnation is our undoing. Our innovation is our salvation.

To this end, the only apparent way of achieving this goal is to go back to a pioneer mentality. We must look at the land with brand new eyes, as if it is the first time anyone has seen it. We must claim some as our own, through whatever possible means. We must give it new names and bring new agricultural techniques and technology to improve it. We must give it new names, protect it from those who would harm it, those who would take it way, and ourselves. We must think of how best to organize ourselves, bringing every available advantage to the fore.

We must step on the same ground we’ve tread our entire lives for the first time, with all the awe and responsibility that brings.

I was just going to publish the above sentence and be done with it, but I’m still kinda pissed off about it. Who thinks that the timeless Greek epics are not interesting stories, that they “need improving?”

Seriously – reading the Wikipedia article on Perseus is more interesting and engaging than either movie – from there I can read more about the Gorgons, Quoits, and the Aegis.

OK, one does look cooler than the other, but still.

I guess it’s a point – if I had no interest in Greek Mythology, I’d probably be all “dude, that movie was dope!” or “I loved how that mechanical owl saved the day when Perseus was mincing around.”

The real, actual hero of the 1981 film.

I have to say that the 2010 was at least somewhat visually interesting. There were too many times when the cinematography bowed to the 3-D fad, with spinning spears in our faces, ridiculous shot compositions to place emphasis on distance, etc. The 1981 version, by contrast, just looks like a stupid butt.

Stupid Butt-Face Fights Real Hero with More Personality than the Actual People in the Film.

It’s my fault I feel this way, I know… after seeing the new one in theaters, all my friends could ask was “did you see the original?” Thanks to the magic of illegal movie downloading, I saw the original that evening – that’s both Clash of the Titans in one day. Of course I would be tired and bitter the next day.

My real mistake, however, was  watching The Third Man immediately after to try and rid my mind of the bad aftertaste. Its such a good movie it made the others even worse in retrospect, and made me wonder why I ever bother with such crap.

the real Clash of the Titans

… there’s a chance I’ll watch the new one again at some point.