Dear all,
Well, the flurry of the holidays is over--what a treat to have that time with our three guys, two wonderful partners and two irresistible little ones, and see the two-year-old so excited about his one-year-old cousin! Now we're in the midst of cold and snow, slowly picking up the threads of the rest of our lives.
I've been learning lessons about the limitations of independence, and the sweetness of help--more on that next time.
Love,
Pamela
Confidence
One end of the drawstring of Chuck’s gym shorts had disappeared deep into the waistband. He had tried getting it out without success and asked for my help. I have sewn plenty of waistbands in my day, working elastic or a drawstring through them with the help of a big safety pin fastened at one end, so I was a good person to go to. It was a challenge, since I didn’t have access to the end of the drawstring. All I had was the knot, deep inside the waistband. But as I worked at that little knot, I could feel the potential for motion. Slowly, slowly, I worked the knot closer to the opening, till finally it came through—and the gym shorts were back in business.
This is a very small story—in itself hardly worth remembering, much less retelling. But as I came upon those gym shorts one day, taking them out of the washer and out to the line to dry, I thought about the confidence I had brought to fixing them—and confidence is something worth talking about.
Confidence. Sitting in the trolley, I think about how my mother would have approached that word. “Confidence. It comes from the Latin. ‘Con’ means with, and you can hear the root, ‘fides’. Think about the word ‘fidelity’. It means ‘faith’. So confidence means ‘with faith’.”
I approached the gym shorts with faith in the outcome. Chuck’s experience didn’t provide him with the faith that he could fix them himself. But he had faith in me.
I think of that little knot, invisible to the eye, and barely discernable to the touch. I think of how hard it would be for somebody else to know that this was the movable part, how hard to believe that it could be moved so far, how easy it would be to give up. And I can’t help but wonder what would be different if we had confidence that bigger things could be moved, fixed, or changed.
What if we could tap into a deeper well of confidence? It wouldn’t provide any shortcuts. The work wouldn’t be any less challenging. But we would be much more likely to take on those struggles that we care about so passionately, and to persist openheartedly when no change was visible on the horizon.
Where could we find such confidence? In each other for starters. In the experience of others who have tried—and failed but also succeeded—in endeavors that are foreign to us. In those who have found strength in very different circumstances, and those who have a long track record of endurance and hopefulness. In the seasoned elders of our communities. In the wisdom of our cultural and faith traditions—and the faith traditions of others.
Most of all, it means holding an expectation that faith and confidence are there to be found and are worth looking for. It requires confronting our defeats and discouragements and not accepting them as the final reality. It requires building our own confidence by daring to try new things. It requires exploring for the confidence of others, more deeply and farther around the edges of our experience than may be comfortable. But every bit of confidence that I have can be useful to others if I can find a way to share it—and if I reach widely, intentionally and persistently, there will always be more to be found.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Cap and What?
Two big economic strategies being considered to help reduce carbon use are cap-and-trade and cap and dividend. Cap-and-trade involves giving each polluter an allocation of emissions. If it doesn’t use up that allocation in a year, it may sell those emission allowances to another company that polluted more than its allocation. Cap-and-dividend, in contrast, involves imposing a carbon cap, auctioning off all carbon allowances, and returning the revenues generated to all households on a per capita basis.
Cap-and-dividend avoids the pitfalls of carbon trading, which can be as easily manipulated and abused as has been financial securities trading. Carbon dividends would help offset the increase in price of most goods that would come with reducing carbon. If the money were returned to people on an equal basis, higher-income and higher-consumption households would pay out more (in higher energy and product costs) than they would receive back from dividends. But lower-income, lower-consumption households would receive back more than they pay. Also, by offering a cash incentive, a cap and dividend strategy could spur all households to try to reduce their carbon footprints.
For more information:
http://www.ilsr.org/instead-cap-and-trade-cap-and-dividend/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
White ranchers and landowners, threatened with eminent domain and the loss of the right to their own land by the Keystone XL Pipeline, who are beginning to understand what the native tribes experienced during colonization, and to notice a shared pride in the land that's the source of both culture and livelihood. As they work together to oppose the pipeline, an 'us' and 'them' is turning into a 'we'.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/cowboys-and-indians-camp-together-to-build-alliance-against-keystone-xl
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's championing of the city's divestment from fossil fuels.
http://350.org/about/blogs/seattle-mayor-orders-city-divest-fossil-fuels
Native peoples' successes over the past year in reintroducing fading species--including a record return of Chinook salmon to the Columbia River, restoring habitats and challenging big industry. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/31/10-environmental-victories-and-triumphs-2013-152924
Uruguay's recent legalization of marijuana--aimed at breaking the link between the lucrative marijuana trade and organized crime--that has kicked off a trend in a region wearied of the bloodshed, expense and failed results of Washington’s “war on drugs".
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/131222/latin-america-uruguay-argentina-marijuana-legalization
More resources
Posts on other people's blogs: http://www.classism.org/children-mass-culture
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
#126 Climate and Faith
Dear all,
I wrote this over a month ago, but am just now getting around to posting: A strong north wind yesterday brought down all the remaining leaves on our street. It seems fitting then that the essay and poem this month are both about trees. On a very different front, I'm trying to get some momentum going on a campaign to get my college to divest from fossil fuels--a small step beyond consumer choices that anyone can take on climate change (see the first thing that makes me hopeful, below). And, as I prepare for Thanksgiving, here's a mind-bender that's stuck with me: What if we woke up tomorrow to find only the things that we were thankful for today?
Love,
Pamela
Climate and fate
I don’t remember exactly when I first internalized the message that the Sahara was steadily, inexorably pushing south, transforming some unimaginable amount of arable land every year into barren waste. It was appalling. While I didn’t doubt that our species had played a role, the forces of nature that had been unleashed seemed now to be beyond the power of any human action to contain, much less reverse.
By the time I heard about draught in the Sahel, with all its unspeakably tragic human consequences, I was so numb that I could barely take it in. After all, who has ever won against a desert? Who could fault me for accepting defeat? So when I saw a reference recently to reforestation efforts in Niger, the image that came to mind was brave little tree seedlings, valiantly trying to survive in a vast expanse of hot sun and bone dry sand—doomed to a short, harsh life and cruel death. But I was compelled to investigate, and this is what I learned.
When the French colonized what is now Niger, they brought their own experience with agriculture, an unshakable confidence that they knew better, and an intention to use their superior understanding to make a profit. Big fields are best for export-oriented monocultures, and crops need sun (in France) so trees outside of designated woodlots should be cut down. These practices, along with the starving of local initiative that comes with strong centralized ownership and control, set the stage for desertification. A period of unusually high rainfall after World War II postponed the impact, but draught came with a vengeance in the 1970’s. With agricultural exports drying up—literally—and uranium mining hard hit by the end of the nuclear power plant boom, the economy tanked. All that was left for the newly independent nation was to use the tragedy of draught and the specter of desertification—both all too real—to petition for international aid.
Some of that aid went to failed tree-planting efforts; other projects had impact only as long as new money kept flowing in. But one man in one little NGO discovered that, in many places, the root systems of the trees that had been cut down were still in place; farmers just kept chopping off the brushy growth as it sprouted up in the middle of the fields. If it were pruned to leave the strongest shoot, however, that shoot would quickly grow into a tree. The potential benefits were enormous: shade in a sun-drenched land, water retention, a means of breaking the destructive sand-filled winds, carbon fixing, and generation of scarce organic matter and firewood. But there were obstacles. Generations of western farming practices left people reluctant to have trees in their fields, and centralized—often corrupt—control of resources left farmers without property rights to any tree they might grow.
In the mid to late 1980’s two things happened to tip the situation toward change. A new draught made desperate farmers willing to try anything, and the death of the country’s president resulted in a power vacuum that essentially knocked out all central authority for years. This created the space for local communities to develop their own protocols for land and tree management, and the speed with which new trees grew, with all the associated positive feedback loops, allowed these communities to increase crop yields and be significantly buffered from the effects of draught.
Such positive results were noticed and replicated in neighboring areas, and by the time a centralized government was functioning again, the evidence was sufficiently compelling that they were induced not only to support replication, but to legislate protection of local land management practices.
By now Niger—said to be the poorest country in the world—has successfully reforested 5 million hectares (almost 12.5 million acres) of land with some 200 million trees, securing the livelihoods of 4.5 million people. An aerial view of the border between Niger and Nigeria makes clear the difference that this greening has made.
Of course there is no guarantee of a happy ending. Population pressure can still drive people of the Sahel into poverty and, if rainfall decreases over time, the land’s ability to produce food will be compromised. The lesson is not that climate change is a myth, but that our numb submission to what seems like fate is part of the problem. The truth is that there is untapped resilience in both nature and the human spirit; the potential for rapid change in a positive direction cannot be discounted; and the freeing up and resourcing of local initiative, whether by accident or by design, may be at the heart of the solution.
Inferno
An oasis of serenity no more,
great clouds of swirling dust
roar of machines and men in gas masks
have conjured up a war zone in the park.
The enemy is leaves.
Blowing every blade of grass
blasting under every bush
their goal is total mastery
and barren earth
(which will be covered up next spring
with pricey mulch).
In another universe of possibility
peace and leaf removal coexist:
long-handled rakes and
muscles turned to useful work
bring leaves from grass
to mound around each bush
providing insulation from the winter cold
then breaking down to fertilize the soil.
There’s a modest circularity in this
a hopeful sign of things both past and yet to come
acknowledgment that nature and a few strong arms—
no fossil fuels, machines or noise
no pricey mulch—
can do the job with quiet elegance.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
It all turns on affection
Excerpts from a talk by Wendell Berry
Economy in its original—and, I think, its proper—sense refers to household management. By extension, it refers to the husbanding of all the goods by which we live. An authentic economy, if we had one, would define and make, on the terms of thrift and affection, our connections to nature and to one another. Our present industrial system also makes those connections, but by pillage and indifference. Most economists think of this arrangement as ”the economy.” …They never ask, in their professional oblivion, why we are willing to do permanent ecological and cultural damage “to strengthen the economy?”
…By now our immense destructiveness has made clear that the actual value of some things exceeds human ability to calculate or measure, and therefore must be considered absolute. For the destruction of these things there is never, under any circumstances, any justification. Their absolute value is recognized by the mortal need of those who do not have them, and by affection. Land, to people who do not have it and who are thus without the means of life, is absolutely valuable. Ecological health, in a land dying of abuse, is not worth “something”; it is worth everything.
…I would insist that the economic arts are just as honorably and authentically refinable as the fine arts. And so I am nominating economy for an equal standing among the arts and humanities. I mean, not economics, but economy, the making of the human household upon the earth: the arts of adapting kindly the many human households to the earth’s many ecosystems and human neighborhoods. This is the economy that the most public and influential economists never talk about, the economy that is the primary vocation and responsibility of every one of us.
www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
In a focused effort to combat global warming, seven colleges and 22 cities in the US have committed to divest from fossil fuels in the last year--and dozens more campaigns are underway across the nation.
http://gofossilfree.org/commitments/
the name Rolling Jubilee, a group of Occupy Wall Street activists has managed to buy almost $15 million of Americans' personal debt helping them pay off their outstanding credit in one year, using $400,000 to purchase anonymous debt cheaply from banks and then "abolish" it, freeing individuals from their bills.
http://www.alternet.org/occupy-wall-street/occupy-wall-street-activists-buy-15-million-americans-personal-debt
Healing and Rebuilding our Communities workshops in Rwanda and Burundi that include participants pairing across ethnic lines for a "trust walk", including this testimonial: I remember the trust walk when the person who killed my family was my partner. During the genocide, I witnessed this man kill my two brothers with a machete and my younger sister with a spear. I was shaking because my partner was a known killer and very strong. I thought he might throw me down, but he also had fear and he took me gently, kindly. I asked him, “Will you lead me in peace?” After the trust walk with him, I felt it was not good to stay in my grief and had no fear against him. http://aglifpt.org
An agricultural cooperative in South Korea with 2,000 growers and 380,000 consumer members, and sales growing annually by 20%, creating an alternative economy that supports local organic farmers, produces healthy food and protects the environment in the process.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/177159/south-korea-ground-zero-food-sovereignty-and-community-resilience
I wrote this over a month ago, but am just now getting around to posting: A strong north wind yesterday brought down all the remaining leaves on our street. It seems fitting then that the essay and poem this month are both about trees. On a very different front, I'm trying to get some momentum going on a campaign to get my college to divest from fossil fuels--a small step beyond consumer choices that anyone can take on climate change (see the first thing that makes me hopeful, below). And, as I prepare for Thanksgiving, here's a mind-bender that's stuck with me: What if we woke up tomorrow to find only the things that we were thankful for today?
Love,
Pamela
Climate and fate
I don’t remember exactly when I first internalized the message that the Sahara was steadily, inexorably pushing south, transforming some unimaginable amount of arable land every year into barren waste. It was appalling. While I didn’t doubt that our species had played a role, the forces of nature that had been unleashed seemed now to be beyond the power of any human action to contain, much less reverse.
By the time I heard about draught in the Sahel, with all its unspeakably tragic human consequences, I was so numb that I could barely take it in. After all, who has ever won against a desert? Who could fault me for accepting defeat? So when I saw a reference recently to reforestation efforts in Niger, the image that came to mind was brave little tree seedlings, valiantly trying to survive in a vast expanse of hot sun and bone dry sand—doomed to a short, harsh life and cruel death. But I was compelled to investigate, and this is what I learned.
When the French colonized what is now Niger, they brought their own experience with agriculture, an unshakable confidence that they knew better, and an intention to use their superior understanding to make a profit. Big fields are best for export-oriented monocultures, and crops need sun (in France) so trees outside of designated woodlots should be cut down. These practices, along with the starving of local initiative that comes with strong centralized ownership and control, set the stage for desertification. A period of unusually high rainfall after World War II postponed the impact, but draught came with a vengeance in the 1970’s. With agricultural exports drying up—literally—and uranium mining hard hit by the end of the nuclear power plant boom, the economy tanked. All that was left for the newly independent nation was to use the tragedy of draught and the specter of desertification—both all too real—to petition for international aid.
Some of that aid went to failed tree-planting efforts; other projects had impact only as long as new money kept flowing in. But one man in one little NGO discovered that, in many places, the root systems of the trees that had been cut down were still in place; farmers just kept chopping off the brushy growth as it sprouted up in the middle of the fields. If it were pruned to leave the strongest shoot, however, that shoot would quickly grow into a tree. The potential benefits were enormous: shade in a sun-drenched land, water retention, a means of breaking the destructive sand-filled winds, carbon fixing, and generation of scarce organic matter and firewood. But there were obstacles. Generations of western farming practices left people reluctant to have trees in their fields, and centralized—often corrupt—control of resources left farmers without property rights to any tree they might grow.
In the mid to late 1980’s two things happened to tip the situation toward change. A new draught made desperate farmers willing to try anything, and the death of the country’s president resulted in a power vacuum that essentially knocked out all central authority for years. This created the space for local communities to develop their own protocols for land and tree management, and the speed with which new trees grew, with all the associated positive feedback loops, allowed these communities to increase crop yields and be significantly buffered from the effects of draught.
Such positive results were noticed and replicated in neighboring areas, and by the time a centralized government was functioning again, the evidence was sufficiently compelling that they were induced not only to support replication, but to legislate protection of local land management practices.
By now Niger—said to be the poorest country in the world—has successfully reforested 5 million hectares (almost 12.5 million acres) of land with some 200 million trees, securing the livelihoods of 4.5 million people. An aerial view of the border between Niger and Nigeria makes clear the difference that this greening has made.
Of course there is no guarantee of a happy ending. Population pressure can still drive people of the Sahel into poverty and, if rainfall decreases over time, the land’s ability to produce food will be compromised. The lesson is not that climate change is a myth, but that our numb submission to what seems like fate is part of the problem. The truth is that there is untapped resilience in both nature and the human spirit; the potential for rapid change in a positive direction cannot be discounted; and the freeing up and resourcing of local initiative, whether by accident or by design, may be at the heart of the solution.
Inferno
An oasis of serenity no more,
great clouds of swirling dust
roar of machines and men in gas masks
have conjured up a war zone in the park.
The enemy is leaves.
Blowing every blade of grass
blasting under every bush
their goal is total mastery
and barren earth
(which will be covered up next spring
with pricey mulch).
In another universe of possibility
peace and leaf removal coexist:
long-handled rakes and
muscles turned to useful work
bring leaves from grass
to mound around each bush
providing insulation from the winter cold
then breaking down to fertilize the soil.
There’s a modest circularity in this
a hopeful sign of things both past and yet to come
acknowledgment that nature and a few strong arms—
no fossil fuels, machines or noise
no pricey mulch—
can do the job with quiet elegance.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
It all turns on affection
Excerpts from a talk by Wendell Berry
Economy in its original—and, I think, its proper—sense refers to household management. By extension, it refers to the husbanding of all the goods by which we live. An authentic economy, if we had one, would define and make, on the terms of thrift and affection, our connections to nature and to one another. Our present industrial system also makes those connections, but by pillage and indifference. Most economists think of this arrangement as ”the economy.” …They never ask, in their professional oblivion, why we are willing to do permanent ecological and cultural damage “to strengthen the economy?”
…By now our immense destructiveness has made clear that the actual value of some things exceeds human ability to calculate or measure, and therefore must be considered absolute. For the destruction of these things there is never, under any circumstances, any justification. Their absolute value is recognized by the mortal need of those who do not have them, and by affection. Land, to people who do not have it and who are thus without the means of life, is absolutely valuable. Ecological health, in a land dying of abuse, is not worth “something”; it is worth everything.
…I would insist that the economic arts are just as honorably and authentically refinable as the fine arts. And so I am nominating economy for an equal standing among the arts and humanities. I mean, not economics, but economy, the making of the human household upon the earth: the arts of adapting kindly the many human households to the earth’s many ecosystems and human neighborhoods. This is the economy that the most public and influential economists never talk about, the economy that is the primary vocation and responsibility of every one of us.
www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
In a focused effort to combat global warming, seven colleges and 22 cities in the US have committed to divest from fossil fuels in the last year--and dozens more campaigns are underway across the nation.
http://gofossilfree.org/commitments/
the name Rolling Jubilee, a group of Occupy Wall Street activists has managed to buy almost $15 million of Americans' personal debt helping them pay off their outstanding credit in one year, using $400,000 to purchase anonymous debt cheaply from banks and then "abolish" it, freeing individuals from their bills.
http://www.alternet.org/occupy-wall-street/occupy-wall-street-activists-buy-15-million-americans-personal-debt
Healing and Rebuilding our Communities workshops in Rwanda and Burundi that include participants pairing across ethnic lines for a "trust walk", including this testimonial: I remember the trust walk when the person who killed my family was my partner. During the genocide, I witnessed this man kill my two brothers with a machete and my younger sister with a spear. I was shaking because my partner was a known killer and very strong. I thought he might throw me down, but he also had fear and he took me gently, kindly. I asked him, “Will you lead me in peace?” After the trust walk with him, I felt it was not good to stay in my grief and had no fear against him. http://aglifpt.org
An agricultural cooperative in South Korea with 2,000 growers and 380,000 consumer members, and sales growing annually by 20%, creating an alternative economy that supports local organic farmers, produces healthy food and protects the environment in the process.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/177159/south-korea-ground-zero-food-sovereignty-and-community-resilience
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
#125 A perpetrator's tale
Dear all,
There are so many ways to think of this time when October turns to November--the completion of the harvest season, a time when the veil grows thin between the worlds of the living and the dead, a pause before the winter holidays and then the winter. While that image of the veil thinning is a compelling one, I'm just plain looking forward to harvesting my sweet potatoes--there's something magical about them growing there unseen.
I send love.
Pamela
A perpetrator’s tale
I’ve accumulated a few facts about Indonesia over the years: a Dutch colonial history; a chain of islands that includes Bali; a nasty civil war in Aceh around the time of the big tsunami; a forest ecosystem increasingly threatened by palm oil plantations. Among them is the fact that there was a big purge of Communists in the mid-1960’s, in which the US played a role.
Now, I’ve found out about a guy who put in eight years working on a documentary about that atrocity, and I’ve learned a lot more. There’s a familiar back-story: an inclusive politician had been elected president; the US wanted a more reliable cold-war ally; and an army general was happy to oblige. Not only did he orchestrate a coup, but he went to arrange the killing of anybody who could be remotely associated with communists, unionists or democratic reformers—a million or more people in all.
The filmmaker first wanted to focus on the survivors, but the military didn’t allow it, so someone suggested that he film the perpetrators. Well, here was my first surprise. Those mass murderers were still around, and able to be identified? Not only that, it turns out, but they are all in positions of power, still boasting about their death-squad prowess, and providing a very effective deterrent to anybody who might like to challenge the regime’s policies.
In a second surprise, he found one perpetrator who was eager to be a star in his movie. Considered the ringleader of the death squads in his area, this man was still extolled and feared for the role he had played. He was happy to talk about his part in the genocide, and ready to cheerfully reenact the most gruesome acts of killing. The filmmaker decided to follow this man’s lead, going along with increasingly elaborate and surreal reenactments. As time went on, it became clearer and clearer that some inner demons were driving this man. When he brought in another death squad buddy, who pointed out that this documentary would make them—not the communists—look like the bad guys, he still couldn’t stop.
In the filmmaker’s own words, “He is trying, actually, somehow, to deal with his own pain. He’s trying to deal with his nightmares. He finds a forum in the film to express a pain that the regime has no time for. The regime wants him to say it was heroic, it was great, so that he can live with himself, all the other killers can live with themselves, and the survivors are kept suppressed and silenced. And suddenly, in the making of the film, he has a chance to deal with the ghosts that haunt him.”
This is the third and biggest surprise: that someone was able to show so compellingly, almost without his own volition, the pain of being a perpetrator. Many of us know, on some level, that it’s hard on people to hurt others, but our compassion is bound up so thoroughly with the victims that we are reluctant to give it much thought. Here is the unvarnished, unavoidable truth about that pain. Some perpetrators may never be able to show it, perhaps they can’t even know it consciously, but it’s there to be found.
The official story in Indonesia, still taught in the schools, is that the genocide was a necessary and heroic chapter in the nation’s history. But this documentary, which has successfully evaded the film censors (a final surprise), has found audiences throughout the country. A wall of silence of almost fifty years has been breached. And that just may be enough to change the story—all because of a tenacious filmmaker and a perpetrator who grabbed at the chance to address his pain.
For more information: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/19/the_act_of_killing_new_film
Sighting
As a species
the mail carrier
is a loner
marking his own territory
making his rounds
in solitary self-sufficiency.
Yet here was a pair
male and female
each marked with that distinctive
uniform and bag
moving side by side
down the street
up steps together
and back down
as if inseparable.
A remarkable sighting
An invitation
to turn what we know
on its head--
imagine the impossible.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
100 years of federal income tax
In the fall of 1913, Congress passed a new revenue act that featured a modest income tax: 7% on income higher than $4,000, or slightly more than $94,000 today. By the 1940s that rate had soared: income above $200,000 faced a 94% percent tax rate, and that top rate hovered around 90% into the early 1960s.
According to critics of progressive income taxation, these high-tax years should have been a time of economic calamity. But commerce did not cease; the wealthy did not flee; the entrepreneurial spirit did not evaporate. On the contrary, the United States thrived throughout the mid-20th century, becoming the first industrial nation ever where the majority did not live in poverty. The nation’s steeply graduated tax rates raised the revenue that bankrolled new programs and services that opened doors into middle-class life, teaching us that our country works best when we tax progressively — and significantly so.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/10/02/irs-at-100-how-income-taxation-built-the-middle-class/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
Alternatives to Violence (AVP) workshops in a 120,000 person refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, through which Somalis, Congolese, Ethiopians, Sudanese and others find transformation. “We are all refugees. We came to Kenya from our countries because of many problems. Creating new problems here will hurt us more. We need each other and our tolerance. Cooperation from this workshop means we can make this camp a haven as we pray for peace in our mother countries” Timas Ibrahim Hamdan from Sudan
Chinese orphanages being transformed into community centers, with a visionary group of child advocates modeling loving, responsive, stimulating, and developmentally appropriate programming for young children, and the ripples beginning to spread.
A Washington Heights, NYC elementary school where more than 80% of parents opted to have their four-six year olds sit out new standardized multiple-choice tests, causing the school to cancel the tests altogether. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/uptown/parents-opt-city-test-article-1.1492127#ixzz2ie6XF7wE
Farmers throughout the US and Canada who are bucking the mono-culture/chemical intensive trends, and discovering that more respect for the health of the soil yields better results all around. For just one example: http://grist.org/food/one-weird-trick-to-fix-farms-forever/
Posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.classism.org/children-mass-culture
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org
There are so many ways to think of this time when October turns to November--the completion of the harvest season, a time when the veil grows thin between the worlds of the living and the dead, a pause before the winter holidays and then the winter. While that image of the veil thinning is a compelling one, I'm just plain looking forward to harvesting my sweet potatoes--there's something magical about them growing there unseen.
I send love.
Pamela
A perpetrator’s tale
I’ve accumulated a few facts about Indonesia over the years: a Dutch colonial history; a chain of islands that includes Bali; a nasty civil war in Aceh around the time of the big tsunami; a forest ecosystem increasingly threatened by palm oil plantations. Among them is the fact that there was a big purge of Communists in the mid-1960’s, in which the US played a role.
Now, I’ve found out about a guy who put in eight years working on a documentary about that atrocity, and I’ve learned a lot more. There’s a familiar back-story: an inclusive politician had been elected president; the US wanted a more reliable cold-war ally; and an army general was happy to oblige. Not only did he orchestrate a coup, but he went to arrange the killing of anybody who could be remotely associated with communists, unionists or democratic reformers—a million or more people in all.
The filmmaker first wanted to focus on the survivors, but the military didn’t allow it, so someone suggested that he film the perpetrators. Well, here was my first surprise. Those mass murderers were still around, and able to be identified? Not only that, it turns out, but they are all in positions of power, still boasting about their death-squad prowess, and providing a very effective deterrent to anybody who might like to challenge the regime’s policies.
In a second surprise, he found one perpetrator who was eager to be a star in his movie. Considered the ringleader of the death squads in his area, this man was still extolled and feared for the role he had played. He was happy to talk about his part in the genocide, and ready to cheerfully reenact the most gruesome acts of killing. The filmmaker decided to follow this man’s lead, going along with increasingly elaborate and surreal reenactments. As time went on, it became clearer and clearer that some inner demons were driving this man. When he brought in another death squad buddy, who pointed out that this documentary would make them—not the communists—look like the bad guys, he still couldn’t stop.
In the filmmaker’s own words, “He is trying, actually, somehow, to deal with his own pain. He’s trying to deal with his nightmares. He finds a forum in the film to express a pain that the regime has no time for. The regime wants him to say it was heroic, it was great, so that he can live with himself, all the other killers can live with themselves, and the survivors are kept suppressed and silenced. And suddenly, in the making of the film, he has a chance to deal with the ghosts that haunt him.”
This is the third and biggest surprise: that someone was able to show so compellingly, almost without his own volition, the pain of being a perpetrator. Many of us know, on some level, that it’s hard on people to hurt others, but our compassion is bound up so thoroughly with the victims that we are reluctant to give it much thought. Here is the unvarnished, unavoidable truth about that pain. Some perpetrators may never be able to show it, perhaps they can’t even know it consciously, but it’s there to be found.
The official story in Indonesia, still taught in the schools, is that the genocide was a necessary and heroic chapter in the nation’s history. But this documentary, which has successfully evaded the film censors (a final surprise), has found audiences throughout the country. A wall of silence of almost fifty years has been breached. And that just may be enough to change the story—all because of a tenacious filmmaker and a perpetrator who grabbed at the chance to address his pain.
For more information: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/19/the_act_of_killing_new_film
Sighting
As a species
the mail carrier
is a loner
marking his own territory
making his rounds
in solitary self-sufficiency.
Yet here was a pair
male and female
each marked with that distinctive
uniform and bag
moving side by side
down the street
up steps together
and back down
as if inseparable.
A remarkable sighting
An invitation
to turn what we know
on its head--
imagine the impossible.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
100 years of federal income tax
In the fall of 1913, Congress passed a new revenue act that featured a modest income tax: 7% on income higher than $4,000, or slightly more than $94,000 today. By the 1940s that rate had soared: income above $200,000 faced a 94% percent tax rate, and that top rate hovered around 90% into the early 1960s.
According to critics of progressive income taxation, these high-tax years should have been a time of economic calamity. But commerce did not cease; the wealthy did not flee; the entrepreneurial spirit did not evaporate. On the contrary, the United States thrived throughout the mid-20th century, becoming the first industrial nation ever where the majority did not live in poverty. The nation’s steeply graduated tax rates raised the revenue that bankrolled new programs and services that opened doors into middle-class life, teaching us that our country works best when we tax progressively — and significantly so.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/10/02/irs-at-100-how-income-taxation-built-the-middle-class/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
Alternatives to Violence (AVP) workshops in a 120,000 person refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, through which Somalis, Congolese, Ethiopians, Sudanese and others find transformation. “We are all refugees. We came to Kenya from our countries because of many problems. Creating new problems here will hurt us more. We need each other and our tolerance. Cooperation from this workshop means we can make this camp a haven as we pray for peace in our mother countries” Timas Ibrahim Hamdan from Sudan
Chinese orphanages being transformed into community centers, with a visionary group of child advocates modeling loving, responsive, stimulating, and developmentally appropriate programming for young children, and the ripples beginning to spread.
A Washington Heights, NYC elementary school where more than 80% of parents opted to have their four-six year olds sit out new standardized multiple-choice tests, causing the school to cancel the tests altogether. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/uptown/parents-opt-city-test-article-1.1492127#ixzz2ie6XF7wE
Farmers throughout the US and Canada who are bucking the mono-culture/chemical intensive trends, and discovering that more respect for the health of the soil yields better results all around. For just one example: http://grist.org/food/one-weird-trick-to-fix-farms-forever/
Posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.classism.org/children-mass-culture
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org
Thursday, October 17, 2013
#124 Comfort and Judgment
Dear all,
We're in the midst of a string on stunningly beautiful fall days, our family is flourishing, and my biggest complaint is that there are more things I would love to do than can begin to fit into a day--and there is the constant balancing act: fully appreciating beauty and well-being while not being seduced into blindness and complacency. I'm trying to get back to the discipline of noticing the times in my days when what I am doing "rings true", with a goal of being more attentive and choosing ever more awarely.
I send my love.
Pamela
Comfort and judgment
Chuck and I had a difference of opinion about how to get a crowd of folks up to his brothers’ farm. We would fit in two cars, but it would be more comfortable and convenient to take three. Since it was his birthday celebration, I didn’t press the point. Three cars were, indeed, very convenient, and the impact on the planet of those extra hours of car driving was barely worth noticing in the larger scheme of things.
The part of the conversation that stuck in my mind, however, was our interchange about comfort and judgment. When I said that I wasn’t a big fan of arguments based on comfort, he said that was easily seen as judgmental, particularly by those for whom comfort has been scarce. I felt painfully torn. One of the dearest wishes of my heart is to leave behind forever the spirit of judgmentalism that pervaded my childhood. Yet I also can never forget a little card that my mother had posted above her desk: “Convenience pollutes.”
All the disposables—the plastic, paper and foam of fast food and picnics, diapers, paper towels, juice boxes—made to be used once and thrown away; those quick errands where driving can save so much time; the second car that avoids having to take the public transportation schedule into account; the pre-processed, pre-cut, pre-packaged food that is so much quicker to prepare; the washer-dryer in every house and the lawn-mower in every garage; all take a toll on the earth’s resources and capacity to absorb waste. There’s no doubt: convenience pollutes.
I’m thinking now that comfort also pollutes. Year-round climate control, big luxurious cars, that long hot shower in the morning, the freedom from having to be jostled by crowds, first class airplane seats, golf carts—the list could go on. Loving comfort has its own traps in terms of what we will trade away for it. Feeling entitled to comfort elevates the problem to a whole new level: who would I fight to hang on to what I have come to believe is rightfully mine?
I do believe that comfort has a place in this world, as when someone is sick, or dying, or grieving a great loss, or when someone has exerted enormously. Coming from the root, “to strengthen greatly”, it is an appropriate response to particular circumstances, a mechanism to soften adversity or make a time of challenge more bearable. But I baulk at the idea that most of us in the industrialized West live in such a state of chronic challenge that we require round-the-clock comfort.
Also, if we have it all the time, if we come to expect it as our due and make sure it’s always present, then its utility as a means of softening adversity is lost. It has become the new normal, and something more comforting, more comfortable must be found to take its place. I’m troubled by the implications that this dynamic of escalation has—on our psyches, on our connection to others with less access to comfort-providing resources, and on the health of our planet. I much prefer a bracing level of discomfort, so we can better appreciate and truly luxuriate in our comfort when it comes.
But what about judgment? Theoretically I could just learn to respect everyone’s different decisions around comfort. Yet I find myself unwilling to concede, unwilling to completely surrender this territory to personal choice. I don’t see a lot of clear thinking here, with all our wounds and insecurities making us so vulnerable to the lures of comfort. Add in a multi-million dollar comfort-selling industry, and it’s hard to make truly free choices in this area.
My mind jumps to the deep desire my young children had for the junky plastic toys that surrounded them—on television, in the stores, in the hands of their friends—and how mad I got at their upset when those toys broke. It was a struggle to be on their side at those moments, but I finally found a way to be true to both of us. “I’m so sorry,” I would say. “The people who make those toys just think about money, and don’t care about what it feels like for children when they break.”
Maybe I can learn from that hard-fought victory to be on the side of people who seem to be choosing short-term comfort over their long-term psychic well-being and the overall health of our biosphere. “I hate it that this issue of comfort is such a loaded one. What a confusing mix of different personal preferences, standards, levels of adversity (past and present), histories around discomfort, takes on what’s due to us and to the future. Add in a system that is squeezing out sources of real comfort, like time with loved ones, and focused on convincing us we need and deserve any product or service they can make a buck off of—and the chances of having a relaxed and mutually enlightening conversation on this topic recede toward zero. But I want to try. I want us to be on each other’s side as we puzzle this thing out together.”
O and P
His farm is in Jamaica
not far outside of Kingston
in the low hills, not the famous higher ones.
Going as often as he can
always on the lookout for cheap flights
he grows so many kinds of fruit that I lose track
--and coffee too.
All this I learn
one morning as I’m heading home
from gardening
basket of produce on my arm.
He’d honked his horn and stopped
leaned over from the driver’s seat
said he knew me from my gardening.
He tells his name, and asks me mine
treats me as a peer who knows a common craft.
And so we talk
Omar and Pamela
one farmer to another,
and I walk home enriched by
a new friend.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Saving labor?
With labor as an expensive part of the production process, the focus of technological innovation over the last half century on saving labor has seemed a straightforward and logical one. Why pay a pricey person if you could get a machine, created from cheap materials by cheap energy, to do the job as well or even better? It’s hard to get our minds around the reality that natural resources and fossil fuels, along with the ability of the earth to absorb our wastes, are now the limiting factors. We are facing a future where productive processes that use LESS resources and fuel, and MORE human labor, will be better positioned to address the dual issues of scarce resources and high unemployment. Our concept of efficiency, which is at the heart of how we evaluate our economic choices, now needs to be completely rethought.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
A European Union directive that by 2019 member countries collect and recycle 65% of the weight of all electronics put on sale, or 85% of all e-waste, with retailers required to take e-waste from consumers.
A new non-profit supermarket that has just opened in the distressed food-desert city of Chester PA, said to be the first such supermarket in the country.
An initiative in Paraguay where poor rural mothers learn to be more responsive to young children's needs, and in the process are empowered to become actors in their communities.
Pope Francis, again, and again.
New: posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.classism.org/children-mass-culture
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting
writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with
others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org.
We're in the midst of a string on stunningly beautiful fall days, our family is flourishing, and my biggest complaint is that there are more things I would love to do than can begin to fit into a day--and there is the constant balancing act: fully appreciating beauty and well-being while not being seduced into blindness and complacency. I'm trying to get back to the discipline of noticing the times in my days when what I am doing "rings true", with a goal of being more attentive and choosing ever more awarely.
I send my love.
Pamela
Comfort and judgment
Chuck and I had a difference of opinion about how to get a crowd of folks up to his brothers’ farm. We would fit in two cars, but it would be more comfortable and convenient to take three. Since it was his birthday celebration, I didn’t press the point. Three cars were, indeed, very convenient, and the impact on the planet of those extra hours of car driving was barely worth noticing in the larger scheme of things.
The part of the conversation that stuck in my mind, however, was our interchange about comfort and judgment. When I said that I wasn’t a big fan of arguments based on comfort, he said that was easily seen as judgmental, particularly by those for whom comfort has been scarce. I felt painfully torn. One of the dearest wishes of my heart is to leave behind forever the spirit of judgmentalism that pervaded my childhood. Yet I also can never forget a little card that my mother had posted above her desk: “Convenience pollutes.”
All the disposables—the plastic, paper and foam of fast food and picnics, diapers, paper towels, juice boxes—made to be used once and thrown away; those quick errands where driving can save so much time; the second car that avoids having to take the public transportation schedule into account; the pre-processed, pre-cut, pre-packaged food that is so much quicker to prepare; the washer-dryer in every house and the lawn-mower in every garage; all take a toll on the earth’s resources and capacity to absorb waste. There’s no doubt: convenience pollutes.
I’m thinking now that comfort also pollutes. Year-round climate control, big luxurious cars, that long hot shower in the morning, the freedom from having to be jostled by crowds, first class airplane seats, golf carts—the list could go on. Loving comfort has its own traps in terms of what we will trade away for it. Feeling entitled to comfort elevates the problem to a whole new level: who would I fight to hang on to what I have come to believe is rightfully mine?
I do believe that comfort has a place in this world, as when someone is sick, or dying, or grieving a great loss, or when someone has exerted enormously. Coming from the root, “to strengthen greatly”, it is an appropriate response to particular circumstances, a mechanism to soften adversity or make a time of challenge more bearable. But I baulk at the idea that most of us in the industrialized West live in such a state of chronic challenge that we require round-the-clock comfort.
Also, if we have it all the time, if we come to expect it as our due and make sure it’s always present, then its utility as a means of softening adversity is lost. It has become the new normal, and something more comforting, more comfortable must be found to take its place. I’m troubled by the implications that this dynamic of escalation has—on our psyches, on our connection to others with less access to comfort-providing resources, and on the health of our planet. I much prefer a bracing level of discomfort, so we can better appreciate and truly luxuriate in our comfort when it comes.
But what about judgment? Theoretically I could just learn to respect everyone’s different decisions around comfort. Yet I find myself unwilling to concede, unwilling to completely surrender this territory to personal choice. I don’t see a lot of clear thinking here, with all our wounds and insecurities making us so vulnerable to the lures of comfort. Add in a multi-million dollar comfort-selling industry, and it’s hard to make truly free choices in this area.
My mind jumps to the deep desire my young children had for the junky plastic toys that surrounded them—on television, in the stores, in the hands of their friends—and how mad I got at their upset when those toys broke. It was a struggle to be on their side at those moments, but I finally found a way to be true to both of us. “I’m so sorry,” I would say. “The people who make those toys just think about money, and don’t care about what it feels like for children when they break.”
Maybe I can learn from that hard-fought victory to be on the side of people who seem to be choosing short-term comfort over their long-term psychic well-being and the overall health of our biosphere. “I hate it that this issue of comfort is such a loaded one. What a confusing mix of different personal preferences, standards, levels of adversity (past and present), histories around discomfort, takes on what’s due to us and to the future. Add in a system that is squeezing out sources of real comfort, like time with loved ones, and focused on convincing us we need and deserve any product or service they can make a buck off of—and the chances of having a relaxed and mutually enlightening conversation on this topic recede toward zero. But I want to try. I want us to be on each other’s side as we puzzle this thing out together.”
O and P
His farm is in Jamaica
not far outside of Kingston
in the low hills, not the famous higher ones.
Going as often as he can
always on the lookout for cheap flights
he grows so many kinds of fruit that I lose track
--and coffee too.
All this I learn
one morning as I’m heading home
from gardening
basket of produce on my arm.
He’d honked his horn and stopped
leaned over from the driver’s seat
said he knew me from my gardening.
He tells his name, and asks me mine
treats me as a peer who knows a common craft.
And so we talk
Omar and Pamela
one farmer to another,
and I walk home enriched by
a new friend.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Saving labor?
With labor as an expensive part of the production process, the focus of technological innovation over the last half century on saving labor has seemed a straightforward and logical one. Why pay a pricey person if you could get a machine, created from cheap materials by cheap energy, to do the job as well or even better? It’s hard to get our minds around the reality that natural resources and fossil fuels, along with the ability of the earth to absorb our wastes, are now the limiting factors. We are facing a future where productive processes that use LESS resources and fuel, and MORE human labor, will be better positioned to address the dual issues of scarce resources and high unemployment. Our concept of efficiency, which is at the heart of how we evaluate our economic choices, now needs to be completely rethought.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
A European Union directive that by 2019 member countries collect and recycle 65% of the weight of all electronics put on sale, or 85% of all e-waste, with retailers required to take e-waste from consumers.
A new non-profit supermarket that has just opened in the distressed food-desert city of Chester PA, said to be the first such supermarket in the country.
An initiative in Paraguay where poor rural mothers learn to be more responsive to young children's needs, and in the process are empowered to become actors in their communities.
Pope Francis, again, and again.
New: posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.classism.org/children-mass-culture
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting
writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with
others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Malpractice and the Heart (7/13)
Dear all,
A summer schedule that's a little slower reminds me of the importance of having enough space in our lives--at least sometimes--that things we didn't even know were priorities can rise to the top. And I am thankful this week for a stretch of stunningly comfortable summer weather, for garden produce, for good friends, and for people who act on their caring for this world.
Love,
Pamela
The effects of malpractice on the heart
There is something that moves me about jury duty, something that is very right. All of these hundreds of people gather together, not eager but willing to make real, in the flesh, our right to a trial by our peers.
Our panel came in without a clue, but gradually it became clear that this was a medical malpractice case. A man had had a horrible accident, been treated by trauma surgeons, then contracted a flesh-eating parasite in the hospital. The surgeon and her team were being sued. There we were together in the courtroom: two lawyers for the plaintiff, four for the doctors, this man who had been through hell, one of the doctors being sued, and forty ordinary citizens called to see that justice was done.
Yet I didn’t see anything we could do to ensure a just outcome. A terrible, an unspeakably tragic, thing had happened. Clearly this man needed and deserved all the medical help available to treat his injuries and infection, to manage his pain and disability, to restore him to the greatest possible degree of health, and to offer him some assurance of being able to meet life’s on-going needs. Yet we would be asked to award for much more than that. Would his life go better if he had hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for loss of life’s pleasures? Would the payment of millions from the doctors’ malpractice insurance make the hospital a safer place?
We cannot fix the past. Just as a life that has been taken cannot be brought back, a body that has been damaged cannot always be restored. And we won’t be able to go on and live fully in the present and future until we have completed the process of grieving our loss. Somehow the awarding of millions of dollars for distress, embarrassment and loss of pleasure confuses and blurs that reality. It seduces us into believing that there is an external solution, an easy substitute for coming to terms with our loss and our grief.
While nothing that is done in the present can change what has already happened, or take the place of grieving, the rawness of past hurt can be assuaged by an apology. This provides an acknowledgment hat someone sees how they hurt me, and joins with me in wishing that it hadn’t happened. When a young man who had been methodically stealing valuables from our house years ago was finally caught, I was relieved to be out of that nightmare, but his trial and conviction just seemed sad for everybody. Real closure came several years later when he sent us a note with a heart-felt apology.
I don’t know the trauma doctors who pieced this man’s broken body back together only to see it ravaged by an infection from their own hospital. Perhaps they were negligent; more likely it was just one of those horrible things that happen. It is possible that they didn’t care; I can only imagine that they were devastated. Yet the nature of adversarial law forbade an apology—and this poor old man who had been through so much had to choose between big bucks and forgiveness.
And the jury—those forty people who gave up a day’s work to be available for this case, and the fourteen who were finally chosen to give a week more of their lives to provide that precious trial by peers—were given none of the tools they needed. It was as if everyone’s heart had been taken away—the old man and his wife, the doctors, all those lawyers, the judge, the jurors. We were being asked to pick our way through medical facts, blame, law and dollars, with the only sure winners being lawyers and insurance companies. There was no way to deal with the real issues—our basic human needs to grieve, to apologize, to forgive, and to try together to make things right.
Morning scent
Up early
to steal a few moments
in the garden
Pinch back tomato vines
pick up fallen apples
Breathe in the beauty
and the cool
before a busy day.
Much later
on the interstate
and far away
a momentary movement
hand to face
brings a scent
that’s unmistakable
And I am back again
amid the growing promise
of tomatoes.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Measuring well-being
The standard measurement of our societal health is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the sum of the value of all economic activity. In a way this makes sense: the more value is being produced, the better off people should be. But there are two significant flaws. First, some economic activity, like building prisons, or cleaning oil spills, does not indicate that things are going better for people. Second, things that are outside the realm of economic activity, but critical to our well-being--health, a sense of security, loving and being loved, making a meaningful contribution, having access to beauty and nature, being at peace--have no place in the measure. (For a very short video, go to http://www.neweconomyworkinggroup.org/video/well-being-and-new-economy)
But change is in the air. Several countries, from Bhutan to France, are experimenting with new measures. A high-level UN meeting on “Happiness and Wellbeing: Defining a New Economic Paradigm,” brought together 600 participants this spring to follow up on a resolution passed at the UN General Assembly by unanimous vote, calling for implementation of a dramatically different, more “holistic” understanding of economic development. It specifically rejected the GDP-based approach and called for the creation and use of an alternative set of indicators that would more accurately measure human well-being.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
“The Seed Underground”, among the many quiet revolutionaries who are saving our food heritage.
Finland's educational system, which is consistently at the very top of global educational rankings, with teachers who are highly trained and very well-paid, students who are given little homework and not tested until their teens, and no private schools. http://www.edimprovement.org/2013/04/what-makes-finlands-education-system-so-successful/
The synthesis of three decades of research that develops a comprehensive evolutionary theory of human cooperation (and not competition!).
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/how-cooperatives-are-driving-the-new-economy/survival-of-the-nicest-the-other-theory-of-evolution
The Two Row Wampum canoe trip, now going on, to honor the 400th anniversary of the first treaty between Native Americans and Europeans, with Haudenosaunee and other Native People paddling side-by-side with allies and supporters down the Hudson River in two equal, but separate rows. http://honorthetworow.org/learn-more/history/
New: posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.classism.org/children-mass-culture
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting
writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with
others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org.
A summer schedule that's a little slower reminds me of the importance of having enough space in our lives--at least sometimes--that things we didn't even know were priorities can rise to the top. And I am thankful this week for a stretch of stunningly comfortable summer weather, for garden produce, for good friends, and for people who act on their caring for this world.
Love,
Pamela
The effects of malpractice on the heart
There is something that moves me about jury duty, something that is very right. All of these hundreds of people gather together, not eager but willing to make real, in the flesh, our right to a trial by our peers.
Our panel came in without a clue, but gradually it became clear that this was a medical malpractice case. A man had had a horrible accident, been treated by trauma surgeons, then contracted a flesh-eating parasite in the hospital. The surgeon and her team were being sued. There we were together in the courtroom: two lawyers for the plaintiff, four for the doctors, this man who had been through hell, one of the doctors being sued, and forty ordinary citizens called to see that justice was done.
Yet I didn’t see anything we could do to ensure a just outcome. A terrible, an unspeakably tragic, thing had happened. Clearly this man needed and deserved all the medical help available to treat his injuries and infection, to manage his pain and disability, to restore him to the greatest possible degree of health, and to offer him some assurance of being able to meet life’s on-going needs. Yet we would be asked to award for much more than that. Would his life go better if he had hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for loss of life’s pleasures? Would the payment of millions from the doctors’ malpractice insurance make the hospital a safer place?
We cannot fix the past. Just as a life that has been taken cannot be brought back, a body that has been damaged cannot always be restored. And we won’t be able to go on and live fully in the present and future until we have completed the process of grieving our loss. Somehow the awarding of millions of dollars for distress, embarrassment and loss of pleasure confuses and blurs that reality. It seduces us into believing that there is an external solution, an easy substitute for coming to terms with our loss and our grief.
While nothing that is done in the present can change what has already happened, or take the place of grieving, the rawness of past hurt can be assuaged by an apology. This provides an acknowledgment hat someone sees how they hurt me, and joins with me in wishing that it hadn’t happened. When a young man who had been methodically stealing valuables from our house years ago was finally caught, I was relieved to be out of that nightmare, but his trial and conviction just seemed sad for everybody. Real closure came several years later when he sent us a note with a heart-felt apology.
I don’t know the trauma doctors who pieced this man’s broken body back together only to see it ravaged by an infection from their own hospital. Perhaps they were negligent; more likely it was just one of those horrible things that happen. It is possible that they didn’t care; I can only imagine that they were devastated. Yet the nature of adversarial law forbade an apology—and this poor old man who had been through so much had to choose between big bucks and forgiveness.
And the jury—those forty people who gave up a day’s work to be available for this case, and the fourteen who were finally chosen to give a week more of their lives to provide that precious trial by peers—were given none of the tools they needed. It was as if everyone’s heart had been taken away—the old man and his wife, the doctors, all those lawyers, the judge, the jurors. We were being asked to pick our way through medical facts, blame, law and dollars, with the only sure winners being lawyers and insurance companies. There was no way to deal with the real issues—our basic human needs to grieve, to apologize, to forgive, and to try together to make things right.
Morning scent
Up early
to steal a few moments
in the garden
Pinch back tomato vines
pick up fallen apples
Breathe in the beauty
and the cool
before a busy day.
Much later
on the interstate
and far away
a momentary movement
hand to face
brings a scent
that’s unmistakable
And I am back again
amid the growing promise
of tomatoes.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Measuring well-being
The standard measurement of our societal health is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the sum of the value of all economic activity. In a way this makes sense: the more value is being produced, the better off people should be. But there are two significant flaws. First, some economic activity, like building prisons, or cleaning oil spills, does not indicate that things are going better for people. Second, things that are outside the realm of economic activity, but critical to our well-being--health, a sense of security, loving and being loved, making a meaningful contribution, having access to beauty and nature, being at peace--have no place in the measure. (For a very short video, go to http://www.neweconomyworkinggroup.org/video/well-being-and-new-economy)
But change is in the air. Several countries, from Bhutan to France, are experimenting with new measures. A high-level UN meeting on “Happiness and Wellbeing: Defining a New Economic Paradigm,” brought together 600 participants this spring to follow up on a resolution passed at the UN General Assembly by unanimous vote, calling for implementation of a dramatically different, more “holistic” understanding of economic development. It specifically rejected the GDP-based approach and called for the creation and use of an alternative set of indicators that would more accurately measure human well-being.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
“The Seed Underground”, among the many quiet revolutionaries who are saving our food heritage.
Finland's educational system, which is consistently at the very top of global educational rankings, with teachers who are highly trained and very well-paid, students who are given little homework and not tested until their teens, and no private schools. http://www.edimprovement.org/2013/04/what-makes-finlands-education-system-so-successful/
The synthesis of three decades of research that develops a comprehensive evolutionary theory of human cooperation (and not competition!).
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/how-cooperatives-are-driving-the-new-economy/survival-of-the-nicest-the-other-theory-of-evolution
The Two Row Wampum canoe trip, now going on, to honor the 400th anniversary of the first treaty between Native Americans and Europeans, with Haudenosaunee and other Native People paddling side-by-side with allies and supporters down the Hudson River in two equal, but separate rows. http://honorthetworow.org/learn-more/history/
New: posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.classism.org/children-mass-culture
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting
writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with
others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org.
Scapegoating and blame (6/13)
Dear all,
Well, we had a lovely wedding. There is something about a community gathering around, with each person offering their strand to weave a strong container to hold a couple that I find deeply hopeful and reassuring.
And our region is caught in a weather cycle that brings hot, humid days, and a strong late afternoon thunderstorm, day in and day out, with no end in sight. It feels like we're in the tropics. My short-term response is to enjoy the storms and get up early enough to garden in the beauty and cool of early morning. The longer-term response is less clear, but I know it will require working together in hope and faith, something I would wish for us in any case.
Love,
Pamela
Scapegoating and blame
We started with the topic of scapegoating, as it is seen in the treatment of Jews. I have some familiarity with this dynamic: for centuries in the West, Jews—an easily identifiable minority with a strong cultural bent toward learning—have been used by those in power as their up-front agents, especially as money lenders and bankers. When the economic or political situation sours, their vulnerable minority status allows them to be named and targeted as the problem, providing an outlet for the pent-up anger and frustration of the populace, while shielding those with real power.
We have created an “other” to whom blame can be assigned; punishment has been meted out; the problem has been contained; and life for the rest of us can go on. While the Holocaust was perhaps the most calculated and certainly the most horrendous example of this type of scapegoating, the examples are legion, and the impulse to blame the Jews has burrowed deep, if often unconscious, into our common psyche.
I hadn’t done much more systematic thinking about this dynamic, but a friend who was a child in Germany during World War II raised the issue of Germans as scapegoats. People who take a stand against the barbaric treatment of Jews under Hitler can easily fall into seeing the Germans as the problem. How convenient! If we can assign the blame for anti-semitism to the Germans, we are off the hook. We have created an “other”, the problem has been addressed, and life for the rest of us, now rendered blameless, can go on. In a very similar fashion, an image of Germans as the bad guys has burrowed deep.
It becomes obvious that the same dynamic is at work around racism. Those of us who live in the North in the United States can be easily seduced into a belief that true racism resides in the South. Having created an “other” and assigned the blame, we are off the hook about racism, and can bask happily in our more evolved goodness.
Clearly scapegoating has many uses. It channels dissatisfaction away from the real issues, thus supporting the status quo and obstructing change. It provides a safe target for venting our feelings. It helps us avoid painful truths by freeing us from the responsibility of considering our part in the situation. We can use it to jack up our sense of our own goodness.
As we saw all the overlap between scapegoating and blame, the conversation got more personal. Could we survive without blame? How often do we assign blame in a situation of disagreement or conflict, and see that as an adequate response? What if we actually had to do something? Are we willing to confront our part in the situation, face our complicity, and decide to be different? Could we find a way to do that without blaming ourselves?
The challenge is full of opportunities. If blame is not an option, then situations just have to be faced for what they are, which allows for ways forward to be found. If no one is to blame—neither me nor, most commonly, my partner—then no one can be consigned to the status of “other” and the task is simply to find a path out of this less-than-ideal situation. Even when I feel that the other person is totally in the wrong, if I can vent without targeting and take the lead in finding a blame-free way forward, I’m the one who gets to grow.
Then the conversation broadened back out—way out. “Maybe”, said one young women, “this is why I haven’t found a way to be involved in social change. It seems like it’s all about finding bad guys and pointing fingers.” Ultimately, it won’t help to blame the bad guys either—not even the ones who are wielding the real power. They need to take responsibility and change, but scapegoating and blame are ultimately the tools of the insecure. An infinitely more powerful approach mirrors the way a loving parent sets a limit with a small child. “I’m not going to let you do that, sweetie.” There’s no blame—just compassion for the person hidden behind that bad behavior, and great confidence that things can be different.
I think we all left with our minds atingle. I certainly went away newly excited about the possibilities of a world without blame.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
What about a maximum wage?
The moral imperative for a minimum wage is clear. But what about a maximum wage? It’s not hard to make the case that something needs to be done. Back in 1965, US CEOs in major companies earned 24 times more than the average (not minimum wage) worker. A typical American CEO now makes 380 times more than the average worker.
Around the world, change is in the wind. An Egyptian ruling that a maximum wage in the public and government sectors be no more than 35 times the minimum wage has been in force since January 2012. France’s president last summer promised to cap the salary of company leaders at 20 times that of their lowest-paid worker. In February, new code amendments of the German Corporate Governance Commission, which all German companies follow, were released, including a mandate that all publicly-traded firms place a cap on executive compensation. While the specific executive pay maximum is left up to each corporation, the Commission made it clear that current pay levels have soared too high. Perhaps the time has come in the US to talk about a maximum wage as well.
http://toomuchonline.org/the-scruffy-and-stuffy-agree-cap-ceo-pay/
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/should-there-be-a-maximum-wage?utm_source=ytw20130628&utm_medium=email
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The practice in Finland of prorating traffic fines according to the net wealth of the driver.
The growing movement in Philadelphia of community gardens, urban food initiatives, and vacant lot protection that brings agriculture, justice, health and nutrition, community organizing and labor together in exciting new ways.
The consistency with which polling reveals voters who demonstrate more generosity, compassion and open-mindedness than the politicians who represent them.
The rooftop greenhouse project, Gotham Greens, which has partnered with Whole Foods to build the nation's first commercial-scale rooftop greenhouse for growing year-round local produce atop a food store in Brooklyn beginning this fall.
New: posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.afsc.org/friends/claiming-all-our-children#comment-891442132
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting
writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with
others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org.
Well, we had a lovely wedding. There is something about a community gathering around, with each person offering their strand to weave a strong container to hold a couple that I find deeply hopeful and reassuring.
And our region is caught in a weather cycle that brings hot, humid days, and a strong late afternoon thunderstorm, day in and day out, with no end in sight. It feels like we're in the tropics. My short-term response is to enjoy the storms and get up early enough to garden in the beauty and cool of early morning. The longer-term response is less clear, but I know it will require working together in hope and faith, something I would wish for us in any case.
Love,
Pamela
Scapegoating and blame
We started with the topic of scapegoating, as it is seen in the treatment of Jews. I have some familiarity with this dynamic: for centuries in the West, Jews—an easily identifiable minority with a strong cultural bent toward learning—have been used by those in power as their up-front agents, especially as money lenders and bankers. When the economic or political situation sours, their vulnerable minority status allows them to be named and targeted as the problem, providing an outlet for the pent-up anger and frustration of the populace, while shielding those with real power.
We have created an “other” to whom blame can be assigned; punishment has been meted out; the problem has been contained; and life for the rest of us can go on. While the Holocaust was perhaps the most calculated and certainly the most horrendous example of this type of scapegoating, the examples are legion, and the impulse to blame the Jews has burrowed deep, if often unconscious, into our common psyche.
I hadn’t done much more systematic thinking about this dynamic, but a friend who was a child in Germany during World War II raised the issue of Germans as scapegoats. People who take a stand against the barbaric treatment of Jews under Hitler can easily fall into seeing the Germans as the problem. How convenient! If we can assign the blame for anti-semitism to the Germans, we are off the hook. We have created an “other”, the problem has been addressed, and life for the rest of us, now rendered blameless, can go on. In a very similar fashion, an image of Germans as the bad guys has burrowed deep.
It becomes obvious that the same dynamic is at work around racism. Those of us who live in the North in the United States can be easily seduced into a belief that true racism resides in the South. Having created an “other” and assigned the blame, we are off the hook about racism, and can bask happily in our more evolved goodness.
Clearly scapegoating has many uses. It channels dissatisfaction away from the real issues, thus supporting the status quo and obstructing change. It provides a safe target for venting our feelings. It helps us avoid painful truths by freeing us from the responsibility of considering our part in the situation. We can use it to jack up our sense of our own goodness.
As we saw all the overlap between scapegoating and blame, the conversation got more personal. Could we survive without blame? How often do we assign blame in a situation of disagreement or conflict, and see that as an adequate response? What if we actually had to do something? Are we willing to confront our part in the situation, face our complicity, and decide to be different? Could we find a way to do that without blaming ourselves?
The challenge is full of opportunities. If blame is not an option, then situations just have to be faced for what they are, which allows for ways forward to be found. If no one is to blame—neither me nor, most commonly, my partner—then no one can be consigned to the status of “other” and the task is simply to find a path out of this less-than-ideal situation. Even when I feel that the other person is totally in the wrong, if I can vent without targeting and take the lead in finding a blame-free way forward, I’m the one who gets to grow.
Then the conversation broadened back out—way out. “Maybe”, said one young women, “this is why I haven’t found a way to be involved in social change. It seems like it’s all about finding bad guys and pointing fingers.” Ultimately, it won’t help to blame the bad guys either—not even the ones who are wielding the real power. They need to take responsibility and change, but scapegoating and blame are ultimately the tools of the insecure. An infinitely more powerful approach mirrors the way a loving parent sets a limit with a small child. “I’m not going to let you do that, sweetie.” There’s no blame—just compassion for the person hidden behind that bad behavior, and great confidence that things can be different.
I think we all left with our minds atingle. I certainly went away newly excited about the possibilities of a world without blame.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
What about a maximum wage?
The moral imperative for a minimum wage is clear. But what about a maximum wage? It’s not hard to make the case that something needs to be done. Back in 1965, US CEOs in major companies earned 24 times more than the average (not minimum wage) worker. A typical American CEO now makes 380 times more than the average worker.
Around the world, change is in the wind. An Egyptian ruling that a maximum wage in the public and government sectors be no more than 35 times the minimum wage has been in force since January 2012. France’s president last summer promised to cap the salary of company leaders at 20 times that of their lowest-paid worker. In February, new code amendments of the German Corporate Governance Commission, which all German companies follow, were released, including a mandate that all publicly-traded firms place a cap on executive compensation. While the specific executive pay maximum is left up to each corporation, the Commission made it clear that current pay levels have soared too high. Perhaps the time has come in the US to talk about a maximum wage as well.
http://toomuchonline.org/the-scruffy-and-stuffy-agree-cap-ceo-pay/
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/should-there-be-a-maximum-wage?utm_source=ytw20130628&utm_medium=email
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The practice in Finland of prorating traffic fines according to the net wealth of the driver.
The growing movement in Philadelphia of community gardens, urban food initiatives, and vacant lot protection that brings agriculture, justice, health and nutrition, community organizing and labor together in exciting new ways.
The consistency with which polling reveals voters who demonstrate more generosity, compassion and open-mindedness than the politicians who represent them.
The rooftop greenhouse project, Gotham Greens, which has partnered with Whole Foods to build the nation's first commercial-scale rooftop greenhouse for growing year-round local produce atop a food store in Brooklyn beginning this fall.
New: posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.afsc.org/friends/claiming-all-our-children#comment-891442132
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting
writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with
others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org.
Extractive or generative? (5/13)
Dear all,
As we settle into an intensive family time around our older son Tim's upcoming wedding, I'm newly grateful for the deep connections I have with that core of loved ones, and all the circles of caring that spread out around it. A wish for myself is to give those connections their true value, and not be confused by a culture that values work and production so much higher.
I've loved putting this column together--I hope some part of it releases new energy in you.
Love,
Pamela
Extractive or generative?
When people talk about our economic system, the traditional language is about free markets, free enterprise, free trade, the invisible hand, the profit motive, supply and demand. Critics use different—and often stronger—language: runaway capitalism, profiteering, unbridled greed, systemic inequality, corporate control. But until recently, I’d never heard our economy characterized as “extractive”, and that term has gotten me thinking.
There’s something about it that rings very true. We pride ourselves on the amount of minerals and fossil fuels that we can extract from beneath the earths’ crust. We extract maximum value from the topsoil and the forests and the oceans. Employers typically have a goal of extracting ever more work from their employees. Financial institutions prosper when they extract maximum profit from every transaction—ATM withdrawals, credit card charges, mortgage rates, currency exchange interactions, and things most of us don’t even understand, like credit swaps, hedges and derivatives. The goal in each case is maximum extraction for maximum profit. The losers, clearly, are ordinary people, the earth, and other living things.
The alternative could be characterized as a “generative” economy. I looked this word up to make sure I knew what it meant: “having the power or function of generating, originating, producing, creating”. Where there wasn’t anything before, there is now something new.
Generative. My mind goes immediately to the soil. I was picking lettuce not long ago, getting ready to make a lunch for work, and noticed a little dirt at the base of a leaf. I rubbed it off, but didn’t even bother to wash it. After all, that was dirt that had been created in my compost pile, and I knew all the good ingredients that had gone into it. I love generating soil for my garden. There is some necessary extraction of nutrients from the soil as the plants grow, but with compost continually added, it just keeps getting richer and richer. Overall, my little agricultural system is far more generative than extractive.
There are many other places in our lives where this distinction might apply. I think of extracting productivity from those who work under us, as opposed to generating loyalty and trust. I think of extracting obedience from children, as opposed to generating a spirit of mutual cooperation. I think of extracting the benefits of a nice neighborhood or a well-functioning religious congregation for oneself, as opposed to putting energy into generating benefits for others. I think of extracting entertainment from an outside source as opposed to generating fun for oneself and others. I think of extracting the maximum value out of any exchange, as opposed to focusing on the opportunity it brings to generate new possibilities or relationships.
I’m deeply committed to building the power and the will to challenge our extractive economy, from curbing fossil fuel extraction to taming multinational corporations to taxing speculative financial transactions that maximize profit without increasing our community well-being. I’m also committed to supporting new economic institutions that help build up a generative economy—coops of all kinds; credit unions; community gardens; enterprises that embrace the triple bottom line of profit, people, and planet; initiatives of the Transition movement.
As I continue to find my place in such efforts, however, I don’t have to wait. At the same time, I can consider my own life choices. I can notice where I am extracting as a citizen, family member, worker and consumer—and where I am generating new wealth, resources and possibilities. As I notice, I can shift my weight toward a generative economy.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Two bankers who work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have recently proposed a bold way to deal with public debt:
One could slash private debt by 100% of GDP, boost growth, stabilize prices, and dethrone bankers all at the same time. It could be done cleanly and painlessly, by legislative command, far more quickly than anybody imagined.
The conjuring trick is to replace our system of private bank-created money -- roughly 97% of the money supply -- with state-created money. We return to the historical norm, before Charles II placed control of the money supply in private hands with the English Free Coinage Act of 1666.
Specifically, it means an assault on "fractional reserve banking". If lenders are forced to put up 100% reserve backing for deposits, they lose the exorbitant privilege of creating money out of thin air.
The nation regains sovereign control over the money supply. There are no more banks runs, and fewer boom-bust credit cycles.
More at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9623863/IMFs-epic-plan-to-conjure-away-debt-and-dethrone-bankers.html
This theory, a variant of which was proposed and almost implemented by President Roosevelt during the Depression, has many critics as well as supporters among economists. Yet the IMF is not a radical institution, our current financial system is not working well, and it seems prudent to consider very different ways of managing our banks, our money and our debt.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The kindness of strangers in Russia, as seen through dashboard cameras. http://kottke.org/13/05/tender-moments-caught-on-russian-dash-cams.
KIVA, a web-based no-interest loan program, that allows individuals throughout the world to loan as little as $25 to other individuals who are working to rise out of poverty. www.kiva.org
Studies showing that bees, which are experiencing devastating colony collapse, often fare better in the modern urban environment than their rural counterparts, partly because the urban polyculture is healthier than vast agricultural monocultures. http://www.flyingkitemedia.com/features/germantownbeekeeping040213.aspx
The public school system in Union City NJ, an overwhelmingly Latino immigrant and poor community, where commitment to shared effort, common-sense solutions and an emphasis on high quality pre-kindergarten programs has created student achievement scores that approximate the statewide average, and a high school graduation rate of 89.5%, about 10 percentage points higher than the national average. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/the-secret-to-fixing-bad-schools.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
New: posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.afsc.org/friends/claiming-all-our-children#comment-891442132
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting
writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with
others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org.
As we settle into an intensive family time around our older son Tim's upcoming wedding, I'm newly grateful for the deep connections I have with that core of loved ones, and all the circles of caring that spread out around it. A wish for myself is to give those connections their true value, and not be confused by a culture that values work and production so much higher.
I've loved putting this column together--I hope some part of it releases new energy in you.
Love,
Pamela
Extractive or generative?
When people talk about our economic system, the traditional language is about free markets, free enterprise, free trade, the invisible hand, the profit motive, supply and demand. Critics use different—and often stronger—language: runaway capitalism, profiteering, unbridled greed, systemic inequality, corporate control. But until recently, I’d never heard our economy characterized as “extractive”, and that term has gotten me thinking.
There’s something about it that rings very true. We pride ourselves on the amount of minerals and fossil fuels that we can extract from beneath the earths’ crust. We extract maximum value from the topsoil and the forests and the oceans. Employers typically have a goal of extracting ever more work from their employees. Financial institutions prosper when they extract maximum profit from every transaction—ATM withdrawals, credit card charges, mortgage rates, currency exchange interactions, and things most of us don’t even understand, like credit swaps, hedges and derivatives. The goal in each case is maximum extraction for maximum profit. The losers, clearly, are ordinary people, the earth, and other living things.
The alternative could be characterized as a “generative” economy. I looked this word up to make sure I knew what it meant: “having the power or function of generating, originating, producing, creating”. Where there wasn’t anything before, there is now something new.
Generative. My mind goes immediately to the soil. I was picking lettuce not long ago, getting ready to make a lunch for work, and noticed a little dirt at the base of a leaf. I rubbed it off, but didn’t even bother to wash it. After all, that was dirt that had been created in my compost pile, and I knew all the good ingredients that had gone into it. I love generating soil for my garden. There is some necessary extraction of nutrients from the soil as the plants grow, but with compost continually added, it just keeps getting richer and richer. Overall, my little agricultural system is far more generative than extractive.
There are many other places in our lives where this distinction might apply. I think of extracting productivity from those who work under us, as opposed to generating loyalty and trust. I think of extracting obedience from children, as opposed to generating a spirit of mutual cooperation. I think of extracting the benefits of a nice neighborhood or a well-functioning religious congregation for oneself, as opposed to putting energy into generating benefits for others. I think of extracting entertainment from an outside source as opposed to generating fun for oneself and others. I think of extracting the maximum value out of any exchange, as opposed to focusing on the opportunity it brings to generate new possibilities or relationships.
I’m deeply committed to building the power and the will to challenge our extractive economy, from curbing fossil fuel extraction to taming multinational corporations to taxing speculative financial transactions that maximize profit without increasing our community well-being. I’m also committed to supporting new economic institutions that help build up a generative economy—coops of all kinds; credit unions; community gardens; enterprises that embrace the triple bottom line of profit, people, and planet; initiatives of the Transition movement.
As I continue to find my place in such efforts, however, I don’t have to wait. At the same time, I can consider my own life choices. I can notice where I am extracting as a citizen, family member, worker and consumer—and where I am generating new wealth, resources and possibilities. As I notice, I can shift my weight toward a generative economy.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Two bankers who work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have recently proposed a bold way to deal with public debt:
One could slash private debt by 100% of GDP, boost growth, stabilize prices, and dethrone bankers all at the same time. It could be done cleanly and painlessly, by legislative command, far more quickly than anybody imagined.
The conjuring trick is to replace our system of private bank-created money -- roughly 97% of the money supply -- with state-created money. We return to the historical norm, before Charles II placed control of the money supply in private hands with the English Free Coinage Act of 1666.
Specifically, it means an assault on "fractional reserve banking". If lenders are forced to put up 100% reserve backing for deposits, they lose the exorbitant privilege of creating money out of thin air.
The nation regains sovereign control over the money supply. There are no more banks runs, and fewer boom-bust credit cycles.
More at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9623863/IMFs-epic-plan-to-conjure-away-debt-and-dethrone-bankers.html
This theory, a variant of which was proposed and almost implemented by President Roosevelt during the Depression, has many critics as well as supporters among economists. Yet the IMF is not a radical institution, our current financial system is not working well, and it seems prudent to consider very different ways of managing our banks, our money and our debt.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The kindness of strangers in Russia, as seen through dashboard cameras. http://kottke.org/13/05/tender-moments-caught-on-russian-dash-cams.
KIVA, a web-based no-interest loan program, that allows individuals throughout the world to loan as little as $25 to other individuals who are working to rise out of poverty. www.kiva.org
Studies showing that bees, which are experiencing devastating colony collapse, often fare better in the modern urban environment than their rural counterparts, partly because the urban polyculture is healthier than vast agricultural monocultures. http://www.flyingkitemedia.com/features/germantownbeekeeping040213.aspx
The public school system in Union City NJ, an overwhelmingly Latino immigrant and poor community, where commitment to shared effort, common-sense solutions and an emphasis on high quality pre-kindergarten programs has created student achievement scores that approximate the statewide average, and a high school graduation rate of 89.5%, about 10 percentage points higher than the national average. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/the-secret-to-fixing-bad-schools.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
New: posts on other people's blogs:
http://www.afsc.org/friends/claiming-all-our-children#comment-891442132
More resources:
NEW: Check out my friend Daniel Hunter's new book, a narrative of direct action campaigning: Strategy & Soul: A Campaigner's Tale of Fighting Billionaires, Corrupt Officials, and Philadelphia Casinos: www.strategyandsoul.org
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting
writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with
others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com.
My favorite magazine: YES! Magazine reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, they outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world: www.yesmagazine.org.
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