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Andrew-R


Human. Still human. ["with sentences [...] reads like they were written by a drunk, stoned, and autistic disorganized schizophrenic", as one said]

More Blog Posts177

Apr
23rd
2018

No title · 9:10am Apr 23rd, 2018

May be there really should be Equestria on Earth. Like Israel, but without guns. Without those stupid hierarchical 'games' humans so love to play, even if they literally drive them into wall. Land where one can live for horses, or for any other being(s), without all those amazing traditions of rationalized exploitation. Where reason is not about being biggest smartass.

http://www.liberazioni.org/articoli/BestS-TheRise(and Fall)ofCriticalAnimalStudies.pdf

"“A revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research
and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into
the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief.” (Max Horkheimer)"

https://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol2/vol2_no3_Best_rethinking_revolution.htm

There are other texts on my hdd, and I try to look at them and find something ...and then just fade back to my...depression? because even greatest philosophers I admire most reads now too incomplete and contradictive (and some of them grow in their thinking over some decades!).

Still, you can try to fish out "Is It Too Late? Anthony Weston In An Invitation to Environmental Philosophy, ed. A. Weston (Oxford
& New York: Oxford University Press), 1999, 43-68" and also other, late books from same author on same theme ...

I also had little text from my search on 'ecosteries' term, as Anthony used ...Apparently, by now whole website is gone, and only partially available at archive.org, so here is repost!

-----------------------------
ECOSTERIES
by
Kirkpatrick Sale
The author, who lives in New York, has written one of the most important books in alternative movement literature - 'The Human Scale', and has recently published a new work on bioregionalism entitled 'Dwellers in the Land', obtainable from Schumacher Book Service, Ford House, Hartland, Devon. This was the Opening Address at The Radical Consultation in Swindon, Wiltshire, England on Friday 13th September 2001.

I have been accused of being 'apocalyptic'...and so indeed I am, for don't you realise that the horrible attacks in the US this week...the sudden, swift eradication of what in prospect was some 20,000 lives...are in fact signals of a global apocalypse?
That blow was not an act of terrorism...for if no one claims responsibility, it has no political leverage, it has no effective response...it was just an act of apocalyptic insanity. It was a powerful symbol of the new phase of global society we are in, signalling the collapse of social and political arrangements as we know them now...exacerbated by increasing environmental damage and depletion...new and newly virulent diseases...political disintegration and genocide...financial disarray and worldwide depression...increased cultural and psychological chaos...and the thrashing about of national and corporate dinosaurs in their death throes.

That is the apocalyptic scenario in which we now must realise we all have been thrust into. That being so, what are we to do? What must our lives be? Where should our actions point? Let me try to suggest an answer.

A few weeks ago I received a letter from a friend in Eugene, Oregon, a guru of the anarchist movement, telling me that my bioregional vision...which I base on an idea of small communities devoted to ecological restoration...was defeatist and demoralising to the "growing number of people who feel behoved to fight the totality." "I do not think the task is hopeless," he said, "and I do not have any intention of turning my back on the challenge and hiding out in some small ecological community somewhere."
That hit pretty hard, as you can imagine, and I took some time before I responded. But I finally wrote back and it is the thinking that went into that letter that I want to share with you.

My thinking has grown in a major way out of the book I wrote a few years ago on the Luddites of yore, which I called 'Rebels Against the Future'. From their experience I drew a series of lessons, and the four most important ones make up the reasoning behind my notion of bioregional communities.

First...the modern nation state and the stem of corporate capitalism are entwined with a synergistic power that is not going to be undone or overthrown. As long as they effectively have all military and police force, and the will to use it to secure their ends, revolt is futile and violence... though it may buy some publicity in the short run...is counterproductive in the long. As long as they effectively control the governing and political systems, reform is impossible and politics...though it may occasionally permit an interesting and dangerous thought in the short run...is useless in the long.

Second...that does not mean that individuals are helpless and should silently bury their heads under the covers and give up life. It is possible...indeed necessary...to express opposition to the conditions of industrial civilisation... establishing an analysis of what the problem is...who the enemies are...and I would say that chief among them are industrialism, capitalism, globalisation, scientism, and anthropocentrism...that last just a fancy term for "people first, nature last"...and providing the moral and intellectual grounds for alternatives to them. It is also possible to develop and broadcast this philosophy at many levels...at least putting it on certain public agendas and encouraging as many people as possible to question the values of the civilisation they live under and reflect on where it is leading them. My version of this philosophy is bioregional, but it can go by many names. Will this opposition...even as vocal as we can make it...be enough to overcome the systems of power...of course not...for if it became too widespread and too threatening it would be quite quickly curtailed and muffled. But it must be done, because...

Third...this industrial civilisation around us will collapse...and the awful destruction in the US this week shows that it is beginning...according to 'Sale's Law'...all civilisations always collapse...from a failure to understand both scale and limits...and a resulting growth in resource exploitation that leads to environmental collapse...economic inequity...and political ossification that leads to social dislocation. It might come from the gradual erosion of the nation state...or the disintegration of corporate behemoths...in our case I believe it will be the accumulating environmental disasters...most especially global warming and the immense rise in sea levels that will occur when the major ice shelves of Antarctica drop off into the ocean...that will cause this collapse within the next 20 years or so...I have made a bet with a supertechie from 'Wired' magazine that it will happen by 2020...a thousand dollars...which I can't collect if I win of course...but won't be worth very much by then if I lose...
Fourth...if humans survive this collapse...and that is by no means certain given the kinds and levels of our assaults on the earth...they will have an opportunity to recast human arrangements and it will be necessary for these survivors to have some body of lore...and some vision of human regeneration...that instructs them in how to live in harmony with nature and how to fashion their technologies with the restraints and obligations a love of nature demands...seeking not to conquer and dominate and control the species and systems of the natural world...for the failure of industrial civilisation will have taught them fully of that...but rather to understand and obey and love and incorporate nature into their souls as well as their tools...

That lore should provide a vision of a world with political empowerments no larger than a bioregional scale... watersheds, islands, valleys...and based surely on small, self-controlled and self-governing communities... whose primary tasks are to restore, protect, and preserve the life-ways of nature in every dimension...that is to say, the bioregional vision and how to achieve it...
So it seems to me our primary task is to prepare, preserve and provide that necessary body of lore...that inspiration...for such future generations as may be. That is a task already begun...that philosophy is spoke of before...but much more needs to be tackled...and that's a job we can all start on right now...

And in addition...we can provide examples...also right now...even as the industrial civilisation continues around us...at least some of what that bioregional community might look like. My favourite example here... based on some experiences of a group of environmentalists and philosophers on Vancouver Island...is the ecostery...a small community of men and women living and working together to restore small sections of the earth to their natural complexity as climax ecosystems. They work...devoted to this sacred task...in ways like the monks who created the monasteries during the long centuries after the fall of Rome...and who did more than any others to keep alive the wisdom of the past and provide models of a new way of living in small-scale, community-based, agriculturally rooted settlements...even as the corrupt, violent, militaristic, miserable regimes continued to exist around them. The ecostery...like the monastery...can be the way to develop and nurture not only the land but the philosophy of land...and set an example of right-minded devotion and doing...

I have come to think of the ecostery...in theory at least...as something like the extra horse...I imagine some of you have heard the fable of the father who died owning 17 horses...and his will decreed that half should go to the first son...a third to his second...and a ninth to the third. Well, it was a plainly insoluble problem, try as they might the children could not put those horses into groups that would satisfy their fathers wishes...there was no way to take a half, or a third, or a ninth of 17. Eventually they took their problem to the local wise man and he said "I understand your problem and your dilemma...but let me help you. I will give you one of my horses...the boys were perplexed ...what good would that do?...well, said the wise man, then you will have 18 horses...so the first son may have half...that's 9...and the second a third...that's 6...and the third son a ninth...that's 2...so you will be able to do as your father asked.

The sons were of course delighted and sat beaming at the old man... shaking his hand in gratitude...but then, of course, the old man added, you will have 17 horses...9 plus 6 is 15...plus 2 is 17...and so you may give the extra horse back to me...as soon as you've finished with it, of course.
The problem, as we have it today, appears to be insoluble...but it is just possible that in the ecostery...or something very much like it as an ecological model...we might have our extra horse...the small, appropriate, organic, living solution...that at any rate is my vision...and I don't call it defeatist. I call it empowering.
copies of this document may be obtained from
26 The High Street, Purton, Wiltshire SN5 4AE, UK
Tel: 01793 77 22 14 Fax: 01793 77 25 21
e-mail: john.papworth@btinternet.com
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Last link was pointing at http://williamfranklin.com/4thworld/index.html . There was whole archive of essays, one title caught my eye. "Age of unreason". Yeah, sounds like era we actually live in! Note for this specific text: horse must be THE horse, as important being, as friend and companion, not some owned 'thing' humans can literally own/use as usual. Sometimes all those analogies and wisdom quotes just backfire :/ Even if written by truely caring humans.

https://tellusconsultants.com/hottips.html - something I found when looking up 'how to save dolphins from captivity and other dangers'. Quite important list, if implemented honestly!

http://hauteecole.ru/en/news/?cat=1 - this is 'ideology' I mostly follow. Mostly, but not blindly. In fact _blindly_ following anything is against very core principles of such.. discipline/life.

http://archeologia.women.it/user/cyberarchive/files/lykke-bryld.html - look from another side ...May be someone someday will find it important, for some real-world action.

http://www.dolphin-lover.me.uk/alan-cooper-chapter15.php - Alan's website. We are quite different in age, but so far we had few times to exchange emails. Doug Cartlidge was my (e)pen friend for quite some time, too, even if at the late years I distanced myself from all those dolphin saving circles. Because yeah, reality-as-dolphin-get-it was/is too much the same on supposedly opposed sides - dolphin's own future and feelings not counted as important at all, or just overwritten at whim, as usual. Thanks, but not like this anymore.

Also, Vladimir's work was posted here: https://tabun.everypony.ru/blog/crafting/179243.html (on my way to him in-our-city it really too easy to bump into some owned {sigh} horses .... we agree on Nevzorov's views, but practice is not easy, even if theory actually good...)

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