emerson

Keeping alive the One Straw Revolution

By Dale Conour

Master farmer Masanobu Fukuoka is one of the most inspirational men I’ve ever encountered in the pages of a book. I read the translation of his words and account of his work raising an all-natural, convention-defying farm on a Japanese mountain, One Straw Revolution, and couldn’t stop making note after note. It wasn’t easy for me to find the book, mine is a used copy from an online book service that tracked down a version printed in India. Hopefully, I was just unlucky and anyone who reads this and is intrigued will simply walk into their local bookstore and find it on the shelf.

I thought of him again recently when I noted in a post something he’d said. And I’d like to just pass along some more words from him. Just to help keep "the revolution" alive.

"Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity should create. Doctors should first determine at the fundamental level what it is that human beings depend on for life."

"Modern research divides nature into tiny pieces and conducts tests that conform neither with natural law nor with practical experiences."

"Extravagance of desire is the fundamental cause which has led the world into its present predicament."

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,
but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."

"If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think that this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land."

("A happy, pleasant land"—I love that!)

"If one fathoms deeply one’s own neighborhood and the everyday world in which he lives, the greatest of worlds wil be revealed."

"Lao Tzu, the Taoist sage, says that a whole and decent life can be lived in a small village."

"...it would be well if people stopped troubling themselves about discovering the 'true meaning of life'; we can never know the answers to great spiritual questions, but it’s all right not to understand. We have been born and are living on the earth to face directly the reality of living. Living is no more than the result of being born."

"The scientists, no matter how much they investigate nature, no matter how far they research, they only come to realize in the end how perfect and mysterious nature really is."

"We have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a "movement" not to bring anything about."

Links: One Straw Revolution, in digital form,  Fukuoka Farming

Let’s stay in touch.

Wanted: New Renaissance

By Dale Conour

Why the Renaissance?, was essentially the question. Last week at Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park, California, Fritjof Capra, author of the classic The Tao of Physics, was talking about his latest book, The Science of Leonardo, in which he explores the great one’s scientific endeavors, even positing the notion that da Vinci should receive credit for pioneering the scientific method.

Capra’s one of those breathtakingly lucid characters who speak in lovely, complete paragraphs, so the questions and answers after his presentation were particularly enjoyable. In asking why, how, the Renaissance happened, one woman put it in context of now, when "nerd culture and art culture," science and the arts, have taken divergent paths.

"The mind is losing its richness," she said.

Capra noted several reasons why it happened, from the political—popes at the time were too busy with power games to care about their flocks’ morality—to the bottegas of Florence, the artist workshops, which became gathering points for creatives (and were, of course, supported by the immense wealth of the elite). The reality was that da Vinci was not the only "Renaissance man" during the Renaissance.

More than ever, we need our sciences steeped in the humanist tradition, to rejoin the heart and spirit with the mind.

One TED conference a year isn’t enough, and who’s got that kind of cash anyway?

Looking for today’s bottegas...

Link: fritjofcapra.net/

Let’s stay in touch.

To the victors go the spoils

What my trip to Italy got me thinking about #2

By Dale Conour

The homogenization of the US and the world is making travel journalists’ jobs harder and harder:

What’s there to write about when every place is the same?

It’s not just the retail chains, which continue to collect communities’ souls at a very favorable exchange rate. It’s also the people, the culture. We’re highly mobile, working and living in different places, increasingly unrooted, and the traditional constructs of community are crumbling.

I know, this is not news. But I’ve started wondering if it’s necessarily a bad thing.

Umbria is Italy’s "green heart," chock full of hill towns and walled cities, very charming and picturesque, populated with locals proud of their heritage and their regionally distinct products; eateries proudly serve wine grown from surrounding vineyards, olive oil from the fruit of groves a pit’s throw away. But there’s a reason they’re situated up on hills and hunkered down behind walls, and it’s not to catch the afternoon light and present an irresistible picture opp (although it certainly does).

Like other ancient regions around the world, attacking and pillaging the next town over was a local past time; how any of these places remain standing is beyond me.

As civilization has "progressed," our constant desire for other people’s resources has grown in scale. We’ve moved from walled towns to walled cities to nations to strategic alliances among nations formed by government and business leaders. No matter who we are and what we have, someone else always has something we want that we’re willing to kill and be killed for.

And of course, the US, just for old time’s sake, is building an actual wall again, hoping to keep out all those people not paying their "fair share" of taxes while at the same time, working undesirable jobs at artificially low salaries and no benefits and preventing us from paying the true higher cost of our food and services. Ha, we’ll show them.

So what I’m wondering is, and please, tell me what you think: Is a singular, global community such a bad thing? If we’re all in bed together economically and socially, perhaps sacrificing some local pride (tribalism?) along the way, and nobody’s killing anybody, isn’t that better?

Or are we, thanks to the success of capitalism, and because of the changing global climate, heading toward a world society not defined by the traditional national or racial boundaries, but by the claiming of favorable locations by the haves, more marginal areas by the have-a-littles, and the shitholes begrudgingly held by the have-nots?

At this point, someone will no doubt turn me onto a list of sci-fi novels that detailed this very thing decades ago.

But at least I’m caught up now(?)

Let’s stay in touch.

Gingrich on environmental elitism

By Dale Conour

Reading Salon’s interview with Newt Gingrich, on the publicity trail for his new book, "A Contract with the Earth," and there are plenty of ideas he’s passing along that sound worth pursuing (and plenty I’d take issue with). But right now I’m interested in his notion that environmentalism is for the rich, something I’ve heard voiced before:

You talked about how wealthier societies are more concerned about environmental issues. Citizens call for clean air and clean water when, as you say, they have enough to eat. But one of the side effects of wealth is, it seems, more carbon emissions.

If you had a hydrogen car and the French level of nuclear power production for electricity, you’d have a very high quality of life, great mobility, lots of electricity, and virtually no carbon-loading. You can create very advanced technological solutions that dramatically improve life in a way that’s better. The quality of air in California is better than it was 30 years ago. The quality of water in the country is better than it was 30 years ago. We have more species who have come back from the edge of extinction in the U.S. because of the wealth and the capacity to nurture that sort of effort.

Granted, I am a white yuppie (or as I’ve noted recently, smuppie (smug urban professional), since my wife and I own a Prius, but I’m going to put myself in the shoes, or sandals, or hell, maybe just bare feet, of someone living in a less privileged society (by our myopic standards). Maybe some native Brazilian living in the Amazon rainforest, but please, pick your own favorite "poor"  people and play along.

Ok, now it’s time for dinner. Me? I’m heading to Whole Foods, get me some of that good organic chicken, maybe, and mmmm, some organic, buttery-tasting Yukon Gold potatoes, some Blue Lake green beans. When I need water, where do I get it? Lucky me: right out of the tap, and it’s pretty darned clean, my tax dollars at work.

Our "poor" indigenous person? More likely to be living off the land, no? Growing his/her food right there in the soil. Maybe getting his/her food and water from a creek, maybe the river? Think it matters to him/her how healthy, fertile, nonpolluted, the local environs are?

Sure, Newt’s right: environmentalism is important only to the wealthy, and it’s a deft play by him to define it as a byproduct of unfettered capitalism. It is the environment, of course, that is the most important thing to everyone, particularly those closest to it.

But here’s the irony: Even if technology, employed as a tool of capitalism, did indeed bring us a healthier planet, would sitting in traffic in a hydrogen car make you feel any more fulfilled?

You tell me.

Let’s stay in touch.

Link:
Salon interview

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Walking the Via Flaminia

...What a visit to Italy got me thinking about #1

By Dale Conour

It’s hard to walk the Via Flaminia now. We made acquaintance with a bumpy, ankle-biting remnant of one of the Roman Empire’s major routes through Umbria, built more than 2,000 years ago. Its cobblestones rutted from the once steady passage of chariots, the stretch of Via Flaminia runs through a former thriving city now archaeological park, Carsulae. Founded in 220 BC, it’s now in ruins, surrendering to entropy as it inevitably loses its battle with nature.

I am trying to stay positive

(I am on vacation after all)

so this road’s enough of a metaphor for me,

with the American empire, the world’s great experiment (dalliance? shhhhh) in democracy, struggling along on its own great road.

Does it have to be the last days of fall, too, dead leaves littering the surrounding woods? And late afternoon, the sun abandoning the valley far below? And sure, why not:

a necropolis rising where the Via Flaminia departs the city’s boundary?

I am trying to stay positive, but I have to wonder: Did the Romans know they were experiencing the peak? Did they know, with Rome in all its glory, that the empire would one day be consigned to history,

beginning and end dates neatly logged, scripts written, roles assigned?

Did they realize, when they were trying to ward off the Goths, the Vandals,

who their real enemy was, and that time’s always on his side? If they did, would the same damned things still seem the most important?

(Even much of that great art was a byproduct of vanity and power—shhhhh.)

I’m trying to stay positive, but it’s hard not to think about the US as a country where the names of poets are never shouted out in the streets,

where friggin’ people crowd the luggage carousel at the airport,

and people fill the back windows of their cars with stuffed animal toys

(Sorry, I just hate that).

I’m trying to stay positive, because I’m thinking of the children, of the next generation. We need to turn things around for them. We need them to learn from us, to be different than us (Yeah right—shhhhh.)

I’m trying to stay positive, but even though the Via Flaminia is hard to walk,

it’s not hard to follow.

Link:
Carsulae information

Let’s stay in touch.

The writing on the wall

By Dale Conour

Wired’s Autopia blog today reports on the International Energy Agency’s annual "World Energy Outlook," which has reversed the agency’s historic positive spin on energy needs and now says, with China and India growing so rapidly (uh, this is news to them?), we’ll be experiencing an international energy crisis within a quarter century, and oh yeah: overwhelming levels of carbon dioxide. Wired and its followers, being Wired and its followers, rush to the altar of science and technology and begin praying for deliverance—hydrogen, solar, nuclear, coal...

I think about something a very wise man, Masanobu Fukuoka, said in the classic "One Straw Revolution":

"Until the modern faith in big technological solutions can be overturned, pollution will only get worse."

And I nod along with one commenter on the blog, who writes, "We cannot sustain this way of life and survive in the long run as a species. Party’s over. Time for a new game."

And strangely enough, I feel somewhat at ease.

"It’s the end of the world as we know it...and I feel fine" —REM

Let’s stay in touch.

Link:
Wired Autopia

Technorati Tags: Oil, technology, science, Masanobu Fukuoka, Wired

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Gary Snyder’s wish list for us

By Dale Conour

Keri Smith, recently featured in emerson, spotted this quote from the poet in Shambala Sun’s "Writers & the War Against Nature," and wants everyone to pass it around. Seems like a good idea.

Let’s stay in touch.

Psychedelic moon

By Dale Conour

Maps have a long tradition of transcending function to attain the level of art. I was reminded of that recently touring the Vatican museum’s gallery of maps, and now, by Wired Science’s blog today about the planetary maps created by the United States Geological Survey between ’71 and ’98. The one above is from the far side of the moon. I think one commenter nailed it when he said they were like Peter Max on steroids.

Let’s stay in touch.

Technorati Tags: Wired, United States Geological Survey, Vatican maps, Peter Max, Emerson

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