culture – Page 9 – Nature Bats Last

Resources and Anthropocentrism

October 12, 2009

As I indicated in a previous post, the word “resources” is problematic because it implies materials are placed on this planet for the use of humans. We see finite substances and the living planet as materials to be exploited for our comfort. Examples of intense anthropocentrism are so numerous in the English language it seems unfair to pick on this one word from among many. And, as with most other cases, we don’t even think about these examples, much less question them (cf. sustainability, civilization, economic growth). My only justifications for singling out “resources” are the preponderance with which the word appears in contemporary media, the uncritical acceptance of resources as divine gifts for Homo sapiens, and previous posts on a few of the other obvious examples.

Twilight of the Machines

July 8, 2009

“The crisis deepens. Everyday life is plundered as much as the physical environment. Our predicament points us toward a solution. The voluntary abandonment of the industrial mode of existence is not self-renunciation, but a healing return.”

Staring into the economic abyss

April 13, 2009

As the sucker rally on Wall Street passed the four-week mark, your president, Congressional delegations, and media worked themselves into a lather explaining how a recovery was under way. To which James Howard Kunstler appropriately asks, “recovery to what?”

A matter of life and death

March 24, 2009

If you believe your life depends upon water coming out the taps and food showing up at the grocery store, you’ll defend to the death the system that keeps water coming out the taps and food showing up at the grocery story. News flash: If your life depends on that system, you’re a very unusual human, especially historically, and you support a culture of death. And you’re sorely mistaken, besides.
Let’s review.

Down for the count?

March 19, 2009

From my email in-box:
“Muhammad Ali used to jab and jab and destroy his opponents before the final blow. The outcome of most fights was never in question even if the opponent was standing.”

My Life in Song

February 25, 2009

I wasn’t born a doomer, nor a social critic. The path was long and imperial, albeit dotted with few indulgences, as least by “civilized” standards.

Neocon Nation

November 17, 2008

As usual, I have good news if you don't like the direction the government and culture have taken: the problem's going to take care of itself. When the empire completes its fall, when the federal government loses the ability to control everything from foreign wars to domestic sex acts, when the dollar's even further in the toilet and the transportation networks are completely impotent, when the cheerleader-in-chief of American Empire can no longer destroy the lands and waters and the organisms on which we all depend, that's when we can bury the neoconservative agenda.