The quants and the poets | The Dark Mountain Project

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The quants and the poets

posted by Paul Kingsnorth

2nd April, 2011

If, a century ago, the keenest talking heads of the age (who would that have been, I wonder: Chesterton, Shaw, Belloc, Jo Chamberlain?) had battled it out amongst themselves about the future of infrastructure and energy, what would that debate have looked like? If, say, they had all agreed on the importance of rolling out a massive, global plan stretching decades into the future, based on endlessly argued-over scientific ‘facts’ which themselves disguised a lot of underlying political, cultural and social assumptions about the way the world is – what would they have been arguing over? Precisely how many ostlers would be needed by 1950? The importance of a large-scale dung clean-up operation on the streets of major cities? A research and development programme to investigate the plausibility of time machines? Sourcing the funding for an urgent nationwide rollout of dirigible charging stations?

Thoughts like these have been drifting into my head, then drifting out again, for a few weeks now, as I have observed the predictably bitter squabble going on in the green community – and, inevitably therefore, in the media – about Fukushima and the future of nuclear power. I am, it is safe to say, no scientist (something I have in common with most of those who hold strong opinions on nuclear power, by the looks of it) and I have no real idea what is currently going on in those Japanese reactors (ditto) I don’t know, either, whether the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl will turn out to be the high-water mark of the global nuclear industry – something which would apparently be a triumph or a catastrophe depending on which pundit you’re listening to.

But I do wonder whether it is a high water mark for the greens. For a long time now, the green movement has been in retreat, and that retreat now seems in danger of turning into a rout. From a standing start four decades ago, the greens have seen some of their ideas (mainly the ones about using ‘our resources’ ‘sustainably’) spread widely and sometimes deeply into popular and political culture. They have also, inevitably, seen those ideas watered down. I have covered this subject before and don’t intend to do so again here in any detail, but it might be worth reflecting a little bit on the bind the greens are now in.

We all know by now how big, and unstoppable, the global industrial machine is. We know that the global economy relies on resource consumption like a fish relies on gills, and we know that when this imperative is combined with accelerating technological change, a rising human population, the virus-like spread of consumer values, a mass extinction event, a changing climate and resource scarcity in a number of (admittedly contested) areas, the results do not look pretty. When we add all this up we also know, if we are being honest with ourselves, that we are not going to be able to prevent the crash into the buffers – which has already begun – from getting very messy indeed.

At this point, things get complicated. If we are highly politicised people, whose values and self-image are predicated on being ‘activists’ in the cause of preventing such terrible things, we may simply not allow ourselves to be honest about this. This is understandable and I know what it feels like, having been there myself for quite a long time. At this point, we have to lie to ourselves – to go into denial for the sake of our psychological health. So we might pretend to ourselves that ‘one more push’ (ie, doing the same thing yet again) may do the trick. We might tell ourselves that The People are ignorant of The Facts and that if we enlighten them they will Act. We might believe that the right treaty has yet to be signed, or the right technology yet to be found, or that the problem is not too much growth and science and progress but too little of it. Or we might choose to believe that a Movement is needed to expose the lies being told to The People by the Bad Men In Power who are preventing The People from doing the rising up they will all want to do when they learn The Truth.

Whatever the story, it will be a story based on the need for an external event or events, which can only be brought into being by way of more ‘action.’ This way, we can tell ourselves that the only thing to do is to keep on keeping on. After all, the alternative must be ‘giving up’ and watching the world burn.

This is where the greens are today. It is a hard place to be, and it is a place made even more fearsome by the single-minded obsession with climate change that has gripped environmentalism over the last decade. The fear of carbon has trumped all other issues – so much so that is now common in popular culture to see ‘green’ ideas represented simply as arguments about carbon emissions. Everything else has been stripped away. All that matters now is cutting carbon.

It is in this context that the nuclear rumpus has occurred. The Japanese earthquake and tsunami ripped apart a nuclear power plant, and with barely a day’s grace the pundits were swooping on the place. Most of them seemed to see this tragedy simply as an opportunity to forcefully restate their existing positions on nuclear power – It will kill us! It will save us! – even as the fuel rods were still melting. Some people – like our very own George Monbiot – used Fukushima not to restate their case but to change their mind. But whatever the argument, the growing – and understandable – sense of desperation was the same.

The greens are in a corner. If you believe that climate change will wreck the Earth and that the only way to prevent that from happening is to ‘reduce emissions’ in a fantastically short time period, then you are in a very perilous place. It’s not that this argument is necessarily wrong – it probably isn’t, though the lack of certainty is always worth highlighting. But it is so obviously impossible to do what it is claimed Must Be Done to stop it that futility or despair can end up being the only places to turn.

My feeling is that the green movement has torpedoed itself with numbers. Its single-minded obsession with climate change, and its insistence on seeing this as an engineering challenge which must be overcome with technological solutions guided by the neutral gaze of Science, has forced it into a ghetto from which it may never escape. Most greens in the mainstream now spend their time arguing about whether they prefer windfarms to wave machines or nuclear power to carbon sequestration. They offer up remarkably confident predictions of what will happen if we do or don’t do this or that, all based on mind-numbing numbers cherry-picked from this or that ‘study’ as if the world were a giant spreadsheet which only needs to be balanced correctly.

In this, the mainstream green movement is only reflecting and feeding upon wider societal trends. We live in a remarkably literal-minded and reductionistic culture. I’m struck listening to or reading the news, for example, by how nothing is seen to be ‘real’ unless it is sanctioned by the priesthoods of either Science or Business, and preferably both. A culture in which Richard Dawkins and Ian McEwan are seen as intellectual guiding lights is the kind of culture which produces an environmental movement made up of frustrated, passionate people who feel obliged to act like speak-your-weight machines just to be heard.

If we want to move beyond the futility and despair imposed by the cold narrowness of this worldview, where do we look? What is missing here is stories, and an understanding of the importance of stories in getting to the bottom of what is really going on. Because at root, this whole squabble between worldviews is not about numbers at all – it is about narratives.

The fight between the pro-nukers and the anti-nukers, for example, is actually quite archetypal. Though both sides pretend to be informed by ‘science’ and ‘facts’ both are actually informed primarily by prejudice. Whether you like nuclear power or not is a reflection of the kind of worldview you have: whether you are a confident embracer of the Western model of progress or whether it frightens or concerns you; whether you trust science or tend not to; whether you are cautious or reckless; whether you are ‘progressive’ or ‘conservative.’ On issues ranging from GM crops to capitalism, these are the underlying stories that actually inform the green debate. That they are then supported by a clutch of cherry-picked facts – easy to come by, after all, in the age of Wikipedia – is a footnote to what’s really going on.

The mess that the greens have got themselves into is at least partly due to them paying more attention to numbers than narratives. Green political thought, in its early incarnations, was radical and challenging. It was about the stories we tell ourselves about the world: stories about progress, industry, the conquest of nature and many of the other narratives that the Dark Mountain Project exists to highlight. The early greens challenged these stories with others, drawn in some cases from ecotopian imaginings about better future but in many more cases from the stories of existing non-industrial societies: the Kalahari Bushmen, for example, who lived for 35,000 years in a culture which managed to survive in remarkable harmony with non-human nature even with lions prowling outside the huts of its people (a story touched on in Dark Mountain book two). You want ‘sustainability’? The Bushmen were the longest-recorded human culture. They were genuinely sustainable for longer than we can imagine. Industrial society got them in the end, like it gets everything, but the example remains.

This kind of thing, of course, was what made it so easy to attack the greens as Romantics and primitivists (which some of them were and still are.) In response, environmentalists decided to get ‘serious’, so as to be listened to in the corridors of power. They started wearing suits and pretending to be economists and speaking the language of business and science. It was a perfectly sensible approach in many ways, and it yielded many clear dividends.

But it may also have doomed the greens in the longer term, for now they find themselves caught in a narrative of other peoples’ making. Almost by accident, mainstream green politics and argument threw out most of the alternative stories it grew up with, like a child throws out his old teddy bears: that was then, but this is now, and now we are Grown Ups. This approach has left environmentalism in a position where its advocates now find themselves unable to do anything but argue about which machines they would prefer to use to power an ever-growing industrial economy. Any sally outside this tightly-controlled ghetto sees them rained with bullets from all sides: accused of wishful thinking if they talk about zero-growth economies; called snobs and hypocrites if they criticise consumerism; attacked as terrorists if they engage in direct action to protect wild nature; called naive idealists if they ask whether planning for a future much like the present is really such a good idea.

This has always been the case, of course, but now the greens are being heard in the corridors of power the stakes are much higher. A global anti-green movement now exists and is growing in power and influence. Meanwhile, the greens have been taken over from within by smooth-tongued purveyors of business-as-usual without the carbon. The message is clear: stick to arguing about the machines, and you’re welcome to play with the big boys. But drop all the other nonsense, alright? This, demonstrably, is how radical movements die.

I’m currently trying to get my head around exactly how the current economic crisis has happened, and in the cause of doing so I am reading John Lanchester’s book Whoops! which explains it in terms that even people like me can grasp. This evening I was reading Lanchester’s description of how banks have changed in the last few decades. When his father worked in banking it was a staid business populated mostly by non-graduates. Today, if you don’t have a first-class maths degree from Oxbridge you’ll find it hard making it in the industry. This, Lanchester suggests, is part of the problem: banking has become so specialist, so complex, that most people – including many bankers - simply don’t understand how it works.

The maths geeks who now run the futures and options operations in banking are known as ‘quants’. One MBA student quoted in the book reported that on his course the students were required to identify themselves as either ‘quants’ or ‘poets’. That is: did they do numbers, or did they do words?

These days, the green movement is being taken over by quants. It’s easy to see why. Quants present easy, numbered, labelled arguments which may sometimes require a maths degree but don’t require a rewiring of your worldview or an examination of your narrative. A green quant might be telling you to change your lightbulbs or come out on the streets in favour of a nuclear power plant or a windfarm, but he’s not asking you to examine your values or your society’s underlying mythology. And if you talk to him about this, it is very easy indeed for him to laugh and tell you loftily that this is all very nice but is hardly comparable to the serious business of saving the world one emission at a time.

This is the context in which the nuclear squabble is being played out. Here, for example, is an article which claims that renewable energy can’t meet ‘our energy needs’? But our needs for what? Coffee machines and fast broadband, or clean drinking water and living ecosystems? Middle class life in a consumer democracy or a liveable human existence? Or do we now think these are the same thing? If you really want to see where a green quant is coming from, simply catch him in the middle of one of these arguments and ask him (and it usually is a him) to define ‘need’. Then watch the narrative spooling out like film from a broken cannister.

As a poet, of course, I have a vested interest in objecting to this, and I often do, but I don’t do it without empathy or without some doubt. I know why it has happened. This, after all, is an approach designed to produce clear and concrete results – something which is undeniably useful in an age of ecocide. But what narrative framework are the results being produced in? Because it’s that framework, in the end which will determine where those results take us.

Too many green quants, then, and not enough green poets? I think so. Or rather, I think that the poets have been cowed into silence by the dominance and urgency of the quants’ narrative. How to reassert the importance of stories, then, is perhaps a key question now. Green poets might perhaps start by observing that worlds are not ‘saved’ by the same stories that are killing them. They might want to observe that saving worlds is an impossible business in the first place, and that attempting to do so is likely to lead to some very dark places. Or they might try and explore what it is about how we see ourselves which reduces us to this, time and time again – arguing about machines rather than wondering what those machines give us and what they take away.

The friction between the quant and the poet could be represented by focusing on a few bickering individuals, or by trying to divide the greens up into Two Cultures. But it could also, perhaps more honestly and productively, be represented as a tension that is present within all. None of us is wholly, or even primarily, rational and analytical, and none of us is quite devoid of poetry either, though it is sometimes hard to find it. These divisions are themselves stories that we, in this particular culture, tell ourselves about how humans work. The quants and the poets are both needed, but I would argue that, right now, the poets ought to take the lead – if indeed that is ever something that poets are capable of. We have no shortage of arguments about numbers and machines, but we do have a great shortage of workable stories. That is to say: stories that don’t just have happy endings, but have convincing plots as well.

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Posted by Paul Kingsnorth on 2 April, 11

Posted in: Blog, Key Posts

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81 thoughts on “The quants and the poets”

Rob K. Walker on April 2, 2011 at 12:26 pm said:

Oddly, I stumbled upon watching Avatar last night and this very observation was striking. I watched it, seeing the Na’vi’s “network” into the Earth not simply as a race more in-tune with their dependence upon it, but also as a metaphor for the Internet, and how this was a more complete network of information and understanding of a holistic system. This intrigued me, so I watched on. We see the “Sky People” as the ignorant machine: we see the Na’vi’s response by the joining together of all of the race’s tribes into a unifying opposition: and a part of me, foolishly, started to think that maybe – trite and simple as the film’s message was – it had some worth in that it was bringing these notions to a mass global audience. Then the horror happened. The deity of the Na’vi intervenes and attacks the humans, allowing the Na’vi to win the battle, taking place. I was infuriated. Some Mother Earth will self-correct and everything will be OK? Leaving the unenlightened humbled and the respectful saved? Who is this deity? And how will it make a distinction between these two humanoid species? This was a happy ending without a convincing plot – bad, bad meme-complex. And this is the most watched and profitable film of our age, our greatest and most accepted myth against all the anxiety building up inside us. It isn’t good enough. Not by a long way.

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” (Kundera)

Rob x

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wolfbird on April 2, 2011 at 2:50 pm said:

[may i point to minor edit, "...engage in direct action to *protect* nature... " ? :-)]

Hmmm. George Monbiot. I love the guy, enough to hug him, when he writes angel words, like this :

http://www.monbiot.com/2010/03/15/the-naming-of-things/

but now I am bewildered by his urgent enthusiasm for nuclear reactors, and the dismal logic, the horrid sterile rationality, of his arguments to support his position… taken before we’ve had any time to get an accurate estimation of how devastating the Fukushima disaster will actually turn out to be…

Coal and oil, or nuclear ? It’s like asking me if I’d prefer to be stabbed or shot to death. Please, the answer is, my answer is, preferably, neither…

Look at these photos, which, if what some people claim is correct, are the kind of results that nuclear accidents produce. A price worth paying for what Obama recently called nuclear power, ‘clean, green energy’ ?

http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/Chernobyl

Are they really ‘accidents’ ? who can really be trusted with such risky technology, especially when big money is involved ? Isn’t the saying that ‘if something can go wrong, it will’ ? So called ‘accidents’ are inevitable and to be expected. The Fukushima disaster WAS PREDICTED, in 2004

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20040523x2.html

” New report picks apart George Monbiot’s support for nuclear power ”

http://www.fraw.org.uk/news/2011/news-0331.shtml

Another interesting critique of ‘nuclear experts’, by Chris Busby :

http://www.counterpunch.org/busby03282011.html

But as Paul mentions, this is the typical pro v. anti format that arises every day in public and political discourse. What’s more interesting is to stand back from the particulars, and contemplate the wider context of our cultural narratives, within which the specific arguments are embedded.

Albert Einstein said something like ‘common sense is merely the set of prejudices that a person has absorbed by age eighteen’. The Aztecs tore out the hearts from thousands of living sacrificial victims, to ensure the Sun’s constancy. The Romans slaughtered thousands every afternoon in the Circus Maximus to keep the masses entertained. Surely, the average Aztec or Roman would have taken these horrors as ‘normal’, inevitable. Seems to me, that’s our problem.

By age eighteen, most of us are indoctrinated into a world where tv, roads, cars, planes, wars, supermarkets, etc, are just the normal, inevitable, reasonable features of our daily cultural landscape, and anyone questioning the sanity of this ‘normality’ gets branded as eccentric, if not insane.

But just imagine what some superior, more highly evolved alien being from another Universe would deduce, when inspecting our vital systems. A science and technology so crude and primitive that we have transport and agriculture systems which poison us and our environment, mountains of plastic items whose life cycle continues for centuries after disposal, floating in country-sized islands in the oceans, nuclear reactors with no satisfactory design for disposal of the radioactive wastes which are dangerous for longer than the time we have had our so-called civilization… wouldn’t such a being shake it’s head in disbelief, just as we find it rather shocking that what the Romans and Aztecs did was ‘normal’ ? I imagine the superior being might point out that our understanding of, and relationship with, technology, is bizarre, deeply flawed, inadequate, quite crazy…

’5 Reasons Why Technology Can Never Be Neutral’

http://www.countercurrents.org/mickeyz270311.htm

Ah well, I don’t have good answers, just find our common everyday behaviour peculiarly perverse and absurd…

I’m fond of the work of Adam Curtis, who tries to show ‘alternatives’ to the ‘standard perceived wisdoms’ which our culture promotes…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrSQinf8Qto

And I recently came across a talk he had with another interesting film maker, Errol Morris, where Curtis said :

“I’m very suspicious of this idea of a balanced version of history, All history is a construction – often by the powerful. What I do is construct an imaginative interpretation of history to make people look again at what they think they know. I like to ask people, “Have you thought of this?” Like zooming up in a helicopter and looking at the ground, looking at the world in a new way. Because I think that so much of this interpretation of events is a deadening repetition agreed upon by certain people, a sort of collectivity of news reports. And often it’s completely wrong. But somehow, they all agree on it. People criticized my film by saying things like, “Why aren’t you balanced? What aren’t you putting in the other views?” And my response was, “What if the other view is wrong?” That’s the real problem of the balanced view – what’s called ‘perceived wisdom.’ What if perceived wisdom’s wrong? What if – when you go and look at the evidence for sleeper cells in America – there doesn’t appear to be anything there? You know, that’s the difficult area. And so it becomes up to you to judge whether to go against perceived wisdom or not.”

http://www.errolmorris.com/content/interview/believer0406.html

http://www.errolmorris.com/television/index.html

Morris made a film about the relationship between Gary Greenberg and Ted Kaczynski, which lead me to another fascinating page…

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9910b/copyright/unabomber.html

I mean, who is crazy ? Is it Ted K. or is it the majority who label him as crazy ? or are we ALL crazy ?

Monbiot says ” Greens, such as myself…” Crikey. Well, if being green means supporting nuclear power stations… I suppose, I am, myself, not a green….

So where does that leave me ? Perhaps I could start a new radical movement, maybe the Ultra-Violets, beyond the ‘normal’ spectrum and with the added advantage of being invisibile to ‘normal’ sight…

sigh…

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Aubrey Meyer on April 2, 2011 at 4:12 pm said:

The quants and the poets

Dear Paul – It was my good friend Dave Bradney of Brent Green Party who years ago wakened me to the dangers of the ‘false dichotomy’ [FD]. In the essay above it seems to me that a false dichotomy may have been constructed between, “the quants and the poets” or those who, the essay says, do the numbers and those who do the words.

The general view point from Dark Mountain laid out above is easy to recognize, as are the grounds for having it. However, to say that, “the greens have got themselves into a mess” is a little harsh. Surely it is more that a mess is being more and widely created that now engulfs greens and non-greens alike.

Again, the suggestion that greens have been, “paying more attention to numbers than narratives” is a condition that also engulfs greens and non-greens alike as well. In other words this ‘problem’ is general.

However, quite disctinct from that, there is a danger of constructing a critique based on the false dichotomy that is posed by separating “the quants” from the “poets”.

The fact is that poets *do* count. Poets count cyclicly in *poetic metre*, in the same way that musicians count in *musical metre*.

This is not a trivial point. The defining property of this counting is that its wholist; i.e. it sub-divides the whole, which is another way of saying that it works within *limits*. The essence of this is that counting feedback from limits creates structure and in *the whole of nature*, as in music and poetry, evolution is a function of structure or constitution. To coin a phrase, it is being responsive to feedback that counts.

It is this of course [counting within limits, for feedback and structure] which bankers etc [who allegedly do count] *don’t* do.

In other words with all the impenetrable maths of modern banking that you refere to, what they actually count [or attempt to count] is without limits, structure and constitution [be it environmental, commercial, social etc]. More particularly still they do it with a numeraire [money] that in that *belief system of no-limts* knows only exponential growth.

We are *all* being sheep-dipped in this folly because like this, the eco-system [unless the belief system can be changed] is doomed to collapse. Going towards dangerous rates of climate change is at the apex of all that.

Greens didn’t create this problem any more than other discreet group. However, if what is said in the essay above means that Greens are being drawn into a numbers game where counting is ‘without limits’, then they are in certainly in danger of being sheep-dipped and actually colluding with it.

So as I see it, a strategy to countervail all this does not come from simply saying, *do words – don’t count*. That to me is the false dichotomy. A strategy for countervailing this come from saying, count with limits, structure, feedback and a constitution . . . .

It may well be now that this won’t work, but I can’t think of enything else that even might: – http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/Pythagorean_Comma_.pdf

If possible, Nil Desperandum; the battle is only over for you when you decide it is . . . .

If you want to die laughing, you must practice every day.

Warm regards

Aubrey

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Osbert on April 2, 2011 at 5:26 pm said:

Paul

Thank you, good post. My experience is that when I have a chance to speak to quants (in your terminology) in some depth, and to explore their deeper feelings and values, I find that they often (not always) share the concerns and criticisms that you highlight.

But they are afraid to voice them.

And they suffer from the cognitive dissonance of ‘having’ to say one thing while believing something else in their heart of hearts.

And, yes, I see this in myself sometimes. We need to find safe spaces to explore and acknowledge this, and then to find ways of going more public with our poetic sides.

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Joe Banks on April 2, 2011 at 8:55 pm said:

Who are the poets coming to Uncivilisation 2, Paul? I would urge you and Douglad to invite one of England’s finest: Aidan Andrew Dun. He is that rare thing, a poet who increases the possibilities of life. A marvelous man. You can contact him here -http://www.aidanandrewdun.com/

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Paul on April 2, 2011 at 8:59 pm said:

Thanks for these thoughts everyone.

Rob – I know what you mean about Avatar. For me it was the cartoon version of Dances With Wolves. But I still enjoyed it, funnily enough. And I was struck by how ancient and enduring this story is – the people of nature who triumph against the odds over the people of industry. You find it in another big recent hit, Lord of the Rings, as well. I wonder why? Is it industrial society assuaging its guilt? In reality, of course, the Earth Goddess does not intervene, and the Indians are forced into reservations, where they drown their pain in cheap vodka.

Either that, or the Earth Goddess just takes longer to get her act together. Maybe she is intervening now …?

Wolfbird – I am told Adam Curtis has a new film due soon. I agree he is terrific. As for old Ted: if you were to read his manifesto with no knowledge of what he did, I submit that it would not look insane at all. It’s actually quite a rational, radical, well-argued primitivist manifesto. It’s a shame he used it to do what he did. But then the New York Times would not have published it in full if he wasn’t a killer, would they? See how the snake eats its tail.

Aubrey – I agree about false dichotomies, and my last paragraph was an attempt not to fall too far into that trap. As I said, this is an internal division, I think, as much as anything else. I agree too that everyone counts, just as everyone uses words, and that the greens reflect a wider trend (as I pointed out.) But I do think their desperation to get something – anything – done about climate change has led to many babies being thrown out with bathwater. I think also that the approach is futile, and that when it is seen to have clearly failed – which can’t be too long now surely – a serious and major reappraisal will have to take place.

I tend to write much of my poetry in open form, incidentally. It doesn’t have a countable metre, but it does have a rhythm. The rhythm will change with the poem though; the rules it sets are its own. Perhaps a metaphor for something? I don’t know.

Osbert – ‘Going more public with our poetic sides’ – yes! There’s the daunting challenge. Maybe if we gang up it will make things easier. ;-)

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Paul on April 2, 2011 at 9:18 pm said:

Joe – thanks, I’d not come across him but it looks intriguing. I will have a proper read soon.

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wolfbird on April 3, 2011 at 10:47 am said:

I put this comment onto the previous post, but an after thought, repeat here in case it might get missed otherwise. Patrick Keillor. Lovely to discover such interesting stuff. Thanks to Jeremy Moore !

—-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Sr0Y–ldI

http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/web-archive-2/issue-44/spotlight-robinson-in-ruins-patrick-keiller-uk-2/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2010/nov/24/patrick-keiller-robinson-in-ruins

http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/watch-movies/robinson-in-space

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v196407193Dhjqr85

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wolfbird on April 3, 2011 at 11:53 am said:

Sorry to meander away from Paul’s post, but I read this in another link re Patrick Keiller, which is close to my heart and the DM themes, I’ve frequently pondered why it is that people seem to need cinematic spaces and films like Avatar or Close Encounters, etc, to prod their sense of mystery, wonder, romance, when the REAL supreme miracle is right in front of their noses, all the time, everywhere. For example, why are most folks blind to lichen, or the weird beings to be observed in any pond, astonishing things like cobwebs and the swelling buds of tress and bushes as leaves emerge, like butterflies in slow motion…

“When we hear early on in the film that Robinson has made contact with a series of “non-human intelligences”, we initially suspect that he has finally succumbed to madness. Yet the “non-human intelligences” turn out to be not the extra-terrestrials of a florid pulp-science-fiction-inspired psychosis, but the intra-terrestrial life forms that an ecological awareness reveals growing with a silent stubbornness that matches the brute tenacity of capitalism. In one of the many slow spirals that typify Keiller’s approach in Robinson in Ruins, the lichen that his camera lingers on in an early shot, apparently for merely picturesque effect, will eventually come to take centre stage in the film’s narrative. Lichen, Robinson comes to realise, is already the dominant life form on large areas of the planet.
Inspired by the work of American biologist Lynn Margulis, Robinson confesses to a growing feeling of “biophilia” – which Keiller seems to share. While his camera lingers tenderly on wild flowers, the film’s verbal narrative is suspended, projecting us for long moments into this world without humans. These moments, these unnarrativised surveys of a non-human landscape, are like Keiller’s version of the famous ‘Straubian shot’, the cutaways to depopulated landscapes in Straub and Huillet’s films. Robinson is drawn to Margulis because she rejects the analogies between capitalism and the biological that are so often used to naturalise capitalist economic relations. Instead of the ruthless competition which social Darwinians find in nature, Margulis discovers organisms engaging in co-operative strategies.”

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49663

More about Keiller and Robinson,

“…the unexamined vanishing of British industry into a hinterland of motorways, logistics sheds and huge ports that operated almost without staff. Robinson and his long-suffering companion were now employed to investigate “the problem of England”, which seemed initially to consist in the fact that lingering geopolitical power and recent economic recovery could not save the country from fatal nostalgia and decrepitude, resentment in the face of modernity…”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/20/robinson-ruins-patrick-keiller-dillon

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wolfbird on April 3, 2011 at 1:32 pm said:

I wonder if the John Lanchester book touches upon the part the Mexican drug cartels played in propping up the failing banking system ?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/04/wachovia-paid-trivial-fine-for-nearly-400-billion-of-drug-related-money-laundering.html#comments

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wolfbird on April 3, 2011 at 1:41 pm said:

And here’s the movie Inside Job, ‘The Wall Street Horror Movie’,

to watch for free…

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/watch-inside-job-wall-street-horror-movie-free-0

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wolfbird on April 3, 2011 at 1:49 pm said:

And

“The problem is that they are now being conditioned by the mainstream media to view the idea of collapse as “cinematic”; a kind of live action fantasy in which we all get to play the part of the audience, watching safely from the dark in our cushy theater seats with a bag of overpriced popcorn, Dolby surround sound, and a hot date to keep us company during the boring parts. Three years ago, even mentioning the idea of a breakdown in society or a financial catastrophe beyond a minor recession earned you the label of “doom monger”; a rather inept and naïve attempt on the part of the MSM to silence any economic analysis that stepped outside the establishment Keynesian framework. Today, I turn around to look at a magazine stand at the airport and right in front of me is Newsweek openly declaring “Apocalypse Now”!

Is the mainstream finally catching up to the alternative media? No. The MSM is merely adopting pieces of our common language and twisting them to fit a more globalist friendly viewpoint. Because our readership is growing exponentially, and our traffic is skyrocketing while corporatized news sources are floundering, the MSM is losing its ability to obscure our fact based journalism with their over funded and highly sterilized adaptation of reality. So instead, they attempt to co-opt our particular vocabulary, and our news focus, while adding their own subtle spin and sensationalism. When people not familiar with the alternative media and the more in-depth information we provide talk about a “Black Swan event”, a depression, hyperinflation, etc., their concept of the implications of such disasters is far different than ours. They are living in the Disney version of financial and social Armageddon.”

http://neithercorp.us/npress/2011/04/migration-of-the-black-swans/

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wolfbird on April 3, 2011 at 3:04 pm said:

Re Adam Curtis, from his blog :

“I am sorry I haven’t put anything up recently. I have been busy finishing a new series of films for BBC-2

As a background to the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant I am putting up a film I made a while ago called A is for Atom. It was part of a series about politics and science called Pandora’s Box.

The film shows that from very early on – as early as 1964 – US government officials knew that there were serious potential dangers with the design of the type of reactor that was used to build the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But that their warnings were repeatedly ignored.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom.html

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wolfbird on April 3, 2011 at 5:40 pm said:

Here’s an interview with the maker of Inside Job

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS0hj4kiqsA&feature=player_embedded

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Julian on April 3, 2011 at 7:47 pm said:

Was it Ghandi who said “if I knew I was going to die tomorrow – I would still plant a tree today”.

This is the most honest approach to life – never mind the supposed divisions between those who like to think they are doing their best.

Poetry or numbers? Science or art? Intellect or emotion? These are all subdivisions of ‘one whole’. As a child we lived close to that ‘one whole’, but due to indoctrination and fear we divided it up and started arguing about it. So when we arrive at what is called ‘adulthood’ there is very little left of ‘the whole’.

I’m afraid that we can’t find an intellectual (or poetic) way around the fact that all passionate beings – all who love Life – are part of the mix which strives for a better world. Who strive to put together (again) that ‘whole’. We are an eclectic crowd and cannot be pigeon-holed or placed in the poets or the quants corner.

Dark Mountain does not do itself a service by pursuing this road.

The ‘artist’ is an individual who hones his or her skills towards the expression of a passion for Life. By defenition all genuine artists are engaged in a battle with the forces of repression (anti-art/anti-life)) – be they governmental, corporate, military, social, cultural or environmental. Only the old Ivory Tower type of schooled ‘artist’ can take a back seat when the world is falling apart around him.

Poets are not a species – like apes or birds – they are human beings who have been able to retain a modicum of subtlety and passion and, for those who put words on paper, devote time to their calling. But to say that such individuals are better placed than other Lovers of Life to ‘take the lead’ is delusional.

We need to explore a new realm now .. one where categories like writer, poet, activist, environmentalist are set aside and a new
sphere which embraces all these – comes forward.

Those are the sort of Dark Mountaineers that I would like to meet and see emerge out of the mists of confusion that engulf our sub-divided planet.

Julian

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Julian on April 3, 2011 at 8:11 pm said:

Having said that(!) I do quite agree that the degree of ‘green’ monocultural mind indulgence in ‘climate change’ is an apallingly misplaced use of human energy. It is completely lacking in lateral thinking and alarmingly ready to villify any ‘non believers’.

Incidently, it is my view that our weather/climate has been taken over by the military and that what is called ‘climate change’ is actually the deliberate manipulation of the climate for neo-colonial/ military ends. If anyone wishes to pursue this further they might like to read a paper I wrote on this subject “Atmospheric Geoengineering” which can be found on the website of ‘Institute for Science in Society’ and/or ‘piotr bein’ web site.

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Dan Olner on April 4, 2011 at 10:48 am said:

Interesting stuff. Please take the following in good humour, but this writing (and also John Michael Greer’s) remind me of this quote:

“Hayek makes frequent claims about what can or cannot be known to us. How does he know these limitations while we do not? Ironically, one is reminded of Marx, who single-handedly hauled his own thought above the superstructure while everyone else’s thought remained intrinsically incapable of this glorious transcendence.”

Similarly, both you and JMG seem to have a hardcore of certainty, which somehow allows you to pass judgement on other people’s attempts to understand. If you’re saying others are wrong, fair enough: but it feels like you’re unwilling to say why they’re wrong.

I get the sense that part of the reason is just because I don’t have your long-developed sense of where the environmental movement has come from and is going to, so it’s great to read your insights. But it makes me very uneasy -

I’m getting myself fairly stuck into climate change stuff at the mo, and have been particularly fascinated in a car-crash way with events in the US. The anti-science campaign there is producing some truly twisted outcomes in the country’s narratives. It’s just that I think one of those narratives – amazingly internally consistent though it is – happens to be utterly, dangerously wrong.

Though I think you say towards the end, the point is not to isolate poets and quants, and I’d agree with that. It’s just that I can’t see a way the US narrative changes without holding onto the fact that there are actual, scientifically justified answers to specific questions, and that those answers matter hugely for forming the stories we need to tell ourselves. The fact of uncertainty makes the science more important, not less. Quants are pretty good at working with uncertainty.

p.s. did you see the US army has a whole unit for `degrading the enemy narrative?’ I think a lot of powerful people fully understand the importance of stories. “Hegemony is just stories.” Discuss!

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Paul on April 4, 2011 at 11:02 am said:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for this. Good humour intact! You say:

‘Similarly, both you and JMG seem to have a hardcore of certainty, which somehow allows you to pass judgement on other people’s attempts to understand. If you’re saying others are wrong, fair enough: but it feels like you’re unwilling to say why they’re wrong.’

You’ll have to explain this a bit further. What do you think I am too certain about? And what am I unwilling to say they’re wrong about? I’m unclear. I hope I am not passing (unfair) judgement, nor being too certain about uncertain things. But tell me more.

I tried to be clear in the post that quantifiable, scientific campaigning is useful – vital, in fact, in many areas. I’m not suggesting anyone stops doing it. I’m just suggesting that if it is done in isolation, and if it is done within a framework set by others with very different interests, it can lead to the wrong outcome, for the wrong reasons.

On the US narrative – well, we certainly need to be clear about what the science is saying about climate change. That’s a given. Climate change is one area in which quantifying and measuring is clearly vital – it’s the core of the case. Physics is not a metaphor. But it’s also clear, surely, that simply restating the scientific facts will not change anything. Those who do not want to hear the case are not interested in the facts. They have a counter-narrative that they are sticking to – successfully, it must be said.

The rise of the global denier movement, in fact, is surely proof of the power of stories, as you suggest. These guys have a story which is blatantly inaccurate, biased, counter-factual and in many cases provably dishonest. And yet it is hugely persuasive to millions of people. Why? Because it tells them what they want to hear. Because they are not primarily rational beings who look at ‘the science’ but emotional beings who want to hold on to their worldview, even if it takes the world down with it.

In this situation, more data will change nothing. Paul Krugman is quite good on this today, in fact:

http://nyti.ms/fzu7F2

That seems a very good example of how the stories dominate the science. ‘Degrading the enemy narrative’ indeed. What to do about it? I don’t know. But I don’t think more science will help. This is a battle between stories.

The other thing I would say is that I don’t think stories can ‘save the world’, though I do think saving the world is a story in itself.

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Dan Olner on April 4, 2011 at 1:05 pm said:

Cheers for the thoughtful response, I’ll have to mull it over to answer your questions properly. One quick answer: bouncing off you saying greens “offer up remarkably confident predictions of what will happen if we do or don’t do this or that, all based on mind-numbing numbers cherry-picked from this or that ’study’ as if the world were a giant spreadsheet which only needs to be balanced correctly.”

I know exactly what you mean: particularly in peak oil circles, there are some really bad uses of quant. But here it seemed to me you were too harshly passing judgement, coming from a place of certainty regarding the limitations of number-crunching our way to salvation. The problem’s compounded because – still – too many people like to wear the figleaf of science-like truthiness, without applying some simple logic or spending time sorting good from bad analysis. That’s what happens with climate denial: people are browbeaten with graphs and can’t take a moment to sort the clear nonsense from the good stuff. Oo, I’m rambling: my point – there are good and bad analyses, and we can work to sort them out. The world isn’t a giant spreadsheet, but numbers are going to massively help us. It just sounded like a job-lot rejection based on certainty that quant is a dead-end – but much of the rest of the piece doesn’t read that way.

Also, just came back cos I happened across this from Popper:

“Scientists have dared (since Thales, Democritus, Plato’s Timaeus, and Aristarchus) to create myths, or conjectures, or theories, which are in striking contrast to the everyday world of common experience, yet able to explain some aspects of this world of common experience.”

http://www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/cursos/ser212/popper_threeviews.pdf

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Paul on April 4, 2011 at 3:19 pm said:

One thing that struck me today as I read more of ‘Whoops!’, Dan, was how creative mathematics is! Not something I’d learnt about at school. And yes, science of course provides an outlet for incredible human creativity. Look at the ideas of Lovelock and Margulis, or indeed Darwin, which have real poetry in them. Conversely, I submit that some professional poets have more of the quant in them than the poet (I submit Pope!)

My point about those confident predictions though was precisely that I wasn’t certain – that we can’t be. Last week I read an article by a green nuclear proponent who was confidently predicting that shutting down new nuclear development from this point would lead to ‘an extra degree of climate change.’ Is that something that can be said with certainty? Clearly not. Ditto on the other side: we don’t really have any idea what peak oil will do, so specific predictions are foolish.

It interests me that while we constantly hear this line ‘science is about uncertainty’, science is used on all sides of the debate to try and claim certainty and to dismiss other views. I think life is about uncertainty, and while much can be usefully measured, sometimes measuring is part of the problem, and can certainly obscure deeper issues. But we are a measuring culture, and we don’t like depth, which is how we got here.

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Dan Olner on April 4, 2011 at 4:45 pm said:

A prayer from Gavin Schmidt: “Grant us The ability to reduce the uncertainties we can; The willingness to work with the uncertainties we cannot; And the scientific knowledge to know the difference.”

Also from realclimate, a whole bunch of normal distributions which nicely illustrate how the uncertainties in temperature change (in a given business-as-usual co2 scenario) pan out over the century (and a good general discussion of uncertainty.)

I guess I’m arguing about something different: I’d agree that anyone claiming certainty about nuclear power is immediately suspicious. Nothing is certain; they could make some attempt to quantify that uncertainty. However, I’m entirely fine with someone saying the lack of nuclear power implies x warming, *if* it’s backed up. I don’t expect them to fit their full analysis into a soundbite, but it’s also unrealistic to expect everyone to avoid soundbites. Soundbites should be tips of analytically rich icebergs, though. Same as the co2 sensitivity post above, if its based on a given scenario, we know that scenario will probably not pan out like that – but it’s a good guide to thinking.

An article in the Daily Mail a while back neatly boxed one common public perception: scientists are ‘arrogant gods of certainty’. So very wrong. For climate science, the analogy is of a car hurtling about in the dark near some cliffs: the uncertainty of driving over the edge at any moment is not an argument for carrying on. Exactly the reverse: you should slam on the brakes. Uncertainty = the most compelling argument for immediate action.

You say: “science is used on all sides of the debate to try and claim certainty and to dismiss other views.” Yes, absolutely. Science is (still, just about) the garb of choice for everyone claiming they represent The Truth, and it’s often completely unwarranted. J.C.Scott’s ‘seeing like a state’ is on the nail too: the gaze of governments’ eye reshapes things (and the corporate eye, increasingly) and that’s done with mathematical precision: measuring can definitely be part of the problem.

But I’m (foolishly?) holding on to the notion that, while everyone might claim science as their own, and measurement can mean a narrow, warping gaze, logical thinking actualy does allow us to distinguish between nonsense and fact, and that’s worth holding on to. On nuclear, we need to decide. Or, in some imaginary utopia of participatory democracy, we would! How do you think that should happen, if it doesn’t start from carefully sorting wrong things from right things – perhaps leaving an uncomfortably large grey area, but at least pruning the complete drivel?

I suspect we’re talking past each other. Gotta be a better way to talk about this stuff.

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Paul on April 4, 2011 at 8:44 pm said:

Hi again Dan,

Yes, we may be talking past each other. Talking of limits – the limits of intelligent online discussion can be reached quite quickly, I find! At this point, a human conversation is infinitely better.

Still, a few things from me:

Firstly, this post is not about science, or scientists. I’m not one, as I’ve said. This is about how the green movement is trying to speak the language of science (and business, and economics) in order to be taken seriously by the structures of power. I deliberately pointed out the internal struggle within many greens, and I think Osbert’s comment was instructive: many, many greens are driven to do what they do by passion, not reason. That’s a wonderful thing and should be celebrated. But they feel the need to disguise their passion in the garb of science and maths, for fear that they will be laughed at. In the process, they have given up on, or toned down, their original radical narrative,.

When we’re talking about nukes – or anything else involving tech or science – we should be level-headedly assessing the evidence as best we can, while acknowledging its limits. So, for example, I happen to think the pro-nuke lot are right when they make the point that statistically nuclear power is actually quite safe – certainly compared to fossil fuels anyway.

But what they don’t acknowledge – and they don’t because their opponents don’t either – is that this debate is not about numbers. It is about feelings and stories. When I see, for example, George Monbiot go head to head with Caroline Lucas I see two smart people chucking numbers at each other, both trying hard to sound the most level-headed. But I also see, not far below the surface, an entirely different conversation going on, that might go something like:

Anti-nuke green: I just don’t like nuclear power. It scares me. I don’t think we should split the atom. It’s like something out of a Greek myth, it goes too far.
Pro-nuke green: Yes, I know how you feel and I kind of feel that too, but I just think that climate change is even more scary, and this might be a way to help stop it.
ANG: But I believe in small, local, human-scale stuff: I don’t like big technology, it’s hard to control and it has its own momentum and it needs elites to run it.
PNG: That’s true, but the trouble is we’re starting from here and we have to do the least damage at this point. So even though I think it’s all wrong, maybe this is the best of a bunch of bad options. Perhaps it will give us some breathing space to make better choices

Etc. This, I think, is the kind of thing that’s beneath the surface of all these fights. But it’s never stated, for fear of sounding woolly and – horror! – emotional. If it were honestly stated, we could probably get to a much better place. And when we got there, we could intelligently use the best science to assess our options.

Science, though is only a tool which can help guide what are essentially moral, ethical or cultural discussions. Once we start pretending that ‘science’ and science alone can decide whether we use GM crops or nuclear power or agrochemicals or whatever, we have swallowed a very bad story. Too many people seem to be doing that.

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wolfbird on April 4, 2011 at 11:01 pm said:

The Monbiot case seems to contain one element which I find questionable, viz the idea that we replace oil and coal with nuclear… Because, given the insatiable and growing demand for energy, isn’t it far more likely that we will get oil and coal and MORE nuclear ?

Is there any evidence at all that existing nuclear reduced consumption of oil and coal at all ? Not that I know of. Correct me if I’m lacking knowledge.

It’s a bit like the argument some people made when cassettes appeared, that everyone would use recorded talking books, instead of printed paper; and then CDs were going to replace books, and then DVDs…. but we end up with cassettes, CDs, DVDs, and podcasts and Youtubes AND books… and even old vinyl and shellac discs…

So we may end up with the worst outcome from both, climate change AND nuclear waste and inevitable nuclear accidents…

Pure science, as a project inquiring into the nature of things, just tells us that it is possible to split atoms and release energy. We could have left that insight in the text books. The decision to do that, or to use the knowledge to build a bomb or a power station, is, as Paul states, a cultural and political and ethical choice. Those kinds of choices tend to be made by small elite groups, and then the rest of us just have to live with the consequences whether we like it or not.

Think about the canal system or the railway network. If there’d been a democratic vote involving the whole population, would those have happened ? I don’t know. I suspect a small bunch of capitalist entrepreneurs, landed gentry, and politicians and their cronies, treated the land as if it was theirs alone and pushed their schemes through, in the quest for personal enrichment.

I found this page re narratives which I thought is quite useful, to get an intellectual handle on how conflicting narratives interact.

“Narrative denotes an ordered representation of events, though the order need not be strictly chronological. The events, and their order, create meaning. They engage and persuade their audience. Consider the following public sector narratives:
Political. Every political party creates a narrative of recent history to establish its claim to govern. Party leaders present narratives that enhance their life experiences and leadership capabilities. Because these rival narratives are necessarily conflicting, parties and their leaders attempt to disrupt and discredit each other’s narratives.
Personal. When public servants apply for promotion, they must not only document their credentials but also generate a coherent narrative of their employment history and its meaning and why it has uniquely prepared them for the challenges of the new position they seek. They tell their story, using personal examples.
Accountability. Failures are bound to occur and they must be explained. These explanatory narratives, often embodied in auditor-general’s reports or public inquiries, provide sequence and locate agency and culminate in an attribution of responsibility.
Policy and Planning. Policy work always involves a narrative component, for example a recounting of how a policy developed. Similarly, departmental plans involve a predictive narrative of future interactions between environmental forces and departmental commitments.
Narratives pervade the public sector, making narrative competence – skill at creating and communicating compelling stories – essential for both politicians and public servants. Narratives conflict, necessitating skill at the analysis, critique, and disruption of rival narratives.”

http://networkedgovernment.ca/print.asp?pid=1033

There’s probably better academic stuff on the subject out there somewhere.

Some Christians seem to have caught on to the idea, there’s an example here :

http://cicconline.org.uk/events-generic/story-wars-cardiff

I remember reading Henry Lincoln, and the story put about by the Merovingian monarchs, that their family was descended from some weird sea creature, called a Quinotaur. There are many other examples, where tribes or families claim descent from some mythical being. I suppose it adds kudos and specialness, a bit like the claim to Jesus’s birth from a virgin.

Those kind of tales must have been very impressive during mediaeval times. But science has taught us that claims require verifiable evidence to be credible. I’m all in favour of privileging the scientific method over superstition and irrational nonsense. However, like in a court of law, regardless of the scientific forensics, you’ve still got to persuade the jury. If the jury, i.e. the wider public, are incapable of distinguishing between science and fantasy and lies, there’s a big problem…

Everyone is familiar with the climate change battle. Locally, there is the project to kill all the badgers, to appease the dairy farmers, which is a political and cultural battle, and IMO, the science shows clearly that it won’t work, re eradicating bovine TB. But it goes ahead anyway.

http://www.pembrokeshireagainstthecull.org.uk/

If you want an example of a really tough case, how about 9/11 ?

http://www.countercurrents.org/carline310311.htm

What annoys me, is the tendency of scientists to scoff at anything that doesn’t fit their text book version of reality, e.g. UFOs. There are a few scientific studies of the subject which are open minded and impressive, the true character of scientific enquiry IMO, e.g.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GypfLfLkrtg&feature=related

http://www.hessdalen.org/film/

I wonder if the dichotomy is good story v. bad story ? I think what I’m looking for is the honest story v. the deceitful story. The honest story may not, ultimately, be ‘true’, but at least it helps me to evaluate the situation and arrive at a judgement.

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Adrian on April 4, 2011 at 11:15 pm said:

Hello Paul,

Greetings from Illinois. Saw your post at Energy Bulletin. Would like to learn more about Dark Mountain.

Your post says many things I’ve often thought, about competing narratives and the misuse of science and factoids as ammunition to “prove” the rightness of said narratives, and also to decide moral questions–sort of like people used to use theological arguments to “prove” various things. So, scientism?

Here are my thoughts. Some of the greenest folks I know are not in the bind you describe. We have left the conversation. Instead, having acknowledged the “crash into the buffers,” we are concentrating on creating ways of life that offer some possible resilience. For me it has had to do with moving past the anger, grief and denial (a difficult process in itself) and beginning to do what one can with what one has. Understanding one’s own narrative, and centering therein, as it were.

Perhaps this is because we are far from the corridors of power and too local for the national/global level of discussion. Do nuclear power, climate change, habitat destruction, energy uncertainty, and all the rest concern, worry, scare me? Yes. I grieve. (I grieve, too, for the people impacted by the Fukushima disaster.) Will technology save us? No. Can I do much to change what those in power do about such things? No.

There are many other people like me, unknown, not connected with any movement, not taking much part in any discourse. I don’t speak numbers and don’t understand machines. What I know is how to nurture plants. I can grow a garden and share my knowledge and learn from others more knowledgeable. I can tell people my version of the biophilia story as it has to do with my home ecosystem: some will respond favorably; of those, a few will change the way they do a few things because I’ve somehow connected with their idea of “the good.” So that’s what I’m doing.

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Paul on April 4, 2011 at 11:31 pm said:

Adrian – thanks for this. It’s a heartening story and I think quite a common one. To hear that kind of thing gives me more hope than any number of well-argued political positions. It may be that this is where the wisdom lies.

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wolfbird on April 5, 2011 at 9:57 am said:

Alexander Cockburn recently called George Monbiot ‘the silliest man in Britain’. I suppose such phrases are akin to the taunts that champion boxers make to the media, to attract attention to their bouts. Cockburn and Monbiot have clashed in the past, so possibly have some antipathy to settle.

http://winterpatriot.blogspot.com/2007/02/george-monbiot-joins-alexander-cockburn.html

I wouldn’t myself call Monbiot the silliest in Britain, ( I can think of many far sillier ), but having just read his latest three posts re nuclear radiation, I do wonder whether he has gone slightly mad, ( perhaps from overwork ? ) Like Moussa Koussa, he’s suddenly jumped from one side to the other… and what’s the justification or explanation ?

He wrote : “Over the past fortnight I’ve made a deeply troubling discovery. The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice.”

He then posts various frenzied email exchanges. He comes across, to me, as aggressive, pushy, ( perhaps that’s understandable, considering he’s a journalist ) and somewhat petulant, nasty, vindictive, egotistical. Padded with formal politeness. The iron fist in the velvet glove. Is that a ‘green’ example to the world ? Seems just like all the typical egomaniac politicians and thrusting business executives, to me. Oh well… perhaps that’s just my imagined impression.

Anyway, my point is, that he hasn’t shown ANYTHING that he claims, in that reckless and inflammatory opening statement, has he ? Personally, rather than being persuaded and convinced to join him in his newly-discovered enthusiasm for nuclear power stations and radiation, what I find is that his stature, in my own personal estimation, has become considerably diminished.

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/interrogation-of-helen-caldicotts-responses/

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/correspondence-with-helen-caldicott/

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Julian on April 5, 2011 at 11:22 am said:

Yes Adrian and Paul, this surely is where the wisdom lies.

Have you read ‘Anastasia’ by Vladimir Maigre? Its a remarkable story. Maigre explains how Anastasia – brought up and living in the forests of Siberia – sees Russian ‘dachas’ (allotment plots)as the foundation for the survival of mankind. Her knowledge is drawn from ancient Ayurvedic spiritual/scientific teachings which have come down to her via her grandparents.

Somehow, without some direct access to fertile land and some skills in food growing, one is ever reliant on some ‘other’ source for one’s survival. Yet virtually all these ‘other’ sources have been discredited and exposed as having money seeking motives.

Not for nothing that DM is to find itslef in ‘The Sustainability Centre’ this August.

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wolfbird on April 5, 2011 at 11:27 am said:

On the one side, we have a claim that around a million people have died, plus many appalling mutations and disabilities, directly as a result of Chernobyl.

http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/Chernobyl

On the other side, it was just a handful, maybe 28, plus s few hundred cancer cases, etc. Not really a significant problem, considering deaths from car crashes and coal mining.

Monbiot wrote :

“For the past 25 years, anti-nuclear campaigners have been racking up the figures for deaths and diseases caused by the Chernobyl disaster, and parading deformed babies like a mediaevel circus. They now claim that 985,000 people have been killed by Chernobyl, and that it will continue to slaughter people for generations to come. These claims are false.”

Monbiot hasn’t shown the claims are false, at all ! All he’s done is hurriedly question the figure and methodology and then insist that he’s right….

This guy, Yablokov, seems, to me, to be sincere, sober, honest, and has been dedicated to studying the subject for a very long time. I find his view plausible and convincing.

‘Interview with Dr. Alexey Yablokov co-author of “Chernobyl:
Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”.

Dr. Alexey Yablokov is a prominent Russian scientist,
environmentalist, former member of the USSR parliament, and
environmental advisor to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and
the Gorbachev administration. Dr. Yablokov has been a leader in
efforts to reveal conservation and pollution challenges in Russia
such as illegal whaling and radiation contamination, particularly in
marine ecosystems and the biology of marine mammals.’

Believe him ? Believe Monbiot ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-hHTFWXr90

The residue of Chernobyl is still with us, in wild boar, sheep, etc.

“Latest figures ( a year ago, May 2010 ) show 369 UK farms continue to be restricted in the way they can use land and rear sheep because of fallout from the world’s worst nuclear power accident. But the vast majority of the restricted farms – 355 – are in Snowdonia, involving 180,000 of the 190,000 affected sheep.”

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/05/10/farms-still-suffering-chernobyl-restrictions-91466-26411200/

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2011/04/germanys-radioactive-boars-legacy-of.html

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andy brewin on April 5, 2011 at 12:06 pm said:

A fascinating blog and one which gets to the heart of the predicament we face. In other words how do we even begin to face the fact that our current energy supplies are finite, that we have been living beyond our planetary means and that we have created a potentially lethal climatic ‘response’ to this over-exploitation (climate change).

As has been pointed out many times before it seems futile to try and address this by using the same philosophy as got us in to the problem in the first place (‘growth and progress’, ‘big solutions’ etc). This is where I get pretty baffled by the response of generally level headed people like George Monbiot, and why the sort of things we are discussing here is so refreshing.

Nicole Foss, from The Automatic Earth, uses a phrase she calls ‘extend and pretend’ (albeit to describe our economic woes more usually). I see the same approach being used by the ‘Big Green’ lobby as they add ‘more Nuclear’ to extend the ‘growth and progress’ story and pretend that this will address the problems that we are facing.

I may be stepping slightly into ‘hot water’ here but I’d also observe that, and I generalise somewhat here, the people who initially make us aware of issues such as Climate Change, the problems of Nuclear Power, etc, are not necessarily the ones best able to chart a path out of such problems. But they are often the ones we assume will. It seems to me why successful campaigners often make rotten politicians. I suspect Henry Ford was not an expert on the problems of Horse Drawn transportation, when he developed the mass market car.

This particular conundrum seems to me very obvious when one looks at the excellent research and argument that goes into highlighting a particular problem in the first place, but then the often lame ‘cures’ that are advocated as a response. A little like umpteen environmental books I’ve read over the years, that have twenty chapters on the problems and then one (thin) chapter addressing the ‘solutions’ as the author sees it (usually a wish list – you know the thing; ‘A Global Marshall plan’ to mobilise a mass uptake of renewables, etc, etc, etc).

As well as our inability to face up to the truth of our predicament, we are facing a huge lack of imagination when it comes to thinking about different ways in which we might live more fulfilling lives which are more ‘in step’ with what the planet can provide. That’s not going to come from either a George Monbiot or a Mark Lynas. I too have no idea where this fresh thinking will come from but I’d like to think we are beginning to create a forum here that, at least, encourages that approach. I see little evidence of this elsewhere.

I suspect as we begin to remove the ‘crutch’ provided by our ‘energy slaves’ (high energy intensity fossil fuels and the turbocharged financial system that supports it), we may see more evidence of a flowering of imagination. Whilst the fossil fuel era has undoubtedly brought many benefits (as well as huge problems), I suspect it has rather imprisoned our creativity and our opportunity to just ‘be’ rather than ‘buy’.

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Caspar Henderson on April 5, 2011 at 1:08 pm said:

Ah, poets as the “unacknowledged legislators”. Thank you Percy Shelley

I love the idea of a network of dirigible charging stations!

Seriously, though, I’m more or less Aubrey on this (!): beware of false dichotomies. Numerical literacy is essential to poetry (& music) and citizenship (or would that be post-citizenship in a post-civilization?) So too is scientific literacy (poetry and science go together – google: Richard Feynman the inconceivable nature of nature).

On finance, Lancaster is good. See also Gillian Tett’s Fool’s Gold, Michael Lewis’s The Big Short (which is excellent), the web site of New Economics Foundation, Richard Murphy’s blog etc. A little secret: It’s *not so hard to understand* what the banks and their stooges are doing: continuing to xxxx us all up the xxxx. It’s OK to get angry. Don’t worry: unlike Barbara Bush (who was concerned that thinking about the Iraq war would would sully her beautiful mind) you will not spoil your capacity for poetry (your blithe spirit) by learning more about 21st century political economy!

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wolfbird on April 5, 2011 at 1:33 pm said:

So, what happens to all the radio active stuff going into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima ?

Seems that the answer is, wait for it, nobody knows !

“If food chains were simple and easy to describe quantitatively and if only the single-
celled plants were able to extract dissolved elements from sea-water, it would be a relatively
simple task to understand the biological cycling of radioactivity. It would only be
necessary to measure the extent to which various radionuclides were accumulated by the
plant cells and to follow the concentrations of these radionuclides at successive steps
up the food chains supported by the plant cells. This work could be done both in natural
environments receiving radioisotopes or under the controlled conditions of the laboratory.
However, the situation is not nearly so simple, for animals, like plants, can obtain at
least a part of their body burdens of radionuclides directly from the water. In addition,
marine food chains, when studied closely, usually prove to be very complex. A particular
animal species may prey on a large variety of other animals and may change its food
habits with increasing age, with the changing seasons, with changes in the abundance of
prey, or by migration to another environment. Clearly, there is much to be learned
about the transfer of radionuclides between the various organisms comprising marine food
chains. ”

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull154/15405703336.pdf

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Paul on April 5, 2011 at 1:58 pm said:

Nice to know that at least one part of Barbara Bush was beautiful. It’s too late for me to worry about having my beautiful mind sullied, Caspar. I’m more worried about still not quite understanding what securitisation is despite being most of the way through the book … Of course, the banks screwed us. But the precise nature of how they screwed is what interests me. And it sounds like – as I suspected all along – ideology in politics is as much to blame as recklessness in investment banking.

I was trying to avoid false dichotomies – I hope I was clear on that. Nonetheless, I do think there are distinct ways of thinking under discussion here – or perhaps distinct ways of seeing. It would be hard to deny, surely that this culture leans heavily towards the numbers and the graphs and away from the more ‘fuzzy’ ways of seeing the world (something that NEF is quite good on. Did you ever read David Boyle’s essay on fairies?!) Try discussing this on Newsnight and see how far you get!

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Julian on April 7, 2011 at 3:42 pm said:

Paul,

We can at least recognise that subjectivity and objectivity are two parts of one whole. In the same way we can recognise that ‘outward action’ and ‘inward reflection’ are two parts of one whole.

Thus there should be no argument about the validity of both poetry and activism. They are two parts of one whole. Unless we start from ‘the whole’ we cannot solve the standard form of ‘either/or’ argument – which clearly can never produce an satisfactory answer.

So if a poet is quietly attending to his/her vegetable patch, he/she is likely to be sensitive enough to recognise that genetically modified seeds would not be the best things to plant in this newly turned earth. Thus, this poet either decides that it will be necessary to become ‘active’ in trying to achieve a ban of genetically modified seeds or lives with the hope that others will be ‘active’ in this battle on his/her behalf.

What is not admissable is to try and do nothing – a position that the majority of society takes – hence the situation we find ourselves in today.

This little illustration should help make it clear to us that any ‘genuine’ poet/artist cannot be dispassionate about life and what direction it takes. The poet/artist of the 21st century cannot select one half of the whole and try to claim that it is the whole!
Exploring the road ahead while simultaneously attempting to block the advances of that which attempts to destroy (it) is the only ‘complete’ action available to us if we are honest with ourselves.

So the poet, in order to have access to organic seeds and not GM seeds, owes the activist a special place of honour for trying to ensure this remains possible. The activist, on the other hand, in order to deepen and develop a true understanding of that which he/she seeks to defend, must call upon the poet/artist within (and without) to help reveal this.

We are, in our deeper natures, all artists and activists – they are two parts of one whole. If we want to move on and not get caught in an eternal cul de sac, we must unite the two halves of ourselves and cease projecting unresolved internal divisions on the outside world and each other.

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Dan Ross on April 9, 2011 at 12:55 pm said:

Hi Paul, thought Maybe Id stick up for the quants- not got long though.
Paul I think you are generally on the ball in lots of ways; you perhaps are too prone to get carried away with emphatic clichés without careful scrutiny of them. I think you need to be a bit more careful. Lets look at one paragraph:

“We all know by now how big, and unstoppable, the global industrial machine is.” [I know neither of these things. I don’t know how big it is, how you would even quantify its size, or whether it can be stopped, or even frankly what stopping ‘the industrial machine’ (please also define) would look like.] “We know that the global economy relies on resource consumption like a fish relies on gills,” [define resource consumption. If we define resource consumption as the use of one’s environment for survival then this sentence is practically tautology- but also states a fact which is completely innocuous, but I don’t think you meant it to be innocuous] “and we know that when this imperative” [what imperative?]“is combined with accelerating technological change, a rising human population, the virus-like spread of consumer values, a mass extinction event, a changing climate and resource scarcity in a number of (admittedly contested) areas, the results do not look pretty. When we add all this up we also know, if we are being honest with ourselves, that we are not going to be able to prevent the crash into the buffers – which has already begun – from getting very messy indeed.” I don’t agree. I don’t see evidence to share this pessimism. Maybe I haven’t seen enough evidence, but I’m pretty sure this is not something you can state as a given. It needs supporting.

Yes this is what boring scientists do. They scrutinize carefully- they love careful, reasoned argument. But its not just scientists that should do that. scientists are just people. people should be committed to reasoned argument- (surely?) Its hard work in a way, but it stops people going spectacularly wrong. On the other hand, Scientists should not be seen as infallible. That is totally antithetical to principles of science incidentally, something which few people, amazingly, understand. You hear people quoting ‘scientists’ as if it MUST be true if a scientist said it. But that’s the exact opposite of what science is about.

Quants vs poets. I think it is a disservice to some of your ideas to imply they have no empirical grounding.

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Paul on April 9, 2011 at 1:31 pm said:

Hi Dan,

Well, as I’ve pointed out a couple of times, this is not a blog about science or scientists. Neither is it an attack on them. Neither is it a suggestion that we shouldn’t use ‘reasoned argument.’

It’s a suggestion that the green movement has become too prone to arguing using numbers and not prone enough to arguing using stories and values. This is not the same thing as saying numbers are unimportant. Or facts. I was quite clear about this.

We could argue all day about evidence for that paragraph, of course. I think there’s plenty, and that’s what i’m doing here. It’s all contested and it could be wrong, but I don’t think it is, in the main. But a lot of this has covered before in various guises here.

As for an ‘empirical grounding’. Well, how would you define that?

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Dan Ross on April 10, 2011 at 12:08 pm said:

Hello again Paul,

I suppose I would define ‘empirical grounding’ as backed up by observation and evidence. I was a bit rushed when writing that.

I hope its clear, that these criticisms are friendly. Perhaps it isn’t; I hear people use the internet often to make seriously nasty comments to people- this is not what I’m doing. I don’t think I’d bother if it weren’t for the fact I agree with you on a lot of what I think are significant points.

We could argue all day about the evidence for that paragraph- which is why I don’t think it should be taken as given… but you say you have covered why you think these things extensively elsewhere- fair enough, I’ve not read most of your writing so I wouldn’t know (although I am currently reading Real England and it is Badass).

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Dan Ross on April 10, 2011 at 12:41 pm said:

oh yea, and p.s. these people who scoff at you for having a different point of view, don’t sound like scientists to me. They sound like arseholes. and there a plenty of arsehole poets who do that as well- and I know some very well!

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wolfbird on April 10, 2011 at 1:27 pm said:

@ Dan

Empirical typically means measurable. How do you measure stuff like beauty, grace, pleasure, love, and similar things ? I’d suggest that the non-empirical ineffable qualities are actually what makes life worth living.

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Paul on April 10, 2011 at 6:10 pm said:

Hi Dan,

I think wolfbird hits the nail on the head here. The point, surely – and it’s a point I make many times in Real England and which I hope it made for me by the stories in that book – is that much of what we’re talking about here cannot be measured by science. I’m continually fascinated by how we hold ‘science’ up as some kind of holy writ in this culture – along with economics. One the one hand we routinely say ‘oh, but of course science is not about certainty’ and then in the next breath we’re saying ‘well, I haven’t seen any scientific evidence for that claim.’

Much of what the green movement was supposed to be about, and green politics was supposed to be about can not be measured by peer-reviewed papers. It is about ethical and moral values, feelings, intuition and ways of living – relationships. This is not the business of science, and the tragedy of the greens is that they have become so ashamed of talking in these terms that they are using ‘science’ as a cover. They end up being dishonest on both counts, and because people can sniff out the agenda beneath the numbers, they are not trusted either.

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Dan Ross on April 10, 2011 at 6:15 pm said:

@ Wbird; empirically does not typically mean measurable, at all as far as I’m aware. A google definition of empirical is: “Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic”. I typed it into google. thats what I got.
but empirical was probably the wrong word to use, I was in a rush. I have no desire to exclude from consideration all those things that we do not have a method for attempting to measure.

@Paul
maybe read this letter in response to Monbiot’s nuclear article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/06/no-definitive-answers-nuclear-debate

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Paul on April 10, 2011 at 8:03 pm said:

I was just sent this, which I think is quite apposite:

http://naturalsystems.blogspot.com/2011/04/monbiot-goes-strangelove.html

Dan – that’s a very good letter; from a scientist, who in his last paragraph in particular is making the point I am making here: which is to say that above and beyond ‘the science’ it is other things which should actually be guiding the decisions we take as a society.

I think we might be talking across each other a bit. This is not a call for another rerun of the scrap between science and art, but a call to be clear about when we use particular disciplines and ways of seeing. My suggestion is that many greens have pretended – in order to be heard in an over-ordered society which believes that everything worthwhile can be quantified – that they are basing their views on ‘science’ or ‘empirical evidence’ when in some cases at least they are expressing views about value systems but are afraid to openly voice them. This does no-one any favours – environmentalists or the scientists they claim back up their views. And it should not be necessary to pretend to understand the science of nuclear power – insofar as anyone does – to express a view about whether it is the kind of power source you would like to see in your society.

Since you brought up my book Real England, I hope that is an example of a sensible balance. In order to make my case I had to carefully build up and display the empirical evidence, and I had to get it right. But I also spent a lot of time telling stories which I hope made clear that evidence of that kind was not enough in itself to understand the depth of what matters in society.

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wolfbird on April 10, 2011 at 11:34 pm said:

Okay, Dan, let’s not get bogged down in an argument over definitions of words – seeing as you say ‘empirical’ was probably not the exact word for what you intended to say – I tend to use it re stuff that can be measured, but I accept that’s a bit vague…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

Thing is, science, as a project, ( which I respect ) can only deal with stuff that can be measured. It’s like the guys who started that project said to themselves, ‘there’s lots of weird things we don’t understand at all, so let’s make a start on what we can easily tackle.’ Phenomena like temperature, conductivity of metals, melting points, behaviour of gases, light, composition of rocks, etc, etc.

That project has been astonishingly successful. Trouble is, that success lead to hubris, and forgetting all the stuff that isn’t amenable to the scientific method. It’s strange how reasonable scientists, with highly disciplined minds, tend to freak out and get emotional if you mention dream analysis, or astrology, or homeopathy, or ghosts, or ESP, or Rupert Sheldrake, etc.

I read Snow’s Two Cultures many decades ago. I didn’t really understand it at the time, in the sense that it didn’t seem useful towards my personal quest. That quest led me to conclude that intellectual analysis is pretty useless. What I recommend is to transcend all that cerebral stuff.

What I mean is actual practical exercises to deepen one’s being. Like making an intense effort to raise one’s level of consciousness, to rise above the usual stream of thought, impressions, mental chatter, etc. If a person makes a great effort, to be fully and only in the moment, the ‘here and now’, without any thought or intention or expectations, like a weight lifter trying for a record, or a drowning person trying to reach the air, if that sort of practice is repeated briefly over a few days, it kind of integrates with the rest of one’s habits, becomes itself a habit, and gets easier to sustain.

It’s a sort of way of escaping from the cultural and intellectual chains which limit us. A window to pause at and contemplate the cosmic view. Thus one can gently change one’s one character and outlook, and have a richer, more profound, more fulfilling life…

It’s pretty much following Aldous Huxley’s idea that the brain is a kind of valve which shuts out 90% of incoming information, because it’s not directly relevant to our conscious aims and intentions.
The song of a thrush, the blue sky above, and so much more, gets censored because we are ‘busy’, strangled by our own narrow conception, conditioned to perceive our world through learned filters.

Maybe dreamy poetic types probably find this sort of thing easier than quant types, with more rigid mental structures.

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Julian on April 11, 2011 at 9:39 am said:

wolfbird;

How are you my friend?

That is indeed a useful bit of advice for those accustomed to living in and amongst “the chatter” which so distorts our deeper comprehension and peace.

The other thing is to ascribe space for reconcilliation of opposites. As I was trying to say earlier: we don’t need to divide the poetic instinct and the activist drive from each other. Even science and art are wedded at the deepest level – like Einstein.

When in your state of calm detachment one sees that almost all opposites are really two parts of one whole. Infact the inner poet stirs the will to action!
Its called ‘passion’ – but that is a rather scary word to dear old brits! Remember the comedy “No sex please – we’re British”..

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wolfbird on April 11, 2011 at 11:15 pm said:

Gosh, a polite person with good manners on the internet ! that’s unusual :-)

I’m working as hard as I can, outside, planting things, cutting things… adjusting from winter rhythms to summer mode…. How are you, Julian ?

Watched a Common Lizard today, which was a joyful magic moment…

Don’t know if the British lack passion. Maybe they just direct it towards stuff like football… crazy country, anyway, anybody remember The Prisoner ? ” I’m not a number, I’m a free man ! ” hahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv813f2Xtrg

I love the weird eccentricity of some British characters, like Clough Williams-Ellis, creating Port Meirion, which was post-modern before postmodernism was invented…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmeirion

Sometimes strikes me that the British don’t know or understand their own culture, so are constantly grasping onto tropes and themes, assimilating and incorporating fragments of other people’s cultures…

Just watched Neil Oliver’s latest offering, and pondered the vast cultural change between the Bronze and Iron ages…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0108tsq

The stark contrast between our ‘modern’ environment and our deep past…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiZ7uqmBHrA

And while I’m subverting Paul’s topic, ( about which I can think of nothing to add at this moment ), and thinking of Huxley’s Doors of Perception, entheogens, art, etc, here’s a cool page which suggests that magic mushrooms were used 6000 years ago. I wonder if they influenced the development of culture ?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928025.400-earliest-evidence-for-magic-mushroom-use-in-europe.html

http://www.springerlink.com/content/g33246r281hr43v1/

http://www.thehawkseye.com/hispanica/hisp.html

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Julian on April 12, 2011 at 9:39 am said:

Wolfbird,

Interesting. These ‘magic mushrooms’ seem to carry more importance than meets the eye. An excellent source on this is ‘Terence McKenna’ who (maybe you already know?) was a great US west coast experimenter with halucinogenics. He formulated some quite plausible theories about the role of the magic mushroom in opening up the mystical experience to very early seekers. Jonathon Black (Secret History of the World) connects the magic mushrooms to the ‘mystery schools’ that carried forward the esoteric and mystical levels of Christianity.

Heh – check out McKenna on You Tube – I think you will have some fun!

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wolfbird on April 12, 2011 at 11:19 am said:

Hi Julian,

Thanks, yes, I’m familiar with Terence McKenna’s ideas. I differ from him on one major point, in that I believe one can get all the insights available via entheogens, from meditation. Yes, meditation requires a lot more effort and self-discipline than taking chemicals. But the effort and self-discipline are also very valuable.
The dramatic, confusing, even overwhelming, experiences produced by high-impact psychoactive chemicals may have a kind of shock value, to wake someone up to alternative realities, but don’t give time to actually learn how to find those realities in ordinary daily life. I think that the gradual exploration, a bit at a time, via meditation, provides a more solid and deeper insight. It’s also a safer route. I’ve known a lot of chaotic reckless drug takers who never learned how to retain the cosmic high whilst simultaneously operating in the mundane everyday world of bills, shopping, police, bank accounts, etc., who have hopelessly messy lives.

Re all the pro-nuclear shills who have been flooding the internet with comments to play down Fukushima, ‘ Nothing like Chernobyl ‘ bla bla bla – I note that the Fukushima disaster is now category 7, putting it at the same level as Chernobyl, and :

“The risks associated with iodine-131 contamination in Europe are no longer “negligible,” according to CRIIRAD, a French research body on radioactivity. The NGO is advising pregnant women and infants against “risky behaviour,” such as consuming fresh milk or vegetables with large leaves.”

http://www.euractiv.com/en/health/radiation-risks-fukushima-longer-negligible-news-503947

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Julian on April 12, 2011 at 2:37 pm said:

While I do agree with your sentiment, McKenna did achieve some wonderfully poetic/scientific insights while in that state and even when not – it seems. He also had a wickedly dry sense of humour, something sometimes lacking in comitteed meditators..

I’ve just finished preparing a field (in Malapolska, Poland) for early potatoes and am now about to start planting leaf veg on the veg plot. Sowing seed (like rye) is done mostly by hand on the small fields out here. I have just about managed to learn the timeless rhythm associetd with this from observing neighbouring peasant farmers’ seed scattering (broadcasting) techniques. Its an art really. But like all ‘good’ art – it requires practice and discipline. The next job is preparing ‘stop GMO’ actions and awareness raising initiatives. We have somehow managed to hold up any commercial GM planting in Poland so far, but corporate greed and government intransigence produce a dangerous mix that requires all one’s wits to counteract.

Fukushima fall out will mix with Chenoble’s residues here. A wise Russian scientist once said that Chenoble’s radio active particles would only start to ‘come down’(from the upper atmosphere where they have been circulating) in significant amounts as of 2006/7.

Its an unfolding tradgedy of great proportions and the herald of more such – no doubt.

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wolfbird on April 12, 2011 at 4:35 pm said:

Hmmm. Unfolding tragedy illustrated here, photos from the Fukushima exclusion zone…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375877/Japan-nuclear-disaster-Pictures-tsunami-ravaged-Fukushima.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I had neighbours, about 50 years ago, who sowed grass seed by hand, grand father, father, son, walking methodically across the field, each with a fiddle to distribute the seeds.

Here’s a poem someone wrote on the subject :

I Remember the Seed Fiddle.

This happened in spring 1944 when I was 6 years old

Father he sowed the grass seed, with an old seed fiddle,
The field across the road, from house was all in stubble,
He filled up his fiddle, with grass seed and clover.
Seed bag as this end marker, his blue jacket at other,

Four yards move the marker, at each end of the bout,
March strait like a soldier, strides even and stout,
He pushed and pulled the bow, with each stride he took,
For the seed must spread thinly, according to the book.

Working all through the morning, half the field is sown
He was heading for the sack, on which he could sit down,
As a little lad to see my dad, went across the field,
Picked up his jacket on the way, look at me I squealed.

On seeing what I’d done, he wasn’t very pleased,
He lost his far end marker, and with grass fine seed,
There was no way of telling, where he’d sown up to,
At very early age I learned, what the markers do.

Countyman

http://www.fwi.co.uk/community/blogs/fretaw/archive/2009/02/20/the-old-seed-fiddle.aspx

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wolfbird on April 12, 2011 at 7:17 pm said:

Helen Caldicot responds to Monbiot :

“Proponents of nuclear power – including George Monbiot, who has had a mysterious road-to-Damascus conversion to its supposedly benign effects – accuse me and others who call attention to the potential serious medical consequences of the accident of “cherry-picking” data and overstating the health effects of radiation from the radioactive fuel in the destroyed reactors and their cooling pools. Yet by reassuring the public that things aren’t too bad, Monbiot and others at best misinform, and at worst misrepresent or distort, the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation exposure – and they play a predictable shoot-the-messenger game in the process.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/11/nuclear-apologists-radiation

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Julian on April 12, 2011 at 7:33 pm said:

While I am thinking about it I would like to propose another line on ‘Climate Change’ (ex Global Warming). In my opinion it is highly unlikely to be just ONE set of conditions that is dramatically altering our weather patterns: i.e. CO2, methane and similar pollutant/emmissions – the line taken by George Monbiot and the IPCC. From my observations and studies – climate change/weather destabilisation (and I consider them inseperable) is likely to be brought about by a number of factors. For example: 1. High tech US military ‘weather wars’ which have been conducted for at least the last two decades and involve a mixture of almost daily atmospheric aerosol spraying and HAARP electro magnetic/microwave pulses. 2.Solar activities – having a minimally understood affect on our planetary weather patterns 3. Shifts in the Earth’s magnetic core. 4. The IPCC/George Monbiot official version.

Oh well, since this is not a ‘peer reviewed’ opinion I suppose it can be consigned to the trash bin. Does anyone know a peer with a keen sense of conspiracy?

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wolfbird on April 30, 2011 at 1:04 pm said:

A. Curtis latest, preview :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/04/_in_order_to_see.html

Previous works :

http://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/happy-christmas/

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ovaut on May 5, 2011 at 11:01 pm said:

europe, rotors massed
off the coast. elsewhere

destruction sweeps the land
like the sun going in

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Geoff Mosley on May 6, 2011 at 9:35 am said:

There is a better way. it is spelled out by the Center for the Steady State Economy (CASSE) it could become your way.

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Geoff Mosley on May 6, 2011 at 9:37 am said:

You can read more about CASSE in my book

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51677675/Replacing-endless-econ-growth

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Nullius on May 6, 2011 at 12:04 pm said:

A superb essay. Thanks.

I’m reminded of a theme in Sam Harris’s new book _The Moral Landscape_ in which he examines Hume’s famous claim that you can’t derive an ought from an is.

Hume is right in many cases, but it is also true to say that if you want to know what you ought to do in a situation, you almost always need to know the facts of the case first. Without the “is” there can only be a number of possible “oughts”. Surely this applies to the “green problem”?

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Jon on May 6, 2011 at 3:12 pm said:

It will be the very wealthy that drive the final nails into the coffin of Mother Earth…

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Joe Niederberger on May 6, 2011 at 5:14 pm said:

The Poets will win when it is too late – when the great masses of humanity reject all the trappings of modern-mega-industrial society and Dawkins-like scientific materialism (i.e., the myth that “that’s all there is”) because it (at some point in the future) it, as a guiding philosophy, will so obviously be a failure at providing the conditions for continuing life.

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Pollyanna Kaan on May 6, 2011 at 5:29 pm said:

Paul is so right to say that we need a way of comparing narratives. And the idea that there will always be multiple narratives ( rather than a search for one “true” story ) is essential. The weaving together of different narrative structures and the identification of points of real dispute between them is the task of dialectical epistemology. It transcends what Aubrey Meyer (in this same thread) called “false narratives” by finding a better idea inherent in the polarity. A 60s book called Paradigms and Fairy Tales explained the epistemology behind this and the author has recently brought it up to date with one which examines all the ideas around quants v poets and manages a halfway cheerful conclusion without conceding an inch to capitalist consumerism. The latest one is called “Never Point at a Rainbow: An Introduction to Radical Logic”

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anna b on May 7, 2011 at 12:02 am said:

“But it could also, perhaps more honestly and productively, be represented as a tension that is present within all”
I had thoughts similar…… That between our heads is a …space which does not understand …the other self …About

our attempt of control of reality (Quants)
and observing loss of control of reality (poets)

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anna b on May 7, 2011 at 12:17 am said:

And a discussion , about the difference between need and want ….

Being with your desire is valuable , rushing through it , as consumers do , wastes part of the experience.

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BlueChris on May 7, 2011 at 4:48 am said:

I have spent quote a lot of time recently arguing (bickering?) on somewhat similar lines with various acquaintances and colleagues in the green movement. I say somewhat, because my discussions have not been about numbers as such – rather, they have been on the failure of the modern green movement, in the US in particular, to present a coherent narrative. It feels as if the movement has become ideologically paralysed by market research – notably, it seems that Americans love farmers, and therefore American environmentalists must use messages that make it sound like they love farmers too. This is particularly intriguing in cases where the farmers are the largest part of the problem that is trying to be addressed – so afraid of offending the majority have we become, that the green narrative has started being designed to actively perpetuate the narratives that are the greatest barrier.
We do (Paul and I) differ on the details of the issue though, perhaps an inevitable consequence of his status as ‘poet’ and my status as ‘quant’. Paul lumps the narratives of business and science together. If you don’t much care for numbers, they might well seem part of the same problem, but I think that this type of conflation of science and business (normally from the other side) is actually central to the problem. An analysis that tells us whether something actually works, be it a vaccine reducing infection rates, or a wind turbine producing more energy than is use to make it, or a catalytic converter reducing vehicle emissions, is a scientific analysis. If it is a good scientific analysis, then it gives us useful information – use the vaccine unless we want to be infected, don’t bother with these wind turbines, fit catalytic converters on our cars. These are relatively objective questions, with objective answers. If a scientific analysis of this sort includes assumptions, they are more or less philosophically neutral – air can be treated as an ideal fluid, most people react in a comparable way to vaccines, vehicular emissions have common characteristics and solutions.
A business analysis on the other hand, in which category I shall unceremoniously include economic analysis, comes with a set of assumptions that are deeply philosophically loaded – welfare can be well described in dollars, free markets are populated by perfectly informed consumers, individuals will act in their financial interest. Economics has been accorded a falsely scientific status. Consider the debate between the Keynesians and monetarists – crisis after crisis the same debates are rehashed. There are no experiments to confirm or deny these ideas – there is even an economic theory that says (more or less) that if a nation acts as if an economic theory were true, this will be enough to render it false. Adam’s Curtis’ Pandora’s box is pertinent on these issues.
To close in defense of the quants, I will note a passage that struck me in Paul’s thoughts: “This, after all, is an approach designed to produce clear and concrete results – something which is undeniably useful in an age of ecocide. But what narrative framework are the results being produced in?”. Paul claims that we have too many quants and not enough poets, but implicit in his argument is the fact that the quants are not making the running, we are not in thrall to their narrative. Look at modern US Republicanism. They will certainly fall back on quantification when it suits them, but they’re are more than happy to let their poetry soar when the evidence is weak. Quantification is a fig leaf worn for a poetry of greed, economics is the servant of that poetry. By all means, I agree that the environmental movement needs to challenge that poetry, but let us not pretend that it is a poetry born solely out of science.
I refer the group to the constantly engaging work of Ben Goldacre, and at risk of misrepresenting him I would say that his ongoing blogathon against ‘Bad Science’ places a correct emphasis that the problem with numbers is their misuse, not their use, and that the answer to this is not to reject them but to take them to the people. So be careful what you wish for – it might be that far from moving us forward, a narrative that is explicitly against using your numbers wisely is a narrative that plays into supply-side economics, and climate change and AIDS denial, and trickle down theory – because, for better or worse, we have invented a world in which sometimes it requires numbers to understand what’s going on at all.

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Joe Niederberger on May 7, 2011 at 12:50 pm said:

We have a society that has now traded the seven sins and seven virtues for Ann Rynd and “greed is good” (or God) and “winning is the only thing”. Scientific materialism preaches that our lives are randomly generated movements of particles from the big meaningless bang, which itself was some fluke from a vast number of randomly generated universes. Trillions of monkeys typing, metaphorically speaking, really did produce Shakespear’s plays.

How will this kind of society respond to environemental destruction?
It can’t really value anything properly with its deep beliefs such as they are. Above are the real myths that operate in our society. Can you change them?

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Auntiegrav on May 7, 2011 at 2:26 pm said:

The circumstance of human consumption is relatively simple: we take more than we put back for our own future. Regardless of the technology du jour which happens to be discussed, the truth is that the usefulness of something is temporal: value is only valuable if it is useful in the future. The Greens tend to talk about activities or technology (from plowing the soil to nuclear power) from the standpoint of some kind of ‘steady-state’ economics: as though many of the activities of humans don’t need to be evaluated as long as they can keep doing them for some undetermined time frame. The idea that if something will last until 2090, it is better than something which only lasts until 2020. This is a distraction from the root of the problem. Humans have to stop thinking in terms of ‘what we can get’ and BEHAVE (it doesn’t matter what we believe) in terms of what we are giving to the universe’s (and hence, our) future. There are VERY few things that either ‘greens’ or ‘consumers’ can say fit this category. This ‘net usefulness’ (our quantitative generosity vs. our consumption), WILL determine our fate, as it has for every species that ever evolved. Its first step is reduction of consumption, so that we don’t have to create as much future usefulness to overcome our consumption. It is the basic simplicity of living things that they have to overcome entropy by doing MORE than just minimizing consumption if they want to survive the random threats of the universe. Humans did it once or we wouldn’t exist now. We just got too imaginative and consumptive.

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Mandy Meikle on May 7, 2011 at 2:40 pm said:

Great post Paul and I’m so sorry I didn’t make it to your recital in Edinburgh last month. I totally agree that the green movement has been trying to have its cake & eat it. For years I’ve been up against arguments over how to replace fossil fuels without changing society too much. While we need poets, we also need some quants who understand the laws of thermodynamics (well, the first two at least).
Anyway, don’t give up!
Mandy

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Stude on May 7, 2011 at 11:11 pm said:

What a lot of waffle.
Quite simply, it is too late to prevent the extinction of Earthlife. As God is Life, you can decide for yourself whether God is incompetent or is unwilling to continue supporting those greedy Religious who are demanding eternal Life in some heaven in the sky, so seeks God’s own TERMINUS.

The only place where eternal Life will be found is Hell. As the translated welsh poet said “Give me Man’s Hell not God’s remorseless Heaven”.

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Auntiegrav on May 10, 2011 at 2:00 pm said:

“If you really want to see where a green quant is coming from, simply catch him in the middle of one of these arguments and ask him (and it usually is a him) to define ‘need’. Then watch the narrative spooling out like film from a broken cannister.”

LMAO!! This is SO true. Not just with green quants (though, I understand the emphasis because they are SUPPOSED to know), but with anyone, anywhere. Health insurance? We don’t need health insurance; we need healthy people. Government? Trade? Money? It all comes down to the realities of being useful to our own (and thus, the planet’s) future. If all of our ‘values’ are based on consuming the future, WTF do we expect will happen? Most Christians simply think in terms of consuming Heaven when they get there, not showing up ready to do some work.

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Joe Landwehr on May 12, 2011 at 11:54 pm said:

Great post. However, quants and poets need not be mutually exclusive. There is actually a deeper story behind numbers, which goes to the mythological root of how this world is constructed and how we humans use and abuse the gift of consciousness to either align ourselves with natural law, or flaunt it with dire consequences. This deeper understanding of numbers was known to Pythagoras and his followers, and largely lost to us today. I’ve attempted to reconstruct these ideas in a modern context in a new book called Astrology and the Archetypal Power of Numbers, Part One: A Contemporary Reformulation of Pythagorean Number Theory – written for non-astrologers. The book weaves together personal experience with mythology, spiritual psychology, social commentary, environmental politics, history, and yes, astrology (not your daily horoscope, but a deeply sophisticated language rooted in archetypal stories) to show how innate intelligence is built into the very fabric of the manifest world, and us as well. I argue that our survival depends upon our capacity to access this intelligence and make it the primary basis for our individual and collective decisions. Hard core quants may dismiss the arguments as beside the point, but poets and quants a bit uneasy with the qualitative dimension of numbers may find some answers here. See my web site – http://www.ancient-tower-press.com for more details. Yes, this is an advertisement, but one that is quite relevant to the discussion here of numbers vs. stories.

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Harry W on May 15, 2011 at 12:28 am said:

As a green quant who’d love more poetry,I wonder about two kinds of climate stories:
Are not many stories to be told about climate change initially about impacts – and adaptation? Here in South Africa, Leonie Joubert is documenting stories about ‘people in a changing climate’
Do we not need stories about reducing emissions – whether one at a time, or many at once?
I hope you start telling the latter stories at the DM project

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Joe Niederberger on May 17, 2011 at 6:28 pm said:

There is a terrific posting at commondreams.org that says it very well indeed: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/17-6 -
“Leaving the Church of Free Market Miracles” – and the author is certainly is a poet for the times: Phil Rockstroh — see http://philrockstroh.com/

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J.D. Smith on May 18, 2011 at 5:29 pm said:

In a parallel to your post, Richard Wilbur addressed the same dilemma for arms control advocates in his poem “Advice to a Prophet”, available at this link: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15485

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