Lesson one of tracking your loved ones: They will toy with your mind just because they can. Lesson Two: tracking makes you paranoid – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p168
Big money is to be made in Haiti – capitalists can capitalize on any disaster – they always have their eyes on the prize – 60m cubic meters of earthquake rubble to dispose of. Will the contractor’s political donations see results in Haiti? You can count on that now that properties are people and people are properties. Big profits were made in Katrina – AshBritt garnered $900m in US government contracts and with the rush for results, little oversight is maintained. This is called Neo-Capitalism – profits belong to the investor, loses are passed on to taxpayers – it’s the best of both government and business – it’s the American way. This morning 20% of all sales in the coffee shop are going to Haiti. No one asks how it is to be spent. They are just glad to be helping out.
Just as the absence of acknowledgment of community in economic theory has led to the destruction of human community in economic practice, so also the neglect of the physical world in economic theory has led to its degradation in economic practice – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p190
Theological tourism also called Christian Imperialism – ‘Immersion’ trips by eager university and church groups who descend upon countries full of poor people. The participants then proceed to ‘immerse’ themselves in the concrete lives of these poor people and thereby gain a feeling after a week of living alongside a community that they understand and know what’s best for these poor populations.
The human mind is desperate to find patterns… Patterns imply meaning. But sometimes things can be random and without patterns – Marcus du Sautoy – Symmetry, 2008 p.97
It is not coincidental that all things seem connected – it is the natural result of web of life that we weave
Rime ice had formed in feathery windrows on shattered grey rocks, which were also marked with lichens the colour of lime and tangerine. Between the rocks, snow lay in strips and furrows, dry and granular as sand – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p155
I like it
When I read
This poetry
As if
I had not
Myself
Written it
This felling
Of distance
Away
From myself
As if
I were not the
Me
That I had read
Here
And that is
True
Everywhere / Giant finned cars nose / Forward like fish / A savage servility / Slides by on grease – Robert Lowell
Americans have the best government that money can buy
A handful get paraded around in front of the cameras and we millions are still at home, in the dark, doing what we’ve always done since the inception of television; passively watching… It’s the lie of fame restated for the lazy and complacent – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p114
Cognitive fluency is the new hot topic in psychology – a measure of how easy it is to think about something. People prefer to think about things that are easy to think about – shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names significantly out perform those with hard-to-pronounce names. Writing in a clear font or making it rhyme or simply repeating can alter people’s judgment of the truth of a statement (nothing new in this to preachers and marketeers).
Can we hit a carbon Undo button? “Not a hope in hell” – James Lovelock
Soundbytes work best when there is a vacuity of actual knowledge
Homo Sapiens now splash golf courses across deserts, joyride in outer space, update their Facebook profiles from the South Pole. And technological change is accelerating – Spencer Reiss – Wired (Dec 2009) p3
Easy = True: Cognitive Fluency
As we begin to accept climate change as inevitable We shall begin to grapple with diminishing diversity and a diminished resource base (biological, fossil fuels, and minerals – or at least the availability of cheap resources).. But what the heck there [has always] been the technological fix. None of those are complete solutions – it’s the sum of ‘all’ progress that will get us through – Spencer Reiss – Wired (Dec 2009) p3 In Technology do we now pray. Let's have 30 seconds of silence for the ice caps.
Should you ask if I’m sane, I’ll say, “absolutely”. If you should ask if I were insane, I’ll say the same.
`Autonomy understood as negative liberty is the single-family dwelling of ethics – Willard Gaylin – The Perversion of Autonomy: coercion and constraints in a liberal society, 2003
My guests are gone. It’s time to repair my mind and catch up on my me-dos (my selfish honey-dos). She had said, “brush your hair before you go out”. I obeyed. She said, “I’m mean aren’t I?” “Yes”, I agreed, “you make me do what I ought to have done in the first place”. We said goodbye.
Not hindering is different from helping - Willard Gaylin – The Perversion of Autonomy: coercion and constraints in a liberal society, 2003
Dimitri the photographer told me to set my alarm clock at an arbitrary time and write down whatever came to mind when I was awoken – “But wouldn’t the shock of the alarm going off dispel any dream consciousness that I had (or more precisely any dream non-consciousness),” I asked him. “The idea.” he remindes me, “is to capture a non-cognitive state of mind” But that’s another project I am already pursuing “Rules for Following People” and then there is my “Breakfast Project” where I eat breakfast at every place that serves it along a specific transit line. But with his project I could be engaged 24-7, oh great! To be worried about keeping busy once one retires is crazy. It is not keeping busy that is the problem, it is the relevance of one’s activities that is called in to question and in our culture anything for which you are not remunerated is not worthwhile unless it is recreational. And what about self-improvement? You mean a hobby! No, I am talking about a project – like right know I have in mind researching jalapeno potato chips. “What for?” he asked.
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