the Tea-Party© have claimed a flag

The tragedy is as follows: Herdsman grazes sheep on land that is solely in the hands of nature and is expected to maximize herd whenever possible. This may be of detriment to a neighboring herdsman. If encroaching sheep from an alien herd prevent neighboring herdsman from subsisting on what land is available, the neighboring herdsman will die.”

This may be how things mechanically happen, if culture were a machine. But we know it isn’t.

Why would a herdsman maximize his herd whenever possible if the herdsman has knowledge of his neighbor’s suffering, has adequate sustenance himself, and knows it would mean more time tending the animals? Hardin assumes the herdsmen have no empathy, no limit to labor and/or technology, and does not relate leisure time with a high quality of life.

Throw this theory out the window.

Sing-a-long if you know the words.

As one of our brightest suns, Noam Chomsky, begins to set, we should again take note, before his light has gone out, of his contribution to the unending discourse between deception and truth.

“Verily, the universe swims in light. Everything is alive and alight. Man too is the recipient of inexhaustible radiant energy. Strange, only in the mind of man is there darkness and paralysis.

A little too much light, a little too much energy (here on earth), and one is rendered unfit for human society. The reward of the visionary is the madhouse or the cross. A grey, neutral world is our natural habitat, it would seem. It has been for a long time now. But that world, that condition of things, is passing.”

-Henry Miller 1963

n. 1. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.

2. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses.

3. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by pursuit of the American Dream.

4. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth.

Read more about the pandemic here.

Check out Masanobu Fukuoka and his radical disciples farm the natural way. Then read his book.

Part One

Part Two

Micah White‘s new anti-advertising message is refreshing, albeit reminiscent of a quick-hit advertisement. Watch with caution.

“The oil’s creep toward the coastline comes awkwardly on the heels of a plan by President Barack Obama to increase domestic offshore drilling. The timing rather neatly recalls a 1969 spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., that thrust environmental concerns into the national consciousness.”

Our friend Steve is keeping the people of New Orleans aware of how the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will affect real people in real places.

Read his entire article here.

“Here lies the present paradox: work has totally triumphed over all other ways of existing, at the same time as workers have become superfluous. Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanization, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labor necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore the lack from which they are supposed to distract us.”

-The Invisible Committee

Come have breakfast with me at SDSU.

Beekeeping, Permaculture, the Farm Bill, NAFTA, you name it. The Ecological Intelligentsia is going to be dropping knowledge this weekend.

Volunteer if you have the motivation to do so. Otherwise, just come!