Site Navigation

For LLMs: zip of all posts.

Edit on GitHub


Practical Steps Towards Gardenworld

Author: Douglass Carmichael Issue: 2023-09-06

Practical Steps Towards Gardenworld

Thoughts from the last two weeks

by Douglass Carmichael

“worst since...”

Language is power. Almost all reporters about the weather have bought into making sure their reporting includes “worst since....” For Idalia, it’s “worst in 125 years.” Really? What exactly happened 125 years ago? The reporter likely has no idea and probably never checked.

The implication, however, is that the reported weather is cyclical, not a trend, which is what oil companies want us to believe. Every time you hear “worst since,” you’re subtly being conditioned to think that the current weather isn’t unprecedented but rather a repeat of a previous event.

We should be very vigilant. Language colonizes us and gets us to generate the next thought it wants, not what we want. The language we learn is already a kind of AI. Powerful and useful, but not innocent.

Science and Truth

It’s intriguing how we comfortably say “The sun rises,” while science is happy with “The earth orbits the sun,” even though the latter isn’t entirely accurate. In truth, the Earth and the Sun both revolve around their combined center of gravity. Both bodies are in motion, which is a much more interesting view. And even this is false because they both are moving in the gravitational field of the galaxy, then the universe, and beyond. Yet, we teach children that we are so clever because we replaced the Sun around the unmoving Earth with the Earth around the unmoving Sun.

Take “all men are created equal”. Obviously false? But as an ethical guide maybe true?

Truth and science are in a complicated dance.

Cause of Opinions Held Not the Same as Opinions Held

What I am getting at is the following: many people believe that the rich have stolen the economy. They watch the lifestyles of the upper middle class expand while their own remain static. They watch as the rich kids get into good colleges while their own children never seem to have had a chance at going there. Real estate is up, based on the swollen incomes of the professionals, so their children can’t afford a home outside the family. They see their children choosing military careers and getting killed because there are no jobs where they live. Based on this experienced reality, they want to choose a political person who will fight back. This is in the context of the democratic party moving from supporting the lower 90% of the economy to being the support of the 1%.

Their kids have come into voting age as the party of their parents has become the party of the professionals.

Strikingly, many progressives recognize the issues, feeling marginalized, yet they remain Democrats, because that is where the job opportunities that map to their education has taken them. What is important in the choice is not agreement on fact, but an expression of rage. That’s why vilifying Trump and perceiving his supporters as sharing his views overlooks the genuine concerns fueling their support. We fail to see that underlying Trump support is a serious diagnosis of the state of the nation. If their choice for expressing their rage appears stupid, it is because we didn’t notice that they were not offered any other choice.

Therefore, equating the beliefs of Trump supporters to those of Trump is a mistake. While journalists can cherry-pick interviewees from rallies, this isn’t necessarily a representative sample. We must be better at social analysis.

A Dying Civilization Becomes a Failed State

There’s a widespread sentiment: “Why destroy our lives to fix climate, when the fix will make the rich richer and trash us?”

This sets up the obvious dilemma: what do we give up, where will be the sacrifice zones? We don’t want to think about this and may prefer to drift over the edge.

Toynbee differentiates between civilizations, which have shared beliefs, and universal states, which possess bureaucracy but no shared belief except their own immortality.

He argues that the ultimate sign a civilization has broken down is when the dominant minority forms a “universal state”, which stifles political creativity within the existing social order. (Quoting editor of Study of History.) For example, Toynbee writes:

First the Dominant Minority attempts to hold by force—against all right and reason—a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit; and then the Proletariat repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, and violence with violence. Yet the whole movement ends in positive acts of creation. The Dominant Minority creates a universal state, the Internal Proletariat a universal church, and the External Proletariat a bevy of barbarian war-bands.It is easy to see our own situation in these ideas. Our Senate is a dead institution incapable of dealing with our real problems (population, energy, climate well-being, war.. The presidency is dead, trying to pump thin blood into a huge dying politics. We have no shared belief except that the elite think they have the right to rule, but have no platform, and no goal.

Toynbee and Joseph Tainter are telling us the same story: existing dynamics will kill us: extraction of wealth from the people and land.

Where can revitalization come from? Most proposals are too weak to counter the tide and actually are designed to support the existing political and economic regimes. We are trapped in Burning Man. The paths out are difficult but we will try.

Common System Template for World View

In dealing with climate we need to understand the attitudes of the population. Trump is, for many, a bigger-than-life giant who can get back at those responsible for an out-of-kilter society. Those who will vote for Trump have no choice, in their understanding, other than to vote for his “screw them” attitude.

People like us tend to confuse what Trump actually is, assuming he represents the thoughts of his supporters. Trump’s views (sic!) are an overlay that poorly fits the underlying complexities of the monopolizing corporate and media world—but for his voters he is the best fit we have.

People are generally distracted by many issues and can’t focus. We do not have what the founding fathers hoped for: a conversation-based Republic.

Here is a rough guess at the system most people (including many anti-trumpets) think and understand and vote from. More or less:

Any wonder climate is not the focus? (I must say, these beliefs are not mine, but an attempt to understand others.)

Some Pragmatics for Reaching Gardenworld

The world will not be in uniform decay, decadence, or recovery. Some areas will be thriving, while others will be unlivable. It’s more tattered than uniform, but opportunities exist even in the bleakest spots.

In our journey toward Gardenworld—a harmonious blend of growing food and nurturing people in the same place—it’s crucial to have some intermediate goals in mind. The first is that with every move, you think in terms of the aesthetics of the placement of things: patterns. Jim Channon, on the big island in Hawaii, had a garden where everything was planted in circles.

Toynbee and Joseph Tainter are telling us the same story: existing dynamics will kill us: extraction of wealth from the people and land.

Where can revitalization come from? Most proposals are too weak to counter the tide and actually are designed to support the existing political and economic regimes. We are trapped in Burning Man. The paths out are difficult but we will try.

The next things are to think very practically about the need for seeds, water, soil, quality, and gardening tools. We want to leave the tractors alone as much as we can. And beware that much land either drains too quickly or not at all, and it’s either too low or too high.

Gardenworld is the return to the old practice of having a closed Garden next to the town City Hall or a large estate.

Think of the garden as a place for children to play, older people to relax, and for pets to amuse us.

But don’t forget, what may be the most difficult part which is access to the land, land-use, ownership—good fodder for having community discussions.

Related:

Pages that link to this page