From Inside the Widening Gyre

Occupying the Centers of Capitalism: update

2011-11-09T07:56:00.006-06:00

On the morality of Occupy Wall Street protesters (and the immorality of capitalism), this article really nails it! WARNING: heavy stuff...

Finding Freedom in Handcuffs by Chris Hedges (posted Nov. 8th on truthdig.com)

The Literature of Climate Change

2011-10-23T11:17:00.004-05:00

Well, it's been awhile hasn't it? It seems like I'm saving this blog for my really important posts. I recently "published" an article about climate change online at the Britannica Blog. It's about a few books I wish to recommend that I have read in the past few years on the subjects of global warming and climate change. Here's the link.

Hope you like it (if you care to read it, that is)...

Climate Change: the Most Urgent Challenge We Face

2011-08-17T08:31:00.009-05:00

Please take time to watch the following excellent video that summarizes the near-future danger we all face because of global warming, by one of the great moral environmentalists of our time:

Bill McKibben: Why Climate Change is the Most Urgent Challenge We Face

I'm on record as listing this as my favorite book

2011-08-16T08:39:00.010-05:00

Hunger by Knut Hamsun

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the most amazing books I've ever read. In short, it is the psychological portrait of a young man who would sacrifice everything for the sake of his art. It's hard to believe this book was written in the 19th century--it feels so contemporary. Indeed, many later writers have acknowledged Hamsun as a major influence on their own work.

More than any artist I know, Hamsun epitomizes the fact that you can have messed up political ideas (he was a Nazi sympathizer), but still be a world-class artist and writer--demonstrating that the two endeavors, politics and art, are not necessarily connected--which may, in fact, be a shock to many cultural Marxists ("Politics decides everything." -Mao). Hunger is, in my opinion, his undisputed masterpiece.

View all my reviews

Peace Corps at 50

2011-03-02T13:26:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, March 1st, was the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps. In honor of that event, I was asked to write an essay about my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer and how it affected my life. The essay "Peace Corps: A Life Changing Experience" was published here on the Britannica Blog.

While riding home on the train last night...

2010-11-06T09:27:00.004-05:00

As I'm writing this I'm sitting on a commuter train on my way home, but the train is stopped on the tracks somewhere between two suburbs north of Chicago named Kenilworth and Winnetka. The conductor just announced over the PA system that we could be delayed here for up to an hour--the usual time it takes, he said. About 5 minutes ago an ambulance and a fire truck sped down the road that runs next to the tracks toward the rear end of the train.

Before the train stopped, and right after the engineer threw on the brakes, I heard an unusual sound. Everyone on the train looked up. It was like someone was throwing handfuls of pebbles at the side of the car we were in, or that we ran over some gravel, but, oddly, it didn't feel like we ran over anything! It was just an unusual rattling noise coming from below, which I will probably never forget. I was in the second passenger car behind the engine.

What occurred was that the train ran over someone at high speed. When the conductor said what happened, almost immediately afterward, everyone in my car groaned. I felt like I was going to vomit, but I didn't. From the sound of it I doubt anything was left of the person we hit except small fragments of flesh and bone. Their body had to have been completely pulverized. Strangely, right after the conductor's announcement, nearly everyone who had a cell phone in my car started calling people to tell them what happened.

Since I didn't hear any horn warning from the engine before we hit whoever it was, I think it must have been a suicide. I just hope it wasn't some kid walking down the tracks with headphones on or something. That usually happens when the engine is in the rear, however (on these push-pull trains), when it's harder to hear the train coming. What an awful way to die, though! If it was a suicide, they must have been extremely desperate. I guess I'll hear all about it on the network news tonight.

...an hour later and we're still sitting in the same location. It's dark outside now. I think they are almost finished with the police investigation, and with cleaning up the human remains, before they let the train move on again. When you encounter a violent death so close and sudden like this, you understand how fragile and fleeting life is, and it makes you glad and thankful to be alive--and very appreciative for the ones you love and care about. Too bad about the poor soul who conjured up these thoughts. I wonder what kind of a person he or she was...

Flirting with Fascism?

2010-07-04T10:39:00.011-05:00

Has Homo sapiens (modern man) squandered his last opportunity to peacefully save the planet from now unstoppable environmental destruction?

The pathetically weak program to curb global warming embodied in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (which the United States, the world's then largest producer of greenhouse gasses [now surpassed by China], has stated it "has no intention to ratify") and the laughable "carbon trading" restrictions embodied in last year's Copenhagen Summit do not offer much hope for the planet. Incredibly, there are still sizable groups of people in the United States (but not Europe) who, through lack of understanding or brainwashing, deny that global warming is even taking place!

The triple threats of global warming, overpopulation, and rampant growth of technology, and mankind's failure to adequately address these problems, has led Finnish ecologist, Pentti Linkola, to conclude that extreme political measures are now necessary if life itself is to prevail on the planet. Democratic eco-socialism would have been a nice alternative, he reasons, but there is no longer any time for such luxuries. The soft-spoken, clear-eyed ecologist now sees a much bleaker future on the horizon.

Eco-fascism, anyone?

The Question

2010-05-30T17:01:00.017-05:00

Random thoughts while driving home alone to Illinois last night from Iowa at 2 AM in the morning (of 5/30/10): 1) That moon is sure large; I wonder if it's a full moon?, 2) it would be cool to see a UFO right now, 3) How could I have forgotten to add the Moody Blues to my Facebook information page as one of my favorite musical groups?, 4) I wonder why so many famous rock bands have come out of the British Isles, especially ones that I like?, 5) I'm really glad I didn't get drafted to fight in Vietnam; my whole life, if I still had one, would be entirely different now, 6) I wonder why there was a very large anti-war movement back during the Vietnam War but today there isn't one, when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are every bit as despicable as the wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were? It's not just because there was a draft back then, I hope., 7) I wonder when they'll be able to stop that oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico--an environmental disaster, they just said, "unprecedented in human history"?, 8) Capitalism, with all its wars, disasters and the misery that it causes, sure does suck--why don't more people see it?!! Because they don't see an alternative?, 9) the Moody Blues were like "the original" New Age rock band; I wonder what they're doing today (...The Question)? 10) I hope I don't fall asleep before I make it home--I'd hate to end up as road kill along this lonely stretch of country highway...

Between Anarchism and Socialism

2010-01-10T11:03:00.055-06:00

When I became old enough to make my own decisions about life, I was fascinated by how all my important choices would ultimately split in two directions. Should I go to this college or that college? Should I go to graduate school or into the Peace Corps? Should I stay single or get married? Should I marry this woman or that one? Later I discovered that this bifurcation process of development is not unusual, though I thought it was at the time and that it had something to do with my inability to make decisions. I found out later that it is known philosophically as dialectics.

When I apply this concept to my own political development, I see another possible bifurcation developing on the horizon. Ever since graduate school I have considered myself to be an intellectual Marxist. This self identification really took off after my tour in the Peace Corps, when I saw first-hand how the people in the little section of the Third World I was posted to actually lived, and how US Imperialism (my boss then) kept them in a state of enforced backwardness and used their land and resources for its own purposes while claiming to do otherwise.

For the longest time I considered US imperialism to be the major enemy of mankind and have put forth a lot of time and effort over the years to work against some of its worst abuses, such as its current wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Yemen--not to mention the domestic abuses of racism, sexism, and species-ism that flow from it. I became a "fellow-traveler" with leftists in the anti-war/anti-imperialist movement and still count many of those people as some of my best friends.

Lately, I've started to wonder, however, if my focus on US imperialism as the major enemy of mankind has been too narrow. Maybe there's something larger at work here than just the functioning of capitalism. Maybe civilization itself is what is holding humanity back and what we need to overcome.

Through my readings in anarchism, as an alternative radical philosophy to Marxism, I've discovered the ideas of the Luddites and other anti-civilization radicals. Both of these groups often adhere to a philosophy known as anarcho-primitivism, which ultimately is a form of radical environmentalism, and I admit that these ideas resonate strongly with me.

Henry David Thoreau was an early pioneer of this philosophy, and he has always been one of my favorite thinkers. His notion of living a simple life free of the entanglements of civil society is very appealing. But I wonder: is his philosophy one that could sustain all of humanity? Wouldn't humans, with their capacity to make symbols and their desire to build institutions, quickly put an end to Thoreau's zen-like existence and the tranquility of his "life in the woods?" For that matter, wouldn't ANY kind of stateless human society be doomed to succumb to "statehood" eventually, even after the so-called Fall that the primitivist folks anticipate, as civilization reasserts itself in one way or another--the arguments of various anarchist thinkers notwithstanding?

If that is the case, that states and/or civilization will reassert themselves no matter what, and conquer or assimilate any so called "free" anarchist societies existing around them, then maybe a form of benign statehood would be better than the total (idealized?) "freedom" that anarchists advocate. Maybe, in fact, that form of statehood would be called--scary as it sounds--the dictatorship of the proletariat, the form of state advocated by communists during the socialist transition from capitalism to communism.

Despite this line of reasoning, however, I still haven't bought into the idea that the state is necessary for higher human social organization. It would certainly be different to live in a condition without a state power hanging over you, and in some ways it would be very appealing (as noted). But again, really, is such a form of human society possible (and sustainable) in today's world? And if that form of society would look like it did in humanity's distant past, as the anarcho-primitivists envision it would (and as I understand their somewhat vague ideas on this), then we would all return to living in small bands of pre-agricultural hunters and gatherers.

But would that be possible without humanity experiencing a huge mass die-off, since many experts believe that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle could not support the entire human population at its current size? And would it be morally acceptable to allow such a die-off to take place because your ideology claims that it would be an inevitable consequence of agriculture and civilization (as the anarcho-primitivists claim)? Wouldn't it be more morally acceptable to work toward a proletarian state and communist future, as advocated by state socialists and communists, to avoid such an "inevitable" die-off? Food for thought, as they say...

Global Warming Maps

2009-11-14T19:02:00.023-06:00

The following climate maps are temperature and precipitation projections for the near future. They were generated from solid scientific evidence a few years ago, but now, unfortunately, because of more recent evidence about the extent of greenhouse gas emissions, appear optimistic:

Larger, 100% versions of these maps can be viewed at the bottom of this page (or you can click on the above maps also). I created these particular renditions of these maps for Encyclopædia Britannica in 2008 from data supplied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Below is a map showing the disintegration of Antarctica's Larsen ice shelf in 2002, a bellweather event that alerted many to the reality of global warming (click on map to see the 100% image):

The following map shows the diminishing extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Summer 2007 set a record for loss in sea ice, as determined by aerial extent.

The volume of sea ice, possibly a more critical factor affecting future climate scenarios, has also been determined from satellite photos, which indicate that Arctic sea ice has thinned by more than 40% since 2004 (Nasa satellites reveal extent of Arctic sea ice loss).

A direct consequence of increasing global temperatures and the melting of ice in the polar regions, especially the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, will be a rise in sea level. A worse-case scenario is that mean sea level will rise by 3 meters, or nearly 20 feet, by the end of the century. Currently a more modest (though also catastophic) 1-meter to 2-meter rise is predicted, but natural systems can change in unpredictable ways and "abrupt climate change" having more severe consequences is certainly possible. A 3-meter rise in sea level will flood many low-lying coastal areas and submerge many islands. The following map shows the effect of a 3-meter rise in sea level on several Atlantic coastal areas (a larger version of this map is also available below, or by clicking on this map):

Thoughts on social networking

2009-11-13T09:14:00.009-06:00

Well, like about a thousand other people yesterday (I'll bet), I started a blog. Who knows what it will amount to? So far my experiences with social networking have been mixed.

I started a Facebook account because Dave, one of my fellow cohorts from the Peace Corps, encouraged me to do so, so we could keep in touch better. But I only made a few entries there. It seems like Facebook is geared toward people who already know each other personally and just want to let one other know what they're doing. Since I don't have that many friends (or want to know a lot of trivia about their lives), do I really have a need for that? I could just exchange emails with Dave instead, I guess.

Next, I started a Twitter account (mdnutter), which I found I like doing much better. You can meet a lot of interesting people there. It seems like it's geared more toward people sharing ideas with one another, who don't necessarily know each other but would like to be in some kind of virtual, like-minded community. So far I've met, and become "fellow-travelers" with, an anarchist from Nova Scotia and a radical professor of anthropology at a college in Montreal (whose blog [zeroanthropology] supplied the quote from W.B. Yeats that I adapted for the title of my blog). How could I so easily come into contact with such people, except over the internet!

I also want to start sharing blogs, if possible, with another blogger whose blog I came across awhile ago. He's a guy who lives without money in a cave in Utah, Daniel Suelo (who is also an ex-Peace Corps guy). It doesn't seem like he's blogged much lately, but I can add him as someone I "follow," so when he does blog next I'll know. Neat, eh?