On Brevity

Okay. I’ll try to keep this short (but I probably will fail)

Brevity is king. Between, sound bites on CNN, the death of newspapers and the rise of such sites as Twitter , YouTube and Facebook , the era of patience is over.

And if I haven’t grabbed you by now, you’ve probably already clicked somewhere else.

We used to have a lot of time. Before the age of mass media, whole communities would gather to hear speeches lasting many hours, and read books which were both long and complex. However, with the introduction of television, came competition for our attention.

If you don’t like what is on, you simply switch to another channel. Holding your attention was easy when there were only three networks but soon there were fifty, then five hundred and now, with the rise of the internet, the number of “channels” is essentially infinite.

This is not a revolution. Revolutions are fought by visionaries with particular ideologies. The internet age has had it’s visionaries, to be sure: Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google , Craig Newmark of CraigsList or Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia to name just a few. However, the genius of their vision was to stand aside and allow their customers to create what they wanted. The same is true of Facebook , flickr , Twitter and YouTube . In other words, they might’ve started the ball rolling but the resulting new economy of information, just happened through natural selection.

In other words, this is not a revolution. This is evolution.

In some ways I think this is a good thing. Competition breeds quality and infinite choices means no one, no matter how powerful or well established, can afford to take their audience or users for granted.

We’ve already seen how much faster Twitter is than traditional news sources and how much more variety there is onYouTube than on the networks. However, we are also losing something and I believe that loss might be very dangerous.

First of all, there are no moderate sound-bites.

If you want to get noticed you have to be extreme. Whether it’s the daily news round up on MSNBC or your latest post on Twitter , no one is interested in the middle ground. That means there is a natural tendency towards polarization in new media. No one will re-tweet that I have mild misgivings with a particular policy, or event. If I want an audience, I have to say that it is the “worst fucking thing I’ve ever heard of in my entire life.” or, better yet, “people who support (blank) are baby raping devil worshipers.” That’s the way to get noticed and that is frequently what is broadcast, followed and repeated.

The result is that the perception of polarization is much greater, and, in this interactive age, perception and reality are symbiotically connected.

Another consequence, and I believe a far more dangerous one, is that while certain ideas are easy to express in a few words, some ideas, frequently the best ones, take time.

Even our briefest speeches, such as The Gettysburg address (278 words) or Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech (1675 words), are too long and complex for todays appetites. Is it possible to compress Lincoln’s Second Inaugural or Eisenhower’s Farewell Address into a sound-byte or tweet? No.

And those speeches are still relatively short. How will Dostoyevsky’s ruminations on God and Morality play in the modern era? Where is the time for Plato’s dialogues or even Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ? Could you tell the stories of Hamlet or Lawrence of Arabia in a few seconds? Yes. Would the stories be better? No.

The way we get information today is unbelievably broad and incredibly varied but it is often dangerously shallow. You simply can’t run a government, discuss the intricacies of human society or dig deep into personal emotion in a few seconds.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fan of Web 2.0. I believe the socialization of media has democratized information and given new power and influence to the general public. It has fostered new ideas and new collaborations. However, this transformation does not come without a price and I am concerned that deep, difficult and complex ideas will be lost in the tidal wave of brevity.

After all, revolutions can be fought but evolution is inevitable.

Fuck The Auto Industry!

I have never been prouder of a vote than the one I cast last year for Barack Obama. However, as much as I admire him personally, and as much as I applaud much of what he’s done in the first few months of his administration, I am deeply concerned by his attempts to bolster America’s economy.

I was outraged by the Bush administration’s close ties to Wall Street and big industry. I felt that our democracy had become an oligarchy, where the richest few could control the future of our nation and the world. Under the Obama administration that relationship has been flipped upside down with the government now stepping in to save, and even take control of, those industries who are most responsible for our failing economy.

I make no comment on the far larger banking bailout. Believe me, I have my misgivings, but I am too overwhelmed by the complexity of the banking industry to make an informed comment (In the interest of full disclosure I should also note that I own some CitiGroup stock)

However, I believe that the Auto Industry Bailout is dangerous, wasteful, anti-democratic and I say,

“FUCK ‘EM!”

Remember that these are the same guys who’ve been fighting tooth nail against mileage and pollution standards for the last four decades. They claimed that higher standards would cost American jobs, then they turned around and shipped those jobs overseas. You have to wonder what would have happened, had the big three listened to men like Jimmy Carter and Ralph Nader who called for a reduction in our dependence on foreign oil during the first oil crisis back in the Seventies.

These are the guys who have used political pull and economic pressure to stifle competition and new ideas. Remember Tucker? There used to be dozens of American car companies. Now there are only three. A little competition might have given us better cars and more profitable companies. Instead, we have aging giants who use their lumbering power, not to make better cars but to stave off their own inevitable extinction.

Capitalism is the evolution of economics. That which works, survives and thrives. That which fails will whither and die. Evolution is not nice or compassionate. It is neither nostalgic nor sentimental. If you can’t survive you wont. That’s it. No second chances. It is that hard reality that has given us the best products at the cheapest prices and it is that system which is threatened when the ties between government and industry become to close.

For years, the right has used this philosophy to condemn the poor and destitute. For years, they have said that handouts only reward bad behavior. I’ve never agreed with that philosophy when applied to a starving child or cancer patient, desperate for healthcare, but when it comes to a big business that has drastically and repeatedly damaged us, I say,

“FUCK EM!”

Now, I know the argument. I know that the death of GM and Chrysler will put millions out of work. I know that people will lose their pensions and I know that cities like Detroit, which are already in deep trouble, will be mortally wounded.

I’m not insensitive to those issues. In fact, it is those issues that I really care about. However, is handing a few billion dollars to failing companies the way to save Detroit? What evidence do we have that these companies will be able to overcome decades of corporate culture and reform? How do we know that they wont be asking us for another hundred billion dollars next year?

Even with the money they’ve already received, these companies have closed dozens of factories and hundreds of dealerships. In other words, they are already putting people out of work despite the billions we’ve given them.

So I say,

“FUCK THE AUTO INDUSTRY”

The truth is, I agree with President Obama that our nation is in serious trouble and that drastic actions are required. I agree with him that we must keep America working. However, if my tax dollars are going to pay the salaries of millions, then we should hire them to build the future, not the past.

I mean, these are cars we’re talking about. They are a big part of the problem. The internal combustion engine might have fueled the twentieth century but it’s killing the twenty-first. They are bad for our health, our environment and our economy and they have drastically shifted the world’s power structure in ways which are extremely dangerous.

Instead of putting these people to work building cars, which only exacerbate our problems, let’s put them to work building a modern, oil independent nation. Let’s build a modern power grid. Let’s build wind, solar, and nuclear plants. Let’s repair our roads, update our failing infrastructure and build the foundation for a twenty-first century economy.

You say we need cars? Fine. But let’s invest, in new technologies from hungry young companies, like Tesla, or the incredibly ambitious, Better Place Electric car company.

If every problem is an opportunity in disguise, then we must see this downturn, not as a time to shore up lost causes, but rather as an opportunity to build a new, cleaner, safer and more efficient nation.

So, I say, it’s time to let the dinosaurs die, they are bound to anyway, and let’s put America to work on something that makes sense, The Future.

Knowing Anything

In all of the discussions I have had as a result of this blog and all of the other philosophical discussions I have had over the last few years there is one phrase which never fails to bug the hell out of me.

“Well, you can’t really know anything.”

People always feel very clever when they roll this one out. It is, they feel a knockout blow to any declarative statement, logical progression or even simple list of facts. “You can’t really know anything.” That’s it. They win.

This phrase, and other’s like it (“Everything is subjective.” “You can’t disprove the existence of God.” etc.) are not conversation starters but rather conversation enders.

Of course, on some level, they’re right.

Are we incredibly limited creatures who’s only ability to understand the world around us is through the conduit of our own narrow senses? Yes. Is it possible that those senses are lying to us? Yes. Are we subjective creatures who perceive reality through the filter of our background, desires and prejudices? Yes. Is it possible that our perception of reality is entirely manufactured? Yes.

We could be locked in a chemical coma with our brains hot-wired, as in The Matrix, or lying in a padded cell in a mental institution. It is even possible that we don’t exist at all.

In fact, once you start going down this road absolutely anything is possible.

And that’s the problem.

If you can’t really know anything, then the sun could rise in the north tomorrow. Pigs could fly and fire could freeze. How could we survive in a world where we can’t know anything?

I’m not saying that ideas like this should never be discussed. Any idea which forces us to rethink our perceptions and preconceptions is a useful tool. Asking the question “Can we really know anything?” is the beginning of a wonderful conversation. Although in my opinion a much more interesting conversation can be had by asking, as my friend, Mike Hoover, does, “How do we know what we know?” There is a lot of mileage and introspection to be got out of that one.

However stating that nothing can be known is in my opinion both irresponsible and even dangerous.

Here’s why:

1. It’s not scientific. Disprovability, is in many ways a more, important, scientific criteria than provability. People often say, “You can’t disprove the existence of God.” Which is true, but so what? As Bertrand Russell used to say. “You also can’t disprove the existence of a flying, invisible, spaghetti monster.” In fact, there are an infinite number of things which I cannot disprove. Science is interested in those things which could be disproved. I could disprove evolution right now. All I have to do is find a porcupine that gives birth to a cactus. However, there is no experiment on earth, or mathematical equation I can produce, or even logical argument I can create to disprove the existence of God or the spaghetti monsters or anything else. If the same statement can be used to argue for or against anything, it has no scientific value.

2. It’s Lazy. Anyone can say it, at any time. It requires no work, no education. There is no research involved or years of labor. It requires no intelligence or discipline. It is, in my opinion, the last argument of a lazy mind and represents, the desire to close, not only the eyes of the speaker, but the eyes of the world.

3. It isn’t useful. And this is really the big one. “You can’t really know anything.” Puts us back in the caves without even a fire to keep us warm.

Imagine two primitive men back in the ice age. One says, “I don’t know why those wooly mammoths come back to the same watering hole every year but I know that they do, so let’s set a trap.” The other says,”Well you can’t really know anything.” Which one of them is more likely to feed his family? Which one of them is more likely to learn why the mammoths return each year? Which one of them will pass that knowledge onto his children and, more importantly, the knowledge that you can, in fact, know some things? In short, which one of them will survive and grow and which one of them will remain stagnant and probably die?

Try saying “You can’t really know anything.” the next time you fly in airplane, drive across a bridge or go to the pharmacy to pick up your antibiotics. Those things, and many others were created by people who believed that knowledge was something that could be gained and used for the betterment of themselves and the rest of the human race.

“You can’t really know anything.” Has the wonderful advantage of sounding, smart, cynical, and superior all at once but it is, in my opinion, a very clever dead end. We can’t know everything. That’s true. The pursuit of knowledge, however, begins with the idea that we can know some things and that knowledge, itself, is worth pursuing.

The Prisoner and The Pawn

Two men.

Both wealthy and respected. Both learned and disciplined. Both the heads of large and influential families. Both doomed to suffering, not by their vices, but rather, by their virtues.

One was a man of faith, the other, a man of science.

The man of faith was the foremost citizen in the foremost city of the known world but despite his power and wealth, he was humble and pious. He knew that the most important values in the world were not those that could be tallied or traded but only felt. He was, in short a devout follower of unseen, unfathomable God and he knew, without a shadow of doubt, not only that his God was real, but that God loved him.

The man of science was born in a city devoted to God where all the teachers were God’s servants and all truth was defined by his holy church. But when he looked around, the truth he witnessed wasn’t what he had been taught and that left him in a terrible dilemma. “Does it take more courage to open one’s eyes or to close them?”

There were those who were unimpressed by the man of faith’s devotion. “It’s easy”, they would say, “to have faith when you are a rich.” It does not take great character to have faith in luxury but faith in suffering is hard and sometimes the greatest lessons come with the greatest price.

The man of science knew that closing his eyes to the truth would be easier, but the call of knowledge was too beautiful to ignore and so he opened his eyes ever wider and began to study. He measured the movements of the planets and the stars. He touched earth and stone. He sought truth in fire and water and the more he learned, the more he came to understand that the word of God, so long spoken with certainty, was at best in error and at worst an outright lie.

How do you keep your faith in the face of tragedy? How can you love a God who takes away everything you hold dear? The man of faith watched his wife and children die of disease. He lost his fortune, his status in the community, and his home. Even his health deserted him and this once proud pillar of society became homeless, destitute and diseased. He valued faith above all other things and now faith was all he had left.

If you are going to argue with God, you better have your facts straight. Years went by. Decades. The man of science spent long nights charting the stars and long days working out the mysteries of their movements. Even when he was certain he had unlocked their secrets he returned to his studies and sought out his own mistakes. Doubting what the rest of the world takes for granted might be the pathway to new knowledge, but turning the light of doubt on your own preconceptions and fallibility is the first step towards wisdom. When he was finally certain, the man of science told his story to the world and it almost cost him his life.

Everyone told the man of faith to abandon God. “How can you love a God who clearly doesn’t love you?” “How can a just God allow such suffering to be visited on a just and faithful man?” The logic, they said, was self evident. “Either God does not exist, or, if he does, he does not love you.” The man of faith listened patiently but in his heart he knew the truth.

In 1633 Galileo Galilei was called before the inquisition in Rome under the charge of heresy. His believe in a heliocentric universe was in direct contradiction to the geocentric universe described in scripture. Galileo was imprisoned and forced to recant his views. However, there is a legend (probably apocryphal) that after admitting, under threat of torture and death, that the earth was the stationary center of the universe, he whispered under his breath, “And yet, it moves.”

Job never gave up his faith and, in the end, God returned his health, wealth and status. That God was also responsible for his suffering is the wellspring of a great debate. How can we love a God who could so callously torture one of his most devoted followers simply to prove a point to Satan? Is Job a saint to be admired and emulated, or a fool?

The journeys of faith and science are both long and difficult. They both require dedication and discipline. They both often mean pitting yourself against the prevailing culture and enduring the derision of the world. However, in the end, these two journey’s are walked in opposite directions. The discipline of science is one of doubt, of seeking facts not feelings, of believing not what we wish is true but only what can be proven. The discipline of faith is internal. It is about letting go of doubt. It’s power is derived not from the head but from heart. It is a way of finding hope, when logic would say all hope is gone.

Science and faith can both save lives, change civilizations and, perhaps, even move mountains but they have walked so long in opposite directions that they have lost site of each other and that might be a tragedy for both.

On the Power of Faith

Those of you who know me, or have read my blog, know that I am not a religious person. Logic, consistency, objectivity and provability are the standards by which I try (albeit at times unsuccessfully) to live my life. Those standards, are frequently at odds with those of religion, which value faith above all other things.

This predilection for the scientific perspective has naturally led me into one heated discussion after another with my more religious friends. These discussions invariably end badly, with me disappointed in my friend/opponent’s inability to see the inconsistencies in their faith while they are equally frustrated and sometimes angry with, what they see as, my patronizing attitude towards their most, cherished beliefs.

So, rather than once again reviewing my litany of Biblical inconsistencies, mocking the biography of Joseph Smith, or trying to explain the criteria for scientific proof, I have decided to examine the question of faith from a decidedly different angle.

Let us first stipulate that although it is possible (albeit, in my opinion very unlikely) for one, particular religion to be literally true, it is impossible for all religions to be literally true.

If the tenants of Hinduism are correct about reincarnation then Judaism must be false in it’s belief in only one life on earth . If, as the Jews believe, the Messiah has not yet appeared, then Christianity must be false as it is based on the divinity of Jesus. If Jesus was, as the Christians believe, the last great prophet, then the followers of Mohammed must be following a fraud.

If one is true, the others must be false. Consequently, since none of the religions of the world represent a majority of the religious population, it follows that the vast majority of religious people on the planet believe in a doctrine which is not true.

However, the fact that most religious people on the planet must be wrong does not effect the intensity of their faith.

The question is, “Is it possible that something which is not literally true can have real and transformative value?”

Here’s a story.

A Jew, a Muslim, a Christian and a Buddhist walk into an AA meeting. All four men have struggled with alcoholism for many years. All four men have tried, over and over again, to fight their addiction with will power and all have failed. All four men begin the twelve step program by admitting they are powerless over their alcoholism. All four men turn their problem over to a higher power. All four men define that higher power differently. Yet, all four manage to do something they have never been able to do on their own.

They stop drinking.

And who gets the credit for this transformation? God? Buddha? Allah? Jesus? If Jesus helped the Christian quit drinking who helped the Buddhist? Who helped the Jew? They cannot all exist and yet all four men found help.

So, what gave these men the power to do what they couldn’t do on their own?

Faith did. Not truth. Not God. Faith.

The Placebo Effect

The placebo effect is really a study in the power of the human mind, or, depending on how you look at it, the power of bullshit. Tell a patient that the sugar pill they are ingesting is a cure and you vastly increase the chances that they will recover. This isn’t psudo-science or new age mysticism. This is carefully documented scientific fact. Our health is intimately linked to our state of mind.

The placebo effect can work in the opposite way as well. In a recent study, the arms of a group of students were rubbed by a plant which they were told was poison ivy. 80% of those students developed rashes consistent with that plant’s effect, despite the fact that the plant they touched wasn’t poison Ivy at all.

Since scientists are seeking real drugs and techniques which can consistently combat disease, they spend most of their time trying to eliminate the placebo effect from their research. Consequently, we think of placebo’s as a statistical anomaly or an experimental nuisance. However, I think that is a mistake.

These results are not inconsequential. They are substantiated and significant. I do not believe that our perceptions and beliefs can magically change the world around us (as we have been told by self help books like The Secret) However, there is no doubt that our beliefs can have powerful, transformative effects on ourselves and by transforming ourselves we do change both our perceptions of the world and how we act in it.

If faith in a tiny pill can cure disease, how much more powerful is faith in an omnipotent and loving God?

So, let us return to our AA members and examine, once again, how they managed their recovery. They knew that they could not beat their drinking on their own. They put their faith in a cure and the cure worked despite the fact that, for at least three out of four of them, the cure must not exist.

Is it possible that something which is not literally true can have real substantial value?

The answer is yes.

Here is a description of a religion.

You go with your family and community into a beautiful space. You perform rituals which are probably not all that different from what your great grand parents performed. You sing, read, and pray in unison. You listen to the wise words of elders. You meditate and contemplate your own life. You ask forgiveness for your inequities. You fast. You dance. You celebrate together and you mourn together. You lend your strength to the rest of the community when you can and take strength from the community when you need to. You have faith in a meaning and a power beyond this world.

The question is, which religion did I just describe? The answer: Pretty much all of them.

So, what do we conclude from this? That the major religions are nothing but plagiarists, callously stealing ideas from each other, or is it possible that the stuff religions do, fasting, singing, praying, is simply good stuff, regardless of whether the doctrine it is designed to support is true?

Almost every religion has the story of the wise man, Christian monk, Hindu ascetic, aboriginal Holy Man or Zen master, who turns his back on society and goes into the wilderness where, through a process of fasting, self denial, meditation, or even drug induced hallucination, has a transformative experience.

Again, what do we conclude from this. Do we see the transformative experience as evidence that the particular mythology the holy man subscribed to is true despite the fact, that that mythology is in direct contradiction to the holy men of other sects who had similar experiences or do we instead conclude that putting the mind and body through a profound change, fasting, deprivation, silence, torture, etc...can be transformative with or without any mythology at all?

The truth is that if you put the human body and mind in an extreme situation, whether it is fasting on your Yoga retreat or going through basic training in the marine corps something will happen, something profound.

Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela had their transformative experiences in prison.

So what do we tell our four AA members who’s faith saved their lives? What do we tell the billions of people across the globe who gain solace, hope and a sense of belonging from their religious traditions. What do we tell the men and women who have had a religious experience so profound that it has not only transformed their lives but, from their perspective, the entire world?

Do we tell them that these experiences are nothing more than dramatic examples of the placebo effect? Do we explain that songs, architecture and ritual do not prove the existence of God? Do we belittle the most important experience of their lives by explaining it?

Can you imagine how insulting that would sound?

Faith is real. Faith is powerful. Faith helped Gandhi and Martin Luther King stand up against impossible odds. Faith helped Jesus forgive his murderers. Faith might even have helped your team win the super bowl.

The truth is that all of the elements of religion; community, tradition, music, mediation, art, prayer, the personal spiritual journey, and yes even faith, can be positive and valuable additions to a person’s or community's life. The problem arises when that genuine value is seen as absolute proof that the particular doctrine they believe in must be true.

And that is very, very dangerous.

Faith exists beyond rational thought and is therefor easily manipulated and very difficult to argue with.

Our four AA men’s lives were literally saved by their faith, so how can they argue when their faith calls upon them to persecute homosexuals, burn down abortion clinics, or raise the shout of global Jihad against all the infidels who oppose the god that saved their life.

Faith has spilt it’s share of blood and the only hope we have is that we find a way to mediate the power of our faith with the power of reason.

In my opinion, the myths of Samson and Jonah are just as likely as the myths of Hercules and Loki or, for that matter, Superman and Spiderman.

However, I will acknowledge that your belief in those stories and your participation in the rituals that go along with them can have lasting and positive effects on your life and that of your community.

All I ask in return is that you acknowledge that believing in a thing beyond reason, beyond logic, can be as dangerous and destructive as it is beneficial.

I support your right to choose faith but I hope that it will be faith tempered by reason and compassion, a faith which is at once humble and forgiving, self-critical and patient.

In short, if your faith helps you strive to be a better person, then we have nothing to argue about.

The Myth of the Spotted Owl or Let's Make Some Money

In 1986 a group of environmental activists commissioned the US Fish and Wildlife commission to save the spotted owl, a dark brown owl with white spots that had made it’s home in the lush old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, saving the owl could mean putting thousands of people out of work, who’s livelihoods depended on the logging industry. The two sides were diametrically opposed and, to make matters worse, each measured success by an entirely different rubric, with species and ecosystems on the one hand, and jobs and profits on the other. Compromise was impossible because one side couldn’t stand the thought of a beautiful species lost forever and the other couldn’t stand to see men loose their livelihoods over something as insignificant as a few birds.

In many ways, the opposite sides in our current environmental debate continue to see the conflict in these stark black and white terms. Depending on where you get your news the two sides might be described as:

A group of bleeding heart liberals, most of whom have never worked a day in their lives and have no idea whatsoever of the value of a dollar or the kind of labor necessary to put the clothes on their backs and gas to go in their VW Buses.

and

The soulless elite, too obsessed with lining their already bloated bank accounts to see the ravages they are inflicting upon the earth.

There are people like this in the world, to be sure, but most of us live somewhere in the middle. Most environmentalists, believe it or not, have jobs, families and credit card bills. Most of them like making money and wouldn’t argue with making a little bit more. Few businessmen enjoy looking out at a smoggy horizon, and few are looking forward to a planet ravaged by climate change. Most of us care about our environment and our bank account and most of us believethat we have to choose between them.

That is a lie.

Are there areas where environmental concerns come into direct conflict with economic ones? Absolutely. But there are also many ways that the proper environemental choice is the best economic choice.

Here’s an example. For the last 32 years the American big three auto makers have fought tooth and nail against the CAFE standards which would force them to produce more fuel efficient automobiles. They argued that these cars would be too expensive to produce, cut into corporate profits (which would effect millions of stock holders) and result in the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs. The car lobby has been extremely successful in reducing (or getting around CAFE standards). At the same time, European and Asian car companies were focusing on making more fuel efficient cars. The result? The big three are in big trouble. General motors, one of the worlds largest companies, has been loosing billions and thousands of American auto workers have lost their jobs. Imagine what would have happened if The Big Three had gotten behind higher fuel standards 30 years ago, rather than fighting them.

And what about the cars we bought? One of the way the auto manufacturers got around the CAFE standards was to classify SUV’s (the biggest auto boom of the 90’s) as trucks which didn’t have to meet the same stringent fuel efficiency requirement. Millions of SUV’s were sold. I bought one myself. We all know that gas guzzling SUV’s are bad for the environment but how are they on the pocketbook? That answer has become far more obvious as gas prices have risen towards four dollars a gallon.

Hurting the environment has made us poorer.

We are, today, absolutely dependent up on fossil fuels the, price of which, as limited resources, will continue to grow. As the cost of oil, coal and natural gas increases we will grow poorer unless we can find a way to change. Sustainable energy sources, solar wind, biomass etc. are currently more expensive than fossil fuels. However, as technology advances, those power sources will only grow cheaper and those who invest in them will grow richer.

It is true that a coal power plant is far cheaper to build than a solar or wind plant of similar size. However, once the plants are built the coal plant must buy coal to produce electricity while the fuel for the sustainable plants is free. It is the difference between renting an apartment and buying a house. In the long run, one produces wealth while the other only costs money. Sustainable power is money in your pocket.

Will a move to sustainable energy cost some jobs in the fossil fuel industry? It will. However, far more jobs will be created elsewhere. The sustainable energy industry have exploded in the last few years creating thousands of jobs. Imagine how many people we could put to work in this country by requiring that all future expansion in energy usage come from sustainable energy?

We all know how destructive a culture of consumption is to our environment. From Landfills filled with discarded electronics and plastic bottles to factory’s spewing smoke into our atmosphere, from strip mining to the destruction of our rainforests, our planet, no matter how vast, has a limited number of resources and can only absorb so much abuse. However, consumption is the engine that drives our economy. If we stop buying, we are told, our economy will collapse.

However, the reality is, that, for most of us, our culture of consumption does not create wealth. It destroys it. The axiom, “The more you buy the less you have,” is more true today than ever, particularly when much of what we purchase is almost instantly obsolete. This is the difference between consumption and investment. Consumption gives momentary pleasure. A meal that you consume is gone in a few minutes. A stylish outfit ceases to have value as soon as it is out of fashion. A cutting edge cellphone or camera will be obsolete in a few years..

The more you buy the less you have.

I’m not saying that all consumption is bad. On a basic level we must consume to survive but a culture of consumption is a road to poverty not wealth. The path to wealth is to make sure that what we invest our money in has real real value, not just in the pleasure of the moment, but for the future. And remember, many of the great joys in life, conversation, sports, nature, family, friends, can be had with a minimal cost to the environment or your pocket book.

Even the big corporations, the traditional enemies of the environmentalists, are beginning to make environmentally friendly decisions. Wall-mart, the symbol of American consumerism, has announced an initiative to reduce energy usage in its existing stores by 20% and in new stores by 35%. Google, who’s server farms consume as much electricity as a small city, is developing a system which they hope will produce 100% of their energy sustainably in the next five years. And even the venerable General Motors, who’s gas guzzling Humvee is the bane of most environmentalists, is pouring tremendous resources into their new plug in hybrid, The Chevy Volt, which they hope will stanch the corporate bleeding and bring them back into the black.

Are they doing this out of a sense of planetary consciousness or merely as a public relations move to placate the growing concern over the environment? For now, I don’t think the motives matter and if big corporations learn they can make more money being environmentally friendly, so much the better.

The truth is that the pursuit of sustainability doesn’t mean that all the corporations and people of the world will make less money it merely means less money for the same people. The building companies who fear innovation will no longer be able to compete in a world where energy, livability and sustainability are as important as an attractive facade. Manufacturers who continue to follow the paradigm of unlimited resources will find themselves out thought and out competed by new companies with new ideas. And the oil companies, who have made record profits as the price of oil has skyrocketed, will see their profits and political influence decline when they can no longer hold an oil-dependent world ransom.

The fight to save the spotted owl might have been a worthy cause but it left behind it an America, and perhaps a world, which perceived a stark division between the environmentalist and economist, the nature lover and the money lover. What we have failed to see, perhaps, is that the most powerful transformative force on earth, the human race, is not removed from the natural world but is rather a part of it and that a healthy economy is directly dependent upon a healthy ecology.

The forces of the economy, like those of nature, are not interested in our good intentions. They are only interested in what works. Destroying the only planet we have, like counting money in a burning house, is a fool’s business plan.

My hope, is that perhaps someday in the future, it will not be a coincidence that the color of money, in this country is green.

Killing The Chicken

“Have you ever killed a chicken?” This is one of the questions that my good friend, Mike Hoover, likes to ask when someone is saying something particularly naive or insensitive. “Have you ever killed a chicken?”

On some level, Hoover divides the world up into, “Chicken killers.” and “non-Chicken Killers”, those who are connected to the world in all it’s brutal reality and those who are not.

Most people, in this country aren’t chicken killers. In fact, for most of us, the closest we get to killing is picking out our cuts at the local super-market. We don’t see the blood, or the suffering, all we see is a product, impersonally prepared and wrapped in cellophane.

I’ve never killed a chicken. My friend Jeff has and he said it was one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do.

So, why does Mike Hoover, a very, smart compassionate man, want all of us to start murdering birds? What’s the big deal?

There was a time when we weren’t removed from death. If we wanted meat we had to kill. So, does that mean we were more callous about killing then, more cruel?

No. The opposite was true.

If you look at hunter gatherer societies, the animals they hunted were not hated or vilified, they were given positions of great respect in the community. The plains Indians did not hate the buffalo, they honored it, not only because it provided much of the raw materials necessary for their way of life, but also because, through the difficult process of hunting, they had come to know the animal. The buffalo wasn’t simply a walking dinner, it was a living breathing creature with a soul and a value. To hunt it honorably, and kill it humanely was the nature of their relationship.

However, to kill the animal and not use every bit of him was considered the cruelest kind of waste. Imagine, the horror the native Americans felt when this animal they respected, who played a key roll in their spiritual life, was hunted, almost to extinction, by ruthless men who were only interested in their hides and left the rest of the animal to rot in the sun.

However, somewhere Back East there was a buyer for that buffalo fur who never had to look into the eyes of the animal that died for him and thus had no pang of conscious for paying for the slaughter. It was a business transaction, nothing more.

I’m reminded of a question in Jedediah Purdy's book, Being America He asks, “Which American slaveholder treated his slaves with greater cruelty, the rich plantation owner with a thousand slaves, or the small farmer with only one?” My first instinct was to say the rich plantation owner. After all, he can afford to be generous, while the poor farmer can barely survive himself. Of course, the opposite is true. The rich plantation owner never really sees his slaves. He lives in a big house with every luxury and has no understanding of how his workers live. The poor farmer, on the other hand, lives much closer to his slave. He works side by side with him in the field. He eats the same food and wears the same kind of clothes. This proximity makes cruelty, if not impossible, far less likely.

Today, we are much further from the animals we eat than in anytime in history and, like the big plantation owner, our distance, our ignorance of where our food comes from, has made us cruel. It is a cruelty which manifests itself not in how our animals die but rather in how they live. Cows, living their whole lives, packed into industrial feed lots knee deep in their own filth. Chickens squeezed into cages so small they cannot turn around. We have become masters of efficiency, experts in turning grain into meat and meat into dinner.

We have separated ourselves from the killing fields because we abhor cruelty but the greater the distance, has made us far crueler than the hunter who kills the buffalo with his bow, or the rancher who slits the neck of the chicken he has cared for all his life.

However, it is not only the animals we eat who have been damaged by this separation. We have been damaged. In my last blog, I outlined how our industrial food system, has left us obese, malnourished, and vulnerable to new strains of disease, but this separation from the natural world, has consequences far beyond diet.

One Hundred years ago, 85% of the worlds population lived on farms or in small villages. Today, 85% of our, much greater, population lives in cities and that number is growing at a breakneck pace. Cities are ecosystems all their own, however, the needs of the urban ecosystem are in almost direct opposition to the needs of the natural one. Success in the city means following the urban paradigm, which is that consumption is success and greed is good. This philosophy has a direct, devastating effect on the natural world but the city dweller does not see the consequences of their actions and so they do not care. That this disconnected relationship damages the natural world is without question, but I believe it is equally damaging to modern man. Are we healthier in our regulated, manufactured, commercialized, and heavily branded urban existence? Are we happier? Are we kinder? Or have we, in fact, become more isolated, overworked, stressed, depressed and unhealthy?

Disconnection is the danger and a disconnection from death is a disconnection from life.

The modern world fears death in all it’s forms. We refuse to see it and this denial of one of the most fundamental realities of life is intensely destructive. There was a time when we died in our own homes, surrounded by our families. Today, death occurs in the sterile, industrial hallways of the hospital with the only human contact permitted during proper visiting hours. There was a time when the greatest concern at the approach of death was our spiritual well being. Today, the focus is on a thousand incomprehensible, medical tests. There was a time, when the bodies of our dead were cleaned and dressed by their families. Today, our dead are locked away in cold storage before they can be attended to by a professional. Which system gives better care in our last moments? Which system better prepares us to say goodbye? We have endeavored to protect ourselves from the pain of death but our lives are no less painful.

Does choosing not to see death make us less cruel or more?

Is a nation that sees an endless stream of mutilated bodies more likely to an end a war than a nation that chooses not to see?

The first thing we must accept is that death in and of itself is not cruel. Death is inexorably connected to life. It is all around us. Every living thing on earth survives on death. It is not cruel when the lion kills it’s prey. It is merely the natural order of things. Cruelty is a uniquely human invention. A sociopath is cruel because he enjoys watching the suffering of others with open eyes but the majority of cruelties, the vast atrocities of our times, are committed with eyes closed. The more we disconnect, the crueler we become.

By separating ourselves from death we have separated ourselves from life. We have created a system in which we are at odds with the natural world and so, at odds with ourselves. Perhaps the only way to save the planet is to touch the planet and perhaps touching the planet is the only way to save ourselves.

Does that mean we should all run out and start killing our own chickens? Not necessarily. It simply means we should begin the long and, sometimes painful, process of opening our eyes.