There was no scientific purpose to it, nor a book or movie to be made, just this guy sitting in his backyard every day for years, watching the same square metre of garden. There’s something very Zen about it and as the guy rambled on about his one square metre he fantasised about creating a global club of ‘One Square Metre Watchers’. It could, it should, catch on.
Then I started to wonder why I was so struck by the idea and I started typing this (and burnt my rice as a result, something I never normally do) thinking all the while that there was something elegant, intimate, universal and entirely pointless about watching the same square metre of nature but then perhaps that’s the point, why should everything have a ‘reason’? Then I wondered whether he photographed it every day as well? Probably not, it’s not his style.
But still I had this ‘thing’ nagging at the back of my mind that there was something else going on here but I just couldn’t put my finger on it until I realised that the reason I was attracted to the idea was that it represented in miniature what we’re missing from life—connections.
Then too I realised that every square metre of nature is doing the same thing, billions of living creatures connected in an invisible (to us) web, with every creature doing its thing, everyone that is, except us (and let’s not forget the guy in his backyard).
But then prior to capitalism, virtually everyone had this kind of intimate relationship to Nature, after all their lives depended on it, and now it seems we have come full circle, for once more our lives depend on re-establishing that intimate connection with Nature. The question is, can capitalism do it?
http://williambowles.info/ini/2007/0607/ini-0487.html
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on June 13, 2007]
Note: http://williambowles.in...
One Square Meter And A Stool
Posted on Monday, June 11 at 10:12 by siljanContributed By
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What Bowles should ask is : How did they ever get there, or even permitted through the doors, and how are they now in the almighty position of ruling the world and deciding the fate of billions, when their proponents have difficulty with even the problem of 2+2 = ?
Why aren't the demonstrations directed at the universities, when the politicians are only the pimps forwarding their teachings?
After 3 years of reading the crap written by these pathetic idiots, I defined neoclassical market economics as:
" The science for the alchemic conversion of silk purses into sows' ears" (1985)
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.
John Ralston Saul has decribed economics in his usual brilliance as the following:
"The romance of truth through measurement".
An understanding of the value of economics can best be established by using its own methods. Draw up a list of the large economic problems to have struck the West over the last quarter-century. Determine the dominant strand of advice offered in each case by the community of economists. Calculate how many times this advise was followed. (More often tan not it was.) Finally add up the number of times this advise solved the problem.
The answer seems to be zero..."
One of the most brilliant demolition of the misuse of Adam Smith's words was also in Ralston's " Unconscious Civilization".
Having lived out in the bush for 28 years by now, I always have to laugh when I hear the words "social Darwininsm" and the "survival of the fittest", because, for one thing, this nonsense was invented by Herbert Spencer through the misuse of Darwin's theories, and also because ecological systems are based on cooperation and not competition.
The foodchain is not a competitive, but a cooperative environment and in ecological systems it is not the "fittest" that survive, because there's no way to determine what and who is the "fittest", but species the system needs for its own survival. Once they become superfluous for the balancing of the system, they are eliminated.
Which could easily happen to the human race, or any vestige of human civilization if they keep on screwing up the environment, as they're doing now. To jack up the GDP and "create wealth" of course.
Ed Deak.
This truth is nowhere to be found in the teachings at our institutions of higher learning, as you have so accurately pointed out on more than one occasion. This truth also applies to economic systems, right.
Again a quote from Saul, as he has an uncanny way of being wise and funny at the same time. This from 'The Doubter's Companion';
COMPETITION
"An event in which there are more losers than winners.. Otherwise it's not a competition. A society based on competition is therefore primarily a society of losers...
The point of competition, if it is left to set its own standards, is that only the winners will benefit. This is as true in economics as it is in sports. And a society which treats competition as a religious value will gradualy reduce most of the population to the role of spectators.. Democracy is impossible in such a situation, so is middle-class stability.
That is why the return to incrasingly unregulated competition over the last two decades has led to growing instability and an increasing gap between an ever-richer elite and an ever larger poorer population."
...that is why in serious competition, such as hockey or football, there are strict regulations controlling time, movement, numbers, dress, language. Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy."
In this book, (which I can warmly recommend), you can also look up 'Level Playing Field' and other fairy tales our elites love to shove down our throats.
It should be called a "level killing field".
The communists were great on this kind of baloney, but the present gang has made an art of the misuse of words.
It should be obvious to anybody with a small scrap of mind that competition is running on the laws of speed, with lesser and lesser outputs for larger and larger energy inputs, therefore it can not reduce, only increase costs.
Here again, I have to come back to the universities where this garbage is being taught. How can they get away with it and why aren't the protests directed against them ?
Ed Deak.
above, survival of the fittest is not the reality - cooperation is....watch this little <br />
film all the way through and you'll see what I mean...<br />
This was sent to me via email with the caption, 'A little movie about sticking <br />
together...'<br />
<a href="http://floobynooby.blogspot.com/2007/06/lion-vs-buffalo.html">http://floobynooby.blogspot.com/2007/06/lion-vs-buffalo.html</a><br />
<br />
We could learn alot from this little movie...imo<p>---<br>"aaaah and the whisper of thousands of tiny voices became a mighty deafening roar and they called it 'freedom'!"' Canadians Acting Humanely at home & everywhere
When the jaws of death comes at you from more than one direction it sure pays off to cooperate. It seems to me, some of the four-legged creatures have got this figured out better than their two-legged counterparts.
Thanks for that incredible video link whelan costen.