Warped Economies IV

He who binds to himself a joy

Doth the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternitie's sunrise.

     WILLIAM BLAKE

Our meddling intellect

Misshapes the beauteous forms of things--

We murder to dissect.

     WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Warped Economies III

Warped Economies II

Warped Economies

"In politics we have so firm a faith in the manifestly unknowable future that we are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to an opium smoker's dream of Utopia or world dominion or perpetual security. But where natural resources are concerned, we sacrifice a pretty accurately predictable future to present greed. We know, for example, that if we abuse soil, it will lose its fertility, that if we massacre the forests, our children will lack timber and see their uplands eroded, their valleys swept by floods. Nevertheless we continue to abuse the soil and massacre the forests. In a word, we immolate the present to the future in those complex human affairs, where foresight is impossible; but in the relatively simple affairs of nature, where we know quite well what is likely to happen, we immolate the future to the present."

     ALDOUS HUXLEY

(Fragment taken from the epilogue to his novel: "Time Must Have a Stop")

"We understand the devilishness of the political manifestations of the lust for power; but have so completely ignored the evils and dangers inherent in the technological manifestations that, in the teeth of the most obvious facts, we continue to teach our children that there is no debit side to applied science, only a continuing and ever expanding credit. The idea of progress is based on the belief that one can be overweening with impunity."

     ALDOUS HUXLEY

(Fragment taken from the epilogue to his novel: "Time Must Have a Stop")

Cutlery

"A flawless, perfectly, digital ethical society would be too well drawn, and would not be good for individuals. A little noise, not too much, is needed if there is to be creativity or individuality.

The very idea of "digital" fights that necessary noise. Recall that the motivation of the invention of the bit was to hide and contain the thermal, chaotic aspect of physical reality for a time in order to have a circumscribed, temporary, programmable nook within the larger theater. Outside of the conceit of the computer, reality cannot be fully known or programmed.

Poorly conceived digital systems can erase the numinous nuances that make us individuals. The all-or-nothing nature of the bit is reflected at all layers in a digital information system, just like the quantum nature of elementary particles is reflected in the uncertainty of complex systems in macro physical reality, like the weather. If we associate human identity with the digital reduction instead of reality at large, we will reduce ourselves.

The all-or-nothing conceit of the bit should not be amplified to become the social principle of the human world, even though that's the lazy thing to do from an engineering point of view. It's equally mistaken to build digital culture, which is gradually becoming all culture, on a foundation of anonymity or single-persona antiprivacy. Both are similar affronts to personhood."

     Fragment taken from the book: "You Are Not A Gadget" by Jaron Lanier.

(Thoughts on personhood and digital culture)

 

"Our willingness to suffer for the sake of the perception of freedom is remarkable."

     JARON LANIER

(Thoughts on capitalism and free markets)

"No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties".

     PAUL GOODMAN

Buttons

Pollinator

Egg

Decay

Blind Window

Flash from Ruben Aguirre Barba on Vimeo.

Blackfriars

Waste

Radiation

"Trend is not destiny."

     René Dubos.

"Elevating the objectives of trade above the transparency and accountability that democracy requires will ultimately destroy at least one of these institutions, if not both."

     Fragment of "Natural Capitalism" by PAUL HAWKEN, AMORY LOVINS & L.HUNTER LOVINS

Suddenly..

"For all their power and vitality, markets are only tools. They make a good servant but a bad master and a worse religion."

     Fragment of "Natural Capitalism" by PAUL HAWKEN, AMORY LOVINS & L.HUNTER LOVINS

"If industry removes concentrated and structured matter from the system faster than it can be replaced, and at the same time destroys the means of its creation, namely ecosystems and habitats, it introduces a fundamental problem in production."

     Fragment of "Natural Capitalism" by PAUL HAWKEN, AMORY LOVINS & L.HUNTER LOVINS

"We, as modern(izing) global constituency, are now at a historical juncture wherein we know so much but fail to grasp that we equally understand so little"

     TONY FRY

"Because of the profligate nature of current industrial processes, the world thus faces three crises that threaten to cripple civilisation in the twenty-first century: the deterioration of the natural environment; the ongoing dissolution of civil societies into lawlessness, despair, and apathy: and the lack of public will needed to address human suffering and social welfare. All three problems share waste as a common cause."

     Fragment of "Natural Capitalism" by PAUL HAWKEN, AMORY LOVINS & L.HUNTER LOVINS