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You and the Food You Rode In On

Over the course of six months living in rural France some years ago, I mysteriously lost about twelve pounds – without trying. Not only was I not trying to lose weight but, being on our second tour in the Vaucluse, Mrs. Green and I were in the throes of all of the delicious meats, vegetables, cheeses, fruits and local Rhone wines that were such an important part of living there. It can’t be overstated, the importance of the food to that place. In fact, besides the inexplicable late afternoon light, there is really not much else going there at all. Which is one reason why it’s a great place to write, among other things. Exercise consisted of mowing the acre out front of the farmhouse twice a month and biking 2 km to the village most every day. Which, when you think about it, is plenty.

But the point is, with all the chipolatas, Camembert, rose’, apricots and creme fraiche, coupled with a largely sedentary lifestyle,  I was baffled about the weight loss until I shared this with a friend upon our return. Without skipping a beat, she pointed out the obvious – that I had largely stopped eating processed food.

All that is to lead-in to this thoughtful post on the same subject, with some sliced media criticism on the side, by Juan Cole. Just go read it. Highly relevant to the current health care debates and everything green you might need to consider. At least on a quiet Sunday.

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Grace to Utility

John Ruskin was the pre-eminent Victorian art critic whose impact is precisely as diverse and long-lasting as the tenants on which any concept of ‘the art of life’ should be. His Fors Clavigera is a series of letters, published as pamphlets, addressed to the working men of Britain during the 1870’s; his Unto This Last was translated into Gujarati by Gandhi in 1908, after Ruskin’s ideas on the value of work inspired him to change his life.

The following is from his lecture, the Relation of Art to Use, part of his Lectures on Art, delivered at the University of Oxford in 1870.

Our subject of enquiry to-day, you will remember, is the mode in which fine art is founded upon, or may contribute to, the practical requirements of human life.

Its offices in this respect are mainly twofold: it gives Form to knowledge, and Grace to utility; that is to say, it makes permanently visible to us things which otherwise could neither be described by our science, nor retained by our memory; and it gives delightfulness and worth to the implements of daily use, and materials of dress, furniture and lodging. In the first of these offices it gives precision and charm to truth; in the second it gives precision and charm to service. For, the moment we make anything useful thoroughly, it is a law of nature that we shall be pleased with ourselves, and with the thing we have made; and become desirous therefore to adorn or complete it, in some dainty way, with finer art expressive of our pleasure.

And the point I wish chiefly to bring before you to-day is this close and healthy connection of the fine arts with material use; but I must first try briefly to put in clear light the function of art in giving Form to truth.

Much that I have hitherto tried to teach has been disputed on the ground that I have attached too much importance to art as representing natural facts, and too little to it as a source of pleasure. And I wish, in the close of these four prefatory lectures, strongly to assert to you, and, so far as I can in the time, convince you, that the entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects,—either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one. It must never exist alone—never for itself; it exists rightly only when it is the means of knowledge, or the grace of agency for life.

Now, I pray you to observe—for though I have said this often before, I have never yet said it clearly enough—every good piece of art, to whichever of these ends it may be directed, involves first essentially the evidence of human skill and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.

Skill, and beauty, always then; and, beyond these, the formative arts have always one or other of the two objects which I have just defined to you—truth, or serviceableness; and without these aims neither the skill nor their beauty will avail; only by these can either legitimately reign. All the graphic arts begin in keeping the outline of shadow that we have loved, and they end in giving to it the aspect of life; and all the architectural arts begin in the shaping of the cup and the platter, and they end in a glorified roof.

Therefore, you see, in the graphic arts you have Skill, Beauty, and Likeness; and in the architectural arts, Skill, Beauty, and Use; and you must have the three in each group, balanced and co-ordinate; and all the chief errors of art consist in losing or exaggerating one of these elements.

For instance, almost the whole system and hope of modern life are founded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill, photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main nineteenth-century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get everything by grinding—music, literature, and painting. You will find it grievously not so; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding. Even to have the barley-meal out of it, you must have the barley first; and that comes by growth, not grinding. But essentially, we have lost our delight in Skill; in that majesty of it which I was trying to make clear to you in my last address, and which long ago I tried to express, under the head of ideas of power. The entire sense of that, we have lost, because we ourselves do not take pains enough to do right, and have no conception of what the right costs; so that all the joy and reverence we ought to feel in looking at a strong man’s work have ceased in us. We keep them yet a little in looking at a honeycomb or a bird’s-nest; we understand that these differ, by divinity of skill, from a lump of wax or a cluster of sticks. But a picture, which is a much more wonderful thing than a honeycomb or a bird’s-nest,—have we not known people, and sensible people too, who expected to be taught to produce that, in six lessons?

Well, you must have the skill, you must have the beauty, which is the highest moral element; and then, lastly, you must have the verity or utility, which is not the moral, but the vital element; and this desire for verity and use is the one aim of the three that always leads in great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without any exception. They will permit themselves in awkwardness, they will permit themselves in ugliness; but they will never permit themselves in uselessness or in unveracity.

And farther, as their skill increases, and as their grace, so much more, their desire for truth. It is impossible to find the three motives in fairer balance and harmony than in our own Reynolds. He rejoices in showing you his skill; and those of you who succeed in learning what painter’s work really is, will one day rejoice also, even to laughter—that highest laughter which springs of pure delight, in watching the fortitude and the fire of a hand which strikes forth its will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it on the sea. He rejoices in all abstract beauty and rhythm and melody of design; he will never give you a colour that is not lovely, nor a shade that is unnecessary, nor a line that is ungraceful. But all his power and all his invention are held by him subordinate,—and the more obediently because of their nobleness,—to his true leading purpose of setting before you such likeness of the living presence of an English gentleman or an English lady, as shall be worthy of being looked upon for ever.

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Science… So What?

principal drawing of a caisson. cc wikimedia
principal drawing of a caisson. cc wikimedia

So Everything. Thus spaketh this fancy new U.K. site. Whether you’re wondering why the sky is blue or arguing with your friends at the bar over what a caisson is*, it seems like a good place to go for answers, as well as explanations for why science is important. As if anybody would possibly need that. The site seems to be predicated on being a destination/resource for kids, but I really don’t see how we’re availed of such distinctions.

*Actually, if your barman isn’t handy with a Webster’s Dictionary to settle such fraci – which can escalate – you should seek improvement in your level of watering hole.

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Selling the Hot Idea

Speaking of debris fields, Stephen Benen at WM flags an article that is brimming with all kinds of cosmic debris. The piece is ostensibly about how the current political climate is muting what enthusiasm there is for legislation to combat climate change. But it’s actually a description of the false choice between the environment and economic development which many people sincerely believe they are grappling with. For those about to choose, we… tell you to hold on a minute.

I’ll just pick out a couple of things form the article, by Jennifer Robison of the Las Vegas Review-Journal who uses data from a recent Gallup poll to get right to the point.

Recent surveys show Americans cooling to global warming, and they’re even less keen on environmental policies they believe might raise power bills or imperil jobs.

…

What’s more, fewer Americans believe the effects of global warming have started to occur: 53 percent see signs of a hotter planet, down from 61 percent in 2008. Global warming placed last among eight environmental concerns Gallup asked respondents to rank, with water pollution landing the top spot.

Another recent Gallup study found that, for the first time in 25 years of polling, more Americans care about economic growth than the environment.

…

And Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think-tank, pointed to a study from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association that showed 58 percent of respondents were unwilling to pay more than they currently pay for electricity to combat climate change.

Emphasis mine. Is that a choice? “Hmm… this is what I’ll pay for my light bill and not a penny more!” Is that how it works? Really? The ellipses are used not to cherry pick – feel free to read the whole thing. It’s a decent picture of what people have been led to believe are the underlying conditions of both climate catastrophe and economic development. She’s right in that the way global warming has been portrayed is partly to blame. Just not in the way she says.

With so many surveys revealing that Americans have little appetite for environmental policies that they think could stall economic growth or pinch consumers’ budgets, policymakers still have some selling to do, observers say.

What are they supposed to sell? That, short of new, highly exotic schemes that, not unlike the rear-view mirror, may appear more insane than they actually are, economic growth as we’ve known it is over? That should go over well. But the point is that these two have not been sufficiently connected. It’s another contradiction: despite the kinds of big expensive movies we make and support – we’re actually afraid of scaring people. Who woulda thunk it? This is not even touching on the degree to which people who sow skepticism of a warming planet turn around tout that very skepticism as one reason to do nothing. Though that phenomenon is responsible for this:

“I think there’s a huge amount of skepticism among the public. They’ve heard all these claims, and now they’ve been informed that there isn’t any recent warming,” Ebell said. “The public, without having a lot of information about it, is pretty astute. I think the alarmists are having a hard time making the case for global warming simply because reality is against them and the public has figured it out.”

Again, emphasis mine. That’s a non-sequitur, first of all. But I would choose the terms ‘reality’ and ‘hard time’ as ripe for a kind of redefinition along the lines of what our economic development has been all about and what it would take for it continue in any meaningful way. Even outside of concern for rising oceans, the connection between our rate of resource burn to our ability to grow and grow is non-sensical and we should be striving to transition away from it for that reason alone. Books will be written about this phenomenon and the brick wall awaiting us. It’s not wishful thinking or ‘fatalism as marketing’ that will determine whether we pass or fail on this front, but the thing people fear most – smarts.

With apologies to Mrs. Simmel and the Piranha Brothers – more heads stuffed with Cartesian dualism, please.

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You’ve Got Your Gender Composition in my Employment Parity

When the banality of economics becomes seductive. Via Matt Yglesias, Economix offers this chart undermining the truly pathetic neologism of a “mancession.” Please.

We could use crises to take a second look at issues in society – budget crises ostensibly allow us to prioritize our concerns, even if cowardly politicians address them with ridiculous across-the-board-cuts. Steep drops in employment bring up gender equity issues in the workforce in a way which, combined with other forces, should reflect not just changing demographics but shifts in national economy itself – toward education and healthcare, for example, and away from certain types of heavy manufacturing. Which itself reflects the tack away from industrial-based activity and toward a service economy. We will still have to make things and build stuff, and women may be increasingly designing the buildings, negotiating the contracts and cutting the ribbons. But this is less ‘XX takin’ XY’s jobs’ than ‘the nature of our jobs is changing.’

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Arguing With Success

Tom Philpot at Grist links to this quote from Virginia farmer, Joel Salatin:

Number one is that it[industrial agriculture] destroys soil. Absolutely and completely. The soil is the only thread upon which civilization can exist, and it’s such a narrow strip around the globe if a person could ever realize that our existence depends on literally inches of active aerobic microbial life on terra firma, we might begin to appreciate the ecological umbilical to which we are all still attached. The food industry, I’m convinced, actually believes we don’t need soil to live. That we are more clever than that.

At the advent of industrial agriculture, right after the Great Depression and really catching fire right after World War II, the only consideration for the natural world was as an abstraction of our national heritage. We didn’t have a large body of oil paintings or bronze sculpture – Americans had land, mountains, canyons and sky, which we assumed went on forever and we owned. Environment as a resource was only concerned with economic determinism. No ideas of preservation, only the concept of a bottomless well. This is not castigation – it’s genuinely difficult to appreciate the past in its own time. During and after the Dust Bowl we couldn’t eat, and we recognized the fact that we couldn’t produce enough food on our farms. So we reacted, and brilliant technicians solved the problem, based on what we knew at the time.

There was no ecology, no environmental science much less any larger systems view as to how these elements of plantary ebb and flow worked together. And so the shift to industrial agriculture worked; we grow food in copious volume. It’s hard to argue down successful ventures.

But that’s exactly what we must be able to do, in a sense, in order to transition to something other than a catastrophe based on the multiple negative externalities that have been produced as a result of our great success. And they have been great. But now in possession of a greater consciousness – we can perceive the problems our actions create. Plus, as it is easy to see, we know much, much more, about our planet, our problems and our solutions. We know the problems are far more complex than is navigable with conventional responses. The non-safety, non-economic externalities are the ones that have caught up with our grand abilities to provide and prosper, which is why these are should be the first things to be brought into question, upon honest appraisal. Instead of twitching at the notion of lower inputs, we’ll have to bore into it with all we have and then some.

As a colleague said to me on this very note, “the science that got us into this situation will not be able to get us out.”

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Changing Planet

I write and link here about many of the observable effects of ‘green’ marketing campaigns and energy initiatives. By hook or crook, we’re all learning the implications of societal progress on natural the world, perhaps most visible right now upon the so-called intellectual order. It is important to remember in the middle of all of this that the world is changing. Sometimes we overlook this perspective of change from the ones who will feel it the most, or at least, more than today’s adults. These people walk and crawl among you today – they’re in everything from diapers to seventh grade right about now. Their perspectives will be far different from the ones enjoyed/indulged just a few short years before – and while they may be revolted by corporate subservience and climate denierism of their elders, they will likely be more empowered to something a little more active than resentment. While we contemplate change at the margins, these folks will likely have the knowledge, gumption and evidence for the necessary actions.

That may sound hopeful, but take a look a this Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit for Formal and Informal Educators. This is the kind of knowledge is power take on climate change that will lead to sober solutions and clear thinking about the challenges ahead. It doesn’t say but I don’t think there is any age limits on its impact or usefulness.

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Naked in the Sun

Apropos of nearing the unofficial end of the travel season,  a little of that voodoo that some do so well. Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was an American expat novelist, travel writer and composer. After living in Paris and New York in the 30’s, he ventured to North Africa and, with a few exceptions, never left, spending most of his life in Tangier. The following is an excerpt from The Age of Monsters, from the book, Let It Come Down

Outside the wind blew by; in here there was nothing but the beating of the hot sun on the skin. he lay a while, intensely conscious of the welcome heat, in a state of self-induced voluptuosness. When he looked at the sun, his eyes closed almost tight, he saw webs of crystalline fire crawling across the narrow space between the slitted lids, and his eyelashes made the furry beams of light stretch out, recede, stretch out. It was a long time since he had lain naked in the sun. he remembered that if you stayed long enough the rays drew every thought out of your head. That was what he wanted, to be baked dry and hard, to vaporous worries evaporating one by one, to know finally that all the damp little doubts and hesitations that covered the floor of his being were curling up and expiring in the great furnace-blast of the sun. Presently he forgot about all that, hs muscles relaxed, and he dozed lightly, waking now and then to lift his head above the worm-eaten gunwale and glance up and down the beach. There was no one. Eventually he ceased doing even that. At one point he turned over and lay face down on the hard-packed sand, feeling the sun’s burning sheet settle over his back. The soft, regular cymbal-crash of the waves was like a distant breathing of tyhe morning; the sound sifted down through the myriad compartments of the air and reached his ears long afterward. When he turned back and looked straight at the sky it seemed farther away than he had ever seen it. Yet he felt very close to himself, perhaps because in order to feel alove a man must first cease to think of himself as being on his way.There must be a full stop, all objectives forgotten. A voice says, “Wait,” but he usually will not listen, because if he waits he may be too late. Then, too, if he really waits, he may find that when he starts to move again it will be in a different direction, and that also is a frightening thought. Because life is not a movement toward or away from anything; not even from the past to the future, or from youth to old age, or from birth to death. The whole of life does not equal the sum of its parts. It equals any one of the parts; there is no sum. The full-grown man is no more deeply involved in life than the new-born child; his only advantage is that it can occasionally be given him to become conscious of the substance of life, and unless he is a fool he will not look for reasons or explanations. Life needs no clarifying, no justification. From whatever direction the appraoch is made, the result is the same: life for life’s sake, the transcending fact of the living individual. In the meantime you eat. And so he, lying in the sun and feeling close to himself, knew that he was there and rejoiced in the knowledge.

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Sustainability for Dummies

I regularly check /. (Slashdot), both as a part of my job keeping up with developments in science and engineering and as one of the many ways of generally training a wider eye. The great preponderance there is technology-oriented, and a serious plurality of that is gaming-related and so of little interest to me personally. But there’s a non-tech thread soliciting advice about marriage for geeks that serves as a good parallel to some wider points, green and other.

We should admit that the concept has become rather trite, even and especially as an advertising tool. I think it was at 80% in the first month, and has pulled up the remainder of the ladder in the time since.

Anyway, the /. poster made the point that he and his fiance were self-ID’d geeks and that most of the books about marriage were aimed at alpha-male jocks and submissive cheerleader wives and hence the incompatibility issues related to sports just didn’t apply to them. Commenters graciously pointed out, among other things, that ‘intelligent people do not need the rubberstamp advice found in self-help books’ and that honesty and openness were the paramount virtues of any marriage. Well put; those points alone open up all manner of questions about anti-elitism and best-selling books along the lines of ________ for dummies and what have you. That people are willing to self-identify as dummies in pursuit of some rudimentary guidance on basic human behavior is indicative of their token interests in the first place. Sort of like trying to figure out how to ‘go green’ with ease, without changing any of the larger elements of your life – you can just buy the right cleaner or bowling ball and Voila!

That’s as stupid as it sounds, itself a point that should be the subtitle on the Dummy Guides to Everything. Just as there is no circle drawn around your town demarcating a sustainable distance from work or play, there is no definitively green lifestyle, per se. Despite our fascination with collective experience, most everyone’s quotidian existence has certain unique aspects. It is these which are malleable and in play, open to alignment with planetary-mindedness, if that’s the idea, or allegiance to your favorite team, as the case may be. The point is not achieving a level of relative sustainability regarding what you are already doing but embarking upon a transition to less waste and better food.

We can’t superimpose sustainability on this system any more than we can mandate faithful marriages by tweaking the kinds of lies that are okay (or agreeing that men and women are simply – darn it – from different planets). We can identify ways to better living and begin to buy and vote accordingly. This will entail a lot of work and probably include reading many books and talking with people smarter than you (and me), but will definitely and without doubt result in better freedom.