How to live in exile

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.

Wyeth descent

Situated atop a hill above the home in which Jamie was raised, [his grandfather N.C. Wyeth's] studio was filled with weapons, costumes and colorful paintings of pirates...

"It was just magic," Jamie says. "And then I would go back to my family's house and there would be my father painting some dead bird in the yard."

Livingry

The essence of livingry is human-life advantaging and environment-controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful. ~RBF

Common sense

In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto; the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him to quit his work, and every different want would call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for, though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.

Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but Heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.

from “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine

Freedom

Freedom is doing the right thing when no one is watching.

The American and the Fisherman

I first read this story posted on the wall of a Jimmy John's sandwich shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan:

An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied only a little while. The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?" The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senior."

The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But senior, how long will this all take?"

To which the American replied, "15-20 years."

"But what then, senior?"

The American laughed and said that's the best part. "When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."

"Millions, senior? Then what?"

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

I've often puzzled over the perceived necessity of "growth." This unattributed parable demonstrates the conflict between the mandate to maximize profits and the value of a life that's worth living. How much greater is this tension when the growth in question is of an increasingly catastrophic militarily-industrial brand of capitalism, the cross of iron on which humanity has hung itself. Buckminster Fuller coined the term livingry, the antonym of weaponry. Our economy should serve the way we ought to live, not the other way around.

Stadium love

Earth is an absurd stadium, teeming and festering with the miracle of life. Each entity must struggle and compete for survival, ceaselessly devouring and being devoured. The most absurd participant in this creature carnival is the human, a being well-constructed for combative success yet seemingly bound by its very nature to self destruction. Our kind's cognitive and physical prowess has elevated us to a position of dominion in the environment, but not over our own nature. We have organized and civilized according to the neccessities of basic survival, the rules of the game, yet we don't seem to be winning the world. We possess the technological capacity to spread knowledge, health, and well-being around the globe, yet remain trapped in primeval tribalism - needlessly beholden to violence, ignorance, and fear. Where's the love?

Every living thing
Pushed into the ring
Fight it out to wow the crowd
Guess you thought
You could just watch
No one's getting out
Without stadium love

Sept. 14, 2011 - I wrote this entry prior to watching the video by the Canadian band Metric that is linked to the lyrics (yep, blog post with song lyrics in it). The translation from lyrics to video are quite literal, and in retrospect the whole thing seems kind of on-the-nose. I've embedded said video here for full effect: