The Day the Earth Stood Still

[Albert Bates]

Sunday, December 21, 2008

A friend and I went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still last week and I found it a remarkable remake of a 1951 original film that never lost its relevancy. This one, being released the week after the 14th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change, is as timely as The China Syndrome.

A central theme of COP-14, held in Poznan, Poland, was that humankind is bound by realities that exist independently of human wishes and beliefs. The era of faith-based science is drawing to a close. Big Science can no longer uniformly describe the many, complicated ways humanity is changing the natural world as an "unprecedented success."

I am not alone in speculating that, in the many quirky or random selections back up our DNA evolutionary chain, better brains than ours or better memes than those in vogue at present were left discarded along the way. Even the thought of giving monkeys the gift of speech, a neocortex, and opposable thumbs must be giving God acid reflux about now, as I said in my most recent c-realm interview.

In Poznan, as in all UN conferences, progress is measured in millimeters not miles. Jeremy Leggett gave as good a summary as any of the amazing disconnect between facts and policies proposed. Greenpeace said they were disappointed with the lack of progress made and especially with the depressingly diluted EU climate package presented by Andrea Merkell. The Pew Center on Climate Change took the public stance that a “full, final, ratifiable agreement just isn’t in the cards” to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, if for no other reason than the archane workings of the US Senate. [Note to Comedy Central: Could Al Franken’s election be the tipping point that saves the planet?] Still, there were some funds freed up by the industrial world to help the de-industrial world green-industrialize, or have a New Green Deal, whatever that means, and that gave the 9,000 delegates the opportunity to declare success and go home.

If there was a highlight, it was Al Gore endorsing resetting the compass at 350 ppmv CO2e in a rousing talk with many extended ovations. “A year ago, nobody had ever heard of 350. But it turns out it’s the most important number on the planet,” remarked Bill McKibben, self-congratulatorily. Undergirding Gore’s shift was the release of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2008 that warned, “Without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6°C.”

Six degrees would be The Century The Earth Stood Still, although surprising few in politics or mass media seem to grasp that. Odd, because one would think a 2-meter sea level rise, desertification of one third the planet and permanent drought over much of the rest, plus the loss of all inland glaciers that provide water to a billion people would be the stuff that sells soap and raises soapboxes. If we consider that the Dust Bowl was a sustained decrease in soil moisture of about 15%, then what effect might a decline of soil moisture in the 20 to 50% range over most of the South and Southwestern US (not to mention Southern Europe, the Asian steppes, Africa and Australia) by as early as 2050 have on the news cycle?

As I came back into this civilization this week, passing through airport lounges with CNN monitors and stands of the Wall Street Journal, I could not help but notice how deceiving it all was. I mean the ongoing collapse and Christmas shoppers' denial. As Catherine Austin Fitts elegantly expressed:

It is difficult for me to express how upset I am with investors being misled by traditional portfolio strategy. Let me state for the record: there is no such thing as a diversified portfolio when most stocks and bonds represent companies or municipalities that are dependent on federal government funds. In addition, there is a difference between a traditional business cycle and a financial coup d’etat. Finally, if the rule of law is not available to ensure functioning markets, all bets are off. There are some things that even zero percent interest rates and an infinite amount of loans from the Fed and the Treasury can’t solve.

And there are some things that government cannot solve, although it can certainly exercise leadership in pointing a way to solutions. Take the existential crisis now spread before us, and advancing like replicating nanobots.

Ultimately, it comes back to learning how to live on this fragile blue island in space. Can we, as Jennifer Connelly/Patricia Neal’s character urges upon Keanu Reeves/Michael Rennie’s character, change? Do we really have that capacity? Do we understand what that might entail? We don’t have long to wait before we will find out. COP-15 in Copenhagen is now less than a year away.

For a version of this post with all of the embedded hyperlinks, see peaksurfer.blogspot.com.

[Sandi Brockway]

I saw this movie tonight where the woman says "i always believed that it was the truth that was supposed to set you free." then the man sad, on "no, you have it wrong, the truth will make you insane."

Then I ran into this quote tonight.

Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
­ Mark Twain

[Sandi Brockway]

I have been wanting to come back and make some comments regarding this issue of MOVEMENTS and human denial. I have had no time, and still have little time until after the New Year. So this must be brief.

Shopping gets such a bad rap, and it is really the least of it - except when you are talking about the super wealthy, the top five percent, who should be spending on philanthropy. We do live in interesting time, though, given that some of the wealthiest people in the world agree with this. I think the reason why shopping is so much easier to attack and criticize is that mostly women do it.

Shopping is just our ancient need to gather, cull, nest and stockpile. Shopping is but a symptom of anxiety, necessary for preparing for harsh conditions and climates. Shopping would not bother me so much, if there was not so much waste. The detrimental tendency, as I see it, is one that is most closely associated with Stockholm Syndrome.

We have lived in a male dominant heirarchichal culture that has won all its privileges and entitlements through violence, lying, and bullying. This has been the operating force for a very very long time - no matter what Jesus or Buddha says! Centralization, too, is not some sort of industrial or petroleum era phenomena. Centralization is all about a big bad bully who wanted to be worshiped as a God.

Human evil is very real. I have always believed that we cultivated, or domesticated, a sociopathic gene for violence. After all, we needed warriors - killers and good hunters to protect and feed us. In exchange, all we had to do is worship and indulge them - but this meant distorting our personalities and lying - and taking and giving abuse in order to protect our positions. This also explains why and how women exaggerate their personalities, artificiality, and mystique in order to appease the violence in men and share in their entitlements. We are a trauma-based culture, most of the this world are walking around with dissociate personality disorders or PTSD.

We have come to the point where there are three leading economies, all born from this reality. First, the arms trade, then the sex trade where women and children around the world are slaves to male privilege, then, there is DRUGS, the third leading economy, which help us deal with the pain, dysfunction, trauma, and denial.

Denial has its basis in narcissism. I suspect, and try to teach others, that as individuals we need to shed our narcissistic inclinations. Only by facing the human proclivity for evil, cruelty, sadism, greed, vanity, will to power - call it what you need - can we have any hope of transcending it and solving the crisis ahead.

How do we cultivate honest, authentic, and truthful relationships and move beyond these dysfunctional addiction models? There is no one who has lost hope more than me, because since becoming an outspoken advocate for progressive change, I have only encountered enormous personal hypocrisy, deceit and cruelty from people who call themselves activists and progressives!!!

As for change, it does have to get out into the zeitgeist in some form of a fad. I think that the UK transitioners that showed skeptism, calling it Premature Triumphantilism, though, might be missing something. The best I can do right now is to recommend the movies IRON JAWED ANGELS and AMAZING GRACE for their similarity. This movement is so long overdue. I first learned about the Greenhouse Effect and global warming in geography classes at Humboldt State University in the 70s! Carter asked for a post petroleum revolution for God's sakes!

I think what we could be experiencing is possibly a fortuitous crossroads and convergence. It is rare, as those historical movies suggest, but it happens.

I disagree that government should do nothing or can do nothing. Since the McCarthy era the US has been on the path of privatization extremism which abhors anything have to do with restrictions or planning - which, I suspect, is one of the reasons that feminism never went over big until if finally figured out a way to cater or compromise to the dominant male values. We are supposed to let free markets rule unbridled. Self centeredness is worshiped usually in the form of a self made alpha male.

Two books I am working my way through, STATES OF DENIAL, and WHY GOOD PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS. I used to be huge Erich Fromm fan, and still am, and made myself crazy reading RD Laing when I was a kid. What I learned form them is that people spend a lot of time lying and running from the truth and themselves.

Remember that Woody Allen joke? LOL. "I only have one regret in life, that I was not born someone else." Well, many of us for decades have said it is a spiritual issue - we have to love and respect ourselves and turn away from conceit and deceit. Somehow, many people thought that loving yourself meant conceit and deceit, unfortunately.

I recently noticed this Episcopal Church I like to go to in Pasadena getting very redundant about this message of self love and respect. They also began taking on a staff of lay psychologists for the ministry to help people facing traumatic life experiences.

Jesus did say two things that are very close to human reality. God, why have you forsaken me.... and ... Forgive them for they know not what they do. For those trying so hard to live in the light of truth, those words ring true.