those awake

Wendell Berry and "Last Words"

awake & linking : "Last Words" | posted by Shaun O

Interesting (and rare) look at a live Q & A with Wendell Berry. Those familiar will enjoy, otherwise, skip around to parts that you might like. The responses I refer to begin at 17:30 in the video.

Linked from Orion Magazine on Friday:  

Here's are two Berry quotes that are sticking with me today:

"What are the conditions within which human beings can make sense? Within what limits are our minds effective?"

Hmm. Whoa. I tend to want to believe in the complete, unrestricted potential of human ability and technology, and can't imagine a good reason not to believe as such. That is, until Wendell Berry offers thoughtful statements like this, which he is prone to.

Then, in a response to a request, "if you were to offer a last/most important word to someone, what would it be?" Hey, not a bad question in my mind. I'll admit I'd be interested to memorize what Wendell would offer as a Last Word. Well, he doesn't offer that, but I find the response is just as important!

"To hell with the 'last words.' Let's try to make one sentence that's rightly positioned within a manageable context so that we can utter it to somebody else and they'll understand it."

Do you have a response?

Homo Evolutis - Robots, the future, and Responsibility?

awake & linking : Homo Evolutis | posted by ThoseAwake

What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth but also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on without public consent.
-DAVID R. BROWER

This TED talk is a reminder that new issues of responsibility and liability are approaching (or, are here now) and our generation will have to address them in some way.  In essence, how do we deal with the scientific/moral/real tension between can we? and should we?  

I am stumped as to how my answers to that will serve anyone in any way; but I'm mysteriously convinced that we all are obligated to answer the should we?. 

Blogging gets groggy

awake & linking : We Are Not the Only Ones | posted by Shaun O

 

ThoseAwake has been quiet.  And I haven't been blogging much lately.  In fact, I haven't blogged too much in the past year, and it's been a year that I thought I'd be doing MORE blogging.  I guess that happens.

I can think of a few reasons for it - the most clear reason being poor internet access and poor computing machines! :(  We've been saving money and mouching off of a wireless feed at home, and working on old comps = slow going.  And, at work, I haven't felt compelled.  

But there's been some bloggy-talk going on about Emergent recently, and while I identify with a lot of what is being tossed around, perhaps I most identfiy with this interesting take on so many previously active bloggers now slowing down, taking breaks, and stopping altogether.  

Josh Brown has a new post about it, and writes - 

This is not to say that social media is bad.  But that the norm for the medium has slowly moved from being about the conversation to being about “the idea of conversation”. We like to talk about conversation and church more than we like to practice it.

(And, okay, the "practice church" message isn't new - it's what church is supposed to be.)

*I resonate with this thought about social webyness in general.  These days, I don't read as many blogs, don't blog as much, and don't listen to as many podcasts partly, I think, because some of it began to somehow focus itself on "the idea of conversation."  Twitter and Facebook are less and less appealing too.  

And this is a tough reality now that we live in Reno and I don't have nearly as many face-to-face, good LIFE conversations as I did before.  Why are my good blogs decaying when that's what I was depending on out here?  :)  I think the answer will be fun.   

For now, books and snail-mail.  Let's figure out a good way to converse.

Also, follow Josh's link to other blogs, like TSK, to read about their reasons for slowing up or stopping.

Interesting times of change.  It will be good to keep questioning technology - is this useful???

Knowlege, Craft, Invention, Occupation

awake & linking : Fading Words | posted by Shaun O

Nate at Fading Words mentions a recent Harper's Article and wonders, "at some point, if EVERYONE is a knowledge worker and NO ONE actually makes anything... where are we at?"

Great question!  I'd love to toss it around.  On a very simple plane, isn't there something human about finding/taking pride in a creation?  And is just me, or do actual, physical creations hold a certain value over creations "in our head" or even digital creations?  

I've personally felt this from time to time.  I've had jobs (still do) where I can think/dream up ideas, plans, and modes of storytelling, etc.., but when it comes to physically creating something to be part of that idea or plan, I'm completely dependant on someone who can actually do something from the work of their hands! Sounds dramatic, but it's close to the truth.  While I've enjoyed the reliance on a community to pull something off (recently heard Jonathan Demme, Director of Rachel Getting Married describe the innovative way the film came together - new types of collaboration in film - called it something close to "collective invention" - interesting!), I still feel like I'm missing out on the intangible value of crafting and making the thing (any thing) on my own.  

That's a tangent, but a piece of knowledge work vs. craft work.  Thoughts?

Holding Firm on Food

awake & linking : NPR - Crunchy Con | posted by Shaun O

Having happily voted for Barack Obama, I am ready to see change in politics.  I understand and grant that it will take time - I'm trying to be patient - but as the media attests to each day, Obama has big, important decisions as it comes to his cabinet and the partners of his presidency.  I trust Obama, but I would like to sense "change" even in these, his first decisions.  Enter Crunch Con with a post on NPR about agribusiness and a potential pick for Obama's Agricultural Secretary.  I'm with Rod on this one and I hope FOOD is one place our president can begin to initiate the change we need!

Here's a snip of Rod's article below, the entire thing is here.

We have to quit subsidizing agribusiness. We need policies that encourage the building of local food economies, not ones that depend heavily on fossil fuel transport. We need reform of regulatory codes that purport to protect the public's health, but really shield agribusiness from local competition. Joel Salatin is a libertarian Evangelical farmer who is a hero of us "small is beautiful" agrarian types. He argues that the best thing the government can do is to get out of the way and let America's small farmers compete in a truly free market. This is not what you're going to hear from ex-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, reportedly in the lead to be your Agriculture Secretary. Mr. President, selling out to Big Corn is not change we can believe in.

May I suggest dinner? Let agribusiness lobbyists feed their faces at The Palm. You break bread at the White House with guests like Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Michael Pollan and Will Allen, the urban gardener who just won a MacArthur Foundation grant for teaching inner-city folks how to raise their own food. Lend them your sympathetic ear. And by the way, why not set a good example by planting a kitchen garden on the White House lawn?

I'm hopeful and watching.  No free passes.  Come on Obama!  Make clear changes or give us a sense of the "why" behind the appointments.

An American Interview, an independence gift/reminder

awake & linking : Sun Magazine | posted by Shaun O

I was moved reading this American interview in the midst of Independence Day celebrations.  As I thankfully celebrate our country, I also feel like we have big hurdles standing just before us, and we have to be creative and intuitive to do well for ourselves and generations (our family) to come.  With that hunger in my gut, I read this interview and chew on the good food of thought, care, and genius.  I would beg you to read it, study it well, so we could engage each other on it’s issues.  We might point out truth to one another, truth we would miss on our own, leaping the hurdles together.   

Digging In:  Wendell Berry On Small Farms, Local Wisdom, And The Folly Of Greed

Here are outtakes, speaking directly to recent posts here, and in line with questions we've asked about information and the urban role for good land-use in the future:

On Community -

Fearnside: You’re a well-known advocate for local economies, yet you write for a much-wider-than-local audience, which means you must rely on the machinery of the corporate world to get your message out. Is there a contradiction in this, or is it simply an inescapable paradox that you must be pragmatic about?

Berry: There are contradictions in it, no doubt about that. There’s an absolutely lethal contradiction in my driving and flying around to talk about conservation and local economies. But you have to live in the world the way it is. You can’t declare yourself too good for it and move away. You have to carry the effort wherever you can take it. You’ve got to have allies. The thought of the Committees of Correspondence in the American Revolution is never very far from my mind. People have to stay in touch somehow. They have to meet and talk. They have to support each other. But that’s a network, not a community.

On Information -

Fearnside: It seems that we’ve been separated from our local communities by radio, television, and now the Internet. Because these forces come from outside the communities, they often don’t reflect the communities’ values. How can we stay plugged in to information and yet preserve our local connections?

Berry: I don’t know. There’s not much you can do, unless you want to disconnect yourself from those electronic gadgets. I pretty much do. Tanya and I haven’t had a television for a long time; people used to give tv sets to our children, because they felt sorry for us. I think we were given three over the years. I listen to the radio some. I don’t have a computer, and I almost never see a movie. To me this isolation is necessary. It keeps my language available to me in a way that I don’t think it would be if I were full of that public information all the time.

On the Food System -

Fearnside: Should the responsibility for changing the food system lie more with the consumer, more with the producer, or equally with both?

Berry:  When the producers — the farmers — are going broke, it’s wrong to expect them to reform the system. In fact, there are too few actual farmers left to reform anything. So, as a practical matter, reform is going to have to come from consumers. Industrial agriculture is an urban invention, and if agriculture is going to be reinvented, it’s going to have to be reinvented by urban people.

Atheism, good & bad

awake & linking : Faith House Manhattan blog | posted by Shaun O'Reilly

We've talked recently about looking into the Christopher Hitchens book God is Not Great.  I haven't gone there yet, but I've seen multiple interviews with Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others in the New Atheism camp.  Sometimes I'm challenged, other times I'm just bored - it hasn't been all that stimulating to me for some reason.  But, today I read a great post HERE from Faith House Manhattan, and have to share.  What Selmanovic shares isn't groundbreaking, but solidly rings true for me - and it's clear (much needed in this discussion).  One piece of his posts reads,

Religion does deserve to be challenged. “Deserves” has two meanings. First, religion deserves the pain of criticism and correction because of its failures to live up to its own ideals. Second, religion deserves the blessing of criticism and correction because it has often been a precious catalyst for justice, peace and beauty in the world. Recent challenges should therefore be welcome by religious people as a chance to see, to grieve, to repent, and then with renewed wisdom act for the common good.

So, much like I listened in on good postmodernism vs bad postmodernism discussions about this time last year -  Samir Selmanovic keeps clear the goodness of the ism's swimming widly around our culture now.  And, for now, I deeply agree with his assessment that, "to end religion, would be to end the imagination."

Ideas in Seasons

awake & linking : Integral Creative Cycle - Kosmos | posted by Shaun O'Reilly

At the beginning of Spring (equinox) this year, in what season are your current ideas?

Linked to from Utne, I'm reading a journal post about how the growth of our creative ideas (and work) can be like a mirror to the seasonal cycle of nature. The thought doesn't have to be exactly "proved" because I think I can sense it ... and, it's fun. Don't we believe in a rhythm underlying the best of what we think and do?
The post from Kosmos Journal HERE.

An example, seemingly academic but perhaps pliable for us, in excerpt:

Autumn, preparing the terrain and planting the seeds; the body, studying what is already known about a subject matter, i.e., the body of literature

Winter, rooting and nourishment of the seed inside the earth; the vital, conception of novel developments in contact with unconscious transpersonal and archetypal sources

Spring, emerging toward the light of buds, leaves, and flowers; the heart, first conscious feelings and rough ideas

Summer, selection of mature fruits and shared celebration; the mind, intellectual selection, elaboration, and offering of the fruits of the creative process

"Our Storied Future"

I receive monthly emails from Orion Magazine that I usually don't have time to look into. But tonight I followed a link to an article by Rebecca Solnit
that emphasized my love for Story and pointed out how naive cynicism can be. Strangely, the author seems to be speaking from a post modern perspective. Most days I'm not sure exactly what "post modern" means, but it seems to be trickling out of these words. Here is an excerpt:

"An equally disabling distinction, handed down from Plato, is the one between representation and reality. This exiling of representations to the realm of the irrelevant, the inactive, the opposite of acts and actualities, trivializes the power of words and ideas. Campaigns of destruction always begin with language and symbols—even calling a forest a natural resource makes it easier to see it as board feet. People die of ideas all the time...."

"Despair is a luxury. If I despair I can drive a Yukon and watch bad television. Despair makes no demand upon us; hope demands everything. For people around the world, in places like Burma and Chiapas, giving up means accepting hideous conditions of life, or death. Despair is cheap for us, expensive for them. What does it mean to be radical, to tell radical stories in our time, to win the battle of the story?"

Go read the rest. It is encouraging and true.

How Creativity is Strangled by the Law

awake & linking : TED - Larry Lessig | posted by Brian Rhea

From TED : Ideas Worth Sharing

Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of “three stories and an argument.” The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.