Brief thoughts on "anthropocentrism," or people aren't the problem, capitalism is

Anthropocentrism: The belief that humans are separate from, and superior to, other forms of life and being.

Elements of the environmental movement claim that it is this feeling of superiority which has brought us to our current ecological crisis. A philosophical tradition reaching back to the Old Testament's "dominion" -- and stretching through Enlightenment Rationality and even reverberating in the Frankfurt School -- has posited man as master of the natural world, which is itself stripped of any inner life, meaning, or spirit.

If you contemplate the sources of our environmental crisis you won't be able to avoid the conclusion that consumption of natural resources is among them. But we (i.e., the developed world, and the U.S. especially) consume tremendously greater amounts of resources and energy than the rest of the world. My point being, what is the use of casting blame at the feet of this abstraction "man"? I fear we are spreading the blame around when we should be pointing fingers.

Unpacking anthropocentrism's simple culprit of "man's dominion over nature," I think we can arrive at something more like this: our economy, based as it is on never-ending growth and the enrichment of a progressively-smaller global elite, is consuming natural resources in an unsustainable way while dispossessing more and more people of the means to live lightly on the land.

To approach this from another angle, do you really think the hordes of Christmas shoppers besieging our nation's malls feel they are enacting "dominion over nature"? I for one am not convinced that the umpteenth sweater purchased for one's niece in full knowledge it will never be worn because "I didn't know what else to get!" gives its buyer the deep satisfaction of scoring one for the home team. I think its something more banal: boredom, insecurity, and a credit card.

Bored, insecure, and packing a credit card. The ideal Western consumer. And it is the economy they participate in that has brought us to the brink of collapse, not "man"-writ-large's delusions of mastery over the natural world.

Paul Krugman on (non-) intervention in the market

From an interview with Andrew Leonard at his blog:

There's kind of a weird double-think involved in arguments that the slump should be allowed to follow its natural course. It's true that classical economics says that we should let market forces do their work; but classical economics also says that severe recessions can't happen. This idea that we must not intervene is based on a worldview that is refuted by the very fact that the economy is in the mess it's in.

Real chicken coop update

Here it is!

This is the next box. Its roof is a lid to allow easy access to our hens' eggs:

Nest box on the inside:

The beauty of information

Explore Gapminder. Watch the numbers dance, and learn something about the world.

Ken MacLeod on socialism

Imagine if the left had taken the most hostile caricatures of what socialism was and what being a socialist meant, and proceeded to live up to them. Lots of people would now be saying things like, 'I'm not a socialist, but I think capitalism sucks and should be replaced by a system based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution.'

Oh, wait. That happened.

from 'The Falling Rate of Profit, Red Hordes and Green Slime: What the Fall Revolution Books are About'

Progress on the chicken coop