Introduction to “Living in the Future’s Past”
Earth Day 2019, Public Library, Seguin, Texas
No voté por esta biblioteca.
Queria dos … menores.
But I do appreciate it
In numerous ways. …
Books, the cellulosic (or—now–electronic) elixir of life.
Informative presentations.
Its beauty.
Its wonderful people.
Challenging educational activities …
For the novices,
For the experienced.
Friends of the Library.
The Spanish Club.
Sylvia and The Creekside Poets.
…………..
Las bibliotecas son para la comunicación.
Communication IS tough
And especially when hoping for …
And planning for …
And beginning to realize …
And attempting to maintain …
Some semblance of
Comunidad sostenible.
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Mom & Dad molded me
On a very small, humble
Diversified hog farm
With pasture all around
Near the railroad town of Devine.
Then off to A&M.
They called me Paul Bain Martin.
I should now add Hoffmann.
My wife Betsy,
Who has that name,
Understands people
And the social fabric
Incredibly more
Than this doctor
Of class Hexapoda.
She does attempt to teach me!
Obrigado Elisabete!!!
Our homes in Medina County … and now Guadalupe
Were savannah.
Created by climate and from rock, then soil,
And soil and climate,
Created by the savannah community itself.
Including indigenous peoples. …
And fire!!!
It’s now de facto much less productive.
Psuedoproductivity
Infused with an addictive blip of fossil energia.
Now largely brush.
South Central Texas Brush.
Texas Hill Country Brush!
And industrial agriculture.
Interstates.
Asphalt, concrete; plastics; cars, cars, cars.
An urban mess.
(Perhaps a little urbane?)
Increasingly … rampant change
Resulting from …
European ecological imperialism,
Agrilogistics,
Embodied Human Appropriated Net Primary Productivity,
Constant disruption of dynamic homeostatic symbioses.
It’s not sustainable.
It suffers from social injustice,
Inhumane policies, plans, and actions,
Ecological insanity.
And I am concerned!
We?? … We?? … We?? …
We are concerned??????
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Merci Institut Français
For your nights of philosophy
And ecological ideas
Across the States
The past winter of 2018-2019.
Merci for promoting the documentary …
“Living in the Future’s Past”.
Merci Dra. Ana Maria Gonzales.
Thanks Marvel & Bobbie & Danny.
¡Muchisimas gracias Sil!
E outros da minha vida.
A challenge we have and which our progeny will continue to face is ecological illiteracy, and the inability to critically, morally, and ethically think and act. Ecology across the curricula in all human organization entities, … and living–as Pope Francis says—more poorly and humbly, will help rectify this.
These elders sitting up here in front of this Seguin Library-audience are helping to steer community in the right direction. Cynthia Greene, James Austin Rogers, Gloria Sasser, and Pastor Jesse Griffin are teaching, mentoring, leading through nutritional strategies (Cynthia), sustainable livelihoods and sustainable homesteads and permaculture (James), community and political activism (Gloria), and spirituality and peaceful guidance (Jesse).
And we have some fantastic young folk learning from and sharing knowledge with the likes of these four elders. We’d like to present to each of these young community members, a PEACEmaker award certificate and a couple of small gifts for their efforts toward: spirituality, art & cultural education, applied ecology agroecology, melittology, ecological law, and consilience. … Katie Tritsch! Laura Salazar! Sharanay Byrd! and Beto Rincon! !!!!
We should all be proud of these youngsters!
Now let’s give these wonderful folk a big hand, and then sit back, enjoy this film, and consider what we can all do to support these elders and young leaders … and others of symbioses.
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I am grateful to Silvia Christy, Marvel Maddox, and Danny Vinson, President of Friends of the Library, Seguin, et al. for recent opportunities to promote sustainable community, i.e., an Earth of social justice and humaneness and ecological caring. (I do wish to emphasize, however, that even with such welcoming hope, advocacy toward regeneration & conservation of resilient, sustainable ecological community is an extremely complicated & daunting process about which to effectively communicate within human populations with a prevalence of ignorance, complacent arrogance, and greedy consumptive habits. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3124387-the-virtues-of-ignorance https://muse.jhu.edu/book/3527 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/books/review/behave-robert-m-sapolsky-.html )
I would also like to express my utmost gratitude to Pete Lingren, USDA Research Entomologist, who opened many doors to knowledge of sustainability for me, David Pimentel, Cornell University ecologist, who gave me a foundation in energetics, Miguel Angel Altieri, Chilean and UC-Berkeley agroecologist, who put fire in my belly for both social justice and ecological caring, and Darryl Birkenfeld, a philosopher/ethicist, motivator, and community organizer, who laid out many pragmatic opportunities for me to practice what is preached in terms of the golden rule (ethic of reciprocity) and sustainability.
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The film we showed on Earth Day evening, 2019 at the Seguin Public Library, Susan Kucera & Jeff Bridges’ Living in the Future’s Past, is an excellent work of love dealing at various levels with regeneration, restoration and conservation of resilient, sustainable ecological community or PEACE–positively ethical applied community ecology. https://www.livinginthefuturespastfilm.com/ Also, there is an excellent worksheet available on the internet (the URL is at the end of this paragraph) which can help to facilitate the enhancement of the knowledge we might receive from this film. Most of us will have to put in some long hours on this worksheet (and otherwise) to truly begin to understand much of the science and many of the premises of sustainability. (And I might add that complementing studies and the developing of an understanding of sustainability through the lenses of the humanities and philosophy is equally necessary and tough work for most of us.) The payoff-process will be the ability to think more ecologically and critically.
[ https://www.videoproject.com/assets/images/PDF/Living_in_the_Futures_Past.pdf In addition, here are three other posts related to the film and contributor Timothy Morton on which you might wish to chew: https://epochemagazine.org/a-guide-to-timothy-mortons-humankind-786cec95eccd https://medium.com/rocking-with-non-humans/rocking-holeness-design-enjoyment-and-the-symbiotic-real-c0a31b558827 http://dismagazine.com/disillusioned/discussion-disillusioned/68280/hans-ulrich-obrist-timothy-morton/ ]
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The rural farming area and de facto segregated community of 1950s-60s Devine, Texas in which I was raised, started me in the battle toward the most important aspect of sustainability, or social justice and humaneness. Then Dr. Dick Ridgway, research leader in a biocontrol (of pestiferous insects) laboratory began me thinking about and working on the ecological caring component.
Finally, at this point in my own personal journey, my belief is that there are three overall truths now on what Bill McKibben calls Eaarth (spelled with a double “a”), or Earth after the Anthropocene:
1. Because of our arrogance, greed, patterns of consumption, and human & domesticated animal population growth we have overshot the carrying capacity of the ecosphere [in terms of quality life, or dynamic homeostatic symbioses (“nature”) as we/Homo sapiens have known it], and
2. we are depleting the natural resource base on which quality human life and other life as we know it can exist. Moreover,
3. there is tremendous disparity within Eaarth’s human population … and within the whole of the biosphere, to the extent that we are currently in a sixth mass extinction and severe loss of species and genetic biodiversity.
I am hoping that other (needed) truths which might develop more holistically, comprehensively, profoundly, and robustly are an ethic of reciprocity and a sharing of power and resources of the Haves with the havenots, including other species and Morton’s proposed solidarity within humankind and with nonhuman people.
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Below are some provocations. They are seriously thought-out attempts at agitating based on scientific principles and facts, and these provocative facts and a final plea result from a truthful innate caring about humans, other species, and the biosphere:
- Recycling can do more harm than good! What is needed is a reduction in consumption!! [Related to this: Widely manufactured and used plastics, various paper and textile material, etc. are polymers of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), chlorine (Cl), fluorine (F), and nitrogen (N) made from fossil matter and energy. If they are produced as biodegradables, they more rapidly contribute to global warming, ocean acidification, and pollution.]
- Expanding transformations of so-called renewable energy (a misnomer/an oxymoron) is not THE answer. http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2018/05/01/renewable-energy-as-the-key-asset-of-commonwealth-in-community-by-paul-bain-martin1/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/27/should-we-switch-the-language-of-climate-crisis-away-from-renewables/
- Green or Smart (economic) Growth is fundamentally an oxymoron. Daly, Herman E. (1996). Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. Boston: Beacon Press. Odum, H.T. & E.C. (2001). A Properous Way Down. Univ. Press of Colorado
- Current conventional organic farming (agrilogistics) is not the answer.
- Transformation of fossil and nuclear energy are necessary in order to maintain the high inputs/throughputs of energy in the current conventional systems of rampant artificialization. However, these are not appropriate or sustainable because we are biophiliacs and for the reason that continuing on this track would end any semblance of quality life for us, i.e., end much of what we have experienced in the past and coevolved within, … and would end a dynamic homeostatic symbioses in which we might continue to exist.
- Also, capitalism was founded, at least in part, on original sins of de facto genocide, slavery/child & indentured laborers/share-croppers/campesinos/poorly-paid & exploited farmworkers, usury, and rampant exploitation of the natural resource base … and many of these processes–as well as the negative legacy of these sins–continue to date. … A democratic socialist ecology is a better alternative. [The following article succinctly points out the failure of capitalism to fairly deal with limits of: our ecosphere, daily solar energy, and dynamic homeostatic symbioses, and to morally & ethically wrestle with the religious- & secular humanist-call to equitably share with others including other species. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth?fbclid=IwAR12c90YP_9A0X1TA8-oKMR0RCh7UlXXryqy_PMfYBfCEBnqD0eTvdBb9Rc ]
There is a doable and ethical solution and answer to How? we might continue a dynamic homeostatic symbioses in which humans might be included. It involves a rapid leveling off of human and domesticated species population growth and a sharing of power of the Haves with the havenots, including other species. It means living sabiamente, simply, smally, slowly, steadfastly, sharingly, sustainably (the 7 Ss). It means abiding by an ethic of reciprocity and the precautionary principle. [Timothy Morton (featured in this film, Living in the Future’s Past) would discard concepts and terms such as Nature and sustainability, and stress solidarity and passive rocking.] Of course this solution must involve a comprehensive, holistic, and profound effort of education toward positively ethical applied community ecology across “curricula and campuses” of all human organizational entities. Moreover, we need a goal and measureable objectives toward achieving sustainability and must use a holistic strategic process of planning, sustainability indicators, action, assessment, and replanning in order to attain goals of the 7 Ss and a world system which is just, humane, and ecologically caring. Martin, P.B. and P. Prather. (1991). “Sustainable agriculture: a process at the community level”. American J. of Alternative Agriculture. 3(1)
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Some terms and concepts to watch for in the movie when you (hopefully) view it:
Ecological-“Simply” means that all is connected.
Life-Equals matter organized (through transformation with chemical bonds) by “free available” energy. Energy transformation & flux are: both the life and death of living systems … and both “‘nature’s’ economy” and the “‘artificial’ economy”.
Energy (the capacity to do work) is “real”. Money is “perception”/”confidence & Faith”/”perceived power structure-situation”/”funny”.
EROEI-Energy returned on energy invested. (In today’s world we have EROEI problems with all energy transformations–fossil energy/nuclear energy, so-called renewable energies, and even photosynthesis/respiration.)
Entropy-“Disorder”; 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. For order in one system (a home, an office, a business, a military, a wall) disorder will be created in another. [We, the 3rd rock, are “fortunate” to have an enormous source, the Sun (which is running down toward more and more disorder), available to furnish energy to create order in dynamic homeostatic symbioses (“nature”).]
Energy footprint-Direct/indirect energy transformed for/by an entity (U.S. energy footprint/per capita is 4X the world average per capita footprint.)
Food energy–In today’s world we eat large amounts of fossil energy and fossil energy-produced nitrogen. (This is one of the major reasons for the expansive and expanding dead zones at the mouths of major rivers, especially in the so-called developed world.) [In the U.S, we use/transform 2,000 food Calories (or kilocalories)/capita daily … and 200,000 total Calories/capita daily when shelter, transport, recreation, etc. are included. … (I propose getting the total/capita daily down to 60,000 or about the current world average. If we would get energy consumption leveled equitably world-wide to slightly below 60,000–or reduced by about 2/3rds in the U.S., the amount of energy transformed in 2060 will be somewhat similar to what it is today, and we will realize many ecological benefits.)]
CO2 concerns-Unprecedented rapid global warming and ocean acidification.
Persistence & ubiquity of plastics-A hyperobject?
Negative Externalities-Side effects/consequences/costs not included in conventional economics for which our children and theirs will eventually pay in one way or another.
Human history-Human-like ancestors go back about 4 million years. We became Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago. For 99% of our history we lived as small close-kin bands of hunter-gatherers.
We deal best with stories and simple, short-term solutions vs. real, complex, and long-term solutions.
Reality 101-We are Self-, Energy-, Earth-Blind.
Neolithic Revolution/Agriculture/Agrilogistics-Worst mistake of humankind (Jared Diamond).
Evolution-Roots of xenophobia & consumerism.
Amygdala/limbic system & Frontal cortex–Genes & experience.
Group think-Decisions as a group which discourages individual responsibility.
OOO or object-oriented ontogeny-Rejects human privilege, etc.
7Ss / VV->^^
pbm
