Yes to all of this! Our bodies are not separate from the earth; we are in constant exchange withe all that is around us - breathing, eating, affecting and being affected - and how much more interesting and juicy and alive-feeling it is to relish ourselves as part of it. As the song-chant goes: "Earth my body, water my blood, air my breath, and fire my spirit."
Brilliant, Rachel. I, too ache for the reconnection to reality, and the only way we can do that is through our connection to Earth via our bodies. Beautifully said!
“Cuba's history of colonization included deforestation and overuse of its agricultural land. Before the crisis, Cuba used more pesticides than the United States. Lack of fertilizer and agricultural machinery caused a shift towards organic farming and urban farming. Cuba still has food rationing for basic staples. Approximately 69% of these rationed basic staples (wheat, vegetable oils, rice, etc.) are imported.[24] Overall, however, approximately 16% of food is imported from abroad.[24]”
A lot I agree with here, Rachel. CoB's work can be reasonably conceived of as an embodiment (or re-embodiment) of money. I published an essay a couple of months back titled 'The Resurrection of The Body - and the Ethics of Liberation'. Norman O Brown's 'Life Against Death' (1959) was a big influence on my thought of the past decade - and its the book that connected me to the late Nigel Dodd (LSE Prof and author of the best book on theories of money ever published). We were both fans of Nobby as he was known. Nobby opened up his book with this:
"THE PATH of sublimation, which mankind has religiously followed at least since the foundation of the first cities, is no way out of the human neurosis, but, on the contrary, leads to its aggravation. Psychoanalytical theory and the bitter facts of contemporary history suggest that mankind is reaching the end of this road. Psychoanalytical theory declares that the end of the road is the dominion of death-in-life. History has brought mankind to that pinnacle on which the total obliteration of mankind is at least a practical possibility. At this moment of history the friends of the life instinct must warn that the victory of death is by no means impossible; the malignant death instinct can unleash those hydrogen bombs. For if we discard our fond illusion that the human race has a privileged or providential status in the life of the universe, it seems plain that the malignant death instinct is a built-in guarantee that the human experiment, if it fails to attain its possible perfection, will cancel itself out. But jeremiads are useless unless we can point to a better way. Therefore the question confronting mankind is the abolition of repression — in traditional Christian language, the resurrection of the body."
I get your angst, confusion, and anger, but you need to stop for a reflective moment and realize this: we are 3,000 times more numerous now than were our ancestral Hunter-Gatherer clans/bands who were ecologically balanced and did not despoil the environment. Instead, we "moderns" have created in our endless Hubris a "built" physical environment filled with stressors and absent of the destressing stimuli in nature untouched by our endless greed. I lay this all out in my free online e-book PDF, "Stress R Us". As for our oil addiction, it is OUR problem, not Big Brother's. Brits seem to do a much better job of limiting your carbon footprints than us narcotized oil guzzling Yanks. Walk, ride a bike, take public transport, don't fly, avoid single use plastics, and limit our carbon footprint is the key to putting the oil barons out of business. Have a great summer, if we don't all just burn-up!
For a long time I've given up hope on most things, but rewilding, to me, is the only action in this senseless world, that makes sense.
Yes to all of this! Our bodies are not separate from the earth; we are in constant exchange withe all that is around us - breathing, eating, affecting and being affected - and how much more interesting and juicy and alive-feeling it is to relish ourselves as part of it. As the song-chant goes: "Earth my body, water my blood, air my breath, and fire my spirit."
Brilliant, Rachel. I, too ache for the reconnection to reality, and the only way we can do that is through our connection to Earth via our bodies. Beautifully said!
Have any of you seen the documentary on Cuba and the Special Period of its 1991 collapse?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814275/
From Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period
“Cuba's history of colonization included deforestation and overuse of its agricultural land. Before the crisis, Cuba used more pesticides than the United States. Lack of fertilizer and agricultural machinery caused a shift towards organic farming and urban farming. Cuba still has food rationing for basic staples. Approximately 69% of these rationed basic staples (wheat, vegetable oils, rice, etc.) are imported.[24] Overall, however, approximately 16% of food is imported from abroad.[24]”
I think there is such a great likeness to our current spin down goals.
A lot I agree with here, Rachel. CoB's work can be reasonably conceived of as an embodiment (or re-embodiment) of money. I published an essay a couple of months back titled 'The Resurrection of The Body - and the Ethics of Liberation'. Norman O Brown's 'Life Against Death' (1959) was a big influence on my thought of the past decade - and its the book that connected me to the late Nigel Dodd (LSE Prof and author of the best book on theories of money ever published). We were both fans of Nobby as he was known. Nobby opened up his book with this:
"THE PATH of sublimation, which mankind has religiously followed at least since the foundation of the first cities, is no way out of the human neurosis, but, on the contrary, leads to its aggravation. Psychoanalytical theory and the bitter facts of contemporary history suggest that mankind is reaching the end of this road. Psychoanalytical theory declares that the end of the road is the dominion of death-in-life. History has brought mankind to that pinnacle on which the total obliteration of mankind is at least a practical possibility. At this moment of history the friends of the life instinct must warn that the victory of death is by no means impossible; the malignant death instinct can unleash those hydrogen bombs. For if we discard our fond illusion that the human race has a privileged or providential status in the life of the universe, it seems plain that the malignant death instinct is a built-in guarantee that the human experiment, if it fails to attain its possible perfection, will cancel itself out. But jeremiads are useless unless we can point to a better way. Therefore the question confronting mankind is the abolition of repression — in traditional Christian language, the resurrection of the body."
I get your angst, confusion, and anger, but you need to stop for a reflective moment and realize this: we are 3,000 times more numerous now than were our ancestral Hunter-Gatherer clans/bands who were ecologically balanced and did not despoil the environment. Instead, we "moderns" have created in our endless Hubris a "built" physical environment filled with stressors and absent of the destressing stimuli in nature untouched by our endless greed. I lay this all out in my free online e-book PDF, "Stress R Us". As for our oil addiction, it is OUR problem, not Big Brother's. Brits seem to do a much better job of limiting your carbon footprints than us narcotized oil guzzling Yanks. Walk, ride a bike, take public transport, don't fly, avoid single use plastics, and limit our carbon footprint is the key to putting the oil barons out of business. Have a great summer, if we don't all just burn-up!