albertideation » long-range planning

100 Year Weather Event, or the future of life in the Pacific Northwest?

albertkaufman — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:37:18 +0000

My heart goes out to everyone in the Pacific Northwest who is being adversely affected by the current rains.

In the Pacific Northwest we’re used to heavy rain and all that it entails. But the recent rains have led to a level of flooding and hardship that people are calling a “100 Year Event”. I most recently heard people talking about this at Breitenbush where I spent new years and learned that two of the newly built bridges that span trails there had been washed out. Next up have been the January rains which have led to roads washing out, peoples’ houses being flooded and lots of landslides. Some towns like Vernonia, Oregon, seem to be having repeat flood events and the recent news is of thousands having to leave homes around the state, car accidents and lots of property damage.

My main question is “is this global climate change and its effects?” If so, are those who are calling this a “100 year event” actually missing the possibility that this may be how life here will continue to be from now on – rainy, with more and more rain and displacement.

I’ve long been following demographic trends around population growth and have been making the connection between our increased numbers and our effect on the environment. More pollution, species loss, rapid glacier melt, and running out of resources like oil have all been shown to be happening on an upward trend for years. What is less obvious is how all of this effects our world in places like Oregon, where we’re in a situation like the frog in the slowly heating water – we probably won’t change what we’re doing until the heat is turned way up, otherwise, the frog, in this scenario slowly boils and dies. Now, with the current rain, we have a warning sign that can’t be ignored.

Will we be smart and move towards actions that will slow global climate change or will we continue to adjust to its adverse effects and grin and bear it? Some smart moves that I think Oregonians could take that might increase our chances of experiencing a better future would be to plant trees and stop clear-cutting the ones we have. This would improve our (and the rest of the world’s) air quality, help control storm water and erosion problems and keep hillsides from sliding. I also think it would make sense for there to be some sort of program to move people out of floodplains and onto higher ground.

If there’s a chance that this year’s rains might repeat regularly what other moves should we as a society consider to avoid the high costs of the damage and to keep us all safe and dry? I’m sure there are hundreds. Should we be removing any extra pavement that exists as the group Depave works to do? Should we be planting millions of fruit and nut trees to make ourselves more food self-reliant and cut down on shipping costs of food? Are millions of new community and backyard gardens in our future? I’d love to see a state-wide or bioregion-wide analysis done of how we currently use our land and other resources and plug in possible weather events into the equation. I’m sure that would shed light on how prepared we will be for any future contingencies.

Will we learn from the current weather event? I suggest we treat it not like a “100 year event” but plan for the possibility that it may happen again next week, and next year. Let’s plan for the future not be run over by it.

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I posted this article on Daily Kos and there have been 100+ comments in one day. It’s a very interesting discussion of this topic. I highly recommend giving it a read – some very cool analysis, ideas, links and videos on the topic.

Filed under: BlueOregon, climate change, climate warming, dreamingoregon, Friends of Trees, Gardening, long-range planning, population growth, The Tillamook State Forest, tree planting, tree planting device

Irvington Friends of Trees 2012 Planting Coming Soon!

albertkaufman — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 21:48:28 +0000

Thanks to everyone who volunteered for our fantastic Irvington tree planting last March. Between us and the other 3 nearby neighborhoods we planted 212 trees. I mention this because for anyone wanting to join us in our next planting, the time to order trees is now and the website to order from is: https://friendsoftrees.org/order-street-and-yard-trees

Our planting day is Saturday March 10, 2012 and we’ll again be hosted by the Holladay Park Church of God at Tillamook and 21st Ave. starting at 9am. We are looking for volunteers to plant trees and donations of delicious food for our work crews. If you’d like more information or would like to volunteer, please contact me at albertkaufman@gmail.com

For a variety of reasons I am encouraging people to plant fruit and nut trees in their yards. This will increase the amount of food we’re providing for ourselves and bring our community together as we harvest food with and for one another.

This year the City of Portland is offering a treebate to those who qualify. Find out more at http://pdx.be/treebate

Happy autumn,

Your canopy-loving Friends of Trees neigborhood coordinator for Irvington, Albert Kaufman

Filed under: Friends of Trees, long-range planning, thriving in the future

Escape from the zombie food court

albertkaufman — Wed, 18 May 2011 22:01:21 +0000

Escape from the Zombie Food Court

Joe Bageant recently spoke at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University at Lexington, and the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago, where he was invited to speak on American consciousness and what he dubbed “The American Hologram,” in his book, Deer Hunting With Jesus. Here is a text version of the talks, assembled from his remarks at all three schools.

By Joe Bageant

I just returned from several months in Central America. And the day I returned I had iguana eggs for breakfast, airline pretzels for lunch and a $7 shot of Jack Daniels for dinner at the Houston Airport, where I spent two hours listening to a Christian religious fanatic tell about Obama running a worldwide child porn ring out of the White House. Entering the country shoeless through airport homeland security, holding up my pants because they don’t let old men wear suspenders through security, well, I knew I was back home in the land of the free.

Anyway, here I am with you good people asking myself the first logical question: What the hell is a redneck writer supposed to say to a prestigious school of psychology? Why of all places am I here? It is intimidating as hell. But as Janna Henning and Sharrod Taylor here have reassured me that all I need to do is talk about is what I write about. And what I write about is Americans, and why we think and behave the way we so. To do that here today I am forced to talk about three things — corporations, television and human spirituality.

No matter how smart we may think we are, the larger world cannot and does not exist for most of us in this room, except through media and maybe through the shallow experience of tourism, or in the minority instance, we may know of it through higher education. The world however, is not a cultural history course, a National Geographic special or recreational destination. It is a real place with many fast developing disasters, economic and ecological collapse being just two. The more aware among us grasp that there is much at stake. Yet, even the most informed and educated Americans have cultural conditioning working against them round the clock.

As psych students, most of you understand that there is no way you can escape being conditioned by your society, one way or another. You are as conditioned as any trained chicken in a carnival. So am I. When we go to the ATM machine and punch the buttons to make cash fall out, we are doing the same thing as the chickens that peck the colored buttons make corn drop from the feeder. You will not do a single thing today, tomorrow or the next day that you have not been generally indoctrinated and deeply conditioned to do — mostly along class lines.

For instance, as university students, you are among the 20% or so of Americans indoctrinated and conditioned to be the administrating and operating class of the American Empire in some form or another. In the business of managing the other 75% in innumerable ways. Psychologists, teachers, lawyers, social workers, doctors, accountants, sociologists, mental health workers, clergy — all are in the business of coordinating and managing the greater mass of working class citizenry by the Empire’s approved methods, and toward the same end: Maximum profitability for a corporate based state.

Yet it all seems so normal. Certainly the psychologists who have prescribed so much Prozac that it now shows up in the piss of penguins, saw what they did as necessary. And the doctors who enable the profitable blackmail practiced by the medical industries see it all as part of the most technologically advanced medical system in the world. And the teacher, who sees no problem with 20% of her fourth graders being on Ritalin, in the name of “appropriate behavior,” is happy to have control of her classroom. None of these feel like dupes or pawns of a corporate state. It seems like just the way things are. Just modern American reality. Which is a corporate generated reality.

Given the financialization of all aspects of our culture and lives, even our so-called leisure time, it is not an exaggeration to say that true democracy is dead and a corporate financial state has now arrived. If you can get your head around that, it’s not hard to see an ever merging global corporate system masquerading electronically and digitally as a nation called the United States. Or Japan for that matter. The corporation now animates us from within our very selves through management of the need hierarchy in goods and information.

As students, even in such an enlightened institution as this one, you are being subjected to the at least some of pedagogy of the corporate management of society for maximum profit. Unarguably your training will help many fellow human beings. But in the larger scheme of things, you are part of an institution, the American Psycho-socio-medical complex, and thus authorized to manage public consciousness, one person at a time. Remember that the entire pedagogy in which you are immersed is itself immersed in a corporate financial state. Even if some of what you do is alternative psychology, that is a reaction to the state, and therefore a result of it. It’s still part of the financialization of consciousness. And, I might add that none you expect to work for nothing.

This financialization of our consciousness under American style capitalism has become all we know. That’s why we fear its loss. Hence the bailouts of the thousands of “zombie banks,” dead but still walking, thanks to the people’s taxpayer offerings to the money god so that banks will not die. We believe that we dare not let corporations die. Corporations feed us. They entertain us. Corporations occupy one full half of our waking hours of our lives, through employment, either directly or indirectly. They heal us when we are sick. So it’s easy to see why the corporations feel like a friendly benevolent entity in the larger American consciousness. Corporations are, of course, deathless and faceless machines, and have no soul or human emotions. That we look to them for so much makes us a corporate cult, and makes corporations a fetish of our culture. Yet to us, they are like the weather just there.

All of us live together in this corporate fetish cult. We agree upon and consent to its reality, just as the Aztecs agreed upon Quetzalcoatl and the lost people of Easter Island agreed that the great stone effigies of their remote island had significance.

We are not unique

Strangely enough, even as a population mass operating under unified corporate management machinery, most Americans believe they are unique individuals, significantly different from every other person around them. More than any other people I have met, Americans fear loss of uniqueness. Yet you and I are not unique in the least. Despite the American yada yada about individualism, you are not special. Nor am I. Just because we come from the manufacturer equipped with individual consciousness, does not make us the center of any unique world, private or public, material, intellectual or spiritual. The fact is, you will seldom if ever make any significant material or lifestyle choices of your own in your entire life. If you don’t buy that house, someone else will. If you don’t marry him, someone else will. If you don’t become a psychologist, lawyer or a clergyman or a telemarketer, someone else will. We are all replaceable parts in the machinery of a capitalist economy. “Oh but we have unique feelings and emotions that are important,” we say. Psychologists specialize in this notion. Yet I venture to say that none of us will ever feel an emotion that someone long dead has not felt, or some as yet unborn person will not feel. We are swimmers in an ancient rushing river of humanity. You, me, the people in my Central American village, the child in Bangladesh, and the millionaire frat boys who run our financial and governmental institutions with such adolescent carelessness. All of our lives will eventually be absorbed without leaving a trace.

Still though, for Western peoples in particular, there is the restless inner cultural need to differentiate our lives from the other swimmers. Most of us, especially as educated people in the Western World, will never beat that one.

Fortunately though, we can meaningfully differentiate our lives (at least in the Western sense) in the way we choose to employ our consciousness. Which is to say, to own our consciousness. If we exercise enough personal courage, we can possess the freedom to discover real meaning and value in our all-too-brief lives. We either wake up to life, or we do not. We are either in charge of our own awareness or we let someone else manage it by default. That we have a choice is damned good news.

The bad news is that we nevertheless remain one of the most controlled peoples on the planet, especially regarding control of our consciousness, public and private. And the control is tightening. I know it doesn’t feel like that to most Americans. But therein rests the proof. Everything feels normal; everybody else around us is doing the same things, so it must be OK. This is a sort of Stockholm Syndrome of the soul, in which the prisoner identifies with the values of his or her captors, which in our case is of course, the American corporate state and its manufactured popular culture.

When we feel that such a life is normal, even desirable, and we act accordingly, we become helpless. Learned helplessness. For instance, most Americans believe there is little they can do in personally dealing with the most important moral and material crises ever faced, both in America and across the planet, beginning with ecocide, war making, and the grotesque deformation of the democratic process we have settled for. Citizenship has been reduced to simple consumer group consciousness. Consequently, even though Americans are only six percent of the planet’s population, we use 36% of the planet’s resources. And we interpret that experience as normal and desirable and as evidence of being the most advanced nation in the world. Despite that our lives have been reduced to a mere marketing demographic.

Let me digress for just a moment, to tell you about how life is outside the marketing demographic. I live much of the year in the Third World country of Belize, Central America, a nation so damned poor that our cash bounces. True, it ain’t Zimbabwe, or the Sudan — there are no dying people in the streets. But food security is easily the biggest problem and growing by the day.

Yet, despite our meager and diminishing resources down there, and much government corruption, people are still citizens, not marketing demographics, not yet anyway. Citizens who struggle toward a just society. They have made more progress than the United States in some respects. For instance, we have: A level of free medical care for the poor, though we lack much equipment and facilities. Maternity pay if either you or your spouse are employed. Retirement on Social Security at age 60. Worker rights, such as mandatory accrued severance pay for workers, even temporary workers. Most Belizeans own their homes outright, and all citizens are entitled to a free piece of land upon which to build one. Employment is scarce, and that has a down side: Many folks waste a lot of valuable time having sex , perhaps because they have too much time on their hands. The Jehovah’s Witnesses missionaries are working hard to fix that problem.

Anyway, American and Canadian tourists drive by in their rented SUVs and you can see by their expressions they are scared as hell of those bare footed black folks in the sand around them. Central America sure as hell ain’t heaven. But lives there are not what we Americans are told about the Third World either. It’s not a flyblown, dangerous place run by murdering drug lords, and full of miserable people. It’s just a whole lot of very poor people trying to get by and make a decent society.

I mention these things because it’s a good example of how North Americans live in a parallel universe in which they are conditioned to see everything in terms of consumer goods and “safety,” as defined by police control. Conditioned to believe they have the best lives on the planet by every measure. So when they see our village and its veneer of “tropical grunge,” they experience fear. Anything outside of the parameters of the cultural hallucination they call “the first world” represents fear and psychological free fall.

Yet, even if we think in that sort of outdated terminology, first, second and Third World, and most Americans do, then America is a second world nation. We have no universal free health care (don’t kid yourself about the plan underway), no guarantee of anything really, except competitive struggle with one another for work and money and career status, if you are one of those conditioned to think of your job and feudal debt enslavement as a “career.” High infant mortality rates, abysmal educational scores, poor diet, no national public transportation system, crumbling infrastructure, a collapsed economy, even by our own definition we are a second world nation.

Learning to love shiny objects

But there is a shiny commercial skin that covers everything American, a thin layer of glossy throwaway technology, that leads the citizenry to believe otherwise. That slick commercial skin, the bright colored signs for Circuit City and The Gap (rest in peace), the clear plastic that covers every product from CDs to pre-cut vegetables, the friendly yellow and red wrapper on the burger inside its bright red paper box, the glossy branding of every item and experience. These things are the supposed tangible evidence that the slick conditioned illusion, the one I call The American Hologram, is indeed real. If it’s bright and shiny and new, it must be better. Right? It’s the complete opposite of tropical grunge.

Last week when I got back to the States I took a shower in an American friend’s new $30,000 gleaming remodeled bathroom. It felt like a surgical operating room experience, compared to wading into the Caribbean surf in the tropical dusk with a bar of soap. Like a parallel universe straight out of The Matrix.

Meat space versus the parallel universe

So how is it that we Americans came to live in such a parallel universe? How is it that we prefer such things as Facebook (don’t get me wrong, I’m on Facebook too), and riding around the suburbs with an iPod plugged into our brain looking for fried chicken in a Styrofoam box? Why prefer these expensive earth destroying things over love and laughter with real people, and making real human music together with other human beings — lifting our voices together, dancing and enjoying the world that was given to us? Absolutely for free.

And the answer is this: We suffer under a mass national hallucination. Americans, regardless of income or social position, now live in a culture entirely perceived inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation and world that does not exist. Our national reality is staged and held together by media, chiefly movie and television images. We live in a “theater state.”

In our theater state, we know the world through media productions which are edited and shaped to instruct us on how to look and behave and view the outside world. As in all staged productions and illusions, everyone we see is an actor. There are the television actors portraying what supposedly represents reality. Non-actors in Congress perform in front of the cameras, as the American empire’s cultural machinery weaves and spins out our cultural mythology.

Cultural myth production is an enormous industry in America. It is very similar to the national projects of pyramid-building in Egypt, or cathedral-building in medieval Europe. And in our obsession with violence and punishment, two characteristics of a consensual police state reality, we are certainly similar to prison camp building in Stalinist Russia. Actually, we’re pretty good in that department too. Consider that one fourth of all the incarcerated people on earth are in U.S. prisons. U.S. citizens imprisoned by their own government.

Good guys and bad guys at the chariot races

In any case, the media culture’s production of martyrs, good guys and bad guys, fallen heroes and concept outlaws, is not just big corporate business. It is the armature of our cultural behavior. It tells us who to fear (Middle Eastern terrorists, Mr. Chavez in Venezuela, and foreign made pharmaceuticals), who to scorn (again the same candidates, along with Brittney Spears for her lousy child rearing skills). Our daily news is the modern version of Roman coliseum shows. Elections are personality combat, chariot races, not examinations of solutions being offered. None are offered.

What are being offered are monkey models. Man as a social animal necessarily mimics the behavior he sees around him, whether it be by real people or moving images of people. This eye-to-brain to mimicry connection does not care. Consequently, we know how to act and what the things around us are because television and media tell us. Television is the software, the operating instructions for our society. Thus, social realism for us is a television commercial for the American lifestyle: what’s new to wear, what to eat, who’s cool (Obama), what and whom to fear (that perennial evil booger, Castro) or who to admire (Bill Gates, pure American genius at work). This societal media software tells us what music our digitized corporate complex is selling, but you never see images of ordinary families sitting around in the evenings making music together, or creating songs of their own based upon their own lives and from their own hearts. Because that music cannot be bought and sold, and is not profitable. I think about that when the children and their parents sing and dance on the sand in front of my shack in Central America. We Americans are not offered that choice.

Managing mythology

So instead of a daily life in the flesh, belly to belly and soul to soul, lived out in the streets, and parks and public places, in love and the workplace, we get 40-inch televisions, YouTube, Cineplexes, and the myths spun out by Hollywood.

Now for a national mythology to work, it has to be accessible to everyone all the time, it has to be all in one bundle. For example, in North Korea, it is wrapped up in a single man, Kim. In America, as we have said, it is the media and Hollywood in particular. Hollywood accommodates Imperial myths, melting pot myths, and hegemonic military masculinity myths, and glamour myths. It articulates our culture’s social imaginary: “the prevailing images a society needs to project about itself in order to maintain certain features of its organization.” And the features of our media mythology are terrifying when you think about them.

As a writer friend says, It is watching “Man on Fire,” with Denzel Washington’s tragic pose and his truthful bullets, and his willingness to saw the fingers off of Mexicans to get the information on time to protect us from The Evil. It is the absorption of that electronic mythology that allowed us to co-sign the torture at Abu Ghraib.

Incidentally, speaking of Abu Ghraib, I am a friend of Ray Hardy, lawyer to Lynndie England, the leash girl of Abu Ghraib. He has copies of thousands of other, far more grisly Abu Ghraib photos. Believe me, they picked the gentlest ones to release. Anyway, when the media and government people in power made that selection, they were managing your consciousness. What you know and don’t know. Keeping you calmer by withholding the truth. Rather like not upsetting little children so they will continue to quietly behave the way you want.

But, like children, the American public got bored with the subject of torture long ago, so we quit seeing the victims. Plenty of new evidence has been coming out for years since Lynndie’s famous pics from Abu Ghraib. But the short American attention span, created by our rapid fire media, says, “Move on to the next hologram please. Whoa! Stop the remote. Nice butt shot of Sarah Palin there!”

The result is that Americans cannot achieve the cathexis we need. Cathexis is the ground zero psychic and emotional attachment to the world that cannot be argued. It is “beyond ideological challenge because it is called into existence affectively.” Americans are conditioned to reject any affective attachment that does not have a happy ending. And in that, we remain mostly a nation of children. We never get to grow up.

So we tell ourselves the Little Golden Book fairy tales — that we are a great and compassionate people, and that we are personally innocent of any of our government’s horrific crimes abroad. Guiltless as individuals. And we do remain innocent, in a sense, as long as we cannot see beyond the media hologram. But it is a terrible kind of self-inflicted innocence that can come to no good. We are a nation latch key kids babysat by an electronic hallucination, the national hologram.

The TV goldfish bowl

You may or may not watch much television, but the average American spends almost one-third of his or her waking life doing so. The neurological implications of this are so profound that they cannot even be comprehended in words, much less described by them. Television constitutes our reality in the same fashion that water constitutes the environment in a goldfish bowl. It’s everywhere and affects everything, even when we are not watching it. Television regulates our national perceptions and our interior ideations of who we Americans are. It schedules our cultural illusions of choice. It pre-selects candidates in our elections. By the way, as much as I like Obama, I fully understand he is there because he was selected by the illusion producing machinery of television, and citizens under its influence. It is hard to underestimate the strength of these illusions.

TV regulates holiday marketing opportunities and the national neurological seasons. It tells us, “It’s Christmas! Time to shop!” Or “it’s election season, time to vote.” Or “it’s football season, let us rally passions and buy beer and cheer.” Or that America’s major deity, “The Economy,” is suffering badly. “Sacred temples on Wall Street make great sickness upon the land!” Or most ominous of all, “It’s time to make war! Again.”

It is fair to say that television and the American culture are the same thing. More than any other factor, it is the glue of society and the mediator of our experience. American culture is stone cold dead without it. If all the TVs in America went black, so would most of America’s collective consciousness and knowledge. Because corporate media have replaced nearly all other previous forms of accumulated knowledge.

Especially the ancient forms, such as contemplation of the natural world, study and care of the soul. And I do not mean soul in the religious sense either. I mean the deeper self, the one you go to sleep with every night.

The media have colonized our inner lives like a virus. The virus is not going away. This commoditization of our human consciousness is probably the most astounding, most chilling accomplishment of American capitalist culture.

Escape from the zombie food court

Capitalist society however, can only survive by defying the laws of thermodynamics, through endlessly expanding growth, buying and using more of everything, every year and forever. Thus the cult of radical consumerism. It has been the deadliest cult of all because, so far, it has always triumphed, and has now spread around the earth and its nations.

Why has it been so viral, so attractive to so many for so long? How did it come to grip the consciousness of so much of mankind, from Beijing to Bangladesh? Thuggish enforcement accounts for part of it, of course. But it has succeeded too because it requires no effort. No critical thinking. Not even literacy. Just passive consumption. That the easy addiction to consumption is probably hard wired into us. Every one of us will go right out this door tonight and continue to play out our lives as contributors to ecocide and global warming, mainly because it’s easier. And besides, we are not offered any other real options, and we don’t know any other way. Nor can we ever know any other way without making a great effort.

How to make that effort? (Assuming you even want to.) As we said, consuming images, goods or buying your identity at Old Navy or a retro clothing shop takes no real effort or thought. Just money. Text messaging your whereabouts at the mall may be a technological wonder, but you’re still absolutely nowhere if you are just one more oral grooved organism in the food court at the mall moving in a swarm toward Quiznos.

So how do you escape the programming of the food court, and, I might include, escape even those parts of this school that may serve more to indoctrinate than enlighten you? All pedagogy, even the best, is nevertheless about control. How does one escape such a total system?

In a word, service. Humble and thoughtful service to the world. It is heartening that we do have concerned Americans studying to alleviate the great suffering of so much of humanity. I have no proof of it, but it seems like earnest idealism is making a comeback since its decline following the optimistic 1960s. People and institutions such as this one are attempting to move American society forward again, heal us of our national sickness to the extent you can, after decades of regression, not to mention repression. Of course, to solve problems you must first identify them.

Let me say here that one of the most profound things I have learned from the Third World, perhaps the only thing I have learned, and as psychologists you’ve surely heard it before, is this: The diagnosis is not the disease. Which is why our prescribed treatment never seems to work in places like Africa. Or even in the Bronx or South Philly.

Even our most well intentioned thinking and study of the afflictions of Africa and Latin America, American inner cities or Appalachia, suffers from hubris, because they are necessarily the products of western propertized and monetized thinking that cause the problem. So now we study our victims with great piety. And supposedly teach them solutions to the problems we continue to cause for them. Western people studying globalization’s horrific effects, or rape in Africa, or world poverty are doing so under the assumption that such things can be dealt with through some social mechanistic means, through analysis and unbiased reason and rational value-free science. Or by a network of officially sanctioned agencies.

For years I have wanted to see the opposite take place. To see well fed, educated Americans learn from the poor of the earth. Do what Gandhi advised, let the poor be the teachers. Go among them with nothing, one set of clothing and no money, keep your mouth shut, and do your best not to affect anything (which is impossible, I know. But you can come, as they say, “close enough for government work.”)

Then just let the world happen to you, like they do in the so-called “passive societies,” instead of trying to happen to it in typical Western fashion. Not trying to “improve” things. Maybe practicemilpa agriculture with Mayans on the Guatemalan border, watching corn grow for three months. Fish in a lonely dugout, sun-up to sun-down, in the dying reefs of the Caribbean, with only a meal or two of fish as your reward. Do such things for a month or two.

First you will experience boredom, then comes an internal psychic violence and anger, much like the experience of zazen, or sitting meditation, as the layers of your mind conditioning peel away. Don’t quit, keep at it, endure it, to the end. And when you return you will find that deeply experiencing a non-conditioned reality changes things forever. What you have experienced will animate whatever intellectual life you have developed. Or negate much of it. But in serious, intelligent people, experiencing non-manufactured reality usually gives lifelong meaning and insight to the work. You will have experienced the eternal verities of the world and mankind at ground zero. And you will find that the healthy social structures our well intentioned Western minds seek are already inherent in the psyche of mankind, but imprisoned. And the startling realization that you and I are the unknowing captors.

In conclusion, I would point out that the high technological imprisonment of our consciousness has been fairly recent. There are still those among us who remember when it was not so entrapped. A few of us still know what it was like to experience non-manufactured realities — life outside our mass produced kitsch culture. Particularly some aging Sixties types, who sought to pass through the doors of perception. Many made it through. But in my travels to places such as this one, I also meet a new breed of younger people, who get it completely. I meet them in the more advanced psychological venues such as Adler. And especially in the ecological movement.

They seem to already know what it took me a lifetime to learn: that each of us is but one strand in the vast organic web of flesh and blood chlorophyll. All things and all beings are inextricably connected at the most profound level. Any physicist will confirm this. We are bound by its every wave and particle, all of us — the lonely night clerk at Motel 6 and the leviathans of the deep, the sleeping grandmother in New Haven, Connecticut and the maimed Iraqi child in Kirkuk. It can be understood by anyone though, simply by owning one’s own consciousness. And in doing so we find that ownership and domination are both temporary and meaningless. And that the animating spirit of the earth is real and within us and claimable.

The purpose of life is to know this. Einstein glimpsed it. Lao-Tzu knew it. So did St. Francis. But you and I are not supposed to. It would shatter the revered, digitized, super-sized, utterly meaningless hologram. The one that mesmerizes us, and mediates our every experience, but isolates us from universal humanness and its coursing energies. Such as love. Or mercy. Compassion. Existential pain. Hunger. Or the unmitigated joy of simply being alive one finds in children everywhere, even among the poorest. Most of the human race still lives in that realm.

Blessed is the one who joins them. Because he or she learns that the truth is not relative, and that because the human mind seeks balance, social justice is not only inescapable in the long run, but inevitable. I won’t be around for that, but on a clear day if I squint real hard I can see down that road ahead. And on that road I can see the long chain of decent human beings like yourselves walking toward the light. And for your very presence on this earth and in this room, I am grateful. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you.

Filed under: long-range planning, opening our minds, Peaceful Revolution, thriving in the future, World News

Petition time for SB 525

albertkaufman — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:41:21 +0000

Please sign this petition NOW!
And share it:
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-delivery-of-unwanted-phonebooks-in-oregon

Filed under: albertideation, climate change, long-range planning, phone book opt in system, SB525

Irvington Tree Planting – March 12, 2011

albertkaufman — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:56:46 +0000

Click to view slideshow.
Tree planting 3.12.11 Irvington, Portland, Oregon, USA!

We had a great day planting trees with Friends of Trees on Saturday, March 13th. Starting with our breakfast at the Holladay Park Church early in the morning through a delicious lunch held after the planting – supplied by residents of the Irvington, Grant, Sabin and Alameda neighborhoods.

I want to thank the following people and businesses for their support in our efforts.

Friends of Trees – especially Jesse Batty and Erica Timm who led the day of planting

The neighborhood coordinators for each neighborhood

Neil Davidson – Alameda
Lisa Johnston-Smith – Sabin
Angela Gusa – Grant Park
Albert Kaufman – Irvington

Holladay Park Church – our wonderful host!
Helen Bernhard Bakery – baked goods
Caffee D’arte – Coffee
Starbucks on 15th & B’way – Coffee and more Coffee
Grand Central Bakery – pastries, yum
Costello’s Travel Caffee – pastries, more yum!
Penske Trucks – truck donation
Eric McClelland – Treeform Woodwork – drove to Boring and back to pick up our trees
City of Portland – Bureau of Environmental Services – a huge hand in many ways
Backyard Bird Shop – our main sponsors!

I could write a novella about the task of being a neighborhood coordinator for this event. It’s full of contacting neighbors, reaching out to businesses and interacting with the great staff at Friends of Trees. And, I enjoyed the fun of planting trees even more. Working with great crew leader, Karen, and crew assistant, David, we walked in a 5 block circle and planted 11 trees in 3 hours. This involved pulling the trees out of the truck, unwrapping each, making sure holes were the right size, involving homeowners and their kids, filling the holes in with dirt, and watering and staking them.

It was a rainy day, but our spirits were high. And when we returned to the basecamp, there were all of the other volunteers and crew leaders sitting down to a well-deserved bountiful lunch of soups, chilis, stews, bread, salads and deserts. It was a great time to swap stories, share smiles, and make some new friends beyond the crew that you’d been assigned to.

All in all, I’d say the day was a complete success. We planted 182 trees together and another 30 were planted the following Monday, bringing us to a grand addition of 212 trees for our 4 neighborhoods. These trees will add to the canopy of our neighborhoods – help reduce the amount of water going into the stormwater drains, shade us in the summer, provide us fruit and nuts, look beautiful, increase property values, and increase the safety of our neighborhoods.

If you didn’t get a chance to join us, please consider volunteering with Friends of Trees and see what fun it can be to plant trees in Portland. Also, Friends of Trees is a membership organization and I encourage you to become a member today. They do great work that makes our City more livable and our lives healthier and happier.

One happy tree planter!

Filed under: Friends of Trees, Irvington, long-range planning, thriving in the future, tree planting

The Oregonian endorses Kitzhaber for Oregon Governor

albertkaufman — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:20:41 +0000

This is big, and good news. This race has been close, too close IMHO. Kitzhaber is such a better choice, that I think the Oregonian would have been foolish to endorse Dudley, but they well could have – they’ve made plenty of awful endorsements in the past. Anyway, a smile on my face, and here’s some interesting video which outlines their thinking.

Filed under: Election 2010, long-range planning

Election 2010 – Register to Vote and more

albertkaufman — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 09:47:59 +0000

October 12th is the last day to register to vote in Oregon. Moved recently? New in town? Here’s the link to register on-line. http://www.osbar.org/public/vote/Voting.htm

I am trying hard to think what to say about this Fall’s election. It’s the most important election of our lifetimes. And that leads me to the thought that every election is the most important. Here’s why this one is important and why I hope that everyone I know will do whatever they can to encourage everyone they know to register to vote, to help good candidates out (financially, if possible – in person, putting up a yard sign, whatever!!!), and to cast your ballot.

In Oregon: we’re electing a new governor. The choices in this race are stark. As in the presidential race, when you elect the head cheese, you’re basically electing thousands of people – from the heads of various departments, commissions, and all of their various staffs. It’s a big deal – and it generally turns out to be a popularity contest – and that is helped along by fundraising – and now there are no holds barred on that fundraising – it can come from anywhere, at any level. So, please, look closely at this race and others and see where the money is coming from and what the candidate and his minions will be about. My hunch is that the State House and Senate will stay in Dem hands. Having an R governor will make it much harder for the legislative body to do much of anything (The Gov signs off on most of what is passed, and I don’t trust an R Gov to support what the Dems in the Legislature put forward). So far the Dems in the House and Senate have been doing a better and better job (IMHO) and I’d like to see them continue to govern the state without hindrance. Also, Kitzhaber has been a leader in healthcare issues nationally and I’d like to see what he’ll do on this front. Dudley? Can’t get much of a read on him, but so far am underwhelmed. But please, take a look at this race, it’s important to those who live in Oregon and beyond. I decided to fully back John Kitzhaber and donated money via this website to his campaign: http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/22914

Oregon Portland area? Metro Council President. Bob Stacey (happy birthday, Bob), and Tom Hughes. Metro makes a lot of decisions that effect those who live in the Metro area – beyond the zoo and expo center, there’s lots of decisions about land-use planning. Stacey was the former head of 1,000 Friends of Oregon and will be a more careful steward of something I love – something that makes Oregon stand out around the country, and that’s the Urban Growth Boundary. When you leave the Metro area you hit countryside. I like that, and believe that Stacey will be a better steward of our rural areas and keep them from turning into industrial parks. There is a huge emphasis on bringing more jobs to a place via building industrial parks. I don’t buy it, and would prefer that we work with what we have – there is tons of land that is vacant within the urban growth boundary; there is tons of vacant office space – IMHO we don’t need to turn our farmland into more of anything but farmland. But that’s another discussion for another day. I’m an environmentalist. I work to preserve farmland, forests and other natural things. Everyone I know in that world is backing Stacey which has made this an easier decision for me. Again, look at this race and make your own decision, but know that it’s an important one.

For Mult Co. Commission Seat #2 there are two great women working, I’m leaning Kollymore partly because I’ve worked with her in the past and she’s been encouraging me on my anti-idling public awareness campaign, but both women would probably be great here.

Initiatives? Yes, we’ve got plenty. Parks and Wildlife? I’m for it. Med Marijuana – hell yeah! Increasing jail sentences? Nah. In PDX: Voter Owned Elections? YES! And there are more – please spend some time learning about them, and we’ll have a voting party where we’ll discuss these sometime before the election once people have their ballots.

Beyond the OR boundaries? Well, there’s a lot going on and a lot at stake. Here’s where a call to arms is really warranted.

My good friend, Brian Hasset, a Canadian, follows US politics closer than anyone I know in the US – puts is clearly at the end of this message.

My friend, Mike, sent me this article yesterday detailing what the R’s will do if they gain control of the House and/or Senate. http://www.slate.com/id/2268442/

And, if you want to get more inspiration read some Michael Moore. Or, think it over yourself.

Yes, Obama has not been all that many of us had hoped for. But he’s also done a ton, and there’s a possibility that a ton more will get done (see my comment above about what happens when you elect the head cheese….). Ie, things are happening in executive departments – regulation of industry is coming back into fashion, the EPA is getting back into the business of protecting us again, and we have a new healthcare reform that will make sure that people get healthcare.

That said, there are many disappointments, and we all know them – the economy, wars, don’t ask don’t tell, etc. But none of this will improve with the R’s in control of either legislative house. The stew that is our legislative branch will turn into cement/gridlock, call it what you will.

So, what can you do? Well, if you live in SW Washington, you can vote for the Dem. If you live in Salem or thereabouts, you can vote for Schrader (D). Yeah, that’s my recommendation, that you and everyone you know vote for the Dem in every House and Senate Race in the Country. There may be a rational Republican out there that I don’t know about – but lately they’re becoming more and more tea-partyish/Palinesque (and not the Monty Python sort) – and that’s not the country we want to live in. So, until the Republican party wrests itself back from the fear-mongering, irrational, fascistic mess that its become, they shouldn’t be encouraged by being given the power to legislate.

Thanks for listening to my thinking. I know it’s not perfect, and somewhat simplistic, but the main point I want to stress is: vote. Research what’s going on in this election, and encourage others to do so. And then vote. Make sure your friends are registered to vote. Take a moment and help them do it – soon. In Oregon, October 12th is the last day to register, but don’t wait that long.

Thanks,

Albert Kaufman

http://albertideation.com/2010/09/12/this-falls-elections-are-important-please-dont-sit-them-out/

Brian sez: “If you don’t vote, you ARE voting for Sarah Palin.

If you whine that somebody isn’t progressive enough, you ARE voting for Agent Orange to control the House.

If you vote for a third party, you’re voting for the Third Reich to retake control.

If you think you’re too cool to vote, you’re voting for hell to freeze over.

If you think the Democratic candidate isn’t perfect enough for you, you’re voting for the repeat criminals to take over the asylum again.

If you’re thinking you’re beyond all this petty voting stuff, then you should be in a petting zoo.

This is between Democrats and war criminals, between a party that wants health care and one that wants waterboarding.

If you think you’re too good for politics, then you aren’t good enough to be an American.”

Filed under: Barack Obama, Election 2010, long-range planning, The Tillamook State Forest, thriving in the future

Donate to Albertideation

albertkaufman — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:50:41 +0000

If you appreciate the work I do in the world and would like to contribute towards it financially, please let me know or click on the donate button to the right. I like what I do in the world and would love to keep making the changes I’d like to see. Your support helps. Thanks! Albert

Filed under: albertideation, anti-idling, billboards, cellphone towers, cellphones, climate change, dreamingoregon, Google Powermeter, ideation, idling, long-range planning, Our Community University, population growth, Sunflowers, The Tillamook State Forest, thriving in the future, undriving

Beloved 2010

albertkaufman — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:35:04 +0000

When the moon is in the seventh house
and jupiter aligns with mars
The peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars
this is the dawning of the age of aquarius

I thought I’d do a little write-up of my visit to the best Festival experience I’ve ever had – The Beloved Festival, known on their website http://www.belovedfestival.com/ as Oregon Open Air Art and Music Festival which is held every year near Alsea, Oregon about 2.5 hours SW of Portland, Oregon, USA.

I thought I’d do this in a way that would be fun for me. I picked up a lot of business cards, postcards and knickknacks all weekend, so I’ll pull one out at a time from my backpack and talk about it and share it with you. And then there will be a nifty slide-show of photos taken by friends at the bottom of this posting. Sound good? OK, let’s go!

1. Art by Adam Scott Miller – http://www.adamscottmiller.com – Adam’s art was featured in a large white tent with a sand floor. Well-lit, and beautiful, the tent was a place to wander any hour of the day or night and see some very inspiring images. I’d recommend a visit to Adam’s website for more adventuring in the world of imagery. Then there was all of the other art at the festival – from the incredible nature installations done by Nature, Dandelion and many others (see photos), to the stage draped with beautiful orange and red fabric by Gregory and the Guildworks team, to live painting happening by the stage all weekend and jewelry by the vendors and face-painting and henna done to all who sought that out. Pretty pretty pretty! btw, the wristlet I got is so beautiful, I’ve decided to leave it on for a while – nice touch!

2. Dance in Seattle? Euphoria: A Dance Odyssey: Every Tues. night, call Franklin for more info 206-406-7283. Yes, Franklin was there, as were many members of the various ecstatic and contact dance communities which made the dance floor in front of the stage such a great place to be. I also had a visit with Michael Suzaris and Jenny Pell (presented on permaculture at the festival http://www.permaculturenow.com ) on their way back to Seattle. Michael has gotten an interesting events space up and running on the north end of Lake Union called OmCulture which also hosts dance and other events. http://www.omculture.com/ – PDX Ecstatic Dance? http://www.pdxecstaticdance.com/Genesa Crystal, installation by Ansula

3. Bright Earth Foods. Super Foods for Super Humans! Yum. So, there was a guy set up on the hill by the tasty food vendors with a set up selling Noni shots. Noni, not sure what it is, but it’s certainly good for you, and you could buy a small glass for $1 or a glass with blue-green algae in it for $2. Their website is http://www.brightearthfoods.com – I’m looking forward to getting myself some wizard paste soon! There’s a longer story about that goodness (we call it hippie crack around these parts) from Beloved #1, perhaps for another day.

4. Music to listen to this note by? I suggest the Beloved music player on their website. A quite nice selection from Beloved’s past. Also, the slide-show on their site done by local photographer and all-time hot DJ, Raku Loren, is worth watching Raku’s also DJ’ing this Sunday at the Village Ballroom sunday dance @ 10:30am – 7th and Dekum, NE in PDX. B There.

5. Some stickers from Onanya These folks are doing something very right. I saw them at a previous Beloved festival. http://www.etsy.com/shop/onanya They say about themselves: “Our work is a collaboration between a Shipibo community of the Peruvian Amazon and us. Our clothing designs become the canvas of their magical patterns. Together we bring you a One of a Kind Piece of wearable art. This work is created while we are together in the village.” Yep, like that

6. Ongoing Classes and Events: The Sacred Muse, The Evolutionary Priestess, the Inner Alchemy of Evolution http://www.thelivingchalice.com – lovely photo of a hummingbird feeding on this card, though website does not seem to be working. Folks in Fairview, OR

7. More clothes and beautiful people @ Naga Designs, Felt Creations! I spent a lovely Thursday afternoon wiling away a couple hours in the sky chairs next to Alani Klein’s booth. She and her friend came down from Courteney, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada to share their beautiful felt creations. More @ http://www.nagadesigns.com

8. Give Peace a Dance! Peace Village Saturday Late Nite After-Party – Organik Time Machine, Cornflower & Special Guests – Ashland, August 21st @ Cultureworks $10. http://www.peacevillagefestival.org and http://www.culture-works.net

9. http://autumnskyemorrison.com/ – the paintings of Autumn Skye Morrison who was doing live painting near the stage. This painting was displayed all weekend:

10. Nemo. The art of Nemo Boko! I met Nemo on Wens. night while he and his girlfriend were busy setting up the office side of the art tent. Nemo’s site is http://www.nemo.org – for psychonauts and curious minds Go, Nemo, Go!

11. My eleventh year at Burning Man. Camp 11:11 3:15 & F. My newsletter, The Eleven – sign up @ http://albertideation.com

12. 1st & 3rd Thursday night Gong Meditation in Portland with John Reinscreiber! http://shamanicvibrations.com – “…let the voices of the gongs carry you to a place of timeless peace and solitude” I have been to this event and John does an excellent job taking everyone deep with his gongs and sound healing. He also has led sound healing for the Beloved Festival for the past two years, and he’ll be speaking tomorrow @ Our Community University @ my house! Details @ http://albertideation.com/2010/07/31/ocu2/

Beloved was lovely in so many ways. People showing themselves, opening, learning, growing, being their beautiful, smart and courageous selves. Kindness ran wild. Great food, smart people, inspiring music, creativity, children, elders, white, black, and perfect weather in a lovely forest setting. Thank you to the organizers and the many volunteers that made it possible! I hope to live my life in a way that is more like what I experienced this past weekend as much as possible.

Click to view slideshow.

13. Third Eye Pinecones, Amulets and Adornments, Carl Weiseth, Santa Cruz, CA – http://www.conesandstones.com – these folks had a necklace that you’ll probably see a lot around town. Very very lovely. looks like this:

14. http://r3xx.net/ – Transformative Media Inspiring Minds. Now, I want a tagline like that These must have been the folks in the art tent who were displaying an interesting selection of books and videos and the like. Nemo, hello, you must be affiliated with these folks….

Psychedelic Art
Visionary Music
Illuminating Books
subversive comics
delicious edibles
bizarre stickers
radical clothing
triply holograms – oh yes, they had some very interesting ones of those….

15. Stevee Postman – http://stevee.com – There was a large painting done by this artist, and I have a feeling there was other work around by him, as well. Quite an image gallery @ http://stevee.com/gallery-01.html

16. Shivoso. Pause. Another Pause. The best talk on tantra that I’ve ever heard. Delivered in the purple temple to a very rapt audience. Great Q&A afterwards. I’ve already sent an email connecting Shivoso, recently arrived from CA to PDX, to various leaders in tantric arts here in town and hope to learn more from him. http://intimacyarts.com : from his website: “I want to share with you new ways of being in relationship. There is a huge change coming on in the realm of intimate connections and many people are finding it challenging to navigate through the shifting fields. Many of us are trying alternative ways of being in relationships, such as polyamory, same gender, open, polyfidelity and variations in monogamous relationships, and there is a need to support these different choices. I have found a common ground for all these relationship styles that is rooted in the psychology and energetics of being human.”

17. http://www.altaryourreality.com – ah, Trinity and the folks who brought the two incredible temples, featured prominently in the pics on this slideshow and at the festival. These were where the Lovetribe‘s Cosmic Temple of Love and the Purple Temple were. Both delicious! OK, I could probably use some more adjectives. Lovely. Plush. Soft. Purposeful. Watch the video here to see how these temples come together. Thanks, Trinity!

18. Kyer Wiltshire Photography. Funny how a business card sometimes can just look so normal. Weddings, events, portrait, commercial, and the biggest picture book about West Coast Festival Culture in existence. His photos were being shown as a slide show on the side of the big white tent a few nights running, and Kyer could be seen shooting photos all weekend long. From his website: “Kyer has expanded his creative talents photographing erotic fire dancing, aerial dance, fire dancing with Phoenix Rising, Nocturnal Sunshine, LuminEssence along with many talented performers such as international magician Jeff McBride, Heavy Hips Belly Dance, Mir and Company Aerial Dance, Xeno, Mutaytor, El Circo, Apsara Dance, Mystic Family Circus, Living Tarot, Living Folklore, Yoga Motion and Cirque du Soleil. Kyer published his beautiful outdoor nude yoga photos in the Sacred Form Yoga 2005 and 2006 calendars.” Yep, like that.

19. Oh Krishna, it’s Ali’s turn. You know, the Floating Lotus, Sacred Massage Temple on Water. I helped Ali put his water temple together – the design of the lotus is so clever. Whoever designed it really did a beautiful job, and the end result is magical. Ali told me that he has only used the floating platform @ Beloved. Contact him and bring him elsewhere, I’m sure he’d love it. So will you. Hi Ali! Thanks for the watermelon! http://www.floating-lotus.org

20. Back to food. http://krishnakitchen.org – yum, yum, yum, and more yum. Fresh coconuts? Raw organic vegan prasadam. Thank you for staying open late, folks.

21. Catalyst for Fun Hot Tips: http://www.catalystforfun.com – Amanda Winters, Funtrepreneur, crowd rouser and social worker. Amanda did a wonderful job throughout the festival rousing us to greater heights. And, she’s just moved to Portland, how lucky we are!

22. One Oasis Credito – Redeemable for 1 Shower or 1 Sauna. Manoj got my other one Well, this is a longer story than I have time for right now, but suffice it to say that the Oasis is where one goes for a shower and sauna @ Beloved, and other places in the PNW. Here is how to find them on FB.

23. HealthForce Nutritionals – Vital Healing Botanicals – http://www.healthforce.com – these folks were part of the food vendor crew which also included some great coffee, Kava, middle eastern food, Coconut Bliss, etc. Yum, and thanks for keeping it delicious and nutritious!

24. The music – oh my, I’m about done. The music was fantastic. All the performers can be found on the Beloved website, as can all the workshop presenters and other Gods and Goddesses. Musically, Gaudi stood out for me, but I loved much of what was offered.

Thanks to my great Gazebo campmates for creating a great place to come home to, and for everyone who put this festival on. Until next year, Om nama shivaya!

Albert

Filed under: Art Festivals, Beloved, Doacracy, dreamingoregon, ecstatic dance, long-range planning, Music Festivals, social networking, thriving in the future

idling

albertkaufman — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:51:37 +0000

I’ve contacted a variety of folks in the Portland and Oregon region recently to talk about starting a public awareness campaign around the issue of engine idling. Given that more people are wanting to stop their cars (hopefully) to talk on their cellphones or text, idling is probably increasing. At a time when we should be thinking about more ways to save oil, rather than waste it, and also if we wish to have cleaner air, an idling awareness campaign in our region seems useful. Here’s a link to a brochure by the City of Portland which stresses that leaving your car on for longer than 10 seconds wastes more gas than by stopping the car and re-starting it again (and other health and environmental benefits of reducing idling). http://www.portlandonline.com/transportation/index.cfm?a=131195&c=34771

Also, OEC has a great video here for their “It’s not cool to idle at school” campaign. Their downloadable PDF on the issue is here.

Also, the City of Denver has done a great job on this issue with their Engines off, Denver campaign.

And, NYC is doing their share. A short film about their law passing here.

If engine idling is an issue that you care about, and you’d like to be a part of a working group in the Portland/Oregon area to work on it, please let me know @ albertkaufman@gmail.com – Thanks!

Filed under: anti-idling, idling, long-range planning

albertideation » long-range planning

100 Year Weather Event, or the future of life in the Pacific Northwest?

Irvington Friends of Trees 2012 Planting Coming Soon!

Escape from the zombie food court

Escape from the Zombie Food Court

Petition time for SB 525

Please sign this petition NOW! And share it: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-delivery-of-unwanted-phonebooks-in-oregon

Irvington Tree Planting – March 12, 2011

The Oregonian endorses Kitzhaber for Oregon Governor

Election 2010 – Register to Vote and more

Donate to Albertideation

Beloved 2010

idling

Please sign this petition NOW!
And share it:
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-delivery-of-unwanted-phonebooks-in-oregon