PLANNING
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/learning-from-a-century-of-bad-urban-planning/
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
globe and place and how everything connects
summary
I find big things easier to comprehend than little things. Since most people (in the Western world at any rate) are just the opposite, I’m always going against the grain. I can’t find any corroboration for my view that it is very easy to correct Earth’s climate and other critical woes if we think big enough. And it’s tempting to go off in a corner and leave the world to its dealings.
Despite what astronauts say about Earth’s unity, beauty and fragility when seen from afar, policy to give meaning to that vision is absent. The awe-stricken astronauts were working at the level of sensibility and feeling, and these are never the concern of policy.
After I wrote my first blog post (“How To Do Everything,” below) I heard about the book “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen, for which the author won The Press Action Person of the Year award. Although I’m puzzled by Jensen’s radical views and by the acclaim given him, what he wrote stopped me in my tracks. Could it be that I received no corroboration for my views because there was none to be found within the broad culture?
Among the premises in Endgame :
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
I reread my post, and the main fault I now find with it is the perhaps naïve assumption that it lies within the power of government to save the planet from the dire consequences wrought by industrial civilization. Ain’t gonna happen, most likely.
But I question whether direct acts of violence against civilization (as Jensen advocates) is the answer – these will most likely happen anyway -- or whether it is feasible, as an alternate strategy, to take peaceful but subversive actions to protect and restore the planet. As an example, what if it were feasible to cover dysfunctional paving everywhere (paving that does not use the sun’s energy to do anything useful) with vegetation (a simple, non-technologic solution to climate change)? It can’t be denied that looking at Earth as a seamless orb that depends on vegetation for its survival is something that civilization has proven hopeless at doing.
During the coming year I want to investigate, to my satisfaction, how or whether the broader society, driven by a revolution in the humanities and the arts, could potentially reverse this direction. (Examining the feasibility of a worldwide survey of land-use plans is one possible way to start.)
Can what is harmful in civilization be transcended through civilization itself?
Despite what astronauts say about Earth’s unity, beauty and fragility when seen from afar, policy to give meaning to that vision is absent. The awe-stricken astronauts were working at the level of sensibility and feeling, and these are never the concern of policy.
After I wrote my first blog post (“How To Do Everything,” below) I heard about the book “Endgame” by Derrick Jensen, for which the author won The Press Action Person of the Year award. Although I’m puzzled by Jensen’s radical views and by the acclaim given him, what he wrote stopped me in my tracks. Could it be that I received no corroboration for my views because there was none to be found within the broad culture?
Among the premises in Endgame :
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
I reread my post, and the main fault I now find with it is the perhaps naïve assumption that it lies within the power of government to save the planet from the dire consequences wrought by industrial civilization. Ain’t gonna happen, most likely.
But I question whether direct acts of violence against civilization (as Jensen advocates) is the answer – these will most likely happen anyway -- or whether it is feasible, as an alternate strategy, to take peaceful but subversive actions to protect and restore the planet. As an example, what if it were feasible to cover dysfunctional paving everywhere (paving that does not use the sun’s energy to do anything useful) with vegetation (a simple, non-technologic solution to climate change)? It can’t be denied that looking at Earth as a seamless orb that depends on vegetation for its survival is something that civilization has proven hopeless at doing.
During the coming year I want to investigate, to my satisfaction, how or whether the broader society, driven by a revolution in the humanities and the arts, could potentially reverse this direction. (Examining the feasibility of a worldwide survey of land-use plans is one possible way to start.)
Can what is harmful in civilization be transcended through civilization itself?
Posts
Blog Archive
-
▼
2020
(128)
-
▼
March
(30)
- THE NEXT STEP Wouldn't you say, keep the world ...
- CV TIMELINE https://www.theatlantic.com/family/ar...
- JANET PATMORE With my usual tech disability I'm...
- VITAMIN C Trevor Burrowes
- for further study Bill Gates could have been the ...
- OIL, COVID-19 AND THE ECONOMY
- GERMAN FUNDING https://news.artnet.com/art-world/...
- Bridgette, because you are there (and some li...
- JAMAICA IS AFRICA Trevor Burrowes I ratcheted u...
- RICHMOND HILL https://www.facebook.com/photo.ph...
- ANGLOPHONE AFRICA China has seen significantly se...
- ROD Trevor, I appreciate your zeal to preser...
- JANET 1) Cooperation: - You are the only per...
- I HAVE TO DO IT ALL Subject: Fwd: MADRID, L...
- LIST MY PROJECT Senior Center the same Sa...
- MADRID, LAND USE, CLIMATE CHANGE, VIEWS, THE COL...
- AFCP 2 To regularize squatters, we coul...
- PLANNING https://www.theamericanconservative.com/...
- Caribbean Heritage Network http://commonwealthher...
- Slave Hospital
- Place insead of Race We don’t have to lose as m...
- RISING FROM THE RUINS? Not exactly the way he see...
- JAMAICA AND THE VIRUS Since I don't understand th...
- CORVID DIY MEASURES Sorry, now utterly off to...
- LICHTENSTEIN "COPIES"
- STACKED HOUSING
- REPAIRS Ellen Dietrich Wes Pittman at Appliance ...
- COUNTY OPEN SPACE TEAM https://surroundings.studi...
- 62 Main St, SAB This is save, probably under pict...
- WOODEN BUILDINGS Wood is scared to pre-colo...
-
▼
March
(30)
No comments:
Post a Comment