Ending the world

I have been reading my way through Derrick Jensen's books. He could be described as an environmental activist or perhaps an environmental anarchist, by some. I find I agree with many of the things that he says--that our culture is insane--for instance. Or that schools exist to mold children into industrial clones. Yes I can relate.

As I usually do, I pursued information about him to his website and there found a discussion board that seemed like an opportunity to engage in deeper discourse about some of the ideas that he expounds upon. Then it got a little weird. In order to join the discussion board there was basically a quiz, the answers being vetted by a board of moderators. The topic of the board revolves around a two volume set of books called Endgame. The premise of these books is that the dominant culture is destroying the natural world and needs to be "dismantled". Throughout his books there are frequent references to blowing up dams and equally extreme measures. In order to "Pass" and become a member of the board the task was to answer the questions in a way that made it clear that you bought the whole dismantle the culture premise.

I have nothing against dismantling the culture but in the broad picture trying to promote change via violence generally doesn't achieve the intended result. In fact it often has the opposite effect. The example that comes to mind is the World Trade Center. There were people who believed that they had reasons to take issue with the United States (as many countries do). The acts of violence that resulted unfortunately had the opposite effect from that intended. Not only did it increase the unpleasant actions on the part of the United States towards nationals from other countries, it had the effect of reducing the freedom that U.S. citizens enjoyed. and creating Homeland Security to Big Brother all of us. Pre 9/11 was such an innocent time.

I clearly have a short attention span when it comes to blogging. Mostly I create them as teaching tools to show someone how it works. They are all experiments in communications. It's been a couple of years since I fell across this one.

Working in a public library has been a wonderful experience. Of course I have the additional pleasure of working in the perfect size community. I was thinking about the scale of things. I'm sure if I looked I would find studies about the preferred size of the human pack. I recently was reading about how we are wired for community. I would definitely agree with that. I had two jobs that were socially isolating and it was a miserable thing.

Library Garden: Library as Place

Library Garden: Library as Place

An Abundance of Riches

We live in a world of abundance. The word abundance itself suggests a level of joy in its containing of the word "dance". It is not only the abundance of things or ideas or possibilities but the abundance of love from friends and family that keeps everything going. I've heard people say that things like the internet separate people, isolate people and make the world a colder place but I have not found that to be the case. Never have people been in a position to share their wealth of knowledge and caring over vast geographic and temporal spans. In industrial nations anyone (practically) can interact with anyone. Letter writing is lamented yet things like email and blogging share as much, or more of people's inner life. Sometimes too much. Cell phones are ubiquitous and video calls are becoming more common also (as have early morning bed-head calls).

There is abundance in the choices of ways that we can do things. The open-source movement has made software available, usually for free, that enables anyone to do things like edit images, produce videos and make and share music files. There is no constraint on human creativity. For people who cannot afford computers themselves the public libraries offer free access.

I think the difficulty that most people face lies in the abundance that overwhelms. More and more and better and faster is overwhelming to the average person trying to navigate the basics let alone the more involved possibilities. The role that librarians play in teasing out the essential needs that people have and helping them to identify and develop the basic skills is critical. Librarians need to be the interpreters of the new order so that everyone can be comfortable in Star Trek land.