Shoutback Dept., No 2. Thanks to Ran Prieur for seconding my complaint about the Carter "energy sweater" urban myth, which holds that "Nerdy Jimmy Carter Wore a Sweater When Talking About Energy." This is wrong. To reiterate: Carter wore the sweater on many occasions after the '76 election, it was part of his laid-back "man of the people" persona, post-Nixon and his foppish uniforms for White House guards. Yet for some reason, media mavens of the left and right and even bloggers continue to enliven their prose with the image of the "nerdy energy sweater."
I've been enjoying Ran's site, which has many interesting things to say about dropping out and living off the grid that I hope to respond to in the coming weeks. Here's a pearl from his blog: Notice that every article about energy systems contains the word "needs." How much energy do we need? Our ancestors did fine for two million years, or two hundred million if you count our pre-human ancestors, with energy gathered by plants through photosynthesis, taken into our bodies through eating, and channeled through our muscles. Do industrial energy systems make us happy? Do they give our lives meaning? Then why are suicide and depression rates higher in countries with greater per-capita energy consumption?
The only thing we need, beyond basic survival, is participation in a system that builds itself bottom-up from autonomous action. "Energy" makes us miserable and stupid when and only when it is gathered and parceled out by control systems. The nice thing about oil and coal is that they run out, and that they pollute the air to cause eco-catastrophes, which are far preferable to having our lives managed by the institutions that own the energy. Sustainable, clean energy that you can't cheaply gather in your back yard is the worst technology possible, because it will enable the systems that enslave us to continue forever.
I think behind human history is an evil collective consciousness that wants to crush the spirit of life, and techies are unwittingly resonating with it. After they take care of energy, they'll invent a way to make us immortal, so we can't even get out by suicide. We will become eternal torture victims of the megamachine, just like in Harlan Ellison's classic sci-fi story "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream."
The energy systems evolved because people want to be comfortable, but people are also mostly lazy and stupid, so they often get "too comfortable".
To many people in Dallas, "comfort" seems to mean racing down Central Expressway tailgating at 90 mph in a Hummer (the vehicle, not the sex act) to a McMansion in Plano, where they eat until they weigh 300 + lbs, and then they go to Church to learn about "The End Times".
In recent years here in Texas (usually in suburbs like Plano) there have been several seperate cases of women who murdered their children, either by drowning, crushing their skulls with rocks, chopping off their arms with butcher knives, or just plain stabbing or smothering. The media pays great attention to the issue of "post-partum depression" but hardly anything is said about the FACT that ALL of them belonged to Apocalyptic Evangelical Churches that in some way or other preach that The End Times are soon at hand, and that the women were in some way trying to prepare for Armageddon so the children would not have to live through The End Times, or to "save" their children before they reached "the age of accountability".
A lot of people think that the electromagnetism put out by cell phone towers is bad for you, and some people think that the energy put out by the towers damages human "psychic ability". Some people think this is being done deliberately, in order to make humans into a bunch of easily controlled dumb worker folk who don't have any real connection to themselves, other people, or nature. Hundreds of cell phone towers are going up all over every week, and I know this is true because my job mostly involves cell phone tower locations.
I think the best artifact of technology is the toilet, but unless you have a solar toilet then water and other kinds of energy are needed to run the whole sewage / sanitation system.
"After they take care of energy, they'll invent a way to make us immortal, so we can't even get out by suicide."
- Some people think that this is just the way things already are with or without energy manipulation, that you already are immortal... some think that when you commit suicide you then become a ghost, with no body, but all the same desires and neurotic shit you had when you were "alive" and inside a body, and so it actually sucks worse than if you had just stayed alive... and some people think that this is just the way normal, regular death is too, suicide or not.
I don't know.
I do love my computer... is that bad?
Hooray for Central and Fitzhugh!!!
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Shoutback Dept., No 2. Thanks to Ran Prieur for seconding my complaint about the Carter "energy sweater" urban myth, which holds that "Nerdy Jimmy Carter Wore a Sweater When Talking About Energy." This is wrong. To reiterate: Carter wore the sweater on many occasions after the '76 election, it was part of his laid-back "man of the people" persona, post-Nixon and his foppish uniforms for White House guards. Yet for some reason, media mavens of the left and right and even bloggers continue to enliven their prose with the image of the "nerdy energy sweater."
I've been enjoying Ran's site, which has many interesting things to say about dropping out and living off the grid that I hope to respond to in the coming weeks. Here's a pearl from his blog:
- tom moody 10-27-2005 11:59 pm
The energy systems evolved because people want to be comfortable, but people are also mostly lazy and stupid, so they often get "too comfortable".
To many people in Dallas, "comfort" seems to mean racing down Central Expressway tailgating at 90 mph in a Hummer (the vehicle, not the sex act) to a McMansion in Plano, where they eat until they weigh 300 + lbs, and then they go to Church to learn about "The End Times".
In recent years here in Texas (usually in suburbs like Plano) there have been several seperate cases of women who murdered their children, either by drowning, crushing their skulls with rocks, chopping off their arms with butcher knives, or just plain stabbing or smothering. The media pays great attention to the issue of "post-partum depression" but hardly anything is said about the FACT that ALL of them belonged to Apocalyptic Evangelical Churches that in some way or other preach that The End Times are soon at hand, and that the women were in some way trying to prepare for Armageddon so the children would not have to live through The End Times, or to "save" their children before they reached "the age of accountability".
A lot of people think that the electromagnetism put out by cell phone towers is bad for you, and some people think that the energy put out by the towers damages human "psychic ability". Some people think this is being done deliberately, in order to make humans into a bunch of easily controlled dumb worker folk who don't have any real connection to themselves, other people, or nature. Hundreds of cell phone towers are going up all over every week, and I know this is true because my job mostly involves cell phone tower locations.
I think the best artifact of technology is the toilet, but unless you have a solar toilet then water and other kinds of energy are needed to run the whole sewage / sanitation system.
"After they take care of energy, they'll invent a way to make us immortal, so we can't even get out by suicide."
- Some people think that this is just the way things already are with or without energy manipulation, that you already are immortal... some think that when you commit suicide you then become a ghost, with no body, but all the same desires and neurotic shit you had when you were "alive" and inside a body, and so it actually sucks worse than if you had just stayed alive... and some people think that this is just the way normal, regular death is too, suicide or not.
I don't know.
I do love my computer... is that bad?
- Thor Johnson 10-28-2005 4:45 am
- bill 10-28-2005 6:41 am
Hooray for Central and Fitzhugh!!!
- Thor Johnson 10-28-2005 8:06 am