The Green Deal

The Prophetic Literature of Oil Depletion - (Repost)

2010-03-04T05:23:00.000-08:00

Concerning Jay Hanson and Dieoff.com

2010-02-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

Originally written: August 9, 2004

Part 1 Introduction

Jay Hanson is a man with an idea. That idea has to do with the reality of energy to every manifestation of life and every activity on earth, including the human activity of gaining knowledge and the maintenance of culture and society.

As the founder of the http://www.dieoff.com/, Jay collected an extensive compendium of articles dealing with energy, environment, population, thermodynamics, sustainability, culture and debates about human nature. It was a heroic effort to ground modern knowledge in reality, and to my knowledge no other contemporary individual has shown a comparable understanding of the extent to which modern knowledge is burdened by its own methodology of abstract theorizing. The dieoff.com website makes an enormous step away from abstraction to the real world. In this essay, which is intended to be both a critical and an appreciative look at Jay’s work, this point will comprise a central theme.

About two years ago, Jay Hanson got out of the website maintenance business and handed the site over to Tom Robertson, the Moderator of the Energy Resources Group on yahoo.com. On January 16, 2003, Jay posted a message entitled "Farewell Dieoff.com" to the dieoff website, in which he summarized his work over the previous ten years.

The document contains much of interest to anyone who is concerned about the human future today. Jay wrote that he developed an interest in sustainability "when it became clear to me that our present economic system was totally unsustainable and self-destructive. It seemed little more than a well-organized method for converting natural resources into garbage." He believed that a better grasp of economic reality would be welcomed, and attempted to run for public office with the intention to publicize and clarify the flaws in the system. But disillusionment awaited him. He learned that not only are such ideas about sustainability not welcomed by the political-economic establishment, but actually the notion that the United States is a democracy is a myth – "it is actually a stealth plutocracy."

Following this disillusionment Jay undertook further studies. He researched the field of the social sciences, including sociology, cybernetics, system theory, biology, ecology, physics, and evolutionary theory, only to conclude, after several years, that "little – if any – of the so-called ‘social sciences’ (including economics) taught in our universities had anything relevant to say about the real world. Eventually I discarded social science altogether because it had absolutely nothing worthwhile to say about sustainability." The insights gained from these research activities boiled down to two fundamental laws: energy and biological evolution. He concluded that our current economic system is fundamentally incompatible with the basic energy laws of the universe, and that it could never be sustainable.

At this point Jay embarked on a study of human nature, hoping to find a key to what might actually be a sustainable form of human society. "Human nature is much more difficult to understand than energy laws for two main reasons," he wrote. "it’s not taught, and we are genetically biased against self-knowledge." He summarized the fruits of his research to two principles: the computer analogy and a social principle.

The analogy of the computer with the human brain has often been made. The idea is that the brain-matter (neurons, dendrites, etc.) form the hardware, and that thoughts are the software. The ability to think new thoughts is a facility mostly absent from people over the age of 25, for the ability to think new thoughts depends upon years of work – "to grow the brain hardware required to think the thought."

I believe that Jay’s insight is profound, but the computer analogy, and his own rationalist bias, prevent him from grasping it fully. It is not only that to activate the cognitive functions of a human mind requires a long education – "hard-wiring." This is not to say anything new. Nor is it even that a lifetime spent in gaining an education is a guarantee that we will be able to produce genuine thoughts.

The computer-brain analogy is false because no distinction is made between the process of thinking and the process of intellection. The computer analogy holds only for the process of intellection. It’s like saying if you want to construct a house you start by digging the basement. Sure. And then you keep adding to it, level by level. And sooner or later you find you have constructed a house for yourself. And everything’s just dandy, that’s the way you go about intellectual construction.

But there is just one problem. Your act of construction was a response to a need for a dwelling place, about which you had a prior concept of a "house." The process of intellection cannot explain the genesis of the unifying idea nor can it address the question of to what extent conceptual activity is the response to a need. Yet scientific thinking presupposes this conceptual activity all the time, although it does not explain it. It depends upon the reconciling activity of thinking to unite a mass of disjoint facts (e.g. the idea of evolution). In that sense, to think is to throw some of the hard wiring out. It is not to add and complexify but to simplify by moving to a different level.

Thus the peculiar characteristic of the mind is not addressed in the computer analogy. The "newness" of a thought is owing not solely to the quantity of complexity and "wiring" but upon the qualitative difference between this thought and its predecessors. In other words, there is a time-dimension, a past, and a memory, connected with the ability to form a new thought. The ability to think a new thought thus raises the fundamental question of whether, and how, human life is an enterprise of gaining self-knowledge in time.

But in this respect Jay argues himself into a tight corner. He says that human nature is difficult to understand because it is not taught and we are genetically biased against self-knowledge. Yet where does he draw the line between the knowledge gained through the scientific study of natural phenomena and self-knowledge? Isn't the study of biology a way of gaining self-knowledge? I thought the Darwinians believed we gained a great deal of self-knowledge through the study of geology, and surely we would not want to deny the astronomers their two-cents worth about the general position of man vis-a-vis the universe? So is Jay saying we are genetically biased against some kinds of self-knowledge but not others, or that the science which has taught us so much about the world and the way we study it has no bearing on self-knowledge? And this is not even to bring up subjects like history, for example, which a few people here and there still pursue in the deluded belief that it has something to teach about how human beings strut and fret their hour upon the stage.

So those are just a few questions. As you see, I am beginning to have fun with it. But let's move on. Remember, Jay has just been talking about his own efforts to educate himself in the social sciences and finding the enterprise nearly worthless. He describes how he immersed himself in modern knowledge and found it barren. It was unreal, abstract, and removed from the constraints of energy that underlie every manifestation of life. Such modern knowledge – particularly in economics – was a deception and a lie.

But despite this realization, what did Jay do? He went on to acquire yet more knowledge. Let us take a pause here and allow ourselves to consider different options. It would have been possible for Jay to confront the barrenness of modern knowledge head-on, so to speak, and not try to avoid it. Such a choice was open to him – that is, to confront this emptiness, and live with it, suffer with it, suffer through it. I am not saying that he should have done this, only suggesting that the possibility of confronting this radical emptiness lay open to him, and he did not choose to pursue it. He could have taken a leap into nothingness.

Is this a strange thing to suggest? Maybe. it's kind of Zen-like. But the question hanging in the air of that nothingness that Jay refused to confront is whether the human mind is capable of regeneration and therefore whether human life is capable of achieving an ecologically sound relationship with the natural world. In this respect I go farther along this road than Jay has. I say it is more than the ability to think a new thought that is the issue. It is nothing less than a renovation of our mind that is now demanded. If we are serious about reducing our ecological impact upon the environment, we can only honestly begin with our own thinking, perhaps by first clarifying the relation of thinking to rationality. For anything we think about -- nature, genes, the environment, consciousness, human nature -- is just that. It is a "thinking-about." It is rationality, and rationality implies a distance between the activity of thinking and the object that is thought about. That is what makes rationality so useful as a tool. Thinking is separated from the object and can look at it "from outside."

But there is another form of thinking which is not so much a "thinking-about" as a "thinking-with." Indeed, our word "consciousness" means a "thinking-with" -- a con "with" + scio, to know -- the root of our word 'science.' If "thinking-about" presupposes a divergence between my thinking and its object, the "thinking-with" assumes that I have an inner awareness by which I can be aware of myself thinking. We should not confuse the perpetual inner dialogue with which we keep ourselves company with this "thinking-with." Self-talk has to be quieted in order for that about which we are thinking to become a subject with us -- for us, indeed, to "subject" ourselves to it. Indeed, to "subject" ourselves in this manner represents a small victory in our campaign to win a moment's respite from perpetual entrapment in our own heads.

Unfortunately, Jay’s increasing preoccupation with genetic theory rules out serious effort to cultivate the "thinking-with." Even the idea of "thinking-with" genes, instead of about them, is a bit ludicrous. It would be like having to sprout eyes in the back of your head, like trying to find another entry-point for subjectivity other than by means of thinking. And actually, this is an idea that has already occurred to Jay, who has used the argument that the gap between a sensory input and the mind's grasp of this input in consciousness proves that we make all our decisions subconsciously anyway.

But this is to get ahead of my story. Jay’s researches into the human brain and its wiring apparatus led him to convert to the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, from which he deduced that our human "empirically designed pre-program" led us historically over a billion years to "maximize inclusive fitness." Now for someone unaccustomed to the jargon of evolutionary biology, I am not quite sure what this means, but I assume it means that the big brain of the human species gave it (us) a better survival mode when compared to other species. "One of these pre-programs was specifically designed to inhibit self-knowledge with respect to social issues. By remaining unaware of our true motives, we are much more effective at deceiving others."

Here I may make an observation concerning Jay’s self-education. Apparently he did not include literature, art, religion, philosophy, or poetry in his program – subjects that are interestingly termed "the humanities." But surely he is aware that the appearance of intellectualism with guile has been recorded in Western literature. The ‘wily Odysseus,’ for example, is immortalized in Homer’s Odyssey. So Jay’s contention that we deceive ourselves and others is no new news, unless the genetic twist is offered as the final nail in the coffin. But before we bury ourselves, let us note that the big-brained species was not so inhibited in its self-knowledge that it failed to recognize, and perhaps mourn through its literature, its own loss of innocence. The myth of a Paradise or a Golden Age is universal in every culture.

Thus the idea propounded by the evolutionary biologist concerning the universality of human guile and deception belongs to this genre of self-awareness. It is the price we pay for intellect. Everybody should know this by now – if for no other reason that it explains the charm of young children, who have yet to acquire the poisoned gift of intellectuality and the ability to tell lies with a straight face. But characteristically, this insight into the nature of human intellectuality doesn’t come, in the thoughts of the evolutionary biologists, with any emotional force or vitality of feeling. It’s not rooted in any feeling. Our ancestors mourned and created cultures. We do not mourn; we state facts.

But I editorialize. Let me pull back my harness once again and continue with Jay: "Contrary to the received wisdom, people do not think and then act. They act and then rationalize."
It is a good point, and Jay’s intellectual journey is a good illustration of it. In the absence of any viable theory of a sustainable culture and in the obvious increase of waste, despoliation and entropy, Jay embarked on a search to find how the causes for this situation lay in human nature. All of us are now having to think about these issues because Nature is showing the unmistakable strain of our presence. We are learning just how much we depend on Nature in all vital ways, and the subject of energy resource depletion is causing all sorts of shudders in the domain of thought. And all kinds of rationalizations as well – from the economists and the cornucopians and the fatuous promoters of The Endless Ingenuity of Human Intelligence. Jay is quite right to be disgusted with this attitude. There is a large movement of cultural revulsion today, and I have often thought that disgust and moral revulsion are an important catalyst to human thinking.

Be that as it may, Jay goes on to say that "in modern societies, economic growth serves as a proxy for increasing fitness…continued social stability requires us to continuously INCREASE energy use, which we now know is impossible! It should not come as a surprise that we have been pre-programmed to overshoot and crash just like other animals." He concludes his paper by saying that there are no humane solutions to the problem – "because it is impossible to solve the problem of human corruption… Unfortunately, the best the poor can hope for is a painless death."

This concludes my summary of Jay’s farewell paper, in which the hard outlines of the situation are boldly and clearly stated. It may be impossible, short of theological Calvinism, to go beyond his characterization of human depravity and self-deception. And yet the individual writing this paper retained a belief in the value or truth of what he was saying.

In the end, we come up against paradoxes. With the blade of moral disgust we cut out our own tongues and return to silence. If we have not yet dwelt in that Silence it is because the blade is not yet sharp enough.

Part 2 The Dieoff.com e-list

The original phase of the dieoff.com discussion group was dedicated to exploring questions raised by Jay’s farewell paper. I don’t know how long this group continued in operation, but it lapsed eventually, only to re-form recently on April 1, 2004. The purpose of this reformulated discussion group was to promote a book called The Spirit of the Gene, by an Australian photo-journalist named Reg Morrison. Evidently, Jay Hanson thought very highly of this book and re-started the group in order to enable the author, Reg Morrison, to enter into discussions with his readers.

The word ‘discussions,’ however, is a bit of a misnomer. Jay and his friend Reg seem to have evolved to a place beyond dialogue to an Olympian haunt of hyper-rationalism where human-racebashing has become the common sport. Of course, it is nothing so crude and obvious as that – the pronouncements are couched in the impeccable language of biological science and clothed with the latest research into brain biochemistry and genetics. Nothing so crude as emotion is allowed to intrude on the ceaseless paeans to human passivity vis-à-vis the genes. Anyone who has the temerity to question any facet of the genetic dogma will get pages and pages of material thrown at him – whole passages from books, for example. Nobody on the message list seems to question the right of Jay and Reg to secede from humanity in this fashion and make pronouncements upon human culture with its arrogant self-deceiving delusions.

As far as that goes, I think that to call us humans "animal" is an insult to our four-footed kindred. As for the other part, Jay and Reg never think to look in the mirror for a view of arrogance and delusion. We see according to our mode of thinking -- said St. Thomas Aquinas. Or maybe it's something about the sword that cuts both ways or the mote and beam -- old old cliches that arose from old, old cultures long, long ago. But of what use are such homely reminders to the new men of science?

The new race of men is A.D. -- not anno domini but After Darwin.

Part 3 The Transcendent Gene

I agree with Jay Hanson and Reg Morrison concerning the very real possibility that the human race will destroy itself and the earth or come close to doing so within the next hundred years. But that is as far as I go. I think the fault lies not with spirituality but with the failure of spirituality. The fault lies in the rational dessicated intellect.

Reg Morrison makes the argument that humanity follows the well-studied pattern of any "plague species," which, when it overruns and overpopulates its habitat, is due for a drastic correction. He blames "cultural mysticism" – the religious beliefs of humanity – for building a myth of transcendent value attached to human life and of its special status with regard to the rest of Nature. These beliefs produced "… a faith-dependent species that believed itself to be thoroughly separate from the rest of the animal kingdom but followed its genetic instructions to the letter… Here was a gene-driven animal… yet one that believed itself to be under special guidance… Here was a wonderfully practical insanity, an invincible hereditary madness that eventually enabled this underendowed paragon of animals to devour the planet like a ripe fruit."
The sport of religion-bashing has been popular since the 19th century, and Reg Morrison has not come up with any particularly new methods. What is remarkable about his approach is that there is no attempt to examine the nature of rationality, nor to ask whether the rise of scientific rationality since the 1500’s may have had something to do with the increasing exploitation of earth’s resources. As one correspondent to the dieoff Q&A group pointed out in a recent posting, "The chart on the home page of this group which shows global population versus time appears to indicate a direct relationship between the degree of rationality in our culture and the total amount of resources we consume… one can see that the slope of the curve rises steeply after formal science replaced Christianity as the major institution for revealing ‘truth’ in our (western) culture."

I believe this to be an excellent point, though the Moderator of the group (Jay Hanson) derided it. He replied as follows: "Not quite true. Science and technology provided ‘means’ to follow genetic drives. Humans can find justification (excuses) anywhere – including formal mysticism."
By now the reader should be getting a clear picture of where these discussions are leading. As Lady Macbeth put it, "Hell is murky." The terms mysticism and self-justification are used to ridicule the attempt to make any useful distinctions whatsoever, convenient for foiling genuine discussion. Perhaps Reg and Jay, having accused the human race of persistent intellectual dishonesty, think that by showcasing it in their e-group discussions that we will not fail to get the point. The argument is that genes drive everything we do; mysticism provides a cover for the genetic program; all rationalization is a form of self-justification; hence the very genetic program that brought us success will eventually bring us to our ruin. The argument appears watertight until you begin to wonder why the views of real genetic scientists are not mentioned. Morrison gives us this: "In linking the words genetic and behavior, I do not mean to suggest that particular genes code for particular behaviors. In fact, it is now generally conceded that many genes are multifunctional, and large numbers of them undoubtedly play a minor role in most behavior."" (p. 173, The Spirit in the Gene) This "concession" seems to be a rather weak basis on which to construct the indictment.

Consider, for example, Morrison’s discussion of the role of genes in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). As a parent of two teen-age boys, I have often had the opportunity to observe what passes for childrearing practices in these Disunited States of Advancement. It astonished me to see how often, and in how many homes, the TV was left on constantly, and how often parents allowed younger siblings and quite young children to be "parked" in front of it. Any daycare center that kept a television running was certainly not on my list, and my husband and I never bought our children video games or other appurtenances of a media-oriented lifestyle. In the few interactions I had with parents of ADHD-diagnosed children, the two characteristics I noted were the passive parenting style and the ubiquity and invasiveness of the media in the home.

So it has come as no surprise to me to learn that recent research on the ADHD disorder has concluded that overexposure to television by young children harms the developing brain and lays the groundwork for the later manifestation of ADHD. Studies carried on by Dmitri Chistakis, a Seattle pediatrician, pointed to a strong correlation between the two. The article reporting these findings (Philadelphia Inquirer, April 11, 2004) admitted that there was a need for further research, for "It may be determined that genetics, not TV, plays the bigger role in child hyperactivity. But even now, the question must be asked: Why are babies watching TV at all?"

Although the Chistakis research is recent, the TV-ADHD link has been debated for years. Reg Morrison’s omits any mention of this, and his account of ADHD focusses on studies of twins. He cites a researcher who concluded that "’no dimension of our behavior is wholly immune to the effects of genetic expression.’" Thus Morrison: "In fact, I would suggest that the moment that we accept that we are entirely normal animals, then no other reasonable conclusion is available to us."

On the contrary, I suggest that many other conclusions are available. One of the most obvious would be to ask whether there is a connection between passive parenting and children who are unable to concentrate and exert motor control. The even larger question – which is so large it may as well be written upon a billboard in Grand Central Station, would be to ask if there is a connection between the refusal to confront moral realities and the breakdown of civilization. However, such questions would be of interest only for that small minority of persons who are interested in philosophy and capable of nuanced thinking. In the new cognitive style being popularized by Morrison, Hanson, et al, dogmatic piety has replaced thinking.

Part 4 Dogmatic Piety

What is it about the genes that so evokes mystical piety? Perhaps the appeal of the genes lies in their "hermetic" quality. For entities believed to be running the show, they possess a magical aloofness, subject merely to the vagaries of chance, and immune from influences of environment or exigencies of need. The genes thus epitomize the situation of the rational intellect today: tyranny masked as inevitability, the non-participating controller.

Reg Morrison and Jay Hanson often cite the work of Richard Dawkins, a fellow of New College, Oxford, and one of the leading thinkers in the field of evolutionary biology today. In an interview from Skeptic , "Darwin’s Dangerous Disciple, An Interview with Richard Dawkins," the interviewer, Frank Miele, quoted a passage from Dawkins’ book, River Out of Eden, to wit: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." Miele, quoting Shakespeare’s words that life is "a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing," asked Dawkins if in fact this described Dawkins’ position. Dawkins replied that, "Yes, at a sort of cosmic level, it is. But what I want to guard against is people therefore getting nihilistic in their personal lives. I don’t see any reason for that at all. You can have a very happy and fulfilled personal life even if you think that the universe at large is a tale told by an idiot. You can set up goals and have a very worthwhile life and not be nihilistic about it at a personal level."

This is an answer given by a priest of hermetism. Dawkins' answer does not recognize the need for truth. "I would rather die than live without truth," wrote Simone Weil (1909-1942) -- that great and troubled spirit. But in a more profound sense Dawkins' answer undermines the very enterprise of science in which he is engaged. For this enterprise is based upon the assumption that there is a truthful relation or correspondence between human thinking and the world.

The retreat of science into hermetism may be a characteristic of mass society. And in point of fact, the genetic dogmatists have ample justification for believing that human beings are the passive creatures of their genes. Passivity is one of the striking features of modern life. We can begin with now and go back into history:

The passivity of Americans has often been noted – one recalls de Tocqueville, for example, who observed early in the 19th century that "I know of no country where there is less liberty of thought than in America."
We Americans seem strangely passive in the face of a government that has encroached upon nearly every sector of society. In the "Grandfather Economic Reports," M.W. Hodges charts the decline of the private sector’s share of the U.S. economy. Before the New Deal, the government sector comprised 9% of the economy. By 1940 the government share had grown to 24% of the economy, and by 2002 government, both Federal and State, outstripped 3-4 times all other spending. By then government occupied about 42% of the economy. The economic disenfranchisement of the American citizenry has proceeded at a relentless pace, no doubt to accompany the selling of the country to corporate management. Our landscape and lifestyle bear witness to this new form of modern serfdom.
Let us continue with the historical review and look at Europe in the 20th century. Need we linger here long, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the trenches of Paschendaele?
We Americans, in the 20th century, were content merely to deface our physical landscape, whereas the Europeans, being more idea-oriented, merely defaced their historical landscape.
The competition between Fascism and Communism to see who could kill the most people ended with the uneasy ascendency of America. There was something like a 50-year respite until it became clear that the oil was running out and the pace of war picked up once again.
Well, let’s keep going back into the past. The 19th century was a highly creative period in England and Europe – far more dynamic, artistically and intellectually, than the 20th century that followed it. I will not say much about 19th century America, where the Yankee hegemony had been established and the agrarian alternative to it in the South decisively vanquished.

The chief factor of interest concerning the 19th century was the Darwinian intellectual conquest. But the real fruits of the evolutionary idea have yet to be won. It needs to be supplemented by the concept of the evolution of consciousness – an idea that Owen Barfield did so much to illuminate in his important book, Saving the Appearances (1957).

It is virtually impossible for us today to understand the real significance of the Scientific Revolution, and, by extension, to understand the thought-processes of our distant ancestors, without a close study of Barfield’s book. May I also recommend Herbert Butterfield’s book on the origins of science and John Lukacs’ book, Historical Consciousness. And there are others – notably Thomas Kuhn, although I have some reservations about his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. These books illuminate the context in which the material-mechanical interpretation of the evolutionary idea unfolded and show why this mechano-morphic interpretation of evolution both took for granted our radical separation from Nature and did much, at the same time, to further this radical separation.

Thus, unable to read from the rocks and bones – and later, the genes – that the story of the coming-into-being of human self-awareness correlates with the discovery of the phenomena of Nature – we were left radically uncertain of our place in the ecology of the earth. No wonder radical materialism has come as a scourge to our intellectual world. But the replacement of one false picture of the world by another is not progress; it is just the substitution of one falsehood by another.

The problem with the radical materialism as espoused by Morrison and Hanson is its intellectual dishonesty. Morrison and Hanson want to make use of scientific rationality, which posits a radical, Cartesian separation between thoughts and things, between the human being and the world. But then they turn around and condemn humanity for not understanding its dependency on Nature and feeling itself separate from Nature.

This is called wanting to have it both ways. To justify their intellectual dishonesty they say that this is the way people are -- deceiving liars and self-justifying rationalizers. It is hard to witness how so many presumably intelligent people are being suckered in to this supposed "discussion" – unless the April1st starting date of this group was meant to carry a hidden message. It's not by studying genetics that you learn how people are passive. Just look at the world around you -- with open eyes.

Quality of Debate

2010-02-27T12:44:00.000-08:00

The following is the text of an e-mail sent to me by my brother, Paul C. Johnston, who was summing up a debate he had with Jay Hanson. It is dated March, 2001. The passage shows Paul's developing ideas, later more fully elaborated in his essay The Great Logic: The Dance of the Stars.
Paul has a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University. Jay Hanson is the founder of the energy website www.dieoff.com and an active commentator on energy and peak oil issues.

___________________________________________

Some months ago, I entered into a debate with Jay on the topic of economics. Since then, we have gone through a few desultory rounds, but our efforts never amounted to much, and now I feel the need to make an observation or two, and then declare the debate to be over. When I entered the debate, I had no expectation of changing Jay's mind, but did think we might engage in a dialogue about reality -- not oil or thermodynamic reality, on which I have nothing to offer, but human, philosophical, and political reality.

I also thought (and still think) that any issues chewed over between us might anticipate political battles to come, as we on this list are already grappling in our minds with the long term consequences of high cost of energy.

I was surprised by the poor quality of the exchanges between Jay and me -- or at least I was until it occurred to me that our exchanges were very likely an accurate reflection of discourse soon to be taking place in the political arena, and in fact already taking place in California.

I take the self-serving position that our failure to engage in useful dialogue is because Jay cannot gain perspective on his passions. When it comes to economists, he seems a bit crossed, e.g., close-minded in his belief that economists have closed minds; religious in his devotion to the idea that economics is a religion; political in his view that economics is only politics; unscientific in his belief that economics is unsupportable by any sort of evidence, and, to top it all off, blind to the way that Mother Nature is having her way with him even as he goes about believing that science allows him to transcend her limits. What he cannot seem to understand is that I am not defending a worldview that denies limits. Quite to the contrary. Partly as a consequence of my training, I am more attentive to limits than he, because I see them not as just physical and thermodynamic, but also as human. I.e., there are limits on how we can arrange our lives together. Economics (and the entire ideology of the Modern Age) comes out of the contractarian paradigm, a basic, fundamental assumption of which is that human beings can choose how they wish to order their lives together. My conviction is that they cannot -- or at least, I believe that we are limited in what we can do through politics.

As a result of my conviction, I am outside a circle that has within it practically everybody else: libertarians, socialists, greens, neo-cons...

Though differing among themselves, members of all of these groups think that improvements are possible by deciding though the political process to secure arrangement X or institution Y. As I say, I am skeptical. We may aim for X, but cannot hit it, or if we do, the actual consequences will be different than those anticipated. I find Jay's response to "economics" to be curious, given his beliefs. I don't need to tell him, of all people, that coal and oil, plus science and technology, created a new niche. Given this, could we not expect that exploitation of the niche would cause certain individuals, with ideas conferring upon them an advantage, to forge ahead? To make the same point in a different way: ideas are at the service of life, not the other way around. When we human beings stumbled upon hydrocarbons, we were bound to go through a process that would select some over others -- i.e., those with energetic but unreflective natures, over those who were cautious, thoughtful, stoic, fatalistic... Economics just happened to be the belief system at hand that let the process go forward. To rail against economics is to rail against life.

I agree with Jay that the displacement of aggression engineered by the contractarians (from direct clashes, to competition through accumulation) is now in the process of breaking down. The reason why is because there is not enough world for the strategy to work much longer. Jay wants to blame those who created the strategy, (David Hume, Adam Smith, James Madison, et al), for the failure, a confusion on Jay's part that I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with. (Jay might, however, for a start, keep in mind that the strategy was likely stable for the pre-fossil fuel world in which it was created, and he should also compare it not to an ideal arrangement, but to alternatives actually faced by people living at a particular time in a particular place. ((In short, a bit of historical consciousness would be quite becoming)) ).

The problem is how to handle competition between men. By"handle" I don't mean anything directly political -- "arrangement X or institution Y" -- but rather, I mean "frame," in the way that Christianity did a pretty good job of "framing" the collapse of the Roman Imperium. Christianity supplied then what we need now, a vision which will allow us at this moment to translate knowledge gained during the special circumstance of a two-centuries-long fossil fuel extravaganza into images that engage and re-order the passions. (Out of these re-ordered passions will emerge the next political dispensation.) If there is a new vision, I would never argue that economists will supply it (nor the engineers, nor the scientists, nor the little folk of good intentions). Rather, it will have its origins in spiritus mundi, be workable, un-gentle, human all too human, but beyond that, who knows?

Though I haven't changed Jay, I do sense changes in myself. As I extend my imagination to grasp the present energy situation, I feel the stirrings in me of Old Adam (the mysterious gene-haunted seat of the passions), in this way: the old fellow is causing that which animates my interest and sustains my concentration to focus every more tightly on my family, my people, my local soil. I suspect Jay will hold this admission against me, as it supplies grist for his mill about the lapsed state of all economists -- but then, seems to me, there is something about Jay's style that makes one want to apply the word "projection."

In any case, I am drawing the debate to a close. I don't mind being a bit player in Jay's internal drama, but it is frustrating to see useful insight and rubbish thrown together -- without conditions ever arising that would make possible a bit of sorting out.

Stephen Hamilton-Bergin (Reposted)

2009-12-31T12:41:00.000-08:00

[This essay was originally posted in 2006. I have italicized the ideas that seemed to me valuable.]

The Truth About The War and Oil: no19 bus. The Coming Global Energy Crisis. 1st ed pub by Literary Workshop Ltd, Earthsure Foundation, Ditchling Common, West Sussex RH 15 0 SJ ; Sept 2003.

No. 19 bus (vol 1) ]Novel] Published March, 2004.

Stephen Hamilton-Bergin is an independent writer and thinker in West Sussex, England, who has produced a series of ten novels and an accompanying treatise dealing with the theme of oil depletion and its accompanying economic, political, spiritual and metaphysical implications. The novels, called No19 bus, follow the lives of forty or fifty characters from the year 2003 to 2070. They are thus an exercise of imagining the future – but not the distant future so beloved by science fiction writers, but the near and imminent future brought on by economic over-reach and energy resource depletion. Although this future is near, to judge by the common mindset of the present it might as well be millennia distant, so far removed are the ordinary citizens of the United States from having any awareness of the seriousness of our energy situation.

As the author says, his reasons for writing about the future, the near future, are simple: “I am very worried about it.” Although he began writing the novel in 1998, he chose as his theme a war in Iraq over oil – thus foretelling, some years into the future, what would actually come to pass. It is thus that his novels fall into the category of a prophetic literature.

Prophetic literature is something new. When something new comes into the world, it is likely to have rudimentary or even “primitive” features. Forget Trollope, George Eliot, James Joyce, the modernists, irony, ambiguity, the mythopoetic, the pathetic fallacy. As far as novelistic technique in the No19bus is concerned, it is as if the literature of the 20th century never happened. With this novel we are back in a simpler world of narrative, perhaps mixed in with little touches of allegory. The characters represent the range of extremes that cheap energy has made possible in modern Western societies. And though the narratives are simple, the characters are interesting – brim-full, in fact, with human content.

There is Sir Jasper, rich and about to die; Alex De Ville, the nouveau riche arms dealer; Bill Bradley, American soldier who is beginning to question Duty, Honor and Justice; Chloe, the distraught suburban mother whose child died in a horrible accident with an automatic car window; Chuck Sackville, who can build anything and destroy a rainforest or Alaskan wildlife refuge in the process; David Sadleigh, the salesman of cheap kitchen cabinet equipment, unfortunately (though not, seemingly, unhappily) wedded to a 34-stone tub of blub called Sheila (hint: she eats all the time while watching television); Debbie, runaway, pregnant at 14 (hint: abusive father; dysfunctional family); Dhaffir Mohammed, Iraqi doctor who spent more time “dispatching bodies to the overflowing morgues than doing life-saving surgery” (hint: this is thanks to the Americans); Desiree, aging bondage expert with a steady clientele; and Dolly, young urban female professional funds manager whose own personal finances mirror the larger financial chaos of modern high-energy states.

This is the allegory: Humanity-as-Entropy, the universe’s or God’s creation of a species that would test the laws of thermodynamics to their limit. Humanity is forever committing acts that exploit states of more concentrated and ordered energy and blowing them off and dissipating them into states of less ordered, more dispersed, and unrecoverable energy. This negative balance sheet, so to speak, was “redeemed,” one could say, or at least disguised, as long as the high-entropy part of mankind (read: Western civilization) remained firmly committed to the task of civilization – a mission bound up, in good ways and bad, with the Christian religion.

This civilizational commitment has become unraveled, and as a result, modern Western man can no longer justify his high-entropy presence with the defense that, well, all this waste, refuse, self-indulgence, etc. is the cost of civilization or the price of freedom Modern Western man has become, in effect, a high-tech barbarian, and it is this process of barbarization that gives No19bus such a feel of familiarity. If science fiction is a form of imaginative writing that wants to transport you into an alternate or strange reality, prophetic literature is a literature that wants you to confront, with moral discomfort and stinging pain, what has become so familiar that you have stopped thinking about it, or even perceiving it. (Italics added.)

The cumulative effect of the different narratives gives a picture of a humanity that is simply unable to act in the light of any moral purpose. The “negative conversion” depicted is that, finally, even self-interest no longer provides a coherent mode of action. For what is self-interest if human action merely revolves back and forth between an aggressive spontaneity and a passive mechanism? The irony – if there is one – of the oil age is that human beings are finally unable to “convert” their own energy, and simply bounce from one disaster to the next. After all, it was the oil that did all that “conversion” for us! And we are only at the beginning of understanding what the Oil Age has cost us spiritually. To really “get” this--- that the problem of oil depletion is not just the depletion of “external” forms of energy – is to begin to grasp this new world of prophetic literature. And it is why this literature has so little to do with the historic evolution of literature as it has developed throughout the Modern Age. For that literature presumed the existence of civilization. This presumption is one that we can no longer make.

But there is also another side of the coin --- not that civilized consensus has totally collapsed, but that it persists in a form that has become removed from real life and lacking vitality. Moral guidelines have no grounding in the world. As with Bill Bradley, the moral guidelines that he does possess are simply too far removed, in the reality into which he has been thrown, to be of any good. And this in general is the problem of a spiritual philosophy, which Stephen Hamilton-Bergin elucidates in his companion volume. He says: “Spiritual philosophy and self-reflection… are mutually attractive but the problem with spiritual philosophy as it becomes more and more internalised is that it becomes further and further removed from the practical day-to-day economic realities of ordinary life.”

The divergence between spiritual people and political leadership has never been greater or more dangerous than at the present. Those who are in political office are unable to reflect; and those who are not in office are unable to act. (Italics added) Western humanity is split at the seams and the most urgent task today is that of integration. But this task goes beyond that of psychological integration, important though that is. The century of cheap oil enabled us to explore our subjectivity and make use of a wide variety of integrative methodologies. But these integrative methodologies have yet to hit home with the question that must be asked of the human cognitive function itself. What is to integrate that which itself seeks for integration? What ultimately justifies integration itself?

Stephen Hamilton-Bergin acknowledges that “Oil is a legacy left by the planet to help mankind along its evolutionary path.” This view is both dynamic and forgiving, and is unusual among the environmentally aware, who are more apt to condemn humanity for its profligacy than to put that profligacy itself in an evolutionary context.

Cheap energy allowed vast portions of humanity to discover and consolidate its subjectivity. The question now is whether than subjectivity is to be directed towards a greater life-serving purpose or whether it will continue to be used and misused towards present selfish ends. I think it is likely that the “no19bus” will provide the answer to many of these questions. For I don’t know what it is that will bring all of these characters, in the end, to board that bus, but I think it will have something to do with Stephen Hamilton-Bergin’s motto: “The human journey cannot be taken alone.”
****
I should say a few words about The Truth about the War and Oil, the background research volume to accompany the novels. I would fervently like to see this book distributed in the U.S., for it is a veritable compendium of energy knowledge. Covering seven-plus chapters on “The true story of the war and oil,” “Prospects for a global economy,” ‘How our opinions are manipulated,” “The environment,” “Alternative energy,” “Does God need a sex-change operation?” and “The coming global energy crisis,” Stephen Hamilton-Bergin packs a remarkable amount of useful information in good, plain, conversational English. This is an advantage, for it shows future marketing potential for a wide audience. I think he dips occasionally into New Age fantasy, such as that about God and a sex-change operation; but fortunately such lapses are rare, and overall, the level of useful knowledge that is communicated (such as his chapter on the modern economy and its bewildering array of financial instruments) is very high. Almost worth the price of the book is his “Conclusions,” a sobering Afterword to the book which describes the author’s moments of spiritual doubt, his fear and despair. And the loneliness of being in large crowds in the tube in London, each commuter enclosed within his or her own world.

It is true that modern man has stopped being able to imagine a brighter future. Anti-futures and dystopian novels have been around for almost a hundred years or more. The real challenge, as Stephen Hamilton-Bergin sees it, and with which I agree, is for us to confront our present in all sobriety. And yet it is not enough just to confront it. We also need to call upon energies of creative imagination that have been long dormant. For the past few hundred years almost all human energies of creative imagination have been directed towards technical innovation rather than sustaining civilization. And it has been our chief error to assume that civilization is sustained by material prosperity or force of arms. What actually sustains civilization, on the contrary, is a certain quality of self-belief tempered with imagination.

Once we stopped sustaining civilization with imagination, our capacity to imagine the future lost its hold upon reality. As a result, our imagined futures became either blissful or bleak, but in either case it was not anything that real people wanted to welcome or work for. It is to re-initiate processes of creative faculty that Stephen Hamilton-Bergin has undertaken to write this interesting series of novels and has published his summary of timely information about oil depletion. It is as much to say that the Real teaches us how to imagine. (Italics added) This is a message of faith to humanity -- if it will hear it.
Stephen Hamilton-Bergin's website is
http://www.no19bus.org.uk/ -- check it out
for book ordering information!

Apocalyptic Novels and the Living Will

2008-12-11T07:16:00.001-08:00

Blake's Inferno

Yesterday's events are somewhat related to "green" issues, at least sufficiently to merit a small report.

First, I met with a lawyer-friend to draw up a will, along with a medical directive. Being on the Old Age Express, perhaps it is time for such a thing. Not that I will have much of anything to leave. But the point I wanted to make in writing is that I absolutely want no medical interference of any kind when the time comes - no "forced survival in an engineered hell," as Ivan Illich put it, in his Medical Nemesis.

My lawyer friend and I agree on the issues, both personal and national. He is greatly perturbed by the lurch of our society away from the rule of law. He says that institutional entities like insurance companies and medical institutions browbeat and intimidate people to relinquish rights and safeguards. And what is appalling - people go along with it.

Two books that I had ordered arrived yesterday - Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society and an apocalyptic novel, about which more in a moment. Illich believes that our society is over-institutionalized. "Surreptitiously, reliance on institutional process has replaced dependence on personal good will. The world has lost its humane dimension and reaquired the factual necessity and fatefulness characteristic of primitive times."

For one who has been accustomed to think of institutions in their civilizing aspects (e.g. "A society without institutions is a barbaric society" - Ortega y Gasset) reading Illich is an important course correction. True, a society without institutions is a barbaric society, but a society over-institutionalized to the point of suffocation has taken a good thing to extremes. Both not enough and too much of a good thing present perils and pitfalls. The overwhelming need of our time is knowing when to stop - stop building, expanding, growing, ramifying. It is as if we had a fanatic fear of self-limitation, of contracting things back into the embryonic form, the seed. The abortion issue is an emblem of this fear. We hate what not-yet-is, because we have so overbuilt ourselves into a program or plan for the future. Where everything is engineered, nothing can be left to chance, to hope - to grace. How dare something be born without our planning, our permission!

B.T. Post's novel, The Noah Countdown, is a gripping thriller about the world of Peak Oil - although it does not seem, at first, that this is the issue. The story concerns an appealing character who has come to work in a mental asylum - one of those institutions again. It is obvious that poor and unlucky people are being vacuumed up from the trailer parks and suburbs of America in order that their Medicare payments might prolong the employment status of mental health workers. B.T. Post has got this fact nailed down. Institutions exist to serve the populace, which exists to serve the institutions, and the circle is completely closed and self-referential. The dishonesty and deception are so patent in this as in other areas of American life that the whole society, in fact, resembles a lunatic ward. Where nothing is necessary, where anything and everything in fact only represent the self-interests of one group or another, the world goes into lockdown of superstition, manipulation, violence, and crime.
Illich's point again, masterfully illustrated and described in the first half of B.T. Post's novel.

Apparently, one of the people shipped to the mental ward is on to Peak Oil and the plans of the global elite to save themselves in the coming meltdown. The author knows quite a bit about what is happening, and if her handling of the Peak Oil and elite conspiracy is not quite as convincing, from the standpoint of literary technique, it is because her handling of the suffocating self-referential world of institutional reality is so good. It is as if she knows too much and was, herself, perhaps not quite able to draw the line and put up the limit.

What is "Inferno" but a place without law - and without limits? Modern man stopped believing in Hell and so turned to creating it on Earth. B.T. Post describes it, my lawyer friend knows it, and Blake painted it.

Time for the Big Green Scream

2008-12-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

Screamers, it's time for another loud yell.

The Philadelphia City Council, according to an article in today's Inquirer, approved Hill International's proposal to build a 1,510-foot tower on 18th and Arch Street - which would be "one of the tallest buildings in the world" and would "dwarf Philadelphia's highest skyscraper," the Comcast Center, which weighs in at 975 feet.

It would be too much to ask where the money is coming from, especially as Hill International does not seem at present to have any "anchored committed tenants" for the monstrosity. Is it too much to expect people to draw a line ending in a question mark from an imploding economy, massive nationalization of banks and financial bailouts to a proposal for Philadelphia to become the "newest epicenter of finance and innovation"? (Note the term - "epicenter," which has been imported from the realm of Earthquake Science to describe economic activity. Words are omens!)

Apparently reality is not something that we Americans need to be concerned with. Economic theory, which I explained in my novel, After the Crash, is the "Magic Hat." That means, you just create something because you want it, and if you exhaust your natural resources, and use up the oil, well, just eat up the hat, start another war, and keep telling yourself that "we create our own reality." Another feature of that book was a description of what happens to tall office buildings once the energy to run them has been depleted. They become the festering sites of new diseases, named for the corporate behemoths who once inhabited them. A zany plot hangs upon that imagination of the future, but zany as whimsical, not zany-as-insane.

The American Commerce Center is the height of folly. And by the way, what "commerce" do they mean? Do we still produce anything in the USA in the way of tradable goods?

We need to save our city, and our minds, from such delusions of grandeur. It's toxic.

Hansen Talk

2008-11-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

Jim Hansen gave a talk/presentation on Global Warming, sponsored by Penn Future and hosted at the Beth David Temple in Gladwyne. He said that CO2 levels are currently at about 385 ppm (although he later said something that seemed to indicate that this figure was much higher) and that we need to reduce it to 350 ppm in order to prevent widespread ice melting. Sea levels have been stable for the last 8,000 years, but in the last century they rose 35 cm. Wildfires are increasing in the United States due to global warming, 4-fold in the last 40 years. Melting glaciers in India and elsewhere, which provide fresh water to millions of people, will no longer be such a source if they melt away altogether. Oceans are becoming acidified - which spells a deep problem to creatures with carbonate shells and coral reefs.

I was concerned about what to say to climate change skeptics. He indirectly answered this question by pointing out while it is true that in previous ages there have been wide swings of temperature, leading to global warming or cooling, what is unique in our time is that gas changes (i.e. burning fossil fuels) are are the driver of temperature changes.

Hansen believes it is imperative to call a halt to the burning of coal - a hard sell in Pennsylvania, which obtains much of its electricity from coal. It was disappointing to hear him say that "people will never give up their cars," - in other words, don't hope for a massive reinvestment in a national rail/ mass transit system. In this way his approach was just as deterministic as those who say it is a "god-given right" for people to burn up their natural resources.

Woodford Orchard Update

2008-11-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

I arrived an hour late for the Woodford Orchard Planting, to find that all the trees had been put into the ground. Connections on Septa during "slippery rail" season are likely to be late at best.
I enjoyed a cup of fresh pressed cider and stood around for a few minutes with the people who had just finished planting the orchard - everyone looking pleased, as they say, as punch.

Woodford Orchard Project

2008-10-27T14:54:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday I found my way to the Woodford Orchard Project in East Fairmount Park. The 61 bus from 9th and Market goes right to 33rd and Dauphin - then it is a short walk to the Park. Finding out these connections took some time, but I arrived soon enough to put in a shift of spreading mushroom compost on a parcel of land. The steaming fragrant mix was rich and abundant - a truckload, I'm told, costing about $500. In two weeks the trees and berry bushes will be planted.

The idea behind the Philly Orchard Project is to establish food-growing venues in abandoned lots and vacant land. At the Infilladelphia meeting a couple of weeks ago it was pointed out that people in low-income neighborhoods have fewer markets and access to quality food. The idea here is that we all must prepare to live in a world with vastly reduced energy and oil resources. There was a good feeling and strong sense of camaraderie among the volunteers.

Review- "The Green Collar Economy"

2008-10-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems (2008) Harper Collins $25.95.

Van Jones’ book is a sign of the times and heartening call to environmental action for all and especially for people of color. It is uncommon for the have-nots, the poor and minority populations, to support the environmental movement. Van Jones hopes that his book will provide a teaching moment – a turn around for this community to begin to identify how environmental restoration and the creation of five million green jobs is truly in its interest. What better time than now – when the United States bids fair to elect its first President of African-American origin? This is a timely and redemptive message.

Economic and environmental issues are inseparably joined. It is only the deceiving interlude of the Cheap Oil-Cheap Energy era that has enabled us to forget that principles of good stewardship begin with the soil and radiate outward to the family, community, nation and body politic. “Deceiving” – because now we have burned through half the world’s endowment of oil, and the second half will be so much harder to extract. The United States' peak of oil production was back in 1971 – just as Hubbert predicted, and the results have been just as predictable: increasing deception on the part of politicians about what’s really going on, increasing aggression with respect to countries with oil resources, and decreasing flexibility of thinking and accountability at home.

I have pondered the irony of the fact that “stewardship” has become a synonym for fundraising. What stewardship really means is being able to sustain oneself, taking care that soil fertility is renewed, that water and air are husbanded, that the means of life are passed on to the next generation. It’s not about riches so much as sustainability. And this is the heart of the matter, for sustainability can only mean something if people feel that they belong to a real community, a community that is not an abstraction. But what is the “United States” as a community today? Sadly, it is a nation of people divided into irreconciliable differences and cultural and political factions. The sustainability movement speaks a common language, and it has the potential to encourage a common task. But I can guarantee that this movement for the common good will be assaulted at every stage, and the invitations to collapse into fragmentation and hostility will be alluring and unrelenting. Such is the nature of “politics.” The people must speak a different language - which is to say, the people must learn not to be deceived.

And this is where I have some reservations about Van Jones. I think he is too optimistic about government—“If the federal government shifts its policy to fully back the green economy, the private sector can create millions more jobs in new clean and green industries.” (p. 15) Well, it’s a big “If.” So far as I can see, the Federal Government has shown little inclination to act on behalf of the people, the latest “bailout of Wall Street” only being the most recent example. Does Van Jones have any idea of the entrenched interests that would have to be forced aside in order for the Federal Government to show such a change of heart? He is aware of it – but only in generalities.

Another point of serious reservation-- his “Social Uplift Environmentalism” is comprised of three points: (1) Equal protection for all people; (2) Equal opportunity for all people; and (3) Reverence for all creation. Frankly, I think the Equality Card has been played out. There are no more aces in that deck. Equality is a recipe for sameness, not sustainability. What is real, what is needed, and what is worth fighting for – is Quality. Quality of life, quality of education, quality of the natural environment, quality of public services, quality of newspaper reporting, and above all quality of accountability and honesty in politics and finance. We need Quality in the United States as never before, because Quality is what makes possible true achievement and genuine self-esteem. The feeling for Quality is the index of the true diversity in the world and it is the sense that fosters appreciation. I believe the sustainability movement needs to foster the feeling of appreciation for all that we have been given - in nature and in culture. Quality is adaptive change - Equality is divisive change. It is interesting that these two words are so similar yet so different in their effects. When has the United States ever put Quality first? Isn't it time?

And another word about slavery. Robert Kennedy’s introduction to this book compares overcoming carbon dependency to the abolition of slavery. Ironically, this is just what it is not. The discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859 was the very catalyst that ended the Southern plantation system, which could not compete with the much cheaper “energy slaves” provided by the oil bonanza. The metaphor of carbon dependency and slavery is strained to say the least. It cannot bear the weight of the sustainability movement, which has to be located in an entirely different realm. The paradox of carbon dependency and cheap energy is that it is the opposite of slavery. It is “too liberating.” It causes people to lose touch with the fundamentals of life, with growing food and husbanding resources, and with structuring their communities in such a way that people of varying skills and abilities can contribute to the whole and have a place in the social order. As a result, the reign of “liberation” fosters political and social passivity on a monumental scale.

Despite these reservation, I hail The Green Collar Economy as an important call to social renewal. “The green economy is not just a place where affluent people can spend money. It is fast becoming a place where ordinary people can earn money.” (p. 54)

Well said.

Going Green

2008-10-22T06:39:00.000-07:00

Philadelphia is about to ride the green wave on the way to a nation near you. There is a new magazine - "Grid-- Philadelphia's First Sustainability Magazine" -- that has just come out. It is beginning to address the future of Philadelphia and has the determination and the idealism to hope that it can shape it. The editor wonders "whether the time is right" to launch a sustainability magazine. But he answers his own question with the result. It's here. Coming - ready or not. Ripeness is all - says Shakespeare -- and the post-peak-oil, climate-change-aware, poverty-conscious American is undergoing an awakening of vision and conscience. This awakening is what Grid is about.

It's not television, it's not banks, it's not politicians. It's about looking at what we've done to our landscape. It's about looking at how people live in cities and get their food. It's about building a new community of people who have decided to build new institutions, new ways of doing things that don't necessarily make the evening news and the sawdust commentary of everyday nothing. It's about black and white. It's about - I hope - antiwar and prolife. It's about being good stewards - of the city, of nature, of history. It's about time.

Can Old Philadelphia dust herself off from the grime and poverty of the departing industrial age and show herself the true reborn capital of a new heart and a new life? I hope so, and I'm going to do my part to help it. Stay tuned.