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I’ve been reading in quite a few places, including a block quote from one of my favorite science fiction writers, Ursula LeGuin, that capitalism and environmentalism are completely irreconcilable.
This does not bode well for the human race because, on the one hand, getting people to give up capitalism is about as unrealistic as getting American rednecks to give up their guns, getting potheads to give up their pot, or getting Jews to give up their persecution complex. It’s just not going to happen any time in the near future.
On the other, it is true. Environmentalism depends on leaving the resources of the Earth intact, as far as possible, and capitalism depends on extracting as many of them as possible and converting them into something people will pay money for, even if it destroys the planet.
So, because I am a conciliatory guy, who doesn’t really care if people are rich, so long as nobody has to be poor, here are a couple of ways to square that circle, to make it possible for these two opposite forces to live in harmony.
1. Green Energy. Buckminster Fuller defined wealth as resources + state of the art technology + power, which includes both manpower and all the electrical energy generated by other sources. So, rich people could invest in solar and wind and kinetic and tidal energy and thus increase the amount of overall wealth available while reducing our overall carbon footprint.
2. 100% recycling. As long as its up to individuals to sort out their paper and plastic, we will be losing a lot of glass, metal, cloth, wire, organics, etc… Also, a lot of people won’t even separate their paper and plastic, because it involves a bit of extra work, that nobody’s paying them for. So, all garbage should go to recycling centers, where things are divided into 40 or 50 basic categories and, thus, get pumped back into the economy. Good for the environment, good for capitalism.
3. Space. Once we start mining the asteroid belt, the amount of resources available to us increases dramatically. Once we terraform Mars (or perhaps Titan, or Europa), we will have someplace even to ship off our surplus population, which would improve Earth’s environment no end.

So, those are three. If we can’t get those, then capitalism really does have to die.

I’ve been writing quite a few short poems lately, often just a sarcastic response to somebody on the internet, and only about half are interesting enough in their own right to post on my poetry page (I mean Rattle’s Anything Goes poetry page, not the gurukalehuru poetry page where all of my stuff winds up archived) and once they’re posted there, they often don’t get any response.
But, I’ve got a couple of long poems that I can feel forming in my head, and I’ve got this blog and no idea what to put in it, so these are just some ruminations on those poems to come.
One is sort of the idea that a life is a microcosm of history, although the background is always different, and each generation has a lot more modern conveniences than the last, there is birth, and death, and the full range of human interactions in between, but also that human history is progressing on a large number (an infinite number, almost) of parallel tracks, there is the history of art, the history of cuisine, the history of marijuana, etc…
The other is about the Power of the Universe and how even though we are a tiny little speck in the vastness of space, we nonetheless can harness that power, absorb and become one with that power, and that would empower us greatly.

Now, do not get me wrong. In my considered opinion of history, Maggie Thatcher was a horrible person who caused great suffering to working class Brits, and serious long-term damage. She was the U.K.’s Ronald Reagan, an appellation which she would wear with pride but I see as a badge of shame.
But, we’re watching season 4 of The Crown, and I find myself rooting for her a bit, because she is the first Prime Minister who has ever stood up to the Queen and properly resented the old cow and her entire social class for being privileged and using all their protocol and sniggling little rules to cover up for what would be considered, in anyone else, an appalling lack of manners.
(I’m talking about the episode where they invited the Thatcher’s to Balmoral Castle, were not present when they showed up because they were all out trying to kill a wounded stag, left instructions that dinner was black tie, and then they all tromped in in hunting clothes and talked about nothing but the hunt at dinner, pretty much as if the Thatcher’s weren’t there)
I’m not an anti-royalist, not 100%, I can understand the arguments about it being tradition, and good for tourism and, besides, it’s not my country so there’s no real reason why I should care, but Britain could easily slash the royals allowance and confiscate like 90% of their properties, and it would be a great improvement.
As people, I don’t see much admirable in them at all.

My latest binge-watch is a show called Vikings, and I give it a big thumbs up. Where I’d put it on a scale of 10, I’m less certain. It’s got beautiful scenery, super hot women all over the place, dark, powerful music, and plenty of sword fights, beheadings, rape, human sacrifice, blood, lots of blood, spraying blood, splattering blood, oozing blood, flowing blood, and blood smeared all over their faces, plague, backstabbing, betrayal, and torture, so if you liked Game of Thrones, you’ll probably love it.
I don’t know how accurate it is historically, I’ll probably get around to looking that up, although I imagine they’ve done a good job of creating a fictional story within the bounds of what’s actually known.
It’s not a documentary.
On the other hand, it’s kind of strange how our heroes do not die, even in battles where everyone around them does, and the battle scenes, in that way, are very much like a martial arts movie. Also, how they seem to be outside the village, or able to flee, when all sorts of extras and minor characters are being trampled, and all those guys getting burned up in the barn never get mentioned again, and that kid who was taken hostage and then killed just to be buried, as part of a weird spell to guard the buried treasure, just a village kid, those deaths don’t appear to affect anybody, so, classism.
But, it’s compelling. It’s 1:30 a.m. here, and I’ve been watching for 3 hours.

Let me start with the disclaimer, that I am not a gamer.
However, I still get ads every day for a game called Forge of Empires. I admit, the idea of rewriting history (their slogan) and building a private empire even though it’s an internet construction, one step even further removed from reality than building a city of blocks, or LEGO, is tempting. Perhaps I’ll try the game some day.
But it struck me yesterday, just watching the ad, how thematic and shallow it is. The medieval village, the town of the 1800s, the modern city and the future, all had a road and buildings. First the road is plied by carts and horses, and the buildings are of wood and straw, then by trolleys and old timey cars, and the buildings are of brick, and, in the future, something that looks sort of like a monorail, or a mag-lev line, and all the buildings are skyscrapers.
Kamala Harris, with all her cheesy identity politics posing, has said that her election will encourage more girls to run, using the line “you can’t be what you can’t see.”
As much as I dislike her, and distrust her motives, there’s a bit of truth to that. About half. Games like this depict the future looking much like the past because that is what we know, so it seems like what the future will be as well. We can only be what we see.
But, we are changing very quickly, and our world is changing more quickly than we can deal with, and our technology is changing quickest of all, and the pace is accelerating.
Tall buildings and fast transportation may be a big part of it. But we also might wind up living in isolated cells, only communicating electronically, or underground, eking out a live for ourselves in the interior of a planet without atmosphere, or in an idyllic paradise where nobody’s in a hurry to get anywhere, and we travel inside luxury floating bubbles.
Whatever it is, I strongly suspect that the future will look much stranger than just a stylized version of the present. And we will become what we can’t see, whether we like it or not.