Monday, October 15, 2012
from the email just sent out - beginnings -
Hi again - just in case you didn't receive the invitation, the blog is at
http://crisisschool.blogspot.com/
Let me know if you can post to it.
Here is what I've been thinking about - this will also go on the blog -
We live in a state of continuous crisis at this point, one with a deep
fissure. In industrialized countries, and particularly in the United
States, there is deep enclaving between rich and poor. Romney, the
Republican presidential candidate can claim that the US has the best health
care in the world - which is true for the extremely wealthy; for others,
there's a lot of scrambling involved.
Example: Robert, a friend of mine with hepatitis C, has to pay $11,000 a
month for pills which might cure him. Another example - in 2001, I had a
panic attack - and owed $10,000 for one night in the hospital to make sure
I didn't have a heart attack. I was covered by insurance; Robert's partly
covered. Another friend of mine with cancer, died in his own shit and
vomit in a Florida hospital - he had no health care.
Statistics indicate that in the past ten years, men and women in the US
without a highschool education, have had their life-spans considerably
shortened (seven years for the women, less for the men). And we can't
forget that at least 30 million citizens here have no health-care at all.
The US pays the highest, by at least twice, rates for health-care, and we
have one of the lowest rates for life-spans, in the industrialized west.
In another area, global extinctions are on the rise; for the past 10-15
years, at least, 3-4 species disappear permanently from the face of the
planet PER HOUR. I imagine this is actually a low figure, since things
like the practice of mountain-topping in West Virginia eliminates hundreds
of species every time a mountain is blown apart (this has happened to over
500 mountains already).
In the US, 90% believe in angels and miracles, less than half believe in
global warming or evolution.
Another example from USA today -
12:42PM EDT October 15. 2012 -
NEW DELHI (AP) . Twenty-five species of monkeys, langurs, lemurs and
gorillas are on the brink of extinction and need global action to protect
them from increasing deforestation and illegal trafficking, researchers
said Monday.
Six of the severely threatened species live in the island nation of
Madagascar, off southeast Africa. Five more from mainland Africa, five
from South America and nine species in Asia are among those listed as most
threatened.
The report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature was
released at the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity being
held in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.
Primates, mankind's closest living relatives, contribute to the ecosystem
by dispersing seeds and maintaining forest diversity.
There's a group a friend of mine is active in -
http://www.crisisgroup.org/ that might be of interest here - it looks
at world-wide potential hotspots and global conflict, and tries to find
solutions.
There's also
http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2011/03/29/martha-stewart-goes-vegan.aspx
-
In other words, the amount of cruelty world-wide, to animals and humans,
is horrifying; as populations increase, so does the drive for survival.
National Geographic pointed to the slaughter, last year alone, of 25,000
elephants for ivory.
The list goes on.
So there are questions out of all of this - how do we deal with crisis?
How to we stop ourselves from turning catatonic or so depressed, we're
dysfunctional? Are art and writing forms of mediation?
This is the oldest question in the book - What is to be done?
I'd ask you to create an online work for the blog (or a URL leading to the
work) or an offline work documented on flickr or other site, dealing with
this issue - What is to be done?
And am I being too pessimistic?
I will continue to question and probe, put up articles and references here
and hope you do the same.
Thanks, Alan (for the blog)
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Hi Alan and fellow classmates,
ReplyDeleteYes, it's infuriating and depressing to think about all of the problems of the world, and sometimes responding with art or writing seems trivial or hopeless. But then it's words and art that can move people and change their minds and maybe be the small lever that brings about action. I'll post shortly with some pieces and more thoughts along these lines.
Sylvia
Oddly, thought I replied here, guess not?
DeleteThis was just put up by Leonardo Flores on Facebook - an older work by Barry Smylie and myself, one which touches on issues of crisis - in this case body, sexuality, and power. I remember wanting the result abstracted to turn away from the grittiness of the original images, etc. - which means playing into censorship etc. It might be of interest.
http://leonardoflores.net/post/33638495749/broken-by-alan-sondheim-and-barry-smylie
Unfortunately you'll have to cut and paste the URL -
DeleteI'd really like to see the pieces. I've tried to do the same thing myself, and have talked endlessly about things - most recently at the online conference Cyposium, http://www.cyposium.net/ - but I never feel it's sufficient. I felt as well things like Occupy Wall Street ultimately failed; as the wealthy and as corporations increasingly enclave themselves, what we do seems to make little difference. There's all sorts of thinking in relation to animal extinctions and saving animals/plants - the cute ones get saved, and the rest are forgotten; the resources for saving are also so small that now there's a movement in the environmental community to forget the coral reefs - that they're already lost.
ReplyDeleteAs you might see, I have a hard time getting up in the morning and functioning; these thoughts are far too often with me.
Dark days indeed. Taking this class alongside another class in Ecology and Socialism will lend the next few weeks quite an apocalyptic aura.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more interesting neurotic complexes within my own head--and I share this because I wonder if I am alone, and if this is fruitful territory to explore: I've been so taken by postapocalyptic media like Mad Max in my life that there's a really twisted part of me that welcomes the crisis. It's utterly irrational, but it's also an anticapitalist part of me--"After the crisis, I won't have to get a job."
When the crash of 2008 hit, I was sitting in Kolkata, a week in to a year long commitment there. I really didn't think that there would be an America to come home to. And part of me was glad. How horrible is that?
Where does this impulse come from? Am I right to blame it on media that makes survival look fun? Or is it the dreariness of capitalist life, the monotony of production and reproduction, that makes me look outward?
As I said, that's only a part of me, one dark corner. The rest of me is utterly committed to saving the world. But how?
I want to share one piece of art I've done that perhaps hits on something relevant.
http://www.oneoffmag.org/site/issue-ii/drone-part-one/
I do think this is fruitful territory to explore, and you're not alone, although I don't share this myself. If anything, for me, Mad Max etc. dulls the reality - I remember T.S. Eliot writing years ago something like - Here is how the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper. - And that's the difficulty - mass extinctions and pollutions are hardly apocalyptic - they're slow processes, and you'll find for example that the birds have disappeared from West Jordan Utah (true), on one of your visits because the environment is becoming so disturbed. Mad Max and even the Singularity are created, I think, through an American individualism that desires the blow-out, like High Noon - that thinks the world works in black and white ways. But the world doesn't - it works through slow decay, corrosion, over-population; even Chernobyl led to a return of irradiated wildlife.
DeleteI don't find capitlism dreary; it creates spectacles to maintain its consumer base for one thing. And production has been conveniently pushed to the outskirts of the industrialized world - China produces now, but their production is also faltering and they're outsourcing to Indonesia and India, maybe Malaysia? I forget.
And yes I'd blame it on the media that make survival look fun - and that also hide the real, human and plant and animal costs of ravage. I do like the text you put up; I have to read it again (got caught in trying to make the settings work better here!)
Hello all, thanks for the thoughts and work shared thus far.
ReplyDeleteAlan, in your first post you mention the enclaving of the rich, as well as an increase in population that intensifies efforts for survival. When thinking about the sources of our crises I think it's important to distinguish between these two sites of fear. Is the depletion of all our resources past the point of no return or are we being made to believe that so we'll just give up? Are people struggling to survive more now than they have in the past? If so, is this an inevitable consequence of population growth or is it because power, knowledge and agency are so unequally held?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/business/global/a-failed-food-system-in-india-prompts-an-intense-review.html?pagewanted=all
And speaking of where power lies, has Occupy Wall Street "ultimately" failed? Who decides what is ultimate? http://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/09/putting-sorkins-occupy-wall-street-critique-in-a-larger-historical-context/
I think this also speaks to Jed's question about where the impulse to welcome the apocalypse comes from. I also have this tendency and I think sometimes it is more frightening to try and imagine and map out what has to be done to make change. Because, of course, in most crisis scenarios (aside from one in which we drown in the water of melted polar icecaps) the world doesn't end, it just becomes even shittier. One person's post-apocalyptic imaginings are already another's realities. It's hard to recognize the move that has to be made beyond personal responsibility (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/) because it may take over your life. When Martha Stewart is vegan she can feel good about herself and continue to build her empire of consumerism and excess. Not so if she devotes her life to looking at, and intervening in, the convergence of capital, industry, geography, class, etc. that keeps animal cruelty alive.
I agree with you, Sylvia, that art can move people and change minds, but how often in this current moment where the institutionalization and professionalization of art-making often keeps it insular and self-reflexive does it really MOVE people. ((as opposed to literature at the height of social reform novels when a reviewer in 1870 wrote of Jane Austen's work, "it is the increase of knowledge among the wealthier classes which has stimulated their sympathies for the the poorer, and, in the course of the present century, distinguished writers of fiction exhibiting the affections and sorrows of the poor, have awakened in the rich a sensibility of which they were at one time thought incapable."-- This is relevant to what you've written I think, Jed-- giving soul to the drone)
I sometimes think I use the comfort of art that clarifies the world for me and gives some small glimpse of the goodness of the world as a way to recuse myself from action. As much as I love and appreciate them, I think the comic relief (relieve me of what?) of Colbert and the Daily Show may do this for a lot of people, as well. Are we just trying to survive the crisis? Or flip it on its head? Could these be the same thing? I've been told that the Mandarin character for crisis and opportunity are one and the same.
Damn started writing and everything disappeared. A bit of summary - the NYC articles are excellent but I disagree with the second where it says "Sorkin’s conclusion is that OWS is a failure since politicians didn’t act. Mine is that the electoral system is a failure since politicians didn’t act." for example. The electoral system has been in place for 200 years and is not about to change. OWS distracted from real opposition in the city; during the same periods, the mayor has kept dismantling the school system, for example getting rid of the after-school programs - which were absolutely necessary for special needs kids (they make up to 30% of the classroom population) - to save $160 million - now he's eliminating classes so that we have a situation in general with one teacher, 28 students of which around 30% are special needs, classrooms that are difficult to control - and everything goes down to preparing, from kindergarten on, for useless tests, that as the Chicago teachers said, only go to show how poverty-stricken the neighborhoods are. My partner teaches in a NYC school; this is what's happening. Art, music, and phys-ed are being eliminated to save money. Teaching assistants are being eliminated. Kids are failing left and right and the teachers are being blamed. This is serious and the teachers' union has been advertising against this. And this is the kind of thing where OWS could have made a difference, but didn't.
DeleteI don't think Martha Stewart feels good or bad about herself. I don't know her. But what she's done has made a difference and I'm grateful for that, and it's more than Steve Jobs or Apple have done. She didn't need to do it. I don't expect sainthood anywhere...
I like your quote re Jane Austin - the same was very true of Dickens who did serious muck-raking, Engels who did the condition of the working-class in 1842 (forget the exact title), and Matthews' (sp) London Labour and the London Poor. Today, though, people don't want to know - which is why Mike Davis' book on City of Quartz, enclaving etc. in L.A., was so important when it came out.
And it's why art MIGHT be important if it's visible, if it's edgy, if it's somewhere that can make a difference - like Colbert and the Daily Show you mention.
Me, I make music and protest and write and video here in Brooklyn and get to speak and have followers etc. - yet I think honestly, on my 'level' it makes no difference at all.
So there are two things to think about (before my fingers give out, apologies) - all that all of us have written, solutions that go to the heart, say, of the problems in the world at large, and all that all of us have written, how to live, personally, through all of this, in a somewhat healthy and productive manner. (Buddhism alas didn't work for me :-(
Hi Jillian, Lovelock, author and more or less originator of the Gaia theory, believes that we're past the point of no return - that the earth has tipped in terms of pollution, extinctions, population increase, and global warming. So we're faced with a J.G. Ballard kind of scenario - how does one survive on a rapidly depleting planet? This has interested me for a long time; in the 70s I taught a course called The Year 3000 for Rhode Island School of Design, and we looked at the Club of Rome reports that were coming out - these were the first global computer models of any consequence, and they all pointed to catastrophic depletions in the 21st century. Recently, scientists went over the predictions and mapped them against current knowledge, and they seemed to be on track.
ReplyDeleteSo there are several possibilities for working through the course here -
1. Agreeing or disagreeing with these conclusions.
2. Creating works or texts dealing with a rapidly depleting planet.
3. Creating works or texts tending towards solutions of the Crisis.
4. Creating works dealing to personal responses to any of the above.
More later - hope everyone is reading here andwill respond!