2 Sustainable Products that You Didn't Know About

Composting Toilets


I'm not ready to install one in my house yet, but this seems pretty cool. According to today's Times, the Gates Foundation is apparently sponsoring a competition to reinvent the toilet, a 19th-century invention.

Recycled PET fabric clothing and bags


Recycled plastic water bottles are woven into a lightweight nylon-like fabric. I bought a Lily Bloom recycled PET bag awhile ago, and it was great.

Excerpts from The Pale King

On corporations and civic responsibility:

p. 136
We've changed the way we think of ourselves as citizens. We don't think of ourselves as citizens in the old sense of being small parts of something larger and infinitely more important to which we have serious responsibilities. We do still think of ourselves as citizens in the sense of being beneficiaries - we're actually conscious of our rights as American citizens and the nation's responsibilities to us and ensuring we get our share of the American pie. We think of ourselves now as eaters of the pie instead of makers of the pie. So who makes the pie? .... Corporations make the pie. They make it and we eat it.

I don't think of corporations as citizens, though. Corporations are machines for producing profit - that's what they're ingeniously designed to do. It's ridiculous to ascribe civic obligations or moral responsibilities to corporations.

But the whole dark genius of corporations is that they allow for individual reward without individual obligation. The works' obligations are to the executives, and the executives' obligations are to the CEO, and the CEO's obligation is to the Board of Directors, and the Board's obligation is to the stockholders, who are also the same customers the corporation will screw over at the very earliest opportunity in the name of profit, which profits are distributed as dividends to the very stockholders-slash0customers they've been f---ing over in their own name. It;'s alike a fugue of evaded responsibility.

On consumerism:

There'll be this incredible political consensus that we need to escape the confinement and rigidity of conforming, of the dead fluorescent world of the office and the balance sheet, of having to wear a tie and listen to Muzak, but the corporations will be able to represent consumption-patterns as the way to break out- use this type of calculator, listen to this type of music, wear this type of shoe because everyone else is wearing conformist shoes. It'll be this era of incredible prosperity and conformity and mass-demographics in which all the symbols and rhetoric will involve revolution and crisis and bold forward-looking individuals who dare to march to their own drummer by allying themselves with brands that invest heavily in the image of rebellion. This mass PR campaign extolling the individual will solidify enormous markets of people whose innate conviction that they are solitary, peerless non-communal, will be massaged at every turn.

On boredom:

I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering.

But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action.

The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.

The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. .... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

Enjoy the Silence

Excerpt from David Foster Wallace's The Pale King:

"For me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it's because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that's where phrases like `deadly dull' or `excruciatingly dull' come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing's pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly . . . but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarket checkouts, airports' gates, SUV's backseats. Walkmen, iPods. BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can't think anyone really believes that today's so-called `information society' is just about information. Everyone knows it's about something else, way down.

The memoir-relevant point here is that I learned, in my time with the Service, something about dullness, information, and irrelevant complexity. About negotiating boredom as one would a terrain, its levels and forests and endless wastes. Learned about it extensively, exquisitely, in my interrupted year. And now ever since that time have noticed, at work and in recreation and time with friends and even the intimacies of family life, that living people do not speak much of the dull. Or those parts of life that are and must be dull. Why this silence? Maybe it's because the subject is, in and of itself, dull . . . only then we're again right back where we started, which is tedious and irksome. There may, though, I opine, be more to it . . . as in vastly more, right before us all, hidden by virtue of its size."

''Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is....'' a character says at one point. ''Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui — these are the true hero's enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real.''

Chia's Spa experience

Went to a day spa today and it was almost as rejuvenating as a trip to the mountains to see Nature. What is it about spas that is so refreshing? Now I don't mean simply relaxing, because the massage was merely mediocre - my beefy friend usually does a better job. I mean soul-cleansing, escapist, transporting-you-to-faraway places kind of relaxing. I found the serene setting and peace and quiet (evocative of nature) to be the best part. What is it about the slowing of one's breath, the quieting of one's mind, and the connection to one's creator and terra firma that is so calming? Not only are we taken away from the hustle of industrial life, we are reminded of that which nourishes us. We are reminded that we are God's children, that we are loved.

The trick about these places is that they evoke "home," if for a short time, at a premium. Now if I'll just fix up my home the same way - darkness, good lightning, sound of water, flowers, candles, relaxing music, good feng shui - I wouldn't need to visit these fancy places.

July is here

Here are some things that I've found interesting lately:



Solar-powered LED lantern kit.


Despite her reclusivity and elusiveness, Princess Masako of Japan has always been my favorite royal.

Organic Chocolate Milk, and season 1 of The Good Wife.

St. John's Eve

I dreamt of blood that washed ashore, of eyes that spoke of sin
The lake was smooth and deep and black, as was her scented skin.
A mask I wore as I approached, I was what I am not
And though the pattern was unclear, its meaning could be bought.
Drawn to Bacchus's abode, I sought there to conspire.
But it was in the city of the dead that I found my heart's desire....
I spoke to one who smelled of death, he gave to me his ears.
And crosses that were marked were made into a veil of tears...
The road was blocked, the truth was shunned, the white flag had been waved.
Reversal cost me all I had, and everything I'd braved...
And then the night became as day, I glimpsed nature's reddest claw!
The face of fear looked back at me as I gazed into the maw...
My last ally laid to waste, I ran towards the light
I prayed for one to change my path, to give me strength to fight...
Inside a hidden chamber where I had no right to be,
I found the wheel at last, or, could it be, the wheel found me
And then the wheel went round and round, I could not find my way
Twelve and three and turn the key, I heard the madman say
Deep in the earth I faced a fight that I could never win
The blameless and the base destroyed, and all that might have been.
-Gabriel Knight

On Growth & Capitalism

Excerpt from Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (2010):

"Mainstream economic theory, both Marxist and free-market, Walter said, took for granted that economic growth was always a positive thing. A GDP growth rate of one or two percent was considered modest, and a population growth rate of one percent was considered desirable, and yet, he said, if you compounded these rates over a hundred years, the numbers were terrible: a world population of eighteen billion and world energy consumption ten times greater than today's. And if you went another hundred years, well, the numbers were simply impossible. So the Club of Rome was seeking more rational and humane ways of putting the brakes on growth than simply destroying the planet and letting everybody starve to death or kill each other.

[The Club of Rome is] a group of people who are challenging our preoccupation with growth. I mean, everybody is so obsessed with growth, but when you think about it, for a mature organism, a growth is basically a cancer, right? If you have a growth in your moth, or a growth in your colon, it's bad news, right? So there's this small group of intellectuals and philanthropists who are trying to step outside our tunnel vision and influence government policy at the highest levels, both in Europe and the Western Hemisphere."

Walter, not seeing the little neck-slicing gesture that Patty was making, pressed on. "The whole reason we need something like the Club of Rome," he said, "is that a rational conversation about growth is going to have to begin outside of the ordinary political process. Obviously you know this yourself, Joyce. If you're trying to get elected, you can't even talk about slowing the growth rate, let alone reversing it. It's total political poison. But somebody has to talk about it, and try to influence policy, otherwise we're going to kill the planet. We're going to choke on our own multiplication."

....

Capitalism can't handle talking about limits, because the whole point of capitalism is the restless growth of capital. If you want to be heard in the capitalist media, and communicate in a capitalist culture, overpopulation can't make any sense. It's literally nonsense.

"The reason the system can't be overthrown in this country," Walter said, "is all about freedom. The reason the free market in Europe is tempered by socialism is that they're not so hung up on personal liberties there. They also have lower population growth rates, despite comparable income levels. The Europeans are all-around more rational, basically. And the conversation about rights in this country isn't rational. It's taking place on the level of emotion, and class resentments, which is why the right is so good at exploiting it."

--------
America, you do excess like no other. Perhaps you are rivaled only by Saudi princes in your wastefulness.

My Enlightenment Salon

"Reading from Moliere," Jean Francois de Troy c.1728

France, 1793

"But what of social occupations in America?" said Talleyrand. "Do they have salons as in England or France?"
"Once you've left Philadelphia or New York - which are full of Dutch immigrants - you'll find little more than frontier towns. The people sit by the fire at night with a book, or have a game of chess as we're doing now. There isn't much of society outside of the eastern seaboard."
--Katherine Neville, The Eight (1993)

I seem to have forgotten how to write, apart from terse business communications (We'll have that deliverable for you by Monday. Have a great weekend!) and dry, technical sales prose (I'll spare you the torture). On the other hand, I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking. Since moving to the Confederacy and former capital city of the KKK, and a very, very red state, I've been thinking a lot about capitalism, communtarianism and what it means to live life in America. After reading that bit in The Eight, I've realized that we don't have salons anymore. They've been replaced by TV, games, and other cheap entertainment. There must be more than this.

American society has denigrated since the Enlightenment. How did this happen? We developed an irresponsible consumeristic society in tandem with the Industrial Revolution. A responsible consumerism is shaped by the common good, while an irresponsible one is not. We have lost touch with the lessons of the Enlightenment, and failed to allow humanistic morals to shape our practice of capitalism. See Nicholas Kristof's recent article on how Pakistan might be representative of America's ideal model of a government with low taxes, little regulation and traditional family values. Everything is privatized. Our goals no longer line up with those of the common good, but what is best for ourselves.

Mindless consumerism affects every aspect of our life because it is a huge drain on our time. Time spent consuming products means less time spent with our loved ones, less time building relationships, less time participating in our community and serving those in need, and less time for us to become well-rounded people, to better teach us to pass on the torch of our time with the lessons of this age to the next generation. These are the things that truly matter the most.

I propose that we as a society return to a more enlightened age, a more civilized and humane time where citizens respected and valued each other and the common goals of humankind. Share your gifts with the community. Talk to your children and really get to know them, understand their motivations, peer into their souls. We would all fare much better if we had those post-dinner discussions, if we were only able to turn off the television and our manifold electronic devices, quit our addictions to shopping and awaken our minds. Quit reading the internet and read a proper book. Come to my salon.

Some Other odds and ends:
- Southern people say "like I said," Northerners say "as I said."
- Southern people pronounce insurance with the accent on the first syllable ("IN'-surance"), which annoys the bollocks out of me.
- I've gotten heckled here in 6 months more than I was ever heckled in New York City for 15 years. Long stops at red lights, and
- I'm coming to terms with the realization that I am actually enneagram 6w5, not 5w6 as I've believed for over ten years. My obsession with hegemony, hierarchies, and the evolution of state societies probably stems from that motivation. Another post to come about that....

An Enneagram Poem

The Stages of the Work

If we were to really observe ourselves,
we would become aware of our habits.

If we were to become aware of our habits,
we would let go and relax.

If we were to let go and relax,
we would be aware of sensations.

If we were to be aware of sensations,
we would receive impressions.

If we were to receive impressions,
we would awaken to the moment.

If we were to awaken to the moment,
we would experience reality.

If we were to experience reality,
we would see that we are not our personality.

If we were to see that we are not our personality,
we would remember ourselves.

If we were to remember ourselves,
we would let go of our fear and attachments.

If we were to let go of our fear and attachments,
we would be touched by God.

If we were touched by God,
we would seek union with God.

If we were to seek union with God,
we would will what God wills.

If we were to will what God wills,
we would be transformed.

If we were transformed,
the world would be transformed.

If the world were transformed,
all would return to God.

–from The Wisdom of the Enneagram

Don Richard Riso & Russ Hudson