Recommendation: Engage one or more of the following: read “A Brief for the Defense.” Listen to one (or more) of Daniel Schmactenberger’s, and Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s talks.
Something to Consider: Explore in some detail your responses to the questions in the two paragraphs that begin with “Consider how much you spend, and on what…” above. Don’t do this from a standpoint of guilt or self-flagellation. Observe and learn, and see what comes up.
Notes from newsletter:
Approximately 25 million U. S. citizens did not have health insurance in 2023. What “quality education” might mean is something we’ll develop in future posts.
The linked data regarding phone and vehicle manufacturing are dated. The general truth of multinational sources holds up; some of the specifics have shifted.
Much of what follows in this post is attributable to Daniel Schmactenberger’s work.
The small number of people includes those of us who are not worried about our next meal, having a roof over our heads in a relatively safe environment, and getting access to health care, and who have enough discretionary income to eat out, have food delivered, bet on sports, take a vacation, and have a variety of specialized footwear available—whether we choose to engage any of these activities. So, that’s pretty much anyone who would read (or write) this post.
This extraordinarily wealthy smaller number of people includes the famous, infamous, and unknown folks who by birth, hard work, talent, luck, or some combination of these choose, because they can, to consume disproportionate percentages of planetary resources—including chunks of the planet itself, what’s necessary to buy and maintain their own aircraft, ships, and fleets of motor vehicles. All this while, according to the World Health Organization, “approximately 29.6 percent of the global population, equivalent to 2.4 billion people, did not have constant access to food, as measured by the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. Among them, around 900 million individuals [almost 3x the U. S. population] faced severe food insecurity.”
The three links point to brief samples of the work of Daniel Schmactenberger (metacrisis), Nate Hagens (superorganism), Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (modernity), and Scott Alexander (Moloch). Again, each of these folks brings a unique perspective to this issue. I continue to learn from them.
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s work, and her 2021 book, Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, provide deep, essential, and discomfiting observations and questions
Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense,” Collected Poems, (Knopf, 2014), 213. Originally in Refusing Heaven (Knopf, 2005).
Striving to Win the Dying Game...