Monthly Archives: March 2014

March 26, 2014

Grow Your Own

By DP

A faithful DP correspondent based in Dublin has alerted us to online documentation of an art exhibition that transpired at Trinity College late last year, exploring pesky ethical and philosophical issues related to perfecting our deeply flawed humanity through biosynthetic enhancements: Grow Your Own.

The entire exhibition is worth perusal, though we found the project created by the Japanese artist Ai Hasegawa of particular interest. It seems Ms. Hasegawa wishes to resolve the paradoxes of her reproductive “dilemma chart” by giving birth to edible endangered species, such as Maui’s dolphins.

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LINK TO VIDEO

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WATER BIRTH: LINK TO VIDEO

Ms. Hasegawa also proposes her biosynthetic dolphin birth as a novel solution to a different dilemma, that of the omnivore environmentalist:

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At first, we thought this must be a brilliant and subtle bit of performance art, above all in the context of ongoing attempts to end the slaughter of dolphins by Japanese fishermen. Alas, once again reality exceeds even the most refined sushi-grade satire, and it appears that Ms. Hasegawa is quite earnest in her endeavors.

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THE BONES FROM PARADISE LOST

The artist takes note:

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THE FUTURE OF THE FAMILY FARM?

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March 18, 2014

Trophic Cascades

By DP

While tracking wolf-related stories and studies, we came across an excellent video that nicely summarizes how restoring the integrity of the food chain can actually reshape the landscape, a process that was intuitively noted by Aldo Leopold over sixty years ago in his pioneering essay, Thinking Like A  Mountain.

The video is linked to the image below, followed by a transcript of the most meaty section of George Monbiot’s somewhat breathless narration that was lifted, it seems, from a TED talk (accounting for the evangelical tone), though the same ideas are given a more detailed and satisfying exposition in his recent book, Feral.

Monbiot has taken a good deal of stick in the British press for his proposal to reintroduce wolves to the Scottish Highlands, yet evidence from the experience at Yellowstone National Park speaks persuasively for itself.

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MOUNTAIN THINKER

MOUNTAIN THINKER

Of course, the cascade can flow equally as powerfully in the other direction, as documented by Lisa-ann Gershwin in her wide-ranging research on the proliferation of jellyfish as a consequence of the elimination of natural predators, together with other human disruptions. Gershwin refers to our “gelatinous future” in her book, Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean. In her closing paragraph, she writes:

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DO SUSHI THE FUTURE?

Gershwin’s important book made a brief media splash towards the end of last year, and then sank into the unfathomable dead zone of yesterday’s news. Our corresponding poet Jon Swan offers the following rumination:

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March 11, 2014

Education Under Attack

By DP

Now comes a powerful report from the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). The authors note the gradual erasure of boundary lines between battle zones and what used to be called “civil society”. The tendency to accept widespread civilian casualties (including children) and damage to civic structures (including schools) as an inevitable by-product of asymmetrical warfare has served to accelerate this process, whereby all of society becomes absorbed into the violent space of the forever war.

Though not discussed in the report, the United States has a long history of crossing the line, so much so that one might identify the practice as a distinguishing marker within our military DNA: indiscriminate massacres such as Wounded Knee; “scorched earth” campaigns such as Sherman’s march to the sea; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; carpet bombings of villages and food supplies in Vietnam and Cambodia; and most recently, the widespread use of UAV drones which expose entire populations to the psychological trauma of unceasing threat and scrutiny.

Yet as the GCPEA study extensively documents, the USA hardly retains a monopoly on such violent transgressions, as attacks on schools have become increasingly central to a wide range of conflicts from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The entire document is worth a careful review; below, we publish a montage of excerpts, including (most importantly) measures used by communities to protect against such attacks.

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And now the response…

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March 4, 2014

Itch of the Absolute

By DP

We are indebted to Simon Critchley, writing in his consistently illuminating The Stone, for steering us towards a remarkable excerpt from the BBC series The Ascent of Man, presented by Dr. Jacob Bronowski.

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Now to the excerpt, with DP transcription and still images below, as Dr. Bronowski walks through the ruins of Auschwitz, towards the pond where the ashes of victims from the crematoria were dumped:

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EMBLEMS OF THE ITCH

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ACCUMULATIONS OF THE ABSOLUTE

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NO MERCY HERE

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In this pond are the ashes of many of Dr. Bronowski’s own relatives, though his immediate family had immigrated to England in 1920.

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FEELING OUR WAY FORWARD

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We have long been troubled by that odd beseech from Cromwell, and finally decided to get to the bottom of it. From a fascinating study conducted by the estimable Philomantis, it appears that there has been a poorly digested text resulting in a King James Bible confusion between Christ’s tender mercy with its gut location.

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Now that we have cleared up that murky bit of business, we return to Dr. Bronowski’s beautiful play of tolerance, with its emphasis on feeling our way forward,  whether through art or science, and on the necessity to touch people.

Alas, history appears to be driving the human species away from this imperative, and back into the dark and violent drama of arrogant righteousness. We have been here before — and it does not end well.

Writing in the opening paragraphs of his powerful book of essays, Science and Human Values (a book that begs to be rediscovered), Dr. Bronowski sets the stage like this, among yet more ashes:

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IS YOU OR IS YOU AIN'T?

IS YOU IS OR IS YOU AIN’T?

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