While channel hopping I stumbled upon the following speech by Robert Kennedy. My immediate reflection was that forty years on it’s a most appropriate message for a world in turmoil, a world that’s literally lost its soul. And particularly as we’re finding ourselves in the bleakest economic recession in living history, with the primary contributing factor being rampant consumerism and human greed. Certainly it’s now a time for reflection, to reevaluate our intrinsic values, and to rediscover what really makes life worthwhile.
Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but that GNP -- if we should judge America by that -- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
Robert Kennedy, March 18, 1968
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
podunkmarte
TheBadScot
Frank Apisa
ordinaryjoe
Jan Sand
Drewonimo
Salon.com
Comments
I just left the law library at the county courthouse. I'm suing (pro se) a corrupt landlord (former) and storage company. First hearing in Supreme Court tomorrow and as I nervously seek justice the memory of his voice and message will comfort and strengthen me.
Thanks, Newton.
(and OS for providing this forum)
Remember the early 1970s when the first oil "crisis" gripped the world and how the American auto makers were going to retool to make smaller cars? Now more than 30 years later, we're looking at giant SUVs such as Hummers, Ford Expeditions, Chevrolet Suburbans with massive engines that boast of an incredible 16 miles per gallon.
Those fine gas-sparing vehicles are a massive portion of our GDP too, along with the ridiculously horse-power endowed Bigottis, Corvettes, Maseratis, Ferraris, etc..
I suppose our never-ending zeal for consumption will end, someday, when only the dirt is left on the Earth.
BTW - I really enjoy your blogs. They're often a little over my head, but the philosophical discussions are intriguing.
Old gold, I know how that feels. I’ve been pursuing a legal battle against the state for almost four years. Despite the difficulty and challenge, justice and upholding truth is something one should hold above most else, so all the best to you with your challenge.
Bob, thanks for the visit. I wrote a section about America’s obsession with gas guzzling monstrosities as well in The Scourge of our Time, will add it as a comment after this. But yes, it’s diabolical that one nation can consume almost half the world’s resources without any apparent regard that it’s in very short supply. China also seems to have very little regard for the environment when witnessing their astronomical and unsustainable growth obsession, and I suppose that is an even greater threat considering their population size.
BTW, thanks for reading. I know some of it can be, but I notice a considerable silent readership which is encouraging. I nagged over the economy for almost a year before the crash, and everyone just called me a pessimist. Now that it’s happened, the best we can do is evaluate our value systems that we may rebuild our lives in a more meaningful way, but hopefully not on the dogma of the old, hence my motivation for posting mostly philosophical material.
___________________________________________________
The World that Was
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. – [Gandhi]
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that the world's food production must increase by fifty percent to cater for growing future demand. Notwithstanding this, the main reason for the current dramatic rise in food prices is as a result of the US and European Union’s increasing use of the existing food supply for conversion to biofuels as a substitute for the dwindling natural oil supply. This considering that at the current increasing rate of consumption, the oil reserves would be depleted by 2020 and thus that this entire deficit must somehow be catered for by other means.
Despite this unsustainable state of affairs it is noteworthy that the US has consistently been the only nation refusing to comply with world fuel reduction protocols, indeed being the only nation not willing to even sign them. This considering that America uses more than a quarter of the world’s energy – four times more than China, the next biggest user – but more than four times larger population .
This attitude is also reflective of the average American's unwillingness to reduce their per capita fuel spend, in particular their unwillingness to use smaller more economical vehicles. However the dilemma now is that the world food supply is directly competing with the need to fill up our tanks. And as the past year can attest to, the demand for feeding our machines indeed has reached the point where it is beginning to outstrip that of feeding humanity.
The future predicament this spells is that all the arable land currently available in the US will only support around seven percent of the country's fuel needs.
The question therefore is: if biofuels is indeed to be the solution to the fuel crisis, would there be any land available on which to feed humanity?
The moral issue which consequently would arise for anyone who wishes to indulge their fetish for horsepower, is whether in doing so, one would be burning away precious sustenance that otherwise could have fed a starving child. This being a distressing reflection of today's reality. Particularly that, if it is to be dictated purely by supply and demand, it would spell an impending social catastrophe unprecedented to anything that has gone before.
Regardless of how we are yet to deal with such a definite future spectre, the ideal should be that one is able to indulge such passions if one has the reasonable means to do so. But the objective reality nevertheless is that the world in which this once was a foregone reality, is dramatically coming to an abrupt end right before our disbelieving eyes.
The concern here is not for instance whether one owns a Hummer if one has the financial means, or that one can afford to run it on a daily basis. But that one uses it daily in bumper-to-bumper traffic instead of using an appropriately sized economical vehicle.
Beside that one has no regard for the waste one is causing, what it also is symptomatic of is a lack of self worth and what one therefore wishes to project about oneself. Notwithstanding its outer trappings, what it ultimately is suggestive of is an insecure ego wishing to compensate for its inadequacies by flaunting a gas guzzling monstrosity. For this reason, obesity and doing one’s daily business in an oversized vehicle when it is not required, is to a large extent symptomatic of the same wanton state of mind responsible for the dire circumstances we are currently findings ourselves in.
Unfortunately.
Rated and this comment: Someday this nation will truly appreciate tje Kennedeys. I miss John Jr to this day. Snark all you want about the Kennedy's (not that you did but to others) - if you ever really knew what they stood for and accomplished you'd be humbled.
that in the right hands would feed the children in every corner , heal this ball of dirt right up,
and send us spinning through the Milky Way in shining glory...
tough choice, that...better to duck it & talk numbers & cunning counterstrategies to the latest policy wonk's
bright idea spun into webs of electromagnetic pornography
...oh well, Gaia we harldly knew ye...
got "bobby" the dvd from the local lbrary...& not to see
sharon stone, ill tell ya
Systems mirror each other, like Russian Nesting Dolls. The isomorphic possibilities are simply endless, given that we exist within systems that exist within systems that exist within systems (family systems, cultural systems, sociopolitical systems, educational systems...and now, this here O.S. system. Yippeeee!!!)
Thanks for the wisdom and inspiration, Newton.
( m&m )
I have decided in my infinite wisdom to time travel back to 1968 and take over the Democratic nomination from McGovern after RFK was killed. I sahll use my knnowledge of events and really do a job of beating Tricky Dick. This is how:
In my nomination speech i sahll say: "the USA ,...nay, the world....stand s at a crossroads. It is a crucible...we are murdering Asians for the same reason that England murdered indians and americans murdered indians
and paskistanis murdered indians and indians murdered indians...
the sheer bloodlust, alas....
we labor for a corrupt fucking system that will bring us another meltdown in 40 yrs...that will lead us to commit the same colonial folly as vietnam, in the fertile crescent...in 40 years...unless...
we commit ourselves to Peace, and, yes...love...now. The poet of our times, Bob Dylan, was lucky enought to get out of all of this...he crashed his bike , thank god..just a few months ago......right agfter " blonde on blonde"....where he sang, "you go yr way & i'll go mine":
"ya say ya luv me & yre thinkin of me
butcha know ya cd be wrong"
that was the temper & the tempo of his troubled soul...then smaho... and he came out with a quiet album this yr with an indian on the cover....and he sang in "i dreamed i saw st augustine":
no martyrs are amongst ye now
that ye can call yr own
so go on yr way ach-kordingly &
know yre not alone"
for you are not....God says, 'do unto others'. ooo-dah says, "ach, just let it go, man"...lets all fuckin take a breath or
in 40 yrs the world will stand on the brink of hell, yet again...another untenable war, spreading....another economic collapse..more rioting and killing and blood and bad yucky shit like that...
and eros in hawaii gettin a fuckin tan
and baldy off chasing rabbits in the veldt,
whatever the fuck a veldt is...
ach ach ach.......and
mythos & oracele...
bored shitless..."
i would win & be carried to the white haus on a silver platter & i would legalize pot
and free the prisoners in all the f...ing jails and
divert war $$$ to help starving brats
and crazzy ass m...f...ers &
sit back and roll an doobie and....
ge t on the Open Salon, what else?
jmeu