PP showed us this amazing video tonight, about what economics is about and what it should be about:
It is very interesting and great, watch it!
It questions our current society's focus on money, natural resources, lack of sharing and giving... I want that Gift Economy that he is talking about. Maybe, just like Paying it forward, we should be Giving it forward more in our lives.
A great piece about why realism is better than overly positive thinking:
Selected fantastic quotes from this video with industrial designer Ayse Birsel that you should watch (I just LOVED it):
I am a designer of life.
I put aside an hour every day just to think... without judging myself.
Design is imagining things and if you can imagine things you can make it happen.
break preconceptions
shift your perspectives
harmonize what you want and what you need which equals value
If you want, you can maybe have an original life.
A great article about guerilla gardening in Tokyo, including planting broccoli outside major banks... It is also about design, food politics, and life philosophy, in the words of David Duval Smith.
Once in a while you read a book that is wonderful in a very unusual way. A book that is challenging in its way of dealing with life's big stories as well as the little things of everyday life, a book that makes you think philosophical thoughts that would otherwise not have crossed your mind, a book that keeps on living in your head after you close the last page after hours of smiles, sadness, fun, and internal laughter. This is a book like that.
If I ever have to restrict my fiction library to only 10 books, this will be one of them. I think I can read this book many times over and over and love it every time, and it would also be different every time. It is like layers you peel of the onion, you see more and more of what is inside and get a deeper meaning.
The story is both simple and complex. A young girl lives in an apartment building with many rich families in Paris and she is highly intellectual but has decided that life is not worth living, since what most people focus on is superficiality and banal things (especially her older sister is like this).
On the first floor of the building is the concierge, an older widowed woman that towards the rest of the world just tries to act like the normal boring, uneducated housekeeper people expect, but in secret she reads philosophy at the library, listens to classic music, and loves Japanese movies. But the keeps up the appearances not to disturb the set ways in the building.
Then one day a Japanese man moves in, and things are suddenly different. He changes the lives of both the suicidal girl and the concierge, and I won't tell you how, for that you will have to read the book. But I can tell you that is is extremely critical of the people that 'have it all', and gives justice to the people in the world that really think and care about life regardless of class, income, and age.
Excerpts:
"Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary - and terribly elegant. " [about the concierge]
As far as I can see, only psychoanalysis can compete with Christians in their love of drawn-out suffering. [says the 12-year old Paloma]
Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? [about drinking tea, among other things]
The language in the book is so beautiful that you want to underline sentences here and there and make comments in the margin all the time. It is not just a story about people, the book is about how we live life, how we look at life, how we look at objects, art, music, ourselves, our inefficiencies, our fears, and our loves. I loved this book. And still, I think I only really understood about half of what was in it, so I am looking forward to read it again.
A thing to ponder:
There are no objects, only time-delimited assemblages of particles.
I don't know who said it, but it is pretty true, isn't it? But you have to think pretty long-term for some things, like when you think about a gold nugget or other rock, hardwood floors, and plastic-based diapers. Then there are the ephemeral things that changes and decomposes/rusts/withers/disassembles quickly, such as books, clouds, wool mittens, and pizza. It is pretty amazing that all these things are made from the same thing - particles of elements.
I have just finished the book Second Nature by Michael Pollan, a writer famous for his books Botany of Desire and An Omnivore's Dilemma (books I have yet to finish). I was really eager to read this book, written about 10 years ago, but it was a disappointment. Not in the sense that it was bad writing, in fact, it is excellently written, but the thoughts are hard to follow and there are a lot of words and not much analysis. I had to push myself to finish the latter half of the book. But if you are into garden philosophy, and are not too easily bored, then read it!
He talks about things like 'what is wilderness?', 'the American lawn', and the feel in us to control nature. The title of the book comes from his suggestion that a garden is a kind of second nature. There are plenty of historical references and discussion of the difference between American and English gardening mentality, which is quite interesting. The problem is that in the end you are left without any conclusion - it is like a long evening discussion over one or two bottles of wine and the next morning you don't remember what you decided or if you decided anything at all.
He got a lot of criticism for the book, both from ecologists and gardeners. For example, the review in the Library Journal reads:
"Pollan, executive editor of Harper's and self-proclaimed amateur gardener, has written a book that is by turns charming and annoying, insightful and shallow, droll and banal. His collection of a dozen essays arranged by season is based on his experiences over a seven-year period in his Connecticut garden, along with vignettes from garden history. Unfortunately, Pollan's text is characterized by dubious and unsupported generalities, self-conscious humor, and extended, labored metaphors, and his lack of gardening authority dooms the book to superficiality. Experienced gardeners and devotees of garden literature will find little here that is original."
A few quotes from the book itself:
"Without the editing of our perceptions, nature might prove unbearable." (think - the killing of a mouse by foxes, heartbeats of owls, and suffering during droughts)
"Suburban America has been laid out to look best from the perspective not of its inhabitants, but of the motorist. " (He is referring to the omnipresent lawns, lack of fences and hedges, flower borders along the house and the vegetable garden hidden in the back, and I completely agree with this.)
"Domination, translated into suburban or rural terms, means lawn. A few acres of Kentucky bluegrass arranged in a buffer zone between house and landscape, a no-man's-land patrolled weekly with a rotary blade. [...] A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule."
The last comment reminds me of the culture of fear here - fear of ticks, fear of snakes, fear of nature, fear of all things unknown, fear of immigrants, fear of terrorism, and so on, and on. Most people around here seem to think that only if you are a conformist and not wander out in nature or into the wild world, you are safe... Of course, nature and the world has a tendency to get into your life anyway, it is just part of their nature.
With American gardens, here are my pet peeves:
* too much lawn!
* no pretty fences along roads
* too little vegetable and herb gardening
* too much leaf blowing
* too many gasoline-powered tools at dinner time
* too many deers and groundhogs
* mulch vulcanoes around trees
* ridiculous landscaping using non-local stone, colored plastic mulch, and plastic edging between borders and lawn
* pink flamingos and stepping stones made out of concrete and bought at HomeDepo...
Also, personally, I think large, hybrid roses are completely overrated, hummingbirds are amazing, and I would love to have a pond for frogs and dragonflies. Anyone want to come here and help me dig?
(The photo is from my idea of a garden, a livable place for people, plants, and creatures and pretty for all. Photo by LS)
