[Landline] Off the Map
1. HOUSEKEEPING
Landline is by me, Jay Babcock, former editor and co-founder of Arthur Magazine. If you were subscribed to the old Arthur email bulletin, you have been added to this list, as Landline is essentially a continuation of that bulletin and I thought anyone who liked that stuff had a good chance of finding this stuff of interest as well.
What is this stuff? Ideas and nudges, hopefully forming a small bailiwick outside the unceasing current of cruddiness — irregular epistles intended for friends, colleagues, Arthur heads, pastoral people, plant people, rural country people, dharma people, herbalists, gardeners, wild people and other curious sweetfolk. I hope Landline will be of use to you.
Also, hey!: I've started doing a playlist on Spotify — old stuff, new stuff, the stuff in between and the stuff beyond, stuff that as I really get going will be from all over the map, some off the map altogether, updated almost daily. Right now it features Theotis Taylor, the late great Richard Swift, Andrew W.K., Doug Paisley. Pretenders, Rolling Blackouts C.F., Ride, Garcia Peoples, Spiritualized, Jackie Opel, the Kinks, J.J. Cale, Dadawah, Hound Dog Taylor, Queens of the Stone Age, Blue Oyster Cult, Eugenius, the Roches, Arbouretum, Tonstartssbandht, Kiki Pau, Sleep, Mississippi Witch, Holger Czukay, Latin Playboys, Howlin Rain, Raspberries, Dean Ween Group, R.E.M., Popol Vuh, Talk Talk, Eddie Harris, and, of course, Julian Cope. Head over here to listen.
And now, some old ideas. Sorry about the slightly wonky formatting — I'm still getting the hang of what this app lets you do....
2. GREEN DREAM
Poster image found recently on instagram
From "Empty half the Earth of its humans. It's the only way to save the planet"
by Kim Stanley Robinson
(thx for the reminder, Ben B.!)
EO Wilson has a plan named Half Earth. His book of the same title is provocative in all the best ways, and I think it has been under-discussed because the central idea seems so extreme. But since people are leaving the land anyway and streaming into cities, the Half Earth concept can help us to orient that process, and dodge the sixth great mass extinction event that we are now starting, and which will hammer humans too.
The idea is right there in the name: leave about half the Earth’s surface mostly free of humans, so wild plants and animals can live there unimpeded as they did for so long before humans arrived. Same with the oceans, by the way; about a third of our food comes from the sea, so the seas have to be healthy too.
At a time when there are far more people alive than ever before, this plan might sound strange, even impossible. But it isn’t. With people already leaving countrysides all over the world to move to the cities, big regions are emptier of humans than they were a century ago, and getting emptier still. Many villages now have populations of under a thousand, and continue to shrink as most of the young people leave. If these places were redefined (and repriced) as becoming usefully empty, there would be caretaker work for some, gamekeeper work for others, and the rest could go to the cities and get into the main swing of things... [Continue reading...]
3. REMEMBER THE ZOMIANS
Justin E.H. Smith, a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris Diderot, writes:
The Yale political scientist James C. Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed (2009) gave me the resources to come out as an anarchist. Subtitled "An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia," the book describes the traditional cultures of the Zomian highlands, a region that spreads across the national boundaries of Laos, Thailand, Burma, and other countries.
Impoverished migrants flocking to urban centers are desperate for the advantages the state can provide. But not everyone is. Some people, often found hidden away in hard-to-reach mountainous zones, practicing subsistence agriculture, are largely indifferent to what the state has to offer. They do not understand why they should be bothered with keeping identity papers or that other sort of paper that can be exchanged, in accordance with strange magical beliefs, for commercial goods. Pushing your way into the system, via politics, is not the only way for groups of human beings to thrive. One can also stay off the radar, slip through the cracks, and still realize something like the human good.
Petition the state for justice, when you have to, or fight against the state, when it shows itself unwilling to respond to the demands of justice. But skirt the state when you can, and don’t elevate it to the ultimate source of all social goods. Learn, in other words, as Scott invites you to do, from the Zomians. [Continue reading]
4. ENDLING
The lone survivor of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian Amazon, monitored and assisted from afar by the government for decades, looks healthy in a rare new video released this week, which shows him swinging an ax at a tree.
Anthropologists say the man, who is believed to be in his 50s, has lived on his own in the jungle in Rondônia State since other members of his tribe died in the 1990s, probably killed by ranchers.
He has become a symbol of the resilience of the more than 100 isolated communities estimated to survive in remote parts of Brazil, under pressure as farmers, miners and loggers push further into the Amazon jungle.
Since then, the government has chosen to help the mysterious man from afar, leaving tools and seeds for him to grow crops, and seeking to keep invaders from his habitat, which is a protected indigenous territory.
Fiona Watson, the research and advocacy director at Survival International, a group that advocates for the protection of isolated communities, said she hopes the new video will bolster efforts to shield indigenous territories.
“He looks healthy, which is very encouraging,” she said. “He has survived this long in a very violent frontier region of the Amazon. He is the ultimate symbol of resilience and resistance. But we are witnessing genocide in real time. Once he’s gone, his people will have disappeared forever, along with all their history and knowledge. To me, that’s a huge loss, and one that can and must be stopped.” [Continue reading...]
5. BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
From a letter by Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson:
Philadelphia May 9th. 1753
...When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them...
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ADDENDUM: THANK YOU, JONATHAN GOLD
What a loss for us all. I'll gather up some thoughts on the great man and his profound work next time. (If you'd like to share something, email me!) For now, read this piece by Gustavo Arellano: "We all live in Jonathan Gold's Southern California"