Fall Afternoon

Talked about money with a musician on Telegraph Avenue. They were kind of excited about going to Las Vegas to make some big bucks.

I think the things of real value are knowledge and wisdom. Access to land for gardening is very important, both practically and for the psyche. If I wanted to dance enough to overcome the experience of going through a big city filled with auto exhaust, then I might have danced, but the auto exhaust destroyed the experience for me. Exit now, cut your expenses. Cars kill everything. Wisdom about ecology puts everything in our profit-motivated world in a different perspective. Growing up in this world means we take certain things for granted, the good and the bad. But study of different cultures and times in history gives us different models of daily living, urban infrastructure, quality of life, freedom, exploitation, and many other ways of valuing our existence. Some people seem obsessed with money and others with time, or job, or power, or family, entertainment, arts, sports, automobiles, etc. What are the forces of society that shape the value systems of one's core being, daily life and long term plans? How much control does one have over the outside circumstances that effect one's life? Knowledge and wisdom give one the tools and options to change the paradigm of one's life given the circumstances. The level up from the individual might be the peers, family or general community, where organization plays a big role in the ability of the group to respond to situations based on knowledge, wisdom and resources. The paradigm of consumerism might be unsustainable if the end result doesn't take into account the balance with the enclosing, sustaining ecology of life forms in the local landscape. The depletion of oil will radically change the ability of local economic systems to survive the breakdown of import/export economies. Consumerism might also be a form of time/behavior occupation by the corporate forces, to prevent people from being involved in other activities, shutting out time for critical thinking. Total mind control for the paradigm of living results in the sheep herding model, rather than the ecosystem model, a hierarchical system. The danger here is the difference of the model from natural systems, much like a mono-culture crop controlled entirely by machines, pesticides, fertilizers; mono-cultures are ripe targets for invading species, blights. The growth of one species is dependent on abundance of resources.