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[BlueHeron]

http://uncivilsociety.org/2008/04/i-am-curious-green.html

Ew, weird...and scary...

[sunflowersFTW!]

One of my roommates worked for a local paper and thus got a huge discount on an internet/landline/cable package. I was flipping through the stations and discovered the Green Channel or whatever it's called. They had a show about the rebuilding of Greensburg, Kansas so I was watching it (local sort of interest there). The advertisements reflect this very same thing.

The cheapness of not only the advertisements for products but also a grip of the shows themselves turned my stomach.

The show itself features the town of Greensburg being rebuilt as a "green" town. However noble the idea (as if it would really make a difference), the way they sold it to the town full of evangelical Good-ol-Boys was by telling them that as an agricultural town they therefore knew the environment better than anyone. Of course it worked, and of course my face paled. This is the land of Monocropping, after all.

The last episode I watched ended with a hint of corporate interest in the town for its decision to "go green." The mayor made clear he wanted Main Street to look different than it had pre-tornado; you bet it will. So long, mom n pop shops.

Can't say I was surprised, sadly.

Meanwhile, the Wakarusa Wetlands are slated for destruction.

[BlueHeron]

Yeah... my hometown of 1,984 people recently had some "city planners" from the "Community Growth Institute" (the inclusion of "Growth" with "Institute" creating a gross name if I ever heard one) come and redesign Main Street.  Mainly what they did was to make it easier for summer "tourist" traffic.  Streamline it to make it more economical, so to speak.   

[orion]

No ill will intended here... Just an observation...

...it seems a bit insincere and hypocritical for some of the Rewilding Bloggers to profit from Google-Ads (or similar) on their webpages... thus promoting the very mindless Consumerism / Commercialism (and Civilization) that is destroying the natural world and seems contrary to the idea of Rewilding.

Perhaps it can be justified with something like "I am just expediting the imminent "fall of civilization" with my Google Ads, so that I can begin actually putting my acquired foraging/survival skills to real use (and I really do need the money)."   

Talking the Walk... or Walking the Walk?
What is your take on this?

[BlueHeron]

Orion, good point, and a sticky issue indeed.

My original post here had more to do with "buying green" and the way in which "green" is commercialized/promoted, moreso than the concurrence of ads with rewilding media.  But check out these conversations for more voices and perspectives on the concerns that you raised, and feel free to chip in your own:

http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=654.0
http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=608.0

[Willem]

Thanks BlueHeron. I forgot about those threads. Good 'uns. And thanks for asking the question on your mind, Orion. This issue never quite goes away, so it pays not to ignore it.

[Peter Bauer]

...it seems a bit insincere and hypocritical for some of the Rewilding Bloggers to profit from Google-Ads (or similar) on their webpages... thus promoting the very mindless Consumerism / Commercialism (and Civilization) that is destroying the natural world and seems contrary to the idea of Rewilding.

Here are my responses to this from my chapter Anarchists Vs. Rewilding:

A handshake, even with a CEO, can benefit the community of life. As long as if by “shaking hands” you mean “working together to dismantle and rewild.” I can feel comfortable shaking hands and making a deal with a CEO if the deal involves dismantling civilization and re-encouraging biodiversity (though I have a hard time seeing any way for that to happen). For example Looking Glass Bookstore refers to a business that sells books. Nothing really anti-civilization in that, unless you leverage the sales of anti-civilization literature. Of course, Looking Glass Bookstore operates as a family business, not some mega-corporation. But I could use Barnes and Noble to the same effect. So you can deal with companies in civilization as long as you leverage them to the advantage of the natural world (against civilization itself). So when I say shaking hands I mean rekindling supportive, mutually exclusive relationships for humans and other-than-humans alike. That builds community.

and

Tom Brown Jr. does drive a hummer. So what? To reach and teach the number of people he does, he makes a thousand trips to the Pine Barrens every year. The Tracker School destroyed several suburbans because the sand kicked up into the engine. The Hummer company heard of this and said to Tom Brown, “We will give you a free hummer if you put your name on the side of it.” So Tom Brown used the hummer company to leverage expenses for the Tracker School. His hummer reads “The Tracker” on the side of it and the Tracker School saves money. This works like a good example of working with corporations to leverage anti-civilization mythology and actions.

People also get on Tom Brown for training the military. I can’t help but think about how animist philosophy permeates everything Tom does, and having him teach empathy to the military probably works in our favor. Though I would never do it, I don’t knock it. I wouldn’t think any less of Derrick Jensen if he did his stand-up tragedy routine at a USO show in Baghdad. We need it all, everywhere.

This reminds me of a time that Nike sponsored Derrick Jensens visit to Portland. At his talk there were nike swooshes on the program. Derrick held it up and said that the idea was that people would see Derrick and think about buying nikes. But Derrick suggested that instead of that, when we see the nike swoosh we should think about taking down civilization. Haha. This is why I can't find sponsors for my website; it's inherently against civilization and therefore any business venture, green or otherwise. So it helps to have google ads because they don't care and neither do I.

In order for me to keep writing and running things like rewild.info, I need to make money. Since I would rather make money through writing and not some wage-slave job it helps to sell ads on my website. Any money I make from google ads furthers my ability to spread anti-civilization and rewilding philosophy. I'm leveraging the system against itself. I highly doubt that the ads on my site wrap people back into civilization more than my site turns people onto rewilding. If that's the case, those people were too stupid anyway. 

[Matt]

Yeah thanks Heron, those are really beautiful threads, hypocrisy is a big issue, no doubt. People sometimes say, so you believe in all these things, but you're still here, doing ______, aren't you a hypocrite? I just say, yeah, so what?

Then again, it is also an internal struggle, how much hypocrisy is alright, how much can I live with? That's a question I always have to answer, or sometimes, unfortunately, ignore.

[BlueHeron]

Yeah Matt.  I too have a huge problem with allegations of hypocrisy.  In a crisis, we do what we need to do to survive.  Well, we and all the world are in crisis and right now, if I want to survive, I have to keep my job in civilization.  I'm doing what I personally can to learn how to live outside of civilization, but until I cross a certain threshold of competence and community, I will readily admit that I depend upon civilization to help me survive.  Often, I get angry or tearful to admit that civilization has such an insidious grip on me.  But I don't hate myself for acting "hypocritical".  I no longer make value judgments on others who act hypocritically, either, although that behavior can be infuriating.

I used to do that, make value judgments.  Not any more.  I do make many, many judgments, but they aren't about right and wrong... rather, I ask myself lots of questions about other people's behavior, and make more practical kinds of judgments that aren't based on values/ideals.  I ask things like, A) do I feel safe to be myself around him/her when he/she behaves that way?, B) what kind of outlook or experiences in life might have motivated that behavior?, and C) what would it take for this behavior to change?

(It is dangerous to ask these questions in the workplace, although I do it all the time (maybe I should work on letting it go when I'm at work...).  Sometimes when I have a particularly "civilized" customer who does not relate to me on a human level, I will start to feel out my answers to those questions, and I quickly reach the conclusion that I want that person and behavior *gone*, out of my sight, because it is painful or scary to be aware of what their behavior indicates about the state of their mind.  It makes it very hard to be patient with them in a customer service setting.)

[sunflowersFTW!]

Isn't it hypocritical for one to claim being free of hypocrisy to begin with?