Editorial: The Souls of White Folk?

This title may have offended you. That was my intent. We are used to thinking about soul of Black people or Native Americans, or Meso-Americans or Asian peoples. It sounds somewhat blasphemous to talk about the souls of White Folk.

We are the villain- repression and conquest personified. To be a white person today is to lay claim to the spoils and crimes of generations of white people who came before. So I think this question is very relevant? What happened to the souls of white folk? Where did those souls go?

The African born slave could dream of returning to Africa. And in that dream there was a connection to an identity- a soul that gave him or her purpose and meaning and validation. An American born African-American can still look to the heritage of that past in Africa. And if that identity is too distant, the modern African-American can find identity in the struggle to be free. Where can white folk turn for an affirming identity that gives them strength and morality?

There is not a square inch of North America that is not occupied land. Every patch of earth is testimony to the crimes of white folk. Every shopping mall or high rise is a tombstone to murdered Native Americans and raped eco-systems. There is nowhere in North America that does not call out to the white person and call them a monster and murderer and betrayer and rapist. What about Europe? There is not a plot of land that is not stained with the blood of women and children. There is no arable land that has not been fought over by kings and conquerors, despots and tyrants and raiders and bandits and butchers. Nowhere is there not an unmarked grave from some injustice. On both continents, the landscape itself indicts the white person for crimes against life itself.

So where can the white person reclaim the soul lost so long ago? Are we doomed to be villains and monsters forever? People better hope not, because if the white folk don't find their soul and reclaim a collective identity that is positive- the world won't survive for much longer.

Editorial: The Avatar Contraversy

Avatar has pissed off conservatives who feel that it is attacking their way of life, and the movie also pissed off liberals who see the specter of the 'white messiah' in the movie's protagonist Jake Sully. In this case the conservatives have the movie figured out much better than the liberals. Avatar is an attack on the 'traditional' destructive way of life that is typically associated with first world European descended white folk- normally white males. It is not, however a story about the 'white messiah' as many commentators have claimed. It is a story about redemption.

The story of Avatar could easily be told from the point of view of only the Na'vi. It would be simple to make Jake Sully's character a young untried warrior instead of a white guy in a Na'vi avatar. The story would function just fine and most of the relevant plot points would work with very little tooling.

But it would not serve its purpose then. What do I mean? The function of stories like 'Dances with Wolves' and 'Avatar' and even 'Pocahontas' are not to tell non-white people that they need white people to rescue them- at least not when the stories are told well and done right.

Done right these stories are stories told to young white people who want a place in a culture that is not a destructive all consuming demon. For young people- and old people- who do not wish to take there place in the white folk's culture of death, there needs to be an option besides that culture. They need to know that even a white person can peel off the layers of civilization and walk quietly amongst the trees and live in balance.

Going back to the movie 'Avatar'. If white people don't find a better story to be in than the one perpetuated by the villains of this story, then more white people will come, and they will carpet bomb Pandora from space before moving in to extract the minerals. Without another story, these hopeless souls who would rather not destroy the world will step into line and do just that. 'Avatar' is not attempting to accurately represent the world, but to tell those people who are still part of the culture of maximum harm, that there is another way and another story to be in.

The View from the End of the World

"Saudi Arabia, the world's largest producer of oil, has pumped a total of 46 billion barrels of oil in the past seventeen years, without any decrease in its stated reserve figure of about 260 billion barrels. The world is likely to get no warning before Saudi output peaks — an event that credible authorities suggest could happen soon."

"Diverse events like the Iraq war, the 9/11 attacks, the 2005 urban riots in France, and hurricane Katrina may be the foreshocks of a coming global breakdown."

"About 40% of the world's population now lacks sufficient water for basic sanitation and hygiene, and nearly one out of every five people does not have enough to drink."

"Nearly half of the world's major fish stocks are now fished to their maximum limit; since 1950, industrialized fishing has reduced the total mass of large predatory fish in the world's oceans by 90 percent."

"Over the past twenty years, warming of the Arctic ocean has been eight times faster than it was over the past hundred years."

"Scientists have recently found that the Greenland ice sheet's rate of ice loss has more than doubled in the past ten years, from 90 to 220 cubic kilometers annually. In 2006 the ice sheet will dump into the ocean about 225 times the amount of fresh water that Los Angeles consumes."

"In 1870 the average income in the world's richest country was about nine times greater than that in the world's poorest country. By 1990 it was forty-five times greater."

"The number of overweight people in the world — about 1.2 billion, mostly in rich countries — now roughly equals the number of underfed and undernourished, almost all in poor countries."

All of these quotes come from the fact page for "The Upside of Down."

How would you like the world to end?

You have a lot of choices today. Civilization could end because of peak oil and the resulting collapse of agriculture and transportation. Civilization could end because of resource wars resulting from the loss of arable land and the increasing acidity of oceans brought about by climate change. Civilization could end because of local wars brought on by the economic collapses of nations like the United States. Civilization could end because of civil strife brought on by the discrepancy between the lifestyles of the rich and the poor, which are at their highest ever in history.

Civilization could collapse because of any number of other problems. Climate scientists worry that climate change could potentially shut off the Gulf Stream, dropping Western Europe back into an ice age (darkly ironic). Colony Collapse Disorder is the current phrase used to describe the catastrophic die offs occurring in the honey bee industry. 75% of all plants rely on pollination and 30% of the world's crops rely on pollination. We are currently in the largest mass extinction since the Dinosaurs disappeared. And worse than this, we never know when the loss of a key species will lead to a cascade of extinctions.

The number of challenges currently facing civilization is so large as to be almost unbelievable when they are recounted. Civilizations have faced and survived challenges before, but lesser challenges have brought down longer lasting civilizations than ours. Rome looked invincible, so did The British Empire Babylon and Egypt, and Tokugawa Japan. But civilizations fall, and things change.

It would be foolish to think that our precariously balanced creation, with its myriad problems and self-inflicted challenges, would be immune to this basic fact.

Book Review: "The Upside of Down" by Thomas Homer- Dixon

So, I have decided to add to this blog. In addition to the the progress of the novel that I will continue to do on Sundays, I will be adding a little commentary on how I designed the story, the setting, the characters, and everything that went into this novel.

Today I'm going to start by reviewing one of the books that was my one of primary research sources for designing how the post-collapse world would look.


The author is arguing that five systemic pressures are threatening the stability of civilization as we know it. According to his official website:

"Homer-Dixon contends that five "tectonic stresses" are accumulating deep underneath the surface of today's global order:

• energy stress, especially from increasing scarcity of conventional oil;
• economic stress from greater global economic instability and widening income gaps between rich and poor;
• demographic stress from differentials in population growth rates between rich and poor societies and from expansion of megacities in poor societies;
• environmental stress from worsening damage to land, water forests, and fisheries; and,
• climate stress from changes in the composition of Earth's atmosphere." [See link here]

 I found the book's first chapter to be very dense and more than a little dry. The only reason I persisted through the first chapter is book had been highly recommended to me by a friend. After the first chapter however, the author seems to find his flow and the writing mellows and loosens up. The books is still very scholarly and the author has double digit citations at the end of each chapter. Homer-Dixon seems aware that what he is arguing is very contentious, and he doesn't want anybody thinking he's on the fringe.

What makes "The Upside of Down" even more frightening in its predictions is that fact that Homer-Dixon doesn't over claim and isn't given to exaggeration. He consistently draws a less the worst case scenario conclusion and is cautious about reading too much into a single study or piece of evidence. Despite this restraint, Homer-Dixon's predictions are terrifying. The extensiveness of Homer-Dixon's research and the obvious complications that could be the result of his separate predictions interacting is alarming.

When I first read this book, I was studying James A. Michener's writing style and I wondered about the idea of a historical epic set in the future. Looking at books like "The Upside of Down" started me thinking about the concept of this novel and gave me early ammunition for building the setting of the story.

I highly recommend this book even with the difficult first chapter. The book is convincing, compelling and thorough beyond measure. It is also alarming, but unlike many books on this subject, "The Upside of Down" does offer solutions. All things considered, this was a well written, well researched book. Homer-Dixon's style is engaging (excluding the first chapter), and his conclusions are convincing. These factors combine for an excellent book on this subject.