Catherine Austin Fitts: From Permaculture to Profits

A brief profile of Eric Toensmeier, author of Perennial Vegetables.


(1 of 4 parts)

Permaculture Magazine

I haven't posted anything by Bill Bonner recently. Here are some:
Government Spending Induces Counterfeit “Expansion”
The Zombie Economy
How to Enjoy an Economic Depression
Depression Causes a Shift in Economic Models

Jason Peters on college

Majoring in Idiocy

I would not be misunderstood. I am not objecting in principle to the fact that a college education comes with a price—that is, with a price tag. I close the classroom door when I lecture because, as the old joke goes, “they’re lining up in the halls out there, and I don’t do this for free.” But I am objecting to the fact that whereas education does come with a price and a price tag, it no longer comes with a cost.

It does not come with a cost because colleges and universities are essentially diploma retailers obsequiously bent on making the shopping experience of their customers enjoyable and painless. Discounts are everywhere. Items are clearly marked. The choices are many, the objects glittery. Can I get you some coffee? Hot chocolate? Be sure to visit our café on the third floor. Please take the moving stairs. One of our associates will be glad to assist you.

Consider the distribution requirements that have replaced core texts and core courses, and behold with what dispatch the university flatters commodity consciousness. See with what precision institutions imitate desperate retailers when these same institutions trot out their pre-professional programs and permit the students in them to avoid any meaningful contact with philosophy, theology, history, literature, political theory, or languages, whether ancient or modern. See how cheaply science holds itself in requiring no knowledge of its own history, in cultivating no suspicion of its own methods, and in sponsoring no inquiry into its fundamental assumptions. Behold the options in this sleek package: business, business administration, accounting, or economics—take your pick. No need to bother with land use, resource management, ethics, or thermodynamics. Business-as-usual will have no hecklers.

For education presently conceived and presently practiced has but one goal: the mass production of idiots.

I’m speaking—I hope—in fairly precise terms here.

An “idiot,” from the Greek idios (“private,” “own,” “peculiar”), is someone who is peculiar because he is closed in on himself or separated or cut off. In short, he is a specialist. If he knows anything, he knows one thing.

It may be difficult to salvage liberal education in the universities once the political economy begins to gasp its last breaths.

JMG, An Exergy Crisis

Pope to Open Sagrada Familia (via NOR)

La Sagrada Familia

CNA: Spanish exorcist addresses claims of Satanic influence in Vatican

(via the Western Confucian)

Blog of Jose Antonio Fortea Cucurull. The blog entry: El Colegio Cardenalicio y el satanismo.

Soft thinking

Novaseeker writes at The Spearhead:

What I saw in law school, both from feminist jurisprudence professors and my female co-students who sympathized with them was the following idea: the legal system, such as it is, is based on hard and fast rules and abstract categories — a "one size fits all" approach that applies the same rules to everyone, and expects everyone to abide by the same rules in every situation. This was deemed to be "steeped in the male way of thinking" and "inherently intellectually violent" because it "forced one perspective on everyone regardless of circumstances" and was therefore thoroughly the product of "the mindset of patriarchy". It was suggested that a female-oriented jurisprudence would view justice not as the impartial application of the same rules to everyone, but rather the selective, context-sensitive application of rules based on the circumstances of the case, the needs of the people involved, the sensitivities and broader impact of the ruling and so on — the idea was that hard and fast rules are bad, narrow and, in that way. "typically male", whereas a more feminine jurisprudence would be based on context, sensitivity, and the particularities of the case, such that two people who would be treated the same under the "patriarchal legal regime" would be potentially treated differently "based on their specific contexts" under the feminist legal system.

This follows from gender feminism — the branch of feminism which plows beyond the "equality" feminism of the early second wave right through into the idea that women are indeed different from men, and in fact are superior to men. Carol Gilligan’s book "In a Different Voice" was all the rage at the time. She was criticizing an earlier study which had suggested that men were more capable of higher moral reasoning than women because women tend to get "stuck" at the level of relationships and the impacts on context rather than the higher level of broader social rules and broader impacts. Gilligan attempted to debunk this study through a series of anecdotal interviews with women by which she intended to show that the female version of moral reasoning — which she seemingly admitted was heavily contextual and relationship-based — was nevertheless at least equal to the male way of looking at things (and heavily hinted to be superior as well, because it was "merciful, compassionate and empathetic" as compared with the male system of "cold, impersonal, impartial" justice). Gilligan was later roundly critiqued by Christina Hoff Sommers as having no sound basis in studies — Gilligan denied that, but never produced any underlying studies supporting her book. Nevertheless, Gilligan’s book has done incalculable damage to men and boys in the decades since it was first written. It was under the influence of that book, together with "Reviving Ophelia", that the school system was tilted dramatically towards girls and away from boys. And it’s still the case that numerous feminist lawyers, judges and legislators effectively buy Gilligan’s view that female-style context-based moral reasoning is superior to the supposedly "male" approach of applying the same rules to everyone.

The best riposte, or at least the most entertaining one, to Gilligan that I have read was in Steven Pinker’s "The Blank Slate" where he basically says that if Gilligan is correct about how women reason morally and legally, no woman should ever be appointed as a judge.

Can emotion distort our judgment and reasoning? It seems to me that there can be such a thing as false empathy, which is false because it is derived from an erroneous understanding of the human good. False empathy in turn can lead to wrong conclusions about what is right behavior and what is not. "Soft thinking" thus leads to an embrace of situation ethics or consequentialism?

Emotion may not only be the problem here; pride and a fault of the will can be the root causes. Those who pride themselves on having the right emotions are lead astray in their moral reasoning, despite seeming well-intentioned. Still, I'll concede that there may be those who are "sincere" in their wrong-headed empathy. How will they respond when confronted with the truth?

Besides false empathy there is also the fear of appearing to be "judgmental," offending someone else, and losing a friendship or relationship.

Related links:
Steven Pinker - Books - The Blank Slate
MIT World: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature


TED: Steven Pinker chalks it up to the blank slate

Fr. Z: A few musings about Card. Levada’s homily in Nebraska

I can see why some traditionalists might be offended by the homily -- by lecturing the seminarians and priests of the FSSP, it seems to question their fidelity and charity. An occasion for humility and respect of authority? What does the cardinal think of his office as the head of the PCED?

Edit. Some reactions by readers of NLM. Would reactions have been different if he had said things differently, more as a warm shepherd or spiritual father, rather than as a [Roman] bureaucrat "enforcing the line"? Cardinal Levada isn't known for his pastoral or personal qualities -- I have heard that as a bishop he was less than successful in those respects. People criticize Pius XII for being aloof, distant, and cold, but I think photographs do not convey his personality. Such criticisms might be warranted though for certain bishops, especially certain American bishops. American bishops seem to range from one extreme to another, cold and impersonal to soft and "nice." If Cardinal Levada had rewritten the homily and delivered it (not necessarily with an "all smiles" approach) as a geniunely concerned pastor, reaffirming the Fraternity's charism and mission and exhorting them to be good priests working for the Lord, how differently it would have been received!

Greg Plotkin, Why Wal-Mart Won't Ever Please Locavores

Why Wal-Mart Won't Ever Please Locavores

A suitable rebuttal of the views mentioned in this post.

Macial's family speaks

See the videos posted here: A peek into the abyss. (Also posted at Catholic Light.)

The Thinking Housewife: Therapeutic Tears

Dr. Fleming criticizes that sort of sentimentalism that passes for morality and obliterates all distinctions between social relations. Sentimentalism seems to be part and parcel of Uhmerican narcissism. It is much easier to feel good and to show emotion then it is to be virtuous and act accordingly. Character is reduced to thinking correctly and feeling correctly, and since the barriers to these are relatively low, many Uhmericans believe that they themselves are good, even if they fail greater tests. (I'll grant that they also need to follow the more fundamental precepts of justice, i.e. do not murder or steal, but what of other sins against justice, like verbal sins against one's neighbor?)

What do those gathered do the next day, in order to revivify their communities and to stall their decline? Probably not much. The murder of a young person is an evil and a cause of sadness, but is anything being done to prevent this from happening again? As Laura Wood and others have pointed out, the feminist indoctrination of young women, that they are invincible and can do anything, continues.

More by The Thinking Housewife:
The Safety of Women in an Uncivilized World
The Evil Called Illness

Qui non est mecum, contra me est; et, qui non congregat mecum, spargit.

Matthew 12:30

Yesterday at school I was struck by the absence of God during the school day -- that is, He is not mentioned at all. It is what you would expect at an American public school, but how can this be acceptable to any right-thinking person of good will? The other day a student said, "Oh my God," and I told him not to say that. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to explain to him way, that we should not take His name in vain; we should instead reverence it. (I wouldn't want to give him the impression that being a secularist or anti-theist is the norm.)

At any rate, man can come to know that he has a duty to pay due homage to God as Creator of the universe, to perform the acts proper to the virtue of religio. This is a precept of the Natural Law, even if it cannot be fulfilled perfectly without from grace and charity. Our public schools, in ignoring God and refusing to discuss Him (as opposed to teaching about "religions"), thereby belittle His importance and foster the lack of proper respect. God has no place in the daily life of our public schools, and students are habituated accordingly -- much potential spiritual growth for beginners is hampered with God is effectively excluded for half of the day (7 or 8 hours out of the 16 during which we are awake). If we are already living as if God is not important to us, then how can we take His commandments seriously when we are confronted with severe temptation?

False religions, those which teach polytheism or atheism or monism, may be tolerated, but they should never have been granted equal status with Christianity. The reaction against Christianity entails a rejection of God (or right monotheism). One cannot preserve the latter in a formerly Christian society.

Cenacle of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus

I found this post at the Holy Vocations blog: Cenacle of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus.

The blog of Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, O.S.B.: Vultus Christi. His article on chant from last Summer's issue of Sacred Music is now available at the online archive. (pdf)

Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

This discalced Carmelite community were mentioned during the consecration ceremony, as it is in the diocese of Lincoln. The community does not yet have a website? I think a friend's sister was with this community for a while, but maybe there is another traditional discalced Carmelite community of women in that part of the U.S.

Related links:
Carmelite Sisters (OCD)
Carmel of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
Phatmass Phorum
Article about a TAC alumna who entered the community.
LatinMass.org (has an address for the community)

Some O.Carm stuff:
The Lake Elmo Carmelites have an art studio producing icons. The color scheme doesn't adhere to Eastern (Byzantine?) convention.

Texas: Carmelites Celebrate 800 Years of following the Rule of Carmel)


Up-Date on new Carmelite group (not sure if they intend to be O.Carm or OCD)

Whole Foods promoting vegetarian diet?

Whole Foods “Health Starts Here” Campaign Is A Vegetarian Agenda
By Raine Saunders

I first read of this shift on the Daily Apple, as Mr. Sisson linked to an article by Mr. Jimmy Moore. Some posts by Mark Sisson:

My Escape from Vegan Island
Top 10 Best & Worst Protein Sources (vegetarians take note)

I haven't shopped at Whole Foods because I don't think I can afford to, but I should buy better quality meat.

John Allen interviews Msgr. Marini

For National Catholic Reporter, of course (via Fr. Z). Fr. Z comments on a companion piece by Mr. Allen.

Richard Spencer is debating Helen Rittelmeyer on the question, “Is Christianity for Wimps?” (via VFR). Mr. Spencer is taking the affirmative position -- but what sort of Christianity is he criticizing? Contemporary liberal Protestantism? (Which might include the American Catholic clone.) Or traditional Christianity?

The 2nd Amendment And The States - With Dr. Kevin Gutzman

Mike: So Judge Napolitano says that the Second Amendment applies to all the cities and all the states and all the municipalities in the United States. And you, when we lost your cell phone connection, you were explaining that you had reviewed his book “We the Sheeple” or something to that effect for The American Conservative magazine, and then we lost you.

Dr. Kevin Gutzman: Right. Well, his book was called “A Nation of Sheep.” And essentially it was a book I could endorse about 95 percent. The one shortcoming was that he has this idea that all of your rights are based on natural law or that they are somehow suddenly the result of philosophical speculation. And so as we heard in the sound bite you played, if we have a right to self-defense, then that must be a right to keep and bear arms, which means you have a right to own a weapon that you might use in your own defense, and therefore no government in the United States can contravene this right.

Well, if he were right about the origin of your rights, that might be a reasonable way to get to that conclusion. The problem is that your right to keep and bear arms, like the other rights in the federal Constitution, is actually a historic right, not a philosophical one. It’s based on people’s experience as English subjects before American independence, where they had a right to keep and bear arms. And that right to keep and bear arms had certain contours. Now, when the Bill of Rights, when the federal Bill of Rights was adopted, it was intended entirely to reserve control over these questions to the state governments. That is the reason why we had a federal Bill of Rights was further to clarify the limits on federal authority.

Franklin C. Spinney, Eisenhower's Nightmare Arrives

As I indicated in CounterPunch on 3 February 2010, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) just released by the Obama Pentagon is a bad joke. That bad joke is about to be given the good housekeeping seal of approval by a special panel appointed jointly by the Secretary of Defense and the defense barons of the Armed Services committees in Congress. When this happens, rest assured, any desire to get control of the out-of-control defense budget will plunge far below its already low level. Chalk up another victory in the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex’s (MICC’s) war on the Constitution, the American taxpayer, and programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are hallmarks of civilized society.

"Conservatives" who think the United States should be "strong" on defense need to re-evaluate their premises and learn about the sort of conflicts we are engaged in now and will be in the future. Even if they believe we need a military that can occupy territory and capture natural resources, expensive toys will not help it accomplish those goals.

Washington, You Have Been Warned

Dave Cohen, Decline of the Empire

Two Brits are duking it out over the fate of the United States. Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, a Scot who believes that America's Imperial Magnificence is fading fast, fired the opening salvo in A Greek Crisis Is Coming To America...Financial Times editor Martin Wolf weighed in to counter what he calls Ferguson's "hysteria" in How to walk the fiscal tightrope that lies before us.

(original)

The last days of economic growth

Daniel Pargman, Life After Oil

Björn Forsberg writes about the fundamental and unavoidable conflict between the environment and the (growth-based) economy in "The last days of economic growth: Green clash over worldviews" (2007). His basic tenet is simple - it is impossible to win legitimacy for any measures that threaten economic growth, are financially burdensome, require sacrifices or are perceived as troublesome for the individual.

(original)

The Infinite Energy Machine and the Myth of Green Energy

Dan Allen, Energy Bulletin

What if we suddenly had access to unlimited clean energy? Would that be a good thing, or would we simply use it to complete the biocidal program of industrial civilization? This little thought experiment suggests that our problem as a civilization is not lack of energy – it is lack of imagination, humility, and empathy. The core is rotten. We must find a better way.

Damian Thompson: Cardinal Levada, Prefect of CDF, to preach at Tridentine Mass in new traditionalist chapel

I'm watching the consecration on EWTN now. There will probably be pictures available later.

I had forgotten that Thomas Gordon Smith designed the seminary in addition to the Benedictine monastery at Clear Creek.

Edit. Fr. Z has some screencaps up.

The foundation of the moral life?

Rod Dreher: Does moral action require rational thought?

Mr. Dreher draws upon contemporary scientific findings:

Neuroscientists have found that our brains appear to be hard-wired for empathy. Which suggests that feeling, not cognition, is the basis for moral action. That's not to downplay the role cognition plays in moral behavior, but only to say the moral instinct appears to be pre-cognitive.

It looks like Mencius was right? Or certain thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment? Empathy may be a natural response to the suffering of others, but is it enough to guarantee right action? And is empathy a purely a response to sense perception? Or does it arise from [rational] judgment as well?

More on Ron Unz and Hispanic crime rates

Ron Unz responds to Steve Burton and Matthew Roberts. Steve Burton writes a rejoinder.