Gutter Oil and Some...

Two things to say about China's Gutter Oil:

1.  This is an example of how extreme recycling which doesn't work.
2.  Economic reform without moral, ethic or working regulation mimics the worst form of capitalism.

 

A Good Policy... to Be

What is a good policy to be in general?

That which promotes mutual respect, trust and cooperation among people.

If not, that which makes friends faster than enemies... 

And hopefully, it adds up in the end.

We Live in an Era of Zombie Politics - Bill Moyers Interviews Henry Giroux

In his book, Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, author and scholar Henry Giroux connects the dots to prove his theory that our current system is informed by a “machinery of social and civil death” that chills “any vestige of a robust democracy.”
Giroux explains that such a machine produces “people who are basically so caught up with surviving that they become like the walking dead—they lose their sense of agency, they lose their homes, they lose their jobs.”
What’s more, Giroux points out, the system that creates this vacuum has little to do with expanding the meaning and the substance of democracy itself. Under “casino capitalism,” the goal is to get a quick return, taking advantage of a kind of logic in which the only thing that drives us is to put as much money as we can into a slot machine and hope we walk out with our wallets overflowing.

The following is a complete transcript of Moyers' interview with Giroux:
 


BILL MOYERS: A very wise teacher once told us, “If you want to change the world, change the metaphor.” Then he gave us some of his favorite examples. You think of language differently, he said, if you think of “words pregnant with celestial fire.” Or “words that weep and tears that speak.” Of course, the heart doesn’t physically separate into pieces when we lose someone we love, but “a broken heart” conveys the depth of loss. And if I say you are the “apple of my eye,” you know how special you are in my sight. In other words, metaphors cleanse the lens of perception and give us a fresh take on reality.  Recently I read a book and saw a film that opened my eyes to see differently the crisis of our times, and the metaphor used by both was, believe it or not, zombies. You heard me right, zombies. More on the film later, but this is the book: Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism. Talk about “connecting the dots.” Read this, and the headlines of the day will, I think, arrange themselves differently in your head, threading together ideas and experiences to reveal a pattern. The skillful weaver is Henry Giroux, a scholar, teacher and social critic with seemingly tireless energy and a broad range of interests. Here are just a few of his books:  America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth, Twilight of the Social, Youth in a Suspect Society, Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education.
Henry Giroux is the son of working-class parents in Rhode Island who now holds the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. Henry Giroux, welcome.  There's a great urgency in your recent books and in the essays you've been posting online, a fierce urgency, almost as if you are writing with the doomsday clock ticking. What accounts for that?

HENRY GIROUX: Well, for me democracy is too important to allow it to be undermined in a way in which every vital institution that matters from the political process to the schools to the inequalities that, to the money being put into politics, I mean, all those things that make a democracy viable are in crisis.  And the problem is the crisis, while we recognize in many ways is associated increasingly with the economic system, what we haven't gotten yet is that it should be accompanied by a crisis of ideas, that the stories that are being told about democracy are really about the swindle of fulfillment.
The swindle of fulfillment in that what the reigning elite in all of their diversity now tell the American people if not the rest of the world is that democracy is an excess. It doesn't really matter anymore, that we don't need social provisions, we don't need the welfare state, that the survival of the fittest is all that matters, that in fact society should mimic those values in ways that suggest a new narrative.
You have a consolidation of power that is so overwhelming, not just in its ability to control resources and drive the economy and redistribute wealth upward, but basically to provide the most fraudulent definition of what a democracy should be.
The notion that profit making is the essence of democracy, the notion that economics is divorced from ethics, the notion that the only obligation of citizenship is consumerism, the notion that the welfare state is a pathology, that any form of dependency basically is disreputable and needs to be attacked, I mean, this is a vicious set of assumptions.

BILL MOYERS: Are we close to equating democracy with capitalism?

HENRY GIROUX: Oh, I mean, I think that's the biggest lie of all actually. The biggest lie of all is that capitalism is democracy. We have no way of understanding democracy outside of the market, just as we have no understanding of how to understand freedom outside of market values.

BILL MOYERS: Explain that. What do you mean "outside of market values"?

HENRY GIROUX: I mean you know, when Margaret Thatcher married Ronald Reagan—

BILL MOYERS: Metaphorically?

HENRY GIROUX: Metaphorically. Two things happened. One, there was this assumption that the government was evil except when it regulated its power to benefit the rich. So it wasn't a matter of smashing the government as Reagan seemed to suggest, it was a matter of rearranging it and reconfiguring it so it served the wealthy, the elites and the corporate, of course, you know, those who run mega corporations. But Thatcher said something else that's particularly interesting in this discussion. She said there's no such thing as society. There are only individuals and families. And so what we begin to see is the emergence of a kind of ethic, a survival of the fittest ethic that legitimates the most incredible forms of cruelty, that seems to suggest that freedom in this discourse of getting rid of society, getting rid of the social— that discourse is really only about self-interest, that possessive individualism is now the only virtue that matters. So freedom, which is essential to any notion of democracy, now becomes nothing more than a matter of pursuing your own self interests. No society can survive under those conditions.

BILL MOYERS: So what is society? When you use it as an antithesis to what Margaret Thatcher said, what do you have in mind? What's the metaphor for—

HENRY GIROUX: I have in mind a society in which the wealth is shared, in which there is a mesh of organizations that are grounded in the social contract, that takes seriously the mutual obligations that people have to each other. But more than anything else— I'm sorry, but I want to echo something that FDR once said.
When he said that, you know, you not only have to have personal freedoms and political freedoms, the right to vote the right to speak, you have to have social freedom. You have to have the freedom from want, the freedom from poverty, the freedom from— that comes with a lack of health care.
Getting ahead cannot be the only motive that motivates people. You have to imagine what a good life is. But agency, the ability to do that, to have the capacity to basically be able to make decisions and learn how to govern and not just be governed—

BILL MOYERS: As a citizen.

HENRY GIROUX: As a citizen.

BILL MOYERS: A citizen is a moral agent of—

HENRY GIROUX: A citizen is a political and moral agent who in fact has a shared sense of hope and responsibility to others and not just to him or herself. Under this system, democracy is basically like the lotto. You know, go in, you put a coin in, and if you're lucky, you win something. If you don't, then you become something else.

BILL MOYERS: So then why when I talk about the urgency in your writing, your forthcoming book opens with this sentence, "America's descending into madness." Now, don't you think many people will read that as hyperbole?

HENRY GIROUX: Sometimes in the exaggerations there are great truths. And it seems to me that what’s unfortunate here is that's not an exaggeration.

BILL MOYERS: Well, madness can mean several things. It can mean insanity. It can mean lunacy. But it can also mean folly, foolishness, you know, look at that craziness over there. Which do you mean?

HENRY GIROUX: I mean, it's certainly not just about foolishness. It's about a kind of lunacy in which people lose themselves in a sense of power and greed and exceptionalism and nationalism in ways that so undercut the meaning of democracy and the meaning of justice that you have to sit back and ask yourself how could the following, for instance, take place?
How could people who allegedly believe in democracy and the American Congress cut $40 billion from a food stamp program, half of which those food stamps go to children? And you ask yourself how could that happen? I mean, how can you say no to a Medicaid program which is far from radical but at the same time offers poor people health benefits that could save their lives?
How do you shut down public schools and say that charter schools and private schools are better because education is really not a right, it's an entitlement? How do you get a discourse governing the country that seems to suggest that anything public, public health, public transportation, public values, you know, public engagement is a pathology?

BILL MOYERS: Let me answer that from the other side. They would say to you that we cut Medicaid or food stamps because they create dependency. We closed public schools because they aren't working, they aren't teaching. People are coming out not ready for life.

HENRY GIROUX: No, no, that's the answer that they give. I mean, and it's a mark of their insanity. I mean, that's precisely an answer that in my mind embodies a kind of psychosis that is so divorced— is in such denial about power and how it works and is in such denial about their attempt at what I call individualize the social, in other words—

BILL MOYERS: Individualize?

HENRY GIROUX: Individualize the social, which means that all problems, if they exist, rest on the shoulders of individuals.

BILL MOYERS: You are responsible.

HENRY GIROUX: You are responsible.

BILL MOYERS: If you're poor, you're responsible if you're ignorant, you're responsible if—

HENRY GIROUX: Exactly.

BILL MOYERS: —you're sick?

HENRY GIROUX: That's right, that the government— the larger social order, the society has no responsibility whatsoever so that— you often hear this, I mean, if there—I mean, if you have an economic crisis caused by the hedge fund crooks, you know and millions of people are put out of work and they're all lining up for unemployment, what do we hear in the national media? We hear that maybe they don't know how to fill out unemployment forms, maybe it's about character. You know, maybe they're just simply lazy.

BILL MOYERS: This line struck me: "The ideology of hardness and cruelty runs through American culture like an electric current..."

HENRY GIROUX: Yeah, it sure does. I mean, to see poor people, their benefits being cut, to see pensions of Americans who have worked like my father, all their lives, and taken away, to see the rich just accumulating more and more wealth.
I mean, it seems to me that there has to be a point where you have to say, "No, this has to stop." We can't allow ourselves to be driven by those lies anymore. We can't allow those who are rich, who are privileged, who are entitled, who accumulate wealth to simply engage in a flight from social and moral and political responsibility by blaming the people who are victimized by those policies as the source of those problems.

BILL MOYERS: There's a new reality you write emerging in America in no small part because of the media, one that enshrines a politics of disposability in which growing numbers of people are considered dispensable and a drain on the body politic and the economy, not to mention you say an affront on the sensibilities of the rich and the powerful.

HENRY GIROUX: If somebody had to say to me, "What exactly is new that we haven't seen before?" And I think that what we haven't seen before is an attack on the social contract, Bill, that is so overwhelming, so dangerous in the way in which its being deconstructed and being disassembled that you now have as a classic example, you have a whole generation of young people who are now seen as disposable.
They're in debt, they're unemployed. My friend, Zygmunt Bauman, calls them the zero generation: zero jobs, zero hope, zero possibilities, zero employment. And it seems to me when a country turns its back on its young people because they figure in investments not long term investments, they can't be treated as simply commodities that are going to in some way provide an instant payback and extend the bottom line, they represent something more noble than that. They represent an indication of how the future is not going to mimic the present and what obligations people might have, social, political, moral and otherwise to allow that to happen, and we've defaulted on that possibility.

BILL MOYERS: You actually call it— there's the title of the book, “America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth.”

HENRY GIROUX: Oh, this is a war. It's a war that endlessly commercializes kids, both as commodities and as commodifiable.

BILL MOYERS: Example?

HENRY GIROUX: Example being that the young people can't turn anywhere without in some way being told that the only obligation of citizenship is to shop, is to be a consumer. You can't walk on a college campus today and walk into the student union and not see everybody represented there from the local banks to Disneyland to local shops, all selling things.
I mean, it's like the school has become a mall. It imitates the mall. And if you walk into schools as one example, I mean, you look at the buses, there are advertisements on the buses. You walk into the bathroom, there are advertisements above the stalls. I mean, and the curriculum is written by General Electric.

BILL MOYERS: We're all branded—

HENRY GIROUX: They're branded, they're branded.

BILL MOYERS: —everything is branded?

HENRY GIROUX: Where are the public spaces for young people other learn a discourse that's not commodified, to be able to think about non-commodifiable values like trust, justice, honesty, integrity, caring for others, compassion. Those things, they're just simply absent, they're not part of those public spheres because those spheres have been commodified.
What does it mean to go to school all day and just be taking tests and learning how to teach for the test? Their minds are numb. I mean—the expression I get from them, they call school dead time, these kids. Say it's dead time. I call it their dis-imagination zones.

BILL MOYERS: Dis-imagination?

HENRY GIROUX: Yeah, yeah, they rob— it's a form of learning that robs the mind of any possibility of being imaginative. The arts are cut out, right, so the questions are not being raised about what it means to be creative.
All of those things that speak to educating the imagination, to stretching it, the giving kids the knowledge, a sense of the traditions, the archives to take risks, to learn about the world, they're disappearing.

BILL MOYERS: I heard you respond to someone who asked you at a public session the other evening: "What would you do about what you've just described?" And your first response was start debating societies in high schools all across the country.

HENRY GIROUX: That's right. One of the things that I learned quickly as a result of the Internet is I started getting a ton of letters from students who basically were involved in these debate societies. And they're saying like things, "We use your work. We love this work.”
And I actually got involved with one that was working with— out of Brown University's working with a high school in the inner cities, and I got involved with some of the students. But then I began to learn as a result of that involvement that these were the most radical kids in the country.
I mean, these were kids who embodied what a critical public sphere meant. They were going all over the country, different high schools, working class kids no less, debating major issues and getting so excited about in many ways winning these debates but doing it on the side of— something they could believe in.
And I thought to myself, "Wow, here's a space." Here's a space where you're going to have a whole generation of kids who could be actually engaging in debate and dialogue. Every working class urban school in this country should put its resources as much as possible into a debate team.

BILL MOYERS: My favorite of your many books is this one, “Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism.” Why that metaphor, zombie politics?

HENRY GIROUX: Because it's a politics that's informed by the machinery of social and civil death.

BILL MOYERS: Death?

HENRY GIROUX: Death. It's a death machine. It's a death machine because in my estimation it does everything it can to kill any vestige of a robust democracy. It turns people into zombies, people who basically are so caught up with surviving that they have no— they become like the walking dead, you know, they lose their sense of agency— I mean they lose their homes, they lose their jobs.
And so this zombie metaphor actually operated at two levels. I mean, at one level it spoke to people who have no visions, who exercise a form of political leadership that extends the politics of what I call war and the machineries of death, whether those machineries are at home or abroad, whether they're about the death of civil liberties or they're about making up horrendous lies to actually invade a country like Iraq.
So this— the zombie metaphor is a way to sort of suggest that democracy is losing its oxygen, you know, it's losing its vitality, that we have a politics that really is about the organization of the production of violence.
It's losing its soul. It's losing its spirit. It's losing its ability to speak to itself in ways that would span the human spirit and the human possibility for justice and equality.

BILL MOYERS: Because we don't think of zombies as having souls?

HENRY GIROUX: They don't have souls.

BILL MOYERS: Right. You—

HENRY GIROUX: They're driven by lust.

BILL MOYERS: By lust?

HENRY GIROUX: The lust for money, the lust for power.

BILL MOYERS: Well, that's, I guess, why you mix your metaphors. Because you talk about casino capitalists, zombie politics, which you say in the book shapes every aspect—

HENRY GIROUX: Every aspect.

BILL MOYERS: —of society.

HENRY GIROUX: Yeah, at the current moment. This is what—

BILL MOYERS: How so?

HENRY GIROUX: Well, first, let's begin with an assumption. This casino capitalism as we talk about it, right, one of the things that it does that hasn't been done before, it doesn't just believe it can control the economy. It believes that it can govern all of social life. That's different.
That means it has to have its tentacles into every aspect of everyday life. Everything from the way schools are run to the way prisons are outsourced to the way the financial services are run to the way in which people have access to health care, it's an all-encompassing, it seems to me, political, cultural, educational apparatus.
And it basically has nothing to do with expanding the meaning and the substance of democracy itself. What it has to do is expanding— what it means to get—a quick return, what it means to take advantage of a kind of casino logic in which the only thing that drives you is to go to that slot machine and somehow get more, just pump the machine, put as much money in as you can into it and walk out a rich man. That's what it's about.

BILL MOYERS: You say that casino capitalist, zombie politics views competition as a form of social combat, celebrates war as an extension of politics and legitimates a ruthless social Darwinism.

HENRY GIROUX: Oh, I mean, it is truly ruthless. I mean, imagine yourself on a reality TV program called “The Survivor," you and I, we're all that's left. The ideology that drives that program is only one of us is going to win. I don't have any respect for you. I mean, all I'm trying to do is beat you. I just want to be the one that's left. I want to win the big prize.
And it seems to me that what's unfortunate is that reality now mimics reality TV. It is reality TV in terms of the consensus that drives it, that the shared fears are more important than shared responsibilities, that the social contract is the pathology because it basically suggests helping people is a strength rather than a weakness.
It believes that social bonds not driven by market values are basically bonds that we should find despicable. But even worse, in this ethic, the market has colonized pleasure in such a way that violence in many ways seems to be the only way left that people can actually experience pleasure whether it's in the popular medium, whether it's in the way in which we militarize local police to become SWAT teams that actually will break up poker games now in full gear or give away surplus material, equipment to a place like Ohio State University, who got an armored tank.
I mean, I guess— I'm wondering what does it mean when you're on a campus and you see an armored tank, you know, by the university police? I mean, this is— everything is a war zone. You know, Senator Graham—when Lindsey Graham, he said— in talking about the terrorist laws, you know these horrible laws that are being put into place in which Americans can be captured, they can be killed and, you know—the kill list all of this, he basically says, "Everybody's a potential terrorist."
I mean, so that what happens here is that this notion of fear and this fear around the notion of security that is simply about protecting yourself, not about social security, not about protecting the commons, not about protecting the environment, turns everybody into a potential enemy. I mean, we cannot mediate our relationships it seems any longer in this culture in ways in which we would suggest and adhere to the notion that justice is a matter of caring for the other, that compassion matters.

BILL MOYERS: So this is why you write that America’s no longer recognizable as a democracy?

HENRY GIROUX: No. Look, as the social state is crippled, as the social state is in some way robbed, hollowed out and robbed of its potential and its capacities, what takes its place? The punishing state takes its place. You get this notion of incarceration, this, what we call the governing through crime complex where governance now has been ceded to corporations who largely are basically about benefiting the rich, the ultra-rich, the big corporations and allowing the state to exercise its power in enormously destructive and limited ways.
And those ways are about militarizing the culture, criminalizing a wide swathe of social behavior and keeping people in check. What does it mean when you turn on the television in the United States and you see young kids, peaceful protestors, lying down with their hands locked and you got a guy with, you know, spraying them with pepper spray as if there's something normal about that, as if that's all it takes, that's how we solve problems? I mean, I guess the question here is what is it in a culture that would allow the public to believe that with almost any problem that arises, force is the first way to address it.  I mean, one has to recognize that in that kind of logic, something has happened in which the state is no longer in the service of democracy.

BILL MOYERS: Well, George Monbiot, who writes for theGuardian, wrote just the other day, "It's business that really rules us." And he says, "So I don't blame people for giving up on politics … When a state-corporate nexus of power has bypassed democracy and made a mockery of the voting process, when an unreformed political funding system ensures that parties can be bought and sold, when politicians of the main … parties stand and watch as public services are divvied up by a grubby cabal of privateers, what is left of the system that inspires us to participate?"

HENRY GIROUX: I mean, the real question is why aren't we more outraged?

HENRY GIROUX: Why aren't we in the streets?

HENRY GIROUX: I mean, that's the central question for the American public. I mean, and I think that question has to address something fundamental and that is what we have, while we have an economic system that in fact has caused a crisis in democracy. What we haven't addressed is the underlying consensus that informs that crisis. What you have is basically a transgression against the very basic ideals of democracy. We have lost what it means to be connected to democracy.
And I think that's coupled with a cultural apparatus, a culture, an educative culture, a mode of politics in which people now have gone through this for so long that it's become normalized. I mean, it's hard to imagine life beyond capitalism. You know, it's easier to imagine the death of the planet than it is to imagine the death of capitalism. I mean— and so it seems to me—

BILL MOYERS: Well, don't you think people want to be capitalist? Don't you think people want capitalism? They want money?

HENRY GIROUX: I'm not sure if they want those things. I mean, I think when you read all the surveys about what's important to people's lives, Bill, actually the things that they focus on are not about, you know, "I want to be about the Kardashian sisters." God forbid, right?
I mean, I think that what—they the same way we want—we need a decent education for our kids, we want, you know, real healthcare. I mean, we want the sense of equality in the country. We want to be able to control the political process so that we're not simply nameless and invisible and disposable.
I mean, they want women to be able to have the right to have some control over their own reproductive rights. I mean, they're talking about gay rights being a legitimate pursuit of justice.
And I think that what is missing from all of this are the basic, are those alternative public spheres, those cultural formations, what I call a formative culture that can bring people together and give those ideas, embody them in both a sense of hope, of vision and the organizations and strategies that would be necessary at the very least to start a third party, at the very least. I mean, to start a party that is not part of this establishment, to reconstruct a sense of where politics can go.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you write that the liberal center has failed us and for all of its discourse of helping the poor, of addressing inequality, it always ends up on the side of bankers and finance capital, right.

HENRY GIROUX: Are you talking about Obama?

BILL MOYERS: I'm talking about what you say.

HENRY GIROUX: I know, I know. I'm—

BILL MOYERS: But you do, I must be fair and say that you go on in that same chapter of one of these books to say isn't it time we forget trying to pressure Obama to do the right thing?

HENRY GIROUX: Obama to me is symptomatic to me of the liberal center. But the issue is much greater than him. I mean, the issue is in a system that is entirely broken. It's broken.
Elections are bought by big money. The political process is not in the hands of the people. It's in the hands of very few people. And it seems to me we have to ask ourselves what kind of formative culture needs to be put in place in which education becomes central to politics, in which politics can be used to help people to be able to see things differently, to get beyond this system that is so closed, so powerfully normalized.
I mean, the right since the 1970s has created a massive cultural apparatus, a slew of anti-public intellectuals. They've invaded the universities with think tanks. They have foundations. They have all kinds of money. And you know, it's interesting, the war they wage is a war on the mind.
The war on what it means to be able to dissent, the war on the possibility of alternative visions. And the left really has— and progressives and liberals, we have nothing like that. I mean, we always seem to believe that all you have to do is tell the truth.

BILL MOYERS: You shall know the truth, the truth will set you free.

HENRY GIROUX: Yeah, and the truth will set you free. But I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.

BILL MOYERS: Which brings me to the book you're now finishing and will be published next spring. You call it The Violence of Organized Forgetting. What are we forgetting?

HENRY GIROUX: We're forgetting the past. We're forgetting all those struggles that in fact offered a different story about the United States.

BILL MOYERS: How is it organized, this forgetting?

HENRY GIROUX: It's organized because it's systemic. It's organized because you have people controlling schools who are deleting those histories and making sure that they don't appear. In Tucson, Arizona, they banished ethnic studies from the curriculum. This is the dis-imagination machine. That's the hardcore element.

BILL MOYERS: The suffocation of imagination?

HENRY GIROUX: The suffocation of imagination. And we kill the imagination by suggesting that the only kind of rationality that matters, the only kind of learning that matters is utterly instrumental, pragmatist.
So what we do is we collapse education into training, and we end up suggesting that not knowing much is somehow a virtue. And I'll and I think what's so disturbing about this is not only do you see it in the popular culture with the lowest common denominator now drives that culture, but you also see it coming from politicians who actually say things that suggest something about the policies they'd like to implement.
I mean, I know Rick Santorum is not— is kind of a, you know, an obvious figure. But when he stands up in front of a body of Republicans and he says, the last thing we need in the Republican party are intellectuals. And I think it's kind of a template for the sort of idiocy that increasingly now dominates our culture.

BILL MOYERS: What is an intellectual, by the way? The atmosphere has been so poisoned, as you know, by what you've been describing, that many people bridle when they hear the term intellectual pursuit.

HENRY GIROUX: I mean, yeah, I think intellectuals are— there are two ways we can describe intellectuals. In the most general sense, we can say, "Intellectuals are people who take pride in ideas. They work with ideas." I mean, they believe that ideas matter. They believe that there's no such thing as common sense, good sense or bad sense, but reflective sense.
That ideas offer the framework for gives us agency, what allows us to read the world critically, what allows us to be literate. What allows us to be civic literacy may be in some ways the high point of what it means to be an intellectual—

BILL MOYERS: Because?

HENRY GIROUX: Because it suggests that how we learn what we learn and what we do with the knowledge that we have is not just for ourselves. It's for the way in which we can expand and deepen the very processes of democracy in general, and address those problems and anti-democratic forces that work against it. Now some people make a living as a result of being intellectuals. But there are people who are intellectuals who don't function in that capacity. They're truck drivers. They're workers.
I grew up in a working-class neighborhood. The smartest people I have ever met were in that neighborhood. We read books. We went to the library together. We drank on Friday nights. We talked about [Antonio] Gramsci. We drove to Boston—

BILL MOYERS: Gramsci being the Italian philosopher.

HENRY GIROUX: The Italian philosopher. I mean—

BILL MOYERS: The pessimism of the—

HENRY GIROUX: Of the intellect, and optimism of the will.

BILL MOYERS: Right.

HENRY GIROUX: Right? I mean, we—

BILL MOYERS: You see the world as it is, but then you act as if you can change the world.

HENRY GIROUX: Exactly. I mean, we tried to find ways to both enliven the neighborhoods we lived in. But at the same time, we knew that that wasn't enough. That one— that there was a world beyond our neighborhood, and that world had all kinds of things for us to learn. And we were excited about that. I mean, we drank, danced and talked. That's what we did.

BILL MOYERS: And I assume there were some other more private activities.

HENRY GIROUX: And there was more private activity.

BILL MOYERS: You know, you are a buoyant man. And yet you describe what you call a shift away from the hope that accompanies the living, to a politics of cynicism and despair.

HENRY GIROUX: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: What leads you to this?

HENRY GIROUX: What leads me to this is something that we mentioned earlier, and that is when you see policies being enacted today that are so cruel and so savage, wiping out a generation of young people, trying to eliminate public schools, eliminating health care, putting endless percentage of black and brown people in jail, destroying the environment and there's no public outrage.
There aren't people in the streets. You know, you have to ask yourself, "Has this market mentality, is it so powerful and that it's become so normalized, so taken for granted that the imagination, the collective imagination has been so stunted that it becomes difficult to challenge it anymore?" And I think that leads me to despair somewhat. But I've always felt that in the face of the worst tyrannies, people resist.
They're resisting now all over the world. And it seems to me history is open. I believe history is open. I don't believe that we have reached the finality of a system that is so destructive that all we have to do is look at the clock and say, "One minute left." I don't believe in those kinds of metaphors.
We have to acknowledge the realities that bear down on us, but it seems to me that if we really want to live in a world and be alive with compassion and justice, then we need educated hope. We need a hope that recognizes the problems and doesn't romanticize them, and also recognizes the need for vision, for social organizations, for strategies. We need institutions that provide the formative culture that give voice to those visions and those ideas.

BILL MOYERS: You've talked elsewhere or written elsewhere about the need for a militant, far-reaching, social movement to challenge the false claims that equate democracy and capitalism. Now, what do you mean "militant and far-reaching social movement"?

HENRY GIROUX: I mean, what we do know, we know this. We know that there are people working in local communities all over the United States around particular kinds of issues, whether it be gay rights, whether it be the environment, whether it be, you know the Occupy movement, helping people with Hurricane Sandy. We have a lot of fragmented movements.
And I think we probably have a lot more than we realize, because the press gives them no visibility, as you know. So, we don't really have a sense of the degree to which these— how pronounced these really are. I think the real issue here is, you know, what would it mean to begin to do at least two things?
To say the very least, one is to develop cultural apparatuses that can offer a new vocabulary for people, where questions of freedom and justice and the problems that we're facing can be analyzed in ways that reach mass audiences in accessible language. We have to build a formative culture. We have to do that. Secondly, we've got to overcome the fractured nature of these movements. I mean the thing that plagues me about progressives in the left and liberals is they are all sort of ensconced in these fragmented movements that seem to suggest those movements constitute the totality of the system of oppression that we are facing. And they don’t.  Look, we have technologies in place now in which students all over the world are beginning to communicate with each other because they're realizing that the punishing logic of austerity has a certain kind of semblance that a certain normality that, in common ground, that is affecting students in Greece, students in Spain, students in France.

BILL MOYERS: And in this country?

HENRY GIROUX: And in this country. And it seems to me that while I may be too old to in any way begin to participate in this, I really believe that young people have recognized that they've been written out of the discourse of democracy. That they're in the grip of something so oppressive it will take away their future, their hopes, their possibilities and their sense of the future will be one that is less than what their parents had imagined.
And there's no going back. I mean, this has to be addressed. And it'll take time. They'll build the organizations. They'll get— they'll work with the new technologies. And hopefully they'll have our generation to be able to assist in that, but it's not going to happen tomorrow. And it's not going to happen in a year. It's going to as you have to plant seeds. You have to believe that seeds matter.
But you need a different vocabulary and a different understanding of politics. Look, the right has one thing going for it that nobody wants to talk about. Power is global. And politics is local. They float. They have no allegiance to anyone. They don't care about the social contract, because if workers in the United States don't want to compromise, they'll get them in Mexico. So the notion of political concessions has died for this class. They don't care about it anymore. There are no political concessions.

BILL MOYERS: The financial class.

HENRY GIROUX: The financial class.

BILL MOYERS: The one percent.

HENRY GIROUX: The one percent. That's why they're so savage. They're so savage because there's nothing to give up. They don't have to compromise. The power is so arrogant, so over the top, so unlike anything we have seen in terms of its anti-democratic practices, policies, modes of governance and ideology. That at some point, you know they feel they don't have to legitimate this anymore. I mean, it's because the contradictions are becoming so great, that I think all of a sudden a lot of young people are recognizing this language, this whole language, doesn't work. The language of liberalism doesn't work anymore.
No, let's just reform the system. Let's work within it. Let's just run people for office. My argument would be, you have one foot in and you have one foot out. I'm not willing to give up the school board. I'm not willing to give up all forms of electoral politics. But it seems to me at the local level we can do some of that thing, that people can get elected. They can make moderate changes.
But the real changes are not going to come there. The real changes are going to come in creating movements that are longstanding, that are organized, that basically take questions of governance and policy seriously and begin to spread out and become international. That is going to have to happen.

BILL MOYERS: But here's the contradiction I hear in what you're saying. That if you write about a turning toward despair and cynicism in politics. Can you get movements out of despair and cynicism? Can you get people who will take on the system when they have been told that the system is so powerful and so overwhelming that they've lost their, as you call it, moral and political agency?

HENRY GIROUX: Well, let me put it this way. What we often find is we often find people who take for granted the systems that they live in. They take for granted the savagery— the sort of things that you talked about. And it produces two kinds of rage. It produces an inner rage in which people blame themselves.
It’s so disturbing to me to see working-class, middle-class people blaming themselves when these bankers have actually caused the crisis. That's the first issue.
Then you have another expression of that rage, and that rage blames blacks. It blames immigrants. It blames young people. It says, "They're not—" it says about youth, it says, "Youth is not in trouble. They're the problem."
And so, all of a sudden that rage gets displaced. The question is not what do we— the question is not just where's the outrage. The question is how do you mobilize the rage in ways in which it's not self-defeating, and in ways in which it doesn't basically be used to scapegoat other people. That's an educational issue. That should be at the center of any politics that matters.

BILL MOYERS: One of your intellectual mentors, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, said, "We must believe in the principle of hope." And you've written often about the language of hope. What does that mean, the principle of hope and the language of hope, and why are they important as you see it in creating this new paradigm, metaphor that you talk about?

HENRY GIROUX: Hope to me is a metaphor that speaks to the power of the imagination. I don't believe that anyone should be involved in politics in a progressive way if they can't understand that to act otherwise, you have to imagine otherwise.
What hope is predicated on is the assumption that life can be different than it is now. But to be different than it is now, rather than romanticizing hope and turning it into something Disney-like, right, it really has to involve the hard work of A) recognizing the structures of domination that we have to face; B) organizing collectively and somehow to change those; and C) believing it can be done, that it's worth the struggle.
That if the struggles are not believed in, if people don't have the faith to engage in these struggles, and that's the issue. I mean, that working class neighborhood that I talked to you about in the beginning of the program, I mean, it just resonates with such a sense of joy for me, the sense of solidarity, sociality.  And I think all the institutions that are being constructed under this market tyranny, this casino capitals is just the opposite. It's like that image of all these people at the bus stop, right. And they're all— they're together, but they're alone. They're alone.

BILL MOYERS: If we have zombied politics, if we have as you say, metaphorically, zombies in the high levels of government, zombies in banks and financial centers and zombies in the military, can't you have a zombie population? I mean, you say the stories that are being told through the commercial corporate entertainment media are all the more powerful because they seem to defy the public's desire for rigorous accountability, critical interrogation and openness.  Now if that's what the public wants, why isn't the market providing them? Isn't that what the market's supposed to do? Provide what people want?

HENRY GIROUX: The market doesn't want that at all. I mean, the market wants the people, the apostles of this market logic, I mean, they actually the first rule of the market is make sure you have power that’s unaccountable. That's what they want.  And I think that, I mean, what we see for the first time in history is a war on the ability to produce meanings that hold power accountable. A war on the possibility of an education that enables people to think critically, a war on cultural apparatuses that entertain by simply engaging in this spectacle of violence and not producing programs that really are controversial, that make people think, that make people alive through the possibilities of, you know, the imagination itself.  I mean, my argument is the formative culture that produces those kinds of intellectual and creative and imaginative abilities has been under assault since the 1980s in a very systemic way. So that the formative culture that takes its place is a business culture. It's a culture run by accountants, not by visionaries. It's a culture run by the financial services. It's a culture run by people who believe that data is more important than knowledge.

BILL MOYERS: You paint a very grim picture of the state of democracy, and yet you don't seem contaminated by cynicism yourself.

HENRY GIROUX: No, I'm not.

BILL MOYERS: How do we understand that?

HENRY GIROUX: Because I refuse to become a part of it.
Become I refuse to become complicitous. I refuse to say—I refuse to be alive and to watch institutions being handed over to right-wing zealots. I refuse to be alive and watch the planet be destroyed.  I mean, when you mentioned— you talk about the collective imagination, you know, I mean that imagination emerges when people find strength in collective organizations, when they find strength in each other.  Believing that we can work together to produce commons in which we can share that raises everybody up and not just some people, that contributes to the world in a way that— and I really don't mean to be romanticizing here, but a world that is we recognize is never just enough. Justice is never done. It's an endless struggle. And that there's joy in that struggle, because there's a sense of solidarity that brings us together around the most basic, most elemental and the most important of democratic values.

BILL MOYERS: Henry Giroux, thank you, very much for talking to me.

HENRY GIROUX: Thank you, Bill.

Cortisol Reduction Foods

You already know that stress can cause health problems. When you experience stress, your body's natural reaction is to release the hormone cortisol. In small doses, cortisol isn’t harmful to your health. But if you experience chronic stress, elevated cortisol levels over time may add to sleep, mood and memory problems, and could even contribute to abdominal obesity.

Fortunately, there is something you can do. By incorporating an assortment of cortisol-reducing foods into your daily diet, you will get started on your way back to health.

Spinach

The magnesium in these leafy greens helps balance your body’s production of cortisol. Try tossing the spinach with a citrus-based fruit for a delicious salad loaded with vitamin C.

Beans and Barley

Phosphatidylserine, a phospholipid located in cell membranes, may help counteract the adverse effects of cortisol. Add phosphatidylserine-rich foods, like white beans and barley, to your diet to help calm your nerves and improve your sleep.

Citrus Fruits

When stress gets you down, try replacing carb-rich snacks with a variety of citrus fruit. Research has shown that vitamin C-rich produce, like oranges and kiwis, help slow the production of cortisol.
For a great mealtime combo, toss oranges and avocado with about a tablespoon of olive oil. Laden with monounsaturated fats, these tasty additions can help reduce inflammation and decrease abdominal fat storage. Add some protein-filled grilled chicken to help keep you satisfied throughout the day!

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

The secret’s out: Omega-3s have mega health benefits! Studies show that omega-3s not only inhibit inflammation, but also help to reduce cortisol levels and perceived stress. If pills and supplements don’t excite you, try incorporating omega-rich mackerel, haddock, sardines, flaxseed and walnuts into your daily meal plan.

Microgreens

When too much tension makes you blue, it’s time to go green. While adult greens are healthy and satisfying, microgreens – young plants that are typically less than 14 days old – provide a higher concentration of nutrients. For example, baby versions of cilantro and red cabbage may contain up to four to six times as much stress-fighting vitamin C as their mature counterparts.

Holy Basil

Holy basil, also known as tulsi, is another effective stress-fighting solution. This tasty herb is part of a class of herbs called adaptogens that help reduce the production of stress hormones. If you can't grow a holy basil plant in your backyard, you can still reap the benefits of this healthy herb by brewing a cup of basil tea.

Zinc

Studies have shown zinc can help inhibit the secretion of cortisol. Fight off stress by ensuring your diet has enough sources of zinc. Just three ounces of lean pot roast or short ribs can provide a substantial amount of your daily zinc needs. If seafood is your preference, opt for oysters. Just six medium-sized oysters contain over 70 mg of zinc!

Dark Chocolate

You don't always have to bypass the candy aisle. The naturally occurring antioxidants in dark chocolate can help your body decrease inflammation and slow cortisol production. The results of one study indicated that consuming about 40 grams per day reduced cortisol levels. Dark chocolate specifies a minimum of 35% cocoa solids. If you can get up to 50% is even better. You don’t have to feel guilty about this indulgence – just limit it to a piece or two.

Lightning

Do you know that lightning occurs approximately 40–50 times a second worldwide, resulting in nearly 1.4 billion flashes per year?

If we can safely harvest and store all these electricity, it will certainly ease some demand for energy.

Just a thought...

J. Krishnamurti on Insight Meditation

In 1979, J. Krishnamurti (K) engaged in a discussion with Buddhist scholars venerable Prof Walpola Rahula (R) from the series "Can humanity change?" During this exchange K made an inquiry about Vipassanā , the foundation of mindfulness, and how it is cultivated, if it is to be cultivated at all.

Here is the transcript of the conversation:

K: Sir, would you kindly explain, what is Buddhist meditation.
R: Buddhist meditation, the purest form of Buddhist meditation which has taken many forms, many varieties, the purest form of Buddhist meditation is this insight into 'what is'.
K: You are using my words.
R: No, not your words. You are using those words! Long before you, two thousand five hundred years ago these words were used. I am using them.
K: All right, then we are both two thousand years old.
R: Vipassana is insight vision, to see into the nature of things, that is the real vision.
K: Have they a system?
R: A system is, of course, developed.
K: That's what I want to get at.
R: Yes, when you take the original teaching of the Buddha...
K: ...there is no system.
R: It is called Satipatthana, the best discourse by the Buddha on this insight meditation. There is no system.
K: I am listening, sir.
R: And the key point in that is the awareness. Awareness is sati or smṛti in Sanskrit. And to be mindful, aware, of all that happens, you are not expected to run away from life and live in a cave or in a forest, like a statue, all that. It is not that. And in this Satipatthāna, it is - if you translate it as the establishment of mindfulness, but rather it is the presence of awareness, the meaning of that word.
K: Is this awareness?
R: Yes, awareness of every movement, every act, everything.
K: Is this awareness to be cultivated?
R: There is no question of cultivation. There is no question.
K: That is what I am trying to get at.
R: Yes.
K: Because the modern gurus, modern systems of meditation, modern Zen, you know all the rest of it, they are trying to cultivate it.
R: Yes, I'll tell you, sir. I have written an essay, it will be published in Belgium, on The Cycle of Buddhist Meditation. There I said that this teaching of the Buddha is for many centuries misunderstood and wrongly applied as a technique. And they have developed into such a technique that the mind can be instead of liberating it can be...imprisoning.
K: Of course. All meditation...
R: If it is made into a system...
K: Please, sir, I am asking: awareness, is it something to be cultivated in the sense manipulated, watched over, worked at?
R: No, no.
K: So how does it come into being?
R: There is no coming into being, you do it.
K: Wait sir, just listen. I want to find out, I am not critical, I just want to find out what Buddhist meditation is. Because now there is Buddhist, there is Tibetan, there are various types of Buddhist meditation, various types of Tibetan meditation, various types of Hindu meditation, Sufi meditation - for God's sake, you follow, they are like mushrooms all over the place. I am just asking if awareness is something that takes place through concentration?
R: No, not in that sense. For anything we do in this world a certain amount of concentration is necessary. That is understood. In that sense a certain kind of concentration is necessary but don't mix it up with Dhyana and Samadhi.
K: I don't like any of those words personally.
R: But they are concentration in the principle.
K: I know, I know. Most of the meditations that have been propagated all over the world involves concentration.
R: Zen and various other things, Samadhi, Dhyana, Hindu, Buddhist, concentration is the center.
K: That is nonsense. I don't accept concentration.
R: In the Buddha's teaching, meditation is not that concentration.
K: It is not concentration. Let's put it away. Then what is this awareness, how does it come into being?
R: You see, you live in the action in the present moment.
K: Wait, sir. Yes sir. The moment you say the present moment, you don't live in the present moment.
R: That is what it says, that you don't live in the present moment. And Satipatthāna is to live in the present moment.
K: No, you are missing it. How is one to live in the present? What is the mind that lives in the present?
R: The mind that lives in the present is the mind which is free from...
K: Yes, sir, go on sir, I am waiting, I want to find out.
R: ...free from the idea of self. When you have the idea of self either you live in the past or in the future.
K: The now is, as far as I, one sees, not I, one sees generally, the past modifying itself in the present and going on.
R: That is the usual.
K: Wait. That is the present.
R: No.
K: Then what is the present? Free of the past?
R: Yes.
K: That's it. Free of the past, which means free of time. So that is the only state of mind which is now. Now I am just asking, sir, what is awareness? How does it flower, how does it happen? You follow?
R: There is no technique for it.
K: I understand.
R: You were asking how it happens.
K: Quite right. I used the 'how' just to ask a question, not for a method. I'll put it round the other way. In what manner does this awareness come into being? I am not aware - suppose I am not aware. I am just enclosed in my own petty little worries and anxieties, problems, I love you and you don't love me, and all that is going on in my mind. I live in that. And you come along and tell me, "Be aware of all that". And I say, "What do you mean by being aware?"
R: When you ask me that, be aware of that pettiness.
K: Yes. So that means be aware...
R: Of the pettiness.
K: Yes, yes. Be aware of all your pettiness. What do you mean by that?
R: Be aware of that.
K: Yes, sir, I don't how to be, I don't know what it means.
R: It is not necessary to know what it means.
K: What do you mean it is not necessary?
R: Be aware of it.
K: Yes, sir. You tell me, be aware of it... I am blind. I think that is an elephant, how am I to? You follow? I am blind and I want to see light. And you say, "Be aware of that blindness". I say, "Yes, what does it mean?" It's not concentration. So I say, look, awareness is something in which choice doesn't exist. Wait, sir. Awareness means to be aware of this hall, the curtains, the lights, the people sitting here, the shape of the walls, the windows, to be aware of it. Just a minute. Either I am aware of one part, part by part, or as I enter the room I am aware of the whole thing: the roof, the lamps, the curtains, the shape of the windows, the floor, the mottled roof, everything. Is that what you mean, sir?
R: That also is a kind of awareness.
K: That is awareness. Now what is the difference - I am not categorizing, please I am not being impudent, or inquisitive, or insulting - what is the difference between that sense of awareness and attention?
R: It is wrong to put 'sense' of awareness. Awareness.
K: All right. That awareness and attention... You see we have abolished concentration except when I have to drill a hole in the wall, I hope I am drilling it straight, I concentrate.
R: We have not excluded it. There is concentration but that is not the main thing.
K: No, that is not awareness.
R: But concentration may be useful or helpful.
K: To drill a hole straight.
R: Yes. In awareness also, it may be helpful but it is not concentration on a simple point.
K: There must be a certain sense of concentration if I have to learn mathematics.
R: For anything, sir.
K: Therefore I am just putting that aside for the moment. What is attention? To attend.
R: How do you explain, for instance, awareness, mindfulness, attention, how do you discriminate these three: awareness, mindfulness and attention?
K: I would say awareness in which there is no choice, just to be aware. The moment when choice enters into awareness, there is no awareness.
R: Right.
K: And choice is measurement, division and so on. So awareness is without choice, just to be aware. To say, "I don't like, I like this room", all that has ended.
R: Right.
K: Attention, to attend, in that attention there is no division.
R: Also that means no choice.
K: Leave it for the moment. Attention implies no division, me attending. And so it has no division, therefore no measurement and therefore no border.
R: In attention.
K: In 'complete' attention.
R: In that sense it is equal to awareness.
K: No, no, no...
R: Why not?
K: In awareness there may be a center from which you are being aware.
SS: Even if there is no choice?
R: No, that is not awareness.
K: Wait, I must go back.
N: You are making a distinction between awareness and attention.
K: I want to.
SS: Are you saying attention is a deeper process.
K: Much more, a totally different quality. One can be aware of what kind of dress you have. One may say, "I like it", or "I don't like it", so choice doesn't exist, you are aware of it, that's all. But attention, in that there is no attender, one who attends, and so no division.
R: In awareness also you can say the same thing, there is no one who is aware.
K: Of course, that's right. But it has not the same quality as attention.
R: I don't want to go into these words, but the Buddha's teaching, Satipatthāna, is that in this practice of meditation there is no discrimination, there is no value judgement, there is no like or dislike, but you only see. That's all. And what happens will happen when you see.
K: In that state of attention what takes place?
R: That is another explanation.
K: No, if you totally attend, with your ears, with your eyes, with your body, with your nerves, with all your mind, with your heart in the sense of affection, love, compassion, total attention, what takes place?
R: Of course what takes place is an absolute revolution internal and complete revolution.
K: No, what is the state of such a mind that is completely attentive?
F: It is free of the stream.
K: No, that's finished.
R: The stream is dried now, don't talk about it! It is desert now!
K: I am asking what is the quality of the mind that is so supremely attentive? You see it has no quality, no center, and having no center no border. And this is an actuality, you can't just imagine this. That means has one ever given such complete attention.
SS: Is there any object in that attention?
K: Of course not.
R: Object in the sense of?
K: Subject and object. Obviously not. Because there is no division. You try it, do it, sir.
SS: I mean not merely physical object but any phenomenal object such as sorrow, or all those.
K: Give complete attention, if you can. Say for instance, I tell you meditation is the meditator.
R: That is right. There is no meditator.
K: Wait, wait, wait. I say, meditation is the meditator. Give your complete attention to that, and see what happens. That's a statement you hear. You don't make an abstraction of it into an idea, but you just hear that statement. It has the quality of truth, it has the quality of great beauty, it has a sense of absoluteness about it. Now give your whole attention to it and see what happens.
R: I think Buddhist meditation is that.
K: I don't know, sir.
R: Yes.
K: I'll accept your word for it, but I don't know.
R: And I think it is not misleading to accept my opinion.
K: No, no. I don't know.
R: Satipatthāna is that. Real Satipatthāna is that. Now if you ask people who practice it, there are many meditation centers, I openly say they are misleading. I have openly written it.
K: Yes, sir, that is nonsense.
R: When you ask how it happens, I said that presupposes a method, a technique.
K: No, I am asking, can one give such attention?
R: You are asking whether it is possible?
K: Yes, is it possible and will you give such attention - not you, sir, I am asking the question. Which means do we ever attend.
F: Sir, when you say can one attend...
K: Will you attend.
F: That's it.
K: Not exercising will.
F: Quite.
K: Will you... you know, do it. If that attention is not there, truth cannot exist.
R: I don't think that is appropriate. Truth exists but cannot be seen.
K: Ah, I don't know. You say truth exists but I don't know...
R: But that doesn't mean that truth does not exist.
K: I don't know, I said.
R: That is correct.
K: Jesus said, Father in heaven. I don't know the father. It may exist but I don't know, so I don't accept.
R: No, not accepting. I don't think it is correct to say that without that attention, truth does not exist.
K: I said without that attention, truth cannot come into being.
R: There is no coming into being.
K: No, of course not. Let me put it differently... all right. Without that attention the word truth has no meaning.
R: That will be better. That's better.
K: We have talked for an hour and three quarters, sir. I don't know when your bus or train goes. We had better stop.
R: I think on behalf of everybody, I thank all these people, not you.

 -  Brockwood Park, June 28 1979 

Wild Elephants Gather Inexplicably, Mourn Death of Their Friend

Author and legendary conservationist Lawrence Anthony died March 7 last year. His family tells of a solemn procession on March 10 that defies human explanation

For 12 hours, two herds of wild South African elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who saved their lives.

The formerly violent, rogue elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.”

For two days the herds loitered at Anthony’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu – to say good-bye to the man they loved. But how did they know he had died March 7?

Known for his unique ability to calm traumatized elephants, Anthony had become a legend. He is the author of three books, Baghdad Ark, detailing his efforts to rescue the animals at Baghdad Zoo during the Iraqi war, the forthcoming The Last Rhinos, and his bestselling The Elephant Whisperer.

There are two elephant herds at Thula Thula. According to his son Dylan, both arrived at the Anthony family compound shortly after Anthony’s death.

“They had not visited the house for a year and a half and it must have taken them about 12 hours to make the journey,” Dylan is quoted in various local news accounts. “The first herd arrived on Sunday and the second herd, a day later. They all hung around for about two days before making their way back into the bush.”

Elephants have long been known to mourn their dead. In India, baby elephants often are raised with a boy who will be their lifelong “mahout.” The pair develop legendary bonds – and it is not uncommon for one to waste away without a will to live after the death of the other.

A line of elephants approaching the Anthony house (Photo courtesy of the Anthony family)

But these are wild elephants in the 21st century, not some Rudyard Kipling novel.

The first herd to arrive at Thula Thula several years ago were violent. They hated humans. Anthony found himself fighting a desperate battle for their survival and their trust, which he detailed in The Elephant Whisperer:

“It was 4:45 a.m. and I was standing in front of Nana, an enraged wild elephant, pleading with her in desperation. Both our lives depended on it. The only thing separating us was an 8,000-volt electric fence that she was preparing to flatten and make her escape.

“Nana, the matriarch of her herd, tensed her enormous frame and flared her ears.

“’Don’t do it, Nana,’ I said, as calmly as I could. She stood there, motionless but tense. The rest of the herd froze.

“’This is your home now,’ I continued. ‘Please don’t do it, girl.’

I felt her eyes boring into me.

Anthony, Nana and calf (Photo courtesy of the Anthony family)

“’They’ll kill you all if you break out. This is your home now. You have no need to run any more.’

“Suddenly, the absurdity of the situation struck me,” Anthony writes. “Here I was in pitch darkness, talking to a wild female elephant with a baby, the most dangerous possible combination, as if we were having a friendly chat. But I meant every word. ‘You will all die if you go. Stay here. I will be here with you and it’s a good place.’

“She took another step forward. I could see her tense up again, preparing to snap the electric wire and be out, the rest of the herd smashing after her in a flash.

“I was in their path, and would only have seconds to scramble out of their way and climb the nearest tree. I wondered if I would be fast enough to avoid being trampled. Possibly not.

“Then something happened between Nana and me, some tiny spark of recognition, flaring for the briefest of moments. Then it was gone. Nana turned and melted into the bush. The rest of the herd followed. I couldn’t explain what had happened between us, but it gave me the first glimmer of hope since the elephants had first thundered into my life.”

Elephants gathering at the Anthony home (Photo courtesy of the Anthony family)

It had all started several weeks earlier with a phone call from an elephant welfare organization. Would Anthony be interested in adopting a problem herd of wild elephants? They lived on a game reserve 600 miles away and were “troublesome,” recalled Anthony.

“They had a tendency to break out of reserves and the owners wanted to get rid of them fast. If we didn’t take them, they would be shot.

“The woman explained, ‘The matriarch is an amazing escape artist and has worked out how to break through electric fences. She just twists the wire around her tusks until it snaps, or takes the pain and smashes through.’

“’Why me?’ I asked.

“’I've heard you have a way with animals. You’re right for them. Or maybe they’re right for you.’”

What followed was heart-breaking. One of the females and her baby were shot and killed in the round-up, trying to evade capture.

“When they arrived, they were thumping the inside of the trailer like a gigantic drum. We sedated them with a pole-sized syringe, and once they had calmed down, the door slid open and the matriarch emerged, followed by her baby bull, three females and an 11-year-old bull.”

Last off was the 15-year-old son of the dead mother. “He stared at us,” writes Anthony, “flared his ears and with a trumpet of rage, charged, pulling up just short of the fence in front of us.

“His mother and baby sister had been shot before his eyes, and here he was, just a teenager, defending his herd. David, my head ranger, named him Mnumzane, which in Zulu means ‘Sir.’ We christened the matriarch Nana, and the second female-in-command, the most feisty, Frankie, after my wife.

“We had erected a giant enclosure within the reserve to keep them safe until they became calm enough to move out into the reserve proper.

“Nana gathered her clan, loped up to the fence and stretched out her trunk, touching the electric wires. The 8,000-volt charge sent a jolt shuddering through her bulk. She backed off. Then, with her family in tow, she strode the entire perimeter of the enclosure, pointing her trunk at the wire to check for vibrations from the electric current.

“As I went to bed that night, I noticed the elephants lining up along the fence, facing out towards their former home. It looked ominous. I was woken several hours later by one of the reserve’s rangers, shouting, ‘The elephants have gone! They’ve broken out!’ The two adult elephants had worked as a team to fell a tree, smashing it onto the electric fence and then charging out of the enclosure.

“I scrambled together a search party and we raced to the border of the game reserve, but we were too late. The fence was down and the animals had broken out.

“They had somehow found the generator that powered the electric fence around the reserve. After trampling it like a tin can, they had pulled the concrete-embedded fence posts out of the ground like matchsticks, and headed north.”

The reserve staff chased them – but had competition.

“We met a group of locals carrying large caliber rifles, who claimed the elephants were ‘fair game’ now. On our radios we heard the wildlife authorities were issuing elephant rifles to staff. It was now a simple race against time.”

Anthony managed to get the herd back onto Thula Thula property, but problems had just begun:

“Their bid for freedom had, if anything, increased their resentment at being kept in captivity. Nana watched my every move, hostility seeping from every pore, her family behind her. There was no doubt that sooner or later they were going to make another break for freedom.

“Then, in a flash, came the answer. I would live with the herd. To save their lives, I would stay with them, feed them, talk to them. But, most importantly, be with them day and night. We all had to get to know each other.”

It worked, as the book describes in detail, notes the London Daily Mail newspaper.

Anthony was later offered another troubled elephant – one that was all alone because the rest of her herd had been shot or sold, and which feared humans. He had to start the process all over again.

And as his reputation spread, more “troublesome” elephants were brought to Thula Thula.

So, how after Anthony’s death, did the reserve’s elephants — grazing miles away in distant parts of the park — know?

“A good man died suddenly,” says Rabbi Leila Gal Berner, Ph.D., “and from miles and miles away, two herds of elephants, sensing that they had lost a beloved human friend, moved in a solemn, almost ‘funereal’ procession to make a call on the bereaved family at the deceased man’s home.”

“If there ever were a time, when we can truly sense the wondrous ‘interconnectedness of all beings,’ it is when we reflect on the elephants of Thula Thula. A man’s heart’s stops, and hundreds of elephants’ hearts are grieving. This man’s oh-so-abundantly loving heart offered healing to these elephants, and now, they came to pay loving homage to their friend.”


                                                                                                                                                  - Rob Kerby, senior editor Beliefnet

Theories and Your Perception of the World

 

Reality is not as obvious and simple as we like to think. Some of the things that we accept as true at face value are notoriously wrong. Scientists and philosophers have made every effort to change our common perceptions of it. The 10 examples below will show you what I mean.

1. Great Glaciation

Great Glaciation is the theory of the final state that our universe is heading toward. The universe has a limited supply of energy. According to this theory, when that energy finally runs out, the universe will devolve into a frozen state. Heat energy produced by the motion of the particles, heat loss, a natural law of the universe, means that eventually this particle motion will slow down and, presumably, one day everything will stop.

2. Solipsism

Solipsism is a philosophical theory, which asserts that nothing exists but the individual’s consciousness. At first it seems silly – and who generally got it into his head completely deny the existence of the world around us? Except when you put your mind to it, it really is impossible to verify anything but your own consciousness.
Don’t you believe me? Think a moment and think of all the possible dreams that you have experienced in your life. Is it not possible that everything around you is nothing but an incredibly intricate dream? But we have people and things around us that we cannot doubt, because we can hear, see, smell, taste and feel them, right? Yes, and no. People who take LSD, for example, say that they can touch the most convincing hallucinations, but we do not claim that their visions are “reality”. Your dreams simulate sensations as well, after all, what you perceive is what different sections of your brain tell you to.
As a result, which parts of existence can we not doubt? None. Not the chicken we ate for dinner or the keyboard beneath our fingers. Each of us can only be sure in his own thoughts.

3. Idealist Philosophy

George Berkeley, the father of Idealism, argued that everything exists as an idea in someone’s mind. Berkley discovered that some of his comrades considered his theory stupid. The story goes that one of his detractors kicked a stone with his eyes closed and said, “There I’ve disproved it!”
The idea being that if the stone really only exists in his imagination, he could not have kicked it with his eyes closed. Refutation of Berkeley is hard to understand, especially in these days. He argued that there is an omnipotent and omnipresent God, who sees all and all at once. Realistic, or not?

4. Plato and Logos

Everybody has heard of Plato. He is the world’s most famous philosopher. Like all philosophers he had a few things to say about reality. He argued that beyond our perceived reality there lies a world of “perfect” forms. Everything that we see is just a shade, an imitation of how things truly are. He argued that by studying philosophy we have a chance of catching a glimpse of how things truly are, of discovering the perfect forms of everything we perceive.

In addition to this stunning statement, Plato, being a monist, said that everything is made of a single substance. Which means (according to him) that diamonds, gold and dog feces all consist of the same basic material, but in a different form, which, with science’s discovery of atoms and molecules, has been proven true to an extent.

5. Presentism

Time is something that we perceive as a matter of course, if we view it at the moment, we usually divide it into past, present and future. Presentism argues that the past and the future are imagined concepts, while only the present is real.
In other words, today’s breakfast and every word of this article will cease to exist after you have read it, until you open it again. The future is just as imaginary, because time cannot exist before and after it happened, as claimed by St. Augustine.

6. Eternalism

Enternalism is the exact opposite of presentism. This is a philosophical theory that says that time is multi-layered. It can be compared to a pound cake (however, unlike the time, a biscuit is not up for philosophical debate). All time exists simultaneously, but the measurement is determined by the observer. What he sees depends on which point he is looking at.
Thus dinosaurs, World War II and Justin Bieber all exist simultaneously but can only be observed from a specific location. If one takes this view of reality then the future is hopeless and the deterministic free will is illusory.

7. The Brain in a Jar

The “brain in a jar” thought experiment is a question discussed by thinkers and scientists, who, like most people, believe that human’s understanding of reality depends solely on his subjective feelings.
So, what is the debate? Imagine that you are just a brain in a jar that is run by aliens or mad scientists. How would you know? And can you truly deny the possibility that this is your reality?
This is a modern interpretation of the Cartesian evil demon problem. This thought experiment leads to the same conclusion: we cannot confirm the actual existence of anything except our consciousness. If this seems to sound reminiscent of the movie “The Matrix“, it is only because this idea was part of the very basis of the story. Unfortunately, in reality we have no red pills…

8. The Multiverse Theory

Anyone who has not spent the last ten years on a desert island, has at least once heard of “the multiverse”, or parallel universes. As many of us have seen, parallel words, in theory, are worlds very similar to ours, with little (or in some cases, large) changes or differences. The multiverse theory speculates that there could exist an infinite number of these alternate realities.
What’s the point? In a parallel reality you have already killed the dinosaurs, and you are lying under the ground at a depth of eight feet (because that’s what happened there.) In the other you might be a powerful dictator. In another you might never have even been born since your parents never met. Now that’s a memorable image.

9. Fictional Realism

This is the most fascinating branch of multiverse theory. Superman is real. Yes, some of you would probably choose a different story, for argument’s sake, Harry Potter might be real too. This branch of the theory argues that given an infinite number of universes, everything must exist somewhere. So, all of our favorite fiction and fantasy may be descriptive of an alternate universe, one where all the right pieces came in to place to make it happen.

10. Phenomenalism

Everyone is interested in what happens to things when we aren’t looking at them. Scientists have carefully studied this problem and some of them came to a simple conclusion - they disappear. Well, not quite like this. Phenomenalist philosophers believe that objects only exist as a phenomenon of consciousness. So, your laptop is only here while you are aware of, and believe in its existence, but when you turn away from it, it ceases to exist until you or someone else interacts with it.   There is simply no existence without perception. This is the root of phenomenalism.