Discuss: Destined for Failure

This very sound comment is spoilt by the common one of considering energy as though it is a commodity.The energy we use is invariably an attribute of matter. This means that when we use energy for our purposes, the process invariably produces material wastes. Using energy from fossil fuels has initiated climate change as well as producing pollutants harming the health of many creatures, including us. Most people do not understand that there is an immutable relation ship between eenrgy and materials.

And we need to look back to the last time in our lives that anything made sense.
This thinking will lead us to those times when we took responsibility for our own health and grew our own food and had gardens with highly nutritional vegetables and fruits which were tended by loving hands.
Not someone else’s idea of food as a commodity but food as medicine.
We see quickly enough what happens when food is treated as a commodity-we end up with massive amounts of stuff which does not decompose and there is no away for all this waste.
We cannot have an entirely new educational curriculum soon enough which has as the most important course Gardening, Nutrition and Health and how their relationship is crucial to the human species and the Planet.

bravo bravo bravo. I agree 100% that we need to strongly reevaluate the focus of current academia. Much of it is strongly out of touch with reality. Our educational institutions need to emphasize localization and more sustainable thinking…and they need it NOW.

I sympathize with the spirit here, but the tone and the quick-fix solutions seem to me a symptom of the disease being diagnosed.  A failure of systematic thinking, and an assumption that the local doesn’t extend beyond my neighborhood (out-of-sight, out-of-mind).  I teach at a large state university, with students from all over the world, a constant reminder that higher education is part of a system that doesn’t just serve residents, but creates (ambiguous) possibilities.  The “last time in our lives that anything made sense” was, I think, in Eden.

When we finally, (and fatefully,) understand the value of energy and its undeniable power to have created this fantasy world we now live in, will those who are providing the tangible and truly meaningful livelihood for us all—the gardeners and cooks—finally be able to claim the respect and equity they deserve?

Interesting points.  It seems to me that in addition to those vegetable gardens andcompost heaps we also need to remember E.F. Schumacher’s admonition, “Small is beautiful.” 

Do we need huge city-unto-themslves campuses? Do we need so many universities rather than broad generalist colleges? Would we benefit from “pocket colleges” of a hundred or so liberal arts undergrads with a dozen faculty living in small flats surrounded by fields, gardens, and orchards?

Thoughts?

Yes small is beautiful for sure and we need to now be working into a world of human dignity and rights.
The education system is old paradigm where true thinking, based on the reality we find ourselves in, does and cannot happen.
We can’t go back to the past but we can return to a time when life made sense and revive those experiences on a small is beautiful scale.
Organic and biodynamic farms where conscious food is produced will be the universities of the future. Folks will go to learn practical skills in a living sphere which will bring forth a legacy for the next generations.
If we eat food that is conscious we become conscious and act out of morality.  The place where nutrition, education and nature meet is where the real work will cocreate a living legacy. And humans can
live in Right Relationship with All Beings planting seeds of hope for a time beyond their own.
This knowledge is not available at the Ivory Towers or in books.

Right on.  Our national elections are now decided by Metripolitanos who have no idea of the connections that link soil biota, arable, cows and lattés.  Unless our educational system can teach students to recognize the duplicitous architecture of elaborate card houses, a majority of our electorate, attracted by fancy Jacks, Queens and Kings, will vote to live in a pending flush.