The Enemy Within

Sensei's Notes
by
Sensei Jason R. Bassels

KEIKO- To train ones self with out competition. Competition hinders the development of higher skill. To recognize and overcome the enemy within.

Many scientist, religious leaders, and teachers of various modalities predict that a major change is coming. The end of many calendars forecasted dooms day predictions from voices long ago; governments becoming corporations, wealth over health, success over sustainability, and cost over value.

All tyranny seems to be undone with a simply apology today. While the fate of many species hinges on a vote in some meeting, the world is more concerned with interest rates and the housing market. If it can be sold, it is. If it can be taken for profit, it is. Competition has become major profit, compassion has become just good business, and complacency is the model of todays spending habits.

Through out history there has always been “snake-oil salesmen”; a person that sells things that are useless or even harmful to you for profit. Their talent is getting people to believe they need what they have. They do this by appealing to the two most weakest places in a person, fear and vanity. Their charms come from nothing more than a play on words - “the lowest price is the law” and “I’m lovin’ it”, to name a few.

Our living used to be influenced by natural laws, by working together in tune with our environment and the other animals that live along side us. We used to know our own voice, and listen to it. Now we live in a reality that is fabricated and molded by very large corporations. Our environment and anything seen as profit is manipulated to grow faster, sucked out to burn, chopped down to furbish, or bulldozed over to expand. This is the voice we hear today, and it is not our own.

When people ask me, “what is the difference between styles, does martial arts really work” I immediately remind myself of some very simple facts before I answer. If the question is related to their child, I then imagine that child as an adult, and how what I say next will contribute to the disposition and mind set of that child becoming an adult.

How, being a member in a village is about providing a craft, and in my case that craft is teaching martial arts. That to be a good member of my society I must be responsible for how I contribute my craft and sometimes answer with what is not popular. That my answer must not be motivated by profit, or ego, but by the integrity of the very thing I teach.

When in reference to an adult, I remind myself of the ‘Achilles heel’ of human nature that makes things that are good for us difficult to embrace, and the things that are not, easy. How adults often ask for information about health and well being in terms of an excuse, rather than a reason to take action. It is this flaw that a good salesman appeals to for profit, and it is this reason why quality is easy when manufactured quickly, instead of being aspired to over time.

The only real difference between styles of martial arts is found in the caring of the teacher. A good martial arts teacher is no different than a good person of any vocation; their quality is not known by what they show and tell, it is determined by the commitment to their craft over time.

I know a man who is a father. He once told me that he had lost control of his son, who was at the time 18 years old. All his son wanted to do was spend money, update his “face book”, “twitter other kids”, play his video games, and go out and return when ever he wanted. He was rude to his father. When his father would return from work he would ask his son if he had found a job, his son would reply in a string of four letter words, or refer to his father as an idiot for asking.

One day the father in a state of anger (and caring) went into his son’s room, cut a hole in the wall, and cut off the power. Now when the boy wanted to use his electronics he had to ask his father for an extension cord.

This man, a caring father, who has worked and struggled to provide for his son, asked me, “what else could he do?” I answered in a humorous manner, “you should drop him off at the nearest and biggest media firm”. It appears that they have more influence over your son than you, that he respects what they think more than you, and that he listens to them more than you”. “So, why not drop him off with them and have them finish raising him?”

The father replied in a serious manner and said. “That is a good idea - it is true - the clothing companies, the digital media firms, T.V. shows, even signs on the side of a bus stop have more power over my kid then me - so what is the point?”. I said, “That is the question that has been asked a million times when facing an enemy that seems so strong that you feel powerless to over come them”. “It is this very question that is responsible for the development of Martial Arts and all the various means of training that encompass it.”

“Even martial arts today has largely succumbed to the enemy you fight over your son with”. “Flashy tournaments, trophies, easy to get ranks, Yutube videos, even martial arts has become seduced by the easy to get, profit industry - the answer is and always has been an inconvenient one - and that is to learn to listen to the guiding principles that are whispered from with in you - and then to strengthen your constitution through training to act from what that voice tells you”.

He asked, ‘so how do I do that?” I replied, “to defeat the enemy that is winning your son you must do the most unselfish and difficult task of your life - you must do what the enemy would never do, and that is to train yourself to be the example that you wish to see in your child”. And then he asked, “Will martial arts help?”

The way is in training to know what you feel, not just what you think. Benefiting and getting ahead from another’s lose, the beating of another, the accumulation of profit and popularity is the enemy martial arts lessons have evolved to undo in students for thousands of years. It is this enemy that continues to put the world at odds against itself.

It is most difficult today, more than ever, to recognize value and honesty against the backdrop of competition and all the shades associated with it, especially when even the most caring among us must endeavor into the “grey” in order to reach out and help.

Champions are not awarded a trophy for beating another, nor are they recognized by the roar of an applause. Champions are those that go un-noticed everyday being responsible for their word, their living, their craft. Champions are those that take action, those that have lived lives that gave more than they took.

A champion is the baker that slips a free loaf of bread to a struggling family even though he is on hard times himself. It is the person that on the coldest day helps a stranger change his tire on the side of the road even though it makes him late for work. It is the mother that works three jobs to raise her kids, even when they take her for granted. It is the anonymous actions done everyday, for no other reason than to bring light into the world despite the cost.

If you have ever wondered what martial arts is, and it’s purpose today, know that you will not learn about it from Youtube, Face-book, a video game or a movie. Know that its mysteries give them selves to a very few over many years, and that a secret so powerful can never be owned and sold by any corporation, media firm or sport. It is a rare thing that a student on the path gives to them selves over time.

The way is in training!!!

The Tree That Changed the World

Source: http://www.miller-mccune.com/science-environment/the-tree-that-changed-the-world-11656/

Astronomers for the longest time have regarded Venus as the planet most resembling Earth. Having almost the exact size as Earth and being almost as close to the sun has led many to call it Earth’s twin.

The clouds always covering the Venusian landscape are another compelling example of Venus’ affinity to Earth. Pioneering astronomer Svante Arrhenius hypothesized great rains pouring from these clouds nurtured lush rain forests below. But when various space probes penetrated the Venusian atmosphere, this belief burst. Astronomers found an inferno rather than a tropical paradise.

Here they discovered the ultimate greenhouse effect: Although the carbon dioxide-laden atmosphere allowed sunlight to pass through, when the solar rays hit the surface of Venus and changed into heat waves, they could not escape the carbon dioxide cover. So the heat had nowhere to go and accumulated at the surface, where temperatures exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Earth has as much carbon dioxide as Venus. But instead of the gas blanketing the sky as happened on Venus, much of the carbon dioxide on Earth has been locked up inside and on the surface. This has made all the difference in the story of the two planets — one, a heaven bountiful with life, the other a hellish place where nothing animate as we understand it can survive.

Credit much of this carbon dioxide transfer from the atmosphere to the land to the rapid global spread 400 million years ago of the first (or among the first) true trees, Archaeopteris.
Its dense canopy photosynthetically absorbed carbon dioxide. As its fernlike leaves shed, they would have given back the carbon dioxide to the air — had the tree’s deep and powerful root system not broken down rock through which it dug into soil, where chemical reactions eventually locked the carbon dioxide into sediment. Mud buried much of the remaining dead leaves, branches, twigs, trunks and roots.

With the passing of millions of years under great pressure deep in the bowels of the earth, the plant material ended up as rich beds of fossils and coal. Once again, natural forces denied returning to the atmosphere what the trees had devoured.

Archaeopteris prepared the soil for smaller plants to flourish and assist in removing carbon dioxide from the air. Its root system turned rock into rich, soft earth. Their leaves shielded the newly formed soil from erosive rain and wind, and fertilized it as they fell and decomposed. Debris from the growing number of plants filled waterways, promoting plankton, which also feeds on atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Buried by sediments these consumers of carbon dioxide could not release this greenhouse gas to the air. The plunging carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused temperatures on land to drop. The change made it possible for large creatures to amble about the land without overheating. They no longer had to remain immersed in water — which heats more slowly than land surfaces, and which also better conducts heat away from animals than does air — to maintain healthy body temperatures.

At the same time, declining amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide enlarged the ozone layer above the Earth. Such protection shields land animals from lethal doses of ultraviolet radiation. Previously, creatures of any significant size had to remain underwater for protection from the unfiltered sun’s harmful rays. Of equal importance, the injection of more oxygen into the air by Archaeopteris and smaller plants provided enough of the life-giving gas to make it possible for animals to breathe.

Scientists find charcoal for the first time during the reign of Archaeopteris, suggesting that with the trees’ appearance came sufficient amounts of oxygen to support combustion.

As logs and large branches started to clutter the bottom of shallow waterways, fishlike creatures with limbs could better propel themselves through the plant debris than those with fins. The increasing organic debris finding its way into waterways would rob them of their oxygen as it decomposed. Creatures that could breathe as well as walk could escape sure death by making their ascent to land where a relatively mild climate, sufficient oxygen, protection from ultraviolet radiation, and plenty of food provided by plants made survival possible.

So began the chain of events that has permitted vertebrates to flourish on land so that 400 million years later I can write this, and you can read it.

While Archaeopteris is now extinct, nature kept buried the remains of ancient organic debris of algae, plankton, plants and trees. Their entombment helped keep the carbon dioxide they captured through photosynthesis out of the atmosphere.

But people started to dig up and burn the early trees, ancient plants and plankton first as coal and then as oil and natural gas. The seemingly unlimited availability of long-buried organic material, aptly named fossil fuels, ushered in a new technological era qualitatively separating those living since the middle of the 19th century from the rest of history. This new age of unprecedented growth, the Industrial Revolution, also accelerated the rate of deforestation as growing markets and population require more and more clearing for agriculture, livestock and biofuels, and the consumption of trees for fuel and for timber.

True, deforestation has occurred throughout world history. Plato, for example, saw deforestation turn a fertile piece of Attica into rock. He compared this butchered slice of earth to a carcass stripped of all its meat with only the bones remaining.

“What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left,” he wrote in Critias. “… There are some mountains which have nothing but food for bees, but they had trees not very long ago …”

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Plato’s compelling description of a particular place in Greece has become universal.

The growing loss of trees has allowed ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide to return the to atmosphere. So have the engines of commerce and industry by burning fossil fuels. Scientific investigations have proven that since the beginning of the industrial revolution carbon dioxide levels have increased as well as the temperature of the Earth.

Unless drastic changes occur socially and technologically, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide will enter the atmosphere as the burning of fossil fuels continues to accelerate along with deforestation. Deforestation alone accounts for the release of more greenhouse gases than do all the vehicles throughout the world!

Bad forestry practices help hasten the pace of carbon released into the atmosphere. Following a clear-cut, for example, the formerly forested soil releases tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In North America, for example, 60 percent of all carbon resides within the earth of the forest floor. Replanting does capture carbon dioxide as new organic matter grows. The losses of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere continue to exceed the removal of carbon in the replanted clear-cut for 15 to 25 years depending on the type of tree, climate and soil. Then the trees and the soil underneath start to store more carbon dioxide than released.

Conversely, forests can become a weapon in our arsenal to break global warming if foresters practice enlightened stewardship. Sustainable forestry will need to become the standard on all forest lands globally. Replanting formerly forested land helps if trees are not selectively harvested until the seedlings reach an age where they have taken in more carbon dioxide than has been exhaled. Trees cut down in cycles of 50, 75 and 100 years store only 38 percent, 44 percent and 51 percent, respectively, of the carbon that an old-growth stand retains.

Indeed, trees can play a vital role in reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide. A recent study shows that saving the Amazon can be a cheaper and faster way to mitigate the consequences of global warming than replacing coal-fired power plants with renewable energy.

Responsible Eating, The Canadian Way

Despite a relatively short growing season, Ontario is blessed with some of the best farmland in the world. You would think that as a result, we would be able to grow the vast majority of our own food right here.

However, that is not at all the case. As a result of (until now) cheap and abundant fuel supplies, it has become more feasible economically for grocery stores (read large corporations) to ship in their produce several thousand kilometers away rather than to have it produced right here in Ontario. It’s a pretty sad fact, but the average distance that produce travels to your supermarket here in North America is more than 4,000 km. And this is considered “normal?”

In addition, urban sprawl is eating up more and more valuable farmland every year. Drive anywhere in and around the GTA (and even areas farther north) and you will see subdivisions, big box stores and shopping plazas springing up like lawn weeds everywhere you look.

And we call this “Progress.”

There is also the question of the quality of the food itself. Food shipped in from thousands of kilometers away ripens on the way here and on the store shelves, not naturally in the farmer’s field as it is supposed to. Thus, the vast majority of all the nutrients you would normally get from the fruit or vegetable is simply not there.

In addition, genetically modified food (or “frankenfood” as it is also called) abounds in our supermarkets, and we still don’t know what effects consuming these have on the human body.

Contrary to popular belief, agriculture in the 21st century is nothing more than the act of turning petroleum fuel into food. For every calorie of food produced, more than 10 calories of petroleum inputs are used. This includes vast amounts of fertilizers (made from natural gas) pesticides and herbicides (made from petroleum) and fuel used to power all the farm implements and also to transport the food thousands of miles to their destination.

Very simply put, this is NOT sustainable, and will come to a crashing halt once petroleum prices reach higher levels.

And we call this “Progress.”

We have to get back to thinking local, supporting our farmers and protecting the farmland that we have left. It is almost beyond comprehension that in our society today, farmers (who provide us with our sustenance) are forced to scrape and scrabble for a living, barely getting by; and on the other hand, lawyers and bankers get six figure salaries (plus bonuses) without ever having to get their hands dirty.

You tell me who has a more valuable or honorable profession?

This is not progress.

This is insanity.

We do have a choice;make a decision to support your local farmer. Supporting your local farmer is an investment in not just his family, but your own!

The Way

No matter how much we speak of it or philosophize it, we cannot hide behind our finger nor be limited by it. Things will change as they always do.

The majority of people do not understand, nor trust something out side their "box" of reality. You can shout, push, pull on and lead an animal with less intellect than a human and get better results sooner, and with less antagonism.

Because humans are "sentient" they have awareness, which is the source of man’s ego and his liberation. This awareness is double sided, and is also known as right and left attention, which we are all responsible for. One side separates a person from†the truth of reality by accepting a "box" to live in; this side sees cost before value, it is the side that can and is seduced. The other side tunes us to reality; this side requires work, and it sees only true value and cannot be seduced. Martial Arts is about taking responsibility for our attention, our gift, by working and training to live in balance with it. And this requires time and is difficult, but also extremely rewarding.

In Martial Arts (Chi Qong, Tai-Chi, Meditation, Karate and so on), the way is in the training, not merely in the philosophy. The training does not give a student the answers but rather the right questions. It is through repetition of basics, fundamental movement that a student becomes familiar with the stranger inside and begins to build the most important relationship of their life.

And yes, it is hard, but fulfilling.

Things change when we change. Responsibility for our "gift" is the reason why martial arts and energy work was created. Balance is perpetual work, which is the nature of life on all levels. To be human does not exempt you from this fact.

In the end, I suspect we humans are destined to bring about our own destruction before rising out of what falls; it is our karma to do so. We are destructive, it is how we learn, and one day will be called "the time before".

There will be a reckoning, and no wall of money, no matter how high or how low will protect us from this day. Those who pass through this time will build the cradle of mans’ new nature from what those in the past and today protect and pass on in the training. What is happening is meant to. We are destined to live out our nature until we destroy it and manifest a new one. It is the karma of man; this is the time of his forging and we are witnessing the fall from which he will ultimately rise from.

Those few who were alive in the past that trained their attention to see beyond their present nature are responsible for the forward passing of the key to mans’ survival and growth; our ancestors, those who have gone before, our parents. Those few are the "masters", the real teachers who bequeath the lessons we train today in our dojos, classrooms, parks and homes. Those few who guard the light that shows the way. The single individual that shines bright among all the rust, those who live what they teach, and teach what they live.

It is our responsibility and our karma, the few who truly set forth on the "path," to take their place and pass the torch (the tools) that will be needed at the end of mans present mind set in order for him to take the next step in his/our evolution.

The last 10 000 years have been a progression towards self destruction, which interestingly has also been the material that has developed Man’s knowledge of himself, and the energy that begat him and all things. All great books, thousands written on the nature of man, discuss and teach the discovery of mans' higher self through his lesser. It is our karma to learn from our mistakes.

Martial Arts and all its facets were and are developed from the flames of mans’ present nature in order to build a new one. A tool has never been made for which there is no use, and therefore martial arts exist because it needs to.

What we are experiencing is beautiful…. and scary. Now we live as the caterpillar; soon we will become the butterfly. All things change, and what is happening now is just man's change, perpetuated in equal proportion to his intellect before his new awakening.

This is why martial arts cannot be sold, commercialized or bottled. It is why some men (a very few) are destined to pass on this "key' the "knowledge", the very ark of tools that prove that we are heading in a direction of positive growth, even if the majority manipulate the facts for profit.

Those who would see only profit are not mentors, teachers or senseis among other names. Though they do have value, it is limited to nothing more in the end than the sides of a river bank that frame the spring of real knowledge towards its intended goal. They have served their purpose for thousands of years, profiting greatly from, war, famine, health, education, entertainment and housing. But without them there would be no need for training or faith. The best in us would go unnoticed. With out the dark how would we know the light?

Everything has its purpose.

Our future is in the "way" of training.

Make no more excuses and seek not to be entertained. Know that all the materials you have been given, your awareness, your feelings, your thoughts, your body, is for a reason. Take the hammer that knocks you down in all your attempts to heal and use it to transform, take it with both hands and use it to forge the true you, take what has been given to you and polish the rust from it, know the delightful labor of the artist, and realize the promise made to you before you were born.

In spirit,

Sensei J. R. Bassels

EASTER ISLAND - BACK TO THE FUTURE?

Below is a copy of a speech written by my son, Alexander, a grade six student. If the young people can "get it," then so should everyone else. An important message here, one worth listening to and sharing with friends and family.

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Easter Island

By Alexander L.
Grade 6

When someone says “Easter Island,” what is the first thing that comes to mind? Most people think of the large, strange looking stone statues that cover the landscape. These remnants of a once great society, how did they get there, and what do they represent? More importantly, what lessons can we learn from them?

Easter Island is the most remote habitable piece of land in the world. The total area of the island is 66 square miles. The closest land in the coast of Chile 2,300 miles to the east and the Pitcairn islands 1,300 miles to the west.

Easter Island used to be a thriving society that seemed unstoppable. Now it is deserted. What happened to those people and their civilization?

Easter Island was discovered in 1722 by the European explorer Jacob Roggeveen. It took him 17 days to sail from the coast of Chile to Easter Island. He was amazed that the Polynesians greeting him could have gotten there on poorly made, rickety old canoes. Roggeveen described the vessels as “…frail in regards to use, for their canoes are put together with small planks and light inner timbers.” Not the best for a 1,300 mile voyage.

The first Easter Islanders were Polynesian. They arrived on the island around 900 A.D. What they found was a lush, subtropical paradise with many trees and millions of nesting birds.

The location of the island made coastal fishing impossible. Deep water dolphin hunting was the only fishing that was available to the islanders. This required the use of big, sturdy boats made of heavy wood.

There were uncountable numbers of nesting birds on the island before humans arrived, but they were soon wiped out due to over hunting and predation from the rats that the settlers had brought with them. The Polynesians brought chickens to the island which, along with the dolphin, was their only source of meat.

As the population grew to a peak of about 30,000 people, resources became scarce. The statues that cover the island are not only of religious significance, but were also symbols of status and wealth. Each of the several tribes on the island competed with one another to see who could have the biggest and most statues.

These “Maoui” as they are called, had to be transported many miles from stone quarries using tremendous amounts of wood. This, along with a growing population that needed more firewood and more farmland, soon led to an ecological disaster.

Before they realized it, every last tree had been cut down.

With no trees, the topsoil was soon blown away and destroyed their farmland. No trees meant no wood to build boats used to hunt dolphins, or to even escape to another island.

As a result their society collapsed, and most of the islanders starved to death. They even resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Of the 30,000 people, only about 1,500 survived on the island when Europeans discovered it in 1722.

You may think that the Easter Islanders were stupid, and one can’t help but wonder what was going through the mind of the person who cut down the last tree that led to the downfall of their people?

Yet, aren’t we doing the same thing today? We are using all of our resources in a similar way that the Easter Islanders did – not thinking about what trouble this may cause in the future.

Like them, we believe that there is an infinite surplus of everything, things will never end, and nothing can ever possibly run out.

In actual fact, we are exactly like Easter Island on a global scale, and like them, we have nowhere else to go if we destroy our ecosystem. We are stranded on this small speck in the middle of the universe.

We have to take care of our home before it’s too late.

One day in the future, some historian may look upon our monuments and wonder, how could they have been so stupid to not see what lay ahead? Perhaps they may also wonder, what was going through the mind of the person that pumped the last barrel of oil from the ground.

However, the most important question is what can each of us do today to prevent us all from sharing the same fate as Easter Island?

Price vs. Quality

The Wal-Mart Model of Self-Destruction: Lowest Prices, Always (January 24, 2010)

The Wal-Mart Model of Self-Destruction is simple: low prices are all that matters. The devolution of the American citizen into a self-destructing consumer starts with the devolution of a value system into an monomaniacal obsession: "the only thing that matters is the lowest price," regardless of the true costs or consequences.

The propaganda of marketing has so hollowed out American culture that most citizens cannot recall a time that "Consumerism" wasn't the unofficial religion of American society. And what is the First Commandment of "consumerist religion"? The lowest price is all that matters.
Quality doesn't matter; we're going to move/throw it away anyway.

Who made it doesn't matter. The idea that you might pay more to keep your neighbor employed is akin to worshipping the Devil: all that matters is the lowest price.

The hidden costs to "the lowest price" don't matter; the environmental costs (conveniently passed off to the developing world) don't matter, nor do the costs of subsidizing the purveyors of "the lowest prices, always."

The health consequences of consuming low-quality food don't matter, just the low price.
The mechanisms used to obtain the lowest price don't matter; dynamite the fish, we don't care, just get us the lowest prices. Chop down the rain forests, we don't care, just get us the lowest price hardwoords and cheapest beef.

The consequence of this mono-mania is that all other costs and consequences are ignored/not priced in unless government shoves it down the retailer/manufacturers/consumers' throats.
I recently helped a friend research buying a small portable washing machine--the kind for small apartments which can be rolled to the kitchen sink and connected to the kitchen faucet, then returned to storage elsewhere.

There are few manufacturers due to the small market: Haier, the Chinese manufacturer, sells a model for under $300. Bosch (German) sells one for around $1,200, and Kenmore (Sears) sells a Whirlpool-made model for about $700.

My friend wanted to buy an appliance that would last, and one made in the U.S., and I recommended the Kenmore based on my own experience with our 5-year old (U.S. made) front-loading Kenmore washer. So we go to the Sears outlet to look at the portable washers and discover they're made in Brazil. In other words, there are no household appliances of this type made in the U.S. or even in North America. China and Germany make portable household washers but the U.S. does not.

The sales clerk, who told us she'd worked there for over 12 years, then informed us that customers had been complaining about Whirlpool's switch from an old-style dial for turning the washer on and off to a digital display which had the nasty habit of failing after a year or two.
Online complaints posted by other customers revealed that the portable washers' digital control boards failed often-- one gent said he'd bought three in three years--and the repair cost $375 each time.

In other words, quality doesn't matter. The digital display probably contains a few dollars or less of actual electronics; yet when it fails, it costs more than the Chinese-made washer to have it repaired.

As a result of this sharp decline in quality and high probability of costly repairs, the sales clerk recommended my friend buy the $129 extended warranty.

So the U.S. brand (made in Brazil), with the apparently necessary extended warranty and California state excise tax (almost 9%) is roughly triple the cost of the Chinese appliance, which cannot be serviced should it break down because Haier has no local service center.

Note to Whirlpool/Sears: do you actually read your customer feedback? If you did, perhaps you'd offer two models: a U.S.-made one with a mechanical dial which costs X dollars and carries a 10-year warranty because you manufacture it to standards you had 20 years ago, or perhaps as recently as 5 years ago, and a second low-quality one with a guaranteed-to-fail digital control board made overseas and shipped to the U.S. for X dollars (presumably lower than the quality appliance but still twice the cost of the Haier.)

Now enable consumer feedback on your two models and see which one achieves a profitable reputation and sales history.

If no one buys the higher-priced, high quality appliance which actually costs much less over its lifetime than cheap throwaways, then the American "consumer" deserves what he/she gets: low quality and high lifetime costs (i.e. everything must be repaired or replaced constantly).
If you can no longer manufacture an appliance that lasts for 20 years (and hence it is safe to warranty it for 10 years), then you deserve to go out of business.

An obsession with "the lowest price" without regard for any other issues, consequences or hidden costs is an act of self-destruction. We as a nation have absorbed the Wal-Mart model of self-destruction, and so we blindly seek the lowest price even as it guts the environment, guts local industry, guts civic centers and ends up costing us more once the total lifetime costs are tallied (all those taxpayer subsidies for "cheap" goods and retailers and high life-cycle costs for crappy goods which don't last.)

Everything we buy or don't buy is a "vote" for or against quality and low lifetime costs.
Is "convenience" and "low prices" really all that's important? Isn't it odd that we spend considerably less on food as a percentage of income than we did 30 years ago but our health has deteriorated and people are complaining about the "high cost of food" even as they rarely eat at home any more? Are "low prices" really that wonderful for the nation? Or did we "get what we paid for," i.e. low quality for low prices, with extremely high-cost consequences of that monomanical obsession with the lowest upfront price?

Maybe we should require that all the costs associated with the item be included in the retail price. Maybe we'd realize the "lowest price" is actually the costliest option we could possibly have taken.

A Crude Awakening

One of the prevalent topics on this blog has been the prospect of Peak Oil, a topic that I feel is one of the most pressing and dangerous issues of our day. Not only is our current energy situation important vis a vis our daily survival, but also our consumption of fossil fuels is the driving factor behind climate change and global warming.

Below is a documentary entitled "A Crude Awakening." It is an excellent piece on Peak Oil and fossil fuel. If you don't know what Peak Oil is, I urge you to watch this in its entirety, and be prepared to be shocked.



Part two, click here

Part three, click here

Part four, click here

Part five, click here

Part six, click here

Part seven, click here

Part eight, click here

Part nine, click here