Rocky Mountain High
It's springtime in the Rockies and everything is awakening from hibernation. Greys and browns turn green and it's time to put seeds in the ground as well as peoples heads. Time to get Outside and I just happened to be looking through a magazine of the same name- wow- adventure is quite the industry,isn't it?
Tanned, healthy young people charging around the most remote regions of the globe in kayaks, on bicycles and surfboards, skis and hang-gliders, and of course, none of this is cheap, home-made equipment. Some of the bikes cost more than I make in a year. The magazine is also crammed with ads for rough and tumble vehicles to get you to all these far away destinations. The guide services and resorts that cater to this hard-core crowd have a very exclusive niche and one senses that brands mean everything.
There appears to be a slight eco-Pachamama-veneer to it butit comes with a wink and a nod.They may use a few recycled plastic bags to make that fleece jacket but it is really about big children and toys, super expensive, high-tech, status conferring toys and itineraries that are bound to leave a hefty "footprint". Nature assumes the role of dominatrix, slapping you around for your sensual enjoyment and the ultimate excitement -porn is the list of those killed by mountains or rivers or avalanches or giant waves in the service of exalting ME and what I can do.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that people still go outside but there is something freaky about the way it gets turned into such a competitive, egoistic affair.Do something cool and don't write a story about it. Remember the conditions your sherpa lives in and understand why.
"Hey everybody, look at me! I climbed the very last glacier!"
posted by troutsky @ 7:04 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
"Hey everybody, look at me! I climbed the very last glacier!"
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Indeed.
Big news has to be the Arizona lw, though. Man, if a white Bagger were stopped and asked to produce his papers with no probable cause we'd be getting a lecture on losing our freedoms.
Meanwhile, you try to explain that a lot of those folks are just Mexican corn farmers who were driven out of farming by NAFTA.
Gotta make sure Monsanto, Cargill, Archer-Daniels all produce enough profit to satisfy the shareholders and put enough high fructose corn syrup into the food supply to give everyone diabetes ... and then the Baggers start screaming about health costs.
Very circular and very depressing. But they can market anything ... corn syrup or a hip environmental movement.
"They may use a few recycled plastic bags to make that fleece jacket but it is really about big children and toys, super expensive, high-tech, status conferring toys and itineraries that are bound to leave a hefty "footprint"."
It is a continuation of the same story... domination of the dominatrix.... take mother nature, put some expensive lipstick and high heels on her and then FUCK her until one of you dies!
It is due to our loss of attachment to nature that occurred with the developing consciousness of individuality, and eventually maturing into the cult of individualism in the West, that we have made our "return" (what a joke) to nature an experiment in ego building.
The mags, the glossies, the cloths, the equipment... it is all part of the spectacle of the curriculum of the West, as it becomes further entrenched in its own juices. We are drowning in our own self-adulation, and can no longer envision a world in which we are not paramount.
I am amused by the person who seems to cross Marx and Mazzola Commercials.
If it seems like Greens are full of it they are. Most of them are commies who are recycled.
I prefer the classic outdoorsman. If there ever becomes a commie season I am signing up. Commies should be caught with snares and then water boarded for fun. As they have few kids we need to preserve them for future generations so it is catch and release.
Simple commie calls are "evil Jews", "socialized medicine", "Tax the middle class" and "grants for worthless scolarship".
Beak, the topic was our relationship to nature, not George Bush's tax policy.
Anyway, do you have an opinion on the volume of top soil used to produce high fructose corn syrup which is a huge negative in many diets? Would we be much better off promoting alternatives or do you favor corporate carte blanche?
Ducky, I stubbornly cling to the belief that Corporate America will put the kabosh to any kind of Palin/Arpaio run for real power.Tea Party porn has been good for ratings but Tyson needs Mexicans.
While it is depressing in a way, it is also a sign that things are shifting. Chomsky writes that the center cannot hold but it may be the opportunity to demolish the right once and for all.(I woke up optimistic!)
Kultur, It is interesting to see the reaction to Camerons Avatar movie. I also cling to the belief that "individual-ism" can be exorcised over time with frontal assault on cultural-political-economic fronts.
Beak: I can't believe you missed the opportunity to mention my picture holding a big fish as hypocritical Look AT ME-ism. I don't give you that many gimmes.Wake up.
Yeah trout, a rig blows up in the gulf and they can't shut off the spill. I wonder if Sister Sarah has anything to say beyond "drill baby drill".
Well, right now they are focused on the Goldman Sachs hearings. Criminal what we are doing to that company's reputation.
... but they can't quite accept the evidence that's all around them.
Cue the Beak in 1, 2 ...
Troutsky
Cameron is just another example of ME-ism; he is concerned only about how good he looks. A fake, a phony. It's in the blood of all Americans, of all Westerners and most civilized peoples.
"I also cling to the belief that "individual-ism" can be exorcised over time with frontal assault on cultural-political-economic fronts."
Don't cling too hard, or hold your breath too long. This is not a simple issue to overcome; it is something that has transformed the history of consciousness on the planet, and politic-cultural-economic reform will not change it back... see my position at link below.
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2829265
It's the nature of humanity to try to conquer nature. That has been the source of human progress. I do concede nature gets revenge at times.
OT: I have a post at my blog, about Sonia's blog apparently was deleted by Google, as well as all of her comments.
Troutsky
You are a harmless simpleton and like most commies full of it. I prefer to focus the words on the soulless Renegade Testicle or Prof.
Mazola Marxist.
Sorry, but I have done plenty on your exploitation of fish and higher life forms. I think we should have a commie season to spare the animals.
I can see it now. I got a MA Stalinist or a NY Maoist. Of course we need to release them after a nice round of water boarding. We should also brand them for identification purposes.
The environmental movement is a communist scam. A great slogan is "out of work or your job is abroad thank a commie".
Sandy, My take on your excellent piece ( and your theory in general) is that transformation occurred and that therefore it may occur again. You locate this dramatic rupture temporally at a particular juncture, one of material re-ordering of the mode of production. There is then a sequential paradigmatic shift in the cultural,political and economic spheres leading to our current predicament.
My argument then is if this indeed happened once, it can be re-created. If it is precipitated by a rupture in the mode of production ( initially hunter-gatherer to domestication) then this gives us a clue on how to proceed. If we assume the first rupture occurred during an age of scarcity then I also think it can be argued a much more sustainably abundant mode of production waits just beyond our fingertips and this new mode could also usher in an age not of hierarchical control, but egalitarian, plural political and economic democracy.
It is telling that you label the domination model a "western curriculum". There may be remnants of eastern "mindfulness" which can facilitate the next shift.So I am not "holding my breath" but learning how to breathe differently! ( decent metaphor, no?)
Troutsky
You are quite correct, it was tied in significant ways to a change in the mode of production... or if you will, in the means of food acquisition. So, I think you have a legitimate point here that the next change could also be instigated by such a shift in food acquisition strategies.
But, your assumption also has some problems... It belies the same cause and effect mentality of historical reasoning, grounded in scientific logistic, that has led to the reconstruction of consciousness over the past several hundred generations. It is a calculative, contestual mentality... the same one which underlies the greed of American capitalism, as well as the dictatorial paternalism of Stalinism and other fascist regimes.
So, to be brief, I still don't quite see a way through this maze to a new world, until we solve the challenges that this consciousness has engendered.
Although... I do think the Eastern mindfulness of, say, Taoism... maybe a step in the right direction!
This problem of consciousness reminds me of the little woven toys where the harder you pull the tighter it grasps your fingers.
I'm trying to think of a better metaphor for the futility of trying to reverse course and recapture something nostalgically (where all this tea party anxiety comes from) or just allowing ( actively) history to "unfold" as a sort of transcendence beyond politics( the Marxist failure).
We discussed Chomskys worry that "the center cannot hold" last night and on the way home I thought NOTHING ever "holds".The dialectic hasn't died. it just smells bad ( to paraphrase Zappa again.)
My way of dealing with it is as follows... life's a bitch, and then you die!
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