Rob Bettmann

My mind is in several places right now. I’m building my own business, which involves diverse work. I’m working on Arts Advocacy day stuff, including research and planning in preparation for the day: March 31. I’m working on a dance show – All Good Men – which I’ve blogged about before. And at the same time I’m trying to get my head back into what was my masters thesis (which will be out soon as a book) cause I need to get a few articles together so I can, eventually, make money off of the publication.

The basic idea I’m working on is an environmental idea. It’s about how we understand the natural world. Do you ever think that western medicine is kind of messed up, the way it treats the body as a machine? Lots of people think that way — it’s why holistic medicine has gotten so big. Lots of people also think the way we relate to nature is whack.

The way we relate to nature, and the way we relate to the body are one and the same.

Does this matter? It’s an idea. Not a unique idea. But an idea. How we relate to the body is representative of how we relate to the rest of the world.

I remember in Macro class as an undergrad discussing savings rates. We were looking at (even back then) rising deficit, and trade deficit, and how individual savings patterns are mirrored in government spending. My teacher was saying that while hypothetically we don’t want lots of debt, the last thing we want is for people to ever start spending less. While there is an ‘ideal’ savings rate, and a ‘safe’ savings rate, if people ever start saving more they are spending less – which is bad for the economy.

You can have a clear idea. You can know how it works, but then you can also see and decide what you should do. Not exactly sure where I’m going with this…. I wrote in an earlier post that looking at graphs of rising deficits is like looking at graphs of rising green house gasses. It’s really easy to feel like they don’t matter. Cause they don’t right now. Social security, greenhouse gasses, nuclear war…

One of the arguments against Kyoto, and raising cafe (fuel) standards is that ‘we can’t afford it’. Or, ‘they can’t afford it’. At some point, if all these theories are right, we will pay for it. Probably more all at once than we would like. It’s a bit like shoving a whole bunch of tunafish in a pillow. Sooner or later, you’re gonna have a really stinky mess.

It’s amazing to me that they are saying maybe this latest stimulus won’t be enough. Enough for what? Enough for whom? We live in a world that is constantly achieving new balance points. It never stops. Like our bodies, moving with our breath, and our hearts, moving our blood every moment we’re alive, the world moves.

We know we can’t afford to spend the way we are. We know we can’t use energy the way we are. There is very simple economic data that tells us this. The market evolves, and when the internal combustion engine develops, the people who make carriages are screwed. Here, and now, we can choose to let the economy crash, soundly, and with some grace, or we can….

Sooner or later we pay for stupid decisions. “Tomorrow is for tonight’s forgiveness” I wrote in a bad poem a few years ago. Clear ideas are guideposts that can help us know how it all works. But even if we do know how it works, there is still the matter of how it is actually gonna work. I appreciated Warren Buffet’s statement a few months ago that, “when others are scared be bold. when others are bold, be scared.” But I think maybe he was just working for the fed when he wrote it.

Every four or eight years we get a new leader. Change has not happened. We had an election and the right guy won. Change might have happened, but it’s too early to know. We all have to pay more attention now, not less, so that the President can do what needs to be done. One good way to stay in tune with the new administration is on their website. It’s new, but looks like it could be a real leadership tool.

Suggested usage: press play, wait 30 seconds, read the post.

George W. Bush: U.S. President (2001 – 2009)

Employment and Earnings, 1998 – 2008 Reported by U.S. Dept of Labor Statistics

U.S. Unemployment, 1998 – 2008 Reported by U.S. Dept of Labor Statistics

Bump visible in both graphs is the war expenditure economic bump.

U.S. Intelligence Gathering Policy – reported on ABCnews.

Karl: And on KSM, one of those tactics, of course, widely reported was waterboarding. And that seems to be a tactic we no longer use. Even that you think was appropriate?

Cheney: I do.

US Casualties – Iraq War (2003-present) reported on wikipedia

Combat: 3,681
Total: 4,221
Wounded: 43,993

Death of the Kyoto Protocol, reported on About.com

First article

George Bush made campaign promises in 2000 to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. However, in 2001, George Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto accords as one of the first acts of his presidency. Bush dismissed Kyoto Protocol as too costly, describing it as “an unrealistic and ever-tightening straitjacket.”

Second article

Under its own provisions, the Kyoto Protocol cannot take effect unless and until it gains ratification by those industrialized countries responsible for at least 55 percent of the world’s total annual production of greenhouse gasses.

Russia puts out 17 percent of those emissions; the United States 36 percent, and the United States has already withdrawn former President Clinton’s provisional ratification of the Protocol.

Income Distribution - reported on wikipedia (an old problem, worse. better since the hedge fund dive, but worse.)

and on, and on, and on…..

Turns out I know at least one person in the new administration… Best of luck to all of the Obamanauts: we’re with you, and we’re counting on you.

I just found out that an idea that I had in 1996 will now be a book. My Masters thesis, which had been my undergraduate thesis, is being published. Here is a brief summary of the idea:

The fight to protect our natural environment can be usefully connected to a reconsideration of the human body. The body is more than corpse, and more than adjunct to the mind. Somatic Ecology states that there is a parallel between the way that we relate to our bodies, and the ways that we interact with the natural world. In fact, how we relate to our bodies is representative of how we relate to the natural world.

Somatic Ecology states that if we want to influence how we relate to the natural world, the most direct means to do so is not to take long walks in the woods, but to invite ourselves to encounter our own human nature – our bodies. Finally, Somatic Ecology argues that the environmental crisis is caused not by too much knowledge, but by too little, and that dance can be used to increase our human knowledge.

We are taught today that the only way to “know anything is through the use of the mind. The complete devaluation of empathic, embodied, sensual knowledge in polite society has sealed over the natural in our selves. What some have called the mechanization of the body (see: modern medicine) is part and parcel of the development of modern society (see: skyscrapers and airports.) Challenging the domination of science over true reason requires challenging the domination of mind over body. The first step is to validate, seek, and encourage somatic knowledge.

Empathy is at the core of somatic understanding, and encompasses the feelings by which we know life. We usually think of empathy as somehow a shared feeling – that one feels empathy for another. Empathy is actually a solitary experience. Its importance to the study of the body, and the natural world, is that empathy is the core of knowing. Empathy preceeds understanding, and follows awareness. These feelings and understandings are not predicated upon study, research, or science, but they do form the foundation for religion, culture, and even technology. Our exclusion of “feelings” from “rational” debate is not a symbol of the environmental problem, but a root cause.

Though we act as if we live in a rational world, we actually live in an empathic, lively world that simply appears to be dominated by “reason.” As we come to fully grasp the terrors caused by un-mitigated reason it will serve us to explore what steps we might take to reverse them.

Environmentalism at its core is not motivated by statistics, but by empathy. It is more similar to religion than science. In tracing a history of Thoreau, Pinchot, Muir, Leopold, McKibben (a history of thinking about environment) we discover this. As long as environmentalists place statistics between their argument and the audience, they weaken the ability to create change. To fight this battle with limited humanity is to fight a losing battle.

In this modern world of freeways and cubicles, it will be very difficult to move from an understanding of the need for body knowledge, to a place of greater somatic awareness. For this journey one needs guides and one needs pathways. Dance may be that pathway. In silence, without words, we can find where we exist with the rest of the world, human and non-human. In dance, without words, we can both develop and communicate our understanding of that connection.

Copyright Robert Bettmann, 2008