© sms:foto duisburg/rhein 2011

Picture of the Doel nuclear plant from my living room.
In sorrow for the people who have lost loved ones and all their worldly belongings this poem is dedicated to them.

The long now

the long now

10.000 years

who can then

read this

understand

the symbol

who knows then

looking

for the cause

of double timing halftime

short selling

of what how log

then still

has to come

now

10.000

years from now

the late burden

of moot mushrooms

and fantasies of fission

we all live

in the halftime

of the long

now -

Nuclear energy no thanks

 old nuclear plants are kept open longer in Europe

We should learn from the disaster in Japan

 

ExpO58 - Futures

The festivities to commemorate the mi-centennial of the world fair in Brussels 'ExpO58' have officially started. Saturday night brought fever and joy. A well made documentary by Farfetched Productions premiered. Maya Van Leemput concept, research and direction, Bram Goots, camera, light, sound and grip and Simone Rau co-editing wizard form quite a team. For the Cultural heritage cell of Antwerp they produced this original, relevant, beautiful, insightful documentary. At the opening the respondents who had been involved with the Expo in 1958 in different capacities, - a volunteer interpreter, a butcher boy demonstrating how to cut meet, visitors, hostesses... and their contemporary shadows - were present and seemed extremely pleased with the end result. Since it is also scientific futures research, the sum comes out way above the individual statements. In fact the documentary is presented as research material for a colleague futurist who will hopefully look at this material in 2058. Images of the future is the guiding principle. 50 years ago optimism reigned, with just a few critical voices: The war was over, technology would improve life for everyone. Now, since the dreams of 50 years ago had at the same time not been fulfilled (there still isn't a base on the moon and there is still hunger and disease in the world) and had developed much faster than anticipated, people's images for the futures of 2058 are a bit grim. Most think that their grandchildren will have a harder life than they had. This was packaged in a fast, professional and warm view with lots of beautiful, nostalgic images from 1958. Remember: All our experiences are in the past and all our decisions are about the future. Well done!

Now!

Climate change, you may have the feeling you know more about it than you want, that you know too much. The technicalities of how, by what tools, in what kind of toolbox, may not really interest you, but it should. Not for your or your neighbor's and friend's children or grandchildren's sake. No, climate change has not only long term implications or consequences in 50 years time. It's implications are here today. And we helped create it. Even President Bush recognized it twice in the last two weeks... It is also recognized by the leading experts and legisators that the action plans should be global and the seat for negotiations about who does what should be the United Nations. That was also said a few days ago by Condy... That after loosing years of time of not acknowledging that something is wrong. The consequences are felt already by millions of people. I could refer to the changing storm patterns, but also to the rise in food prices in China: 18 % in one year, because of bad harvests among other for rice and a shortage of pigmeat. I could speak about the high prizes in the grain market because there was an extreme drought in Australia, just there and at the moment the climate experts had predicted it. This means that millions of people are to pay more for their daily bread... Are there advantages in global warming? If you consider growing strawberries on the north pole, yeah, if you think that offsets the drying up of small mountain glaciers and the thread of having no water in vast regions in the South West of the US, in Southern Europe, in China, in Australia, and of course in Africa... The failing crop yields today are manifesting today all of Africa: today and tomorrow! Maps have to be redrawn because satellites show that great lakes are shrinking which leads to starvation and misery. Today climate change has 'security' implications. Don't we all love security issues for deciding policies... Expect floods of people, who are displaced, looking for a livable place... Thus we, the industrialized countries must lead by example and cut our emissions by 80 % by 2020. If we don't, well than we have lost a small window of opportunity to avoid the fatal tipping point in our climate when major coast lying cities will be flooded and Bangladesh and the small island states will disappear in the ocean. The legislators have to lay down a law with the goals and the means to realize them, creating opportunities for innovation and creativity and a decent life for all within an equitable global society. And please, switch off the light when you leave the room. The best energy is the energy that we are not using.

Weekend Work

It is good to be chartered by younger folks for one or other of their projects. This time it was the "Rotory Club": an unused part of a street in a town is given a temporary structure in mainly recuperated material. People are gathered to produce something in three days, which is then shown at the 'finissage' at the end of the fourth day. It is meant to cross fertilize each other, to learn about each others creative outlook. There were photo shoots, a sweet animation film with paper sheep coming out of a wall and running away, projected high up on a derelict wall. There was a lot of fuzzy activity going on in which the low tech environment poses challenges for the high tech performances. Of course I am partial to the art documentary with interviews about the future in different cities of the world, with the added the interviews by the locals of the venue.

Work in progress

I came across Julia Kristeva’s work reading literary studies in the eighties in the same period I developed affection for Roland Barthes. She coined the term ‘intertextuality’. What I like in her psychoanalytical approach is that she allows for the fluidity of the individual. We are all subjects in progress… a work in progress :

So is all
work in progress
the searching for the note
that touches the soul
the words that please a lover
find a friend
the playing of an eight bar blues
in 7,5
knowing there is time
and that in time every beat
will be picked up
brought to a conclusion

There is the mind work
the heart work
the digging in the dirt work
the body work
of animal and child
the wild

So are we all
work in progress

Race is a modern concept

There is no gene for race is the title of the action during equality month. The concept is American and a hit in Europe. With the multiple choice questions one learns that humans have approximately 30.000 genes. Question: On average, how many genes separate all members of one race from all members of another race? Answer: None. There are no characteristics, no traits, not even one gene that distinguish all members of one so-called race from all members of another race.
Race is a modern idea. The word race only was coined in 1508, referring to a line of kings. The ancient societies did make distinction according to religion, status, gender, class and even language. ‘Barbarians’ evolved from a Greek word referring to people who speak the language badly, physical distinctions were not a subdividing category. Most traits that we see in people are not directly linked to skin color. Those traits are inherited independently from each other: hair form, height, blood type, musical talent, intelligence, etc… If many black people have sickle cells in their blood then this is not a racial factor but is connected to the ancestors' place of origin. Since sickle cells protect against malaria, the only thing such cells tell you about the person is that the ancestors came from a region with malaria: Mediterranean, Arabia, Turkey, Southern Asia, Western and Central Africa, but not South Africa.
Slavery predates racism. And when Pocahontas traveled to the court of London in 1619 it created a scandal because she, a princess, married a commoner, beneath her station. In a feudal society, status was fixed at birth. There were even laws which forbade to dress so that one could pass for another class. The racial concept of Manifest Destiny wasn’t born yet…
The power of illusion is still strong and color blindness alone will not right the wrongs. The machine that has been developed lats you choose to be different ethnic groups and it can age and morphe you, not make you younger again. I liked myself best with some Asian influence...

Why does it matter?

Why do I care about the Wave Structure of Matter. Do I understand the mathematical part of it? Not really. Yet when I am reading on the Space and Motion site I realize the philosophical implications of some parts a few paragraphs before I find the confirmation in the text. Now think, space in motion is infinite. It makes sense to me, a beginning and an end never did. This space is infinite eternal and continuous. Space is all there is. So is the yearning for space in the heart of the restless traveler. And the rest (time and its consequences) is a consequence of movement in space. Being ‘spaced out’ to me always was being so in flow, so engrossed in a book, in writing, that suddenly your body calls you to order. Having to use the bathroom, and before you know it, it happens again. That is then usually the moment I look at my watch and realize that four, five hours have gone by and that time has passed me by. That is how space must be, waving in and out, relating, not quiet reaching all and everything, yet part of the whole. So what we can ‘see’ as influencing us, we consider part of our universe. Isn’t it great we are the center again of our own universe? It also works this way in networking in human relations. I feel the more waves we let in, the more waves we can send out. The more my friends provide me with opportunities to learn, to feel, to enjoy, to live fully, the more waves I create out again. The sad thing in the infinity of space our own universe is finite. The planet could be ruined by us, by our human activity. Already today we have created an ecological debt that is longer than fifty years. We have made life harder, less healthy, more precarious for at least three generations. So in order to keep the equilibrium in our finite part of infinity, we need to change our ways and strife for justice, equity, kindness, beauty, solidarity with all and everything. The sixties said it right, sometimes there are good vibrations, waves in harmony and equilibrium, yet listening to the world now what I hear is the dissonant of war, the ugliness of greed, the darkness of doomsday sounds of injustice and egotism and bloodthirsty power. Yet we have a choice (if we are not dictated by past and genes and such) or the waves right now give us the opening to try and heal what is sick, they repeat with every pulsing motion that touches us: we are all related!
Mitakuye Oyasin. To all my relations… If we truly feel this, maybe then we can imagine long term inclusive futures.

Finite universes

This link is a gift from a friend. I started reading it and my joy grew with every new concept that was introduced. I have known for a while that there are pluriverses: more than one, several and all united in ‘space’. This last jump is quite amazing: space infinite and eternal and continuous. The different universes are finite just as matter is. There are waves going in and waves going out. We are just as each particle, the center of our universe. Definition: Universe is the Finite Spherical region of Matter and Space that we can see and interact with (within an Infinite Space). Only this other matter's Out-Waves contribute to the formation of our Matter's in-Waves. i.e. Huygens' Principle - and this is the cause of Mach's Principle, that the mass of our matter is determined by all the other matter in our finite spherical universe (because it is created by it!). Read on on the site and you’ll jump for joy because this is the end of unconnectedness. I have said before: the stars and I are part of each other, now I know why. And time? Definition: Time is a consequence of the Wave Motions of Space, and that it takes ‘Time’ for Wave Motions to flow from place to place in Space. Time does not exist as a thing in itself, it is, like the ‘Particle’, an effect of the Wave Motion of Space, not a cause! Thus Time only applies to Matter, as the Spherical Wave Motion of Space and not to Space itself. Of course during my many goings from one place to another, in cars, trains, planes, boats, I have often wondered how time was needed to get to another place and the close connection between aspects of Time and Space.
The definitions come from Cosmology, Geoff Haselhurst website on ‘Space and Motion’.