Fall Review

Summary of Recent Updates

Here’s a Quick update on the posts for the last two months.

• Scraps and Odds and Ends – https://professorharbinger.com/2021/09/11/scraps-and-odds-and-ends/
• Outlaw and Borders – https://professorharbinger.com/2021/09/18/outlaw-and-borders/
• I’ve Been Making a Lot of Bad Memes and Propaganda – https://professorharbinger.com/2021/09/25/ive-been-making-a-lot-of-bad-memes-and-propaganda/
• FAQs about Ohto County – https://professorharbinger.com/2021/10/12/faqs-about-ohto-county/
• Sufficiency Fact: Growing Grain – https://professorharbinger.com/2021/10/14/sufficiency-fact-growing-grain/
• Thorstein Veblen – https://professorharbinger.com/2021/10/15/thorstein-veblen/
• October Blog 2021 – https://professorharbinger.com/2021/10/17/october-blog-2021/
• October 2021 Journal – https://professorharbinger.com/2021/10/18/october-2021-journal/

Quotes to Ponder

“Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they’re an explicit acknowledgment that what you’re doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don’t want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them.”

― Derrick Jensen

“Like the layers of an onion, under the first lie is another, and under that another, and they all make you cry.”

― Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

“For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”

― Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe

“Those in power have made it so we have to pay simply to exist on the planet. We have to pay for a place to sleep, and we have to pay for food. If we don’t, people with guns come and force us to pay. That’s violent.”

― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

“What if the point of life has nothing to do with the creation of an ever-expanding region of control? What if the point is not to keep at bay all those people, beings, objects and emotions that we so needlessly fear? What if the point instead is to let go of that control? What if the point of life, the primary reason for existence, is to lie naked with your lover in a shady grove of trees? What if the point is to taste each other’s sweat and feel the delicate pressure of finger on chest, thigh on thigh, lip on cheek? What if the point is to stop, then, in your slow movements together, and listen to the birdsong, to watch the dragonflies hover, to look at your lover’s face, then up at the undersides of leaves moving together in the breeze? What if the point is to invite these others into your movement, to bring trees, wind, grass, dragonflies into your family and in so doing abandon any attempt to control them? What if the point all along has been to get along, to relate, to experience things on their own terms? What if the point is to feel joy when joyous, love when loving, anger when angry, thoughtful when full of thought? What if the point from the beginning has been to simply be?”

― Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

Recommended Reading

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe: This novel is a fictional account of Okonkwo, an Igbo man living in the final days of tribal Nigeria and his encounters with colonial missionaries. The tale speak from a non white perspective and offers a unique view of colonialism that may be impossible to obtain elsewhere. This books is a quick read, but not remotely a light one.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer: A non fiction account of William Kamkwamba and his life in Malawi during a time of heavy famine. William taught himself from engineering textbooks written in English (a language he could not read) after having to drop out of school. And as a result of his perseverance and ingenuity, he was able to construct a windmill to power lights and irrigate fields to help his family endure the famine. An amazing, uplifting and heartbreaking tale. Highly recommended.