Bill McKibben on why "self-reliance" is a chimaera


	Bill McKibben on why "self-reliance" is a chimaera

enbar

4-18-2007 2:32 PM

432 views

tags:

environment, popular_culture, criticism, post:tumblr, !toread

enbar says:

Self-reliance is the American "pathology" -- in the consumerist form of everyone cocooned in front of his own TV screen, or the environmentalist back-to-the-land form, or the survivalist nut-job form. We depend on each other & might as well admit it.

2 Comments |

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4-18-2007 3:39 PM

Socratoad

Great article enbar .... spot on

4-18-2007 10:37 PM

willhelm

POP for the word Chimera. Good word, even though we spell it differently. You don't see that used every day.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/db211a73-824d-4096-bf42-d8bc5bf44fd9/23C7E024-343C-4BF1-9A05-C0318A9AB97B/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=87" href="http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=87" style="font-size: 11px;">www.incharacter.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=87"><div align="center"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.incharacter.org/img/AD3E7307-C631-464B-9EDA-BEE8FAE8CBBB" alt="" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=87"><STRONG> By Bill McKibben</STRONG></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=87"><STRONG>Old MacDonald Had A Farmers’ Market – 
total self-sufficiency is a noble, misguided ideal</STRONG></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=87"><DIV>
Every culture has its pathologies, and ours is self-reliance. From some mix of our frontier past, our <EM>Little House on the Prairie</EM> heritage, our Thoreauvian desire for solitude, and our amazing wealth we’ve derived a level of independence never seen before on this round earth. We’ve built an economy where we need no one else; with a credit card, you can harvest the world’s bounty from the privacy of your room. And we’ve built a culture much the same — the dream houses those architects build, needless to say, come with a plasma screen in every room. As long as we can go on earning good money in our own tiny niche, we don’t need a helping hand from a soul — save, of course, from the invisible hand that cups us all in its benign grip.</DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=87">
There are a couple of problems with this fine scenario, of course. One is: we’re miserable.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/23C7E024-343C-4BF1-9A05-C0318A9AB97B/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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