Arnie Cooper
Arnie Cooper grew up in New York City, where he counted dimes and quarters in his father’s laundromat. He now lives in Santa Barbara, California, and no longer counts his change. His writing has appeared in Orion, Esquire, and the Wall Street Journal.
Peak Experience
The Age Of Oil Is Coming To An End: An Interview With Richard Heinberg
We’re on the verge of an infrastructural shift as profound as any in human history, on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. You might say we’re going to be seeing the other side of that revolution, and it will change our political system, our ideologies, and our beliefs.
July 2006Lost In The Supermarket
Michael Pollan On How The Food Industry Has Changed The Way We Eat
Families used to control what their members ate and pass along learned wisdom in the form of a food culture. Now that’s gone. Most people don’t eat as families. We eat individually, going one-on-one with the food supply, which is how the food industry likes it.
May 2006Thieves In High Places
Jim Hightower On Taking America Back From The Plutocrats
I think that there is a small-d democratic spirit in people that rebels against plutocracy, or rule by the rich, which is what we had from the robber-baron era to the 1920s and what the New Deal was designed to eliminate. Now here we are again with this increasing concentration of wealth. It’s not that people resent wealth; they resent greed.
November 2005Voodoo Electronics
Jaron Lanier On The Danger Of Letting Computers Do Our Thinking For Us
A key belief of cybernetic totalism is that there’s no difference between experience and information; that is, everything can be reduced to “bits.” When you don’t believe in experience anymore, you become desensitized to the subjective quality of life. And this has a huge impact on ethics, religion, and spirituality, because now the center of everything isn’t human life or God, but the biggest possible computer. You have this cultlike anticipation of computers big enough to house consciousness and thus grant possible immortality.
May 2005Twenty-Eight Words That Could Change The World
Robert Hinkley’s Plan To Tame Corporate Power
We can’t solve the problem of corporate irresponsibility by imposing volumes of laws and regulations that try to restrain the system, because the system is designed not to be restrained. I believe the solution lies in redesigning the corporation itself to build in some self-restraint.
September 2004Resurrecting The Revolutionary Heart Of Judaism
An Interview With Michael Lerner
Jews jumped from the burning buildings of Europe and landed, unintentionally, on the backs of the Palestinians. Because our pain was so great from the Holocaust, we didn’t notice the pain we caused them.
April 2004Biting The Hand That Feeds: How Globalization Cripples Small Farms
An Interview With Vandana Shiva
This year farmers started to commit suicide in Uttar Pradesh, the richest agricultural state in India. Some of the most fertile soil in the world can be found there, and the region has never had agricultural problems. But the first rule of globalization says, “Don’t grow food for yourself; grow export crops.” So the farmers there all grew potatoes. And then potato prices collapsed. The potato-chip makers have walked off with super profits, and the farmers have been left with huge debts.
February 2004Earthly Delights
Cultivating A New Agricultural Revolution: An Interview With Michael Ableman
When we focus on regional production and regional distribution, the issues around the use of chemicals and other materials resolve themselves. It’s as simple as standing across the table at the farmers’ market from the person who’s growing your food. Ultimately the basic health of the food system is not about laws; it’s about relationships: interpersonal, ecological, and biological. The people who eat my food don’t need a legislative act to know that what I’m providing is safe to eat. They know me, and they know my farm. That, to me, is the best form of certification. It’s based on outdated ideas like honor and trust.
June 2003Coming Back To The World
Timothy Conway On Engaged Spirituality
There are two kinds of really powerful, transformative spirituality. One is mystical spirituality, or the full, inner awakening from egoism to transpersonal awareness. The other is engaged spirituality, working for the public good or collective welfare, out of a deep sense of solidarity with all sentient beings. The problems in the world today are so immense, grievous, and dire that we need both kinds of spirituality, not just an individual, inner mystical spirituality.
April 2003Peril And Promise
Duane Elgin On Simplicity And Humanity’s Future
Simplicity lies at the intersection of spirituality and sustainability. If you put spirituality, or the inner life, together with sustainability, or the outer life of maintaining things, what you come up with is the simple life.
August 2002
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