When one starts a blog where does one begin? There is so much to say, so many different directions to go in.
Today when I was uploading some chapters from an unfinished book of mine The Value(s) of Money for this site, I thought it might be good to go over some of the ideas in the book to help reinvigorate me to write on. Since it’s been years since I wrote the early chapters I thought a review would be a good start. So for the next few days I’m going to get myself, and you, up to speed.
The major premise of my book is that we are obsessed with finding and assessing the value of everything in life. We not only talk of the value of things, but also endlessly debate our personal and social values.
Value is obviously primarily an economic term, and it makes sense that a capitalistic and commercial society would place an emphasis on value. Yet, in The Value(s) of Money I try to examine how our preoccupation with value has effected not only our economy, but our politics, educational and medical systems, as well as our view of religion and spirituality. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a single aspect of our external and internal life which is not highly influenced, if not dominated, by our obsession with value.
Back in the late sixties and early seventies our society was flooded with a series of social movements. One of the movements had to due with a growing concern of the environment and the quality of our air and water. This general movement took on the name Ecology.
During the sixties one seldom talked about their values, instead one talked about their standards, morals, principles or even one’s ethics. The only discussion of values in this modern sense was by Cultural Anthropologists in their efforts to help us understand the desires and goals of societies much different from ours.
In the seventies this term was adopted by pop psychologists in an effort to help us understand ourselves and our behavior. Soon, we were introduced to exercises designed to help us “clarify” our values, and to help asocial personalities reenter society thru successful positive value change.
While our society quickly embraced the new usage of the word value, it just as quickly marginalized the ecological movement.
By the late 70′s the Ecological movement went back to academia and did not play an important part in the national dialogue. Some would point out that reality got in the way of the Ecological ideal. Economic stagflation, the oil crisis, etc. came to the fore and concerns for the environment would have to wait till better times.
In great part the Ecological movement re-emerged as a need to recylce. It became our privilege and duty to help save the environment thru proper waste management. Helping the environment became the responsibility of the individual. We were led to believe that if we, as individuals, recylced market forces would take over and corporations and businesses would be forced to be “green” and enviromentally friendly.
Tomorrow I will write on why I think the recycling movement is more myth than fact, and what a real ecological movement would look like.
I want to conclude with two final points. One is that I realize this entry was a little dry, but a little set up was required. Second, I want to say that I do recylce, but more because of personal ethics than in the net impact of recycling on the environment.
More tomorrow.
Sorry for the delay in getting this site up, please take a look around at all the music and books you can download.