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Author Archives: cjkperley
Reframing our Water as a Commons
I’m reblogging this because the current (Spring) sprinkler ban by Hastings District Council has once again raised the whole issue of why – oh for heaven’s sake why – we give our water – *our* water – away to an … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
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A Forest Flows
Have to repost. The whole idea of a mechanical world is destroying us, and it is a wrong view. It doesn’t have to be this way. It cannot continue to be this way. There are ways of seeing that are … Continue reading
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Can Neoliberalism and Social Democracy be Compatible?
Where does Social Democracy finish and Neoliberalism start? Can both co-exist at the margin between the two? Some argue that they are on a continuum. I’m not at all convinced. That seems a Third Way argument, heartless mechanical Neoliberalism … Continue reading
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Principles of Truth, Open Dialogue and Compassion …. and Trump
The Guardian’s Oliver Milman has written that Trump is to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’. It is an ironic title. His politicised science framed as cracking down on politicised science. Orwellian. Corporate science is truth. My … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
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The Trumps of History
In the 20s, the Weimar republic – post WW I Germany – had hyperinflation; wheelbarrows of money, widespread penury. The Allies had imposed vengeful and immoral reparations. Most people suffered. Austerity reigned. There are system effects; consequences. Suffering creates resentment. … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
7 Comments
The Art of Space – Realising the Potential of our Lands and CityScapes
I am struck by the similarities we face when we look at land and cityscapes. Patterns, connections, things that do many things at once, that mean this as well as that. You have to hold a few ideas simultaneously in … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Thought Pieces
2 Comments
Is the Banality of Evil Back Again?
Reading about Hannah Arendt, who wrote about the Banality of Evil and the Eichmann trial. He was everybody’s functionary. Think the postal clerk with no moral concern for the purpose of his office – just act as part of the ‘machinery … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
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Have some Bliss
I remember studying ee cummings’ poems in high school. He always spoke to me more than Shakespeare and the great British romantics. Partly it was the interesting fact he went all lower case with his name. Rebel! But he also … Continue reading
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Coping with Uncertainty – What does it Mean?
Encapsulating thoughts for the day. I struggle to get across what it means if you accept you cannot determine your future. What it means to build resilience. How does this make life different? How does it change our focus in … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
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An Economic Doctrine cannot start from the Assumption that we do not Belong
One of the assumptions I found so bizarre in Neoliberal ‘thought’ was the idea of asociality – that people are individuals outside of any society, making selfish, ‘rational’ ‘utility maximising’ decisions as if we do not belong. It is the … Continue reading
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Teaching Wisdom – To Know the World, you Have to Live in the World
“To know the world, you have to live in the world.” Carol Black has written a beautiful and insightful essay on connection between children and the outdoors, knowing, and what education ought to be. It resonates with me. I think … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Thought Pieces, Virtues, Ways of Seeing
9 Comments
Everything is Connected: Make it Sing
I’ve used this diagram often when talking about land use. But it is so much more than that. The connections between and among things, patches, processes, dollars, functions of soil, stock, trees, wetlands, water and thought – many not quantifiable, … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Thought Pieces
1 Comment
Looking after Local Enterprise and Life (Part II)
This is the second part of an article looking at why do we put local government money in the big rather than the small? Especially when the big tend to extract, while the small are so integral to a creative … Continue reading
Posted in Building Regional Economies, Thought Pieces
5 Comments
Looking After Local Enterprise and Life (Part I)
The following was submitted to the local paper as an opinion piece. It corresponds to the news that the local district council subsidised the very unpopular investment in water bottling by outside interests, utilising our very high quality aquifer water … Continue reading
Posted in Building Regional Economies, Thought Pieces
8 Comments
Rethinking our World – Ethics Really Matters
Reading Aldo Leopold blew my mind a few decades ago – the grace and cadence of his words, the context and logic of his arguments, his recognition of respectful harvest as part of who we are and must be, and … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
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An Ethos of Care Matters in Public Life
Hawke’s Bay Kaumatua Des Ratima quoted to me once “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Actually, I have to take a notebook with me when I meet Des because you can guarantee … Continue reading
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Connections – Harm People and the Land, and you Harm Your Future.
Letter to the editor sent to the Hawke’s Bay Today 28th August 2016. Context. We are currently experiencing polluted drinking water, the result of intensive farming locally. Some old people have died from infections impacting on underlying health issues. … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Thought Pieces
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The Horrid Mechanical Screech of Modern Conformity and Order
Hannah Arendt was the author and philosopher of the Nazi era of inhumanity; of totalitarianism, of the ascendancy of soulless mechanical acting where humanity loses itself in instruction, obedience and order. She described the behaviour of such functionaries as Adolph … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
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Thinking About Energy – Uncertainty is a Certainty
Now we sit out this storm. No power because the Napier-Taupo road is being hammered at the moment. It has been down for 30 odd minutes. It was blown out last night as well for two hours. The Napier-Taupo road … Continue reading
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Always Question: Never Simply Function and Obey
The brilliance that is Hannah Arendt. She wanted to look deep in what made Adolph Eichmann tick – the proverbial scheduler of trains from – was it Budapest? – to the death camps during World War II. But first you … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
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Trust … in our Economy
They don’t think of ‘trust’ much when they talk about the economy. They split it up. They, the technocrats. They put such things as ‘trust’, ‘integrity’, ‘truth’ and ‘justice’ in the box marked ‘social’; something to deal with “after we … Continue reading
Expedient ‘Government’: Build the Slag Heaps of Tomorrow for New Zealand
Is our whole New Zealand economy a bubble built on speculation, the Christchurch rebuild, the Viking-raid exploitation of society and place for short-term gain, financing expenditure out of debt, the promotion of extractive big business over local enterprise, immigration to … Continue reading
Posted in Building Regional Economies, Thought Pieces
15 Comments
Is This our Neoliberal Meritocracy?
I know many people who are truly amazing. They think outside the box, they practice an art, they connect to community and to land, they have passion for some goal, they can hold a humorous conversation and be great company … Continue reading
Posted in Neoliberalism & Corporatism, Thought Pieces
Tagged Autocracy, Managerialism, Meritocracy, Neoliberalism
2 Comments
Putting Culture back into Nature
We have spread across and changed our world. Change is the constant. But it is maintaining the integrity of our systems that is more important than whether there is any particular ‘natural state’. Continue reading
Our Land is not an Industry
“To heal is to make whole. This applies as well to the ‘industries’ of landscapes: agriculture, forestry & mining. Once they have been industrialised, those enterprises no longer recognise landscapes as wholes, let alone as homes for people and other … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Thought Pieces
3 Comments
Civilisation – It’s about Values
Updated from a couple of years ago because I think those who govern no longer do so in the interests of people or our grandchildren …. and it really has to be reversed. We need a values campaign. Chris Perley … Continue reading
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The Housing Crisis and Neoliberalism
Listening to Morning Report this morning (25th May 2016) interview these right wing completely out of touch politicians from this government making excuses for the New Zealand housing crisis, was like a rerun of the Irish Potato famine. It so … Continue reading
Would you Commoditise Rain?
We are heading for a winter drought in Hawke’s Bay. Nothing on California’s situation. But I find myself longing for heavy rain. A cloudburst that goes on for a few hours. I want to just sit and listen, and smell, … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Thought Pieces
4 Comments
Alternatives to Big Capitalism
I think there are alternatives to authoritarian ‘Big Capitalism’ that don’t move us into some authoritarian – and therefore equally dysfunctional – type of ‘communist’ state. I find it slightly ironic that when in opposition to the extremes of neoliberalism – … Continue reading
Posted in Building Regional Economies, Thought Pieces
2 Comments
Nature and Corporate Neoliberal Economics in Conflict
The laws of nature and the laws of corporate-based neoliberal economics are in conflict. Continue reading
Political Paths to Tyranny
These are just rough thoughts. The start of some future ramblings. I do not like the labels ‘left’ and ‘right’. I think our politics has to change beyond those narrow reference frames. I think the more important continua are: How … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
1 Comment
Does Ozymandias Live in the Bay?
This old post from my other site relates to what we are up against: the rise of the castle builders, increasingly under siege, increasingly authoritarian and inflexible – which is any evolutionary sense means extinction – because the world is … Continue reading
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Mega-Corporations and their Political Minions – the Latter-day rise of Ozymandias
I was searching for the ultimate reading of Ozymandias – to connect to the article on Creative vs Extractive Economies I posted yesterday. Listen to Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad – within which the arrogance of Ozymandias (and his ultimate … Continue reading
Posted in Thought Pieces
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Creative versus Extractive Economies
The sands of Iraq and the karst mountain bones of the Grecian hills tell a story. These were once fat lands; the Tigris/Euphrates fields of Sumer, the Arcadia of Greece. They were once Mediterranean empires, now struggling countries of a … Continue reading
Rural Decline and the Ruataniwha Dam Revisited
I wrote this article below in response to a promotional meeting for the Ruataniwha Dam held in Waipukurau in 2014. I’ve edited it slightly. In early March 2016, another meeting was held, an… Source: Rural Decline and the Ruataniwha Dam … Continue reading
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The Minimum Wage and the Extractive Economy
There is a question that political economists used to ask, “What sort of society do we want to live in?” That question was a central core of the wider study of political economy, the study of our real economic experience. It … Continue reading
Ways of Seeing III: Looking for the Many Moving Things
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.“ F. Scott Fitzgerald I read that Fitzgerald quote in a book by Roger … Continue reading
Are GMOs New Zealand’s Agricultural Future?
The debate about the future of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in Hawke’s Bay (and NZ agriculture) is heating up. A number of opinion pieces are reacting to this government’s attempts to take legislative decision making out of the region’s hands. … Continue reading
One Love
When you came into that room moving with … … heart-stopping … … bewitching grace, a walk to please the gods high held head, exquisite neck the sway of skirt. You picked from the pile a magazine … or was … Continue reading
Posted in Poems
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The Blue Mountains
I flew across the mountain blue today ten thousand feet above the land, exhaling morning breath all sitting mist in fissures drawn by some old Dreaming stick in days when there were only dreams, when Totem gods played in the … Continue reading
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In Grief, the Blues
On a quiet street corner Down from the cafes A blind, grey-bearded bluesman Cups hands to face Sucks and blows a slow lament. Pure notes, meaning little by themselves Strung together create meaning and the blues Notes, man, islands … … Continue reading
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Reading
I read to slow down, to stop and sink into the cadence of words. It is not about speed reading to the end. The end is not the goal. It is about being mindful for the messages and meanings of … Continue reading
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Intentions
I do not have plans; I have intentions. I intended to grow the basil to seed, to spread from there for the next year. But a flock of goldfinches Had other ideas, and landed, all dazzling red and gold, to … Continue reading
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Meditation’s Edge
It’s silent here. But not. There is this hum, and if you listen very still there is this buzz as well, this long high tone of energy connecting. I don’t know if it’s in my head or out beyond. Stark … Continue reading
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Wanderings of HD Thoreau II
From ‘House Warming’, Walden But I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the vert more than the hunters or wood-choppers, and as much as though I had been the Lord Warden himself; and if any part was … Continue reading
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Wanderings of Henry David Thoreau I
Henry David Thoreau, Extract from ‘Baker Farm’, Walden Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady that the Druids … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Poems
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Industrial Farming: The Deeper Roots of Animal Cruelty
My father was a gentle stockman, and he cared for people the same. He taught us how to hunt up and how to use presence and eye when mustering, and how not to push cattle too hard. He had a … Continue reading
Posted in Land Use, Thought Pieces
Tagged Agro-ecology, Alternative Vision, Animal Cruelty, Commodity trap, Corporate Influence, Land Degradation, Local Development, Mechanistic Worldview, Neo-liberal Economics, People as Cogs, Production vs. Value & Price, resilience, Sustainable Land Management, Value not volume
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A Message to the Neo-Liberals
You are destroying the sacred. You have lost sense Of what it is to be human, To be a people, A culture, To be of and in a place. You are destroying meaning And purpose And have replaced it With … Continue reading
That’s My Hat!
She looks good in a Stetson, all cowgirl in her chaps. The coolest Snood reflects her mood, but she wasn’t happy with that. She tried the Lady Panama with the larger brim. The Flouncy Bonnet With the bow on it … Continue reading
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The Hot Bohemian Chic Chick
She’s in love with Radical Chic The style Comtessa d’amour With a touch of wild untamed abandon, Speaking without words Difference and Grace and This Is My World To Make As I Want Without Your Oppressive Conventions Stifling Expression. So … Continue reading
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