Tompkins County Relocalization Project

[Tompkins County Relocalization Project <tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

I agree with much of what David writes, and I have long been a critic of
Kunstler's style, but I also think JHK has been unfairly criticized for
failing to offer solutions, and I suspect that he's actually responding
to those criticisms. I wish he'd get off his suburbia-and-fat mall 
schstick, but he's included cities in this solution-oriented diatribe, 
so he's not entirely stuck on the old tune.

The fact is, maybe we don't like the simple solutions he suggests. Maybe 
we think that because they're simple, he's a simple bigot. Granted 
people this acerbic are annoying, and I'd much rather read Heinberg, but 
we all keep listening to JHK because he's got some essential things 
right, and because we've long been in training to listen to any manner 
of unattractive version of the truth.

The real problem is that a bunch of people can't analyze JHK (not you, 
Dave, I know you get him), which all too often makes him little more 
than a fart in the wind--too bad, given all that energy.

Bethany



Tompkins County Relocalization Project wrote:
> I posted the Kunstler piece last night because I thought it was a
> pretty decent agenda for action.  By now I guess I'm so used to
> Kunstler's bilious views of American culture that I just don't
> notice them any more.  This response (forwarded with permission)
> points out the counterproductive aspects of such bias.
>
> Jon
>
> ---------------------- Original Message ----------------------
> Subject: Re: Kunstler
> From:    "David Quinn-Jacobs" <dqj AT graphwise.com>
> Date:    Tue, February 6, 2007 12:17 am
> To:      bosak AT ibiblio.org
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> He's created a straw man and refuted that.  People aren't responding
> negatively to him for failing to offer solutions, but for his aggressive
> intolerance and tunnel vision.  He deserves to be "twanged on" for the
> fact that he cannot separate his own aesthetic from peak oil problems
> and solutions.
>
> He has a well-documented distaste for suburbia, mass production and mass
> culture.  We may sympathize with some or all of those tastes, but they
> blur the issues.  Although suburban living may present problems for
> sustainability and may not be the choice for existentially authentic
> people, it is not intrinsically /evil/ in other respects.  That is an
> important distinction to make because it takes the religion out of the
> discussion and denies the creation of a simplistic us/them dichotomy.
> As another example, Kunstler expresses support for the invasion of Iraq
> in the/ Long Emergency/.  He ridicules peace activists who drive SUVs,
> making the illogical jump from there to citing it as tacit approval of
> the war on their part.  Of course a small correlation exists, but it is
> not nearly as strong as he paints it.
>
> When you recognize that lifestyles and histories as different as those
> in the US and China have painted us all into the same corner -- or left
> us on the same raft, to use Heinberg's analogy -- everyday Suburbanites
> and SUV Drivers no longer appear as Satan incarnate.
>
> His "agenda" is motherhood and apple pie to peakniks.  No real arguments
> there.  Only with his vilifications, which are not constructive, and
> which he did not address.
>
> Cheers,
> -dqj
>
>
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