Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #75
From time vs. perspective to capitalism as cancer, repairable shoes, being stuck in the iron age, and ads stalking us
Hi everyone!
A few quick things before we dive into this week’s rabbit holes:
In case you missed it, check out last Friday’s post on how Natural Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence, will help us build a flourishing future!
Also, I’ll be off from tomorrow on and all of next week doing a bit of WOOFing in the Swiss Alps. I’ll still send out another rabbit holes issue on Wednesday, though, but no Friday issue this and next week.
That’s it! Enjoy this week’s rabbit holes:
THIS WEEK → 👁️ Time & Perspective 🦠 Capitalism As Cancer 👞 Repairable Shoes ➕ Stuck in the Iron Age 🚿 Stalking Ads
Rabbit Holes 🕳️
How can we build a better world? As always, here are three perspective-shifting ideas to rewild your mind and help you create a better world, plus some extras below. Enjoy!
#1 👁️ Time vs. Perspective
When you are working on changing the world for the better, every minute counts…right?! However, in times like these, in which we are stuck in old ideologies and systems, what counts even more than time is perspective. Moreover, one cannot build a future in which we embrace a slower life or the natural cycles by using the mental models (time is scarce/money, hyperproductivity) that distanced us from these in the first place.
“All I can say about time with certainty is that no one I know has it. And while our deification of hyperproductivity is nothing new, the unsustainability of it feels more pronounced in the years since our world came to a sudden stop in 2020. There’s a reason that time was transformational; when I used to teach meditation, I saw firsthand the power of taking people out of their daily routines, if only for an hour. When we step out of time, we gain perspective. But even that is temporary. We need to reimagine our relationship to temporality itself. […]
In climate work, I have found that the productivity mindset disguises itself as unequivocally gainful; I believe the more I work, the more I’m aiding a cause that is undeniably urgent. And yet, again and again, I have learned that my contributions to this movement are dependent on my ability to have perspective. […]
For all I have written on the subject, I’m still unlearning productivity culture and the discomfort I have around rest—allowing myself to take a moment and honor a massive chapter of my life that has just closed, rather than march relentlessly onto the next. Instead, I aspire to live my life by deep time, expansive and all-encompassing. A wider circle full of work, yes, but also everything else: idle hours, falling in love, smelling the flowers. Time not as something taken, but a gift.”
» Atmos | On the Hours by Willow Defebaugh
#2 🦠 Capitalism As Cancer
While the capitalism = cancer analogy is quite well-known, the article below illustrates it in a way that resonates a lot with me. I especially liked this framing: Just as the inside of the tumor is dislocated or disconnected from the body – despite being right there inside the body –, we are dislocated or disconnected from the planet or from nature – despite being right there inside nature.
“Every multicellular organism exists because at some point, evolution favored cooperative cells over solitary ones. Cooperation evolved on this planet because it comes with great reward, complexity and resilience otherwise unavailable, but it has one essential cost: regulation. In order to glean the rewards of the whole, each part must forgo some individuality through self-regulation or regulation by it’s partners. That’s as true for the cells in a nematode or the ants in an ant colony as it is for the people and systems that make up an entire civilization. If regulation is abandoned, the complex system will eventually fall apart.
We are all aware of a particularly awful version of this phenomenon. Cancer forms when a cell loses its ability to be regulated. Where a cell once knew to limit itself, or where it was once limited by systems around it, it now divides and divides, draining resources at a rate the body eventually cannot sustain. In time, cancer undermines itself as it destroys the functions that, unbeknownst to it, sustain it. Cancer has no foresight. It doesn’t know it's rushing toward it’s own demise, it grows because it is brainless machinery.
The parallels between cancer and today’s capitalism start to become clear. Capitalism is an economic system that resists regulation (neoliberalism’s rallying call is quite literally deregulation) and gamifies large groups of people towards ever-increasing growth as a means for return on capital. When it comes to unfettered growth on a finite planet, or in a finite body, something’s gotta give. […]
In their insatiable hunger, tumors create a space inside them rife with excess. Inside a tumor there is an excess of necrotic tissue for bacteria to feed on (yum!). In our analogy, that means the material excesses afforded (to some), in the long arc, by forced labor and colonialism, and in the short arc, continued extractivism.
Drawing the connection between cancer and capitalism wasn’t as profound to me as drawing the connection between the interior of a tumor and what it feels like to be living inside capitalism. There is a sense of unrealness that comes from being dislocated from reality (the body/the Earth). And there is a sense of unease as the immune-privileged gorge themselves on the necrotic bounty of once healthy living systems, unaware of where the bounty came from and what awaits them outside the tumorous fortress they take for granted.
Which begs the question, from what are people at the center of a tumorous system privileged? What sort of “immune system” is knocking on the fortress walls in this analogy? The answer has been revealed through climate change and the degradation of our ecological and social systems. Capitalism has protected many people, momentarily, from the physical realities of the Earth System. The anxiety climate change has stirred in many is the fear that they may suddenly run up against reality. They may run up against consequences as the tumorous shell dissolves before our eyes. Unlike cancer or the machinery of capitalism, we have the curse of foresight. If we choose to look, we can see the disaster we’re rushing toward.”
» As If We Were Staying | If capitalism is a cancer, what are we? by Spencer R. Scott
#3 👞 Repairable Shoes
As we become more conscious about the impact of our consumption behaviors and as the veil of away-living (far away production & waste dumping) gets increasingly lifted, I get the feeling that the choice between mass-produced, environmentally harmful stuff on the one hand and handcrafted, eco- & human-friendly, small-scale produced stuff on the other becomes more straightforward. There is much more richness and meaning in the latter.
“We are living in the age of sneakers. Times and tastes are changing, sure, but no matter how many kids you see wearing Doc Martens, the overwhelming majority of shoes sold these days are sporty and soft. There’s a lot to be said about the way we revere sneakers (as I looked at in last week’s story on sneaker hype) but the sad truth is that they are essentially disposable products. No matter how hyped your Dunks are, when they’re worn out, it’s game over. Sneaker brands aren’t in the business of repairing shoes, they’re in the business of selling new ones. […]
It wasn’t always like this. Back in the day, shoes were real investments. The big, macho engineer boots Marlon Brando wore in The Wild One or the shiny oxfords Don Draper wore in Mad Men looked timeless, manly and classic, but they also had longevity. That’s thanks to what’s known as a Goodyear Welt, which is an old-school shoemaking technique that means shoes can be resoled by a cobbler over and over again. You can spot a Goodyear Welt by the stitched section that extends out of the edge of the sole, which creates a bigger footprint than what you’d find on something more elegant like a Gucci loafer (which can still be resoled, just not as many times).
The Goodyear Welt is considered the gold standard of old-school shoemaking, but there’s a bunch of other techniques as well, like the Storm Welt, Norwegian Welt, Stitchdown and Blake Stitch. Whatever the method, the principle is the same — a high quality upper, usually leather, is stitched to a hard sole. The fact that the shoe is assembled by stitching makes the soles easy to repair and replace. In an age of throwaway Dunks and Chucks, there’s some enduring appeal to these kinds of shoes — something to be worn day after day, and resoled when they start to wear out.
For people my age, who grew up in Vans and Nikes, this kind of thing feels like ancient history, and it’s not an easy category to get into. The fit of “proper” shoes is much less forgiving than sneakers, and hard soles take a lot of getting used to if you’ve spent your life in New Balances.
Over the years, I’ve fallen in love with the craftsmanship (and longevity) of hand-stitched footwear. After last week’s story on sneaker hype, it felt like the right time to connect with some old-school shoemakers to get a deeper look inside their small corner of the fashion industry. In an age where everything is mass-market, where even expensive shoes are disposable, these guys deserve our attention.”
» ALEC LEACH | Make shoes repairable again by Alec Leach
➕ Extras
“The continuous growth of the steel output – the increasing steel intensity of human society – makes sustainable steel production impossible. No technology can change that because it’s not a technological problem. Like forestry can only be sustainable if the wood demand does not exceed the wood supply, steel is sustainable or not depending on the balance between (scrap) supply and (steel) demand. We may not be able to escape the Iron Age, but we have an option to escape the catch-22 that inextricably links steel production with fossil fuels.”
How to Escape From the Iron Age? by Kris de Decker
“While “normal” seems like an innocent term, its cultural baggage reveals complex and derisive implications. Regardless of the intention of the person using the term, normality inherently draws a distinction between the normal and the abnormal. Even more problematically, this binary elevates the normal over the abnormal, which places a value distinction on human existence.”
Confronting Health’s Normality Bias by Tonie Marie Gordon
“Today’s tech behemoths are reminiscent of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. […] Telecom, entertainment, agriculture, news media, banking, and software giants rose throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. Today, we are facing tech companies that are even more wealthy, entrenched, and globe-spanning than some of the worst offenders of the last century.”
Tech Titans Are the Robber Barons of Our Gilded Age by David Moscrop
🚿 Shower Thoughts
That’s it for this week’s Rabbit Holes issue!
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