I wrote this over fifty years ago for the first Earth Day on 22 April 1970. I was an Earth Day organizer for the American Friends Service Committee [AFSC] at the time. I wrote this from the St. Louis County Jail where I was then serving a one year sentence for my part in an anti-Vietnam War protest of the Washington University Reserve Officer Training Course (R.O.T.C.) at the end of March 1970. This was first published in the first edition of the St. Louis Outlaw, 24 April 1970.
The St. Louis Outlaw was an independent, radical newspaper published every
three weeks by the Outlaw collective - David, Dev, Fred, Lori and
Terry...They were members of Liberation News Service (LNS) and UPS. They subscribed to Pacific News Service (PNS) and the news service of the
North American Congress on Latin America. They were also briefly affiliated with KDNA radio where I also worked as a radio engineer.
INTER-OFFICE MEMO NUMBER NINE What is Ecology?
Slowly, very slowly, science and mankind are coming to understand whole systems, First through the development and use of computers and the development of spacecrafts as life support environments, then in application to the whole Earth. But few have been able to grasp the full meaning of this new "systems oriented" thinking
Biology, a specialized framework for the examination and study of life, has already, in recent years found that framework inadequate and so to compensate had broadened the field by adding the further specializations of bio-chemistry, bio-physics. Ecology is possibly the latest of these emerging specializations. It attempts to explain how life forces work as a system, this requires not specialized knowledge but comprehensive ability.
Ecology is the study of the operations of whole life systems, or more correctly, the whole life system, since all life we have thus far discovered is interrelated. To subdivide is to leave out, to bring error into any calculation. From a scientific point of view, all biology must be seen as a subdivision of ecology. Chemistry and physics, in so far as our interest in them is environmental, are related to ecology. To deal with ecology as a subdivision of some field, or to fail to cain an overview of life systems is in itself anti-ecological.
Ecology is the comprehension of the whole Earth as an environment and all life on the planet as forming an interrelated system in that environment. Man is a part of that network. He is the Host intelligent, and he is the only one with tool capabilities. Tool capabilities are slave capabilities. In terms of power produced and used in this country, we each have the equivalent of:
500 slaves working for us. Man is the only animal with the ability to make any conscious change in his environment. He is the only one with any comprehensive ability, he alone can understand the system in which he lives, He is Adam, the keeper of the Garden, with the ability to destroy or maintain, to change for the better, to act as the computer's cybernetic control, to comprehend all that is happening at once and make changes and repairs while the system is operating. Don't be too quick to assume that nature would be perfect without man, that it would operate from day to day, year to year without fault. Man is a god and he'd better start acting like one.
The understanding of relationships in nature and man's relationship to his environment should lead to the most radical of viewpoints.
The Death of Western Science
The rulers, manipulators, the power people have always had to further man's distrust in nature, man's isolation from himself and nature, and man's distrust in himself to stay in power. When a man distrusts the wilderness in himself he sees nature as the adversary. This is in part the reason for the current ecological crisis.
Likewise, these rulers have always subdivided men into groups, subdivided knowledge, isolated men as much as possible on all levels. This has been done to destroy man's inherent comprehensive ability, because with a total comprehension of the world would come full understanding of one's own oppression, and the ability to rise against that oppression. They created specialization so that a man might know a great deal about any one thing without ever under- standing the whole.
These things are the basis for all western technology and science, which has permeated every culture on the globe. They have failed to provide an ecologically sound environment and a happy life for men because they were designed to serve the few people in power. Present science and engineering practices see nature as the enemy and act in ways hostile to nature. This is true at all levels and it is he way we are trained. We are all lonely and isolated, not knowing how to love or communicate. We are trained that way because it makes us easy to control. The present uproar in ecology is only to find that exactly the forces that make us losers as lovers make us polluters as scientists, and are therefor self- terminating. By the end of the century it will become clear that all science and technology that is specialized and not comprehensive in its design is anti-ecological and must be done away with, or it will lead to the destruction of life on this planet.
The Seven Cities of Gold
Wealth, money, property concepts came out of a misunderstanding of what the world was about.
Humanity has always lived on less than 10% of the Earth's surface, and the average man only saw 1/100,000th of that area. It is not surprising that men first thought the Earth flat, equally unsurprisingly he thought it extended infinitely in area and resources. He saw a need to define local systems in which he could operate. Nations arose out of the need to define a finite body of known people as a center point, as an independent system within the infinity of the world's people. Outside of this center point there was the limitless rest of the world. Explorers could go out into the world and bring the resources home, just as early nomads moved on when the grass was eaten or the hunted animal depleted. As explorers met other people they became exploiters, but since all these people had been defined as outside their nation-system, the exploitation was not seen as real. Black slaves, the American Indians, the Chinese, where see as the limitless "outside" people to those in the "known" world of Europe. Those people and there re- sources have been continuously exploited.
In just the same way, western man has always seen the airs and oceans as limitless. "ho could measure the volume of all the world's air, the depth of the ocean? Early industry must have honestly thought that anything dumped into the ocean was cone for- ever. But it has become increasingly clear that the world is of finite measures. The world is round end of definite dimensions, the Indians could not go west forever, going deeper into Africa you soon met another ocean. Science discovered that the ocean and air had a measurable volume, and that likewise the Earth's oil, coal, and iron were of certain unchangeable amounts, All of these things are well know today, but they have made little change in our conceptualization of the world. The exploiters maintain their power at the expense of the world's people.
The Spaceship Earth
The world is one system, using the same air and water, the same reserve of raw materials, and it can only be operated effectively as one system. The concepts of nations, of individual peoples, which lead to racism, are obsolete. The United States, as 6% of the world's population uses 55% of the world's resources. The concepts of private property are based on a limitless world,:and are likewise obsolete. In a world of 3 billion, why should one man own more than 1/3 billionth of the world wealth, and why should one man own less. The concept of "spending" originated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics with its well know "entropy" which stated that all local systems were losing energy. Thus it was thought that the Earth was running down and that things once
“spent were lost. Einstein set us straight on that with his famous E = me", which not only gave a continuous correlation between energy and matter, but also showed the overwhelming effects of the metaphysical upon the physical.
Ecology Action
Almost everything written in ecology is simply telling people what is happening to our environment. We hear about the population bomb, the DDT-ocean crisis, the air pollution - inversion dangers, the green house effect. This is all very interesting information and it fits well with everything we already know about racism, the war, the atomic bomb, etc. Ecology has just been the uncovering of some more shit in a shitty, stinking world, and its effect on most people is to say,
"Gee, there's some more shit."
But telling horror stories is not where its at. Teach~ins, speakers, literature and demonstrations. The come-rally-round mentality and all it tactics belong to the earlier civil rights - anti war stages of development. They are not suitable for building and structuring a movement with the broad base and comprehensive totality that is needed at the present time. To the unenlightened eye the ecology movement must start out much as other movements have, however, close scrutiny reveals that ecology is just a part of the further development of the same movement, and that all our environmental problems, including war and racism, will be solved at the same time, in the same way. Even with its educational functions, Ecology Action attempts to use the old technology (i.e. ecology is another Movement specialization) to teach entirely new environmental problems, in an entirely new stage of Movement development.
I have asked many people in St. Louis and in other cities in Ecology Action the same question: What do you have planned after April 22? And have yet to receive a satisfactory answer. The over- whelming majority of the people asked really hadn't thought about it or didn't know, many others suggested demonstration type actions against various polluters. Very little radical politics has been injected into the ecology movement, even by the radicals involved. The AFSC in St. Louis has rushed into ecology without any assessment, and hooked up with plans already in progress by setting up a speaker's bureau and a literature service for the teach-in,
An examination of the effects of the up coming ecology teach- in show that it will make a large number of people aware that there is a lot more shit around, without giving them anyway of relating to it, or doing something about it, thus making those people feel more lost and insecure. All the things talked about to change the situation, from writing congressmen to sitting in buildings, are worthless and have shown their worthlessness. The problem isn't, as ecology people say, that the people don't know. In this ace of electronic media, where everyone can smell and taste the pollution, they know. They don't act because they have been shown no- where to go.
If ecology was simply a problem of getting the pollution out of our air and water, as the teach-in implies. The problem could be better solved by a fascist government than by revolution. The problem will be presented that way and use for fascist repression. (A Nixon speech of 1975 might read; For the safety and preservation of all humanity, I have been forced to take the following steps...) The teach-in is only doing the ground work for that repression.
The environmental problem id a total one and it has more to do with the garbage floating around inside our minds than anything else. The realization must come that total change is necessary and that chance is revolutionary, not a patchwork of the present system.
The Neighborhood as a Village
As the movement comes out of infancy it must seek ways to survive and grow. Individuals committed to revolution must eventually come out of schools and find ways of living which give them freedom to think and build a movement, and they must find ways of relating to other people.
In St. Louis a neighborhood struggle over the future of the Delmar-Skinner area is going on. It is similar to struggles going on in most other cities, It has to do with the ecology of the automobile. The middle class has moved out of the cities and now commutes to downtown jobs via car. Cities build superhighways and other commuter-oriented structures with little regard for the communities they go thru (usually poor white and black). This is happening on the corner of two heavily trafficked streets in St. Louis, Skinner and Delmar where two gas stations and a drive-in restaurant are to be built. They will serve people passing thru, with no interest in the area, and. they will pollute the neighborhood with paper, exhaust, and will destroy neighborhood services. The neighborhood is a village to those who live in it, and the people who live there can be organized to fight this kind of change.
A neighborhood can be organized as a center for radical action. Attack people's values and Institutions by creating alternative values and institutions.
Knock on every door in the neighborhood. Say,
"We're taking a survey." A clip board with a piece of paper headed:
WHAT DO YOU KNOW? / WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN?
another piece headed:
WHAT DO YOU NEED? / WHAT CAN YOU GIVE AWAY?
"We are evaluating our resources to see just what we have in our neighborhood, how we can help each other. We feel that none of us know each other well enough. We're going to make up a directory for the neighborhood, it might tell you who can help you with your lawn, who can lend you a power saw." Go prepared to rap with people. If they let you in the door, maybe you can turn their heads around without breaking them off. People will talk to you and under- stand you because we all have the same problems, we are all lonely and insecure.
For the Movement to grow it must realize that we are kept in isolation all our lives and told about each other thru the established media. The Movement's problems of relating to Blacks, poor whites, police, etc., are essentially problems of overcoming false ideas on both sides designed to keep us apart. Those problems can and will be overcome by people talking to people, not by sitting around and listening to media descriptions. The same media that describes us as dirty commies, gives us our impressions of middle America.
Free is the second most important four letter word in the English language. The Diggers were hip to that. Set up a free store as an exchange of goods within the neighborhood. ‘here will the stuff come from? People. Objects are only transitory subjects of human value. An object released from one person's value may be destroyed, abandoned or made available to other people. The Diggers assumed free stores to liberate human nature. First free the space, goods and services. Let the theories of economics follow social facts. Once a free store is assumed, human wanting and giving, needing and taking, become wide open to improvisation.
Build a free laundromat. Find a garage, some old machines, washers and driers that are cheap or free, make them work and leave the door unlocked. Paint the place nicely and make it a neighborhood project. People will talk. Why can't all work done by machines be done for free? Why should we be ripped off by the gyp merchants ~: run the laundromats? The People"s Laundromat?
Free the services that people usually have to pay for. A cooperative garage, bring your cars, we have tools and a place and someone who can teach you to fix your car. Understand your technology. Can people become their own electricians and plumbers? can they pool their tools and make them available to all? A man in the wilderness quickly learns that he can do many things for himself. Stop relying om the specialist and start becoming a comprehensive person. Build confidence by becoming master of your technology. Anyone willing to teach a class on How Things Work in this neighborhood?
All this time you are talking to people and changing their heads, and yours too, You stop working through the media because it is designed to screw you.
The Student Cooperative Craft Shop already exists in this area. Its purpose is to sell leather goods, jewelry, candles, etc cheap, and stop exploitation by the mod clothing stores and head shops in St. Louis. It gives people a way to make some money and a place to learn a craft. It has spoken,mainly by design, to the student population in the area. It ia interesting, however, to note how the community responded. It made students a part of the community. Black kids came in and wanted to learn how to maké things, and started talking to us. Old ladies who had nothing to do offered to mind the store. People got turned on to politics,music and culture on both sides. There was a place to go where none ever existed before.
A food store could have interesting possibilities in this area. The food industry is one of the industries most neglected by the left, however,it rips people off as much as the auto industry or the military-industrial complex. The food is poor quality, unhealthy, and excessively packaged, but everybody has to eat. A food store could succeed if it could sell healthy organic (DDT free) food as cheaply or cheaper than the retail markets. To do this it would have to form its own food chain-system, if you go to the present food industry at any stage you will be ripped off. The food should come from farm land in Missouri or Illinois, although some can come from much farther. Student farms, kids living in the country, and farmers who will sell to you (most large farms are under contract) are,the sources, The trucking is done by people who ow trucks. Flour mills can be had for a couple hundred dollars, bread ovens, juice presses, and much other equipment can be had cheaply be- cause it isn't used .
The key to the project is that while it may not be the most radical thing to do with your time, we all have to eat and support ourselves, If we can spend that time doing these things and free people, we are performing a radicalizing function. The tools exist, not among the students but among the people we have been talking about organizing, i.e., everybody else, and if we want to radicalize them we must start providing ways for them to live. There is a good deal of money in a successful food system, money to pay people.
Build a park on the corner of Delmar and Skinner, which is empty now and awaiting a gas station. The people's nark strategy is a good one. Do something everyone can understand, build a park, make an ugly place beautiful. then it gets torn down, people will understand about private property and corporate power. Begin with the survey, and talk about the ecology of the automobile. Talk a- bout: how gas stations are holding companies for real estate, and @ against tearing down the Chinese restaurant and book store to build a Jack in the Box. Then make the place a park and liberation block party.
Start by talking to people, turn them on and get them thinking. Let human wanting and needing discover what it can about its condition. The political analysis and rhetoric will come later, slowly.
NOT PEOPLE'S PARK - PEOPLE'S PLANET
much thanks to
Gary Snyder Bucky Fuller the Communication Company
Clay Claiborne
American Friend Service Corm. 447 De Balivere St. Louis, Mo. (314) 862-8070
