Ralph Waldo Emerson was wrong when he wrote: "Essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf". Because the Industrial Revolution has touched everything.
The 18th Century is coming to a close - a little late - in the 21st century when what we need is another industrial revolution, thanks to peak oil and peak debt and climate change. Revolution of universal design with universal application ... if you want to invest, invest in community, invest in people.
This is the message from today's philosophers who gathered at Berkeley's Ecoliteracy Centre for the Systems Thinking seminar by Fritjof Capra in June.
In one action-packed week in San Francisco, I managed to more than fulfil all three goals for my trip:
- to catch up with family
- to hear Fritjof Capra speak
- to walk in nature.
On the riverboat trip across Lake Tahoe to Emerald Bay, we listened to words of Mark Twain delivered by an actor who impersonated Twain.
"To obtain the air the angels breathe, you must go to Tahoe." _ Mark Twain
My cousin informed me that "They ran a bumper sticker campaign to "Keep Tahoe Blue". Turns out climate change has warmed the waters of one of the world's largest alpine lakes.
The dramatic landscape and cool, cool basin of blue water was carved by melting glaciers. But less snow falls in winter, more rain falls, the seasons have changed. To me, it seems that angels still breathe the air there but imagine what it must have been like when Emerson and Twain were around?
My father's cousin took me to see Muir Woods - a massive, old-growth, redwood forest basically in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is as incredible as the Daintree Rainforests of North Queensland. Except instead of ascending into the mountains, you descend along a winding road into the depths of a fairytale forest.
Here's a quick video of Muir Wood:
What's all this got to do with Systems Thinking? Well, ecology is a system and we are part of this system. Definitely no better than a redwood.
I'm guessing that the wood may exist due to the cloud forests - the infamous bay mists - just as the Daintree's Uplands are sustained by the cloud forests that blow in from The Great Barrier Reef. If these mists disappear due to seasonal changes (read global warming) these ancient ecosystems will fail due to climate change.
Scientists say Evolution started in places like these. The oldest coastal redwoods in Muir Woods are up to 1200 years old - so they were giants even 200 years ago when Ralph Waldo and Twain marvelled at nature.
Ralph, a philosopher poet who loved nature, could not ever imagine that man could exhaust nature - even though he worried about the consequences of the great Industrial Revolution's inexhaustible drive to make more stuff quicker. This is quite a feat.
I travelled to San Francisco to hear another philosopher, the physicist-author Fritjof Capra, talk about Systems Thinking at the Ecoliteracy Centre.
He's writing a new book on Systems Thinking. I've wanted to hear him speak ever since I read his book The Tao of Physics in about 2008 - I came to it late. It was first published in 1975. I managed to ask him to elaborate on how he came to write it.
The physicist took took time out from his academic and scientific research to write this book about how physics is proving Eastern philosophy. People hung on his every word.
Climate skeptics can deny all knowledge and ban climate science from being taught in schools but the truth is that when you teach ecology you are teaching systems thinking and systems connect us to everything in the cosmos - all the way through evolution to the first bubble the popped.
Fritjof Capra, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Ecoliteracy Centre, Aristotle share one trait - they teach that we must learn from nature rather than try to defeat nature.
I bought many books at the Ecoliteracy Centre, like Cradle to Cradle, Remaking the Way We Make Things, ©2002, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.
Many books, such as this one and the one Capra is writing, advocate a new Industrial Revolution. We need to learn to make things better so that there is not so much waste - as in nature.
"If the first Industrial Revolution had a motto, we like to joke, it would be 'If brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough of it'." _ Cradle to Cradle.
If "make it fit" was good enough for industrial solutions in the 18th century then what's wrong with industry of today? Make it fit again, redesign it, make it fit in ways that follow nature's design. Build new industries, build new markets, isn't that what business and industry do?
See Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation. Berkeley's Ecoliteracy Centre is funded through philanthropy and is designed to the tip-top sustainability ratings in the USA.
I visited Ghirardelli Square the before week Australia's Darrell Lea went into administration.
It was standing room only in the chocolate shop and ice-creamery where the line for a table went out the door and into the square and a gorgeous summer Saturday.
The locals are proud of their homegrown chocolate brand. Ghirardelli's employs a small army to keep the traffic flowing through the shop. And tourists walk away with any number of gimmick chocolate boxes from milk pails to the famous San Francisco trams or a red, white and blue canister in the shape of a star.
I did think of Darrell Lea standing there in that chocolate shop but it was a bitter-sweet moment. I haven't bought Darrell Lea for a few years now because the quality fell. The rocky road was full of coconut and no jelly (only at Christmas time, for some reason).
Their famous nougart Easter eggs are unrecognizable. I did feel sad when they went under but it made me think of how clever Ghirardelli Chocolates are.
Here's a quick video I edited together:
I thought of this again last week when I made chocolate cake for dinner ;)
This recipe keeps for three days - yummier on the third day, if it lasts that long. I haven't made it for 12 months. After quadrupling the recipe to make my mother's birthday cake last year was a tricky business that was enough to put me off chocolate cake for a year.
Recipe for Chocolate Cake
Simple Chocolate Almond Cake - from Robert Linxe's La Maison Du Chocolat
(My favourite cook book)
1/2 vanilla bean (though I use a whole one)
200g chocolate (proper: half ordinary, half cuana)
5 eggs
1 stick + 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 2/3 cup confectioner's sugar (castor sugar)
pinch salt
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar (castor ok)
3/4 cup plain flour
3/4 cup ground almonds
Method:
1. Split vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape out seeds with knife. Put bean and seeds into double boiler with chocolate (break into pieces). Melt over low heat.
2. Separate eggs. Whites in large bowl. Yolks in small bowl.
3. Add butter into melted chocolate and stir in sugar and egg yolks. Remove from heat.
4. Add flour and mix. Set aside.
5. Pre-heat oven 180º (400º) & grease 10 inch pan - line with greaseproof paper.
6. Add pinch salt to egg whites, beat, adding in granulated sugar.
7. Fold egg whites into chocolate mix.
8. Pour batter into pan. Bake 20 minutes.