Minnesota Potter and Printer In Mashiko

OUTGROWING THE EARTH: China's Havest Decline

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:50:30 GMT

OUTGROWING THE EARTH: THE FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGE IN AN AGE OF FALLING
WATER TABLES AND RISING TEMPERATURES by Lester R. Brown (W.W. Norton &
Co.)

>From Chapter 8: Reversing Chinas Harvest Decline

The phenomenal rise in Chinas grain production from 90 million tons in
1950 to 392 million tons in 1998 was one of the great economic success
stories of the late twentieth century. But in 1998 production peaked and
turned downward, falling to 322 million tons in 2003. As noted in Chapter
1, this drop of 70 million tons exceeds the entire grain harvest of
Canada. Thus any attempt to expand the world grain harvest enough to
rebuild depleted world grain stocks starts with reversing the decline in
China.

Virtually all of Chinas production decline of nearly 18 percent from 1998
to 2003 is the result of a 16-percent shrinkage in grain area. Several
forces are at work here, as described in Chapter 5. Cropland is being
converted to nonfarm uses at a record rate, including industrial and
residential construction and the paving of land for roads, highways, and
parking lots. With deserts expanding by 360,000 hectares (1,400 square
miles) a year, drifting sands are covering cropland in the north and west,
making agriculture impossible. The loss of irrigation water is also
reducing the harvested area, particularly of wheat, which is grown in the
northern, drier regions of the country.

In 2004 Chinas improved grain harvest, lifted by a substantial rise in
the rice support price and unusually favorable weather, was expected to
regain 21 million of the 70-million-ton-drop of the preceding five years.
Even with this projected production increase, Chinas harvest in 2004 will
still fall short of consumption by 35 million tons. And there are several
worrying trends that undermine the hope that the harvest will rise
consistently again anytime soon.

To read the entire chapter, go to
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Contents.htm

North and South Divide.

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 03:41:06 GMT

U.S.-Canada: Just Who's the Docile One? By Michael Adams | Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Canadians have long been considered more docile than Americans. But as President Bush visits Canada on November 30, 2004, does this stereotype still hold true? Michael Adams author of "Fire and Ice" argues that Canadians are emerging as the more liberal and pluralist people. In contrast, Americans are increasingly becoming deferent to authority.
n 1867, Canadas Fathers of Confederation dedicated their country to peace, order and good government. Meanwhile, the ideals set out in Thomas Jeffersons Declaration of Independence were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Opposing ideals
Back then, it was Americans who were the revolutionaries, putting in place institutions that were designed to frustrate the authority of governments. Surprisingly, I have found Canadians to be a more autonomous people than Americans, less outer-directed and less conformist. In contrast, counter-revolutionary Canadians saw the authority of political institutions as central to the well-being of their country.
America has long honored the individual fighting for truth and justice. Canadians, for their part, have tended to defer to elites who broker compromises between competing social groups. And while Americas motto is E Pluribus Unum, out of many one, Canada started as two founding European cultures French and English.
Since that time, this biculturalism has been expanded to include a multiculturalism that encompasses not only more recent immigrants, but also the aboriginal First Nations that were here long before Europeans arrived.
The Old World lives on
The Americans separated church and state, while we Canadians embedded state sponsorship of parochial education in our constitution. All in all, Canada never renounced its European political heritage at least not as emphatically as the American revolutionaries did.
The Old World ideal of noblesse oblige has survived here even into this century, shaping our social assistance and public housing programs. In contrast, in the United States, the primary public expenditure has been mass education in the service of individual achievement.
Who are the real revolutionaries?
>From distinct roots, Canada and the United States have thus grown up with substantially different characters. Americans are motivated by the notion of individual achievement. Canadians, in contrast, stand out by balancing individual autonomy with a sense of collective responsibility.
Group rights, public institutions and deference to authority have abided north of the border while individualism, private interests and mistrust of authority have remained strong to the south. So much for the officially sanctioned saga. In the last quarter century, some counterintuitive developments have occurred on both sides of the 49th parallel.
Canadians have distanced themselves from traditional authority organized religion, the patriarchal family and political elites. Peter C. Newman has characterized recent social change in Canada as the movement from deference to defiance.
American nightmare?

Meanwhile, an ever greater proportion of America is clinging to old institutions family, church, state and a myriad of clubs, voluntary associations, even gangs as anchors in an increasingly chaotic world.
After all, the United States is a country where the price of untrammeled individualism is that, in an instant, illness, crime or an injudicious investment portfolio can turn the proverbial American Dream into an outright nightmare. As a result, many Americans are seeking refuge in the church, with family or in gated communities.
Social innovation
In many ways, it is Canadians who have become the true revolutionaries, at least when it comes to social life. In fact, it has become apparent to me that Canadians are at the forefront of a fascinating and important social experiment. In many ways, it is Canadians who have become the true revolutionaries at least when it comes to social life.
We Canadians are coming to define a new sociological post-modernity, characterized by multiple, flexible roles and identities. In contrast, Americans weaned for generations on ideals of freedom and independence have in general not found adequate security and stability in their social environment.
That makes them hesitant when it comes to asserting the personal autonomy needed to enact the kind of individual explorations spiritual, familial, sexual that are taking place north of the border.
Flocking to religion
The increase in religiosity in the United States is perhaps the characteristic that best distinguishes America from other advanced industrial societies in terms of social change.
Whereas in Canada and Europe the church has been linked with the state (and, thus, over time has become subject to the distrust and questioning to which the state has been exposed), in America religion has long been decentralized and congregationally-based.
Marketing religion
The diverse and populist system of American sectarianism has proved much more resilient, in the long run, than the more hierarchical, institutional, state-sanctioned church models of the Old World.
Churches are some of the few places if not the only one where many Americans feel truly safe, where guns are left at home, under the seat in the 4X4, or checked at the door.
The claim that Americans high levels of religious affiliation can be attributed to U.S. churches particularly the Protestant sects having been forced to market themselves effectively over the years in order to survive may well be true. In my records, however, we found an extremely strong correlation between deference to authority and religiosity among Americans.
Those Americans who describe themselves as very religious are far more likely to embrace trends associated with deference to authority not only Obedience to Authority, but also values such as Patriarchy, Traditional Family, Duty and Propriety.
Seeking refuge

These people are looking for definitive answers and rules to live by, unlike many of those strong on the Spiritual Quest trend, who are looking to ask the right questions and wish to arrive at their own albeit often tentative conclusions.
Religion is fulfilling a role for Americans that secular institutions do in other countries: Safe haven, community, a place to be with people like me, a refuge from Darwinistic competition and conflict in an increasingly dangerous world.
High standards, high quality

Churches are some of the few places, if not the only one, where many Americans feel truly safe where guns are left at home or under the seat in the 4X4 or checked at the door.
Religion is fulfilling a role for Americans that secular institutions do in other countries: Safe haven, community, a place to be with people like me," a refuge from Darwinistic competition and conflict.
Besides what separates Americans and Canadians on the church front, it is interesting to note that these two New World nations have each won the sweepstakes in two international competitions. The Americans in the category for the highest standard of living on the planet and the Canadians win for the best quality of life.
The Americans have done this by being motivated by the notion of individual achievement. The Canadians, in contrast, stand out by balancing individual autonomy with a sense of collective responsibility.
Ancestral qualities
We Americans and Canadians are thus each 21st century expressions of the ideas of our ancestors and the institutions they built. America honors traditionally masculine qualities. Canada honors qualities that are more traditionally feminine.
America honors the lone warrior fighting for truth and justice, the father who is master of his lonely house on the prairie or a few good men planting the Stars and Stripes on a distant planet. Canada honors compromise, harmony and equality. Americans go where no man has gone before. Canadians follow hoping to make that new place livable.
Complementary world roles

What does this all mean for the global community? If American historian Samuel P. Huntington is right and the 21st century will be an often violent clash of civilizations we will all be grateful for U.S. economic and military leadership.
Americans go where no man has gone before. Canadians follow hoping to make that new place livable.
If, however, the challenges of the 21st century will be addressing the growing disparities between rich and poor and the degradation of the Earths ecology, then let us hope Canada and kindred nations can muster the courage to show us another path into the future.
The key to these apparent anomalies, I believe, is the consequence of Americas single-minded pursuit of individual achievement in the absence of peace, order and good government. By adolescence and often earlier in life, Americans find themselves in an intense, often dangerous struggle for survival or a winner take all quest for success.
Winners and losers
In such a context, traditional authorities serve as anchors: A strong father, a strong police force, a strong military, a strong nation, the President and Commander-in-Chief. In such a world, there is little tolerance for subtlety, nuance or shades of gray.
Life is a Manichean struggle between good and evil, winners and losers and the only way good will prevail is by being the strongest, vanquishing the evil empire or the axis of evil or the next incarnation of the forces of evil.

The Boss got it right
Bruce Springsteen, American icon and perpetual valedictorian of the school of hard knocks, summed it up in his aptly named tune, Atlantic City: Down here, its just winners and losers and dont get caught on the wrong side of that line.
The Americans win the category for the highest standard of living on the planet and the Canadians win for the best quality of life.
In that world, individuals must choose their side, fall into line and follow their leader into battle. There is little room for individual autonomy in such a scenario.
That Americans are more deferential to institutions than Canadians is counter-intuitive. And perhaps most surprising, I have found Canadians to be a more autonomous people than Americans, less outer-directed and less conformist. This, too, is contrary to the stereotype of Americans as a nation of individuals.
Adapted from "Fire and Ice. The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values" (Penguin, Canada) by Michael Adams. Copyright 2003 by Michael Adams. Used by permission of the author.

Visiting Mashiko

Wed, 7 Jul 2004 01:11:07 GMT

John Baymore provided a list a while back. You can see the full list here:

http://lsv.ceramics.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0307B&;L=CLAYART&P=R12974

John stays at the first one. Said it costs \7500 a night and included breakfast and dinner. He also advises that you have a Japanese speaker call for you.

Okadaya Ryokan　0285-72-2016
Hasegawa ryokan 0285-72-2210
Shiraume-so 0285-72-6762
Tozan-so 0285-72-2063
Ohkawado Kozen Spa 0285-72-4546
Minshuku (private guest house) Higeta 0285-72-2559
Minshuju Furusato 0285-72-3156
Minshuku Yamaji 0285-72-2525
Minshuku Yamabiko 0285-72-1829
Business Hotel Toyoda 0285-68-4500

Furuki-san runs The Tao Art Club, Potters In, a traditional Minshuku style inn and also a pottery studio. Lodging only is \3500 a night. Cost more to use the studios. If you book during the week or "off peak" you might be able to stay in the Minka farmhouse, which has "Western" style toilets. If the Minka is full, you get placed in modern rooms, but with "traditional" modern toilets. It is located in a convenient spot. Fax first, Furuki-san can read English and then voice call to confirm:

FAX 　0285-72-4178 Voice: 0285-72-3866

Best way to get to Mashiko from Tokyo is by train to Utsunomiya and then bus from Utsunomiya to Mashiko.

Buy a rail pass before you leave home. You cannot purchase them once you are in Japan. They will save you a lot of money.

Check out http://www.japantravelinfo.com/ for travel information

Tactile Experience.

Thu, 17 Jun 2004 05:40:55 GMT

"What level of experience do we achieve by running a hand over a Formica counter, gripping the rim of a stainless steel mixing bowl, or touching the door of a refrigerator? Even materials that have an intrinsic tactile surface, such as wood, are rendered neutral by being permeated with plastic and isolated from our tactile sensors. As a result, we are deprived of one of the basic senses with which potters must concern themselves, since the forms and surfaces they create are made by the pressure and grip of their hands on the clay. In some standardized and repetative ceramics, these gestures become stereotyped and meaningless, but in a sensitively made pot this contact between maker and material can become a direct and moving experience that may be shared by users of the pot. Not only the forms which reveal themselves, but also the weight of the pot, the texture of the materials, and surface gesture provide an open door to understanding. First, however, we must overcome the inhibitions of our Western acculturation that causes us to feel knowledge by touch is immature, primitive, and even illegal. Among many other peoples, the hand is a live instrument of experience, used in daily life to hold, lift, grip, and explore. As a tool for living, it becomes a tool for knowing." --Warren MacKenzie

The Parable Of The Tribes by Andrew Schmookler

Wed, 16 Jun 2004 15:57:56 GMT

The Parable Of The Tribes

A new look at how the history of civilization
may have been largely shaped
by the raw struggle for power between societies

by Andrew Schmookler

The following article is based on excerpts from the first part of a major new book (same title and author, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, 400pp, $19.95) that argues that the history of civilization has been largely shaped by the way that, as a system, civilization has no mechanisms for restraining the raw struggle for power between societies. Schmookler brings a remarkable depth of both scholarship and insight to this issue, tracing (in the latter parts of the book) the myriad insidious ways that this struggle has thwarted human choice. He makes it clear that the problems we face now, as we try to come to grips with our planetary interconnectedness, can't simply be blamed on personalities or ideologies, but are rooted in the fundamental structure of 5000 years of international anarchy. The problem of power that he raises and explores is a fundamental challenge for governance (at many levels) that we must deal with somehow if we are to have any hope of creating a humane sustainable culture as a successor to the darkness we call civilization. If you want to deepen your understanding of the full challenge we face, you'll find the book a mind-stretcher and a sobering treat. Reprinted with permission.

The Dynamics of History

THE COMMONSENSE THEORY of social evolution offers a benign and reasonable view of human affairs. According to this image, people are continually hunting for ways to better their condition. (One immediately recognizes the Economic Man of capitalist theory.) The alternatives are readily generated by this pursuit of improvement. The longer the hunt goes on, the more alternatives are discovered. And, since man is an inventive as well as exploratory creature, what is discovered in the world is increasingly supplemented by what people have created. With the passage of time, therefore, more and more cultural alternatives become available for all aspects of our cultural business - how and what to produce, how to govern ourselves, what to think, how to travel, play, make music, and so on. The process of selection is done by people. The criterion for selection? People choose what they believe will best meet their needs, replacing old cultural forms when new and better ones become available. Again, the resonance with economic theory is striking: social evolution is the product of choices made in the marketplace of cultural possibilities.

The commonsense theory of selection by human choice leads one to expect a continuous betterment of the human condition. For a story of improvement, however, the history of civilization makes rather dismal reading, and as the culmination of ten thousand years of progress the twentieth century is deeply disappointing. It is not simply that history is strewn with regrettable events, with accidents leaving carnage and wreckage on the thoroughfare bound for Progress. The road itself has been treacherous. If the stupendous historical transformation in the structure of human life has been the result of people choosing what they believe will best satisfy their needs, why have not human needs been better met?

The idea of history as progress is itself of relatively recent origin. And those who endorse that idea are usually looking only at relatively recent history for support. But even the advances of modern civilization have their nightmarish side, escalating as they have the destructive capacities of civilization. Looking at history as a whole, it is far from clear that the main "advances" of civilized societies have consistently improved the human condition. In earlier eras of history, the cutting edge of civilization's progress led from freedom into bondage for the common person. The great monuments of the ancient world were built with the sweat of slaves whose civilized ancestors had not known the oppressor's whip. After four thousand years the pyramids of Egypt can still stand as an emblem of the problem of civilization, that its achievements are more reliably impressive than benign.

The idea of progress has relied in another way on the lack of a clear vision of the distant past. The life of primitive peoples is widely assumed to have been nasty, brutish, and short. The step from the "savage" state to the "civilized" is consequently assumed to have been straight up. Increasingly, however, as anthropologists have taken a closer and less ethnocentric look at hunter-gatherers, the evidence has shown that primitive life was not so bad.

Among hunting-and-gathering bands, the burden of labor is comparatively small, leaving more time than most civilized people have known for play, music, dance. The politics of these small societies are largely free of coercion and inequality. Relationships are close and enduring. Primitives enjoy a wholeness and freedom in their lives which many civilized peoples may well envy. This new view of our starting point demands a new look at the entire course.

The Struggle For Power

In his classic, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes what he calls "the state of nature" as an anarchic situation in which all are compelled, for their very survival, to engage in a ceaseless struggle for power. About this "war of all against all," two important points should be made: that Hobbes's vision of the dangers of anarchy captured an important dimension of the human condition, and that to call that condition "the state of nature" is a remarkable misnomer.

In nature, all pursue survival for themselves and their kind. But they can do so only within biologically evolved limits. The living order of nature, though it has no ruler, is not in the least anarchic. Each pursues a kind of self- interest, each is a law unto itself, but the separate interests and laws have been formed over aeons of selection to form part of a tightly ordered harmonious system. Although the state of nature involves struggle, the struggle is part of an order. Each component of the living system has a defined place out of which no ambition can extricate it. Hunting- gathering societies were to a very great extent likewise contained by natural limits.

With the rise of civilization, the limits fall away. The natural self-interest and pursuit of survival remain, but they are no longer governed by any order. The new civilized forms of society, with more complex social and political structures, created the new possibility of indefinite social expansion: more and more people organized over more and more territory. All other forms of life had always found inevitable limits placed upon their growth by scarcity and consequent death. But civilized society was developing the unprecedented capacity for unlimited growth as an entity. (The limitlessness of this possibility does not emerge fully at the outset, but rather becomes progressively more realized over the course of history as people invent methods of transportation, communication, and governance which extend the range within which coherence and order can be maintained.) Out of the living order there emerged a living entity with no defined place.

In a finite world, societies all seeking to escape death- dealing scarcity through expansion will inevitably come to confront each other. Civilized societies, therefore, though lacking inherent limitations to their growth, do encounter new external limits - in the form of one another. Because human beings (like other living creatures) have "excess reproductive capacity," meaning that human numbers tend to increase indefinitely unless a high proportion of the population dies prematurely, each civilized society faces an unpleasant choice. If an expanding society willingly stops where its growth would infringe upon neighboring societies, it allows death to catch up and overtake its population. If it goes beyond those limits, it commits aggression. With no natural order or overarching power to prevent it, some will surely choose to take what belongs to their neighbors rather than to accept the limits that are compulsory for every other form of life.

In such circumstances, a Hobbesian struggle for power among societies becomes inevitable. We see that what is freedom from the point of view of each single unit is anarchy in an ungoverned system of those units. A freedom unknown in nature is cruelly transmuted into an equally unnatural state of anarchy, with its terrors and its destructive war of all against all.

As people stepped across the threshold into civilization, they inadvertently stumbled into a chaos that had never before existed. The relations among societies were uncontrolled and virtually uncontrollable. Such an ungoverned system imposes unchosen necessities: civilized people were compelled to enter a struggle for power.

The meaning of "power," a concept central to this entire work, needs to be explored. Power may be defined as the capacity to achieve one's will against the will of another. The exercise of power thus infringes upon the exercise of choice, for to be the object of another's power is to have his choice substituted for one's own. Power becomes important where two actors (or more) would choose the same thing but cannot have it; power becomes important when the obstacles to the achievement of one's will come from the will of others. Thus as the expanding capacities of human societies created an overlap in the range of their grasp and desire, the intersocietal struggle for power arose.

But the new unavoidability of this struggle is but the first and smaller step in the transmutation of the apparent freedom of civilized peoples into bondage to the necessities of power.

The Parable

The new human freedom made striving for expansion and power possible. Such freedom, when multiplied, creates anarchy. The anarchy among civilized societies meant that the play of power in the system was uncontrollable. In an anarchic situation like that, no one can choose that the struggle for power shall cease. But there is one more element in the picture: no one is free to choose peace, but anyone can impose upon all the necessity for power. This is the lesson of the parable of the tribes.

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.

I have just outlined four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes: destruction, absorption and transformation, withdrawal, and imitation. In every one of these outcomes the ways of power are spread throughout the system. This is the parable of the tribes.

This parable is a theory of social evolution which shows that power is like a contaminant, a disease, which once introduced will gradually yet inexorably become universal in the system of competing societies. More important than the inevitability of the struggle for power is the profound social evolutionary consequence of that struggle once it begins. A selection for power among civilized societies is inevitable. If anarchy assured that power among civilized societies could not be governed, the selection for power signified that increasingly the ways of power would govern the destiny of mankind. This is the new evolutionary principle that came into the world with civilization. Here is the social evolutionary black hole that we have sought as an explanation of the harmful warp in the course of civilization's development.

Power Versus Choice In Social Evolution

The parable of the tribes provides a perspective on social evolution quite different from the commonsense view. Even without rewriting history, the parable of the tribes puts it in a wholly new light.

The Question of Choice The commonsense model emphasizes the role of free human choice: social evolution is directed by a benign process of selection in which people choose what they want from among the cultural alternatives. Viewed from the perspective of the parable of the tribes, human destiny is no longer governed by free human choice. At the heart of the loss of choice is not that some could impose their will upon others, but that the whole reign of power came unbidden by anyone to dominate human life. People inadvertently stumbled into a struggle for power beyond their ability to avoid or to stop. This struggle generated a selective process, also beyond human control, which molded change in a direction that was inevitable - toward power maximization in human societies.

The parable of the tribes is not, however, rigidly deterministic. It does not maintain that specific events are preordained. Even major developments can arise owing to relatively fortuitous circumstances. The history of a continent may be altered by a burst of human creativity, a people's destiny may hinge on the wisdom or folly of its leaders, the texture of a culture may bear for ages the imprint of some charismatic visionary. What the parable of the tribes does assert is that once mankind had begun the process of developing civilization, the overall direction of its evolution was inevitable. This is suggested by the way civilization developed in those regions of the Old and New worlds where it arose more or less independently: their courses show significant parallels. People can act freely and intelligently, but uncontrolled circumstances determine the situation in which they must act and mold the evolution of their systems

Thus we find that the major trends in the transformation of human society have had the effect of increasing competitive power. This effect in itself does not prove that the selection for power has been the cause of these trends, especially since many of these transformations also increase a society's ability to achieve goals outside the realm of competition. A major purpose of my work is to make compelling the case for the contention of the parable of the tribes that the reign of power has been a significant factor in dictating the principal trends of the social evolution.

History-makers People do make history. Historical "forces" can be expressed only in the doings of flesh-and- blood human beings. In the commonsense view of social evolution, history is shaped by "the people" in general. To recognize that some people play a large historical role and that others play almost no role at all still falls within the realm of common sense. This inequality does not challenge the essentially democratic view of history as governed by human choices if the history makers are seen as representative of humanity. They can be representative if, like George Washington, they are first in the hearts of their countrymen, or if, like Bach or Edison, they have an extraordinary ability to create what the people want.

The parable of the tribes, however, sees the history makers as an unrepresentative lot. To the extent that social evolution is governed by the selection for power, it is the power maximizers who play the important role in the drama of history. This group is selected for its starring role not by the human cast as a whole but by impersonal and ungoverned forces. They are therefore not representative in the democratic sense. Nor in the Gallup Poll sense, for they are selected because of how they are different from the other actors. They are different in their capacity to get and to wield power. Finally, they are not representative in the sense of the hero who carries his community's banner and fulfills his community's aspirations, for the power wielders of history have often been the conquerors, the destroyers, the oppressors of their fellow human beings. Though we must see history as a drama in which the main actors are the powerful and aggressive, we should not slip into seeing them as the villains, for it is not the actors who set the stage or who govern the thrust of the plot.

The category of "power maximizers" embraces a couple of different kinds of actors in the human drama. Most especially, it includes entire sovereign social entities (like the imperialistic tribes of the parable) who impinge upon other, previously autonomous societies. The parable of the tribes focuses primarily on the intersocietal system because that system forms the comprehensive context for human action, but more importantly because in that system anarchy has been most complete and least curable. Anarchy is at the core of the problem of power, making struggle inevitable and allowing the ways of power to spread uncontrolled throughout the whole like a contaminant. Thus, nowhere has power had so free and decisive a reign as in that arena of sovereign actors where, by definition, there is no power to hold all in awe.

Yet the problem of power exists in some form also within societies; for even though in one sense societies are governed, in another more profound sense they are usually subject to anarchy. The formation of government and the establishment of the rule of law can be - and usually have been in large measure - the embodiment of the rule of raw power rather than a restraint upon it. The search for a fuller understanding of the problem of power in social evolution leads therefore to an intrasocietal analogue of the parable of the tribes. And the category of history's power maximizers includes those groups (like the feudal class) and individuals (like Stalin) who are successful in competing for power within a society's boundaries. Again, it is those distinguished by their capacity to grasp and wield power who gain the means to shape the whole (social) system according to their ways and their vision. And again, the history makers are cast in their roles not by the people affected but by an unchosen selective process; and generally, they are not those whom mankind would choose to guide its destiny.

The Spread of Cultural Innovations Both the commonsense view and the parable of the tribes would predict that innovations tend to spread from their place of origin. Both would predict an erosion of cultural diversity among societies, but the two theories view this process of cultural homogenization differently. If innovations are seen as "improvements," naturally they will spread. When people in more "backward" areas learn of better ways of meeting their needs, they will adopt them. Cultural diversity is thus diminished by a process of diffusion. In the perspective of the parable of the tribes, the historic trend toward cultural homogeneity is decreed by the reign of power. Whether or not a cultural innovation spreads throughout the system of interacting societies depends not so much on its ability to enhance the quality of human life as on its capacity to increase the competitive power of those who adopt it. The ways of power inevitably become universal. While the diffusion model represents cultural homogenization as the result of free human choice, the parable of the tribes stresses the role of compulsion: the conqueror spreads his ways either directly or by compelling others to imitate him in self- defense.

Civilization and Human Needs If civilization were governed by human choice, we would expect it to be fairly well designed for the fulfillment of human needs. This expectation led us earlier to the Rube Goldberg problem, the ludicrous disproportion between the gargantuan apparatus of civilization and the disappointing benefit in human terms. The parable of the tribes sweeps aside this dilemma. If the selection for power, and not choice, has governed the evolving shape of civilized society, there is no reason to expect the design to correspond with the needs of human beings. According to the parable of the tribes, civilized peoples have been compelled to live in societies organized for the maximization of competitive power. People become the servants of their evolving systems, rather than civilized society being the instrument of its members.

Not that the selection for power systematically selects what is injurious to people. The process is not hostile to human welfare, simply indifferent. Many things that serve power serve people as well, such as a degree of social order and the provision of adequate nutrition to keep people functioning. (As this implies, there are a great many roads to hell that the need for social power helps close off.) But the parable of the tribes suggests that the service to people of such power-enhancing attributes of society may be entirely incidental to their raison d'etre. Those of us who now enjoy affluence and freedom as well as power are predisposed to believe that benign forces shape our destiny. But to the extent that our blessings are incidental by-products of the strategy for power at this point in the evolution of civilization, our optimism may be ill-founded. If the forces that now favor us are the same as those that earlier condemned masses of people to tyranny and bondage, the future requirements of power maximization may compel mankind not toward the heavenly utopia to which we aspire but toward the hellish dystopias that some like Orwell and Huxley have envisioned. Our well-being may prove to be less like that of the squire who feeds himself well off the land that he rules than like that of the dairy cow who, though pampered and well fed, is not served but exploited by the system in which she lives. The bottom line that governs her fate is not her own calculation; when she is worth more for meat than for milk, off she goes to the slaughterhouse.

Power and Choice Wisdom is often less a matter of choosing a particular view as the truth than of combining different truths in a balanced way. So it is with the parable of the tribes and the commonsense view of social evolution. The selection for power does govern a good deal of the evolution of civilization, but people also shape their destiny by their choices. The power wielders are, to be sure, prominent in the human drama, but there are creative and charismatic figures (Shakespeare, Buddha) whom we choose to give a very different kind of power to shape our experience. The ways of power may spread by compulsion, but antibiotics, fine silks, and the idea of liberty can diffuse throughout the world by human choice. Thus, while human well-being may be incidental to one major social- evolutionary force, there is room for human aspiration to dictate a part of the story. I therefore argue not that the parable of the tribes has been the sole force directing the evolution of civilization but only that it has been an extremely important one.

The evolution of civilization can be seen as dialectic between the systematic selection for power and the human striving for a humane world, between the necessities imposed upon humankind regardless of their wishes and their efforts to be able to choose the cultural environment in which they will live.

My Deshi/Apprentice

Wed, 19 May 2004 10:12:21 GMT
Taiko is an Akita dog I brought with me to Japan from Minnesota. Here is a photo of her helping me during the last firing.
http://images6.fotki.com/v76/photos/1/199764/954235/Sdeshi-vi.jpg>;

George Eliot Quote...

Wed, 19 May 2004 05:57:44 GMT
"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

Sine Cere, Without Wax.

Wed, 19 May 2004 05:56:31 GMT
English word "sincere" comes from two Latin words:

sine = without
cere = wax.

In Ol' Rome, potters used wax to cover up cracks and flaws in pottery.

Potters who wanted folks to know they did not follow this practice had the sign in the shop declaring , "Sine Cere" - Without Wax, no hiding of imperfections or flaws.

In Greek the word is:

aploteti = "sincerity"

It includes not only the idea of sincerity, but also doing more than is expected: Promising less but giving more than expected.

An Online Friend asked me how I came to study in Mashiko

Wed, 19 May 2004 01:42:34 GMT

Not counting my early experiences as a kid, digging up my own clay, I become interested in pottery during undergrad at the U of Central Mich. Was too busy trying to get a degree to raise a family to take time and study pottery at the time. When I met my wife Jean in 1983, I looked her up because of the note she posted on the Zen center bulletin board, looking for a partner to go square and folk dancing with. This caught my eye, because it was out of character for your average Minnesota zen student, who my potter friend Dirk describes as being "about a quart low on blood."

The first thing Jean asked me was if I was a potter. I said no, I was studying wood sculpture, but I was always interested in pottery. She said I looked like a potter and reminded me of her friend Dirk. When I met Jean, her apartment was full of MacKenzie's work and Dirk's work. Jean also took me to an import store, Yamato Imports, Downtown Minneapolis, where I was able to handle the work of Hamada and Shimaoka and also see the wood block prints of Shiko Munakata. She also took me to visit MacKenzie's pottery in 1983, not long after I came back from the monastery in Iowa.

Jean introduced Dirk to MacKenzie's first graduate student (Horning), after Dirk came back from the East coast, where he ran a bookstore for the Himalayan Institute in NYC and learned pottery to make their cast formed netty pots (a sort of Aladdin's lamp used by Yoga people for cleaning the sinuses.) When he came back to Omaha in 1981, he told Jean he was really interested in the work of Shoji Hamada. Jean told him that he should meet Jerry Horning at Creighton University, the head of the ceramics department there, because he studied with MacKenzie, who was the leading proponent of Hamada in America. So, from the beginning, I was always interested in Dirk Gillespie, Warren MacKenzie, Tatsuzo Shimaoka and Shoji Hamada.

After I studied with our zen teacher for 7 years, I began studying pottery. My initial plan was to study at my friend's pottery for a year and study Japanese too, and then study at Shimaoka's for a year. My friend's pottery situation was not satisfactory, so I went to Shimaoka's after a couple months and ended up studying with him for over 3 years. We decided to stay in Mashiko early on, when we found our modern house and studio, which is very rare in Mashiko. Jean's single request for a house was that it had a flush toilet and not a pit toilet. We have that here. Dirk and I both picked up work at the wheel very quickly. I have always attributed this to his yoga mediation and my zen meditation. I was also lucky to be able to collect and study good pots for 7 years before touching wet clay.

It took me a long time to send in my Jerome Travel Study grant report because I am still being effected by it, but I did sent it in last month. I include it below.
------------------------------ ... ------------------------------

My travel study grant allowed me to come to Mashiko to study pottery and do a three year apprenticeship with the National Living Treasure Tatsuzo Shimaoka. I was introduced and recommended to Shimaoka by his friend Warren MacKenzie. Few foreigners have had the chance to study with Shimaoka for three years. I was able to study all aspects of traditional wood fired pottery, from the processing of clay and glazes, working on the wheel, glazing, firing a large complex Noborigama climbing kiln and preparing work after it is unloaded. I had a graduation show in the spring of 2003 at the Tsukamoto gallery, the best gallery in Mashiko, which included my wife Jean Shannon showing her monotypes and new woodblock prints.

I have built my own wood fired kiln which can be seen here: http://mashiko.org and have opened my own studio and am making my own work in Mashiko. I am also working on a book drawing on my experiences that the travel/study grant enabled. The book is related to zen practice, craft and the importance of craft in the 21st century.

Below is a short bio I sent to the International Wood Fire Conference in Goshiwara, Aomori Japan, that I am presenting at in June. My talk will be titled: "From MingeiSota To Mashiko."

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I was born in Osaka, lived my first 18 months in Sakai, and grew up in Michigan in the U.S.A. I moved to Minnesota in 1983 to study Soto Zen Buddhism with Dainin Katagiri Roshi. At my teacher's funeral service in 1990, I was impressed with the traditional Hassidic Jewish pine coffin, of nailess construction, that his body lay in. I decided at his funeral to become a potter, and to make funeral urns with the same heart/mind as the Hassidic coffin maker.

Consumption is death and creating is life. Human beings are by nature creative. We cannot be happy through consuming only. And the best means of communication that transcends time, place, and culture, is through art and craft. Creativity can bring understanding, peace and harmony to the world.

--
Lee Love in Mashiko, Japan Lee@Mashiko.org

homepage: http://mashiko.org

Minnesota Potter and Printer In Mashiko

OUTGROWING THE EARTH: China's Havest Decline

North and South Divide.

Visiting Mashiko

Tactile Experience.

The Parable Of The Tribes by Andrew Schmookler

The Parable Of The Tribes

A new look at how the history of civilization may have been largely shaped by the raw struggle for power between societies

The Dynamics of History

The Struggle For Power

The Parable

Power Versus Choice In Social Evolution

My Deshi/Apprentice

George Eliot Quote...

Sine Cere, Without Wax.

An Online Friend asked me how I came to study in Mashiko

A new look at how the history of civilization
may have been largely shaped
by the raw struggle for power between societies