One of the cinema’s most powerful scenes occurs in a film many might disregard due to its genre. In “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” a man trying to rebuild his war-shattered life, rides out to face a Comanche chieftain.

Josey: You be Ten Bears?

Ten Bears: I am Ten Bears.

Josey: I’m Josey Wales.

Ten Bears: I have heard. You’re the Gray Rider. You would not make peace with the Blue Coats. You may go in peace.

Josey: I reckon not. Got nowhere to go.

Ten Bears: Then you will die.

Josey: I came here to die with you. Or, live with you. Dying ain’t so hard for men like you and me, it’s living that’s hard; when all you ever cared about has been butchered or raped. Governments don’t live together, people live together. With governments, you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well, I’ve come here to give you either one or get either one from you. I came here like this so you’ll know my word of death is true. And that my word of life is then true. The bear lives here, the wolf, the antelope, the Comanche. And so will we. Now, we’ll only hunt what we need to live on, the same as the Comanche does. And every spring when the grass turns green and the Comanche moves north, we can rest here in peace, butcher some of our cattle, and jerk beef for the journey. The sign of the Comanche, that will be on our lodge. That’s my word of life.

Ten Bears: And your word of death?

Josey: It’s here in my pistols, there in your rifles . . . I’m here for either one.

Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have.

Josey: That’s true. I ain’t promising you nothing extra. I’m just giving you life and you’re giving me life. And I’m saying that men can live together without butchering one another.

Ten Bears: It’s sad that governments are chiefed by the double-tongues. There is iron in your word of death for all Comanche to see. And so there is iron in your word of life. No signed paper can hold the iron, it must come from men. The word of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life . . . or death. It shall be life.

US Air Force Special Forces command, 1992

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West

Misanthropic environmentalism

Middle-upper class Western urbanites often develop apparently strong feelings regarding environmental exploitation and destruction. The problem often emerges as soon as extremely idealised views of nature and extremised concepts of the anthropic influence on the environment emerge. The truth is that there are vast swathes of land that have been largely anthropized for centuries, if not millennia.  Hydrogeological balance, control of pests and hunting all sorts of invasive species, prevention of fires, etc. This are all things humans CAN do, and in agrarian communities these things have been done for centuries. In addition to this, since obviously nature has no political voice, these people are the only ones who can correctly and introspectively advocate for the nature that surrounds us. The concept of degrowth in its environmental declinations, or the idea that nature is innately self-balancing and that all human presence is a hysterical, bourgeois idea that conceals the disguised loathing that urbanites harbour for agrarian communities and their ability to live in actual communion with nature beyond all middle-upper class fanfares; it is indeed a way of life that has no need for soy latte, transatlantic avocado trade, and the unnatural concoctions of a vegan diet - it is a way of life that does not shy away from hard labour (unlike urbanites), from making hard decisions such as slaughtering animals, and from a truly spiritual relationship with nature. Hence, be very wary of those who apparently espouse absolutist, idealised views of nature, and who often barely conceal misanthropic hatred. These are childish, bourgeois individuals who have never lived in contact with nature - they only conceive nature through their sentimentalistic, fetishised, surreal distortions of it.

Quite often it is precisely the destruction or removal of these communities that leads to vast environmental damage or irreversible alteration of the local biodiversity. Practices are lost; know-how is dispersed; social capital eradicated. True love of nature implies the understanding that the part must give way to the whole, the only process that can allow for rejuvenation, cyclical regrowth, and balance (thus, hunting; thus, fire trenches; thus, controlled logging).

If you have ever been in a formerly cultivated area which has been abandoned for a while, you can really feel this forlornness of the landscape. A millstone laying by a creek, bereft of its gears. A set of stairs leading to it, forgotten by all. Fenced kitchen gardens invaded by weeds. Smashed doors and ruins of stone walls. The people who for generations flourished on that land, kept it teeming with labour, sweat, tears, and laughter - gone. And you can almost hear the silent weeping of the land, if you listen closely. Where are those who rooted out my weeds? Where are those who drank from my creeks? Where are those who watered crops and ran the mills? Where are those who checked pests and tended to me? And the silence is deafening.

Enterprise (OV-101) alongside Challenger (OV-099) at the Palmdale Facility. When STA-099 was selected over OV-101 to be rebuilt as an operational shuttle, several components from Enterprise were transferred to complete Challenger.

Date: August 24, 1981

source

I think one of the consequences of getting older is finding out that your parents were kind of right when they complained about technology? At least you can see they weren’t entirely wrong.

I’ve been hearing from friends that it’s getting harder to find quality refrigerators that don’t connect to the internet. Why exactly does my refrigerator need wifi? Or even a computer, at that? Older fridges can last decades because they have so few failure points. They have one job and they do it well. 

I tend not to use my smart TV very often because the damn thing glitches and it’s laggy and too much of a hassle unless I am really committed to watching a movie in my living room. And the worse thing is...can you even buy a non-smart TV these days that isn’t secondhand? Are they even making ordinary...yanno...televisions that don’t need software updates and internet connections, anymore?

Someone in the comments of this post asked how bluetooth earbuds are forced and everyone pointed out that a lot of phones (especially iphones) simply do not have the ports to plug in wired headphones anymore. You must get the apple wireless headphones - and I think that’s the crux of the problem. I am glad I have an android phone because I can use the old wired earbuds I've had for over 12 years. If I wanted to, I could buy wireless earbuds and use them instead, because my model of phone gives me that option.

And that's the kicker: the problem is that as things are "advancing," more and more, options are being taken away. It has nothing to do with consumer demand - obviously there are a lot of people that are not happy with these developments. But as we’re seeing, the products being made don’t reflect customer preference or choice. It’s always about is best for the companies making and selling those products.

Every day we’re hearing about new apps and tech startups and really...does anyone really want this shit? Is the nth attempt to make crypto work, the billions spent on the Metaverse, doorbell cameras; is a fridge with an IP address really allow it to do its job better? Is that actually going to improve the lives of anyone who aren’t the developers of that product? Just the other day I was reading about a tech startup that wants to be able to beam ads into your car's GPS screen. Video ads! On a screen! To tell drivers what's nearby when they can just...continue to look out the window because they're supposed to be driving a goddamn car.

The problem of a world run by tech companies is that the tech isn’t being made to accommodate us, we are being forced to accommodate the tech.

F-16C

3rd Special Forces member ‘Randy’ confronts a suspected al-Qaeda supporter during a search of his compound. Narizah, east Kabul, Afghanistan. 2002

“We all have forests on our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

F-15C