Jim Brumm: Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World

Shake yourself into ecstatic truth! Bradford Keeney Bradford Keeney 91 The Revolution Issue Adbusters_91_not-my-revolution_t.jpg Splash Image:  Push and Pull by Janine Gordon
IN THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN CULTURE, PEOPLE KNEW HOW TO SHAKE THEIR BOOTIES AND IN DOING SO, THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE WERE REVEALED. Then along came language, social hierarchy, overinflated beliefs and the mirages of under-standing. Whereas human beings embodied the most important truths in the beginning, it all went to hell when we stilled our bodies and fed too many words to our minds.

Look at the oldest library in the world – the rock art of southern Africa. What we see are images of people dancing themselves into ecstasy. Many generations later the elders of the oldest living culture on Earth today, the Kalahari Bushmen, still know that the electrified body inspired by heightened feelings – rather than anything remotely related to a calm and still presence – is the master key to being fully alive.

What is most important has little or nothing to do with words and linguistic understanding. As the Bushmen say, words can trick us into believing anything. With word trickery we may end up worshipping a pile of elephant dung or a heap of metal. Somewhere between the early cradle of civilization and the internet, our species made the colossal mistake of proclaiming that words, theories and understandings are the roads to salvation and happiness. If this is true or even partially true, it means we have been misled for over a thousand years. The word games have led us to posit one form of gender, race, culture, nation, or religion as superior to others – thereby justifying any and all acts of arrogant greed, war and destruction of life and planet.

Religions and philosophies can never deliver the truth we most deeply desire. Our born destiny is the same as the first humans – to release our bodies, our whole beings, into feeling and expressing the deepest joy and ecstasy. In other words, dancing ourselves into heaven, enlightenment, peace and love. If there is anything history teaches, it is that words and understandings aren’t giving us anything but more of the same bullshit. We need to start up the wild drumming and shake off the words and stuck thoughts.

If we don’t free ourselves to be ecstatically tuned and happy, we may continue going to hell while taking the planet down with us.

What does it mean to sound the revolution? Here’s a few teasers that provide some hints – remember, it can’t be said in words:

• You gotta go beyond dance: no choreography, let the body be free to move without purpose.
• Recognize that whatever the great mystery or god is, it hates all reasonable and tamed definitions.
• Meditation without wild ecstasy is a dead end.
• Don’t sit still when you are excited. Get up and move!
• The wisdom of the East is as ignorant as the wisdom of the West. Look where both have gotten us. Let’s consider the wisdom of Mother Africa, the ancestral culture that honored rhythms more than words.
• The revolution is through sounding it and allowing yourself to be fully shaken.
• The trouble with gurus is that they don’t have a rhythm, they don’t shake and they don’t wiggle their ass.

This is the revolution: Shake everything up – your body, mind, heart, ideas, understandings and everyday routines. Shake yourself into ecstatic truth.

Bradford Keeney, PhD, chronicles the world’s healing practices in his 11-volume encyclopedia, Profiles of Healing. To learn more about the old ways of ecstatic shaking, visit shakingmedicine.com

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How I miss you. Adbusters S 91 The Revolution Issue 91_dear_revo_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

The Corporate America Flag on the Lincoln Memorial

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Audio version read by George Atherton

My dearest Revolution,

How I miss you in my life. I remember clearly letting you slip away, thinking to myself it would be alright. But as the days and weeks turned into months and then years, I find myself searching for you time and time again. I swear I catch glimpses of you in different places, but they are just fleeting, teasing illusions.

From time to time I see your friend Discontent stirring up protests, and I think you must not be far behind. But the violence he stirs up is often aimless and misguided, merely attempting to disrupt, with no hope for a lasting change. I watched the mobs protest at the G8 meeting in Genoa and my heart beat a little bit faster watching their pure energy, feeling you must be there to lead them forward to a better world. But the protesters were herded up at night, pushed away, knocked back time and time again, and one was even shot. And then it was over. The stage was gone; the world was left unchanged.

I forgive you for your infidelity with Fidel. After all, at the time he certainly needed you. And anyone, anything, was better than what they had. Even from afar, that affair rocked the world: The passion you gave to each other left us awestruck. But like so many others, once he got what he wanted he pushed you away, beyond the reach of those who once breathlessly gasped your name.

Still I watch the politicians blithely ignore the will of their people, certain that your name must be remembered. I sit up straighter, my breath ragged, thinking of how things will change once your presence is felt. When I realize you are nowhere to be found, I sag back into my seat.

But I haven’t abandoned all hope: I still look for you.

I was sure I’d get a glimpse of you when oil filled the Gulf of Mexico. I was sure the environmentalists would join forces with the natives to call you out and demand change. But the lawyers got there first. I wept bitter tears when instead of demanding change, they demanded money. Twenty billion dollars – the price we have finally put on the environment. Between you and me, it’s way too low.

Your appearances have been so rare and fleeting these days that people have forgotten what you look like. Everyone is pretending that they’re somehow in league with you. Even cars claim to be “revolutionary” now. Gadgets, too. They use your favorite color – wet, blood red – to get our attention. But when the ad agencies mimic you, it only makes me miss you more.

Revolution, I need you back. I cannot stand another day without you. I want everyone to feel the passion you bring out in me: the longing for a better world.

Come back, darling. Please. I need you.

All my love,

—S

How I miss you. Adbusters S 91 The Revolution Issue 91_dear_revo_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

The Corporate America Flag on the Lincoln Memorial

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Audio version read by George Atherton

My dearest Revolution,

How I miss you in my life. I remember clearly letting you slip away, thinking to myself it would be alright. But as the days and weeks turned into months and then years, I find myself searching for you time and time again. I swear I catch glimpses of you in different places, but they are just fleeting, teasing illusions.

From time to time I see your friend Discontent stirring up protests, and I think you must not be far behind. But the violence he stirs up is often aimless and misguided, merely attempting to disrupt, with no hope for a lasting change. I watched the mobs protest at the G8 meeting in Genoa and my heart beat a little bit faster watching their pure energy, feeling you must be there to lead them forward to a better world. But the protesters were herded up at night, pushed away, knocked back time and time again, and one was even shot. And then it was over. The stage was gone; the world was left unchanged.

I forgive you for your infidelity with Fidel. After all, at the time he certainly needed you. And anyone, anything, was better than what they had. Even from afar, that affair rocked the world: The passion you gave to each other left us awestruck. But like so many others, once he got what he wanted he pushed you away, beyond the reach of those who once breathlessly gasped your name.

Still I watch the politicians blithely ignore the will of their people, certain that your name must be remembered. I sit up straighter, my breath ragged, thinking of how things will change once your presence is felt. When I realize you are nowhere to be found, I sag back into my seat.

But I haven’t abandoned all hope: I still look for you.

I was sure I’d get a glimpse of you when oil filled the Gulf of Mexico. I was sure the environmentalists would join forces with the natives to call you out and demand change. But the lawyers got there first. I wept bitter tears when instead of demanding change, they demanded money. Twenty billion dollars – the price we have finally put on the environment. Between you and me, it’s way too low.

Your appearances have been so rare and fleeting these days that people have forgotten what you look like. Everyone is pretending that they’re somehow in league with you. Even cars claim to be “revolutionary” now. Gadgets, too. They use your favorite color – wet, blood red – to get our attention. But when the ad agencies mimic you, it only makes me miss you more.

Revolution, I need you back. I cannot stand another day without you. I want everyone to feel the passion you bring out in me: the longing for a better world.

Come back, darling. Please. I need you.

All my love,

—S

How I miss you. Adbusters S 91 The Revolution Issue 91_dear_revo_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

The Corporate America Flag on the Lincoln Memorial

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Audio version read by George Atherton

My dearest Revolution,

How I miss you in my life. I remember clearly letting you slip away, thinking to myself it would be alright. But as the days and weeks turned into months and then years, I find myself searching for you time and time again. I swear I catch glimpses of you in different places, but they are just fleeting, teasing illusions.

From time to time I see your friend Discontent stirring up protests, and I think you must not be far behind. But the violence he stirs up is often aimless and misguided, merely attempting to disrupt, with no hope for a lasting change. I watched the mobs protest at the G8 meeting in Genoa and my heart beat a little bit faster watching their pure energy, feeling you must be there to lead them forward to a better world. But the protesters were herded up at night, pushed away, knocked back time and time again, and one was even shot. And then it was over. The stage was gone; the world was left unchanged.

I forgive you for your infidelity with Fidel. After all, at the time he certainly needed you. And anyone, anything, was better than what they had. Even from afar, that affair rocked the world: The passion you gave to each other left us awestruck. But like so many others, once he got what he wanted he pushed you away, beyond the reach of those who once breathlessly gasped your name.

Still I watch the politicians blithely ignore the will of their people, certain that your name must be remembered. I sit up straighter, my breath ragged, thinking of how things will change once your presence is felt. When I realize you are nowhere to be found, I sag back into my seat.

But I haven’t abandoned all hope: I still look for you.

I was sure I’d get a glimpse of you when oil filled the Gulf of Mexico. I was sure the environmentalists would join forces with the natives to call you out and demand change. But the lawyers got there first. I wept bitter tears when instead of demanding change, they demanded money. Twenty billion dollars – the price we have finally put on the environment. Between you and me, it’s way too low.

Your appearances have been so rare and fleeting these days that people have forgotten what you look like. Everyone is pretending that they’re somehow in league with you. Even cars claim to be “revolutionary” now. Gadgets, too. They use your favorite color – wet, blood red – to get our attention. But when the ad agencies mimic you, it only makes me miss you more.

Revolution, I need you back. I cannot stand another day without you. I want everyone to feel the passion you bring out in me: the longing for a better world.

Come back, darling. Please. I need you.

All my love,

—S

How I miss you. Adbusters S 91 The Revolution Issue 91_dear_revo_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

The Corporate America Flag on the Lincoln Memorial

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Audio version read by George Atherton

My dearest Revolution,

How I miss you in my life. I remember clearly letting you slip away, thinking to myself it would be alright. But as the days and weeks turned into months and then years, I find myself searching for you time and time again. I swear I catch glimpses of you in different places, but they are just fleeting, teasing illusions.

From time to time I see your friend Discontent stirring up protests, and I think you must not be far behind. But the violence he stirs up is often aimless and misguided, merely attempting to disrupt, with no hope for a lasting change. I watched the mobs protest at the G8 meeting in Genoa and my heart beat a little bit faster watching their pure energy, feeling you must be there to lead them forward to a better world. But the protesters were herded up at night, pushed away, knocked back time and time again, and one was even shot. And then it was over. The stage was gone; the world was left unchanged.

I forgive you for your infidelity with Fidel. After all, at the time he certainly needed you. And anyone, anything, was better than what they had. Even from afar, that affair rocked the world: The passion you gave to each other left us awestruck. But like so many others, once he got what he wanted he pushed you away, beyond the reach of those who once breathlessly gasped your name.

Still I watch the politicians blithely ignore the will of their people, certain that your name must be remembered. I sit up straighter, my breath ragged, thinking of how things will change once your presence is felt. When I realize you are nowhere to be found, I sag back into my seat.

But I haven’t abandoned all hope: I still look for you.

I was sure I’d get a glimpse of you when oil filled the Gulf of Mexico. I was sure the environmentalists would join forces with the natives to call you out and demand change. But the lawyers got there first. I wept bitter tears when instead of demanding change, they demanded money. Twenty billion dollars – the price we have finally put on the environment. Between you and me, it’s way too low.

Your appearances have been so rare and fleeting these days that people have forgotten what you look like. Everyone is pretending that they’re somehow in league with you. Even cars claim to be “revolutionary” now. Gadgets, too. They use your favorite color – wet, blood red – to get our attention. But when the ad agencies mimic you, it only makes me miss you more.

Revolution, I need you back. I cannot stand another day without you. I want everyone to feel the passion you bring out in me: the longing for a better world.

Come back, darling. Please. I need you.

All my love,

—S

Suddenly alternative possibilities reveal themselves. Sam Cooper Sam Cooper 91 The Revolution Issue 91_cooper2_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Janine Gordon

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Audio version read by George Atherton

In Europe, national governments in the pocket of the IMF are imposing stringent austerity measures meant to deliver us from the present financial crisis. Put crudely, these measures save the banks and make the people pay. This reconsolidation of neoliberal capitalism is being met with differing levels of resistance, but for the most part we are caught between anger and action. Neoliberalism, we say with a sigh and a heavy heart, is here to stay. But why are we so unable to think beyond capitalism? The problem, I want to suggest, is one of possibility – and we must recognize another crisis: of the possible.

For too long we have been told what is and what isn’t possible. Late last year, the British cultural critic Mark Fisher published a book titled Capitalist Realism, that discusses neoliberalism’s propaganda project: its insistence that “there is no alternative.” This message has been hammered into our collective consciousness so consistently for so long that we have come to assume that neoliberal capitalism is our only option, that it constitutes our reality and we find it difficult to imagine anything else. Fisher reminds us of the quip made by both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Everyone seems agreed that revolution is impossible. So what should be our response if not a descent into nihilism? Right now we certainly should argue as loudly as possible that austerity measures that involve the transfer of responsibility from the rich to the poor should be curtailed. But at the same time we need to explore other possibilities for the long term.

Fisher writes:

“The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the gray curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

We need, first of all, a revolution of the possible. We must confront, challenge and condemn the logic of neoliberal capitalism and do all we can to create a space where alternatives are made possible. While we must hold onto ideals of equality and fairness, we don’t want to work toward a glorified image of a utopian future society; that is itself to impose limits, to establish another regime of impossibility when we must open ourselves to all possibilities. By acknowledging how deeply we are immersed in capitalism, how capitalist logic has come to curtail our ability to imagine anything beyond itself, we might open up spaces in which alternative possibilities reveal themselves. We must extend the cracks in capitalism’s self-image to allow some as yet unimaginable possibility to reveal itself.

Sam Cooper is working toward a PhD at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on the adoption of Situationist theory in Britain.

Suddenly alternative possibilities reveal themselves. Sam Cooper Sam Cooper 91 The Revolution Issue 91_cooper2_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Janine Gordon

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Audio version read by George Atherton

In Europe, national governments in the pocket of the IMF are imposing stringent austerity measures meant to deliver us from the present financial crisis. Put crudely, these measures save the banks and make the people pay. This reconsolidation of neoliberal capitalism is being met with differing levels of resistance, but for the most part we are caught between anger and action. Neoliberalism, we say with a sigh and a heavy heart, is here to stay. But why are we so unable to think beyond capitalism? The problem, I want to suggest, is one of possibility – and we must recognize another crisis: of the possible.

For too long we have been told what is and what isn’t possible. Late last year, the British cultural critic Mark Fisher published a book titled Capitalist Realism, that discusses neoliberalism’s propaganda project: its insistence that “there is no alternative.” This message has been hammered into our collective consciousness so consistently for so long that we have come to assume that neoliberal capitalism is our only option, that it constitutes our reality and we find it difficult to imagine anything else. Fisher reminds us of the quip made by both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Everyone seems agreed that revolution is impossible. So what should be our response if not a descent into nihilism? Right now we certainly should argue as loudly as possible that austerity measures that involve the transfer of responsibility from the rich to the poor should be curtailed. But at the same time we need to explore other possibilities for the long term.

Fisher writes:

“The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the gray curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

We need, first of all, a revolution of the possible. We must confront, challenge and condemn the logic of neoliberal capitalism and do all we can to create a space where alternatives are made possible. While we must hold onto ideals of equality and fairness, we don’t want to work toward a glorified image of a utopian future society; that is itself to impose limits, to establish another regime of impossibility when we must open ourselves to all possibilities. By acknowledging how deeply we are immersed in capitalism, how capitalist logic has come to curtail our ability to imagine anything beyond itself, we might open up spaces in which alternative possibilities reveal themselves. We must extend the cracks in capitalism’s self-image to allow some as yet unimaginable possibility to reveal itself.

Sam Cooper is working toward a PhD at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on the adoption of Situationist theory in Britain.

Suddenly alternative possibilities reveal themselves. Sam Cooper Sam Cooper 91 The Revolution Issue 91_cooper2_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Janine Gordon

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Audio version read by George Atherton

In Europe, national governments in the pocket of the IMF are imposing stringent austerity measures meant to deliver us from the present financial crisis. Put crudely, these measures save the banks and make the people pay. This reconsolidation of neoliberal capitalism is being met with differing levels of resistance, but for the most part we are caught between anger and action. Neoliberalism, we say with a sigh and a heavy heart, is here to stay. But why are we so unable to think beyond capitalism? The problem, I want to suggest, is one of possibility – and we must recognize another crisis: of the possible.

For too long we have been told what is and what isn’t possible. Late last year, the British cultural critic Mark Fisher published a book titled Capitalist Realism, that discusses neoliberalism’s propaganda project: its insistence that “there is no alternative.” This message has been hammered into our collective consciousness so consistently for so long that we have come to assume that neoliberal capitalism is our only option, that it constitutes our reality and we find it difficult to imagine anything else. Fisher reminds us of the quip made by both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Everyone seems agreed that revolution is impossible. So what should be our response if not a descent into nihilism? Right now we certainly should argue as loudly as possible that austerity measures that involve the transfer of responsibility from the rich to the poor should be curtailed. But at the same time we need to explore other possibilities for the long term.

Fisher writes:

“The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the gray curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

We need, first of all, a revolution of the possible. We must confront, challenge and condemn the logic of neoliberal capitalism and do all we can to create a space where alternatives are made possible. While we must hold onto ideals of equality and fairness, we don’t want to work toward a glorified image of a utopian future society; that is itself to impose limits, to establish another regime of impossibility when we must open ourselves to all possibilities. By acknowledging how deeply we are immersed in capitalism, how capitalist logic has come to curtail our ability to imagine anything beyond itself, we might open up spaces in which alternative possibilities reveal themselves. We must extend the cracks in capitalism’s self-image to allow some as yet unimaginable possibility to reveal itself.

Sam Cooper is working toward a PhD at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on the adoption of Situationist theory in Britain.

Suddenly alternative possibilities reveal themselves. Sam Cooper Sam Cooper 91 The Revolution Issue 91_cooper2_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Janine Gordon

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Audio version read by George Atherton

In Europe, national governments in the pocket of the IMF are imposing stringent austerity measures meant to deliver us from the present financial crisis. Put crudely, these measures save the banks and make the people pay. This reconsolidation of neoliberal capitalism is being met with differing levels of resistance, but for the most part we are caught between anger and action. Neoliberalism, we say with a sigh and a heavy heart, is here to stay. But why are we so unable to think beyond capitalism? The problem, I want to suggest, is one of possibility – and we must recognize another crisis: of the possible.

For too long we have been told what is and what isn’t possible. Late last year, the British cultural critic Mark Fisher published a book titled Capitalist Realism, that discusses neoliberalism’s propaganda project: its insistence that “there is no alternative.” This message has been hammered into our collective consciousness so consistently for so long that we have come to assume that neoliberal capitalism is our only option, that it constitutes our reality and we find it difficult to imagine anything else. Fisher reminds us of the quip made by both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Everyone seems agreed that revolution is impossible. So what should be our response if not a descent into nihilism? Right now we certainly should argue as loudly as possible that austerity measures that involve the transfer of responsibility from the rich to the poor should be curtailed. But at the same time we need to explore other possibilities for the long term.

Fisher writes:

“The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the gray curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

We need, first of all, a revolution of the possible. We must confront, challenge and condemn the logic of neoliberal capitalism and do all we can to create a space where alternatives are made possible. While we must hold onto ideals of equality and fairness, we don’t want to work toward a glorified image of a utopian future society; that is itself to impose limits, to establish another regime of impossibility when we must open ourselves to all possibilities. By acknowledging how deeply we are immersed in capitalism, how capitalist logic has come to curtail our ability to imagine anything beyond itself, we might open up spaces in which alternative possibilities reveal themselves. We must extend the cracks in capitalism’s self-image to allow some as yet unimaginable possibility to reveal itself.

Sam Cooper is working toward a PhD at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on the adoption of Situationist theory in Britain.

The explosive potential of awakened youth. Skylar Fein Skylar Fein 91 The Revolution Issue 91_youthrevolt_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Dylan Martinez / Reuters

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Audio version read by George Atherton

When I was 19 and full of socialist fervor, I went to the Soviet Union to see the workers’ paradise. I spent most of the year on bread lines. And flour lines. And butter lines. My disillusionment was total. The Russian army was withdrawing from a ruinous war in Afghanistan. The economy was nearing collapse. The core beliefs that had served as a foundation for the society were daily being exposed as transparent lies. Drug addiction was rampant, something I couldn’t miss, living as I did across from the city drunk tank; screams filled the Krasnodar night. Bad as it was, no one dared recognize how bad it actually was: The country would shortly cease to exist. It was 1988.

Parallels to the US of 2010 are hard to miss. Our economic system has been revealed as a teetering house of cards. We are deepening our commitment to permanent war in the same region, one known as the graveyard of empires. The nation’s debt is now so large it can never be repaid, and a sovereign default, while not imminent, is nevertheless inevitable. The obviousness of this fact panics everyone, forcing the power holders to send spooky numerologists to utter magical numbers – to the delighted gasps of an audience that thrills at the setting aside of its own rational experience. More ominous, the beliefs that for 60 years have formed the ideological basis for the society are failing to cohere. The new reality – the reality of failure – cannot be integrated into the old symbolic order. Just as the nation’s new program reveals itself as an unmythical, unmagical struggle for brute survival, its past doctrine sharpens in the rear-view mirror: expropriation of natural resources. That has been our real program. It is a game we will never win again, and in fact must lose if we are to survive.

In a Ponzi scheme, early investors reap rewards while later investors are shafted. Western economies, fueled by debt and unlimited consumption of limited resources, are Ponzi economies and will sooner or later collapse under their own weight. The victims of this scheme are the young. That this is perfectly foreseeable has not made it preventable. The collapse of the system is far outpacing the thought or work of any of the interested parties. We acknowledge on the one hand the inevitability of the fall of the current economic model, and on the other hand the apparent impossibility of collective revolutionary action. As a result of this contradiction, the main characteristic at all levels of society is confusion and an acutely felt need for unconsciousness.

Some look to electoral politics for a way forward, but there too the leadership is failing. Lost in imagery and the critique of imagery, we have failed to notice that no party has acknowledged the real threats to our security – rising seas, permanent war, depleted resources and a bankrupt central government – let alone put forward any strategy for addressing them. Politics is pretend.

We live in a state of permanent falsification, our starkest fear that we will collectively awaken to reality as it is. To speak the truth is to sound insane. George Orwell once imagined a government that would (ludicrously) claim that ignorance is strength, yet my friends and family now say this to my face.

The truth is that our leaders’ every action worsens these conditions in a mendacious, murderous betrayal of the next generation. They have suggested no end game, leaving it up to the people, specifically to the young, who have one.

When the next generation is handed the keys to a broken, bankrupt nation sinking into a fishless sea, when they realize they’ve been ripped off, when they take to the streets – and they will – they will flood society with a mess of desires that cannot be realized by the current system, and they will call for a revolution in every aspect of human life.

Skylar Fein is an artist living in New Orleans. His show Youth Manifesto was recently held at The New Orleans Museum of Art. Go to skylarfein.tumblr.com to see more of his work.

The explosive potential of awakened youth. Skylar Fein Skylar Fein 91 The Revolution Issue 91_youthrevolt_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Dylan Martinez / Reuters

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

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Audio version read by George Atherton

When I was 19 and full of socialist fervor, I went to the Soviet Union to see the workers’ paradise. I spent most of the year on bread lines. And flour lines. And butter lines. My disillusionment was total. The Russian army was withdrawing from a ruinous war in Afghanistan. The economy was nearing collapse. The core beliefs that had served as a foundation for the society were daily being exposed as transparent lies. Drug addiction was rampant, something I couldn’t miss, living as I did across from the city drunk tank; screams filled the Krasnodar night. Bad as it was, no one dared recognize how bad it actually was: The country would shortly cease to exist. It was 1988.

Parallels to the US of 2010 are hard to miss. Our economic system has been revealed as a teetering house of cards. We are deepening our commitment to permanent war in the same region, one known as the graveyard of empires. The nation’s debt is now so large it can never be repaid, and a sovereign default, while not imminent, is nevertheless inevitable. The obviousness of this fact panics everyone, forcing the power holders to send spooky numerologists to utter magical numbers – to the delighted gasps of an audience that thrills at the setting aside of its own rational experience. More ominous, the beliefs that for 60 years have formed the ideological basis for the society are failing to cohere. The new reality – the reality of failure – cannot be integrated into the old symbolic order. Just as the nation’s new program reveals itself as an unmythical, unmagical struggle for brute survival, its past doctrine sharpens in the rear-view mirror: expropriation of natural resources. That has been our real program. It is a game we will never win again, and in fact must lose if we are to survive.

In a Ponzi scheme, early investors reap rewards while later investors are shafted. Western economies, fueled by debt and unlimited consumption of limited resources, are Ponzi economies and will sooner or later collapse under their own weight. The victims of this scheme are the young. That this is perfectly foreseeable has not made it preventable. The collapse of the system is far outpacing the thought or work of any of the interested parties. We acknowledge on the one hand the inevitability of the fall of the current economic model, and on the other hand the apparent impossibility of collective revolutionary action. As a result of this contradiction, the main characteristic at all levels of society is confusion and an acutely felt need for unconsciousness.

Some look to electoral politics for a way forward, but there too the leadership is failing. Lost in imagery and the critique of imagery, we have failed to notice that no party has acknowledged the real threats to our security – rising seas, permanent war, depleted resources and a bankrupt central government – let alone put forward any strategy for addressing them. Politics is pretend.

We live in a state of permanent falsification, our starkest fear that we will collectively awaken to reality as it is. To speak the truth is to sound insane. George Orwell once imagined a government that would (ludicrously) claim that ignorance is strength, yet my friends and family now say this to my face.

The truth is that our leaders’ every action worsens these conditions in a mendacious, murderous betrayal of the next generation. They have suggested no end game, leaving it up to the people, specifically to the young, who have one.

When the next generation is handed the keys to a broken, bankrupt nation sinking into a fishless sea, when they realize they’ve been ripped off, when they take to the streets – and they will – they will flood society with a mess of desires that cannot be realized by the current system, and they will call for a revolution in every aspect of human life.

Skylar Fein is an artist living in New Orleans. His show Youth Manifesto was recently held at The New Orleans Museum of Art. Go to skylarfein.tumblr.com to see more of his work.

The explosive potential of awakened youth. Skylar Fein Skylar Fein 91 The Revolution Issue 91_youthrevolt_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Dylan Martinez / Reuters

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

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Audio version read by George Atherton

When I was 19 and full of socialist fervor, I went to the Soviet Union to see the workers’ paradise. I spent most of the year on bread lines. And flour lines. And butter lines. My disillusionment was total. The Russian army was withdrawing from a ruinous war in Afghanistan. The economy was nearing collapse. The core beliefs that had served as a foundation for the society were daily being exposed as transparent lies. Drug addiction was rampant, something I couldn’t miss, living as I did across from the city drunk tank; screams filled the Krasnodar night. Bad as it was, no one dared recognize how bad it actually was: The country would shortly cease to exist. It was 1988.

Parallels to the US of 2010 are hard to miss. Our economic system has been revealed as a teetering house of cards. We are deepening our commitment to permanent war in the same region, one known as the graveyard of empires. The nation’s debt is now so large it can never be repaid, and a sovereign default, while not imminent, is nevertheless inevitable. The obviousness of this fact panics everyone, forcing the power holders to send spooky numerologists to utter magical numbers – to the delighted gasps of an audience that thrills at the setting aside of its own rational experience. More ominous, the beliefs that for 60 years have formed the ideological basis for the society are failing to cohere. The new reality – the reality of failure – cannot be integrated into the old symbolic order. Just as the nation’s new program reveals itself as an unmythical, unmagical struggle for brute survival, its past doctrine sharpens in the rear-view mirror: expropriation of natural resources. That has been our real program. It is a game we will never win again, and in fact must lose if we are to survive.

In a Ponzi scheme, early investors reap rewards while later investors are shafted. Western economies, fueled by debt and unlimited consumption of limited resources, are Ponzi economies and will sooner or later collapse under their own weight. The victims of this scheme are the young. That this is perfectly foreseeable has not made it preventable. The collapse of the system is far outpacing the thought or work of any of the interested parties. We acknowledge on the one hand the inevitability of the fall of the current economic model, and on the other hand the apparent impossibility of collective revolutionary action. As a result of this contradiction, the main characteristic at all levels of society is confusion and an acutely felt need for unconsciousness.

Some look to electoral politics for a way forward, but there too the leadership is failing. Lost in imagery and the critique of imagery, we have failed to notice that no party has acknowledged the real threats to our security – rising seas, permanent war, depleted resources and a bankrupt central government – let alone put forward any strategy for addressing them. Politics is pretend.

We live in a state of permanent falsification, our starkest fear that we will collectively awaken to reality as it is. To speak the truth is to sound insane. George Orwell once imagined a government that would (ludicrously) claim that ignorance is strength, yet my friends and family now say this to my face.

The truth is that our leaders’ every action worsens these conditions in a mendacious, murderous betrayal of the next generation. They have suggested no end game, leaving it up to the people, specifically to the young, who have one.

When the next generation is handed the keys to a broken, bankrupt nation sinking into a fishless sea, when they realize they’ve been ripped off, when they take to the streets – and they will – they will flood society with a mess of desires that cannot be realized by the current system, and they will call for a revolution in every aspect of human life.

Skylar Fein is an artist living in New Orleans. His show Youth Manifesto was recently held at The New Orleans Museum of Art. Go to skylarfein.tumblr.com to see more of his work.

The explosive potential of awakened youth. Skylar Fein Skylar Fein 91 The Revolution Issue 91_youthrevolt_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by Dylan Martinez / Reuters

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

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Audio version read by George Atherton

When I was 19 and full of socialist fervor, I went to the Soviet Union to see the workers’ paradise. I spent most of the year on bread lines. And flour lines. And butter lines. My disillusionment was total. The Russian army was withdrawing from a ruinous war in Afghanistan. The economy was nearing collapse. The core beliefs that had served as a foundation for the society were daily being exposed as transparent lies. Drug addiction was rampant, something I couldn’t miss, living as I did across from the city drunk tank; screams filled the Krasnodar night. Bad as it was, no one dared recognize how bad it actually was: The country would shortly cease to exist. It was 1988.

Parallels to the US of 2010 are hard to miss. Our economic system has been revealed as a teetering house of cards. We are deepening our commitment to permanent war in the same region, one known as the graveyard of empires. The nation’s debt is now so large it can never be repaid, and a sovereign default, while not imminent, is nevertheless inevitable. The obviousness of this fact panics everyone, forcing the power holders to send spooky numerologists to utter magical numbers – to the delighted gasps of an audience that thrills at the setting aside of its own rational experience. More ominous, the beliefs that for 60 years have formed the ideological basis for the society are failing to cohere. The new reality – the reality of failure – cannot be integrated into the old symbolic order. Just as the nation’s new program reveals itself as an unmythical, unmagical struggle for brute survival, its past doctrine sharpens in the rear-view mirror: expropriation of natural resources. That has been our real program. It is a game we will never win again, and in fact must lose if we are to survive.

In a Ponzi scheme, early investors reap rewards while later investors are shafted. Western economies, fueled by debt and unlimited consumption of limited resources, are Ponzi economies and will sooner or later collapse under their own weight. The victims of this scheme are the young. That this is perfectly foreseeable has not made it preventable. The collapse of the system is far outpacing the thought or work of any of the interested parties. We acknowledge on the one hand the inevitability of the fall of the current economic model, and on the other hand the apparent impossibility of collective revolutionary action. As a result of this contradiction, the main characteristic at all levels of society is confusion and an acutely felt need for unconsciousness.

Some look to electoral politics for a way forward, but there too the leadership is failing. Lost in imagery and the critique of imagery, we have failed to notice that no party has acknowledged the real threats to our security – rising seas, permanent war, depleted resources and a bankrupt central government – let alone put forward any strategy for addressing them. Politics is pretend.

We live in a state of permanent falsification, our starkest fear that we will collectively awaken to reality as it is. To speak the truth is to sound insane. George Orwell once imagined a government that would (ludicrously) claim that ignorance is strength, yet my friends and family now say this to my face.

The truth is that our leaders’ every action worsens these conditions in a mendacious, murderous betrayal of the next generation. They have suggested no end game, leaving it up to the people, specifically to the young, who have one.

When the next generation is handed the keys to a broken, bankrupt nation sinking into a fishless sea, when they realize they’ve been ripped off, when they take to the streets – and they will – they will flood society with a mess of desires that cannot be realized by the current system, and they will call for a revolution in every aspect of human life.

Skylar Fein is an artist living in New Orleans. His show Youth Manifesto was recently held at The New Orleans Museum of Art. Go to skylarfein.tumblr.com to see more of his work.

Redefining the word "terrorist." Adbusters Adbusters 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_sewerrat_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Black Widow Dzhennet Adbullayeva poses with her militant husband Umalat Magomedov who was killed by federal forces in 2009. Since Chechen suicide attacks began in 2000, forty percent of the bombers have been women seeking revenge.

While terrorism perpetrated by groups or individuals is rightfully condemned, state terror is too often celebrated. Medals are awarded and parades held in honor of bloody campaigns that would be labeled criminal if they were carried out with small arms and suicide bombs instead of tanks and high altitude bombers.

Following the double suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway system in late March Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded that those responsible be scraped “from the bottom of the sewers.” His tough talk echoed statements he made in 1999 when he promised to “pursue the terrorists everywhere” and “rub them out in the outhouse.”

After following them into Chechnya with 90,000 Russian troops Putin emerged from obscurity and climbed to the upper echelons of Russian power by prosecuting one of the most vicious and brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in modern history.

Painting the centuries-old struggle for Chechen independence as an Islamic extremist movement, Putin ordered a scorched-earth campaign in the Caucasus. It featured the extensive burning of Chechen homes, mass extrajudicial executions, the systematic rape of Chechen women and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas, including the near destruction of the capital, Grozny. The Russian invasion of Chechnya killed between 30,000 and 40,000 Chechen civilians out of a population of one million.

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has done extensive research on the motivations behind suicide bombing. As he found in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, Pape concluded that Chechen suicide terrorism is a last resort against brutal military occupation.

Of the 63 Chechens who killed themselves in suicide attacks since 2000, 40 percent were female. These so-called “Black Widows” sought to avenge a husband, child or close relative killed by occupying Russian soldiers. The murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya once said that the Black Widows “are trying to force Russians to feel the same pain that they have felt.”

It’s becoming harder to tell the difference between those occupying the halls of power and those who live in the margins, shadows and sewers.

Redefining the word "terrorist." Adbusters Adbusters 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_sewerrat_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Black Widow Dzhennet Adbullayeva poses with her militant husband Umalat Magomedov who was killed by federal forces in 2009. Since Chechen suicide attacks began in 2000, forty percent of the bombers have been women seeking revenge.

While terrorism perpetrated by groups or individuals is rightfully condemned, state terror is too often celebrated. Medals are awarded and parades held in honor of bloody campaigns that would be labeled criminal if they were carried out with small arms and suicide bombs instead of tanks and high altitude bombers.

Following the double suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway system in late March Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded that those responsible be scraped “from the bottom of the sewers.” His tough talk echoed statements he made in 1999 when he promised to “pursue the terrorists everywhere” and “rub them out in the outhouse.”

After following them into Chechnya with 90,000 Russian troops Putin emerged from obscurity and climbed to the upper echelons of Russian power by prosecuting one of the most vicious and brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in modern history.

Painting the centuries-old struggle for Chechen independence as an Islamic extremist movement, Putin ordered a scorched-earth campaign in the Caucasus. It featured the extensive burning of Chechen homes, mass extrajudicial executions, the systematic rape of Chechen women and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas, including the near destruction of the capital, Grozny. The Russian invasion of Chechnya killed between 30,000 and 40,000 Chechen civilians out of a population of one million.

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has done extensive research on the motivations behind suicide bombing. As he found in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, Pape concluded that Chechen suicide terrorism is a last resort against brutal military occupation.

Of the 63 Chechens who killed themselves in suicide attacks since 2000, 40 percent were female. These so-called “Black Widows” sought to avenge a husband, child or close relative killed by occupying Russian soldiers. The murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya once said that the Black Widows “are trying to force Russians to feel the same pain that they have felt.”

It’s becoming harder to tell the difference between those occupying the halls of power and those who live in the margins, shadows and sewers.

Redefining the word "terrorist." Adbusters Adbusters 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_sewerrat_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Black Widow Dzhennet Adbullayeva poses with her militant husband Umalat Magomedov who was killed by federal forces in 2009. Since Chechen suicide attacks began in 2000, forty percent of the bombers have been women seeking revenge.

While terrorism perpetrated by groups or individuals is rightfully condemned, state terror is too often celebrated. Medals are awarded and parades held in honor of bloody campaigns that would be labeled criminal if they were carried out with small arms and suicide bombs instead of tanks and high altitude bombers.

Following the double suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway system in late March Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded that those responsible be scraped “from the bottom of the sewers.” His tough talk echoed statements he made in 1999 when he promised to “pursue the terrorists everywhere” and “rub them out in the outhouse.”

After following them into Chechnya with 90,000 Russian troops Putin emerged from obscurity and climbed to the upper echelons of Russian power by prosecuting one of the most vicious and brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in modern history.

Painting the centuries-old struggle for Chechen independence as an Islamic extremist movement, Putin ordered a scorched-earth campaign in the Caucasus. It featured the extensive burning of Chechen homes, mass extrajudicial executions, the systematic rape of Chechen women and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas, including the near destruction of the capital, Grozny. The Russian invasion of Chechnya killed between 30,000 and 40,000 Chechen civilians out of a population of one million.

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has done extensive research on the motivations behind suicide bombing. As he found in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, Pape concluded that Chechen suicide terrorism is a last resort against brutal military occupation.

Of the 63 Chechens who killed themselves in suicide attacks since 2000, 40 percent were female. These so-called “Black Widows” sought to avenge a husband, child or close relative killed by occupying Russian soldiers. The murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya once said that the Black Widows “are trying to force Russians to feel the same pain that they have felt.”

It’s becoming harder to tell the difference between those occupying the halls of power and those who live in the margins, shadows and sewers.

Redefining the word "terrorist." Adbusters Adbusters 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_sewerrat_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Black Widow Dzhennet Adbullayeva poses with her militant husband Umalat Magomedov who was killed by federal forces in 2009. Since Chechen suicide attacks began in 2000, forty percent of the bombers have been women seeking revenge.

While terrorism perpetrated by groups or individuals is rightfully condemned, state terror is too often celebrated. Medals are awarded and parades held in honor of bloody campaigns that would be labeled criminal if they were carried out with small arms and suicide bombs instead of tanks and high altitude bombers.

Following the double suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway system in late March Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded that those responsible be scraped “from the bottom of the sewers.” His tough talk echoed statements he made in 1999 when he promised to “pursue the terrorists everywhere” and “rub them out in the outhouse.”

After following them into Chechnya with 90,000 Russian troops Putin emerged from obscurity and climbed to the upper echelons of Russian power by prosecuting one of the most vicious and brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in modern history.

Painting the centuries-old struggle for Chechen independence as an Islamic extremist movement, Putin ordered a scorched-earth campaign in the Caucasus. It featured the extensive burning of Chechen homes, mass extrajudicial executions, the systematic rape of Chechen women and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas, including the near destruction of the capital, Grozny. The Russian invasion of Chechnya killed between 30,000 and 40,000 Chechen civilians out of a population of one million.

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has done extensive research on the motivations behind suicide bombing. As he found in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, Pape concluded that Chechen suicide terrorism is a last resort against brutal military occupation.

Of the 63 Chechens who killed themselves in suicide attacks since 2000, 40 percent were female. These so-called “Black Widows” sought to avenge a husband, child or close relative killed by occupying Russian soldiers. The murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya once said that the Black Widows “are trying to force Russians to feel the same pain that they have felt.”

It’s becoming harder to tell the difference between those occupying the halls of power and those who live in the margins, shadows and sewers.

Unplug your kids and kick them outside! Mike Weilbacher Mike Weilbacher 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_woods_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by AP Wideworld Photos

“Every child,” wrote pioneer botanist Luther Burbank, “should have mud pies, grasshoppers, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pinecones, rocks to roll, snakes, huckleberries and hornets. And any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.”

In our education-obsessed culture, elite kids play piano and speak three languages by the age of four, but just about every North American kid is deprived. In one of the greatest retreats ever, children are vanishing from a critical piece of territory: their own backyards.

And there isn’t a kid on the planet who knows what a huckleberry is, other than a character in a Mark Twain book.

For the average kid only spends 30 minutes a day outside, an amount that shrinks yearly. In this brave new world of Facebook and YouTube, Twitter and Google, iPod and Wii, kids are tuned in to technology, and kindergartners start school with 5,000 hours of TV under their belts.

Typical tweens put in a 40-hour week – a virtual full-time job – watching screens: TV, laptop, cell phone, and so on. They can name dozens of corporate logos and celebrities on sight – Lady Gaga! Justin Bieber! The cast from Glee! – but they cannot name three animals that live in their neighborhood, or three plants.

A first grader can sing every lyric of “Bad Romance,” God help us, but has no idea what a chickadee sounds like.

Adults are colluding in this retreat. Our school system has chained kids to their desks, number 2 pencils glued to their hands. If a kid is outside playing sports, it’s not a pickup game in the sandlot but a league organized by overzealous parents carpooling kids endlessly from one game to the next.

And the geographic world they wander is collapsing like a black hole into their laptops; the typical kid today roams a world only one-ninth the size a child of the ‘70s did. I wandered Long Island’s rapidly decreasing pine forests in the ‘60s, biking and hiking unthinkable distances, alone and with friends, with neither a cell phone nor a dime to make a call. Because inside our houses were the adults, and who wanted to be there? Every last child was outside, in the street, in the yard, on the corner, at the 7-Eleven.

But letting kids go into a forest alone today is unthinkable, heretical. Remember that kid who was allowed to take the train in New York alone? “Child abuse!” we screamed at his parents. Even my own kids, raised by me, a naturalist, have never been allowed to go unattended into a forest. I am always there: stranger danger, ticks and West Nile have all taken their toll, even on me.

This radical retreat from the great outdoors, now called “nature-deficit disorder,” a phrase coined by journalist Richard Louv in his groundbreaking book Last Child in the Woods, is the greatest health catastrophe facing Western kids.

Ever.

Asthma rates are climbing. Attention-deficit disorders are through the roof. Obesity rates skyrocket; diabetes, linked to weight, soaring. Kids who watch too much TV don’t physically move, change the working of their brains and even eat more poorly than other children; there is a distinct inverse relationship between TV use and the amount of vegetables in one’s diet. This next generation might not live as long as their parents.

At the same time, numerous studies indicate kids are physically and mentally healthier if they spend time outdoors and in nature. They calm down when surrounded by green, which seems to ameliorate their ADD. And free play outside lets children develop social skills they can’t get from tube-watching (or from playing sports under adult supervision), and their skills are more age-appropriate as well.

Here’s the kicker: Studies indicate that learning through nature-based programs helps kids score higher on standardized tests. Want your kid to go to Harvard? Have her study outdoors.

But change is blowing in the wind. Louv’s book, the first-ever environmental education bestseller, jump-started an international movement that gave birth to a web site, the Children and Nature Network. Places as disparate as nature centers and urban parks are unveiling natural playscapes: areas where kids can linger and climb rocks, play with sticks, push sand and gravel around, get muddy – do lots of delicious nothing. Nature preschools are becoming popular, too, as places where toddlers spend quality time outdoors. Even middle schools are developing nature-based curricula where the bulk of the student’s school day is given to studying the environment to integrate math, language and social studies into the real world.

In the United States, some 1,600 NGOs representing 50 million people have organized into a No Child Left Inside coalition, a spin on the Bush-era name for his education bill, lobbying Obama for statewide environmental literacy plans that include children spending quality time outdoors.

But it’s a long climb, for culture is the very air our children breathe, and culture conspires to convince kids that everything important can be found in that little box. We’ve seduced children indoors.

Now childhood itself is an endangered species. If we are going to save either the environment or our children, we have to take a surprisingly simple but very radical first step.

End the Great Green Retreat. Unplug our kids and kick them outside. To play. And hear chickadees. And find huckleberries.

Writer-naturalist Mike Weilbacher directs a nature center near Philadelphia.

Unplug your kids and kick them outside! Mike Weilbacher Mike Weilbacher 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_woods_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by AP Wideworld Photos

“Every child,” wrote pioneer botanist Luther Burbank, “should have mud pies, grasshoppers, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pinecones, rocks to roll, snakes, huckleberries and hornets. And any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.”

In our education-obsessed culture, elite kids play piano and speak three languages by the age of four, but just about every North American kid is deprived. In one of the greatest retreats ever, children are vanishing from a critical piece of territory: their own backyards.

And there isn’t a kid on the planet who knows what a huckleberry is, other than a character in a Mark Twain book.

For the average kid only spends 30 minutes a day outside, an amount that shrinks yearly. In this brave new world of Facebook and YouTube, Twitter and Google, iPod and Wii, kids are tuned in to technology, and kindergartners start school with 5,000 hours of TV under their belts.

Typical tweens put in a 40-hour week – a virtual full-time job – watching screens: TV, laptop, cell phone, and so on. They can name dozens of corporate logos and celebrities on sight – Lady Gaga! Justin Bieber! The cast from Glee! – but they cannot name three animals that live in their neighborhood, or three plants.

A first grader can sing every lyric of “Bad Romance,” God help us, but has no idea what a chickadee sounds like.

Adults are colluding in this retreat. Our school system has chained kids to their desks, number 2 pencils glued to their hands. If a kid is outside playing sports, it’s not a pickup game in the sandlot but a league organized by overzealous parents carpooling kids endlessly from one game to the next.

And the geographic world they wander is collapsing like a black hole into their laptops; the typical kid today roams a world only one-ninth the size a child of the ‘70s did. I wandered Long Island’s rapidly decreasing pine forests in the ‘60s, biking and hiking unthinkable distances, alone and with friends, with neither a cell phone nor a dime to make a call. Because inside our houses were the adults, and who wanted to be there? Every last child was outside, in the street, in the yard, on the corner, at the 7-Eleven.

But letting kids go into a forest alone today is unthinkable, heretical. Remember that kid who was allowed to take the train in New York alone? “Child abuse!” we screamed at his parents. Even my own kids, raised by me, a naturalist, have never been allowed to go unattended into a forest. I am always there: stranger danger, ticks and West Nile have all taken their toll, even on me.

This radical retreat from the great outdoors, now called “nature-deficit disorder,” a phrase coined by journalist Richard Louv in his groundbreaking book Last Child in the Woods, is the greatest health catastrophe facing Western kids.

Ever.

Asthma rates are climbing. Attention-deficit disorders are through the roof. Obesity rates skyrocket; diabetes, linked to weight, soaring. Kids who watch too much TV don’t physically move, change the working of their brains and even eat more poorly than other children; there is a distinct inverse relationship between TV use and the amount of vegetables in one’s diet. This next generation might not live as long as their parents.

At the same time, numerous studies indicate kids are physically and mentally healthier if they spend time outdoors and in nature. They calm down when surrounded by green, which seems to ameliorate their ADD. And free play outside lets children develop social skills they can’t get from tube-watching (or from playing sports under adult supervision), and their skills are more age-appropriate as well.

Here’s the kicker: Studies indicate that learning through nature-based programs helps kids score higher on standardized tests. Want your kid to go to Harvard? Have her study outdoors.

But change is blowing in the wind. Louv’s book, the first-ever environmental education bestseller, jump-started an international movement that gave birth to a web site, the Children and Nature Network. Places as disparate as nature centers and urban parks are unveiling natural playscapes: areas where kids can linger and climb rocks, play with sticks, push sand and gravel around, get muddy – do lots of delicious nothing. Nature preschools are becoming popular, too, as places where toddlers spend quality time outdoors. Even middle schools are developing nature-based curricula where the bulk of the student’s school day is given to studying the environment to integrate math, language and social studies into the real world.

In the United States, some 1,600 NGOs representing 50 million people have organized into a No Child Left Inside coalition, a spin on the Bush-era name for his education bill, lobbying Obama for statewide environmental literacy plans that include children spending quality time outdoors.

But it’s a long climb, for culture is the very air our children breathe, and culture conspires to convince kids that everything important can be found in that little box. We’ve seduced children indoors.

Now childhood itself is an endangered species. If we are going to save either the environment or our children, we have to take a surprisingly simple but very radical first step.

End the Great Green Retreat. Unplug our kids and kick them outside. To play. And hear chickadees. And find huckleberries.

Writer-naturalist Mike Weilbacher directs a nature center near Philadelphia.

Unplug your kids and kick them outside! Mike Weilbacher Mike Weilbacher 90 Whole Brain Catalog 90_woods_teaser.jpg Splash Image: 

Photo by AP Wideworld Photos

“Every child,” wrote pioneer botanist Luther Burbank, “should have mud pies, grasshoppers, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pinecones, rocks to roll, snakes, huckleberries and hornets. And any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.”

In our education-obsessed culture, elite kids play piano and speak three languages by the age of four, but just about every North American kid is deprived. In one of the greatest retreats ever, children are vanishing from a critical piece of territory: their own backyards.

And there isn’t a kid on the planet who knows what a huckleberry is, other than a character in a Mark Twain book.

For the average kid only spends 30 minutes a day outside, an amount that shrinks yearly. In this brave new world of Facebook and YouTube, Twitter and Google, iPod and Wii, kids are tuned in to technology, and kindergartners start school with 5,000 hours of TV under their belts.

Typical tweens put in a 40-hour week – a virtual full-time job – watching screens: TV, laptop, cell phone, and so on. They can name dozens of corporate logos and celebrities on sight – Lady Gaga! Justin Bieber! The cast from Glee! – but they cannot name three animals that live in their neighborhood, or three plants.

A first grader can sing every lyric of “Bad Romance,” God help us, but has no idea what a chickadee sounds like.

Adults are colluding in this retreat. Our school system has chained kids to their desks, number 2 pencils glued to their hands. If a kid is outside playing sports, it’s not a pickup game in the sandlot but a league organized by overzealous parents carpooling kids endlessly from one game to the next.

And the geographic world they wander is collapsing like a black hole into their laptops; the typical kid today roams a world only one-ninth the size a child of the ‘70s did. I wandered Long Island’s rapidly decreasing pine forests in the ‘60s, biking and hiking unthinkable distances, alone and with friends, with neither a cell phone nor a dime to make a call. Because inside our houses were the adults, and who wanted to be there? Every last child was outside, in the street, in the yard, on the corner, at the 7-Eleven.

But letting kids go into a forest alone today is unthinkable, heretical. Remember that kid who was allowed to take the train in New York alone? “Child abuse!” we screamed at his parents. Even my own kids, raised by me, a naturalist, have never been allowed to go unattended into a forest. I am always there: stranger danger, ticks and West Nile have all taken their toll, even on me.

This radical retreat from the great outdoors, now called “nature-deficit disorder,” a phrase coined by journalist Richard Louv in his groundbreaking book Last Child in the Woods, is the greatest health catastrophe facing Western kids.

Ever.

Asthma rates are climbing. Attention-deficit disorders are through the roof. Obesity rates skyrocket; diabetes, linked to weight, soaring. Kids who watch too much TV don’t physically move, change the working of their brains and even eat more poorly than other children; there is a distinct inverse relationship between TV use and the amount of vegetables in one’s diet. This next generation might not live as long as their parents.

At the same time, numerous studies indicate kids are physically and mentally healthier if they spend time outdoors and in nature. They calm down when surrounded by green, which seems to ameliorate their ADD. And free play outside lets children develop social skills they can’t get from tube-watching (or from playing sports under adult supervision), and their skills are more age-appropriate as well.

Here’s the kicker: Studies indicate that learning through nature-based programs helps kids score higher on standardized tests. Want your kid to go to Harvard? Have her study outdoors.

But change is blowing in the wind. Louv’s book, the first-ever environmental education bestseller, jump-started an international movement that gave birth to a web site, the Children and Nature Network. Places as disparate as nature centers and urban parks are unveiling natural playscapes: areas where kids can linger and climb rocks, play with sticks, push sand and gravel around, get muddy – do lots of delicious nothing. Nature preschools are becoming popular, too, as places where toddlers spend quality time outdoors. Even middle schools are developing nature-based curricula where the bulk of the student’s school day is given to studying the environment to integrate math, language and social studies into the real world.

In the United States, some 1,600 NGOs representing 50 million people have organized into a No Child Left Inside coalition, a spin on the Bush-era name for his education bill, lobbying Obama for statewide environmental literacy plans that include children spending quality time outdoors.

But it’s a long climb, for culture is the very air our children breathe, and culture conspires to convince kids that everything important can be found in that little box. We’ve seduced children indoors.

Now childhood itself is an endangered species. If we are going to save either the environment or our children, we have to take a surprisingly simple but very radical first step.

End the Great Green Retreat. Unplug our kids and kick them outside. To play. And hear chickadees. And find huckleberries.

Writer-naturalist Mike Weilbacher directs a nature center near Philadelphia.