Doomsday Thinking: Imagining End Times

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There are so many stories about the end of our civilization, too many to list, perhaps too many for our health. It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

In this podcast, Greg assesses our worst presidents — the real and the imagined, and our obsession with the end of everything, or a new dark age if we’re lucky. With scenes from Mercury Theatre’s classic alien invasion on the radio. Theme by Dave Lippman.

New Video: Reign of Error

   
On Halloween Eve in 1938, a flood of terror swept the United States. Some people, believing that the world was coming to an end, tried flight or suicide, or just cringed in their homes as "aliens" from Mars attacked New Jersey, then New York and the world. 
     But it was just a prank, tapping a deep national well of pre-war anxiety, and produced for radio by Orson Welles and his Mercury Players.
  

   

     Times have changed so radically since then that, in the face of real disasters like the Three Mile Island “partial meltdown” in 1979, the explosion and fire at Chernobyl in 1986, the 2011 earthquake and Tsunami-sparked disaster in Japan, the election of Donald Trump, or even a deadly virus, many people are deceptively calm. Some simply refuse to believe it.
      Are we really so confident about our ability to cope and recover, or have we given in to an overarching pessimism about the fate of the planet and future of humanity?
     According to a survey by the Encyclopedia Britannica, in 1980 nearly half of all US junior high school students believed that World War III would begin by the year 2000. If you consider the last decade, it looks like the youth of that period – in their 50s today – were only off by a few years.
     Many futurologists, an academic specialty that emerged about 40 years ago, continue to warn that the environment is critically damaged. Yet this sounds positively cautious when compared to the diverse images of social calamity projected through films, books and the news media. Long before Covid 19, pandemics and outbreaks were at the center of dozens of novel and films. Of course, there have always been such predictions. But in the last few decades they have proliferated almost as rapidly as nuclear weapons during a Cold War. Some dramatize a “big bang” theory –global devastation caused by some extinction level event.
     Fortunately, a few do chart a slightly hopeful future, one in which humanity either smartens up in time to save itself or manages to survive.
     Rather than a desire to be scared out of our wits, the attraction to such stories and predictions may reflect a widespread interest in confronting the likely future. The mass media may, in fact, be producing training guides for the coming Dark Age -- if we're lucky.

Variations on a Theme

Sometimes humanity – or California – is saved in the nick of time by an individual sacrifice or collective action. Sometimes, as in the classics On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove or The Omega Man (remade as I am Legend), we are basically wiped out. Occasionally there are long-term possibilities for survival, but technology breaks down and the environment takes strange revenge. In some cases the future is so dismal that it is hardly worth going on, as in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
     In a few cases the end of humanity is just a piece of cosmic black humor.
     All of these are speculative visions, many adapted from ideas originally developed in pulp science fiction or from prophetic statements by figures like Edgar Cayce. The films usually offer a way out (audiences generally favor hopeful endings), while deep doom and gloom tend to gain more traction in print. But both scenarios share the assumption that the track we are on leads to a dangerous dead end.
     We seem to keep asking the same basic questions: How do we get to catastrophe? And what happens afterward? One obvious way to get pretty close is to misuse technology, especially when the mistakes are made as a result of greed – for power, knowledge or cold cash.  

Vermont's Nuclear Plant

      The classic anti-nuclear film The China Syndrome presents a textbook example: greedy corporations ignoring public health and shoddy construction in pursuit of profit. It was a powerful statement in its day, especially given the Three Mile accident just weeks after the film's release, yet predictable in a way and inconclusive on the prospects for health or quality survival in a nuclear-powered world. We are just beginning to have this discussion again.
     An earlier “close call” film, The Andromeda Strain, had a more inventive story and placed the blame on a lust for knowledge (the old Frankenstein theme). But this early techno-triller provided no real solution to the problem of disease or disaster created by scientific discovery. In Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain the threat was a deadly organism brought back from outer space, the same kind of self-inflicted biological warfare that heavy doses of radioactive fallout can become. But in the book and film the blood of victims coagulated almost instantly, avoiding the prolonged agony of dying from a plague or the long-term effects of radiation.
     Fear of nuclear power is by no means new. Radiation created many movie monsters in the 1950s, from the incredible 50-foot man and woman to giant mantises, crabs and spiders. But the threat was usually related to the testing or detonation of weapons, not the ongoing use of what was then called “the peaceful atom.” That mythical atom was going to be our good friend in a cheap, safe, long-term relationship.
      Since then, and especially since the nuclear accidents of the 1970s and 80s, nuclear plants have provided a basis for various bleak scenarios. Not even Vermont has been spared, though it sometimes appears as a post-disaster oasis. In the 1970s novel The Orange R, however, Middlebury College teacher John Clagett extended nuclear terror into a future where the Green Mountains is inhabited by radioactive people called Roberts. They are dying off rapidly in a country where apartheid has become a device to keep the Roberts away from the Normals.
     Using a pulp novel style Clagett lays out the overall situation about halfway through:
     “For many years every nuclear plant built had been placed in Robert country, ever since, in fact, the dreadful month in which three plants had ruptured cooling systems, spreading radioactive vapor over much of Vermont, New Hampshire and West Massachusetts. After that no more plants had been built near populated areas; before long, the requirement that the plants should be located on running fresh water and in lightly populated country had brought about the present situation. Norm country was surviving and living high on the power generated in Robert country, where radiation grew worse, year by year.”
     In The Orange R Normal people who live in radioactive areas wear airtight suits and laugh hysterically when anyone mentions solar power. All of Vermont’s major streams and bodies of water have heated up, and the deer have mutated into killer Wolverdeer. Still, the book offers a hopeful vision at the end: the Roberts rise up and take over Vermont’s nukes and successfully dismantle the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as a corporate state that is only vaguely described. Most Vermonters have terminal radiation sickness, but for humanity it turns out to be another close call.

Prophecies Go Mainstream

There are simply too many novels about the end of the current civilization, too many to list and perhaps too many for our psychological health. It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
     Only a few decades ago people who accepted the prophecies of Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce were mocked by mainstream society and even some of their close friends. Cayce predicted that the western part of the US would be broken up, that most of Japan would be covered by water, and that New York would be destroyed in 1998 (perhaps he meant Mayor Giuliani’s remake of Times Square). Nearly 400 years earlier Nostradamus, whose benefactor was Henry II of France, said that western civilization would be under heavy attack from the East in 1999, with possible cataclysmic repercussions. Not far off, it turns out.
     But what is “lunatic fringe” in one era can become mainstream, perhaps even commercially viable, in another.
     The destruction of the West Coast has been featured in numerous books and movies. Hollywood has of course excelled in creating doomsday myths, from the antichrist’s continuing saga in countless unmemorable installments, to total destruction in the Planet of the Apes franchise, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and many more.

     Japanese filmmakers have been equally and famously preoccupied with mass destruction. Decades before the current disaster, they even turned Cayce’s prophecy about their country into a 1975 disaster movie called Tidal Wave. Starring Lorne Greene and Japanese cast, it was imported to the US by Roger Corman. Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) describes it this way:
     “Racked by earthquakes and volcanoes, Japan is slowly sinking into the sea. A race against time and tide begins as Americans and Japanese work together to salvage some fraction of the disappearing Japan.” Close, but they missed the nuclear angle.
     Predictions to the contrary, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove remains one of the most memorable doomsday movies. Its black humor and naturalistic performances by Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden combine with a devastating premise – that The End may come through a mixture of human error (a demented general) and flawed technology (an extinction level bomb that can't be disarmed).
     There haven’t been many stories based on Nostradamus’ Eastern siege prophecy, although there certainly could be. But a number of films have adapted Cayce’s visions of environmental upheaval. Oddly enough Charlton Heston appears in several, usually as Cassandra or savior. In Planet of the Apes he is an astronaut who returns to Earth only to find his civilization in ruins, apes in charge, and humans living below ground as scarred mutants who worship the bomb. In The Omega Man he is a disillusioned scientist who has survived bio-chemical war and spends his days exterminating book-burning mutants. He discovers an antidote to the plague, but only a handful of people are left to give humanity another chance. The same basic story is told in I am Legend, the book and Will Smith movie. In the latter, Bethel, Vermont serves at the end as a gated refuge from the Zombie apocalypse.
     And then there is Soylent Green, a film that presents the slow road to environmental pollution and starvation. This time Heston is a policeman who eventually discovers that the masses have been hoodwinked into cannibalism. They are also so depressed that suicide parlors are big business.
     Most of the Heston vehicles were big budget B-movies, exploiting popular anxiety but much less affecting than Dr. Strangelove or Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. On the other hand, they deftly tapped into growing doubts about the future with a Dirty Harry-style response.

After The End

Ecologist George Stewart wrote his novel Earth Abides in 1949, before the Atom bomb scare took hold or the environment seemed like something to worry about. But his story of civilization destroyed by an airborne disease took the idea of rebuilding afterward about as far as anyone. In this prescient book the breakdown of man-made systems is traced in convincing detail, in counterpoint with a story of survival without machines, mass production and, ultimately, most of what residents of developed countries take for granted.
     Not many recent books or films are as optimistic about our prospects once humanity has gone through either its Big Bang or Long Wheeze end game. In Margaret Atwood’s multi -volume science fiction saga, for example, man-made environmental catastrophe and mass extinction in Oryx and Crake is followed, in The Year of the Flood, by marginal survival in a strange mutated world.
     The optimism of Earth Abides about the ability of human beings to adapt may be a reason why it did not develop the cult following of more dystopian tales. The more dismal the forecast, it seems, the more enthusiastic the following. Apropos, one of the most popular science fiction books downloaded in recent years was The Passage, Justin Cronin’s compelling mixture of vampires run amuck, government conspiracy, and post-apocalypse survivalism.
      What most of these stories and films have in common is a basic idea: the inevitability of radical, cataclysmic change. Should we manage to get beyond annihilation, apocalypse, Armageddon or whatever, they predict that we are very likely to enter a new Dark Age. Like most things, this too isn't a new idea. At the end of his life J. B. Priestley, the British novelist who founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, contemplated such a future. Calling it a “slithering down” he forecast that industrial civilization would one day come to an end.
      But even in a Dark Age there is some hope. The life of the planet will likely continue and equilibrium can be reestablished in time. At least many of us continue to hope so. If the devastation is not total, perhaps a new culture can emerge. The main question thus becomes not whether the Earth will survive but how human beings fit in.
     Near the end of his life H. G. Wells, the master of science fiction who produced optimistic visions in The Shape of Things to Come and The Time Machine, turned pessimist and wrote Mind at the End of Its Tether. “There is no way out or round or through,” he concluded. Life on Earth may not be ending, Wells believed, but humans aren’t going anywhere. Well, at least for the next few months, for most of us that will literally be true. 

     Yet compared with the darkest forecasts, the prospect of a post-modern Dark Age starts to sound more hopeful. Maybe it will just be a long Time Out.

Cyber Threats: System Failures & Living in Denial

By Greg Guma

In August 2010, when Foreign Policy posted an article citing credible research and directly warned oil companies worldwide that their offshore oil rigs were highly vulnerable to hacking, few people took notice.

     “Computer commands can derail a train or cause a gas pipeline to burst,” warned former Bush administration counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke a few years later in Cyber War, his book on the topic. The reaction: mainly silence. Until recently, such scenarios seemed more like movie plots than foreign policy concerns, and the threat looked more domestic than foreign. 

     In early 2009, for instance, a 28-year-old contractor in California was charged in federal court with almost disabling an offshore rig. Prosecutors said the contractor, who was allegedly angry about not being hired full time, had hacked into the computerized network of an oil-rig off the coast, specifically the controls that detect leaks. He caused damage, but fortunately not a leak.

     After the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico the Christian Science Monitor reported that at least three US oil companies had been targets in a series of cyber attacks. The culprit was most likely someone or some group in China, and the incidents, largely un-reported for several years, had involved Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. But the companies apparently didn’t realize how serious their problem was until the FBI alerted them.

     At the time, federal officials said that proprietary information – email passwords, messages, and information linked to executives – had been flowing out to computers overseas. Chinese government involvement could not be confirmed, but some data did end up on a computer in China. One oil company security staffer privately coined the term “China virus.”
     Still, the companies generally preferred not to comment, or even admit that the attacks had happened. But the Monitor persisted, interviewing insiders, officials and cyber attack experts, and ultimately confirmed the details. Their overall conclusion was that cyber-burglars, using spyware that is almost undetectable, pose a serious and potentially dangerous threat to private industry.
     According to Clarke, many nations conduct Internet espionage and sometimes even cyber attacks. China has been aggressive at times, but so have Russia and North Korea. Spying on defense agencies and diplomats has been one major focus; strategically important businesses and even national governments have also been targeted.

     In 2011, when I first published an article on the problem, Google claimed that it had evidence of at least 20 companies that had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, logic bombs were being infiltrated into the US electric power grid. If so, they could operate like time bombs. Now it looks likely that Russia was the actual culprit, or had the same idea.
     On oil rigs, the advent of robot-controlled platforms has made a cyber attack possible with a computer anywhere in the world. Control of a rig could be accomplished by hacking into the "integrated operations" that link onshore computer networks to offshore ones. Until 2018 few experts would speculate publicly that this may already have happened. But there has been confirmation of computer viruses causing personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms for several years.
     One problem is that even though newer rigs have cutting-edge robotics technology, the software that controls their basic functions can still be old school. Many rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, which was created in an era when "open source" was more important than security.
     "It's underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are," warned Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department who talked with Greg Grant, author of the Foreign Policy article. "It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail."
     The name of the article, by the way, was “The New Threat to Oil Supplies – Hackers.” It sounds a lot like “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US.”
     To be fair, the US government’s failure to address private-sector vulnerability to cyber attacks goes back decades. Until recently, however, Congress and various administrations hesitated to challenge the status quo. Given the vulnerability of crucial infrastructure and much of the private sector, surprisingly little was done to prepare for what sounds inevitable.
     The US Cyber Command has attempted to protect federal infrastructure, while various branches of the military have developed their own offensive capabilities. But not even the Department of Homeland Security is officially responsible for protecting the private sector.  Legal and privacy issues get in the way of having the government directly monitor the Internet or business operations for evidence of potential cyber attacks. As you might expect, many businesses are wary of the regulations that might accompany government help.
     Though cyber attacks have clearly happened, many leave no obvious trace. As Clarke explained, corporations tend to believe that the “millions of dollars they have spent on computer security systems means they have successfully protected their company’s secrets.” Unfortunately, they are wrong. Intrusion detection and prevention systems sometimes fail.
     As it stands, no single federal agency is responsible for defending the banking system, power grids and oil rigs from attacks. The prevailing logic is that businesses should handle their own security. Yet their experts readily admit that they wouldn’t know what to do if an attack came from another nation, and assume that defense in such a case would be the government’s job.That’s capitalist thinking for you, private interests but socialized costs.
     In 2011, a US Senate bill sponsored by Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe sought to change that, but became another victim of DC gridlock. It would have required the president to work with the private sector on a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, created a joint public-private advisory board, and led to a Senate-confirmed national security adviser position. Rockefeller said the goal was “unprecedented information sharing between government and the private sector.”
     James Fallows has argued that the US suffers from “a conspiracy of secrecy about the scale of cyber risk.” His point was that many companies simply won’t admit how easily they can be infiltrated. As a result, changes in the law, the regulatory environment, or personal habits that could increase safety are not seriously discussed.  
      But sooner or later, Fallows concluded, “the cyber equivalent of 9/11 will occur.” That prediction is bad enough. But then he adds, “if the real 9/11 is a model, we will understandably, but destructively, overreact.” 
      So we’ve also got that to look forward to.

From Lifeboat Ethics to Global Consciousness

By Greg Guma

For more than half a century humanity has been learning the lesson that "everything is connected." The realization of physical limits to human and material growth, the impact of development and pollution on ecological systems and the atmosphere, the integration of economic systems – no matter what ideology or religion dominates – and the tragic consequences of massive mal-distribution of resources make it obvious that the planet is one organism. 
     But many proposed solutions to such problems aim to "minimize" the losses rather than acknowledge the responsibilities of interdependence. When faced with famines in under-developed nations, Philip Handler, President of the National Academy of Sciences in the 1970s, publicly proposed that we "give them up as hopeless." Assistance that would "barely manage to keep people alive and hungry" could only lead to tragedy later, he advised.
     Although not often voiced so clearly, expressions of "lifeboat ethics" have become more common as humanity grapples with the harsh realities of spaceship earth. Garrett Harden, who coined the term, also provided the basic argument for its implementation.
     "We are all the descendants of thieves," he wrote, "and the world's resources are inequitably distributed. But we must begin the journey to tomorrow from the point where we are today. We cannot remake the past. We cannot safely divide the wealth equitably among all peoples so long as people reproduce at different rates. To do so would guarantee that our grandchildren, and everyone else's grandchildren would have only a ruined world to inhabit."

The Trilateral Commission's EC meets with President Ford in 1974;
to Ford's immediate left, David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

     Until an effective world government is established, Harden argued, a harsh ethic is unavoidable. And the first step? Control of reproduction. To ensure compliance, Paul Erhlich linked population to food in his controversial book The Population Bomb. "We may have to announce," he wrote, "that we will no longer ship food to countries unwilling or unable to bring their population increases under control." Other schemes since then have involved exchanges of needed technology and resources in return for commitments to limit reproduction.
     The thing is, green plants form the basis of food chains, and it takes more green plant production to support citizens of developed countries. In 1980 North Americans used about six times the green plant production of the average Indian. India has begun to catch up since then, but the math remains pretty simple: 500 million more people in developed countries will use up the same amount of green plants as up to three billion in underdeveloped countries.
     Advocating population control in less developed regions without radically changing habits of consumption in highly industrialized countries wouldn't just be unfair. It would be futile.
     Such considerations have nevertheless failed to deter various open conspiracies to create world order from pursuing their grandiose plans. Beginning in the 1970s two of the most prominent were the Trilateral Commission, representing the "new breed" of corporate internationalists, and the Club of Rome. The Commission, which played a prominent role during the Carter presidency and re-emerged in Age of Obama, generated a series of policy proposals based on global power sharing between three poles of economic power – the US, Western Europe, and Asia. According to Samuel Huntington, a prominent trilateral theorist, limits would have to be placed on political democracy, a goal that would require lower public expectations and greater executive power.
     The Club of Rome returned to Plato's ethical aristocracy as a model for its solution to world crises. According to founder Aurelio Peccei, politicians and businessmen are too nearsighted to take a long view of global management. What is needed instead, he argued, is the "civilized traditions of a ruling class," implemented by technocrats, diplomats and government officials, "men of influence" able to see the shape of a post-industrial world. At least he was candid.
     In the early 1990s, President George H.W. Bush inadvertently helped stimulate public discussion about global management by calling for a "new world order." The term was an unfortunate translation of the Nazi call for "Nie Ordnung," which had set the tone for German expansionism. As the US was staging Gulf War I — then the largest military campaign since World War II – Bush promised that, once Iraq was defeated, the world could turn its attention to peaceful approaches, world law and human rights. But even his "points of light" version of world order depended on a military stick, and it was really just a soft-sell of "one superpower order."
     Some theorists and thinkers suggest that the US can no longer impose its will by economic means, that it is evolving into a mercenary state, underwritten and restrained by economic partners and overseers. If so, the next world order could be an updated version of the Trilateral or Kissinger vision. All such variations serve the interests of political and economic elites, while compressing the individual into the mass.
     Whether power is centered in one superpower or shared by several, it amounts to the same thing: a global State, increasing its domain and mechanizing more aspects of life as it reduces individual sovereignty.
     One slender hope is the slow birth of a new global consciousness, a shift in thinking already underway. The Gaia theory, which grew out of research on the geophysiology of the planet, suggests an alternative, non-mechanistic vision of what it means to be part of a living whole. According to James Lovelock, who was instrumental in developing the idea, the evolution of the material environment and various organisms are part of a single and indivisible process. If that is so, a major task ahead is to recognize, as Elisabet Sahtouris put it, that we are "a body of humanity embedded in, and with much to learn from, our living parent planet, which is all we have to sustain us."
     Or, as William Thompson explained in Passages About Earth, we have reached the end of the line for industrial society. Looking over the edge of history, we are discovering that "it's a spiral and that we have turned and are now facing back in the direction of cosmic mythology." Our old maps "take on a new meaning as they warn us, Here be dragons," he warned. "Ecstasy or economics, madness or sanity, mysticism or science: where ancient dragons live modern categories die."

This is an excerpt from Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey. Greg Guma's second novel, Dons of Time, was published in October 2013 by Fomite Press.

Partners, Standards and Climate Change: Burlington's Winding Road

As Bernie Sanders flirted with the possibility of running for president in 2012, residents of Burlington, the city where he made his first electoral breakthrough, questioned the approach he and a local successor were taking to military contractor Lockheed Martin. Mayor Bob Kiss had signed an agreement with Lockheed for a local partnership to work on climate change, while Sanders arranged for Sandia Labs, a Lockheed subsidiary, to open an energy research lab at the university.

Then suddenly, on Sept. 2, 2011, the defense contractor backed out of the deal signed with Kiss in an e-mail message to the Burlington Free Press. Why the change? A few weeks earlier, after months of local debate, Burlington’s City Council had voted in favor of community standards for proposed climate-change partnerships, prompted by the agreement Kiss had signed. The resolution called for standards which, if followed, could limit or exclude working agreements with weapons manufacturers and polluters.

Rob Fuller, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, said in a statement, "While several projects showed promise initially and we have learned a tremendous amount from each other, we were unable to develop a mutually beneficial implementation plan. Therefore Lockheed Martin has decided to conclude the current collaboration."

It read a bit like a Dear John, and a silent nod to public pressure. Dozens of residents had testified during public meetings, all but a few opposing the deal. Kiss nevertheless called the standards "bad public policy” and a “restrictive and regressive approach.” In a veto message, he said the policy may even have contributed to Lockheed’s decision to pull out of the Burlington agreement.

A Progressive recruited to run for mayor in 2006, Kiss found support for his opposition to community standards from Republicans and Democrats on the council, including future mayoral candidate Kurt Wright, who questioned whether such standards represented local opinion. In the end, the vote was  8-6, more than a majority but not enough to override the mayor's veto. The question of setting standards or criteria for public-private partnerships remains open.

Since then, greenhouse gas emissions have increased in Burlington by around 7 percent.  Emissions traceable to city government activity rose 15 percent in three years, while the community’s emissions went up 6 percent. The city's official goal is a 20 percent decrease overall by 2020.

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas. Local emissions from that source increased by almost 25 percent between 2007 and 2010. Of total community emissions about half come from transportation. Thus, a reduction in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by residents and commuters would have the biggest impact on meeting the city's emissions reduction target.

Burlington’s City Council formed a Climate Protection Task Force more than 15 years ago. A resolution passed in 1998 proposed to reduce emissions to 10 percent below 1990 levels. An 18-month process subsequently led to the city’s first Climate Action Plan, adopted in May 2000.

A 2007 inventory showed that Burlington generated 397,272.4 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). Based on that, local goals were set -- a 20 percent reduction by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. This would require an annual 2 percent decrease. Unfortunately, the "action" since then has been in the opposite direction.

In 2009 Burlington used American Recovery Act funds to hire Spring Hill Solutions, a clean energy consulting firm, to prioritize more than 200 “mitigation actions” generated by a community process. The resulting plan was supposed to be a framework for measuring and reducing greenhouse emissions and other climate change impacts. There is no evidence that idea has been implemented.

According to the plan, three approaches offer the greatest potential for both carbon reductions and cost savings:

- Requiring any new commercial construction to follow performance guidelines that reduce energy use by at least 20 percent

- The Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program, which provides property owners with help making energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements

-- Reducing the number of miles driven by residents by combining trips, telecommuting, carpooling and using alternatives to the automobile

Originally posted on December 10, 2014 

PlanBTV: Going for Competitive Advantage

One rendering shows a new waterfront hotel.

At first the master plan for Burlington’s urban core sounds and looks like a new airport designation – planBTV. The logo-style name, like other decisions made since the project began in early 2011, point to an emphasis on image and messaging.

Dozens of beautifully rendered diagrams, illustrations and charts combine to create a seductive vision of Vermont’s largest city in the not-too-distant future. An online version released in 2012 allowed for comments on almost every paragraph. This and much of the process was designed and directed by a consulting firm, Town Planning and Urban Design Collaborative, with funding from HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities.

The result is a long-term blueprint for downtown Burlington and the waterfront that attempts  to balance growing concerns about sustainability with continued growth and pressing Burlington’s competitive edge. Since its development, it has become the basis for a variety of ordinance and zoning changes to implement the overall vision and smooth the path for projects that survive public scrutiny.

On page 84 of the print version, the desire to keep Burlington a vital and desirable place to live is linked to competition for “market share” with surrounding communities and the suburbs.

“For years the City has struggled to agree on how to move forward with the development of the waterfront and the core has struggled to match the vitality seen on Church Street,” it explains. “While the city is a desirable place to live, a lack of high quality affordable housing limits the number of people who can find housing downtown. This deficiency of downtown housing also potentially deters businesses who fear they cannot find a needed employee base. Traffic, challenges with parking, and shortfalls in the quality of the public realm further deter potential residents and visits. Complex and unpredictable regulatory framework also suppress the potential for investment by the private sector.”

The plan itself, presented without the traditional references to goals, objectives, and benchmarks, is more like a PowerPoint presentation, full of intriguing statistics and perceptions but also a series of frequently reinforced themes and arguments. In the 114-page magazine version, most specific recommendations do not emerge until page 90. The rest of the elaborately-designed publication covers local history, how the plan was developed, a set of “values we celebrate,” and nine “themes” that combine to create the rationale for various proposals.

Making the case for change

The decision to present the proposed master plan in print as a colorful, high-end magazine was supposed to “make this document as accessible as possible to the public.” A note on page three said you could order a print edition or download it from the city’s website.

Study area shown by blue line.

An initial hundred copies of the magazine version were printed at a cost of $1,800. and a second edition was made available after the public comments period. Officials and members of the city council received copies.  But only a limited number were available at the Planning and Zoning office, with a cover sticker indicating that they could be borrowed on a three-day loan basis. Some pages and recommended ordinance changes in the print edition were not featured on the website, but the entire magazine was available in PDF form.

On Page 5 of the magazine Comprehensive Planners Sandrine Thibault encouraged the plan’s adoption with the argument that it “represents a social contract bringing citizens together around common goals for their future.” This assertion is followed by an orientation section under the headline “How to love the plan.” Step one, it suggests, is to support it “even if you don’t like all the ideas.” 

The basic idea: have residents focus on the big picture rather than controversial details like a new waterfront hotel or more parking structures, and ultimately to consider whether the overall plan basically takes the city in the right direction. Readers were also encouraged to become part of the planning team and to recognize that some ideas likely to “bring about transformative change” could take years to implement.

The magazine’s review section features historical photos, a selected timeline of past planning milestones, a description of the process and photo spreads that show participants huddled around charts and maps. Little of this made it to the online version.

A highlight of the public process was a series of community meetings. These design “charettes” -- a chic planning term from the French words for cart or chariot -- were attended by about 500 people who considered needs and looked over various proposals.

“Feeding off this buzz of activity, the team entered production mode, synthesizing ideas, collaborating over design challenges, preparing renderings, compiling precedent images, and drawing up the final master plan,” the text explains.

Phase 1 also featured a study of local demographics, transportation, parking, housing and economics. Among the economic “insights” that emerged was that downtown Burlington, which currently has nearly one million square feet of retail space, could accommodate up to 200,000 more. Another is the assertion that French Canadians account for only 3 percent of downtown shoppers. Some officials have questioned this. The problem is that no documentation is provided for much of the data presented in the plan, and some statistics are based on short-term or limited samples.

A section on housing states that single-person households account for 55 percent of the total in the downtown and waterfront area, while 88 percent are renters, 63 percent are under 35 year old, and the average rental price is $1,250.

“Wow,” the plan comments – but not about the cost of housing. “Only 12 percent of homes in Burlington’s downtown and waterfront area are owner occupied. Though not always the case, rental properties are often times unkempt – especially when there is a high concentration of transient residents such as students – compared to homeowners who put down roots and make a long-term investment in their home and neighborhood,” it states.

On transportation, the statistical bottom line is that 74 percent of Burlingtonians drive to work regularly, but the majority “would like to be less auto dependent” and 20 percent already walk to work. A factoid under the heading “Myth Busting” asserts that the city actually does not have a shortage of parking spaces. At peak times, it notes, 35 percent of the spaces are empty. However, a mitigating factor is that a third of the area’s parking is private.

Although the impact of the proposed Champlain Parkway is not discussed – in part because it extends beyond the downtown area – four high-relief aerial maps show the potential for more park and civic space beyond the core, opportunities “to extend the street grid” in the south end, and “a lack of buildings to enclose and activate the park space” on the waterfront. In other words, more development is needed to attract additional visitors.

The fourth map in this section shows “underutilized sites.” The plan concludes that downtown could handled an additional 18.2 million square feet of mixed-use development and more than 500 residential units.

Lists and themes

Some sections are difficult of categorize, even for the plan’s editors. In the magazine’s table of contents one section is titled, “Some Commentary.” However, the title on the page referenced is actually “Timeless Principles” while the content covers what has worked in other communities. The list includes walkability, destination, distance, design, connectivity, density, scale, diversity and mixed-use.

“The creative class, entrepreneurs, and baby boomers are moving into cities, sacrificing privacy, personal space, and their automobiles, in exchange for convenience, entertainment and social interaction,” the plan offers. In the sub-section on distance, the dynamic is quantified this way: the average pedestrian will walk 1320 feet, or five minutes, to reach a destination but Burlingtonians will go a bit farther.

Under mixed-use, planBTV recommends that neighborhoods combine commercial, residential, recreational and civic uses. “This mix of uses is optimized when commercial establishments have residential dwelling units above to help promote active streets,” it explains.

Another section defines a set of Burlington values, based on 250 responses to a survey conducted from October 2011 to January 2012. Asked their impressions of downtown and the waterfront, the word people apparently used most often was” vibrant.” They were also asked about their level of satisfaction with specific features of the area. The highest scores went to shopping and dining downtown, how the Marketplace is maintained, amenities for pedestrians and cyclists, and the scale of buildings.

Asked to rank the five most important subjects that should be addressed by the plan those who responded listed promotion of a local economy sustained by a diverse mixture of business at the top.  Other popular choices were strengthening the city’s role as an economic center, an integrated transportation system, a wide range of housing options, and new urban development.

Based on the various surveys and sources, the planners generated another list – “values we celebrate.” This one includes respect and tolerance, diversity, access, localism, creativity, ability to walk and bike, social interaction and civic engagement, a sense of place, conserving energy, self-sufficiency, and life-long learning.  

By page 44, planBTV the magazine has not quite reached the point of presenting specific proposals. Instead, a final background section describes seven “placed-based themes” that supposedly underlie the choices, goals and objectives “embedded in the hearts and minds of the citizens.” These themes include a vibrant economy, housing and transportation choice, active and healthy living, environmental and cultural stewardship, a sense of place, and creativity and innovation.

Implementing the vision

PlanBTV eventually gets around to specifics, beginning with the need to expand the retail market share in competition with the suburbs. A major proposal in this area is expansion of the current four-block business improvement district (BID) downtown, currently known as the Church Street Marketplace.

In the future the BID’s role could include unified management of public infrastructure, advocating for redevelopment incentives, retail recruitment services handled by a specialist, and creation of a waterfront enhancement and redevelopment program. Setting up a downtown development revolving fund – a potential source of loans for promising projects – is mentioned as “a means to leverage private investment” and make sure that design and material standards are met.

Subsequent sections cover the need to reduce barriers to housing development and open up more units downtown. One recommendation is to improve vacant upper floors along Church Street for use as student housing. Another is to develop an under-utilized parcel at the corner of Main and South Winooski, ironically known as the Superblock, to create a high density project that attracts “several demographic groups interested in urban living who may want an alternative to fatigued single-family homes.”

Absent from the website is a related section in the magazine listing the specific zoning changes that will be needed. They include dropping the 50 percent limit on residential use in downtown projects, eliminating off-street parking requirements, simplifying the public approvals process, increasing the threshold that triggers the need for inclusionary units, and revising the size limits to allow for smaller units.

Another section deals with the innovative potential of Burlington’s creative class, described as “anyone willing to think like an artist” or who is striving to “create a window to view the world in an altogether different way.” This element of the plan is a departure from the past, explicitly acknowledging that arts and culture have become key factors in Burlington’s identity and economy that need to be nurtured.

Recommendations for how to do that include combined public and private funding for non-for-profit enterprises, a commitment to development that “actively enables” creative endeavors, and "incentivizing" the use of upper story properties. 

Among the most detailed sections in planBTV are those dealing with streets, transportation, pedestrians, cycling, and parking. “Now people want to be in urban areas so they can choose to not use a car,” the plan asserts. The proposals for these areas are numerous and ambitious, including a downtown transit mall; a passenger train station that will be part of a new waterfront civic square; and enhancing Burlington’s reputation as a bike-friendly destination through functional parking, end-of-trip facilities, secure storage, bike sharing, and a variety of bikeway types.  

The section titled “Park It! Burlington” provides a granular look at demand, the rationale to change some parking requirements, a tiered time limit approach, use of smart technology,  and various pricing proposals. “We already know that there is a surplus of parking that should be filled before new parking infrastructure is constructed,” the publication says in a sub-section on supply. “Building additional parking facilities will be the last step for Burlington to grow in a smart and efficient way.”

Reimagining the waterfront

Plan BTV sees the Waterfront’s potential “to be a year-round activity center that attracts both city residents and visitors.” Future possibilities include an ice skating facility, even a sled run down Depot Street when the area is “less than ideal” for typical warn weather options. Reinforcing previous municipal plans it also foresees the physical linking of the waterfront area with downtown at several points. 

The text often mentions minimizing the use of automobiles. But in the section on parking innovations it also recommends eliminating parking requirements for future development. “Each new development can determine exactly how much parking is needed without wasting land and resources on parking spaces that will not be utilized,” it argues. 

Thirty pages later, among the many proposals in a key section under the jaunty title, “Around the Burlington Plan,” it discusses two possible new parking structures on the waterfront. The idea is to keep most of the additional parking hidden from view, preferably in buildings with other retail, housing or office uses.

One possibility is below Battery Street, potentially with a connection to Pearl Street via elevator, plus a green roof with a commanding waterfront view. Another option is below the southern end of Lake Street, with access to College or Main.  Building them “would allow nearby surface parking lots to be redeveloped into civic spaces and mixed-used buildings to further activate the waterfront,” the plan says.

The new civic Pavilion surrounded by a plaza is expected
to become a "defining icon" on the waterfront

The most informative sections come in the final 25 pages, when specific elements of the plan are physically pinpointed and described.  At the north end of the waterfront, for example, it calls for a redesign of Overlook Park; stairs or even a mechanical conveyance down the escarpment; a new multi-purpose building at the mid-point of Waterfront Park, creating an entrance to the event area where access can be controlled; a “creativity village” of new and existing buildings along Lake Street; a seasonal skating rink; and a large new civic pavilion that could become the site for future crafts and farmers markets, indoor concerts, and exhibits.

Moving south, the plan describes an “active mixed-use area” with retail space, restaurants and a new inn or hotel on land owned by the Pecor family. In planning speak, this is called “adaptive reuse and infill,” an opportunity for development that extends the four-season tourism concept, with uses that reinforce “a vibrant pedestrian environment.”  To accomplish this, the city’s ferry terminal would be moved south to make room for new projects.

Balancing priorities

In a letter to Burlingtonians, Comprehensive Planner Thibault introduces the “limited edition” magazine version of planBTV with a suggestion that it allows residents to “proactively prepare” for inevitable growth.

In June 2012 Mayor Miro Weinberger said that he sees the process underway as the city’s best chance to reach “a meaningful consensus” about what Burlington’s downtown and waterfront should look like.  The approach could work, he told VTDigger, because it is visual and combines talented designers with modern technology.

However, the plan is as much a persuasive prospectus as a planning document. In addition, it does not incorporate some other relevant planning that is also underway, notably the update of Burlington’s Climate Action Plan that will become part of a revised Municipal Development Plan. Future city projects and programs affecting transportation and development will have to conform to the standards in the plan. That includes zoning, subdivision regulation, impact fees and capital improvements.

The Climate Action Plan concludes that Burlington's greenhouse gas emissions increased 7 percent from 2007 to 2010, despite a goal to reduce emissions 20 percent by 2020. Among the approaches mentioned in the plan offering the greatest potential for carbon reductions and cost savings are reducing the number of miles driven by residents by combining trips, telecommuting, carpooling and using alternatives to the automobile; and requiring any new commercial construction to follow performance guidelines that reduce energy use by at least 20 percent. There is no mention of such considerations in planBTV.

The plan includes many relevant suggestions. But its primary focus is economic. As the statement on long-term vision explains, planBTV seeks” to have a positive impact on the economy, business climate, tax base, and the sustainability of the City in to the future.” Whether the proposed plan’s ambitious vision for how to enhance and protect Burlington’s current marketing advantages is consistent with emerging environmental realities, as well as prevailing local attitudes about housing, traffic and the use of remaining land along the waterfront, remains to be seen.

Article first published in 2012 by VTDigger. To request a digital download or a print copy go to www.burlingtonvt.gov/planbtv

SOS - Burlington: From Secrets to Partnership

Remarks for Save Open Space Summit, Jan. 21, City Hall. 
Reimagine Burlington

   How did we get here? These days I often ask myself that kind of thing, looking back, thinking about the past. But 40 years ago, when I was new to Burlington, I thought mostly about the future, how it could be different and better.
   About that time I joined the faculty of Burlington College. It had another name then. Vermont Institute of Community Involvement, or just VICI. And one of the ideas of founder Steward LaCasce was to get away from "bricks and mortar" -- the big, expensive, campus-based model of higher education -- and, as much as possible, develop a community-based alternative, using existing resources and spaces around town. It was a practical form of involvement and interdependence.
   Eventually, the College did buy a building. But the idea of staying small and connected to the community persisted.
   At the time, the land we are here to save was owned by Vermont's Roman Catholic Diocese. The church purchased most of it from Burlington Free Press Publisher Henry Stacy in the 1870s. Before that it was farmland, and the city grew around it. A rolling meadow led to a bluff overlooking Lake Champlain, with a beach below, a forest of oak, red maple and pine at the southern edge, and a railroad tunnel under North Avenue. All in all, it is a special, irreplaceable piece of land.
   The church erected an imposing Victorian building, which housed orphans for a century. After World War II, the local diocese bought adjacent land and converted a cottage into a school for delinquents. After the St. Joseph Orphan Asylum and the Don Bosco School for Delinquent Boys closed, it became diocese headquarters and home for projects like Camp Holy Cross.
    So, the "school without walls" and the cloistered catholic campus near the lake. How did they get entangled? The answer begins with secrets, the first about what went on in the church -- and on that property.
   In the end dozens of former residents came forward, and revealed a dark, sordid history of physical and sexual abuse by nuns, priests and staff. Like other parts of the church, the diocese ultimately found itself under attack and in serious financial trouble. By May 2010, it had paid almost $20 million to settle 26 lawsuits. More were to follow. Selling the land was urgent to help cover up to $30 million in legal settlements for the abused.
    Developers expressed some interest, but disagreed about what the property was worth. There were also zoning restrictions, and some claimed the city was overvaluing the land. In any case, it went on the market in April 2010 for $12.5 million. The sale to BC for $10 million was announced on May 24, 2010, only a month later -- ten days after the diocese paid out $17. 65 million.  Based on about 200 housing units, a plan initially considered, a more reasonable price was probably $7 million or less.
   Why did the college pay that much? And what did its leaders expect? Like many decisions by private boards, it's mostly confidential, a shared secret. But we know the deal was promoted and brokered by Antonio Pomerleau, once known as the "godfather of Vermont shopping center development." Owner of Pomerleau Real Estate, a prominent, devoted Catholic who wanted to help the church, and a powerful, persuasive developer who for years chaired the Burlington Police Commission.
    In the early 1980s Pomerleau became an obvious target for Bernie Sanders, a capitalist mogul who wanted to rebuild the waterfront and controlled the Police Department. His $30 million waterfront redevelopment plan was derailed after Sanders' election as mayor. But the relationship changed. By the time College President Jane Sanders announced the purchase, Pomerleau was considered a family friend. In then-President Sanders' words, Pomerleau was the only man who could have made it happen. Someone to trust, who understood relationships. But it didn't hurt that he loaned the school $500,000 to close the deal. Yves Bradley, who subsequently became chair of the College's Board of Trustee, handled the 2010 transaction details for Pomerleau Real Estate.
   According to local sources, the school's leaders believed that, with connected friends like Sanders and Pomerleau, plus a Treasurer like Jonathan Leopold, handling the $10 million debt and $3 million for renovations was a reasonable expectation for a school with 200 students and revenues around $4 million a year. Big donors would come -- but they didn't. The Board also embraced another notion: that enrollment could double in five years, a goal well beyond the national average. It didn't.
    In retrospect, it sounds like magical thinking. Or just bad judgement. But somehow it made sense -- at least until September 2011, when Jane Sanders was forced to resign, mainly for not raising enough money. So began a three-year, silent slide toward insolvency.
    Exactly how many students attend BC today? Just how bad are its finances, and how did that happen? Why did one president resign suddenly in the parking lot? We don't know for sure. We also don't know whether the school will continue to exist as an independent college a year from now. 
    We could know more. We should. But it's a political hot potato. And the mayor has made it known that, although he's open to preserving a few "key attributes" for public use -- some forest, a garden, a path to the shore and Texaco beach -- he won't risk city funds or political capital. Instead, he's likely to wait until the deal is closed, then try to negotiate concessions during the zoning and permitting process. 
Many people in a position to make things happen, one way or another, appear to be on board with developer Eric Farrell's plan and the mayor's free market stance. But they are reluctant to say much.
    I'll conclude with a question and a vision. This land has seen more than enough secrets, loss and pain. Can't we find a better approach, a more open path? Can't we move from secrecy to partnership, a partnership in the public interest -- between conservation groups, local colleges, government and private capital -- brokered by engaged officials, combining sufficient housing with a modest campus, compatible projects, and as much open space as possible. With persistence, courage and political will, it can happen. 
    I still believe the future can be different -- and better. And that's why I think we're here.

Community & Consciousness

Part 35 of Prisoners of the Real

We can't go back. The only route is through the current crisis and on to the next stage of human evolution. But we can only get there if we know where we want to go.

First and foremost, the impulses toward centralization, rationalization, absolutism, and hierarchy must be rejected as means toward personal liberation and global harmony. This is especially difficult at a time when the need for global control is so strongly asserted and threatens to erase the vision of free communities. Complicating matters further is the confusion between the concept of true community and the State. The more a group of people allows itself to be represented from outside, the less community life is left in it.

Community is the joint and active management of what we hold in common, a primary aspiration of all human beings. Survival itself depends on the use of community structures and institutions to promote genuine freedom and spontaneous social action.

Second, we must recognize that community isn't a rigid idea but instead a living form, shaped by daily experience. It must satisfy the demands of real situations rather than abstractions. Like any realization, community is not reached once and for all time. Every moment presents new challenges and calls for original answers. For the individual, community building requires the inner disposition to pursue a life in common, despite the prospect of adverse circumstances and anxiety, tribulations, and toil. What sustains it is spirit, trust and love.

Community begins when its members see their common purpose and relation to the whole, a living togetherness that is the essence of sister and brotherhood. In that sense, few true communities currently exist in our "post-modern" world. Most of our cities have no real centers, and we devote little time to defining what holds us together. That work has mostly been turned over to elected representatives and appointed bureaucrats. Their "rational collectives" leave little space for warmth or friendship in the press of political and economic reality. Visions of togetherness are usually viewed as romantic fantasy, conceivable at all only in terms of their concrete effects.

Dionysian collectives, in contrast, are the seeds of an organic commonwealth that place true solidarity at the center of social experience. Every act of true friendship, every moment of selfless aid in our rationalized "post-industrial" world, brings social transformation a step nearer. This is true community building, and it occurs whenever autonomous actions create dynamic unity.

The Dionysian path is known by many names – metaphysical reconstruction, holistic epistemology, deep ecology, and new age claptrap, among others. Critics rightly note that attacks on rationalism and "instrumental reason" often extend too far, ending in rejection of all forms of purposeful activity and a retreat into the mystical haze of nature worship and “magical thinking.” Wary of the cult of technique, cultural revolutionaries sometimes confuse technology with practice and reject all human inventiveness as wanton dominance. In truth, however, it is possible to make peace with nature even while acknowledging the separation created by our consciousness. As Christopher Lasch explained, "Nature sets limits to human freedom, but it does not define freedom."

Ecological and systems thinking provide a theoretical foundation for the Dionysian approach. The former encompasses the realization that structures that may appear rigid in nature are actually manifestations of processes in continual flux; the latter has moved beyond analysis of complex machines to an understanding of relationships and integration in living systems. After 2000 years of reducing the world to smaller and smaller building blocks, science has finally turned its attention to principles of organization. Every organism is an integrated whole, a living system. Families and communities exhibit the same characteristics of wholeness as cells and ecosystems.

Yet the metaphysical reconstruction implied by a turn to the Dionysian principle also involves reconciliation of two realms of experience that have long been viewed as separate and irreconcilable – the political and spiritual. Marx's claim that religion is the "opiate of the people" has been as debilitating as the notion that enlightenment is a purely personal pursuit, fundamentally incompatible with the "dirty" world of social action.

The keys to a synthesis have been found in ecological consciousness and the post-modern politics of Gaia. Together they form a new cultural paradigm – planetary consciousness. With roots in myth, Gaia re-emerged as hypothesis, out of research on the auto-regulation of the Earth as a living system. According to James Lovelock, originator of the hypothesis, "the entire range of living matter on Earth, from whales to viruses, can be regarded as a single entity." Studying the nature of Earth's atmosphere, he and other researchers discovered that it is not merely a biological product but instead an active system designed to maintain a chosen environment within the biosphere.

Since this initial research Gaia has developed as a theoretical and artistic context, embraced by social critics, articulated in music, and developed as an eco-social organizing principle. There is talk also of a Gaian mode of consciousness, one acknowledging that science has a myth-making quality. Closely linked to ecological concepts, Gaian consciousness recognizes that opposites can – in fact, must – coexist.

This emerging form of spirituality is politically consistent with certain strains of Green thinking, in particular deep ecology, holistic feminism, community-based populism, and bio-regionalism. All of these incorporate a subtle awareness of the oneness of life, the interdependence of its limitless manifestations, and its cyclical processes of change and transformation. The sense that we are connected to the cosmos as a whole is a spiritual revelation that ties together the disparate expressions of this new consciousness.

In The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics, Charlene Spretnak argued persuasively that Green concepts of inter-relatedness and sustainability open the way toward what she called post-modern spirituality. Human beings, she wrote, are social and interconnected, and the boundaries between us are more illusory than we normally think. Taking account of the nature reverence buried within most religious traditions, she concluded that a spiritual grounding can not only answer a deep hunger in modern experience, but also mesh comfortably with the Green tendrils that have sprouted around the world. Like others who are attempting to describe the next stage of humanity's journey, she found herself in a region where cosmic consciousness and political analysis meet.

William Irwin Thompson defined the current transition as a shift from the cultural ecology of the Atlantic, with its capitalist, industrial approach, to a new Pacific ecology that is more communal and balanced. On the spiritual level, this translates as a move from obedience to symbiosis. Working with a series of paradoxes, he noted that "Good at one level of order becomes evil at another.... In the age of mental understanding of doctrine (the current Atlantic era), obedience to law is evil, for it aborts the development of the mind. In an age of universal compassion (the new Pacific era), understanding of doctrine becomes evil, for it simply sanctifies murder in religious warfare."

The key to a new age, says Thompson, is the acceptance of difference, "the consciousness of the unique that contributes to the understanding of the universal." The main danger, on the other hand, is what he has labeled "collectivization through terror," the stamping out of differences. Just as mono-crop agriculture does violence to nature, a mono-crop society – essentially the extreme of an industrial mentality – would be deadly to human nature. Even Green politics, which may yet develop an ecology of consciousness, could instead become a fundamentalist ideology, rejecting flexibility and promoting a Luddite contempt for innovation.

"The real secret of freedom," Thompson once wrote, "seems to lie in the ability to deal with ambiguity, the capacity to tolerate noise and yet hear within its wild, randomizing abandon the possibilities of innovation and transformation."

Next: The Eclipse of Free Expression

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey