The leaning barn.

[20] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (8)

Part 1.

Warren Buffet on a buying spree here.

The failure of Latvia as a viable economy, whether guided by Latvian Latvians or Latvian Russians or a coalition of same is that both parties look toward the future in the outdated terms of a “growth” economy.

The financial and economic disaster enveloping the world today (and Latvia in particular) is thought of in terms of a “short lived” event—even if the event is presumed to last for ten or more years. The mindset of our times appears to have been occupied by the interests of urbanites who cannot get off the Shoals of Growth.

The urbanites are permanently immobile, captured by brain-lock, metallic rock band entertainment and all.

On the other hand, all around the Shoals of Growth are the Digital Floating Islands, which though limited to their given size, can readily help those stranded on sand bars. The art of getting off a shoal is to untie one’s mind from the knot of "growth" and tie it to a "tree" on one of the Digital Islands.

Indeed, the Digital Islands allow one to leave the urban scene and its permanent state of Turrets like turbulences and get to move one’s computer onto earthquake proof woodland. The compulsion that forced the conquistadores to destroy the Inca garden of gold can be controlled by letting the Earth go fallow and seeing it covered with “green gold” again.

The presumption of the Union Party (consisting mostly of Latvian Latvians) is that every Latvian naturally gets all tied up in knots and suffers of Turrets for the sake of always being and always remaining a good patriot. The Union Party’s particular knot is known as The West.

The Harmony Party, on the other hand, is knotted to The East, because it believes that the East’s Gaslands will solidify into pure gold if one but wishes this to happen strongly enough.

The Digital Islands can get Harmony Party off its shoal, too, by reminding it that the language of business is English and Gaslands spelled in Russian cannot blow a bubble around the Earth as English can.

So, this is where the Latvian Latvians and Russian Latvians get to fulfill their need for “growth”. Like in the days of the Hansa League, Riga (within certain limits) gets to become like the Wild West which the medieval knights sought in the East. One way to “grow” Riga (now shrinking down to 600,000 inhabitants) is to rent it out to the highest bidder, say, Beijing, and repeat the experience of Hongkong on the Baltic.

Out of a union of Union and Harmony parties—which union has potential, because both are agreed to rent themselves out to the highest bidder—a new post-Latvian Latvian society, one that is truly Latvian, is born. Surprisingly, this society may move to live in the Latvian woodlands.

Sounds like a joke?  Go to the next blog to find out.

Part 2 follows.


The leaning barn and what used to be a roof.


[20] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (8)

Part 2.

A Latvian politologue’s opinion (transl. from Latvian) on what makes him a political observer: “The author of these lines in not an economist. The window sill of geopolitics is also too high for him…. Therefore...." The above is followed by a defense and praise of a politically unstable blob known as the European Union or EU.

The presumption of our “civilized” world is that all geopolitically significant human movement is for ever toward urban centers. What used to be cities, entities owned by oligarchs trading with other oligarchs in ‘their’ cities (they did not trade with the countryside), have been erased and become said "unstable blobs" .

Whether the blob is the EU, a mega city, or a "grausts"  in Riga (a city which the tourist industry touts as a tourist’s must) in Riga, Riga gets to go where it is going as a result of its supporters.

The supporters of Riga may be loyalists, but more likely they are "blobbies". One can begin with the unstable blobby that is the President of Latvia and work down to the countryside poor full of envy of the blobbies in the city who seem to have it all.

Of course, cities like London, cause the Thames River, which has to pass through it, to emerge into the English Channel looking like green piss that turns the North Sea a pale green. Riga has only the Bay of Riga to pollute. For all that, the blobbies try to present the blobs as shimmrering stars.

Who is to blame? Why is such uni-polar view ruling over Latvia?

Before one despairs of such uni-polarity, it may be actually be good for Latvia, at least now that it has happened. Bank driven “fools gold”, imprinted as a permanent advertisement on the brain of all “good Latvian people” who have bought into it, is driving the wild boars from forests to dig my garden. As I do not shoot wild boars, I would make them my soldiers—if I could but outlaw boar hunting.

If it was forbidden to shoot the wild boars, humankind would have its forests back in shape soon. Driven from their forests by the magic of the chainsaw, the wild boars cannot help but come and dig up my garden. If the law forbade boar hunting, and if the “farmer” was to return the boar-dug land to forest and retreat to another field, lost forests and forest landscape would come back in a hundred to two hundred years.

Part 3 follows.

The other end of the leaning barn.

[20] Harmony Centre & Its Geopolitical Uses (8)

Part 3.

Latvians, who create and live in the geopolitical environment of post-Riga Latvia, ought to adjust the arrow on the face their compass from “deforest Earth” to “accommodate the boar”. A practical way of doing this is to dedicate Latvia to the service industries of emerging tomorrow rather than a declining yesteryear.

I see boars as front line warriors against urban dwelling farmers for who the earth is but to exploit and “growth” their pockets.  

The farmer as homesteader is long gone or has become an exception. It is not difficult to persuade the farm worker who needs a job that exploitation of planet Earth is needed if he is to eat. One almost never hears that letting land go fallow and re-grow into a forest brings income sufficient unto the day.

Some such (as described above) must be the future of our planet if humankind is to survive. In other words, growth in the future can only happen through “de-growth”.

While Riga rented, say, to Berlin (Latvians have a historic relationship with the German people) brings enough “growth” to keep happy those born to city life, Latvians can establish headquarters for their own “Green tree” Party in Jelgava, by which process Jelgava becomes the capital city of Latvia.

There are people who are anxious that renting Riga means to prostitute Latvian ideals (whatever these as yet seldom discussed ideals may be). I am happy to say that I am not suggesting anyone prostitute themselves, but diminish their prejudices.

Clearly, it is in the interest of the Earth and all its nations to belong to an Earth-protecting union. The present unstable blobs, which we find dot the map, are not sustainable.

By nature human beings are creatures that are cautious in the extreme, and will keep making unstable blobs their living spaces—if this has become a seemingly sustainable event—until they are struck by an irreversible catastrophe.

Traditionally, in many pre-modern societies a “reminder” of the reality that lay at as foundation of society was human sacrifice. Society sensed that this was a reality that cannot be fudged. While exemplified by likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus, or St. John, reality became ever more unreal after the cities led humankind into a warp of virtual reality. We are still caught up in this warp and do not seem to be able to get out of.

For this reason, I would like to suggest that it is time for the Latvian public (such as remains) to come out from behind the trees and suggest that by virtue of the computer city folk can also live in the countryside that is let to become forest again.

How are we going to do that? What are you going to live on? Will there be butter on our bread?

The answer is as simple as it is complicated. The ways of a Latvia fully dedicated to a post-growth de-growth economy are many. But here is one: Latvians declare all of Latvia a biosphere for trees.

No one can enter and live in the Latvian forest without express permission of the Jelgava government [let us remember that Riga has been rented to Austria (?)]. Because Latvians keep their own numbers low, which by the way they can do, because their population is presently said to be in a death spiral, the transition ought not to be all that difficult.

When the Latvians (Latvian Latvians, Latvian Russians, Latvian Germans, Latvian Swedes, etc.) will have rented Riga and re-founded their capital in Jelgava, then Latvia will no longer be an unknown country. The whole world will have been watching and taking example.