WHY CASA GOOFY INTERNATIONAL
(and why it matters)
The MISSION of Casa Goofy is:
Crossing borders to build the real community.
Why? To see the world whole so we can see ourselves whole within it.
What Borders? Between countries, between art and life, youth and age, downtown, uptown, all around town, out of town, out of luck, in luck, mine and yours, right and wrong, good and evil, third world, fourth world, fifth world, outer space, inner space, the knowns and the unknowns, the Smiths and the Joneses, the fleshes and the boneses, life and death, the human and the natural community….
Because? It’s the vision thing, it’s the little thing, it’s the big thing (it’s all of these of which I sing). It’s a human thing.
Because it’s the only way to fight global warming. If it’s a losing battle it’s the only way
I know to have fun trying to win, because?
Partial vision screws it up
Every time.
(LET ME EXPLAIN:)
Very few scientists have come to terms with the destructive potential of global warming. Every year mainstream science issues estimates for isolated global warming factors such as ice melt, ocean temperatures, greenhouse gas volume, species extinction etc. which turn out to be underestimates by over 100%. Why? Because the factors are isolated. Because that’s the easiest way to study them, in bits and pieces. Because? We’ve always done it this way. And then the bits and pieces of data are dumped into the all wise all knowing computer which is instructed to add them with grade school math while in the real world, in process, they are accelerating and multiplying each other by exponents and unknown factors. Could scientists make such a basic, simple error? And on such a crucial subject? Of course not! (It’s never happened before.)
So let’s just
IGNORE
The fact that:
scientific estimates of global warming factors always turn out to underestimates by over 100%
that all of Washington’s proposed conservation measures are only decreases in an increase. (which might be a good political ploy, except nature doesn't make deals.)
that even if we got back to pre industrial levels of greenhouse gasses the feedback loops would still be aggressively multiplying each other’s combined synergistic effects.
AND LET’S
just concentrate on the MONEY, just keep on looking at your environment as a business model and you’ll be fine.
BUT (OOPS!) LOOK:
Violent weather costs money,
Wars over depleted natural resources cost money.
Failed crops cost money. Droughts and famines cause wars over territory which exponentially increase environmental damage.
Disease outbreaks cost money.
Social damage increases the damage left by weather related disasters.
If insurance companies are starting to recognize these facts how does that affect your business model perception of your environment, and finally your bottom line?
LOOK:
At the earth from outer space. Do you see any borders? Stay up late at night with me on security patrol watching for sudden explosions of beauty which is somehow inseparable from tragedy….and as the dawn comes up you’ll see there are also no lines between night and day, just like there are no more safe places because there is no place called AWAY.
And you’ll see something else. That what has been our strength through the ages is not our lone wolf survival skills, but our ability to form communities, to care about each other and the natural world around us.
So on a good day, I believe in community. On a bad day when the communities I interact with are being just unbearably stupid, I’m with Gandhi, I think it would be a good idea.
SO?
Every anti global warming measure has to combat the global warming feedback loops by doing more than one thing or you can’t combat the negative synergy. Even if we got back to 356 PPM, the pre industrial level of C02, what about the other gasses, and the feedback loops (by that time) in FULL acceleration? HOW could we ever refreeze the ice and snow pack, the tundra and permafrost, or reverse one, much less thousands of feedback loops? We could start NOW by shading the polar ice with thin film photovoltaics stretched between dirigibles to prevent the loss of reflectance and use the sun’s radiant heat to produce electricity which would otherwise be produced by burning fossil fuels. Or in a desert climate, shade gardens by the same method and produce electricity.
For another instance: smokestack algae biodiesel (google it) & straight vegetable oil, NO WATER WASTE, NO ARABLE LAND REQUIRED, the algae sucks up CO2 from the smokestack & turns it into carbon neutral fuel. NO WAR REQUIRED which eliminates an all too human global warming feedback loop that each year multiplies its waste of fuel and production of gigatons of greenhouse gasses.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
Because, in the process of conquering and insulating ourselves from nature, we’ve lost our connection to nature.
Art can help us get back to nature, but we’ve lost our connection to art.
Kids can help us get back to art but (in losing our connection to nature) we’ve lost our connection to our kids.
Los Amigos Childcare can help with that, assuming we haven’t lost our connection to our basic humanity.
Casa Goofy International can help us make ourselves whole again by seeing the world whole, by teaching us to look across and beyond all kinds of borders. But first we need to be able to make enough money to survive in the artificial form of sustainability that we call the economy.
Artfare has helped with that by accepting Casa Goofy International and Los Amigos Childcare as programs under their 501c3 non profit, and by forming modes of self employment that artists can afford to use. And in return, Casa Goofy and Los Amigos can help Arftfare with the artist employment problem with opportunities in education and maintenance.
But how do we get our lost connections back?
What is happening at OCCUPY WALL ST. is a case in point. The central command structure is broken. The President’s chair is empty. We don’t have an environmental crisis, we have a communication crisis, humans to nature, nature to humans, humans to humans. As Coolhand Luke said,
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
There is a form of governance working very well within the OCCUPY movement which is classic (not Faux News’ hysterical definition of) Anarchism. If you watch the process of the General Assemblies you will see actual democracy working, building consensus, leaving very few people out, depriving no one of their right to privacy & reasonable ownership. It resembles the way primitive societies, flocks of birds, herds of animals, groups of fish etc. move in unison, generally promoting survival.
An article in the AZ Daily Star, 6/1/10 by Tom Beal echoes: “UA Biologist: Cues from nature useful in keeping humans safe”. Herds of animals, insect colonies and microscopic life, and primitive human societies that operate independently of central command, do so very successfully and efficiently. Natural systems, including the human immune system, operating independently of the cerebral cortex keep creatures (like us) safe. Activist political movement cells without central headquarters are less vulnerable to infiltration by agents provocateurs, legal and militaristic challenge. Artist housing that is decentralized, away from the gentrification, boom and bust cycle of the inner city is more sustainable. Recent studies of insect colonies confirm this. Neurological studies now suggest that we as individuals move this way: the impulse to move a limb occurs before the thought goes through the cortex. You get the car back on the road (or don’t) and then figure out how you did (or didn’t do) it.
Correct me if I’m wrong and I’m sure you will, I think our survival depends on giving individuals choices that allow them to vote with their money, and live outside the box. You have to think and act really small to get past the big shots in the international cartels. You have to give the little guy more choices. Every intensive garden, waste water and rain water harvesting project, WVO/biodiesel plant, food co-op is a step toward a natural and sustainable, rather than an abstract, economy, AND a community based art that is so present to the world it doesn’t have to sell for millions to make it.
An artist’s best weapon is single celled images that speak directly to this primitive command system in the individual’s brain. Once the back brain, the lizard brain, the inner baby Tyranosaurus Rex gets it, the argument is over. But you can’t organize artists anymore than you can herd cats. And doesn’t art die when asked to be programmatic, propagandistic, formulaic? Sure, but what else is there in the roots of our being where nothing (like energy) can be destroyed or created, except nature? And where do you think art comes from anyway, Safeway, Walmart, Wall Street, Sotheby’s, Art In America? Or didn’t you notice those guys are mostly into marketing?
In my darkest hour, hope sprang infernal. I found an onion I’d stuffed in a drawer to mix with vinegar to restore my weather damaged skin. It had sprouted long, thick, green leaves. If nature can do this with nothing, in the dark, without soil, in the world as it is given us by a system of abstract greed, there can still be little islands where…but if onions and positive scenarios just make you cry, anymore, try doing it with a potato (many eyes to see you). Because it’s a potato sack race and you do it for the laughs, because you gotta. You gotta laugh, you gotta cry, cause you never know what you’re doing, that’s why we have this thing called art, so we can not know what we’re doing accidentally on purpose.
So in such a dying world as you think I only imagine, how could I propose art-in-nature projects as leisure time activities? Because back to nature is back to our nature, and has the potential to put it all back together. Because, as Wordsworth said, there is a primal sympathy that runs through all things.
So here’s my vision: kids from Los Amigos visiting the greenhouses, ponds, aquaculture and intensive gardening and art projects at Casa Goofy, the roof of Artfare’s Arizona Hotel and gallery with decks and roof gardens strategically shaded by photo voltaic panels, exchange artists from other countries doing projects at all the facilities, and the kids see and learn, as these modules spread across the roofs of Tucson, and from there, the world.
It’s too much to ask, right? OK, so maybe it’s the people we meet, the community we form and what they made of the project as it progressed, the process and not the product, the journey, not the destination? So maybe we can accomplish parts of it, little by little, in bits and pieces, the way we screwed things up in the first place. Or maybe, just maybe, we should do it just to be as absurd as we possibly can, right back at Stupid.
