Guest post – Breast is best

Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, September 9th, 2018 - 26 comments
Categories: climate change, Environment, global warming, jobs, science, Unions, wages, workers' rights - Tags:

Any caring, loving, and protective mother wants best for her child and nurtures them in the best way she knows and can. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, this means to feed the baby breastmilk.

However, there comes a time when the child needs to be weaned off the breastmilk and change to solids for optimal growth & development. This is an important transition in any child’s life and one of the most transformative ones too.

The whole breastfeeding issue and time of weaning can be fertile ground for all sorts of debate, fear-mongering, bullying, and moral crusading by semi-militant and arrogant think-they-know-it-all’s.

Nevertheless, babies fed on formula can thrive and grow up to be fairly normal people and no human can survive on their mother’s breastmilk alone; they would be underdeveloped and die, I reckon.

Now, before you get stuck into me about the above, it is all kinda metaphorically speaking.

For example, the ‘mother’ is the Oil & Gas Industry; the ‘breastmilk’ is the extracted fossil products; the ‘baby’ can be many things, e.g. the regional (e.g. Taranaki) economy, the national economy and GDP, the consumers of all products derived from petroleum products or my preferred one: mankind.

For its survival and growth & development (i.e. to reach its potential), mankind needs to be weaned off fossil fuels. That much is obvious.

This is where the ‘know-it-all’s’ come in. They scream child-murder; they claim the mother will die too; and the worst part, they say, perhaps surprisingly, is the spilling of the liquid gold down the drain.

As usual, they over-egg things to a beat-up frenzy of froth and hot air; it ain’t pretty and is not intended for human consumption as such.

But mankind needs to change its ways of burning fossil fuels, wasteful consumption of energy resources, raping & pillaging of the environment to feed its insatiable lust for consumption of mostly non-vital stuff, and the whole profit-driven economy. All these are human constructs and choices, not inevitable natural events or unavoidable Natural Laws. They interact in a self-reinforcing feedback loop of stunted growth & development (the chronic illness of modern man) that ultimately leads to self-destruction and a painful torturous death. Who would want to wish that upon one’s offspring? Nobody sane, yet this is what is what’s happening; this is what we do …

Transition won’t be easy, painful even, but it is absolutely unavoidable and necessary for transformative growth & development. Nobody wants to stay small forever (with the exception of Oskar Matzerath). So, we have a choice.

Mothers know best. This is where the metaphor stops being useful 😉

Incognito

26 comments on “Guest post – Breast is best ”

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  1. Bill 1
    9 September 2018 at 10:21 am

    Mothers know best. This is where the metaphor stops being useful.

    Couldn’t resist.

    ….there’s always mum
    So hold me mum, in your long arms.
    In your automatic arms.
    Your electronic arms.
    In your arms.
    So hold me mum.
    In your long arms
    Your petrochemical arms.
    Your military arms.
    In your arms.

    Yes. We need to grow the fuck up.

  2. joe90 2
    9 September 2018 at 10:32 am

    If we’re doing verse.

    This Be The Verse

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
    They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

    But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,
    Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

    Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
    Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.

    – Philip Larkin

    • RedLogix 2.1
      9 September 2018 at 11:15 am

      The idea that the world is a battle between good people and bad people is a terrible one; naturally we all like to imagine we’re the ‘good’ people, and everything that’s unfair or wrong in the world must be the fault of those other ‘bad’ people.

      And Larkin’s words cast a dark light on the dead-end nihilism of that philosophy.

    • Tomorrow&Tomorrow 2.2
      9 September 2018 at 11:58 am

      Oh, Joe, you can never resist a Larkin!

  3. millsy 3
    9 September 2018 at 11:28 am

    The whaling industry employed thousands, and sustained whole communities and industries. Whale by products were used in just about everything people took for granted pre-plastic, even as fuel for lamps. Then, it was banned (apart from small communities for specific purposes). While the transition was painful, civilisation didn’t collapse. Now we wouldn’t dream of hunting whales. Even the old time whalers agree that the ban was needed.

    • SHG 3.1
      9 September 2018 at 3:39 pm

      What saved the whales was the fact that hunting them and killing them and processing their bodies to produce whale oil was too time-consuming, dangerous, and expensive. Technological advances meant that night-time lighting sources such as camphene, coal oil, and the newfangled petroleum-based kerosene were far cheaper than whale oil.

      If you were in the night-time lighting business and you wanted to stay in business, you stopped hunting whales.

    • Gosman 3.2
      10 September 2018 at 7:52 am

      The transition wasn’t painful. It was easy and it also wasn’t mandated by thr State in most places.

      • McFlock 3.2.1
        10 September 2018 at 10:54 am

        IWC. Look it up.

        • Gosman 3.2.1.1
          10 September 2018 at 1:13 pm

          The IWC did not manage the transition away from using Whale products. For a start it was set up in 1946 at which stage the World had well and truly moved to Hydrocarbon based products. Secondly it was originally set up to encourage whaling not to stop it.

          • McFlock 3.2.1.1.1
            10 September 2018 at 1:22 pm

            The whaling industry produced record amounts of products in the 1960s. Different products for different uses, but they sold what they caught. And the industry was still largely shut down by state mandates. The states that didn’t do that still have whaling industries.

  4. AsleepWhileWalking 4
    9 September 2018 at 11:33 am

    Markets work. The cure for high prices IS high prices.

    I’m making a prediction that out of necessity by early 2019 there will be a noticeable shift towards working from home.

    All this money spent in transport is mostly wasted because transport itself is unsustainable. That includes the overseas holidays, the idea of a traditional office in a city center, and anything that requires more than 20 mins in a vehicle.

    • greywarshark 4.1
      9 September 2018 at 12:40 pm

      I predict that by year 2039 we will be living in little groups in caves and grinding any grains we can find for flour.

    • Draco T Bastard 4.2
      9 September 2018 at 2:42 pm

      Markets work if everyone has perfect information. This is supposed to be how pricing works. It supposedly allows everyone to have perfect information without having any information at all.

      Then there’s externalities which are price increases that are left out of the sales price.

      Result: The ‘price’ is wrong and thus the market fails.

  5. Sacha 5
    9 September 2018 at 12:28 pm

    You have it backwards.

    The oil industry is formula.
    Breastmilk was there all along.

    • Incognito 5.1
      9 September 2018 at 10:54 pm

      I’ll stick with my take on it; using fossil fuels and all its derived products, not just to give you “the undending orgasm”, come as the most natural thing to us. Nuclear power, for example, never had that kind of ‘public approval rating’ and most certainly not here in Aotearoa.

      Many generations have been grown up when fossil fuels were totally normal & acceptable and it’s now so engrained in our culture & language we can’t seem to imagine or simply don’t want to contemplate the necessary transformation. Babies grow up, they change their diet, they stop shitting their nappies and become potty-trained, etc. It’s time that we stop shitting our own nest, except we don’t have our ‘parents’ helping us, do we?

      These days, life is extremely confusing; political leaders and MSM cannot be trusted and (postmodern) science is rapidly losing its authority too. So, what to do, whom to trust & listen too? Oh well, tomorrow is another work day – do I need to fill up the car on the way to work?

    • left_forward 5.2
      10 September 2018 at 8:14 am

      I agree Sacha, the metaphor is back to front.
      How is cow’s milk better for the child and environment, than mother’s milk is?

  6. R.P Mcmurphy 6
    9 September 2018 at 2:07 pm

    hey the thing is I jump in my car and press the accelerator and instantly I believe I am in control of the undending orgasm!

  7. Graeme 7
    9 September 2018 at 9:35 pm

    ” The Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will come to an end not because we have a lack of oil.” Sheikh Yamani, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister from 1962 to 1986 in an interview in 2000.

    It’s probably not fuel cells now but batteries and inductive technologies, and maybe something that we haven’t seen yet, but the transition will be as swift, of swifter than when our for-fathers abandoned the horse for the Model T

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1344832/Sheikh-Yamani-predicts-price-crash-as-age-of-oil-ends.html

    Also Saudi Arabia has abandoned plans to float Aramco. No one want it.

    https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/comment/article-6088369/ALEX-BRUMMER-desert-dream-vanishes-Aramco-scraps-London-flotation.html

  8. Gosman 8
    10 September 2018 at 7:55 am

    The World does not lack energy sources. It lacks energy sources that can be easily convertible and can be stored/transported efficiently. That is a technology problem.

    • Incognito 8.1
      10 September 2018 at 3:03 pm

      The World does not lack energy sources.

      Nobody here argued that!? In fact, the problem is the opposite. [Hint: the image in the OP].

      The point of this post is that it is not a “technology problem” but a behavioural one, first and foremost, for want of a better word. And even if it were a “technology problem” we would be wise to take adaptive/evasive action in the absence of a technology ‘solution’.

  9. corodale 9
    10 September 2018 at 9:07 am

    Yes, well ecological wisdom n all. The homebased working works, n ebikes, ha! Technologies will come but so slowly with the patents tied up in big energy companies, playing BAU

    Moving quickly on this one if the Persian gulf is closed for shipping, that would halve our NZ oil flow. The Qatar/Turkish link is a stability, but the 9 subs are tied to steal industry.

    Retirement funds might linger on a biotech ethanol from algae, for AKL fuel, to keep the combustion engine engineers employed> So long as agriculture is protected from plant based ethanol competition. That will make the way for organic too. There are whole districts of India going that low cost organic way.

    Our calves drink from mothercow for a good 5 days minimum colostrum. Calves on udder 7-8weeks, but thats a bit wobbly. Then yogurt in bucket til end first 3 months, n grass, hay,..

  10. SaveNZ 10
    10 September 2018 at 10:31 am

    Sooner we stop oil exploration and go down the renewables energy for most things the better.

    • Mack 10.1
      10 September 2018 at 10:10 pm

      “sooner we stop oil exploration….”
      The govt. has already stopped oil exploration….what are you grizzling about?