The Paradox of buying organic

L'accueil de l'inspiration Bestof Sept/Oct 2019

par la sensibilité

What to do in London :
The Culture Column
November 2019

Life on Easy Mode 

Misconceptions about
the Earth Dying
 The Dolphin Thames n°10 Edition

contents
1 The Editorial by Lou Gilbert
2 The Paradox Of Buying Organic by Delphine Regnault
3 Life On Easy Mode by Diego Libreros
4 L'Accueil De L'Inspiration Par La Sensibilité by Martin Vaquié
5 What To Do In London by Sofia Him
6 The Culture Column by Chloé Molina and Martin Vaquié
7 Best of Photos CAM
Misconceptions about the Earth dying
Or How the human race is committing mass suicide
The Earth isn’t dying - the world we have built upon it is.
The planet has become ours. Everything we see, smell and
touch, has been subjected to Man’s influence. The current
climate change that the planet is going through is but the
mere effect of human ambition. In our quest for more, we
have rendered ourselves into not having anything left. Our
resource well has dried up, and so have our spirits.
Contemporary western society is built on the very need for
one to succeed. People are so focused on their end
destination of where they want to be that they forget to
look out the window on the way there. We have become
so full of ourselves that we have decided to turn a blind
eye to the impact we are having on our world. It seems
therefore as though the planet – or at least what we know
of it – is bound to crumble, is it not?
I would argue differently. The planet will be fine. The
planet is undergoing changes like it always has, and this
process, of what we might think is destruction, is just
going to lead to a new fresh era where we will no longer
belong. I would be tempted to somewhat shamelessly
quote Elizabeth Gilbert “Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to
transformation”.
There is no such thing as death in terms of an ending point.
Death is a fully man-made concept which derived from our
incapacity to fully grasp the infinite futility of our lives at
the scale of the universe. To define it as the end of life, is
completely misinterpreting the meaning of life itself. In
exploring our consciousness, we have bypassed our
existence in terms of matter to focus rather on how we
exist through our psyche. Therefore, the definition we
have attributed to life, and the existence of such a notion
as death, is, to an extent, irrelevant.
Scientifically, things don’t die, they regenerate and turn
into something else. When a plant, a dog, a sea urchin or a
fly dies, they just give way to more life. The true meaning
of death could actually be interpreted as rebirth, fueling
life rather than ceasing it. Just as endings imply
beginnings, death is synonymous with life.
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The world can save itself. It can and it will.
But it sure won’t save us.
We are pieces of the Earth itself. We are only a hint of a
passage of its history; in another million years, no one
could ever suspect of our presence having graced the
surface of the planet. The planet is not dying – if anything,
the current climate change is only its way of getting rid of
the human virus, as if it were having a fever to cure a cold.
We are a part of the Earth’s evolution, similarly to the
dinosaurs before us; and alike them, we will disappear
eventually. The only thing we can do about this is decide
to take the matter into our own hands and realize that the
only thing that is bound to disappear is the human race.
We are in the process of committing mass suicide. In truth,
Man cannot project himself realistically, it is beyond his
comprehension and rationality. We know only of the past
and the present, and the only future we are able to talk
about could even be considered as the present because on
the scale of the Earth’s life, 100 years – which is about
how far most predictions go as to the « future of the
Earth » – is infinitely neglectable. We need to shift the
focus from the Earth to ourselves. We need to stop
distancing ourselves from the problem itself. We are
entirely responsible for both our termination and our
survival. We are the problem, we are the virus, and we are
the cure.
Following Yves Coppens’ fascination and hope for human
evolution, we have never been at a higher state of
development than right now. We have all the tools in hand
to make the changes necessary for us to continue being a
part of the Earth. Let us step away from the fear of having
children because of not wanting to bring them into a
tarnished, melting world. Let us regain trust in ourselves,
in our world, in our values. As what one of the great
leaders of our times would say, Let Humanity be Great
Again.
By Lou Gilbert
 The paradox of buying organic
The French are increasingly seduced by the organic
market. As a result, 9 out of 10 French citizens consume
organic produce regularly. Local farms are no longer
enough to meet this increasing demand which explains
how the agri-food industry has rushed to enter this
market. The question now raised is whether we can
produce good qualitative and quantitative organic food at
a large scale?
Consumers are unfortunately victims of disinformation;
the agri-food industry has become the symbol of a
paradoxical model torn between the desire to meet
demand and the desire to produce more qualitative,
environmentally-friendly products. When digging into
the abyss of this industry, one may discover some
practices as astonishingly shocking. For example,
organic input on crops such as chicken faeces are not
necessarily from organic breeding; even worse, it often
comes from GMO breeding which is highly prohibited in
France. The circuit is therefore irrelevant to the objective
of respectful agriculture. This is precisely where the
contradiction and the absurdity of the organic label lie.
The European organic label has strict specifications
when it comes to production with essential requirements
such as not using pesticides, GMOs and cultivating in the
soil. However, in some areas of Europe, these
requirements are only an illusion to pretend that they are
producing good quality vegetables. For example, in
Almería, Spain – which is considered as Europe’s garden
– tomatoes are cultivated during the whole year. This
implies that greenhouses need to be heated, consuming
drastic amounts of energy.
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Photos taken by Delphine Regnault at family business property
In addition to this, most of those tomatoes are exported
all year around which leads to massive energy waste in
transportation. It goes against the actual objectives of
sustainability that the organic industry seeks to attain.
Consumers are sometimes ready to pay twice the price
for an organic product, yet its label is fundamentally a
sham. According to the European label, it is the
consumer’s duty to take responsibility when buying
products, and from their point of view, distribution and
energy consumption is not included in their skill set.
Besides, buying a product from sustainable agriculture
that is not necessarily certified organic does not mean
that it is bad quality product. The organic label hides
many uncoherent practices and lies to its consumers.
Rather than obstinately buying organic, today’s
consumer should favour local distribution and directly
buying from producers. In the end, certain non-organic
products are more organic than actual organic products!
In this current situation, consumers must be able to exert
their own critical thinking even when doing their
groceries. This speaks volumes about how we are being
manipulated by the very industries we can come to
support. Don’t buy into fancy labels and make sure to
always educate yourself further than what
advertisements easily portray.
By Delphine Regnault

An essay on how nuclear
war will save Humanity
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of
worlds.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer, Trinity
nuclear test, July 16th, 1945.
At the end of the Second World War,
a panel of experts created the Doomsday Clock,
a thought experiment which aims to indicate
how close Humanity is to destroying itself.
Today, it sits comfortably at two minutes till
midnight, the closest to Judgement Day it has
ever been. Many believe that it is unlikely that
we do not nuke ourselves to oblivion by the end
of the 22nd century. The possibility of nuclear
war is a fascinating subject, which, on top of
providing a solution to the Fermi Paradox,
helps us to solve many philosophical questions
on the meaning of our existence.
It is difficult to grasp how far we have
come as a specie. The first humans were
nothing more than snacks for prehistoric beasts.
Today, Homo Deus rules the planet. If Life has
existed for 24 hours, then humans have only
been around for the last 5 seconds. Even on our
own scale, we only became masters of the
house about 600 years ago. Back then, life was
harsh.
Today, we are gods. We killed the old
ones and took their place back in the
Renaissance. We started to see Nature as a
conglomerate of exploitable resources. Nature
has some gnarly monsters and other scary
things on its resume, but even six-hundred
years ago, that was no match for humans. The
gods, demons, tree spirits and monsters, which
had ruled over the Earth since the dawn of time,
were now getting thrown to the trashcan of
history by some venture capitalists.
We came up with various systems to
best exploit Nature for our own good. These
systems were known as “societies”. Many have
risen, and many more have fallen. However, to
this day, one stands out: The Western capitalist
democracy. Whether you like it or not, this is
the best form of society to ever exist. It brought
billions out of poverty, all while optimising
freedom and security. But, as we all know, this
system isn’t perfect. If our magnum opus is
flawed, then maybe we missed something along
the way. It’s not just the West, humanity as a
whole is running straight into the wall of
obsolescence, for three reasons.
1) Humans destroy the planet
Unlike what a certain entitled child
would have you believe, climate change is not
bad news for the planet. Past climate has altered
between hot tropical periods and ice ages,
without tremendous consequences. Rather,
humans are destroying the very thing they need
to live through excessive pollution. I’m not
suggesting that Nature is necessarily good, and
humans necessarily evil. Nature should give
humans a chance, as we are relatively new to
the scene. Humans, on the other hand, should
try to compromise. However, looking back at
our history, I doubt that we are capable of doing
so. To put it in the words of Hayao Miyazaki:
“Humans cannot be forgiven for their sins, for
there are too many, too great, in too little time”.
Some playboy billionaires, notably
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, think our salvation
is in outer space. This is too optimistic. Firstly,
the technology required to conquer other stellar
systems is too far away. Reaching just 0.06
PPY (Parsec Per Year) is impossible with our
current thrusters. The journey to the closest
habitable world would take centuries. Without
artificial gravity, hyper sleep and a decent
protection against space radiation, we will
never make it alive. Secondly, it is very
probable that the promised land turns out to be
hell rather than paradise. Not only do we not
have the technological means to terraform a
non-habitable planet like Mars, but it is almost
impossible that Earth 2.0 is suitable for humans
from a gravity perspective. We can’t live on
planets which are too big, or too small. Earth
2.0 needs to be just the right size, and, as of
2019, we haven’t found a suitable candidate.
The apocalypse is
inevitable, but I choose
to see it as a good thing.
2) War is profitable
The Western Capitalist Democracy
was made possible by the emergence of one
great idea: mass production. This enabled us to
provide goods in abundance, therefore reducing
prices. But, as with all great concepts, this idea
is a double-edged sword, and the flip side to
abundance and comfort was the emergence of
the military industrial complex.
The 20th century is often regarded as
the worst and the best in the history of mankind.
There were two world wars, and threats of total
annihilation. Communism and Nazism rose and
fell, each causing millions of deaths. But, at the
same time, we went from coal to nuclear fusion
in less than 100 years, from slow boats to
supersonic jets. The flip side was war. You
cannot kill millions of people if you don’t have
the means to do so. You cannot destroy
countries without factories to make weapons.
3) We have lost our purpose
Our lives in the West are relatively
easy, which counter-intuitively is the root of
most of our problems. People in Western
Europe, Japan and, to a certain extent, the
United States, are experiencing an existential
crisis. Suicide and depression levels have never
been so high. As a matter of fact, there seems to
be a correlation between how close a country is
to maxing out its economy and its suicide
statistics. Japan’s economy plateaued 20 years
ago. As a consequence, the nation has the
highest suicide rate of any developed country.
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Europe is somewhere in the middle, with
Americans still lagging behind. In the US,
degeneracy has become the norm: fat is healthy,
paedophilia is a sexual orientation, and
communism is cool. If you dare oppose Islam
or third wave feminism, you will instantly
become public enemy n°1. What could be the
cause of this mess? After several weeks of
reflection, I have come up with a plausible
explanation. The fact that our lives are easy is
destroying our mental health. Humans are
designed to fight monsters and live in the
forests. Everything in our genetic arsenal
confirms this: our unbeatable endurance, our
ability to craft tools and our complex language.
We are survival machines, we’re not money
machines. If you protect us, we start breaking
down.
What is the consequence of life on
easy mode? Well, we never grow up. Today,
people have bland, entitled, uninteresting
personalities. Our lives are boring. This is why
we spend our evenings drunk in shady
basements dancing to loud music. This is why
we feel the need to “go out” with “friends”,
whom we probably don’t even like. This is why
we crave for “likes” on social media. This is
why we play video games and watch movies
and read books: to escape the boring reality we
have chained ourselves to. We cannot even be
bothered to rule the universe, so we create new,
digital gods to take care of this boring task. We
have traded our life purpose for comfort. We
force ourselves to think we are better off
working fifty hours a week in an office, rather
than fighting monsters.
At this point the situation looks pretty
hopeless. Enter nuclear weapons: the wild card.
The modern weapons make the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombings look like lame firecrackers.
In the event of a nuclear war, most humans will
perish, but a couple million will survive. Even
cockroaches can’t compete with our
adaptability. The apocalypse is inevitable, but I
choose to see it as a good thing. There are too
many humans on this Earth. They cannot be
forgiven. Extinction events are good for life,
and Judgement Day will be no different.
There is an even chance of an all-out
war between miserable India and its sinister
neighbour Pakistan. All Western systems are
automated for mutually assured destruction.
When the clowns in South-West Asia start
hitting each other on the head, everything is
going to turn to absolute chaos in a matter of
minutes. In such event, it’s estimated that 3
billion humans will die in the first weeks, and
another 4 billion in the following months, from
radiation poisoning and starvation. The
survivors will be playing Life on hard mode.
There will be monsters that will eat them,
diseases that will kill them, and some guy on
the side of the road will cut their throat. The
game will be worth playing again. Nuclear war
will save humanity, or at least it will give us the
second chance we desperately need.
By Diego Libreros
L’accueil de l’Inspiration par la Sensibilité

« La sensibilité de chacun, c’est son génie. », tel définissait Baudelaire, à son

apogée créative, ce qui pour lui représentait la clé de toute œuvre littéraire et, plus
généralement, artistique. Il pensait que mépriser la sensibilité et la rabaisser comme
elle le fut longtemps aux bassesses de l’esprit, empêchant la réflexion rationnelle et
constructive, ne constituait pas moins qu’un crime contre l’humanité portée en
chacun.
Cette sensibilité se doit d’être, dans tout processus d’écriture créative, l’origine
d’une inspiration puisée du mélange interactif des éléments extérieurs qui forment
le contexte d’écriture et des éléments intérieurs qui apportent la force émotionnelle
à l’ouvrage. Toute l’utilité de cette configuration d’esprit réside dans la quantité
d’informations et de ressentis qui pourront ainsi être collectés et permettront
d’enrichir davantage la production littéraire.
De ce décuplement des sens naît ce que nombreux tiennent à appeler l’inspiration.
Cette montée, graduelle ou brutale, se traduit par le besoin d’extérioriser par la
plume ce que la sensibilité aura encaissé. On ne peut la trouver volontairement,
d’où sa nature instable et complexe, mais sa présence ne fait aucun doute
lorsqu’elle est ressentie. Ainsi il faut construire et maintenir un terrain favorable à
son développement afin de rendre plus naturel et instinctif le fil d’écriture.
Alors il faut s’ouvrir au monde sans réserve, s’abandonner à ses sensations, se
laisser guider et emporter, lâcher prise et penser, non pas avec la raison, mais avec
le cœur.
Par Martin Vaquié

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 What To Do In London: November 2019

Halloween is now behind us which means it is finally the

time to get ready for the festive period!

This November, do not miss the Christmas lights switch-

on parties on Carnaby Street (Nov 7th), Regent Street
(Nov 14th) or in Covent Garden (Nov 12th).

From this month until January, you will also be able to go

ice skating on the iconic Ice Rink at the Natural History
Museum.

And of course, let’s not forget about the most magical © Photos taken by Marie Pham Van

and Christmassy destination that is Winter Wonderland

which will open this year on November 21st.

Christmas markets will also make a comeback this

November, some of the bests are the fantastic Leicester
Square Christmas Market and the Southbank Centre
Winter Market.

If you are not into the end of the year celebrations, do

not worry: they are still many things to do in London
during throughout the month!

Taste of London is coming back for another exquisite

weekend (Nov 21st - 24th) that will please more than
just one foodie.

For those who fancy an evening at the Royal Opera,

make sure you see Sleeping Beauty which will be played
between November 7th and January 16th (ticket price
starts at only £7!).

Moreover, London will host this month many exciting

concerts: from Christina Aguilera and Snoop Dog to
Chemical Brothers and Little Mix, you will be able to
sing, dance and repeat all month long!

Finally, take the chance this November to attend an

original Hit Musical such as Harry Potter and the Goblet
of Fire or even The Woman in Black.

The CAM Society hopes that you will have a great time in
London during the end of the year. If you wish to attend
some of the events with us, make sure to follow our
Facebook page.

By Sofia Him
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 THE CULTURE COLUMN
THE EVENT

The Store X the Vinyl Factory presents Other Spaces

with United Visual Artists. [Free]

Light, lasers and sound. That s what it takes to get

your senses lost and immerse yourself in an outer
world made of deep although somewhat kind
darkness, where eyes and ears become, more than
ever, perception keys. Three rooms, three
atmospheres and one unique sensation of a
reinvented notion of space using choreographed
movements to easily trick our curious minds. Be
sensitive, observe, feel, and let yourself get
destabilized and carried away from London s fast Photo taken by Jack Hems, found on event’s website
pace into a living dream-like atmosphere.
THE ARTIST

Baudelaire ‒ Poetry, France

He was a journalist, art and literary critic, but above

all, Baudelaire was a poet, one of the greatest and
most talented of his time.

Marginal, bohemian, he lived a life of debauchery

built around a characteristic spleen. His generalized
misery, his numerous libertine adventures and his
own romantic sensibility were the main sources of
inspiration which simultaneously weighed on him
heavily and enabled to give birth to works of
exceptional complexity and singularity, capturing the
era he lived in through varying filters.

Forerunner of literary modernity with his main work

Les Fleurs du Mal, he was accused of immorality,
considered scandalous, a corrupter of nature and a
THE WORK OF ART revolutionary, which gives an idea of the outstanding
Nighthawks, Edward Hopper impact he had on French poetry and literature.

Through Nighthawks, Edward Hopper signs one of

the greatest successes of his career and of the 20th
century s art.

A heavy and cold atmosphere emerges from this

depiction of the 1940s in America, emanating from
the dark and raw colours used by the artist. To these
sharp colours is added a play on shadow and light
particularly immersive as well as a limited
perspective. The latter prompts us to focus on the
main stage which, even if the few characters that
appear do not seem engaged in any action or express
any emotion, sends back a feeling of strong solemnity
associated with the weightiness of the painting.

The genius of Hopper lies in his ability to making us

By Chloé Molina and Martin Vaquié
wait, in front of this motionless picture, for a sequel
to the mystery established.

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BESTOF PHOTOS CAM OCT NOV 2019

Special thanks to Juliette Mouden

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The Thames Dolphin would like to thank all the people who
have contributed to this fall edition’s creation.

We hope you have liked reading us. Thank you.

Edited by Lou Gilbert and Emma Le Vourch

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