Image by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr
replaced video and link to the transcript, Jan. 10, 2017
leftymathprof on Jan 1, 2017
Ecosystem collapse would kill us all. To avert that requires measures that are blocked by plutocracy. Ending plutocracy requires ending property and hierarchy, replacing them with a culture of sharing, caring, and networking that we all learned in kindergarten. It can’t be imposed by force. The first step is to talk about it.
Transcript, with links to related materials, at https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/share-or-die/
More material about feedback and exponential growth at https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/runaway-warming/
from the archives:
Rapacious Consumerism is the Life-blood of Capitalism by Graham Peebles
We Live in a World of Environmental Inequality by Graham Peebles
Corporate Demons Possess Our Nation’s Soul
Resisting Operation Extract and Export
Michael Parenti: The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism
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The important thing to remember is that we are at a point when capitalist solutions to the global warming problem are within our grasp. It would just take a little rebalancing of incentives and shaping of popular will to tip the balance.
I think this video is a little pessimistic. As I said in my “Three Carbons” post, the only thing that could totally kill humanity is an ocean acidification event, and current research on carbon 13 cycling suggests that we just might avert that if we change course.
But even “regular” global warming without ocean acidification will be horrifying. I rate the destruction, displacement, and damage about the same as a mid-level US/Soviet nuclear exchange at peak late70’s early 80s nuclear strength.
Even Ronald Reagan could understand this. Reagan may have introduced the domestic policy horrors that define today’s politics, but he had a goofy sentimentality about global issues.
For those who want to read it, here is the “Three Carbons” essay.
https://thebigboardblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/nuclear-friday-the-three-carbons/
Thanks, Lefty. I meant to look it up, too and post it here. Appreciate you doing just that.
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A lot of ideas and aspirations here; I reckon things can change, simply because if they don’t, very soon…..there will be nothing left worth changing.
Joni Mitchell’s ‘tree museum’ has been a self-fulfilling prophecy. The tragedy of the ecocide that is engulfing us, that has been steadily proliferating exponentially, is so enormous there is simply nothing to compare it to.
There is no metaphor adequate to the task; we must call it exactly what it is. The gravity of this planetary crime is all encompassing.
Plutocracy knows no intelligent restraints, it will consume everything; humanity must rise up and declare with one voice ~ NO MORE! ~ what else can we do? Do we imagine Donald Trump will put on his red suit and play the benefactor, the benign bearer of wholesome gifts and salvation?
It is as though our paranoid schizoid world of commodified vulgarity is being set against itself, perverse misogynistic (bio)phobes contra the biophilic universe.
Maybe the malnourished and morally deficient will understand better, when their toxic supermarket shelves collapse under the fabricated weight of ersatz retail emptiness, and they have nothing more nutritious left to chew on but their spent, corporate credit rating.
And unfettered greed is killing all of us too.
Perhaps I didn’t make this point clear enough in my video: I’m convinced that having your property separate from my property makes us feel insecure, and I believe that is one of the chief causes of greed. Most people talk about greed as though it were a moral failing of individuals, independent of their material and cultural surroundings, but I believe greed is mostly a product of our sick culture. And we can change that culture. Whether we will or not, I don’t know. We’re like people stumbling around in the dark, and most of us don’t seem to realize there’s a light switch on the wall next to the door.
Thanks for the clarification Lefty…I reckon we should consider separation not in literal, physical terms so much, but as a psychological condition; we all recognize boundaries, but how we experience them and mark them may be complicated.
I think the notion we need to re-imagine is the idea that property confers control (as in ‘lock up your daughters etc,’) rather than respecting boundaries that delineate the scope of our responsibilities as stewards and guardians ~ not as petty fiefdoms.
If community were our most sacred idea, social mores and customs would be more organically reflexive, regulated by the metaphysics of the whole ecosystem rather than dictated by arbitrary parts and a discordant, fragmented consciousness subordinated to selfish interest.
Consider the geometric archetypes and conventions that distinguish ‘civilized’ architectural forms from indigenous patterns: the latter understand and sanctify circles, whereas the classic structure for imperial magistracy is the square.