Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiThe New Economy Won't Be Like the Last One
Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, the economy is a long ways from recovery. The speculative system that created the mess remains intact, and foreclosures and unemployment continue to rise. But at the same time, a new economy is taking form. It’s built on a recognition that the only thing too big to fail is the Earth itself. It is designed to build sustainable wealth for families, communities, and ecosystems, and it’s our best chance to improve prospects for future generations, instead of leaving them with ever-growing debt, conflict, and environmental destruction.
Politicians, pundits, and financiers defend deepening our national debt to bail out the institutions of a failed Wall Street system. But this system, built on speculation and the rule of money, is undermining the health of the planet and the well-being of all but the wealthiest few.
The new economy is built on new forms of money, and on democratic finance and business. In the summer 2009 issue of YES!, we report on worker-owned cooperatives that distribute the benefits of hard work to employee-owners who call the shots in democratic workplaces. These co-ops spend locally and are rooted locally, so they are long-term boons to their local economies. And they don't close down in favor of sweat shops in low-wage regions.
Money, though hidden in plain sight, is another critical piece of the puzzle. As currently created, it destabilizes our economy and concentrates wealth. Many communities are developing new means of exchange that work even when there is a global shortage of credit. And the issuing of money could be a public service, rather than a profit center for private banks.
We’re told we need Wall Street in order to finance business. But Wall Street has quit serving the real economy and, with the continued blessing of the Obama administration, is acting as a global casino, creating exotic and toxic packages of “assets” that have no function but to make money for the already wealthy.
In the new economy, credit is provided through local banks rooted in the communities they serve. Credit unions, community development banks, and other democratic institutions also serve, rather than cannibalize, the real economy.
Americans know we’ve been living beyond our means, and we’re cutting back. That means the segment of the old economy centered on encouraging wasteful consumption will continue shrinking.
The new economy—sometimes with the aid of President Obama’s stimulus spending—is moving in to meet needs unmet by a system centered on mega-profits. New jobs are being created to install renewable energy and weatherize homes, raise food through more labor-intensive and less damaging means, build public transit systems and inter-city rail, and rebuild schools, bridges, water systems and neighborhoods. We can no longer defer these vital investments as we did when we oriented our economy around the desires of the ultra-rich.
The new economy is about increasing quality of life, improving health, and restoring the environment. The resources to pay for this will be the resources that previously went into multi-million-dollar CEO pay packages and oversized returns on speculation.
With reduced consumption, we’ll no longer need to fight for an excess share of the world’s resources, so we can slim down our bloated military budget. We can save on prisons and police, since people with access to good education and jobs less often turn to crime.
An Earth- and human-centered economy is not inevitable. We could revert to a winner-take-all system in which a few benefit and everyone else fights over the scraps. The current economic downturn, though, offers an exceptional opportunity to rebuild and, this time, to make it an economy that works for all.
97 Comments so far
Show AllThe new bubble will be insurance health care corps that Obama is imposing as mandatory.
Other than changes made in the personal lives of people to be more self-sustainable, there will be no shift, except perhaps gradually over time. The problem with so many of these Green ideas is that they cater to the polically correct elitist eco-class, as a fashion statement of sorts.
The article is muddled wishful thinking.
I'm sure most CommonDreams readers will choke at the phrase "best efforts of the Obama Administration." After an opening like that, it's really hard to take the rap seriously, but...
The concept of a decentralized economy has great appeal--especially as we watch the old system rot before our eyes.
But I'm sure such a decentralized system would be instantly eaten alive by groups that still operate according to the old, centralized principles. This was my objection to the once-popular idea of "making government smaller." If we made government smaller, we'd be gobbled up in a trice--by nations and corporations that are centrally controlled.
Also, the failure of a centralized system does not prove that these systems are inherently unworkable. It could be argued that more efficient centralization is all that is needed.
Ghasp! Choke * cough**
------ Yeah, but some good stuff here, no?
Ms. van Gelder's pivotal error arises not from her PollyAnna denial of the fact Obama's "change" is proving to be the biggest Big Lie ever sold the Moron Nation electorate but from her abysmal ignorance of history. Everything she suggests as effective countermeasures to capitalism -- worker ownership and management; sustainable agriculture; deliberate personal and collective transformation from ego-culture to eco-culture; the creation of a globally relevant but definitively local socioeconomy in general -- all these were attempted throughout the United States by the revolutionary Counterculture during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
By 1981, every one of these efforts had been crushed -- always ruthlessly and often violently -- by the ruling class.
The alternative-press and back-to-the-land movements were destroyed completely, the former by government infiltrators and illegal restraint of trade, the latter by a combination of measures including death-squads or vigilante bands that operated with obvious governmental protection and viciously preyed upon any commune that was foolish enough to go into Ku Klux country or any of the other bible-thump theocracy-lands of Moron Nation without -- at the very least -- a few individual communards who were armed military veterans and thus possessed the tools and tool-use skills necessary to provide adequate protection.
Meanwhile second-wave feminism, which evolved among the breathtakingly intelligent women of New York City bohemia c. 1966-1967 -- a definitively Marxian critique radically expanded by breakthrough realization that class-struggle originates from patriarchy itself -- was co-opted and transmogrified beyond recognition into an oppressor-controlled weapon of class warfare. So was environmentalism. Note the anti-union, anti-working class bias that soon became characteristic of both movements and in fact lingers in to this day in such organizations as MoveOn.org and the Green Party.
At the same time the concept of “alternative business” -- the self-contradictory notion that business might somehow sidestep the fact that however business is defined, the business of business is profit (and therefore theft and exploitation) -- was once again proven to an entire generation. Which, thanks to years of conditioning, responded to the lesson not by rejecting capitalism (as did the generation of the New Deal) but by voting for Ronald Reagan, thus laying the foundation for the metastasis of Moron Nation values even into locales that had formerly resisted the capitalist/theofascist onslaught. Hence the present-day reality of a slave-and-sweatshop economy from which there is now no reasonable possibility of escape.
I know this history because I was there to witness it firsthand. I was casually acquainted with several of the originators of second-wave feminism and, though a man, maintained an enduring friendship with one its more influential birthmothers; I was involved in the alternative press almost from its beginning; was both an agricultural communard and a chronicler of the back-to-the-land movement. I am also a Vietnam-era veteran who became active in the anti-war movement and, before that, was jailed in the South for Civil Rights activism and targeted by the Ku Klux Klan.
Thus from the very start I was uniquely positioned to chronicle the real Counterculture itself: at its grass roots a genuine “revolution in consciousness” precisely as its most articulate exponents proclaimed -- nothing at all like the stagnantly elitist miasma of would-be apparatchiks and potential bureaucracy so misleadingly described by Todd Gitlin in "Years of Hope, Days of Rage": unquestionably the most potent hardbound soporific I have ever squandered money on. (Aside to Mr. Gitlin: though the anti-Vietnam War Movement was surely part of the Counterculture, it was by no means the core of it -- nor even its essence: a dangerous truth the ruling class continues to suppress.)
Thus too I know that -- though the United States was once truly a somewhat promising nation -- today at every level its government and governance have but one purpose: the propagation of capitalism: that is, the absolute protection of its ruling class, the total subjugation of all the rest of us.
From this perspective the great sadness about Ms. van Gelder’s manifesto is that she doesn’t realize everything she suggests was already valiantly attempted by earlier generations -- and savagely suppressed by a national secret-police apparatus that had neither the operational moral imbecility, the technological omnipotence or the unlimited power of its counterpart today.
Which is not to say we shouldn’t attempt the measures Ms. van Gelder proposes. Indeed we should. But we should do so knowing all such efforts are doomed. As the late John Paul Sartre said, it is this very certainty of failure that -- ironically -- turns such choices into ultimate assertions of existential freedom.
Not crushed!
------------ Thwarted, baited, misled, expunged, bedeviled, bled, abated, denatured, defanged, corralled, defeated, defeated, defeated, distorted, bought off, brought down, put down, put aside, put asunder, beaten
----------- No
not crushed. Not if what is crushed lacks resilience to spring back.
We cannot come back; we have not left.
We have not won, but we are not eradicated.
War and exploitation continue across the planet much as war and exploitation have continued through human history and before. Peace and charity continue, too, between and around and within the violence and beneath the bottom line.
I do not mean we do not need new techniques.
I do mean new techniques will not likely altogether abandon principles derived from prior struggle.
There's a hubris in extracting failure from partial failure, even from large failure.
I'll steal a phrase from Samuel Beckett: Let's fail better.
Sioux Rose
LOREN: Your post is brilliant; so I'm glad I stepped back into this thread.
It would seem that Mother nature has had many millions of years to experiment with an enormous array of organic possibilities. Some of these no doubt got short-stopped by weather events, the power of a predator, or some other unforeseen anomaly.
I like to think of the 60's as the brilliant burst of a seedling, its parts splintered, a sped-up Renaissance that went underground. We are accustomed to analyzing events through the context of our small lifetimes; but just as nature has taken eons to come up with amazing combinations, it's possible that the individuals who came alive in the l960's to push for all kinds of egalitarian human expression(s), were "ahead" of their times. It is not that their contribution is now defunct, but like the seed, it's waiting for the appropriate time to open and grow.
I suggest this idealized possibility because as an astrologer, I recognize that we are witnessing an enormous undertow at this time. It's as if the value system (a dominator one based on the patriarchal code of "divide and conquer." It ensues from creating a chasm between the genders, taking the natural love/attraction felt between the naked beings of "Eden" and turning it into sin and a state of perpetuated divorce) of the last 2200 years is about to fade, and this beast, largely composed of elements loyal to Mars (war/ego/brutality/competition) and Mammon (greed/the love of $/profound emptiness of the spirit) is using every nuance of its dying strength to hold on...
The wheel of time turns. When mankind behaves like armies of red/fire ants, everything in its path is destroyed. Yet life requires agreements between symbiotic systems. The expressive force of Mars (warriors) has taken over, and its influence permeates media, politics, even medicine! It takes shape as the path of death and destruction; and if it were permitted to retain ascendancy indeed all human life (along with far too many other elementals) would perish. I believe we are now in a whirlwind transition phase where this mindset and all that animated it (added to the many who subscribe to it, the vast majority essentially hypnotized into believing it defines all that life is or could be) is dying... however, what the phoenix calls for in order to rise again poses the great mystery. That I cannot answer. I can only do my utmost to teach the highest principles, seek to live by them, and trust in a benevolent universe. Yes, that benevolence appears scarred by so many purges, inquisitions, wars, holocausts, and acts of barbarism. As earth is the school house in which mortal beings learn to use free will to grow in their own Godliness, the reverse is also true. They are here free to learn how to misuse this Divine gift, although there are long-term karmic consequences as ours is a lawful universe. We are seeing the result of the misuse of principle live and in bloody color.
My new book "Moon Dance: The Feminine Dimensions of Time" speaks of this and a great many other items seldom to never found in print. No agent could follow its message so I was forced to self-publish this work, a labor of love in earnest!
Too modest, Sioux! Where's the purchase address?
Sioux Rose
BARDAMU: Modest, as in joke? My books are at Iuniverse.com although Moon Dance is not yet in print. It's nearly there... I never worked longer on a book in my life. This one began in l992! It's gone through many metamorphoses.
Thank you; please see the reply to you and Azjoe posted beneath his comment below.
Sioux Rose,
My sweetie and I would both like to read your book. Can you send us a signed copy? Let us know what it costs, and we'll send you a check.
I looked for it by title on Dogpile and only got references to your archived posts on CD where you had mentioned it. It was fun reading your posts from back in June 2007!
Please send us your book. I think you have my contact info.
Rastafari guide and protect InI
Sioux Rose
MOONDOGGY: Please write to me at my personal email and I will respond, okay? It's Astrologo77@yahoo.com Thank you for the kind words. I think you'd dig that book, and I see you very much as E.Z. Hopper, the grasshopper who represents Sagittarius. Concha, the house roach is the Cancer symbol. And this is pretty funny. I was in Puerto Rico in 2006 and a client that had a reading with me like 10 years before in Key West looked me up and she was in Puerto Rico, too. So she had me come to her friend's house, a VERY wealthy woman. I was very excited about the book which had just come out at that time, and I asked this wealthy woman (a Cancer) which insect she thought I might have chosen to symbolize her sign. I was shocked when she said roach! One reason I elected the roach is that they are always found in the nicest homes! (Cancer represents the "home" in mundane astrology.) Also, the roach is a very sturdy creature that seems to have its own prehistoric ancestors, and Cancer represents the past and things that accrue value over time.
Looking forward to hearing from you. I am finally able to breathe, but expect to start a new book in July-August.
BTW one reason you had difficulty finding it is that the publisher is NOT very helpful. I am actually re-doing this book with another one. Currently it's at Xlibris.com
lorenbliss. Whoah, that was a heavy post. Poignant, on point and thought provoking. Might you extrapolate a touch re, "class struggle originates from patriarchy itself." I failed to get that.
And subjectively speaking, as perceptions tend, I saw that guy dangling from the skid lifting off the American embassy in "Hanoi," and that was "the day the music died."
The Stones went disco.
Zepellin did Physical Grafitti. Which sucked.
And the Moron Nation turned off Jimi Hendrix and Jerry, quit dropping and starting drinking and turning on came to mean turning on the tube and watching Animal House. Party time in idiot country after the struggle. And w/ the impetus gone, I saw the fire die.
I love how you near venerate the cerebral and spiritual beauty of women in the sixties.
You don't need a Sword to Cut Flowers
You don't need a Gun to Blow Your Mind
Apropos Azjoe’s question about how class-struggle originates from patriarchy,
the essence of the answer is this: Minoan archaeology and Mosuo sociology prove that female-centered society is inherently cooperative even as history proves that patriarchal society is inherently tyrannical. Capitalism, for example, is the logical fulfillment of Biblical or Qur’anic theocracy just as fascism is the logical fulfillment of capitalism. Theofascism (such as is now emerging in the United States) is the logical hybrid of all three -- scriptural, capitalist and fascist principles synergistically combined to ensure capitalism’s survival: absolute protection of its ruling class, total subjugation of all the rest of us.
When Minoan and Mosuo studies are combined with the earliest insights of second-wave feminism -- insights that were almost immediately suppressed -- what emerges is a plausible answer to the core question of Marxian historical analysis: what is the origin of class struggle? If female-centered societies are intrinsically cooperative and therefore egalitarian -- the best evidence is that the core ethos of the thousand-year Minoan civilization evolved directly from tribal communism, while studies of the present-day Mosuo reveal precisely the degree of cooperativeness and non-material values such societies would require for long-term sustainability -- there would be no class-struggle inherent in any of their socioeconomic interactions. By contrast, there is no doubt patriarchy is definitively hierarchal -- which creates class struggle even before economic issues arise.
From this perspective -- especially if one contrasts the abandonment of New Orleans to the Minoan evacuation of the Theran archipelago (not just all humans, pets and livestock but literally all moveable goods, for which Google “Thera” with and without quotes) -- it becomes undeniable that Minoan society was the true apex of human civilization and that its destruction set our species on its slow but now-irreversible descent to extinction. This insight seems to have come first to Eastern European archaeologists -- researchers whose vision was not forcibly blinded by capitalism -- but it is increasingly held by scientists of all regions and disciplines.
The earliest U.S. second-wave feminists, particularly Shulamith Firestone (for whom Google) and the Redstockings (for which Google), evolved via Marxian analysis the premise that male supremacy is the original form of human tyranny and that all other forms of exploitation -- religious, racist, ethnic, socioeconomic, political, medical -- are so derived. While this insight was almost instantly censored by ruling-class suppression of Marxian feminism and co-optation of secular feminism in general, it was fiercely preserved by a brand of feminism the co-opted feminists soon condemned as “lunatic fringe” -- the spiritual feminists who openly embraced the notion of a goddess, whether as politico-poetic symbol, cosmic reality or both.
Unlike secular feminists (who now with the suppression of Marxian influences became both anti-historical and anti-intellectual), the spiritual feminists were involved in a genuine quest for the buried truths of women’s history, and their diligent research soon led them to the works of Marija Gimbutas and her colleagues. Over the subsequent decades, the resultant fusion of Eastern European archaeology, anthropology and mythography with feminism has convincingly demonstrated not only that patriarchy is definitively oppression but that matriarchy may well be our only hope of genuine liberation.
How do I know all this?
I researched, photographically illustrated and wrote a book in which I argued that the Counterculture was perhaps the most potentially revolutionary and thus deliberately misrepresented movement in U.S. history: that contrary to carefully-shaped popular misconception, it was a profoundly spiritual rebellion against the encroaching darkness superficially symbolized by “The Bomb” but subconsciously infinitely more bottomless and terrifying. The inquiry leading to that conclusion began with my recognition in 1959 that the Folk Renaissance was profoundly ominous: an anomaly that suggested our then-projected technological utopia was more likely to become another Dark Age instead. By 1967 I had recognized, from the Counterculture’s own symbols and sociology, that its “revolution in consciousness” was at its core the resurrection of humanity’s oldest deity: the ancient Great Goddess, the divine mother whose cosmic womb gives birth to all that exists and whose implied precepts are almost indescribably revolutionary. From this perspective quickly grew an application of Occam’s Razor that explained each and every aspect of the Counterculture -- especially feminism, environmentalism and the back-to-the-land movement -- as separate branches of a single tree.
Meanwhile our collective ignorance of pre-Christian spirituality and religion enabled the misrepresentation that kept most of us from understanding what was happening -- an ignorance from which the far-more-thoroughly educated ruling class was undoubtedly exempt. But the spiritual feminists -- the feminists now so resoundingly denounced by their thoroughly compromised secular sisters -- refused to be discouraged, and now they were uniquely fulfilling the potential and initial promise of the “revolution in consciousness” the Counterculture had proclaimed.
After 24 years of photography and research the resultant notes, prints, negatives and manuscript filled a four-drawer filing cabinet. My working title was “Glimpses of a Pale Dancer”; a few months after I returned to New York City in 1983, it seemed on the brink of publication. But then “Dancer” and virtually everything else I had ever done -- other photography, other writing, drawing, painting, a long litany of local journalism awards and commendations I had earned for mainstream newspaper work -- all was destroyed in a mysterious house fire that ignited at exactly the same moment I was meeting with an editor and a literary agent to discuss the publishing process. The loss was so total -- so emotionally devastating -- it ended my career, effectively silencing me forever. Now thanks to the Internet I sometimes have a voice again, though I know it will never be allowed to rise above a whisper.
Oh my gosh. If I had one more whisper before I am silenced forever, I would whisper in your ear this message: Please, for goddess sake, write that book.
That fire was deliberate. Don't let those tyrants stop you. With the time you have left in this life, please write down everything you know and publish it. Even if for free on the web. Whatever it takes. Somebody will publish it. You may not get your pictures back, but the words are alive inside you. Don't let these words die with you.
You must finish what you started. Who knows how your words may affect the outcome of humanity. Revive your work and the loss will not be total. Get it out there on the web and no fire can stop it. For goddess sake, do it!
And put the words you wrote here in the forward or preface. Thank-you for sharing. We are eternally grateful for your kindness in sharing this vital information. The world is hungry, even dying for what you know.
lorenbliss, the power, insight and humanity of your posts rock me to my core. I just assimilated carefully, w/ reverence brother, the glimpses you share here of a dancer's silhouette undulating against the blazing sun's backdrop, not pale but so bright as to make the backdrop seem a blackcloth and that dancer is you.
A Whisper? YoungOld Lion, this post Roared. And when I read the last two sentences, I did too, with you.
Please post more, especially re the ME, 9-11, or anything in the world that strikes your leonine fancy, with utmost Love, your lesser brother, joe.
Mayhap your project's evisceration, the laying to rest was a false one. Records and pictures immolate, but your reservoir of spirit and knowledge smolders with the fire of life, not the ashes of destruction. ThenetSiouxRosedestinyintertwining threads, can you see the mandala's final form on the tapestry?
The Dancer Glimpsed?
Sioux Rose
LOREN: I can only imagine your sense of loss! I remember when Alice Walker had a house fire that burned a major manuscript. I live in a tornado prone area and whenever I leave I always take copies of computer disks with me, and keep a few in my safety deposit box, too. However, there are hundreds of pages of notes that would eventually belong to future projects that could be taken in a heartbeat.
In a sense you relived on a personal scale the magnitude of the burning of books at the Library of Alexandria.
I empathize with your loss. If it's any consolation I have found that the media has become very tight when it comes to what it publishes. I have spoken to numerous agents and a few publishers and whenever I bring forth a novel idea they generally say "it's never been done." If I do research and come across a title that has some relevance to what I intend to do, they reverse gears and say, "You see it's BEEN done." That's why I started self-publishing. It's not an especially profitable route, but my main motivation is to get the truth out there.
I just finished a work that began in the early l990s and was held by Inner Traditions. They were right to pass the work up as it's taken me all this time to mature as a writer and find a way to craft language that makes the esoteric more comprehensible to the lay reader. I would like to send you a gratis copy, and would be eager (if you have the time & inclination) to hear your responses. I looked over the final revisions this week, and it should be in print soon. It analyzes time from a FEMININE perspective via the moon and her cycles. I see the dance between the sun and the moon as that which forms the rhythm structures for life on this planet, and that every time the sun and moon unite (at new moon), their marriage draws fron the collective unconscious the archetype that dwells there. (For example this past week's new moon in Cancer, drew Athena from the collective unconscious; and the next new moon will draw Apollo, and so forth.) It's entitled: Moon Dance: The Feminine Dimensions of Time.
I was inwardly compelled to bring this understanding forward when I came across shocking statistics on the numbers of persons (many of them women) being prescribed anti-depressant drugs. Nor do I see it as mere coincidence the chemical turning down of the volume of "the human canaries shrieking in their personal mine shafts" and the otherwise inexplicable apathy for politically-rendered policies that are ruining life across the globe, with powerful impacts here at home.
I left my email on another post. I hope to hear from you. By the way, you have great depth to your understanding. When I read about the lecture circuit (Naomi Klein) I thought I'd like to find a way to get on such a thing, and I would recommend you do likewise.
Good News! The fire is still burnin'!
I carry it, and so does dubet, yourself, GoldenMean, Sioux Rose and a whole bunch of us here and all over this world. I see it in many of the younger generation and in their little children. It will never die as long as the sun shines and the grass grows.
We would see it flourishing into a wildfire if we were in Telluride at the Bluegrass Festival or at the Rainbow Gathering right now.
PEACE!!
Sioux Rose
MOONDOGGY: You Rastafarian Grasshopper, you have so much LIGHT! May the rainbow shine from within you always!
And may that Love, laughter and light always shine from within you my cosmic, guru, rainbow, intellectual, sister!
Sioux Rose
You're such a love bug. Can I clone you?
heck, I wish I could clone myself. There's never enough time in a day to get it all done! My goddess!
BTW, I just finished reading lorenbliss' posts. Wow. I hope she or he publishes.
I just got off the phone with an old cowboy friend. I don't know if cowboy is the right word. Although he is known as Cowboy Roy. He lives in the mountains and rides everywhere on horseback leading a herd of about 8 to 12 mustangs. He's like the last of a dying breed. I just encouraged him to write down all the stories he knows, and he knows quite a few. I gave him my old guitar because he lost his.
Everybody has their stories, and if they don't write them down they are in danger of being lost forever. A good example is a book, one of my favorites called: Tough Trip Through Paradise, Montana 1878, by Andrew Garcia. The author wrote it all down and stored the manuscripts in dynamite boxes. It was Garcia's grandson I believe who found and published his work.
Cowboy Roy is like a reincarnation of Andrew Garcia. I told him, just write it down. Don't worry about accuracy or chronology, just write. He assured me that he is and will continue to do so. I believe I've encouraged him because I tell him this almost every time we talk.
I just hope lorenbliss does the same. Just write. Forget royalties. Think about Vincent Van Gogh. He only sold one painting in his entire life, to his brother Theo. Look at what they are worth today. Nobody knows how important their work will eventually become.
True, there are spoilers, from who knows where, that attempt to despoil any progress that groups make. I believe however that today there are differences that will allow progress at the bottom. Decentralization is enabled by the net. People either by choice or by necessity are unplugging from the corporate culture. They have the unique gift of the wisdom and sustainability of simple lifeways and are adapting their lives accordingly. There is a new spark of life at the bottom. It is a place where life can again be lived in it's intended fullness, absent the oppression of corporatism and big government. It is happening and it is growing and it is not populated by elitists. This lifeway springs from the Earth and elitists refuse to get their hands dirty. This movement does not lend itself to centralized control but quite the opposite. Planners, plotters, and profiteers cannot get a foothold here. Spoilers are quickly marginalized by necessity. It represents the best of a blend of old and new. It abhors Washington and chooses to live well in spite of it. It denies corporations their lifeblood, profits. It looks oppression in the eye and laughs.
mine is a a somewhat different story, but the same experience and conclusion. passing through denial and having made the step sartre speaks about, from freedom arises a true and invincible pride,--man does not live by bread alone..
Poet
Your post was first, if you're still on, here's this.
You are right, the article is an inspiration. But, yes, practical steps really are needed. I have read David Korten's book. But not everyone can afford that or would know to buy it. So it is up to the rest of us to put out what ever we can -in our own sphere, community, neighborhood. I print out a lot of these articles, tell people about the website, and the books, (also about NPR) and Democracy Now. The more people know of these types of information sources, they can then go forth and find more of their own. These sites are seeds. They are seeds to the blossoming of critical thinking and of the sprouts of growing curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Pass along what you can. It is a huge step toward spreading the word-then comes action.
"So it is up to the rest of us to put out what ever we can -in our own sphere, community, neighborhood. I print out a lot of these articles, tell people about the website, and the books, (also about NPR) and Democracy Now. The more people know of these types of information sources, they can then go forth and find more of their own. These sites are seeds. They are seeds to the blossoming of critical thinking and of the sprouts of growing curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Pass along what you can. It is a huge step toward spreading the word-then comes action."
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
That's the thing to do!
Most people are just waiting for a Savior.
Whether it is Sarah Van Gelder or David Korten, I alwaysappreciate the positive solutions orientated tone of the articles they author.
The problem with this sunny "can do" tone is that there are no actions steps designed to tell people how they go from where we all are now to where we ought to be going.
I know that space in CD is limited to 1000 words, but within this limit there could surely be a laundry list of things we all could be doing to undermine this corrupt system or at the very least a website or two with more detailed information and resources.
Poet
See, for instance, Richard Heinberg's Web site.
I have read read YES! several times, and each time end up disgusted. These people are forever clueless.
The systemic problem we face is the collapse of U.S. and global capitalism. Systemic problems cannot be fixed by small scale utopian projects such as green capitalism.
Capitalism must be ended as it cannot be "rebuilt" or "bailed out" in any way that restores economic sustainability to the people of this country or the planet.
The world's crises of survival are all rooted in the collapse of capitalism:
* War will continue forever when the profit from war is maintained. (Why don't the Democrats and Obama end the wars, cut the military budget by 50 percent, shutdown the 700 plus foreign bases, shutdown the 250,000 private contractors making big bucks in the middle east? The people of the U.S. now desperately need these funds! Reason: there is "big bucks" in war for the military-industrial complex!)
* Global warming and the environmental destruction continues as profitable global polluters continue unchecked.
(Historic profits of the oil companies are not applied to cleaning up the oil spills, destruction of the Amazon, etc.)
* The public education and health systems will continue to be destroyed as the corporations and wealthy individuals refuse to pay taxes to support essential social services needed by millions to survive.
* The mass of people in the U.S. will forever remain IGNORANT of why they are being destroyed as the mass media, including PBS (Privatized B.S.) remain totally controlled by corporate interests.
* No political change is possible as long as the wealthy labor bosses (now CEOs of VEBA, Chrysler, etc.)who are in fact "business partners" to the destruction of their own members.
* Working people, even when ignoring the daily indoctrination of FOX News and Rush Limbaugh, will not continue to support the Democrats and clue-less "progressives" and lying politicians such as Obama, when personally confronted with no jobs, destroyed public schools , no health care for themselves and their families.
The collapse of U.S. Capitalism cannot be dealt with as a "personal" problem or solved at a local community problem.
Some hopeful prospects (?):
The socialist California Peace and Freedom Party is having a conference August 1st, San Francisco, to form a NATIONAL party and to plan running socialist candidates in
2010. (I changed registration from Green Party to Peace and Freedom.)
The World Socialist Web Site (http://www.wsws.org) has been on-line for over 10 years, 6 days a week, with a critical socialist and Marxist analysis of current affairs.
Read WSWS and compare with other sources to find out WHY the crises facing humanity today for survival are not being resolved.
I disagree, though I applaud the party connections.
Small projects are not "the solution," sure. They do not eliminate nor likely reduce the need for systemic change.
No system functions independently of its components, however.
* War will continue forever when the profit from war is maintained.
Granted. But ceasing to participate in the war economy is a personal act. Can we unite to do that, make it a general act? Sure, if enough people will.
* Global polluters continue unchecked
Again, for profit, right? Let's organize for regulations, but let's quit purchasing the products, too.
* The wealthy refuse to pay to support services
I'm all for coercion here. Meanwhile, they're rich because we buy from them and work for them. To the extent that anyone avoids that, the poor have fewer arms pointed at us in a conflict. These conflicts fail and go bad frequently. Just getting to the conflict does not constitute a victory. Nor does winning without being able to establish a system that fulfills at least somewhat the original principles. The cadres behind Lenin did not fight hoping to install Stalin.
Lenin said the capitalists would sell him the rope with which he would hang them, but he couldn't have doubted that the capitalists would use the money from the rope to buy bullets.
It all counts.
* The mass of people will remain IGNORANT under corporate media.
Partly. Let's write. (Cheers!)
* No change is possible as labor bosses are "partners" to destruction
Do you see this as a systemic union problem? If so, why would similar problems not attend socialist revolution?
* Working people will not continue to support the clueless.
Praise the Heavens! Maybe our ignorance is partial!
The collapse of capitalism cannot be solved as a community problem.
No, but collapse will be but an event or aspect in change. The left need feed and educate, socialize and acculturate itself and others without supplying the profits for war and exploitation. That requires economies within and around and from the dominant corporate economy.
The better dug in we are when the levees break, the better we may determine to where things wash.
It must be nice to be so well informed. No wonder the press so frequenlty refers to you arrogant left lefties as elitists. I mean, "the mass of people in the U. S. will forever remain IGNORANT...". How could that be constued as elitist? Good luck with your persuasive skills!
Jerry Well..thanks for the link to the wsws....I agree with your points. One of the books I've read by Edward Belamy..."Looking Backward," presented a view of Socialism that I cannot get out of my mind. A "perfect" Socialism will take some time to develop....post capitalism.....but it is the best answer to human survival. The other solution is returning to hunter/gatherer tribes. Or, we can coin some new terms like...."Cooperatism" or "Communityism," but then, these sound too much like "Communism" and might scare everybody!
Boy oh boy do we always hear of "new economy" after simply changing a president every time. Let's be honest. It will be just like the last one. One caveat though is Obama bailing out Wall Street which will eventually come to be a liability against him. I don't see as much of a growth on green jobs and given our rising demands for oil with the rising prices reflecting it all, I'm afraid I'll have to side with the commenters here. As long as all the focus is on foreign policy, I don't see a real economy in the works.
Sarah, you poor deluded young upper middle class American woman. You've grown too comfortable with consuming a quarter of the planet's resources as one of the world's privileged 3%. Your name should be Pollyanna. But you're right, the "new economy" will not be like the old economy because an epic struggle is about to escalate between two great classes created by capitalism.
Depending on who prevails, human beings will be consigned to hunter-gatherers again or we will share whatever resources exist on this planet equally under a socialist regimen. Even if this socialist economy is established and the planet saved, we will all live at a level of material austerity that we can hardly imagine now. But it beats the hell out of extinction.
folks in ND have had a sane credit system for years. try:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_North_Dakota
and:
* http://www.banknd.com/
as for single-payer, we have this and other very clear precedents for a productive banking system, as we do for most of the the other things we need. move now, sons and daughters of a revolution, or move never.
faolks in ND have been using a sane credit system for years. try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_North_Dakota
and:
http://www.banknd.com/
This article validates my decision to toss their subscription offer in the recycle bin.
You must have some faith in the future - you're still recycling.
"It's time to let it go."
Humans, and we Americans especially, never just let stuff go. It has to pried out of our cold dead hands, usually after a 30 year court battle.
And, if rising FOX 'news' ratings are any indication, the banksters' ownership of 'the place' will continue for a long while...
many excellent comments!
agrarian, acoustic life is the eventual goal, but won't be achieved without both psychological 'awakening' and violent 'negotiating'...the violence will come, whether the awakening does, or no...violence may never leave us as an issue...we have chosen to delegate the handling of violence to others, while we remain in our homes...this will have to change, along with many other things, as we take responsibility for our own communities...we will need to be our own police, and judge and jury, and defense against marauders...also, our own religious leaders and teachers...and no, I am not referring to 'worshipping' religions...intentionally...
I would suggest marijuana as a practical aid to the 'awakening', and alliances between neighbors as a practical aid to the 'negotiating'...let's get those gardens growing! We will need to share housing...
No violence, please. Just more love.
check out www.unfilterednewsnetwork.com and the 'global systemic collapse" thread.
there are, as always, several things in play. population growth, the end of cheap fossil fuel, the willingness to establish population centers in areas where they should not be (think vegas), financial system built upon imaginary money (think interest as it is generated from nowhere), control of production as well as finance by a small group of people ("superclass" by david rothkopf)wielding control via networking and influence of agendas are all conditions which must be considered. how and what must change? how will such change be brought about? do we build upon the notion of the collective? are people "born" greedy or generous or are those learned behaviors? how will the loss of cheap energy affect change? the idea that simply going to solar or wind or tidal or geothermal will end our energy problems is wishful thinking. there are construction and maintenance platforms that operate on fossil fuels as their underpinning. what will the loss of cheap fossil fuel mean for farming? since agri-business depends upon fossil fuel derived fertilizers will the loss of this be offset sufficiently by organic farming? how will populations that are skewed toward urban centers and the hyper-suburbanized deathstyle cope with movement of fodd when transporation is less readily available or when it is higher cost?
there is nothing wrong with dreams of a future where cooperation is easily achievable. but we must also consider reality and human nature when dealing with change. we may choose legislative fiat to force change or rely on unreliable human nature but either way we will be dissapointed. perhaps it will take a global die-off to force the issue. but di not look at politicians to solve the problem simply because the people do not wish it solved if it will result in some immediate hardship for themselves.
"It’s time to let it go."
Only revolution will accomplish that. The Emperors of Primitive Acquisitiveness and their enablers, the Republicans and the Democrats, will have to be dragged down physically, tried and locked up permanently. They'll never give an inch. They'll destroy you, me and planet Earth. No other solution is possible in this nation.
Mordechai Shiblikov June 25th, 2009 1:50 pm...My friend, you could not be more correct. If the past eight years has not been enough for a massive uprising, what will it take? A serious question............................ From Dylan's "Blowin in the Wind"...."How many deaths will it take 'til we know that too many people have died?"............
"In the new economy, credit is provided through local banks rooted in the communities they serve."
As long as compounding interest is still your corner stone, this not a new economy, merely the same where growth is the continued emphasis and greed is the eventual sympton.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2005/9/18/1236759.html
2 things will continue-
A. Existing wealth will continue to be updrafted.
B. The population will continue to sky-rocket.
These in concurrence insure a rapid decline in the US standard of living-lost homes, no health care, lost lives and dreams-
Karl Marx said A + B=Revolution, seems he is dead on track in his predictions.
And Sarah, whoah, respectfully I submit her optimism is ridiculous!
Hey az, call me, and this time leave your number so I can call you back! I got your fun message on Father's Day, but am not able to return your call. I can't get into my inbox where your contact info is. My email server won't let me access my email for some unknown reason. I haven't been able to access my email for almost 2 weeks now, which is totally bogus, and I'm pissed! Care2.com which is my wildmail provider is fucked! I've tried to find another way to reach you, via some of the others here who know you, but to no avail. So call, and leave me your phone number, bro! Garcias!
He he Md, hopin you awake, cause here this call come! Now.
bro, call me back. We got disconnected. I think my battery went dead. I went down and grabbed my other phone. You never gave me your number. Call me back! I want to hear the rest of your crammed in a car story. I even star 69'd you and it said your number withheld. Next time I'll have to write your number down. Don't worry about waking me up. Just call.
the population may skyrocket...on the other hand, chemical alteration may render many sterile...
The true economy will never recover until society reduces materialism significantly. For example, I cannot tell you how much more relieved I am to not have to travel 45 miles to work every day and 45 miles back of course now that I can work from home remotely at least until the end of summer. I don't know if it's just me but the less I found myself having to spend, the less unhappy I got.
"I don't know if it's just me but the less I found myself having to spend, the less unhappy I got."
No, Jennifer, it's not just you. Just a taste of what it's like when we start kicking the consumption drug.
Jennifer\Ted ~
I find any day I don't use a car to be noticeably less stressful, and I try to structure days so that I don't...it's more than just not experiencing the stress of driving as an act...it's more of a naturalness that is harshly interrupted by the grinding of the starter and the smell of the fuel and the insulated feeling of being closed in and zipping past things rather than experiencing them...being in the elements is a very grounding thing...just supporting what you've said...
dubet,
Me and a friend have been hired to build a log bridge across a creek. The guy who hired us is a lawyer who has a summer cabin nearby. So we hopped in my jeep and drove up and down the forest roads in the nearby state forest to look for a suitable dead tree.
We both were starting to go, "whoa, this sucks, driving around in a vehicle. We'd be better off to ride these roads on mountainbikes. Yeah, you can't really see much from a car, like you can on a bike."
So, rather than continuing on, we turned around and drove back and parked that stinkin' rig. On Monday we plan to fill up our water bottles and continue our search on bikes, something we should have done in the first place.
Jennifer, Ted, Dubet,
All good comments and sentiments. I concur entirely.
I left a very big city (New York City), where I lived for years and years, and moved to the country. My whole life has changed. I had so many shirts and pants and socks and whatnot to go to my office job and look presentable and all that jazz; now, the stuff lies in storage tubs; I don't use it any more. Same for all my snazy shoes. I nearly forgot about it all, and one of them days I'm gonna give it all away. My Banana Republic credit card has been in retirement. Now, I do carpentry. Now, I see the passing of the seasons again, just as when I was a child. In the city, I worked in a office without windows for almost twenty years -- I used to fall asleep on the bus or on the subway on the way to work... I suppose you get the idea...
Abendland, having moved from the rurals to the city due to seeking employment and then suburbs due to rising costs of living in the city, I don't know if I'll ever go back to living in the country side. I do miss living the countryside life in some ways but I was amazed at how much living in the city opened my mind to so much more knowledge and understandings of what was going on in the world than I even had before that. I also got to meet more diverse people and even find out more about the plight of the working class not only in the city but even where I used to live and foreigners as well. I could find myself working back in the country side but with rural MO depopulating, the closest I'll get is probably working in the suburbs but since I live in the surrounding suburbs, it might not be a bad idea. If I had to move back out to the countryside, I still think I would end up missing my life as a city girl than I missed being a country girl but maybe there will be unexpected changes such as Peak Oil, improvements in public transportation, populist uprisings, etc ... that could make me feel otherwise.
Prescriptively, Gelder is right: a sustainable future lies only in the localized making of a living (I purposely avoid the word 'economy'). All giganticism (economic, military, industrial, architectural, urbanistic, etc.) must end. It will end either catastrophically or deliberately.
I do not consider such prescriptions utopian at all: they are prescriptions for the only realistic and peaceful future ways of making a living.
The word 'deliberately' brings me to my reservation regarding Gelder's article: although she does see that "[w]e could revert to a winner-take-all system in which a few benefit and everyone else fights over the scraps," she underestimates the resistance (including violent repression) that Empire's beneficiaries (the few and wealthy that rule this country and a good deal of the world) will put up.
We are in a very perilous situation, but Gelder is right in saying that the present massive failure and breakdown of savage capitalism do offer an opportunity for radical change. The problem is, will people seize that opportunity in a deliberate manner and usher in a relatively peaceful and orderly transition to the new arrangements for making a livng?
At this point, and in view of the gang of mainly servile fools in Congress and in the White House, the prospect for such a transition looks dim.
Beautiful post,
Abendland, you ponder, "will people usher in a peaceful transition?"
But allude to the impossibility of that in your 3rd to last paragraph.
The transition will require the wealth of the country be returned to the people. Never in the history of the planet have the elite/wealthy given up their stolen amassed wealth w/o radical revolutionary violence, ie, over their dead bodies.
Moondoggy-thanks for pointing me to Abendland and Ted Markow. xlnt posts by both-if every "localized making of a living," meant this, it meant that in every county in America, ALL they needed had to be produced there, all, in 5 years this country would be healthy.
We over and underestimate ourselves.
Azjoe, thank you!
Regarding the issue of violence, please see my reply to Ted below: Abendland June 25th, 2009 6:53 pm.
Hey, our phone call last night got cut short. The battery went dead in my phone. Call me back and leave me your number. I never wrote it down, even though I had a pad and pen with me. I woke up this morning with the pad and pen still in bed with me and an ink mark on my hand. Life is a trip!
I appreciate your post. I don't get the "fuggetaboutit" sour taste that I get from others.
"The problem is, will people seize that opportunity in a deliberate manner and usher in a relatively peaceful and orderly transition to the new arrangements for making a livng?"
For me, this really is a moot point. For one thing, few times in history have transitions been peaceful and orderly. People are messy and they make messy changes. Sometimes violently messy.
For another thing, we can always use this question as an excuse not to act. And, many people do that every day. What does it matter what everyone else chooses to do or how change happens? If we were really as hep and conscientious as we like to believe we are, we'd just do the right thing no matter what others think or do or even whether it's allowed or approved of.
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." Churchill
I hear you very clearly and, in the end, I tend to agree with you.
I raised the question that you quoted in order to present the most desirable course of action in the transition out of our present desastrous predicament. I consider it to be a regulative ideal -- a goal that should orient action as much as possible. It is certainly not meant in the least as an excuse for not taking action.
We must begin now to take our lives and fates into our own hands, live and make a living as locally as possible, develop public transportation (resuscitate the United States' once great network of railroads) and local businesses, avoid purchasing goods made in China or other far-off countries, grow our own vegetables, raise chickens, keep bees, promote alternative fuels, reside in small towns (where walking or bicycling to work is possible), rekindle the water ways as transportation routes, stop buying useless junk, subscribing to needless magazines, and watching television, and so forth (see Richard Heinberg's advice and discussions of these matters on his Web site, for example).
However, I am very much aware that what is desirable and what in fact will happen are not necessarily coextensive.
"We must begin now to take our lives and fates into our own hands, live and make a living as locally as possible..."
Very well said, Abe.
To me, this is the most empowering thing - when I realize that even as limited as things are, the most powerful thing I can do is to start changing myself, and therefore, my world. Of course, the flip side of this is to sit and rail against what is without applying my own elbow grease and therefore, guarantee that my world won't change.
Yes, we are in agreement.
One must begin by changing one's relation to oneself and others and to one's environment and one's way of making a living: that is where change begins and must begin, for waiting for Obama to change anything is total abdication, passivity, and, one might even add, a form of suicide, or at least a form of serious masochism.
By the by, no one is claiming that making these changes is easy, but I would suspect that, no matter how hard it is, it will still be easier in the end than not doing anything at all and waiting for Savior Obama to change something, for such a passive attitude will cost us dearly.
It's time to snap out of the fix, out of the holy economy, out of the Machine, out of the trash culture, out of the fat and the excess, out of the consumerism, out of People magazine, out of the ideological piffle delivered by most media, out of Hollywood, out of theme parks, out of Las Vegas, out of Disneyland, out of Cheeze Doodles, out of soft ice cream and soft drinks, etc.
Abendland, I like what you and Ted Markow are saying. It's a refreshing bit of sanity to read this after some of the negative, cynical comments early on here.
Your comments are productive whereas those others I referred to serve no purpose at all. Complaining won't solve a thing. We can't expect the same monster institutions who created this mess to get us out of it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one here advocating self-reliance. To quote a line in a song by Velcro Sheep, "We are the only saviors I can see".
I hope you're comments are widely read and considered. If I were to cease posting on CD today, I could rest assured that guys like you are out there speaking my heart.
Back to the garden. Peace!!
Moondoggy, thank you for your supportive words!
Wish you much success in building that bridge with them logs! That is the sort of thing we must learn how to do again.
In general, we must recover all the old knowledge: farming, construction, carpentry, botany, plant breeding, boating and boat making, animal husbdandry, horse carriage making, smithing, bee keeping (before they are all dead), traditional architecture and art (perspective and, generally, representational drawing), book making, etc. Make seed archives to bypass monsters such as Monsanto.
We must learn again to use hand tools, divorce ourselves gradually from the use of electrical tools. Buy and store manual tools (coz' when the grid starts failing, they will make the difference between life and death).
Buy as many old books on these subjects as you can find! Collect them, treasure them, scan them and make them available to others and on the Web. In fact, a publisher should begin reediting the old trade manuals.
Choose one or more of these areas of endeavor and start developing its respective skills. The more you know about these matters, the greater your chances will be of surviving the civilizational collapse that will slowly, and in some places, more rapidly, erode and eventually undo industrial societies over the decades to come.
Once our predicament becomes really dire, those with skills will also be able to teach them to others and to the youth.
Don't forget beer and wine making!
Yes, hand tools. I'm collecting them and learning the skills. We try to do as many things by hand as possible, forgoing the use of electricity. We live in a log cabin and heat with wood. We also have a wood burning hot water heater. I'm planning to add bee keeping to my skills some day.
We had a power outage one year at Thanksgiving due to 2 big ice storms in a row. The power was out for 8 days. We just fired up the woodstove in our kitchen and cooked our traditional thanksgiving meal as usual. Got our wash water by hauling buckets from the river and drinking water by melting snow. We were warm and cozy and read by candle light.
Later I ran into a neighbor on the road and asked how their Thanksgiving was. He said, "We ate corn flakes. Had to throw out the turkey." I talked to other neighbors and they said, "We drove into town and got a room at the Holiday Inn and ate at a restaurant." We talked to people who live in town and they said, "I don't know how I would survive if the power ever went out."
They key is preparedness, being able to live without electricity. We've been doing this all along. I've always had an inclination to do so, and actually rather enjoy it. It's so quiet and peaceful when the power goes out. And here in the outback of northwest Montana where my family and I live, the power goes out often. We are literally at the end of the line, so when it goes out, we're the last to get it restored.
Both my wife and I had done a lot of camping and lived off the grid before we met. So we're a perfect match. Most people consider us an anomaly. Well, all I can say to that is good luck when the empire falls. They'll be coming to us to teach them how to live.
This year a wild turkey landed in our yard on Thanksgiving day and hung around for a couple of days. I suppose if we didn't already have a tofurkey in the oven, we might have had some feather plucking to do.
My advise to everyone is the same as the boy scout motto: be prepared!
Touché!
People often complain that there is no movement of disengagement, but that's not true. There is actually a large movement that has been doing this for years. Many years. It's a continuum and many of us are somewhere along that path. All we have to do is tune ourselves into where we want to go, and we will start seeing others who are doing likewise. And they will help us.
Right on, SEAGLASS. Obama is not going to get any new converts just because he is Obama. Bush policies were (and are) destructive, dangerous and just plain ridiculous. To think that the Dems can put a different label on what are essentially Bush policies is nonsence. As usual we will have to let this play out till it comes back to bite the Dems and Obama. This article is just more DLC crap.
Just like there will be a reduction in population, there will be a new economy.
Just like we won't stop overpopulating the planet, the greed addicts won't stop--can't stop-- until the whole old order falls in around our ears.
It WILL happen, and I am afraid before this time next year.
Someone ought to let Congress and Wall Street in on this vision. They are all wearing the blinders of personal gain, profit, and recognition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Frank, forget Washington. Change happens from the bottom and works it's way up. The new economy is forming out of both idealism and self interest. As it grows it will eventually change Local government first, State government, then the Federal Government. We must form groups of people to change local lifeways and government first. The sooner we adopt the new lifeways the better. Washington is not a change agent but instead is propping up old 20th Century ideas. In the year 2001 we crossed the threshold to a new future, we turned a page of history. If we wish for peaceful change we must get solidly behind the new economy now, otherwise change will be violent and result in Fascism.
Once again I find myself addressing the merely wishful thinking exemplified here with the fundamental economic issues. Economy must be founded on scientific fact and not mere social projection. As before, I offer these links to become informed about the new thinking relating the laws of thermodynamics to production, without which the market might consist only in the barter of sea shells and bits of rock:
http://www.eco.uni-heidelberg.de/ng-oeoe/research/papers/Faber%20et%20al%20AEE%201998.pdf
http://www.eco.uni-heidelberg.de/ng-oeoe/research/papers/JPEE_Introduction.pdf
http://www.ecoeco.org/pdf/jointprod.pdf
http://events.it-sudparis.eu/degrowthconference/themes/3Second%20sessions%20panel/1Indicators/Friend%2...
Thank you for all the links! I have been checking them: all work, save for the last one. Could you look into it?
Unfortunately, the restrictions on the Comments box will not permit full reproduction of the last link which always truncates, but I will try again.
http://events.it-sudparis.eu/degrowthconference/themes/3Second%20sessions%20panel/1Indicators/
Friend%20A%20Degrowth%20Paris%20april%202008%20presentation.pdf
Thank you!!
"the market might consist only in the barter of sea shells and bits of rock." Barter is barter no matter what is being traded. Sea shells and bits of rock have as much value these days as the fiat currency we use now. Worthless unless a agreed upon value. Nothing has value unless someone wants to pay the price you are asking. We have allowed Wall Street and the Banking community to dictate what is of value. That time is coming to an end.
The sun, too, is coming to an end, but not any time soon.
We can invalidate the social projection, but not without science, hence the links mounting economics upon production (as Adam Smith observed), but bounding production with thermodynamics (which neither Adam Smith, nor Karl Marx realized).
As far as anytime soon, you might be right. Me thinks though that we have relied upon science too much.
The human aspect needs to be reintroduced.
Science is the only path to overcome the traditional superstition that is the substance of conservatism. Science is the very stuff of which humanism is made. That which has been passing for economics follows the model of mathematics as science does, but its principles are not founded on science – the result is that economics as we practice it is a form of pseudo-science like astrology or alchemy.
Sioux Rose
CLASS ACT: I generally like and respect your posts, but this one is all puffed up. Just as a boat with only one oar (cold logic/science) will ONLY succeed in circling, there is something to be said for that more diffusive other oar, i.e. right brain. Creator purposely installed two sides to our minds that we would not ONLY be led by science and cold reason... science has done some things well, but it has also gotten us lofty things like bombs; and scientists who study the mind also have learned how to break it down via a nefarious number of torture tactics. What some call the heart, or the spirit, or intuition, or basic instinct ALSO has its wisdom. So call my field a pseudo-science all you like but mystics, poets, and lovers have seen, known, and experienced things science and its ilk have not.
Rudolph Steiner, Germany's pre-eminent mystic termed science the "consensus of mediocre minds." The inventor, say a mind such as Einstein's, was equal parts mystic, poet, and rebel! Science alone can be a barren field, sir.
Ms Van Gelder's article is a synopsis of the argument made by her "boss" David Korten (YES! Magazine co-founder and chairman) in his 2008 book entitled "Agenda For a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth."
The critics of the intellectual underpinnings of the argument can find his CV (including the fact that he holds PhDs from the business schools at Stanford and Harvard) here:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/default.asp?ID=119#board
The ideas are utopian, without doubt, and all the more compelling for the fact that they show the fallacy of the growth-centered capitalist model that's destroying our natural, political, human and financial ... uhm ... capital.
hope this can help give direction to our concrete vision for the future:
..the late japanese master masanobu fukuoka showed how to grow grains (and vegetables) without fertilizer, pesticides, or plowing, by observing nature. --he also showed how to grow rice without transplanting,-which creates a strong naturally pest-resistant plant,--in his fields we could find every kind of pest and disease but it did not effect the amount harvested... on top of this his method leaves plenty of free time allowing human culture and art to also grow and develop... in a certain sense, the garden of eden has always existed,,,,around the same time frederick dolman showed how to teach a child beginning at 6 months of age, about 20 minutes a day,..with the result that the child knew several languages and advanced mathematics at four years of age,,,
There will be a new economy.
Well, several thousand of them actually. And they will have a loose interconnection via remaining internet and phone connections, plus local and long distance couriers (think Pony Express, only slower).
These economies will be extremely local, and will support the regions and remaining cities with the basics they require. Older sections of cities will be progressively looted for their resources of refined metals, glass, plastics and few volatile petrochemicals, and the concrete towers slowly dismantled.
There will be hunger, at least until the population equalizes to the environment, and the food will be local, organic, and mostly meat free.
The vast legions of office workers will have to learn new skill sets, indigenous to self-sufficiency and cottage industry. Those who have repair skills will be in high demand, and those fractional few remaining of the obscenely wealthy will be scorned, ridiculed and hated for their demonstrations of excess, and their paranoid necessity to have mercenary guards accompany them everywhere. The 'poor' will be everybody else, living in economically necessary simplicity, making do or doing with out.
This is not some pie-in-the-sky dream. It is the reality that is bearing down on us like a rock slide.
And it is coming sooner than you think.
Walk in peace.
Respectfully, Galenwainwright, what WILL be coming soon is a police state un-like ever before seen; this country will collapse from the inside and our remedy will be martial law.
We no longer have a vocabulary that brings us together, a language that can unite us to a common singular cause. We are ego-run-rampant! We have many, many resourceful, well-meaning individuals who will start a cause but will not join one. Everyone wants their own brand, their own logo.
The "vast legions of office workers", many of whom cannot "live" without modern technology and convenience, will be reduced to desperation and barbarism. We will panic and rip one another apart. We will be a spectacle for the wealthy.
Civilization left us long ago. "Progress" will not allow us to return to guilds, tribes, or communities. Already in our world we produce enough food for 12 billion people - And a billion of us are starving. The organic "movement" was stillborn - bought and paid and made a brand by big business.
A civilized people would drag these politicians and corporate oligarchs into the street and remove them from society. But alas...
Until we embrace a remedy from this ignorance we will continue to march off the same cliff.
That police state will rely upon a rapidly exhausting single resource (oil), and will be unable to monitor every single human interaction. Outlying areas will be left to fend for themselves, and people will return to barter and trade out of necessity, creating a thriving 'grey market' that the government will have no control over.
It is the few remaining elites who will cheerfully submit to the police state, telling them selves that the impoverished masses beyond their gated communities want to break in and take their worthless crap. Hence the mercenary guards I mentioned previously.
When I say that food will be organic, it will be because petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides will be almost non-existent, and most people will be eating out of their kitchen or community gardens, just as they did up to and including WWII, but very little after. The great agri-corporate farms will wither, dying off as their financial base depletes itself in a series of economic implosions.
Will there be unrest? Definitely. Will there be repressions and crackdowns resulting in protester deaths? Definitely. Will the bloated and obscene US model of greed and overpopulation collapse?
Definitely.
Walk in peace.
Since you cannot step in the same river twice, how can we achieve this?
Our "educational" system has been very effective in lowering the ceiling on not only critical development and self-sufficiency but also civic responsibility. Our souls are malnourished - And there is seemingly no interest but self-interest. Of what interest is the natural world to any of us when we have no real indication of what it is? We have been taught to consume and disregard. We strive to break this dependency, to what degree we are able - But for most there isn't even the consideration. Many of us are well-comfortable inside illusion's illusion.
I, despite my pessimism, believe people are good - They are simply not taught to be as such; evil is just a separation from this, like shade from the sun. Rob a man of his possessions and decorations, his status and wealth, and what are you left with? A living heart with consciousness and ability. And at the end of the day who does not want a peaceful existence?
I suppose the seeds we need to plant are ones of self-sufficiency and dignity. I think, at their center, the ideas of your posts posses quality, but that quality needs a foundation.
And as for elites - Their interests are simply not my interests.
Thank you GW. Peak Oil is coming and not even lowering the crude oil prices temporarily seems to be working if the past 2 decades was any indicator. We need to localize our currencies as well so that no local economy will find it easy to go predatory. I don't know if you have heard of hemp or algal oil but even those two require decentralization, localization, and good labor to keep the prices not too high but think of the benefits. Since neither can be cheap through a centralized economy unlike petroleum, a police state will be tougher to come by. Lots to say about hemp and algae oil but you'll be surprised that such peaceful plants for fuel can actually help weaken and shutdown the Military Industrial Complex.
Hemp and algal oil, while both nominally viable alternatives, suffer from the same problem.
Scalability. There will never be enough production to meet even a fraction of demand.
So we had better get used to living in a situation where you use it up, use it over, make do, or do with out.
Walk in peace.
I didn't say that hemp and algal oil would fully work. I am already aware that unlike conventional crude oil, the "whole sale volume sale" mantra won't work with algal oil or hemp. People will be forced to conserve and restrict their urge to guzzle even as decentralized production and localized delivery significantly cuts down the economic and environmental costs. What exactly do you mean by them suffering the same problems?
The good thing about Peak Oil is that fewer people will say no to carpooling, metro stations will be forced to improve and even lower their obscene fees, and more businesses will be forced to spread out and even allow more teleworking from home. Contrary to what I feared, I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to work remotely from home and avoid having to travel 45 miles to work every day.
P.S.: I find your last sentence "Walk in peace" attractive. :)
I realize that my formal education left a lot to be desired so I make the effort to properly educate myself, including on the subjects of economics and economic history so I know at least on a basic level what is going and it makes me able to tell who knows what they are economically talking about. That said, Gelder's economic ignorance and economic prejudice coupled with her dogmatic certainty that she knows what she is talking about - has me speechless.
Submit your editorial to an econ prof. who is worth his salt and see what he says about it.
Everyday I read foolishness that insults my intelligence - that's hard to avoid nowadays - but Gelder brought that to a new low. Thanks!
Yes beat the drum of us having to learn to live with less. I dont see the 1% making those adjustments, do you? Maybe just maybe that was the whole point of this meltdown, brought to you by the Feds. WE should learn to live with less.
No thankyou. I want more.
This article is BULLSHIT! Any real attempts to build an new economy on sustainable footings will be crushed ruthlessly by the Mullahs of Wall st. and the rest of the BIG CORP nobility that now rules with an IRON f'ing fist. Iranian women have more BALLS it seems then all of America's down trodden masses these days. Nobody is challenging the Imperial order. These articles are the fantasy literature of the 21st century. I keep this shit right up next to my Sci Fi reading.
Luckily Gandhi didn't think so... India never would have been freed of the English Empire.
Every empire in history has crumbled. I hope this will be the last one we have to crush and we should make sure of it.
It's the effort that makes us better than the Mullahs.
"Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration ..."
the first eight words of this article sum up the writer's (author???) imagination. the only thing more vivid is her ending: "with reduced consumption..."
which planet, sarah, do you live on?
common dreams, please.
My sentiments exactly.
Z-zzzzzz
lino June 25th, 2009 9:39 am...She lives on the planet of propaganda...the same propaganda that shoved the false flag of 9/11 down our throats.