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A Reality Check From the Brink of Extinction
We can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard. But unless we dismantle the corporate state, all those actions will be just as ineffective as the Ghost Dance shirts donned by native American warriors to protect themselves from the bullets of white soldiers at Wounded Knee.
“If we all wait for the great, glorious revolution there won’t be anything left,” author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me when I interviewed him in a phone call to his home in California. “If all we do is reform work, this culture will grind away. This work is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to use whatever means are necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet. We need to target and take down the industrial infrastructure that is systematically dismembering the planet. Industrial civilization is functionally incompatible with life on the planet, and is murdering the planet. We need to do whatever is necessary to stop this.”
The oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, arms and weapons manufacturers, industrial farms, deforestation industries, the automotive industry and chemical plants will not willingly accept their own extinction. They are indifferent to the looming human catastrophe. We will not significantly reduce carbon emissions by drying our laundry in the backyard and naively trusting the power elite. The corporations will continue to cannibalize the planet for the sake of money. They must be halted by organized and militant forms of resistance. The crisis of global heating is a social problem. It requires a social response.
The United States, after rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, went on to increase its carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels. The European Union countries during the same period reduced their emissions by 2 percent. But the recent climate negotiations in Bangkok, designed to lead to a deal in Copenhagen in December, have scuttled even the tepid response of Kyoto. Kyoto is dead. The EU, like the United States, will no longer abide by binding targets for emission reductions. Countries will unilaterally decide how much to cut. They will submit their plans to international monitoring. And while Kyoto put the burden of responsibility on the industrialized nations that created the climate crisis, the new plan treats all countries the same. It is a huge step backward.
“All of the so-called solutions to global warming take industrial capitalism as a given,” said Jensen, who wrote “Endgame: The Problem of Civilization” and “The Culture of Make Believe.” “The natural world is supposed to conform to industrial capitalism. This is insane. It is out of touch with physical reality. What’s real is real. Any social system—it does not matter if we are talking about industrial capitalism or an indigenous Tolowa people—their way of life, is dependent upon a real, physical world. Without a real, physical world you don’t have anything. When you separate yourself from the real world you start to hallucinate. You believe the machines are more real than real life. How many machines are within 10 feet of you and how many wild animals are within a hundred yards? How many machines do you have a daily relationship with? We have forgotten what is real.”
The latest studies show polar ice caps are melting at a record rate and that within a decade the Arctic will be an open sea during summers. This does not give us much time. White ice and snow reflect 80 percent of sunlight back to space, while dark water reflects only 20 percent, absorbing a much larger heat load. Scientists warn that the loss of the ice will dramatically change winds and sea currents around the world. And the rapidly melting permafrost is unleashing methane chimneys from the ocean floor along the Russian coastline. Methane is a greenhouse gas 25 times more toxic than carbon dioxide, and some scientists have speculated that the release of huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere could asphyxiate the human species. The rising sea levels, which will swallow countries such as Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands and turn cities like New Orleans into a new Atlantis, will combine with severe droughts, horrific storms and flooding to eventually dislocate over a billion people. The effects will be suffering, disease and death on a scale unseen in human history.
We can save groves of trees, protect endangered species and clean up rivers, all of which is good, but to leave the corporations unchallenged would mean our efforts would be wasted. These personal adjustments and environmental crusades can too easily become a badge of moral purity, an excuse for inaction. They can absolve us from the harder task of confronting the power of corporations.
The damage to the environment by human households is minuscule next to the damage done by corporations. Municipalities and individuals use 10 percent of the nation’s water while the other 90 percent is consumed by agriculture and industry. Individual consumption of energy accounts for about a quarter of all energy consumption; the other 75 percent is consumed by corporations. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States. We can, and should, live more simply, but it will not be enough if we do not radically transform the economic structure of the industrial world.
“If your food comes from the grocery store and your water from a tap you will defend to the death the system that brings these to you because your life depends on it,” said Jensen, who is holding workshops around the country called Deep Green Resistance [click here and here] to build a militant resistance movement. “If your food comes from a land base and if your water comes from a river you will defend to the death these systems. In any abusive system, whether we are talking about an abusive man against his partner or the larger abusive system, you force your victims to become dependent upon you. We believe that industrial capitalism is more important than life.”
Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation. They are responsible for our personal impoverishment as well as the impoverishment of our ecosystem. We remain addicted, courtesy of the oil, gas and automobile industries and a corporate-controlled government, to fossil fuels. Species are vanishing. Fish stocks are depleted. The great human migration from coastlines and deserts has begun. And as temperatures continue to rise, huge parts of the globe will become uninhabitable. NASA climate scientist James Hansen has demonstrated that any concentration of carbon dioxide greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere is not compatible with maintenance of the biosphere on the “planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” He has determined that the world must stop burning coal by 2030—and the industrialized world well before that—if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number. Coal supplies half of our electricity in the United States.
“We need to separate ourselves from the corporate government that is killing the planet,” Jensen said. “We need to get really serious. We are talking about life on the planet. We need to shut down the oil infrastructure. I don’t care, and the trees don’t care, if we do this through lawsuits, mass boycotts or sabotage. I asked Dahr Jamail how long a bridge would last in Iraq that was not defended. He said probably six to 12 hours. We need to make the economic system, which is the engine for so much destruction, unmanageable. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has been able to reduce Nigerian oil output by 20 percent. We need to stop the oil economy.”
The reason the ecosystem is dying is not because we still have a dryer in our basement. It is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities. It is because consumption is the engine of corporate profits. We have allowed the corporate state to sell the environmental crisis as a matter of personal choice when actually there is a need for profound social and economic reform. We are left powerless.
Alexander Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of Russian anarchists working to topple the czar, reminded his followers that they were not there to rescue the system.
“We think we are the doctors,” Herzen said. “We are the disease.”
Comments
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315 Comments so far
Show Allazjoe,
If you truly want to defend your champion (Mr. Hedges),you must refute my basic premise. Since that premise has so far been ignored (which is almost certainly my fault), I will pose my premise another way. My premise is this: "fringe" thinking can not exist without "fringe" standards. By putting it this way I hope that you, nick, and whoever else, will be better able to understand that by focusing on my shortcomings, regardless of how vast and hypocritical those may be, it is that which is becoming increasingly absent, that increasingly strengthens my premise. The rules of debate are simple and timeless. And my original comment is a clear challenge to prove my premise wrong. You must use something from the article and show refuting evidence. Everything else is just evasion, and based in denial, and more evidence that serves my point, no matter how many words I misspell (petty). Thanks for all of the support so far.
Are you on drugs?
nick,
No to drugs. I am scared though. "The corporations", every last one of them from what I am able to gather, "cannibalize the planet". And there must thousands of these cannibals just in my immediate area.
I am confused too. I thought cannibals only eat their own kind. It even says so in my dictionary so I hope you are able to understand my confusion.
The only solution seems to be "militant forms of resistance". But there is no mention of how the modes of production might be replaced. Sadly, (I am also sad), I happen to know that only 3% of the earth's land mass contains highly fertile soil. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that without industrialized farming a great many will starve. You may have noticed that I have stated somewhere here that I have been involved in environmentalism for more than 30 years. Did my apprenticeship out in the woods for ten of those years and my wife is a park ranger. So I happen to know things that are causing me to be scared, confused, and sad. And to make matters worse I have recently learned that my spelling and punctuation are well below standard. But no drugs today.
R.L. hi, how are you? It was Chris who said Resist or Become Serfs. Corazon de Alma, which I said you have, means Heart and Soul. A common use of the word cannibalize is to "cannabilize a car for parts," as a verb it's meaning is different than the noun form.
A safe m.o. here on CD that I've found is this; swear illiteracy up front, I say always "I was not learned past grade number 8," (I gotta BA in Intl Studies sssshhhh), then only go after macro principles and truths, supportable by same, (details and numbers can be diverting bs,) for ex Forms of production, now arms- based, would become infrastructure-based. Wham. Finis!
I am sorry you don't do drugs if that includes pot-I will get high now twice to address this cosmic imbalance.
antiwar.com
informed comment (juan cole)
commondreams; they tie us together,
gossamer tendrils of hope
azjoe,
I did not say that I do not do drugs.
I did anticipate that folks would attack me. And I made it perfectly clear that attacking me only srenghtens my case. My premise, "that fringe thinking can not exist without fringe standards", is about denial and delusional thinking. I did not purposely bait my readers, but I did not go to any great lengths to edit out any mistakes either. The fact that the standards used to write the article in question were not defended serves my point perfectly well. The fact that the premise of the article was not used in an "end justifies the means effort" adds additional strength. The truth is that Mr. Hedges uses dishonest writing to mislead and that is the convesation that I wanted to have. The fact that we did not have a conversation on that ISSUE, an issue that I tried so hard to bring into play is even more TELLING.
I stand corrected on the use of "cannibalize". The paperback dictionary that I use most, did not include the verb usage. But my unabridged dictionary describes its use very much the same as what you have. I am no longer confused on that front!
I was an English major although I was not able to finish. That was a very long time ago and I have forgotten a great deal. These days I rely heavily on my computer for editing although, this site tends to expose those of us who use these threads, as you well know. Mr. Hedges does not have that excuse and that fact makes the attacks on me petty, and even more delusional. And as you alluded to in your "blogging" advice, my hypocracy became a distraction. But it was you and nick who made the premise about my gramatical shortcomings. So, considering that the two of you also have some grammatical shortcomings, who is actually being hypocritical here. My premise was never about grammer, you and nick on the other hand just keep the digging the hole you share, a hole you created together, deeper.
And for you to advise me on how lower standards might be more effective on THIS site. In a conversation intended to be about standards, but wasn't, but is, although about lowering standards as opposed to raising them, wow. I just hope that those who read this do not assume that you and nick are shills; because this is almost too good to be true. I should not have made so many efforts to ADVISE you and nick on how to redeem your positions, because your stubborn and willful foolishness does seem suspicious. But it is too late take anything back, so I'll just say thanks for the help.
As far as I can see, the above comment is PROFOUNDLY meaningless.
It is a trivial matter to point out the obvious errors and doublespeak; e.g., "affect" for "effect (twice), and the observation that "anything beside the point...is pointless." And you are right that language skills are not relevant anyway--except when you make them so by telling other people to take English lessons.
But when you contrast "truth" with "defining truth" and "potential truths"; when you talk about the "narrowing and concentrating affects (sic) of integrity", and about "those who put justice before all else" (who are these people? what do you and/or they mean by "justice"? and why exactly is it bad to put justice first in general, and ahead of doublespeak in particular?)--well, to me it seems that your comments lack the very integrity you extol, since they present an appearance of substance that they seem to lack.
Sorry if my remarks seem unfriendly. Obviously I have too much free time on my hands...
I have problems with CH's writing, too; but even more with your criticism. In the one and only place where you deign to give a specific example of his shortcomings, you come up with this:
"it is misleading to assign consumption to a producer of something that is actually consumed by a CONSUMER, hence the term."
I don't think this sentence is grammatical, but in any case I can't understand what it means. Maybe you should attend those English classes along with Mr. Hedges.
nick,
Explain WHY and we will have something to discuss. "I don't think" is almost good enough to warrant cheap shot status; but without SUPPORT, it is more of an affirming example for me than anything else. Which is only strengthened by your admission: "I can't understand", in regards to what is a fairly clear remark. Then if you could explain what my shortcomings have to do with my contentions, how for instance, if a murderer who witnesses a murder has any affect on whether a murder has in fact been committed, then your reply might be redeemed. In the meantime all I can say, given the lack of integrity that your reply allows, is that I did "attend those English classes" but I am confused as to what that has to do with ANYTHING.
When you attended the classes, did they teach the difference between "affect" and "effect"?
As for my "I don't think", I added it because grammaticality is a judgment call; actually I'm pretty sure the sentence is not grammatical, but since I don't understand it I can't be sure. The trivial part seems to be saying that consumption is called consumption because it (what?) is consumed by a consumer; but as for what the substantive part is saying, I cannot figure it out (and I gave it a good-faith try).
As for your remark above, about whether a "murderer who witnesses a murder has an affect (sic) on whether a murder has been committed"--obviously he does, since he's a murderer. So I am confused yet again.
I fail to see how my remarks "lack integrity"--you fault CH for saying general stuff without backup, but you have no problem slandering me with no backup at all. I agree that my comment may have been snotty, but certainly no nastier than your own first comment.
Nick,
"I don't think", "actually I'm pretty sure", "I don't understand it", "I can't be sure", "seems to be", I cannot figure it out", So I am confused yet again", "I fail to see", (do you notice a pattern?)
Notice that you almost never commit to your claims. Then you evidently seem to think that a lack of resolve absolves you of any responsibility of supporting your quasi-claims. Your underlying premise is that if you do not to understand a sentence (or chose not to understand), then that sentence "is not grammatical". I must also assume that this inability-to-understand-standard also explains your inability to understand my use of the words "affect" and "effect",(which I KNOW that I used correctly). And you are also having trouble understanding that there are two murderers in my sentence; so I will accept that my sentence fails to meet YOUR-UNEXPLAINED-STANDARD, and therefore I will write another sentence: When a murderer witnesses a murder being committed by a second murderer, does that INFLUENCE the fact that a murder has been committed?
That you are unable to understand also that economic protocol dictates that consumption is assigned to the consumer (end user), serves the premise of my original comment. As does the use of "trivial" and "substantive" as words used to describe the parts of a sentence by someone who critisizes with "pretty sure", and "almost sure". As does your defence of Mr. Hedges because your standards are simular to his. And my premise, that irresponsble writing can have a splintering affect, and an effect as well, is meant to say that falsehoods are harmful to any cause.
As falsehoods are eliminated from a debate this process of elimination brings people together as independently discovered conclusions lead to consensus. This is of course the formula for a healthy democracy. But Mr. Hedges wants us to form a consensus based on false premises. "Tiny oligarchy" for example, must be reconciled with the broadest possible use of "corporation" as the root of all evil. But how can tens of thousands of corporations with all of the stakeholders and stockholders be "tiny".
And, at best, the accepted norm here would be "small oligarchy"; and so for this "tiny" claim to taken seriously, considering that history provides a very long list of some very small oligarchies, that leaves "tiny" suggesting that the world is being destroyed by a large number of corporatists who use the same tailor as the Gieko Lizard. And I think if you look closely at the splintering affect, it has the effect of pushing away the very people who have the much needed information to provide the counter balance of understanding. So, what remains is the apt term: Splinter group. And to each his own, I suppose.
Alas, most of what you are saying is gibberish, and most of the rest is wrong. I'm sure you will disagree, so let's just leave it there.
You have a great last name, anyway.
Nick,
What is there to disagree with. You seem to think it is clever that you sling your childish and completely unsupported insults without providing ANYTHING. Then a coward's farewell, a poke in the back as you scurry away. I suppose clever is different things to different people.
I included you in my reply to azjoe. There is chance there for redemption. It is a challenge but you will need more courage and integrity than you have shown thus far.
mercy R.L.- such trouble you take to stay in denial! Most of this piece is quoting or elaborating on Derrick Jensen. Now I don't know what kind of "support" you want him to provide, but all you really need to do is open your eyes and look around at our planet ok well maybe you need to do some reading about the polar ice cap and stuff. But basically all we are saying is the planet cannot live with global capital chewing up bigger chunks of it every day. And you can't talk your way out of it either
abuelo,
I have been active in the environmental movement for more than 30 years. I also participated in the Sandinista Revolution and have been part of the labor movement since the early 1970s. I grew up in California and lived in the "Haight" back when protests still had meaning. I think if you knew what "biochar" and "localized commerce" is about, your comment would not have been so insulting. I also think if you were to read my comment more carefully, and also the replies, and the replies to the replies, you might see things differently. Until I hear otherwise I will presume you spoke in haste?
"These personal adjustments and environmental crusades can too easily become a badge of moral purity, an excuse for inaction. They can absolve us from the harder task of confronting the power of corporations"
We on the far-left have a comprehensive strategy. By changing our personal lifestyles to be self-empowering and independent, we set a good example for others to do the same. This is an interaction among people that deliberately leaves the elitevil out of the loop. As the people work to bring ever more people into the fold, to change lifestyles, to disengage from the elite establishment, we build a stake in the new system giving us personal incentives to defend it.
Most aren't compelled to defend sustainable lifestyles today because most are still dependent on the elite establishment. As long as we remain dependent, and addicted to the opiates, we're part of the problem, not part of the solution. If some of us organize into small bands of nonviolent class warriors to confront elite power, and wrestle power away from them, we will then be perceived by the people as "the new boss, same as the old boss", because they were excluded from the process.
So to avoid that problem we set as our goal the empowerment of the people, i.e. the ideal. As a side effect, the elites will lose their slaves, dry up and blow away, among many other side effects that support universal equity/justice. These tactics to confront elites directly may complement the basic strategy but cannot substitute for it. Such a multi-pronged approach, with the people's empowerment as the centerpiece, has the greatest chances of success.
"The damage to the environment by human households is minuscule next to the damage done by corporations."
Most of the damage done by corporations feeds the public consumption machine, so the people's change to local, sustainable lifestyles denies the corporations workers and consumers. Our change of lifestyle has to be comprehensive. It won't work to start a compost heap while still working for an industrial godzilla. We have to shift our exchange/association entirely away from the elite establishment and toward the local alternatives.
Corporations are, per se, morally neutral--their managements are not. Corporate personhood (origianlly corporations had no such status) is an amoral fiction behind which uscrupulous people hide despicable deeds and it needs to be revoked.
If workers all owned and managed the businesses at which they worked, power, responsibility, and liability would be dispersed over a wider range of opinion and knowledge. In the multitude of counsel there can be both wisdom and strength.
If the cost of all products sold included the social costs (environmental pollution, depletion of resources, safe disposal of toxic materials) both rampant consumerism and the destruction of the environment could be slowed if not stopped.
In the then Federal Republic of Germany when AIDS tainted blood was discovered in the Red Cross blood bank, the head of that organization was sent to prison. In the US when the same thing happened, the head of the Red Cross (Elizabeth Dole)ended up running for the Republican presidential nomination.
Poet
If workers all owned and managed the businesses at which they worked, power, responsibility, and liability would be dispersed over a wider range of opinion and knowledge. In the multitude of counsel there can be both wisdom and strength.
------------------------
But it's well-documented that group decision-making too often suffers from groupthink, and group-made decisions too often are mediocre
Perhaps it would be better to argue from democracy instead: there's no solid reason why people shouldn't have the right to control their own lives, including the economic aspects. Contrary claims all resolve to Platonic guardianship, depend on everyone's acceptance of a-priori assumptions, and can't be supported on rational grounds.
But Mairead, no way, if workers owned and managed the factories they would not be alienated from the means of production with the resultant soul withering inherent within slave-labor.
Then they would have a total stake in the product. Would GM employees have manufactured trash if their survival depended on not doing so? Divorced and alienated from the product, production, planning and profit they did so.
We're on the same side, Joe! Only justifying it differently.
Yeah Mairead-or the same...enjoy your posts, read 'em all too.
Mairead sez:
"But it's well-documented that group decision-making too often suffers from groupthink, and group-made decisions too often are mediocre"
************
Right now mediocre would be an improvement don't you think?
Mairead also sez:
"Perhaps it would be better to argue from democracy instead: there's no solid reason why people shouldn't have the right to control their own lives, including the economic aspects."
***********
That's what I thought I was proposing.
Poet
"That's what I thought I was proposing."
------------------------------
Ooops, sorry then, I misunderstood. I thought you were arguing that larger groups are better at taking decisions.
I am not sure that corporations are morally neutral. The corporate form shapes the attitudes and goals of the individuals making the decisions for the corporation. The limited liability, along with corporate law requiring officers to only consider profit and not the welfare of individuals or the society, inevitably makes the decisionmaker more reckless with the welfare and even the lives of others, changing the risk/greed equation where greed becomes a greater factor than it would be for an individual operating in a non-corporate capacity. And as excessive greed is generally considered to be a moral failing, in large part because of the social harm it often causes, then maybe one can say that corporations are not only amoral but immoral as well.
I agree with your conclusions--in fact your film board of Canada awarded a prize to the team that produced an excellent documentary called "The Corporation" that showed that corporations as presently constituted are effectively psychopathic (without conscience in other words) in their behavior.
By removing personhood from the corporate form, by requiring that any corporation must be owned and run by those who work for it, and that as such, the "owners"are jointly and severally liable for the corporation's acts and the consequences of such acts, responsibility and its consequences can be rightly apportioned.
I would also add the requirement that any corporation be limited in time to a fixed chronology. Either when the corporation's mission was complete or perhaps 50 years--whichever came first. In other words no more eternal life for such an institution as a corporation.
Many of the silicon valley start-ups in computers started out as worker owned, financed, and managed and have done quite well thank you very much. Farmer cooperatives like Organic Valley dairy products have been organized the same way.
Poet
"The Corporation"...a MUST see.
kivals,
Impressive.
oops--deleted
Corporations exist for the sole purpose of making a profit, and the pursuit of profit-above-all is not moral.
Corporations are not alive (regardless of what the courts say), so the concept of morality--neutral or otherwise--does not apply to them. We can say the same thing about cluster bombs and chemical weapons. The concept applies to the people who use these things.
Chris Hedges is right to say that banishing plastic bags and other (necessary) changes in life-style will not solve the huge problems we are facing, but still these are steps in the right direction.
I also share Derrick Jensen’s apocalyptic mood because our morally corrupt leaders will never admit that the economic dogmas they have adhered to, are complete BS...
Appeals to reason do not work ...a more radical approach is clearly required. However, telling people that “we need to target and take down the industrial infrastructure (that is ultimately killing the planet)” is no great help either.
What exactly does he mean? Sabotage? Trying to scare business execs and economic “experts” into submission? Force them to realize that an economy based on ruthless competition and endless growth is absolutely insane, that a market society is incompatible with the social needs of human beings because it turns everything into commodities – including people (the “labour-market” is basically a kind of slave-market since labour does not come without a human being attached to it, so we have to sell ourselves to the market..) and eventually life itself..
Hedges is right to diagnose that “corporations are indifferent to the looming human catastrophe” but so are politicians, the only difference is, the latter pretend to take measures against the disaster (see “climate conferences”, etc.) while the former still try to downplay or even deny the facts to avoid the painful admission that what they are doing is sick and is creating even sicker people in the process....
In the late 1970s Erich Fromm published “To Have or To Be?” I find his observations still relevant today i.e. he writes about how our economic system has shaped society and human character (for the worse):
“...Both tendencies are present in human beings; TO HAVE – to possess – that owes its strength ....to the biological factor of the desire for survival; the other TO BE – to share, to give, to sacrifice – that owes its strength to the specific conditions of human existence and the inherend need to overcome one’s isolation by oneness with others. ... from these contradictory strivings in every human being it follows that the social structure, its values and norms, decides which of the two becomes dominant. ... it is the socioeconomic structure of a given society that inclines us toward one or the other.... “
In other words: GS-people like Paulson or the CEOs of oil giants were not born as greedy bastards who could not care less about the social and ecological consequences of their immoral dealings but they are the result of a socio-economic system: unfettered capitalism, a political system who seeks “Full spectrum dominance”...
These guys are mentally ill and ought to be taken away in straightjackets but the system has succeeded in “normalizing the abnormal”. In earlier societies these people would have been despised, expelled or even killed by their tribe but now they are on the cover of glossy magazines, celebrated as quasi-heroes, whose only achievement was "making" obscene amounts of money.. The huge damage to society and ecosystems they have created in the process is of no no concern.
Fromm:
...”What is surprising is that this need [to share, to give, to show empathy, etc.] could be so repressed as to make acts of selfishness the rule in ... industrial societies and acts of solidarity the exception... (>>health insurance???)
“A society whose principles are acquisition, profit and property produces a social character oriented around HAVING, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast; ... so everybody adapts to the majority ....... as a consequence of the dominant attitude of selfishness the leaders of our society believe that people can be motivated only by .. material advantages; .. a “radical different socio-economic structure and a radically different picture of human nature” is necessary ..... “
“If we look into the behaviour of almost all people, into our political leaders, it is undeniable that our model of what is good and valuable is the pagan hero. European-North American history is a history of conquest and greed; our highest values are: to be stronger than others, ... and exploit them....”
.” .. the work of the peasant as well as of the artisan was not a hostile exploitative attack against nature. It was co-operation with nature: not raping but transforming nature according to its own laws...
Behind the Christian facade arose a new secret religion “industrial religion” that is rooted in the character structure of modern society (not recognised as a religion). ... it reduces people to servants of the economy ...”
The total economisation of society changed the social character, Fromm calls it “the Marketing Character” ..because it is based on experiencing oneself as a commodity .. people must now know how to “sell their personality” (and to shape it as the “market” requires it to be....) ... “their identity rests upon participation in the corporations (or other giant bureaucracies). Where there is not authentic self, there can be no identity...” [if your “identity” and prestige in society is dependent on making tons of money at the expense of others and nature – then what have you become? Have you not lost your humanity?]
“The supremacy of cerebral, manipulative thinking goes together with an atrophy of emotional life. Since it is not cultivated or needed, but rather an impediment..., emotional life has remained stunted... The Marketing Character can also be described by using a Marxian term, the alienated character: ... persons .. are alienated from other human beings, and from nature. ... “
“Everything the economist takes aways from you in the way of life and humanity, he restores to you in the form of money and wealth”. (Marx)
... and even that (the second part) is no longer true for the majority of people...
Nicely stated. I would suggest that if you don't like the word 'sabotage' you can always substitute it for monkey wrenching.
I wouldn't downplay the Power of the GHOST DANCE!
Are corporations the problem, or is it too many people and too few with too much?
It seems to me that they are two ends of the same piece of string.
For all you kids out there who might be inspired by CH, go read "The Monkey Wrench Gang" by Abbey.
And, a note to certain geeks out there: stop f@#king with twitter and Facebook and put your net-a-toge talents to actual use - the web is quite the evil corporate target-rich environment.
CORP IS BORG.
Life and art imitate each other. Captain Picard had to put the Enterprise on 'auto-destruct' to rid his "ship" of the Borg...
St John had to have a nightmare to process the "Anti-Christ" out of his subconscious.
The corporatists (real people who run this monster) will take it down to the wire. Their skills and value system are inappropriate to the situation we face. Their game is over.
Every time I run into the writings of or reference to Mr. Jensen, I have the same feeling. It is not that I disagree that corporate power has to be dismantled, but I get annoyed at the fact that he downplays the personal responsibility aspect of that process to the point of calling it useless.
What does he think, that 1% (or so) of us who believe it needs to be completely dismanteled can accomplish this on our own? We need the buy in of a large majority of the population.
As accurately pointed out, people depend on the corporate system for life sustaining items. How will they turn their backs on the corporate system if they do not see there is a way to survive without it? For example, it is easy to say they should turn away from large scale agri-farming, but what alternative do people know?
The efforts of the "morally pure" are essential to their solution, which is why I do not understand how they could be so smart yet (as someone else pointed out) build walls between those that are the foundation of their solution.
I admit I am making these comments without once having previewed the Deep Green Resistance. I am certainly interested in learning more about his ideas as I do believe they have much merit.
But ultimately it is not the planet that will die, it is us. The planet will survive, and other forms of life will give it another try (just ask the dinasours).
What I see him saying is that working in isolation isn't going to do the job. So there's a 'personal responsibility', but it's somewhat pointless to express it by doing things in an uncoordinated, atomistic fashion.
Here's my summation of what Jensen (and Hedges?) is saying; forget all the personal attempts at changing your lifestyle, or working to build sustainability, just go out and blow up bridges.
Okay Jensen, you first.
And I see the implicit acknowledgment that our choices reduce to acceptance, ballots, or bullets and that we'd better get our arses into gear. But I see no suggestion that we should start blowing things up, whether bridges or something else.
It's unrealistic to expect the elites to suddenly get healthy when their pathology is so ingrained and personally serviceable, so either we accept their pathology, their exploitation of us, and the probable consequences (the extinction of high-order life on Earth) or we band together to turf them out of power by the use of the ballot.
And if the ballot doesn't work because they cancel elections or do something else to make Emma Goldman prescient, then our choices reduce to resigned acceptance or bullets.
But the key concept is *doing things together*. People as diverse in their backgrounds and methodologies as Marge Piercy, Bucky Fuller, Saul Alinsky, and Stanley Milgram have found that people working together in groups create a gestalt effect in which the power they can apply is greater than the sum of their inputs as individuals. *That's* where the 'forget all the personal attempts' comes into it. There's nothing wrong with 'personal attempts', but the most likely outcome is Not Much. We need a helluva lot more than that if we want to live.
For some of you new people, this is a heads up to be alert to one clown who uses multiple sign on names and often carries on a conversation with herself to undermine authentic left voices like Hedges. I like to call it the Harriet or Harvey Wunkerpud syndrome.
This should not surprise anyone, since all of Harriet's other virtues have long been truncated by spiritual pauperism, commodity fetishism, and juvenile delinquency.
But such is the age we live in. It is void of self awareness for those guru worshippers taking up one's valuable time:
Harriet sub-exists much like the domesticated animals he keeps in bondage for pleasure or food, while not recognizing she is one of them, also in chains. Therefore, she is incapable of true compassion for herself or for the beasts she tortures because this type of compassion would require a formidable look from without, from outside her senseless condition. Additionally, and because her bondage does not bother her or she is simply not aware of it, she fails to recognize political or social dissent. The right to dissent or to revolt peacefully or with blood, against the cancerous, corporate, gluttonous, materialistic ethos seems to her the exclusive enterprise of some historical ancestor, "the Patriot." Finally, Harriet refuses to take responsibility for her freedom, or to be responsible for anything worthwhile and good. True rebellion, righteous rebellion, is seen, alternatively, as bad form, a vice, or only to be employed as a means to insure that the easy and disposable life she is addicted to continues. Living perpetually in a self imposed cage, she is anxious of the very idea of the cage's door opening for good. As such, Harriet will bite the very hand of her liberator. Plenty of food, much diversion are nevertheless accepted.
Like the film Groundhog day, Harriet wakes up each day to the same surreal and alienated life, parrots the expected script and meaningless text, moves from one thermostatically stable environment to another, pushing buttons, pulling levers, and punching cards. SHe has transformed herself into a wheeled cyborg, half human, half car, for whom walking is seen as a form of rebellion, or deviant act she just will not tolerate.
S/He has substituted moral or righteous indignation with acting out behavior, violence, passive aggressive agitation, incessant complaining, or insufferable whining. Her entire vocabulary comes either at the promptings of her handlers or is punctuated by a tendency of self-pity and injured ego dramatics. The crescendo of her speech covers the spectrum of incessant complaining to insufferable whining extends easily to projection, stereotype, and personal prejudice. The world is always wrong for Harriet because of too many environmentalists, progressives, Turks, or Muslims living and working where She is used to whining about every other thing that captures her limited attention.
Of course, we cannot blame her for this. Harriet lacks any understanding of how her own consciousness is affected by propaganda and ideology. SHe lacks any understanding of the way language is crafted by others, of how technical jargons make many important facets of life interruptible into a cohesive matrix that might inform him in ecological, social, and/or mythical terms. Such is Harriet's predicament and social plight or interminable existential angst against which he is a victim of her own ignorance.
Off-topic lies and bs with nothing to prove it. I can't believe they allow this kind of slander. Please stick to the topic.
This may come as a surprise, but you do not decide what is/ or is off topic on this forum. Get over yourself.
Tell me, is this the part (from my post) that provoked your rage:
S/He has substituted moral or righteous indignation with acting out behavior, violence, passive aggressive agitation, incessant complaining, or insufferable whining. Her entire vocabulary comes either at the promptings of her handlers or is punctuated by a tendency of self-pity and injured ego dramatics. The crescendo of her speech covers the spectrum of incessant complaining to insufferable whining extends easily to projection, stereotype, and personal prejudice. The world is always wrong for Harriet because of too many environmentalists, progressives, Turks, or Muslims living and working where She is used to whining about every other thing that captures her limited attention.
Sioux has more integrity, maturity, and insight than your useless rambling non-sense since the first day you showed up on this forum. Given the level of your existential angst, I guess a few of us really hit a raw nerve - Jung called it the shadow; faced with the denuded truth and fantasy overturned, you strike back with an authoritarian thunder. (How many rants on this one topic?)
Attack me all you want to under as many sign on names that you can dream up. If you had any class whatsoever, you would get off Sioux's back. She did nothing to you.
Sioux Rose
ELOHIM: Thank you. I think the party in question is more interested in attack than understanding, and had I not had this EXACT experience with another (who I believe comes form the same paid source) a few months ago, I might be more patient or humorous about a storm of false accusations. While some may question the veracity of astrology, which is fine, I do not post exclusively on that topic. And furthermore, many in this forum know that I try to practice good manners and diplomacy while fashioning opinions on a variety of subjects. I appreciate your chivalry.
Nicely stated my friend. Keep the fires burning. I always had an interest in astrology but my plate is always full. Maybe in the next life-time.
Keep the flames burning? More flame wars in other words. Is this how you represent the party of peace? You give third parties a bad rap. Richard Nixon would be blushing watch the two of you imitating him.
It is your woundednees on display for all to see, not mine. At this point, you only look foolish. Take the last word and make it memorable, just like the other day.
Your wicked behavior never stops aflaming, does it? You and your associates brought this among yourselves while I shot down your bullying and hammered your lies and bs. I'm still standing independently and doing fine while you and your associates are falling apart like a house of cards.
I rest my case.
Archives don't lie. You only play nice to people who agree 100% with you or prop up hate Obama hate Democrats talk. You viciously attack others who disagree with you just like you did to Boyd Collins and Thomas More to name a few. Only your associates who have been with you would agree with you. Any independent thinker knows you post too much bias. You have no basis for your lies about who's a paid troll and who isn't. You invent false accusations without proving them and then when you're out of facts to back up your statements, you turn to using Mars and Mammon as your scapegoat. No sensible astrologer would do such a thing.
Sioux Rose
I have had MAJOR debates with INTELLIGENT persons on this site, and I welcome GENUINE discussions. You conflate my life work with black magic and play fast and loose with facts. That sort of character defamation is NOT discussion, nor are you worthy of respect in the least. You are a mosquito that buzzes around me, so I swat at you. I have sometimes agreed with Boyd Collins and Thomas More, given his knee jerk jingoism about militarism and his intolerance towards "illegal" aliens has indeed heard my STRONG responses.
I am VERY glad that most see you for what you are, whether a group of trolls or one loud, impossibly arrogant ignoramus. As stated more than once, I would just as soon NOT have ANY dialog whatsoever with you, but if you seek to damage my reputation based on nothing short of calumny, I will be forced to respond. You completely simplify--to the point of idiocy--what I have to say about the inherent sexism of patriarchal society. To you, it's the false matter of personal problems I may have had with men. If that's the case, then that's true of many millions of women.
You do NOT belong on this site, particularly when you spout opinions without facts to support them. You are only here to waste our time, and mine is a bit precious for this sort of nonsense. Please, go back under the rock you're obviously comfortable residing beneath. And if I was into black magic, I would put a spell on you that made your pecker ineffective, even with mega doses of Viagra. Think about that...
SR scribbles:
"I have had MAJOR debates with INTELLIGENT persons on this site, and I welcome GENUINE discussions. You conflate my life work with black magic and play fast and loose with facts. That sort of character defamation is NOT discussion, nor are you worthy of respect in the least. You are a mosquito that buzzes around me, so I swat at you. I have sometimes agreed with Boyd Collins and Thomas More, given his knee jerk jingoism about militarism and his intolerance towards "illegal" aliens has indeed heard my STRONG responses."
Yeah right. Only when they agree with you.
"I am VERY glad that most see you for what you are, whether a group of trolls or one loud, impossibly arrogant ignoramus. As stated more than once, I would just as soon NOT have ANY dialog whatsoever with you, but if you seek to damage my reputation based on nothing short of calumny, I will be forced to respond. You completely simplify--to the point of idiocy--what I have to say about the inherent sexism of patriarchal society. To you, it's the false matter of personal problems I may have had with men. If that's the case, then that's true of many millions of women."
More personal hate, bs, and lying.
"You do NOT belong on this site, particularly when you spout opinions without facts to support them. You are only here to waste our time, and mine is a bit precious for this sort of nonsense. Please, go back under the rock you're obviously comfortable residing beneath. And if I was into black magic, I would put a spell on you that made your pecker ineffective, even with mega doses of Viagra. Think about that..."
You're the divisive one who doesn't belong here. You think you can bully on this forum with your astro bs, don't you? You drive everyone but your associates off this site. If a dictator needed a partner, you'd be his perfect lifetime partner. HA !