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Cash Of The Titans: Against The Noxious Fantasy Of Limitless Growth
The concept of endless economic growth, accepted as sacrosanct by both U.S. mainstream political parties, and internalized as the dominant mode of mind by the general population of the corporate/consumer state is mirrored in the exponential mathematics of a malignancy.
Cancer, if given voice, would proclaim itself to be a believer in "free market values"…devoted to the principle of endless growth…until, of course, it would silence its own voice by killing its host.
Likewise, all life seeks limits or prematurely dooms itself.
The same holds true with addiction to unlimited economic expansion…the craving for incessant ascension is, in fact, a doomed Icarusian flight.
In our time, politics as usual has failed to address the most pressing issues of the age: The manner by which neoliberal economic agendas exploit the masses in the service of a corrupt elite, and in so doing, decimating individual hopes and aspirations, as, all the while, the environmental dangers, endemic to the unchecked system, imperil the survival of humankind.
Although, alarmingly, both political parties continue to serve the status quo: Contemporary conservatives promote--in fact, seem to outright revel in--the litanies of a gospel of global-wide destruction (in the case of religious fundamentalists even going so far as to implore the forces of heaven, with fervid prayers, to expedite doomsday's date of arrival) by means of militarist aggression and environmental carnage--while squeamish liberals are devotees of the cliché-worshipping temple of incremental change.
From the right flank of this disastrous cosmology of convenience, Rick Santarium insists that a literal interpretation and societal application of "The Scriptures" i.e., an ad hoc collection of the laws, legends and beliefs of Middle Eastern, Bronze Age, hill country barbarians will remedy our national woes. Accordingly, what is one to make of this lovely bit of wisdom from Isaiah (13:9,15–18)?
"Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger . . . Every one that is found shall be thrust through . . . Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes . . . and their wives ravished. Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them. . . [T]hey shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children."
Lovely, huh? Surely, we've evolved past such barbaric sentiments. What kind of a blood-besotted people would accept such an abomination to the tenets of modern civilization and basic human decency?
Tragically, this is who: Both political parties of U.S. duopoly and their supporters, comprising a nation of people, who by large majorities support, for example, the Obama administration's policy of warfare waged by predator drone attack. Military actions that often result in an Old Testament-style "dashing to pieces" the bodies of children.
What does it matter now to the dead whether the reason given for perpetrating these monstrous acts are based on Santarium's psychotic concretization of religious lore or Obama's slick, national security state rationalizations?
As neocons press the pedal to the metal of the war machine, mainstream liberal apologists for the status quo, luxuriating upon the hurtling juggernaut, counsel us that any change in direction and velocity must be incremental, as they proffer other brain-dead, political clichés about the need for"civility" and "political realism" involving the criteria of sausage making.
First, clichés are zombies; they are dead to the novelty of the living moment, and they eat the brains of inspiration. They are worse than lazy thinking--they are putrefied thought. Worse, clichés will not die, because they are already dead. Burn them with fire…reduce them to ashes…let the ash mulch the soil where future inspiration will grow.
Second, an incremental approach is an utterly useless, if not delusional, response to the situation. The U.S., through the decades of the post-war era, has been moving with increasing rapidity towards becoming an outright national security/corporate authoritarian state. At this point, this much is evident regarding mainstream liberals who tout the virtues of "incremental change": they, from their comfortable perch of privilege, do so, because they harbor scant desire to alter the present order.
Still, mainstream liberals are baffled as to why people find them so unbearable, when, in their swoons of self-regard, they believe themselves to be oh-so reasonable sorts who selflessly wish everyone the best.
If you are an advocate of incrementalism, then you co-sign the present order--and the present order consists of corporate/military/police state dominance over almost every aspect of life in the U.S. In short, "reasonable", "well-meaning" liberals--you are complicit in crimes against human dignity when you bandy your incremental change fantasies.
This is what your reasonable, well-meaning, piecemeal approach is worth...Not a drop of blood of the innocent slaughtered in your predator drone-besotted president's wars of imperium whose blood-drenched deeds you co-sign with your casuistry. Your faux civil pose is worth about a handful of dust. Obama apologists you can keep making excuses for dear leader--although, it strains credulity as to how anyone with a working moral compass can continue to defend him, or any leader, who has proven himself to be a stalwart defender of the dominant order.
Regarding which, the defining trait of the financial and corporate elite, who lord over the present system has proven to be an all-consuming lust for riches that an individual could not spend in a thousand lifetimes. Their concept of what constitutes acts of trade and commerce is analogous to what pornography is to erotica. Accordingly, one would regard the greedheads of the one percent with the same compassion that one grants to a porn addict, if not for the fact that acts of autoeroticism are not responsible for climate chaos nor did the activity bring down the global economy.
In contrast, this ongoing, noxious, degrading circle jerk of the elite did.
And this brings us to what is at the root of the current siege mentality of the architects and operatives of the corporate/militarist state: Below the armament-bristling surface, and at the dark heart of the subterfuge of one percenters’ yawns this abysmal psychology: If an individual insists on existing in a fortified tower of the mind, the truths of his own heart, as well as those arriving from the soul of the world, will appear to him to be acts of sedition; the longings of his own heart for compassion will be misinterpreted as signs of weakness and emotionally displaced as a malignant, paranoid fantasy in which his own desire for resonate human contact will seem to be the attack of an invading army of rebels.
By reflex (mirrored outwardly in the modus operandi of the one percent against a rising, global chorus of political protest and social unrest) he will attempt to block out and silence the admonitions of his own besieged heart, doubling down on his paranoid actions, until the fortifications in and around himself (the mass psychology of a national security state) have grown to titanic proportions.
An inhuman system that has come to stand for little but the empty perpetuation of itself, according to the metaphoric lexicon of the ancient Greeks, is tantamount to approaching existence as a Titan--and they did not mean the metaphoric designation to be taken as laudatory: The Greek poets believed an evincing of titanic traits was an anathema to human life and an affront to the gods.
According to Homer, after returning from a long military campaign, the reluctant warrior, Hector, who upon seeing his young son, Astyanax, for the first time, in a misguided attempt to bestow a hug on his son, pressed the boy, with too much force, to his armored breastplate, causing the child to cry out in pain. Upon noticing his son's distress, Hector eased the pressure (an act of sensitivity; conversely, some father's never notice the agony they inflict on their sons in their wrong-headed attempts to show their love).
Then Hector held the boy skyward and offered him to Zeus. We should all be so lucky.
Zeus, after all, is the father of the gods; therefore, Hector granted his son the right to choose his own unique destiny; he was given free will.
In contrast, at present, the collective fathers of this culture have given us--and we now give our own children--to the Titans of the corporate/militarist state. Titans, who, as Titans are prone to do, eat their young.
According to Greek mythology, human beings could not exist on earth until Zeus banished and imprisoned his father, Cronus, a Titan, and the other Titans to the depths of Hades.
In human terms, we call this an uprising.
At present, daily life has become defined by the caprice of titanic forces (forces that devour our humanity). Fellow human beings, we are long overdue for this: The hour has arrived to demand an end to the destructive reign of these self-serving elites who have proven, time and time again, they care nothing about the suffering they bring to humanity nor the damage they inflict on this living planet.
In our time, when feedback loops of methane gas are melting arctic ice at an exponential rate, yet the powers that be continue their pursuit of ruthless agendas that perpetuate this death-worshiping trajectory, it is evident that politics as usual has failed.
Incremental change will not slow a runaway train. Awareness and action might. In our case, at this late date, if the corporate elite, who control the agendas of the state, are not challenged and brought to heel, and soon, then there is little else left for us to do, other than become hospice workers for our doomed species.
Even the notion of (much less the cultural imperative) of constant, endless growth causes one to feel diminished. Resultantly, the imagination seeks to fall in love with limits--a process we mislabel as depression, a form of repressed grieving that brings feelings of powerlessness, but when tweaked by an active participation in confronting malignant power can be transformed into a life-vivifying vehemence to bring meaning and structure to an overly complex system.
"All around us, the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped, or created."--Joseph Beuys
Conversely, personal devotion to a fear-bulwarked, habitually self-serving egoism, as opposed to embracing a soul-infused selfhood, creates a catastrophe of malignant greed--a disastrously narrow, resonance-bereft approach to consciousness that alone cannot carry the multiverse of the self into the world. Hence, a selfish man's relentless obsession to possess the bounty of our planet can never assuage his sense of insecurity and emptiness, not even if all the plundered riches of the ravaged earth were laid before him for his taking.
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82 Comments so far
Show AllHello Phil, and thanks for another article. I see you are appearing here on Common Dreams more frequently, and with increasing vehemence.
The 1972 "The Limits to Growth", by a group of five scientists at MIT still bears reading, as it was in essence entirely accurate in its predictions to date, and there are predictions yet to stand the test of time.
Forty years and the situation is as described by yourself.
There are many faces to mankind. Some are beautiful. Many are not.
What is clear is this: All the curves are now exponential, and collapse imminent.
One reading of history suggests that mankind will wait for proof - despite all the warnings.
The economy and the natural world, both in a race to the cliff, will, in their plummet over the edge, create the necessary condition for non-incremental change. I don't think anything else will.
Manysummits
=====
Agreed. This article wonderfully and poetically captures our impending collapse as a civilization, if this runaway train of neoliberalism is not stopped. It certainly appears to be "collapsing" as we speak from its many cracks, strains and tears.
Michael, I agree with your citation that mankind will wait for proof -- despite all the warnings...before seriously, collectively acting as one, to alter course. Those in the political and economic structure who carry the water for the corporate state, along with all the demented politicians here and abroad, are paid too well and provided lives too privileged and cushy to be motivated to change. They have all drunk the Kool-Aid of the "privilege track", which fuses in the brain a trans-cultural selfishness that only thinks about one's personal ambition and success in relation to that elite track. Once me and mine are taken care of, it's the universe, and the rest of the rabble living within it, be damned.
rgardener, Michel - Hear hear! Beautifully and lucidly stated!
rgardener98
I have this crazy hope that the half who do not vote, who have never bought in to this charade, will save the day.
But I'm not holding my breath.
======
It is Auto Addiction which is destroying the planet!!
"Transport Revolutions" ( http://transportrevolutions.info ) includes this amazing table of changes in Greenhouse Gas Emissions compiled from UN data:
Changes in GHG emissions 1990-2004:
All sources including LULUCF All sources except LULUCF Transport only
Canada 62% 27% 30%
EU15 -3% -1% 26%
Japan 5% 7% 20%
US 21% 16% 28%
LULUCF means "Land Use, Land Use Changes and Forests"
It is CARS and TRUCKS which are the major source of increased Greenhouse Gases!
Without increases in Greenhouse emissions due to increased cars and trucks Europe would have cut Greenhouse emissions!
Yet the HR-7 Transportation Bill proposed by Teabag Republicans and rammed through Committee by the House Republican Leadership totally cuts even Public Transit funding supported under Reagan!
Tell your Representative to oppose HR-7 and support the Nadler Amendment to
restore or increase Green Transit funding.
http://t4america.org/blog/2012/02/21/the-more-they-see-the-less-they-like-10-reasons-why-opposition-to-the-house-transportation-bill-is-growing/
An excellent 30-year update of the original "Limits to Growth" was published in 2004, by the way. It reconfirmed the "overshoot and collapse" scenario as being well underway, while also holding out some hope that concerted and rapid action might yet avert such a catastrophe. No way to know for sure, and the last eight years haven't been too promising on the surface. But there is clearly something vast and powerful moving and awakening in response to this system run amok, and I am not giving up hope, or the fight!
GentleBen1961
I think a paradigm shift in thinking and interacting with the natural world and each other is indeed in the works, as you surmise.
If so, it is a dead certainty that the vast majority will not come on board without proof positive that a complete re-organization of society is called for, and not only called for, but it is clear that no other alternative exists. Not reform, not a bringing back of the social safety net, etc...
Things will have to get a lot worse before this re-organization can even be contemplated.
I think things are going to get a whole lot worse - and soon. It feels that way. Predictions are best left to soothsayers, but I just can't get over the feeling that everything is coming to a head, pretty much right now.
The very few who write here on Common Dreams are accompanied by a larger group who read the articles but do not post, and do not read the comments.
But even including the widest range of viewers - I think we here on CD are an almost vanishingly small percentage of the population. But what we lack in numbers may be made up for in ways that are not yet clear. Dialogue is very human - almost defining.
While waiting for the final shoe to drop - we can converse - and imagine.
========
>>>> As neocons press the petal to the metal of the war machine...
I think these bastards are using more than flowers!
It's "pedal", not "petal", a common error. Spellcheck should really contain an alert when either one is used.
However, Rockstroh's material is so deserving of respect and emulation, so valuable, that the occasional stylistic bugs must be insignificant.
You may wish to open yourself to the possibility that Phil not only takes prosaic license but poetic as well. Did you notice the spelling of Santorum? Phil's spelling puts "little Ricky" closer to sanitarium than the WH, I hope.
Phil has really got his chops down, he has elevated the internet dialogue on CD!
That wasn't poetic licence, unless the 100 others who made the same error are also poets.
I already praised Phil's "chops" and I wasn't criticizing a minor error but dismissing it as unimportant, considering the value of his work. Did you miss that?
I love his work - I was gently chiding the commenter I responded to. Did you miss that?
You know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The word "petal" has been changed to "pedal" in the article since these comments were written, although I don't know who changed it. In any case, this is a rather trivial diversion from the point of the article.
Reminiscent of the time the girl put the flower in the soldier's rifle muzzle, back during the Kent State Massacre.
Deadly surrealism.
Agreed: "zombie clichés"!
"...laws, legends and beliefs of Middle Eastern, Bronze Age, hill country barbarians
Thanks for noticing that the imagery supplied by biblical material is harmful to our relationships with each other and with the living world.
Think of Pluto, who takes what he wants, steals all the wealth and buries it; think of Smaug, who hoards the buried treasure where no one can benefit, not even himself, and will burn down cities in order to keep it.
More people ought to study Jung and Campbell, and dump Nietsche as guiding principles.
I love reading Rockstroh's material; reminds me of T.S.Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Robert Graves, Leonard Cohen; and I always feel like my IQ just got pumped up a few notches from all the high-protein poetic nourishment.
"Likewise, all life seeks limits or prematurely dooms itself."
You're WRONG, Rockstroh. Forms of life donot limit themselves, just watch bacteria in a petri dish. They'll reproduce until every last drop of nutrient broth is eaten up. The growth of forms of life does not limit itself. Limits to popualtion growth are imposed on one form of life by other forms of life competing for the same nutrient pool.
Either get ecological analogies correct or find a different way to express your ideas, but don't impose some cognizant altruisms on biology that don't exist, just to make your point.
It makes you sound stupid, and your opinions worthless, to those who know better.
Better to repeat the tried and true analogy that we are acting exactly like bacteria in a petri dish, consuming without competition, untill all is turned to waste, and if we want to continue to consider ourselves intelligent and intrinsically different than single-cell organisms we better start acting like it.
Don't know if your comparing humans to bacteria is quite valid either. Populations of mammals regularly curtail reproduction when times are hard. We've observed birth rates falling throughout the world as the economic situation hits home. Besides that, women with access to birth control use it--months of pregnancy and the care of infants are not what they want. Humans may want more and more resources, but they understand at the biological level that unlimited population growth is not sustainable.
Besides that, most people are happy with relatively few resources. Greedy bastards keep taking and taking, but they don't represent all humans. Most people want the basics of shelter, food, healthcare, and a job, but they do not aspire to be Bill Gates. You should not take such a pessimistic view of our species.
Human birth rates being reduced in industrial societies have everything to do with prosperity. There is one sure way to reduce population growth: insure that people have enough to eat, have access to health care... in short, have a financially secure future. The high birth rates and large families in the poorest countries are about the high infant mortality rates and the social security the parents hope the children will provide them in their old age, and to serve as working assets (farm hands, etc.) for the family before then. While populations of mammals may curtail reproduction during "hard times", human mammals do just the opposite, except where children are a liability (as they are in industrial societies). I do not know who the "most people" are that you allege "are happy with relatively few resources", and I suspect most, contrary to your assertions, would be happier with greater resources, and that those who are poor but happy are happy IN SPITE of their limited resources, not because of them.
FRT: Amazing how you adroitly left out the birth control issue altogether... as if babies magically appear in alignment with financial cycles alone. If women have access to contraception, then they can control the birth rate. But if the fundamentalist Christians, along with the Catholic Church, have their way, birth control will also vanish...and woe unto women seeking to feed children in a world where so much of the harvest cycle will soon go to waste, the "fruit" of Monsanto poison the gene lines, and the oceans serve up toxic fish. What a world in which to bring on yet more of the multitudes.
As usual, Phil's breadth of vision impresses, inspires, and stretches minds to follow him along on the arc of his philosophical, often poetic trajectories.
No, babies do not appear magically, but neither is contraception only up to the women. Nor did I mention financial cycles, as poverty is not part of some financial cycle, but a structural, and thus artificial, condition of capitalism. Seems to me you are simply trying to pick a fight with such Straw Man arguments. It also seems to me that you infuse the Catholic Church and fundamentalist Christians with way too much power and influence, and the secular majority, in general, and men, in particular, with way too little... it is not just the women who seek to feed their children, and like it or not, ovaries by themselves do not produce children... it still takes two to tango (or not, as the case may be).
Finally, please own what you say. Phil's "breadth of vision" perhaps "impresses, inspires, and stretches" YOUR mind, but I would thank you to not presume to think for me, to know what impresses me, what inspires me or stretches my mind, or what I (or anyone other than yourself) might care to follow. Thanks.
Yeah, those deer are sure curtailing their reproduction now that we've destroyed their predators. Homeowners in rural NJ and PA and NY aren't calling them vermin as the poor critters denude the suburban rose bushes and still starve every winter
Do you have any background in ecology?
The reasons mammals, and all other species, "curtail their reproduction" in times of limited resources is because they are too malnourished or stressed to reproduce, not because some intelligent mechanism that understands population dynamics keeps the population in check. If such was the case, why aren't humans naturally curtailing their populations? In fact, it is the least able to support large families who are reproducing the most. So goes your theory. 7+ billion humans, most of whom don't have sufficient protein, sure is a testament to that theory. If the growth rate is slowing down it is most lilkely due not to naturally curtailed birthrates - as opposed to forced abortions or human economcs, but to an increased death rate - or are all those millions killed in the Middle East and Africa irrelevant to our population dynamics - from social and economic pressures, not some natural ability to limit reproductive urge.
if your theory was correct, the lowest birthrates would be in India and China and equatorial Africa rather than Scandanavia. The whole human population dynamic argues against your theory. China wouldn't need to force abortions on women and India wouldn't need to pay people not to have children. The US birth rate - high level of resources/capita, would be through the roof.
The fact is, whether viruses, bacteria or mammals, species with no population pressures increase their numbers until carrying-capacity is reached or exceeded and then there is a mass die-off due to lack of resources. The best you can hope for under such circumstances is a cycling of boom/bust populations that is nowhere near stable. Ask any systems ecologist.
The problem is not that we act too little like life in general, it is that we act too much like life in general - life IS greedy! - those deer would like nothing better than a world of nothing but deer and those rose bushes a world solely of roses, as unsustainable as it may be - and we should be able to, and must, do better. We are "blessed" with a scientific prescience that is only thwarted by the religious and biological fervor to breed. breed, breed - just like bacteria in a petri dish.
The problem with you folks, en masse, seems to be you adore the poets and deride the scientists. When the byline reads so and so is an ecologist, instead of so and so is a poet, will you be as quick to accept anything they say as accurate?
What can one expect when one of the most respected, and remarkably intelligent, commenters here can't post anything that doesn't involve Venus, Mars and the signs of the zodiac, and still expects, nay demands, to be taken seriously.
When will Common Dreams post an article a week by, say, James Hansen, or any ecologist, instead of psuedo-scientifc ramblings of philosophers who can't get a simple ecological analogy factually correct? It may make good rhetoric, but it definitely makes for an ignorable argument.
And the other piece of rhetorical bullshit, that you utter: realism is pessimsim. I never said we couldn't curtail our population or not act like mindless "biological units". I only stated that Rochstroh's assertion was categorically false. And if he was as knowledgeable and experienced in the SCIENCE of ecology as he'd like us to think, rather than the "romance of life" - he'd know that!
Futher, this has nothing to do with human greed or distribution of resources, or living with less. Or do you think bacteria in a petri dish are just greedy in the cognitive sense? Yeah, if they only evolved less greedy bacterium they'd all live happy, comfy lives in that petri dish for an infinite number of generations. If each bacterium just used infinitesimal resources, we can have an infinite number of bacteria in a finite space for eternity. After all, infinity/infinity is a constant right?
"Life limits itself." What utter nonsense. Life, as individual species, which we are speaking of here, does nothing of the sort. It, in fact, does exactly the opposite. Left to itself, any species will increase it's population until there's no resource base left. If there is ONE ecological truth, it's that! The chemical reaction that is life will use up all reactants until equilibrium is reached.
If we were to think of life as a set of cyclical chemical reactions occurring in a materially closed system - which it is, it would be obvious. All such chemical reactions tend toward equilibrium - not steady state. Equlibrium means when there are no energy or material gradients - i.e. DEATH. It is only a sufficienly diverse system, which checks indivdual populations, that seems to be anywhere near able to maintain itself away from equilibrium for the long-term. That is one of the primary questions in ecology today: what level of diversity is necessary to maintain a stable system of populations and how do changes in diversity - i.e. mass extinctions for example, alter the stability of ecosystems.
If we want to beleive we are different, better, unbeholden to the laws of ecology, we better start acting like it. Because all I see is a species, despite what it thinks of itself, mindlessly out-breeding its resource base, just like deer in Passaic County and streptococcus in a biology lab.
Sativirus: Poster boy for one who mistakes ideology for intelligence, as to your not exactly rhetorical questions aimed at population control, you managed to leave out the role religion plays in keeping birth control a taboo... and thus often out of reach. And where Christianity is not at work in furthering the population bomb in places like India, try considering the lack of birth control based on the cost/availability of such an item in a land of so many impoverished souls.
As is typical of right wing types (and/or libertarians), the fathers of their discourse the same fundamentalist preachers who cherry pick the data in support of their linear arguments, you, too miss about 80% of the dynamics at play.
I'm sure others will take you up on your poor arguments. I've got a day to catch.
Okay. We get your point. Maybe he should have said, 'we, all of mankind, needs to seek some (rational) limits or prematurely doom ourselves'.
But really, are you suggesting that you don't get the overall importance and meaning as stated in this article? To me, he doesn't sound stupid nor are his opinions worthless.
Your turning Rockstroh's entire message, a damned fucking good one, on its head because a single hair may be out of place seems, well, not quite balanced to me.
Exactly.
In fact, it is the critics here, who miss the point.
"Cancer...devoted to the principle of endless growth...until, of course, it would silence its own voice by killing its host."
Rockstroh points out that disease ends by killing its host if left unchecked. No petri dish lover could object to that. All very agar-vating!
"Likewise, all life seeks limits or prematurely dooms itself."
Here Rockstroh means that unless life respects limits, it dooms itself, and the greedsters are failing to see that. It would also be useful for some to learn how to read.
GARDENER: Your earlier post was right on and well-expressed. As for "Sativirus," his motive is to make Phil look bad. What some lump under the heading of "Leftist purists" is neither. There are plants in this forum (and others) here to specifically discredit visionaries, control the limits of thought, and berate anyone who's a threat to the status quo. It's done so often, under cover of anonymity, that many mistake free speech for planned and targeted smear campaigns, i.e. the progeny of hate speech. It is rare to find a thread that doesn't have at least one person assigned to this role, added to that of the chorus of climate change deniers, Monsanto defenders, Nuke power proponents, and endless apologists for Obama, and/or the deleterious status quo.
So we should ignore what people say and write in deference to what we assume they mean?
Oh, I get it now. Though, surely, I wish I didn't. because what I "get" is not what you think it is.
So were I to say something like "Humanity is independent of biology", you understand I really mean that we must live within our resource base, just like any other species.
And when I say "you're an asshole" you know it really means your a profoumd thinker whose opinions should be accepted as fact without proof.
In fact, no matter what anyone actually says or writes, it always means exactly what it is expected they mean.
Somewhere, I can't help thinking, the ghost of George Orwell is chuckling just a little.
And I'm more and nore convinced the progressives have come full circle and are now the same as reactionary regressives, since we all know what is meant, despite what is actually said.
So Rockstroh now need write nothing, just publish a byline on a blank page and we all just KNOW what he meant.
I didn't denigrate Rockstroh's message, I merely pointed out his rhetoric is at odds wth ecological fact. If his argument is based on that rhetorical construct HE denigrated his argument by using a false analogy. I just pointed it out. If Mr. Rockstroh's message is so perfect, perhaps he can tailor his analogies to match., lest the less sophisticated of us get the wrong idea.
I am glad you have the capacity to understand what people mean, depsite what they say.
There's an article today based on Santorum and his penchant for projecting intolerance onto the Left, while it's the right wing authoritarians most guilty of that behavior. This type of inversion is the intellectual commerce of right wing libertarians, and you qualify. You are the ONLY one trying to make Mr. Rockstroh look bad, and it's based on your attacking his use of a specific metaphor. You've gone on and on about that, while seeking to divert the thread away from more expansive topics of discussion.
You fit the designation of troll. And you are a liar. I am not going to feed a troll, or attempt to reason with someone who has such an aversion to telling the truth. There are many like you; and whether they're deluded true believers of rigid orthodoxies, or paid to dissemble, is difficult to say. In either case, they pollute the threads. And that's a pity. So pity party on without me, troll.
sativarius:
You know, when a writer and a reader share a mother tongue, and those two people really wants to understand one another, without one trying to trip up the other or preach or lord something over the other, it is not as difficult as you seem to have made it.
Since you mention George Orwell, do you really think he would waste his time chuckling over such minutiae that you've kicked up?....and if so, just maybe, he would be chuckling at your extremely energetic attempts to divert attention, done so tactically and strategically, from Mr. Rockstroh's overall purpose and meaning. AKA: much ado about nothing.
My feeling is, you understand Mr. Rockstroh just fine.
**********snork********
In fact, bacteria are the most adaptable creatures on earth and very early learned the advantages of cooperation (which has guided most of the evolutionary process, creating multi-celled complex organisms). About 2.5 billion years ago, what may have initially been predator bacteria developed a symbiotic relationship with their host cells and became the mitochondria which are the power supply for every animal cell, including human. Similarly, chloroplasts which convert light into energy for plants likely began as predator bacteria and evolved into symbiots (Lynn Margulis' endosymbiotic theory).
The human body consists of about 100 trillion cells, 90% of which are not human. Most are bacteria, without which we would quickly die. This undermines the myth of the "bad" bacteria and the germ theory of disease. Most bacteria, far from reproducing or growing endlessly and destroying their host, are either benign, helpful or necessary.
"Likewise, all life seeks limits or prematurely dooms itself."
The example of bacteria in a petri dish supports Rockstroh's point: that unless bacteria were to be able to cooperate, limit their rate of reproduction, and cease depleting resources faster than resources can be replenished, that bacteria are indeed (very much like humans), dooming themselves.
"petal to the metal"
Of course it's intentional-- artful, amusing, and (the elixir of poetry), ironic.
That is how I took it as well.
Bacteria and cockroaches will still be here on planet earth long after humans expire.
Bacteria and cockroaches will still be here on planet earth long after humans expire.
"'Likewise, all life seeks limits or prematurely dooms itself.'
You're WRONG, Rockstroh. Forms of life donot limit themselves, ..."
Do you know what the word "or" means? Others have already pointed out the logical errors in your postings on this thread.
Not only are your posts here logically flawed, they are steeped in hostility and sarcasm, all in response to an article that calls on us to be more compassionate and understanding. Do you really think that will win anyone over to your way of thinking? Or are you only concerned with showing that you're right, and others are wrong, even when your own reasoning is wobbly?
So, sativarius, just to make sure i understand your post, are you saying that life prematurely dooms itself if it fails to find limits?
Sativarius,
It is you, not Rokstroh, who appears "stupid, and your opinions worthless, to those who know better" (to use your own words).
The earth is not a petri dish in a laboratory. In natural ecosystems, new forms of life are initially competitive until a niche is established and then they mature into cooperative relationships with the other life forms in their environments, with the whole collective enterprise settling into a thermodynamically stable level in which growth is controlled, energy and material throughputs are limited, wastes are minimized, "leakage" out of the ecosystem is reduced, and biodiversity is maximized. This is called a mature ecosystem, in which the dominant operative principles are containment, self-limitation, optimum efficiency and maximum resilience.
Under stress, however, any species or ecosystem will devolve into an immature state in which competition, aggression and uncontained growth once more become dominant. Such is the case with humanity, which devolved from a mature hunter/gatherer species into an immature growth-oriented "civilized" calamity for the earth.
Once again, I am so very thankful for Phil Rockstroh's visionary words.
Any support of the corporate parties is the same as supporting the causes of a train wreck. All corporate candidates are stoking the engine of horrific crashes. The destination is being seen within the current treatment of the passengers.
We continue down the track of Lies, Injustice, Killings based on deceitful rumors, people thrown out of the train into deep canyons because they are accused of having too much weight and thus slowing the train, while the majority of people desperately keep offering up their futures to feed the engine.
All the while, we are repeatedly told there is no reason to look outside of the train, that we MUST look forward and that we who do look outside are fools.
Just because we have been born within the narrow confines of this future train wreck does not mean that there is not a wide world outside of it.
Stopping, or at least, significantly slowing the train (reducing our participation in its agenda) is our only hope of getting to a world beyond and of saving lives.
The author addresses a fundamental problem that is becoming obvious to some, but screams for popular attention; yet everyone treats it like the proverbial elephant in the room no one wants to talk about. Through a very long (from the days our ancestors lived in caves) held desire and practice of making our lives better, we have created a world where limitless consumption is the norm, and in spite of emphatic evidences, do not pay attention to the declining resources; the greedy and the super greedy devours resources, while the vast majority live in abject poverty, hunger, barely surviving. As a proof, look at this article: Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global, Trade-Linked Analysis by Edgar G. Hertwich and Glen P. Peters: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es803496a?prevSearch=Carbon%2BFootprint%2Bof%2BNations&searchHistoryKey= and compare the carbon foot print of nations, a solid indication of who is consuming how much resources. The dominant system of production depends on the uncritical culture of consumption and generates demand for endless consumption, because that is the only way it can make profit, i.e., stay in business. Southern third of Bangladesh will probably be under water within the next hundred years because of sea-level rise from global warming; surely, this cannot be attributed to the very low standard of living in this country, yet they will pay for some one else’s ‘pleasure’. The rational solution is to reduce consumption overall to fit availability of resources without causing irreversible damages to the environment. But that would require uneven distribution of resources for a period, i.e., less to those who over consume and more to those who need more to survive, that is, move towards some form of parity. That would be a genuinely sustainable system, not the phony sustainability global capitalists and their enablers such as the World Bank, IMF et al peddle when they want to seem ‘responsible’. Is this attainable? It is very hard to be optimistic.
Admitting our wars are for resources and not ideology is the first incremental step but even that is unlikely. Still, it only takes a tap in the correct place to cut a diamond.
With a revolution, a diamond cut with a hammer, we'll meet the new boss, same as the old boss. That is, until the planet shows us who's really the boss.
"Contemporary conservatives promote--in fact, seem to outright revel in--the litanies of a gospel of global-wide destruction"
And it is same gospels that give license to their rampant anti-nature attitudes, and their literal beliefs in and blind adherence to such things as virgin births(unlimited, unnatural reproduction) and the miracle of loaves(unlimited exploitation of limitless resources); both lies, as is the religion they both come from and the economic model, capitalism, which seem empowered by them.
Lanista: Is it possible you missed the part about the rising methane plumes and how this phenomena will alter the global warming situation by major orders of magnitude? Did you miss Ellen Brown's article on the way Greece's economy could upset the whole global house of cards? Sure, someone just printed money to pass over to Greece in the form of a bail-out, but has the FUNDAMENTAL problem of the endless graft and corruption that's created a parallel virtual economy, one into the trillions, ever been corrected through remedial regulation? No! So you have climate chaos's engine running increasingly hotter, along with that of an inevitable implosion of the monetary system. And I didn't even get to the deluded warriors (and their trained followers) courting a Middle Eastern Armageddon.
The point is, apocalypic style events ARE very likely. And none of these are God's will. They represent the end points of grostesque human folly, much of it inculcated into the masses through religions of deceit and political systems of equal malevolence.
The next decade is critical. And decisions NOT made now, consign billions to a likely hell on earth.
Siouxrose:
Excellent points all along this thread. Thank you for the comments you directed at me earlier.
Great comments, concise and to the point,thanks
Are you actually suggesting, that Christans are set to avenge the absurdities of their so-called religion of love, with violence and destruction?. Lol, nothing new there, that's what they've always done!.
Oh, and by the way, I'm sure Santorium hasn't a clue about what stewardship even means, because if he did, he'd be against it. For one thing, its a principled effort, if not a philosophical way of life, to actually improve the quality of soil and water and ultimately the product it bares, for the good life of people and the environment. Yet, good, healthy natural food and clean unpolluted water are trivial when compared to the coveted reward of a heavenly afterlife, right?.
Just as soldiers are (mostly) unknowing enablers of the MIC and could be very effective in battling it by just saying no...so too are many scientists and engineers enablers of our rampant consumerism. I'm as pro-science as they come, but I'm really starting to notice an arrogance in many scientists. Fracking is a good example. If more scientists just said No to be enablers of endless greed maybe the situation would change.
We live on a relatively small planet, a bit less than 8000 miles in diameter. But that is only a small part of the story. Of that 8000 miles we are currently only capable of taping resources like oil to a depth of less than 10 miles. The breathable atmosphere is even thiner, occupying around 4 or 5 miles.
As an analogy we are like microbes living on an apple, that can only use the skin of the apple, and a film of dew as our only food resources, and on those razor thin resources we think we can have infinite growth.
People go to school, and spend a lot of money to "learn" the "fact" of infinite growth on a finite planet. P.T. Barnum was right, a sucker really is born every minute.
I'm right there with 'ya, Phil! And yet I also find myself rooting for Obama despite his utter failure to call for the paradigm shifts that we both know are urgently needed.
In 2000, I bought into the notion that there wasn't much difference between the two parties (although even so I wouldn't have voted for Nader if I lived in a "swing state"). Looking back though, it's pretty clear that eight years of Gore would have left us with a very different legacy.
No war in Iraq, for sure. And who knows? He might even have taken 9/11 as an opportunity to move the planet off of fossil fuels, assuming he didn't manage to prevent it by heeding the many warnings being issued!
So... this year I will once again root for the Dem, who represents--to quote Swami Beyondananda-- "the lesser of two weasels." Meanwhile, I will also devote most of my energies to supporting the call for a true Paradigm Shift.
Your first claim is directly contradicted by the remainder of what you wrote.
The most appropriate response to your post is already contained in Mr. Rockstroh's article: "it strains credulity as to how anyone with a working moral compass can continue to defend [Obama], or any leader, who has proven himself to be a stalwart defender of the dominant order."
But he had already answered his own question earlier in the article in writing that "they, from their comfortable perch of privilege, do so, because they harbor scant desire to alter the present order."
But you see, John, I DO wish to alter the present order. I've given lectures on the Limits to Growth and the folly of "GDP" as a measurement of anything useful. I speak constantly about the paradigm shift that is desperately needed (and that, as "Eye" commented a few hours ago, is already well underway), and do my best to be a part of that Shift in many ways.
AND, I still care about whether or not Obama gets reelected. That's not the same as "defending" him, when it comes to escalating the war in Afghanistan, failing to reign in Wall Street, signing away our rights in NDAA, becoming part of the problem when it comes to the corrosive influence of money in politics, etc. etc. But I DO think there is a clear difference between our two major parties. I'm guessing I'm not alone in that.