Yves wrote:
> My comment: agreed, but how do you formulate the "fundamental problem"? We
> are trying to assemble forces to do that adequately on an educational site
> under cooperative construction, and i know for sure that it is not easy.
> But what is the good of replying in such a snappy way with generalities?
> (with all due respect, as this may not have been intended, but this is the
> way it was received)
Not intended to be snappy, just came out that way. I'd say that formulating
the fundamental problem is a collective effort and it is what we are doing
on lists like this, energyresources, your site and also many other places.
No-one has a monopoly of the truth but we do share common
starting-points even tho we still may not agree much about the destination.
I'd say that we must very strongly share the same general concerns, to be
talking at all, given wide different social and political backgrounds. This
is an unqualified good, surely. At this point, my amswer to
the question, 'what do we do now?' is I think it we need to do much more
concrete analysis, and I think we all agree on this. We have done some work
on energy issues and reached a kind of consensus about the scale of the
problem but are still not agreed as between various 'hard and soft landing'
scenarios. There is even less agreement on other issues such as population,
global warming etc. And there is no agreement at all on issues which lay
closer to the surface of history, by which I mean the world political order
and its general evolutionary direction. Some people here think the problem
is 'capitalism' and 'imperialism' and I am in that number. Others have a
practically opposite point of view. One of my goals is to move beyond empty
ideological posturing by trying to create a context of information, which is
why I post articles which I may disagree with but which contain impoprtant
information or relevant analysis (particularly on economic and political
issues). I could not do that, and simply make my own views known, I suppose,
but I don't think I would convince many. What I do believe is that one
thingn we have to do is (as Winston Churchill put it) 'trust the people'. I
think that real pessimists who believe dieoff is guaranteed because 'it's in
our genes' also 'trust the people' to behave as their genes dictate, and
thus *guarantee* global disaster. I do not agree with this, and you can call
me a hopeless optimist. I do not believe the 'tragedy of the commons' has
the universal message some people do. I believe that cooperation,
compassion and human solidarity are more powerful, more elemental forces
than blind egotism, and I also believe that people are not thick and if they
understand the problem, they do the right thing. The question is whether
there will be enough time to do anything (and I don't think that stuffing
one's backpack with dried food and heading for the hills counts as an
answer). There *may* be enough time to prevent a fatal combination of
risings and wars from finally doing us all in, but we need to energetically
mobilise people, inform them and make them aware of just how serious the
underlying problem is. Human society really is on the edge of a precipice.
> My comment: fine until now. However, when he continues with a prediction
> that we will then discover that "the 'weightless economy' was just a way
of
> closing down previously self-sufficient subsystems: families,
> communities,extra-market forms of social solidarity.", what good will it
be
> to anyone at the time,as it will probably be too late to reconstruct? It
> is true that for the most part, "we have forgotten *how* to survive except
> as small cogs in the big machine." But then what? Do we have to wait until
> the whole thing collapses, us included, to think of a possibility to do
> something practical about it? I(n other words, how can we get out of the
> market and short-term profit and power maximization dogmas before they
have
> destroyed the whole society and its ecological context?
>
Well, I agree we should prepare, and there are lots of different ways we can
do that and should do that. I need to inform myself of your project and it
would be good if you publicised it again on this list so others can check it
out if they want to (please give the url's etc again, Yves). We do need a
division of labour among ourselves. A lot of this is down to developing
trust. For instance, I just spent (wasted) a day going through the World
Bank's huge new report on global poverty. There's lots of data in there, and
I may try to summarise some relevant bits. I'd like to feel that no-one else
will feel obliged to do the same duty, once should be enough. Similarly, I
am not spending time checking down yours or Jay's or Julien's or whomever's
sources; I'm not gonna reread what they read, I'm gonna mostly take it on
trust because I trust these folks; we've been around each other long enough
to know something by now.
> I see nothing new in what Mark says and His vision is probably incomplete
> (so is mine and everybody's anyway). My questions remain: "We know that at
> current rate and in current system with current players playing by current
> "rules", this is it. Then, what? What do you propose to do? How? when?
> where? with whom? with what means? how directly? Where do you start?"
Carrol Cox keeps asking the same thing, but my answer is the same: we are
not Superman, we cannot change anything by acts of will, but we can inform
ourselves and share our discoveries with others, and we can try to create a
set of common assumptions and responses which will help navigate us thru
future crises. Other than that if one takes your list of questions
seriously, the answer has to be, you need to create a new movement or
political party or something. Is that what you are suggesting?
I'd join like a shot, but dunno how many others would - yet.
Mark
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