Adam - I'm a green socialist, and I guess a former Christian socialist, sort of - we're supposed to believe in internationalism plus egalitarianism. But I think there are limits on how far this kind of thinking can be extended, how much it will really motivate people to "do the right thing" regarding climate, world poverty, or anything else. I do think that as a practical matter, many not so altruistic people are beginning to think that global cooperation on issues like climate change is necessary -- and that to the extent that climate change is necessary, some moderate commitment to greater egalitarianism is needed to allow the cooperation to happen. But how is the cooperation to be organized? The "one world socialist" approach that the AGW Deniers accuse Greens like me of wanting to establish seems to me to be highly idealistic and impractical -- not to mention potentially tyranical, of course, which is what the AGW Deniers fear or claim to fear. Can we pursue a more federated approach, a more "republican" approach to global cooperation, maybe? An approach in which people organize themselves in smaller governmental or non-governmental units in which individuals feel they have at least some chance of influencing policy? And then these smaller units organize themselves into medium size units -- maybe nation states, maybe not -- and then the nation states cooperate to support some global federation like the United Nations?
Because without this kind of approach, I think many individuals and indeed many sizeable groups of people are likely to feel alienated from & oppressed by whatever structure of global cooperation is established -- or even proposed. Also, I think as an American cynic, and as an ex-Calvinist of sorts, that we need to be prepared for the inevitability of individual human rascality, anti-social behavior, and mindless rebellion at every level of our "cooperative" society. "Socialism will not cure warts," a cynical V.I. Lenin is supposed to have written about some particularly utopian vision of the Russian left -- the warts here are not important, but Lenin's larger point seems to me to be saying look, we aren't going to miraculously transform human nature whatever we do; we aren't ever going to establish paradise on earth; let's be realistic about this business of massive social change. And from the little I've read of the philospher GWF Hegel [whom as a would-be Marxist I feel compelled to read at times], I get the same idea. Hegel's famous "dialectical" approach to history, as explained in his rather dense but evocative book "Phenomenology of the Spirit," holds that the ultimate basis for all intellecutal and spiritual change in the world is "negativity" -- human contrariness and self-centeredness. It is "negativity" that first leads the human self to distinguish itself from the "Infinite" [=God], Hegel suggests, and in fact this is the first step that the self takes AS self -- kind of a "terrible twos" concept of how individuality first develops, through the nascent self saying "no" to some authority figure. It then also is "negativity" in a more philosophical sense that inspires all the twists and turns of dialectical development in Hegel's system -- leading to one political or philosophical outlook on life replacing another, and to science ultimately replacing a religious outlook on the world, until at the very end of history, the World Spirit kind of magically incorporates all of the different contradictions in itself, and through the "negation of the negation," an ego-driven, negative, "selfish" approach to developing philosophy & science & everything else is ultimately incorporated into a "positive" approach to all thought, which reconciles everything. But even at the end of history, Hegel seems to me to be saying, there will be some pockets of consciousness -- some individual brains or peculiar philosophies, perhaps -- that will continue to hold to one or more of the earlier, cruder approaches to "truth" that the World Spirit has now superseded. What this suggests to me is that even if we ever get to the point of establishing a more or less egalitarian, more or less cooperative world order, there still will be fair numbers of groups and individuals who will continue to rebel against it -- kind of the way that Satan rebels against God in Milton's poem, I guess, and pretty much the way that Hegel sees the "self" at the dawn of intellectual and spiritual history rebelling against the World Spirit. To be themselves, or maybe to become themselves, I think some people would reject Heaven on Earth, if we ever somehow established it. They will rebel against parents who love them, against governments that may or may not mean them well, against environmentalists [or Christian clergy or Jewish rabbis or whoever] preaching virtue, against science professors preaching the importance of knowledge. They will rebel against common sense, I think - just to prove that they can, that they have "free will" and are not pathetic robots who are compelled to follow the truth just because it happens to be valid. How would a largely cooperative and largely egalitarian world society handle this kind of rebellion? I don't have a clue, but as a rather dilettantish Hegelian, I think it's inevitable that such rebellion will occur, and whatever we build in the way of better institutions & customs will need to find ways to handle it. AdamW <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I therefore think the nation state is the "problem", and the solution > is to make it increasingly irrelevant and to refocus our tribal > instincts. Really, at this time, it makes sense that the 200 odd > person tribal grouping we evolved in be expanded to humanity, we are > on a small planet in it together. > I've not much really to add to this post other than that I've often thought the same thing. I'd be interested to hear if anyone's got any convincing arguments why it can't happen. I realise it would take a long time, and it must be a difficult option, but has anyone spotted an easy one yet? My main thinking is though, that it could only work based on equality. The problem with the equality goal is, even if everyone's agreed on the destination, there's a fair amount of argument over the map, let alone the route. Cheers, Adam __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
