There's a lot in your words, Suzanne, and we have much to overcome. The social and spiritual growth we need could come from the simple recognition the Earth is everything to us, and she needs to be cared for. That includes all of its plants and creatures that work in a harmony only achieved by the wisdom of slow change over millennia. Our common need for a healthy planet could be the commonality to overcome the divisions of people kill over. The planet and her organisms can be thought of as a body, and just as we have chosen to put toxic substances into our bodies and minds, we have polluted and made her toxic as well. It's a true measure of our insanity, absolute, irrefutable physical evidence of madness, this dubious achievement. There is little time to pull back from the brink with numerous planetary boundaries exceeded and certain tipping points at hand, or possibly exceeded as well.
Rallying over the physical emergency on our planet must be our starting point. It's only through oil, we have become so overpopulated and created mindless consumerism and the devil of capitalism at such a toxic level. Oil will become economically unviable to extract at some point in the next few decades. We are now down to fracking wells. At that point, the energy expended will exceed what can be gained. When that happens, it's game over for fossil fuels.
On one hand, we must stop burning oil as it threatens life on this planet, but on the other it's what makes the world run. We're challenged with a massive economic transition or, worse, threatened with complete collapse. Droughts, floods and fires are taking lives as I write as a result of global warming, and climate change will wreak havoc on agriculture. We have an immediate existential crisis underway that we must solve if we are going to learn to live on a deeper, meaningful level. Our frightening crisis contains the seeds of achieving this goal because it demands cooperation like never before, and something humans have never done, seeking less looking as the solution, rather than exploiting more, barring a breakthrough in fusion or a massive build out of nuclear energy, both of which would delay treating our behavioral problems.
Harris-Walz looks to be a winning ticket. The type of thoughts we express here must be powerfully communicated to them, and they must put their political necks on the line with a broad understanding and vision of creating a just, post capitalism world. There are road blocks in place from the heinous Supreme Court overturning of the Chevron doctrine, and there will be massive push back against these ideas, but mere policy won't get us there. We must be prepared to march and fight. We've seen the police state on our college campuses over the genocide of Palestinians. This is an undeniable indicator of what we're up against. The tenets of degrowth are an excellent starting point. A better future won't be won with words and pacifism alone.
You are so knowledgeable and so cogent describing the precipice we are on. I'll re-post the comment I've already made on the masterful piece of yours that you've linked to:
"I wasn't tuned into you when you wrote your magnum opus you've linked to on how it is and how it could be. I am so glad we are paying attention to each other now.
"Reading along, nodding my head at how intelligent your appraisal is, I also was shaking my head at the resistance to all those points you make that plain and simple are the difference between humanity thriving and maybe even surviving to how we are barreling ahead to an apocalypse. Here's where we need to join forces, where I echo what you say and also come in to augment you.
"How to redo everything? As you have the case for a different way to operate, I have it for a different way to think. As the rugged individualists we essentially still are, everyone is out for personal gain and we get what we've got. As sacred creatures living in a sacred universe, we would operate from a mutuality where we would do what's best for everyone.
"You know, it's as simple as that, and it's the reasoning behind what I write on my Substack about how humanity needs a new idea about itself.
Think more inclusively. This is not just about the USA. Structures of domination in the form of hierarchical governance and institutions, imperial mindsets and control of planetary resources in the hands of seven or eight male topped corporations, is unsustainable. And, to use Riane Eisler's phrase, they are all "trauma factories", producing endless cycles of reenactment and self destruction. Systemic change needs to be planet wide.
It is unlikely to start in an country corporately controlled with a mission for the rest of the world, i.e. enforcing its version of democracy on others... no matter how inspired its somewhat undemocratically elected leaders... ?the electoral college? ... are.
Wisdom Circles/Councils in every place are a more promising possibility of seeding change from the ground up.
Yes, it's the world needs to get it. When I put things out like the Wisdom Council idea, I sometimes do it in the name of the world, suggesting participants like Greta Thunberg and Jane Goodall, but daunting as it is to conceptualize such goings on in the US it's even more so where I don't know as much about how things are run.
It's strange to me that no champions have stepped up to organize such a thing. That Twilight Club I mentioned, in addition to Andrew Carnegie, members included Mark Twain, Herbert Spencer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Edwin Markham, Oliver Wendell Homes, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Darwin, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Russell, Louis Tiffany, John Dewey, Adolph Ochs, Thomas J. Watson, and more of leading intellectuals and industrialists throughout the whole last century, and the enterprise was dedicated to doing good things for the world. That virtually no one knows it even existed let along that there's no impetus to do anything like this is a puzzling situation that I'd like to do something about.
Thanks Suzanne, for this thorough and thoughtful list! I’m enthusiastic about the bulk of it. (I’m trying to remain hopeful about some meaningful changes in direction under a Harris administration.)
One of the early 20th Century physicists remarked that “Scientific theory advances, one funeral at a time”. I suspect it’s similar for political philosophy. All of our change efforts are good and necessary, but to a large degree, we may just have to wait for the Old Guard to die off. Fortunately that seems to be underway.
Regarding an ultimate vision, I recently ran across the following quote from French philosopher Henri Bergson, excerpted from his last book “The Two Sources of Morality and Religion”:
“Joy indeed would be that simplicity of life diffused throughout the world by an ever-spreading mystic intuition; joy, too, that which would automatically follow a vision of the life beyond [physical death] attained through the furtherance of scientific experiment. . . . But, whether we go bail for small measure or great, a decision is imperative. Mankind lies groaning, half crushed beneath the weight of its own progress. Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort requiring for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.”
"...the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.” That's great. And I'm on it!
But I'm not big on waiting for future generations. Here's a comment I didn't include in the post:
"Good wars. Rules of War. Departments of War. They all enrage me. A human being is entitled to a life. It’s basic. To die for your country or for the spirit of democracy or for future generations is a monstrous ideal. To send troops to die for honor, that’s not getting condoned on my watch. I’m not generous about sacrificing my life for principles. What an aberration that is.
"We need to be here to help each other. Period. To stop running on hatred and start running on love. This is a planetary choice to be making. It goes with eliminating billionaires and making it a fair world, where opportunity is there for the talented. That requires fundamental good will. People wanting the best for everyone. Give Nobel Prizes for generosity. Dump those billions on the world’s table and get our heads on straight to gentle the world."
The system we live under that's causing us so much grief isn't a force of nature. People created it and people can transform it.
I'm trying to help people visualize what a healed world would be like, so they can see something to strive for.
Also, there's a lot going on in the rest of the world. A lot of people are working hard to bring about a just, caring and peaceful global culture, where all countries' sovereignty is respected.
"We live inside a giant idea" always rings in my head from some sage awhile back. The will to change the system is the challenge. We've been wising up for a long time and there are products of new thinking all over, but what would encourage the massive leap we need to get us into a new system?
I wish I knew, Suzanne. But some things that are giving me hope are the actions of the global majority, the invigorated labour movement and the BDS movement. I recently read that fully 1/3 of the global population is boycotting Israel.
I appreciate the sentience... there are so many better ways to expend our energies. It remains. We let Nixon slide and got Reagan. We let Reagan slide and got Bush. We let Bush slide and got Trump. If we let Trump slide? It just seems to get worse and worse if we do the math. It looks like we're going to have to throw some sand down for the orange manure blivit and expend some prosecutor's energies. We are not served sliding Trump. Dead stop! Prison! Prison for Trump or next time we get worse than Trump! That's the math and the history?
With worse than Trump being inconceivable, maybe it's the wall we've hit so that a big shift is immanent. I didn't include this comment in my compilation, about the cyclical reality of the "Hegelian dialectic, with the THESIS of how it is, the ANTITHESIS of ways it doesn’t work, that gets so bad there's a SYNTHESIS that is the big shift to a new thesis that incorporates the unworkable issues into a new workability." Could the big shift be in sight?
There's a lot in your words, Suzanne, and we have much to overcome. The social and spiritual growth we need could come from the simple recognition the Earth is everything to us, and she needs to be cared for. That includes all of its plants and creatures that work in a harmony only achieved by the wisdom of slow change over millennia. Our common need for a healthy planet could be the commonality to overcome the divisions of people kill over. The planet and her organisms can be thought of as a body, and just as we have chosen to put toxic substances into our bodies and minds, we have polluted and made her toxic as well. It's a true measure of our insanity, absolute, irrefutable physical evidence of madness, this dubious achievement. There is little time to pull back from the brink with numerous planetary boundaries exceeded and certain tipping points at hand, or possibly exceeded as well.
Rallying over the physical emergency on our planet must be our starting point. It's only through oil, we have become so overpopulated and created mindless consumerism and the devil of capitalism at such a toxic level. Oil will become economically unviable to extract at some point in the next few decades. We are now down to fracking wells. At that point, the energy expended will exceed what can be gained. When that happens, it's game over for fossil fuels.
On one hand, we must stop burning oil as it threatens life on this planet, but on the other it's what makes the world run. We're challenged with a massive economic transition or, worse, threatened with complete collapse. Droughts, floods and fires are taking lives as I write as a result of global warming, and climate change will wreak havoc on agriculture. We have an immediate existential crisis underway that we must solve if we are going to learn to live on a deeper, meaningful level. Our frightening crisis contains the seeds of achieving this goal because it demands cooperation like never before, and something humans have never done, seeking less looking as the solution, rather than exploiting more, barring a breakthrough in fusion or a massive build out of nuclear energy, both of which would delay treating our behavioral problems.
Harris-Walz looks to be a winning ticket. The type of thoughts we express here must be powerfully communicated to them, and they must put their political necks on the line with a broad understanding and vision of creating a just, post capitalism world. There are road blocks in place from the heinous Supreme Court overturning of the Chevron doctrine, and there will be massive push back against these ideas, but mere policy won't get us there. We must be prepared to march and fight. We've seen the police state on our college campuses over the genocide of Palestinians. This is an undeniable indicator of what we're up against. The tenets of degrowth are an excellent starting point. A better future won't be won with words and pacifism alone.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/degrowth-the-vision-we-must-demand
You are so knowledgeable and so cogent describing the precipice we are on. I'll re-post the comment I've already made on the masterful piece of yours that you've linked to:
"I wasn't tuned into you when you wrote your magnum opus you've linked to on how it is and how it could be. I am so glad we are paying attention to each other now.
"Reading along, nodding my head at how intelligent your appraisal is, I also was shaking my head at the resistance to all those points you make that plain and simple are the difference between humanity thriving and maybe even surviving to how we are barreling ahead to an apocalypse. Here's where we need to join forces, where I echo what you say and also come in to augment you.
"How to redo everything? As you have the case for a different way to operate, I have it for a different way to think. As the rugged individualists we essentially still are, everyone is out for personal gain and we get what we've got. As sacred creatures living in a sacred universe, we would operate from a mutuality where we would do what's best for everyone.
"You know, it's as simple as that, and it's the reasoning behind what I write on my Substack about how humanity needs a new idea about itself.
"Pausing here for now..."
Think more inclusively. This is not just about the USA. Structures of domination in the form of hierarchical governance and institutions, imperial mindsets and control of planetary resources in the hands of seven or eight male topped corporations, is unsustainable. And, to use Riane Eisler's phrase, they are all "trauma factories", producing endless cycles of reenactment and self destruction. Systemic change needs to be planet wide.
It is unlikely to start in an country corporately controlled with a mission for the rest of the world, i.e. enforcing its version of democracy on others... no matter how inspired its somewhat undemocratically elected leaders... ?the electoral college? ... are.
Wisdom Circles/Councils in every place are a more promising possibility of seeding change from the ground up.
Yes, it's the world needs to get it. When I put things out like the Wisdom Council idea, I sometimes do it in the name of the world, suggesting participants like Greta Thunberg and Jane Goodall, but daunting as it is to conceptualize such goings on in the US it's even more so where I don't know as much about how things are run.
It's strange to me that no champions have stepped up to organize such a thing. That Twilight Club I mentioned, in addition to Andrew Carnegie, members included Mark Twain, Herbert Spencer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Edwin Markham, Oliver Wendell Homes, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Darwin, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Russell, Louis Tiffany, John Dewey, Adolph Ochs, Thomas J. Watson, and more of leading intellectuals and industrialists throughout the whole last century, and the enterprise was dedicated to doing good things for the world. That virtually no one knows it even existed let along that there's no impetus to do anything like this is a puzzling situation that I'd like to do something about.
Thanks Suzanne, for this thorough and thoughtful list! I’m enthusiastic about the bulk of it. (I’m trying to remain hopeful about some meaningful changes in direction under a Harris administration.)
One of the early 20th Century physicists remarked that “Scientific theory advances, one funeral at a time”. I suspect it’s similar for political philosophy. All of our change efforts are good and necessary, but to a large degree, we may just have to wait for the Old Guard to die off. Fortunately that seems to be underway.
Regarding an ultimate vision, I recently ran across the following quote from French philosopher Henri Bergson, excerpted from his last book “The Two Sources of Morality and Religion”:
“Joy indeed would be that simplicity of life diffused throughout the world by an ever-spreading mystic intuition; joy, too, that which would automatically follow a vision of the life beyond [physical death] attained through the furtherance of scientific experiment. . . . But, whether we go bail for small measure or great, a decision is imperative. Mankind lies groaning, half crushed beneath the weight of its own progress. Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort requiring for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.”
Now, THERE is something to try to live up to!
"...the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.” That's great. And I'm on it!
But I'm not big on waiting for future generations. Here's a comment I didn't include in the post:
"Good wars. Rules of War. Departments of War. They all enrage me. A human being is entitled to a life. It’s basic. To die for your country or for the spirit of democracy or for future generations is a monstrous ideal. To send troops to die for honor, that’s not getting condoned on my watch. I’m not generous about sacrificing my life for principles. What an aberration that is.
"We need to be here to help each other. Period. To stop running on hatred and start running on love. This is a planetary choice to be making. It goes with eliminating billionaires and making it a fair world, where opportunity is there for the talented. That requires fundamental good will. People wanting the best for everyone. Give Nobel Prizes for generosity. Dump those billions on the world’s table and get our heads on straight to gentle the world."
The system we live under that's causing us so much grief isn't a force of nature. People created it and people can transform it.
I'm trying to help people visualize what a healed world would be like, so they can see something to strive for.
Also, there's a lot going on in the rest of the world. A lot of people are working hard to bring about a just, caring and peaceful global culture, where all countries' sovereignty is respected.
"We live inside a giant idea" always rings in my head from some sage awhile back. The will to change the system is the challenge. We've been wising up for a long time and there are products of new thinking all over, but what would encourage the massive leap we need to get us into a new system?
I wish I knew, Suzanne. But some things that are giving me hope are the actions of the global majority, the invigorated labour movement and the BDS movement. I recently read that fully 1/3 of the global population is boycotting Israel.
I appreciate the sentience... there are so many better ways to expend our energies. It remains. We let Nixon slide and got Reagan. We let Reagan slide and got Bush. We let Bush slide and got Trump. If we let Trump slide? It just seems to get worse and worse if we do the math. It looks like we're going to have to throw some sand down for the orange manure blivit and expend some prosecutor's energies. We are not served sliding Trump. Dead stop! Prison! Prison for Trump or next time we get worse than Trump! That's the math and the history?
With worse than Trump being inconceivable, maybe it's the wall we've hit so that a big shift is immanent. I didn't include this comment in my compilation, about the cyclical reality of the "Hegelian dialectic, with the THESIS of how it is, the ANTITHESIS of ways it doesn’t work, that gets so bad there's a SYNTHESIS that is the big shift to a new thesis that incorporates the unworkable issues into a new workability." Could the big shift be in sight?
We can only provide support for that... and hope. Oh... and think about it. There's plenty worse than Trump, eh?