“Climate crisis” framing of the world is already “denialism” on steroids because, whether intentionally or inadvertently, it inevitably reduces the ecological crisis – and with it, the “metacrisis” about which philosophers like Iain McGilchrist (eg, see:
By the way, with all that said, there are of course no pat answers. Our most probable response to any emergency situation is usually to go on a war footing. But what if the whole problem in the first place largely comes down to the fact that we've been operating an economy and a society on essentially a war footing to begin with?
In a war, you have no time to waste on messy democratic niceties. You need to concentrate power in a chain of command and get things done quickly. And sometimes that really is true. But when you have already built a whole society around that central operating principle, then the only guaranteed result is that the weak are crushed, and the powerful are made even richer and more powerful.
The bottom line is, we will "handle" the climate and other crises one way or another, whether proactively or reactively. The only real question is, will we build a humane society in their wake, or just expand and intensify the already prevailing dystopian nightmare?
You are seeing an awful lot of “NO’s” that I don’t disagree with but is there anything positive that you are saying? Is there something that you are building on or is it all critique?
"Extinction Rebellion", the grassroots climate group, addresses the core of the issue in the third plank of their four point program. (https://extinctionrebellion.us/demands ) And concrete proposals for advancing that plank are elaborated in great detail by, among others, the late Chilean sociologist Marta Harnecker, especially in her book, "Planning from Below". (https://www.amazon.com/Planning-Below-Decentralized-Participatory-Proposal/dp/1583677550 ) Additional complementary proposals have been advanced for decades in the forms "codetermination" comparable to programs already adopted by some countries, such as Germany, and for which Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced legislation in the US Senate, or the "first right of refusal" legislation for democratizing a green economy via guaranteeing the right of workers to take control of their own workplaces when their bosses and owners are deciding to sell or close up shop, as proposed by, among others, former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, current US Senator Bernie Sanders, and also as long ago as the 1970s by the Swedish Social Democrats.
That is an extremely generous and competent reply. It sounds like it could be the syllabus for a course. Would you be willing to distill it into something that is a little bit more intimate and personal to yourself?
It's the principle that prioritizes initiatives that democratize and devolve power and control over economy and society to the those most immediately impacted by the decisions in the areas in question, which are, as a rule, preferable to concentrating them. And that our problems are not "hardware" but "software" defects (ie, ideological and organizational stumbling blocks, as opposed to shortages of certain rare earth metals, or inadequate battery storage, or a welter of other techno distractions).
By the way, with all that said, there are of course no pat answers. Our most probable response to any emergency situation is usually to go on a war footing. But what if the whole problem in the first place largely comes down to the fact that we've been operating an economy and a society on essentially a war footing to begin with?
In a war, you have no time to waste on messy democratic niceties. You need to concentrate power in a chain of command and get things done quickly. And sometimes that really is true. But when you have already built a whole society around that central operating principle, then the only guaranteed result is that the weak are crushed, and the powerful are made even richer and more powerful.
The bottom line is, we will "handle" the climate and other crises one way or another, whether proactively or reactively. The only real question is, will we build a humane society in their wake, or just expand and intensify the already prevailing dystopian nightmare?
You are seeing an awful lot of “NO’s” that I don’t disagree with but is there anything positive that you are saying? Is there something that you are building on or is it all critique?
"Extinction Rebellion", the grassroots climate group, addresses the core of the issue in the third plank of their four point program. (https://extinctionrebellion.us/demands ) And concrete proposals for advancing that plank are elaborated in great detail by, among others, the late Chilean sociologist Marta Harnecker, especially in her book, "Planning from Below". (https://www.amazon.com/Planning-Below-Decentralized-Participatory-Proposal/dp/1583677550 ) Additional complementary proposals have been advanced for decades in the forms "codetermination" comparable to programs already adopted by some countries, such as Germany, and for which Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced legislation in the US Senate, or the "first right of refusal" legislation for democratizing a green economy via guaranteeing the right of workers to take control of their own workplaces when their bosses and owners are deciding to sell or close up shop, as proposed by, among others, former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, current US Senator Bernie Sanders, and also as long ago as the 1970s by the Swedish Social Democrats.
That is an extremely generous and competent reply. It sounds like it could be the syllabus for a course. Would you be willing to distill it into something that is a little bit more intimate and personal to yourself?
It's the principle that prioritizes initiatives that democratize and devolve power and control over economy and society to the those most immediately impacted by the decisions in the areas in question, which are, as a rule, preferable to concentrating them. And that our problems are not "hardware" but "software" defects (ie, ideological and organizational stumbling blocks, as opposed to shortages of certain rare earth metals, or inadequate battery storage, or a welter of other techno distractions).