Can Civilization Survive Capitalism?

A piece by a favorite voice of mine, on two topics that are dear to me: Noam Chomsky Alternet, March 5, 2013

The term “capitalism” is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the “too-big-to-fail” government insurance policy for banks. The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book “Digital Disconnect.” “Capitalism” is a term now commonly used to describe systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain, or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often with conservative support — both are discussed in important work by the scholar Gar Alperovitz. Some might even use the term “capitalism” to refer to the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America’s leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Dewey called for workers to be “masters of their own industrial fate” and for all institutions to be brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.” The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority “down below” has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will. There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy — RECD for short — the question is effectively answered: They are radically incompatible. It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference? Let’s keep to the most critical immediate problem that civilization faces: environmental catastrophe. Policies and public attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap is examined in several articles in the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that “One hundred and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy.” It is not public opinion that drives American policy off the international spectrum. Quite the opposite. Opinion is much closer to the global norm than the U.S. government’s policies reflect, and much more supportive of actions needed to confront the likely environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific consensus — and one that’s not too far off; affecting the lives of our grandchildren, very likely. As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: “Huge majorities have favored steps by the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored requiring utilities, or encouraging them with tax breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. Also in that year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind or sunlight [ These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that. The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy. One current illustration of their concern is the “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act” proposed to state legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth. The ALEC Act mandates “balanced teaching” of climate science in K-12 classrooms. “Balanced teaching” is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to “balance” mainstream climate science. It is analogous to the “balanced teaching” advocated by creationists to enable the teaching of “creation science” in public schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already been introduced in several states. Of course, all of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching critical thinking — a fine idea, no doubt, but it’s easy to think up far better examples than an issue that threatens our survival and has been selected because of its importance in terms of corporate profits. Media reports commonly present a controversy between two sides on climate change. One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists, the world’s major national academies of science, the professional science journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They agree that global warming is taking place, that there is a substantial human component, that the situation is serious and perhaps dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might reach a tipping point where the process will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with severe social and economic effects. It is rare to find such consensus on complex scientific issues. The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected scientists who caution that much is unknown — which means that things might not be as bad as thought, or they might be worse. Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the IPCC’s regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately. The propaganda campaign has apparently had some effect on U.S. public opinion, which is more skeptical than the global norm. But the effect is not significant enough to satisfy the masters. That is presumably why sectors of the corporate world are launching their attack on the educational system, in an effort to counter the public’s dangerous tendency to pay attention to the conclusions of scientific research. At the Republican National Committee’s Winter Meeting a few weeks ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned the leadership that “We must stop being the stupid party … We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters.” Within the RECD system it is of extreme importance that we become the stupid nation, not misled by science and rationality, in the interests of the short-term gains of the masters of the economy and political system, and damn the consequences. These commitments are deeply rooted in the fundamentalist market doctrines that are preached within RECD, though observed in a highly selective manner, so as to sustain a powerful state that serves wealth and power. The official doctrines suffer from a number of familiar “market inefficiencies,” among them the failure to take into account the effects on others in market transactions. The consequences of these “externalities” can be substantial. The current financial crisis is an illustration. It is partly traceable to the major banks and investment firms’ ignoring “systemic risk” — the possibility that the whole system would collapse — when they undertook risky transactions. Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality that is being ignored is the fate of the species. And there is nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout. In future, historians (if there are any) will look back on this curious spectacle taking shape in the early 21st century. For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of severe calamity as a result of their actions — actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival. Those historians will observe that the richest and most powerful country in history, which enjoys incomparable advantages, is leading the effort to intensify the likely disaster. Leading the effort to preserve conditions in which our immediate descendants might have a decent life are the so-called “primitive” societies: First Nations, tribal, indigenous, aboriginal. The countries with large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in seeking to preserve the planet. The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction. Thus Ecuador, with its large indigenous population, is seeking aid from the rich countries to allow it to keep its substantial oil reserves underground, where they should be. Meanwhile the U.S. and Canada are seeking to burn fossil fuels, including the extremely dangerous Canadian tar sands, and to do so as quickly and fully as possible, while they hail the wonders of a century of (largely meaningless) energy independence without a side glance at what the world might look like after this extravagant commitment to self-destruction. This observation generalizes: Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness. This is all exactly the opposite of what rationality would predict — unless it is the skewed form of reason that passes through the filter of RECD.

The Ball Rolls

The offering of the city is opportunity, and a wealth of culture and idea.  The city offers a collection of humanity where we can delve into certain unknown regions of being human that we can’t as easily access distributed afar. My intent has all along been to explore this region vigorously: I would arrive and drive faster than the speed limit, I would explore the intricacies with a tenacity I’d never known, and I would start to explore my own proclivities and passions against the offerings of the city’s opportunity.

There is a passage of Nietzsche’s that resonates deeply with me where he describes the self-artist as one whom wishes “… to create the world before which you can kneel: [it] is your ultimate hope and intoxication.”  I planned I would explore the city and my integration into its humanly offerings along these lines.

Nietzsche saw life as a work of art, so that’s why he refers this passage to the self-artist – to the person wishing within their own life to explore the creativity and production of life and living.  I dare say my approach is entirely Nietzschean, but there is beauty to this passage concerning life as self-artistry.

I’ll humbly say I’ve explored life this way in my recent-history, but the city has caught me by surprise.  Through it’s obvious movements, and concentration of services and diversity, I’d thought the beauties of the city would present themselves with ardor and speed.  I was mistaken and politely asked to reassess.

I’ve fallen victim to the recent social condition that there is a burgeoning group of educated and experienced individuals that are underemployed.  I’ve begun to learn of the link between community, economic subsistence, and self-worth.  I intentionally came to experience such newness and realities, and I’m now learning its outcomes.  These outcomes had me turn inwards and led to a reduction of my own capacity to see outwards.  I now feel this inward focus subsiding to the outward observance; nonetheless this initial shock caught me by surprise.

Now that I’ve begun to look back beyond my own difficulties, I’m relearning the truths of all living things [even in a city], that true depth and beauty don’t present themselves, but offer themselves through acquaintance and growing relationships.

So having come to the city with a part-Nietzschean ethos, I’m being met with these realities, and realities I revel in exploring faster than the speed limit, or like the avalanche collecting snow in its slide, etc.

I will continue working to align the world with the world I see worthy of kneeling before, as if it’s my ultimate hope and intoxication. I will continue engendering the creativity of living and life, and all the while share my trials, tribulations, and successes with my past beloveds and my potential future partners in crime.

I wish for all, that even if your ball is rolling over a new hill, that you will have enough internal momentum to reach the crest and begin the descent.  These momentums aren’t deterministic laws of physics, but the subjectively psychological laws of passion and pursuit.  These are in-large all that we have as humans, and the remaining beauties of happiness, truth, and self-satisfaction are byproducts of our own internal momentums.  So today join me in the remembrance of our splendor to strive.  Celebrate our potential!  But tomorrow continue in your own self-artistry.

Seattle Climate Action Plan

For those who are looking for a technical review and critique of the Seattle Climate Action Plan, I’ve finally posted it!  Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in knowing more.

The rest of my blog will now resume!

CRTQ

Abbey – Cancerous Economics

A letter written by Abbey that I think is cheeky and keen.

New York Review, New York City
30 March 1973

“Editors: In his review of the book Retreat From Riches [Affluence and Its Enemies, by Peter Passell] Jason Epstein mentions the Earth Day slogan “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” He dismisses the analogy as an argument against ever-expanding industrialism. Nature as a whole, he asserts, operates on the same principle as cancer. All living things, he seems to believe, subscribe to the “ideology” of growth for growth’s sake. Therefore, he implies, we have nothing to fear from expansionist industrialism.

“Not so. Most species within nature aim not at unlimited growth but rather at optimum growth; that is, a condition of stability, fulfilling but not destroying the species’ appropriate niche within the larger life-system. Likewise, the individual organism, if it is healthy, seeks not endless growth—which is monstrous and suicidal—but rather maturation and reproduction, which also coincides with the “ideal” of the species. Both tend to serve and sustain the ends—whatever those may be—of evolutionary change as a whole.

“Cancer is distinctive and pathological precisely because it does not conform to this pattern, or recognize any limitations; the disease with—as well as of—hubris. Delighting in nothing but multiplication, cancer ends by destroying both its host and itself. The analogy to our modern planetary growth-devoted techno-industrial society (whether capitalist or socialist makes no difference) is complete and exact. Like cancer, expansionist industrialism believes in nothing but more expansionism. Growth equals power: power equals growth. Again like cancer, the process will self-destruct. Not, however, without human suffering, which will be great until a different kind of society based on a more stable adaptation to the earth’s thin skin is somewhat achieved.

For a little more SWern apologetics

“Unlike Jason Epstein, I find the idea of placing a limit on industrial growth quite thinkable. Not only thinkable, not only desirable, but essential. Affluence consists of far more than the endless production of junk, under the ever-growing mountain of which many good things (like healthy human-type people) are benignly suffocated.

“For example, many of us would gladly forego La Tache (whatever that is) served in Baccarat glasses (who needs them?) in exchange for breathable air and edible bread. That, and freedom from more and more technological tyranny—police helicopters, for example—is part of my notion of what affluence really means.

“A sound argument could be made for the case that growing industrialism not only does not eliminate poverty (there are as many poor people today as there were in the depths of the New Deal—40 million), it increases poverty. Industrialism, beyond the optimum point, which we passed about seventy years ago, tends to impoverish, not enrich, our lives. Ask any Indian. Ask any Appalachian.”

Mundane Excitement

There are points as forests move through their lurching development that they get stuck in specific stages of life.

A lifeless but newly disturbed soil will start with a burst of excitement inducing lush bright greens of leaf and stalk, and vibrant arrays of blooming flowers yellow, red, violet, and all colors in between.  Pollen will fly, pollinators will wrestle with the flowers, seeds will disperse, and this exuberant landscape will soon brown and decompose below the winter’s snow.  These incumbents of fescues, vetch, paintbrush, daisy, et al. will only persist for a few short years until they’ve graciously ripened the soils and microclimates for the next expansive stages of the landscape’s life; and thus will explode the ceanothus, garryana and nitrogen-fixing alder.  These taller shrubs will dominate for only a little longer than the soft green-tissued-herbal predecessors until the slower growing woody species of douglas-fir, cedar, and early-seral true-fir can replace the shrubs’ dominance.  Relatively speaking these transitions are quick and competitive, but all together healthy.  Soil begins to build from the rapid decay of the out-competed, homogeneity will start to be lost to its hetero-form, increasing resilience, and the macro-environmental effects of a healthy ecosystem will begin to provide valuable ecosystem services to all.  As the trees age and begin to make up the horizon, its phase of a development begins to slow and become more mundane, but all together important.  Species diversity will reach an all time low, and the forest will slowly start to thicken soils, retain water and micronutrients, and biomass will accumulate.  The forest will continue to grow, but not develop, waiting in its simple stature; waiting for isolated disturbances to excite its condition and allow for its sown conditions to blossom uniqueness from that one point.  Allowing for the ripened seedbed conditions to sprout with endemic life, and for the trees to topple and the forest complexity increase, allowing for the re-invasion of niche specific flora and fauna.  And as these isolated disturbances repeat over space and time, it takes along the forest through sets of dynamism, though a seemingly mundane sort over its full landscape.  Liken it to a new wrinkle on a hand or a face, one wrinkle is but a blemish, though enough wrinkles are character; it’s the gift of this mundane development and excitement within the forest that the conditions of the arcane old-growth are sown; it’s here a forest develops its unique signature.

Courtesy of AG.

In the tale of a forest the details are of their own splendor – take the off chance that a yew may seed in before the hemlock, or the two hundred year-dead tree was made home by a spotted owl in stead of an osprey – though it’s not the details that I’m looking to contrive, but the nature of the details themselves.  As a forest gets caught in this period of slowed development it has an element of consistency and growing homogeneity we can all relate to; where there comes a point in life that fits of explosive change are moderated to minutely observable disturbances, and over one’s full expanse of time and space, these minutia will give rise to one’s own unique characteristics.  I say it’s the observance of these intricate and delicate fluctuations that have the richest and worthiest influence in the progression of life.  Without such an observance I say there is no eye for beauty; without such observance there is no reverence, nor humor; grandeur, splendor and excitement necessitates a keen eye to pierce the mundane.

Anarchism

“Anarchism means many different things to different people. I’ve always understood its central core to be the principle that structures of authority and domination, at an level from personal relations to international affairs, are not self-justifying: they carry a burden of proof, and unless that can be met (which is rare), they should be dismantled in favor of others more conducive to basic human values.”

~Noam Chomsky; Interview in 2011

Emerson at Mt. Baker

An Un-Foreshadowed Dream at 24

Let the American Dream thrive!  Let me live a life of freedom and liberty!  I didn’t even ask, but you’ve given it to me…  Thank you.

What the hell am I talking about?

I attended the beautifully equalizing institutions of public school, yes beautiful in its own reagard, but not terribly thought provoking; so I ended up like most, being alley-ooped metaphorical carrot after carrot to be a dilettante and follow orders.  Through all of it I kept my head in the sand and my headphones loud – be preached the dreamy gospel, “Go to college! And whatever follows..!”  Which I did, and I kept those headphones roaring; I volunteered, I worked for good grades, I had a job, I did research, I excelled, (I even learned my extracurriculars: how to drink and smoke, to yell, to do hoodrat shit with my friends), and as I got better and better at this heady-sand procedure, I added a subwoofer so the headphones could teach me to dance their dance.  So while my feet followed a beat so-loud-I-couldn’t-think I learned to dance, and all the while the quiet voices behind the beat sang tiny songs of, “opportunity and prosperity.”  I danced and I danced, I danced so hard I vomited everywhere; I fell sick and jailed myself – one of the best things I’ve ever done – that’s another story though.

Now, as a keen reaction to clean this stinking half-digested substance that lies all up and down my front, I moved to a city, a land of opportunity within the land of opportunity – God blessed it.  What have I found here?  Freedom and liberty at 40 hours a week!  I am the 8 percent! (or the 15%, however you see it)  I’m getting bonus after bonus!  I’m as free as they get – so help me God.

As we part ways for now, raise your scotch glass high, HIGH: to all those re-illusion-ing youth as they celebrate the Dream.  I’ll join you.

Ode to the Book

In the tumult of a new land I’ve spent some days and moments resorting to the aspects of life that I know best for a little reprieve.  I find myself in the garden pulling up vines lain by a loom, getting lost in my running shoes as a manner of internal cartography, writing myself nonsense or bantering on the guitar, filling the house with scents of hot spice, and of course reading.  It is to the books that I want to write a little of an ode:

To you books, for your vicarious experiences gracefully traversing imagination and guidance, teasing along the emotions with your subject and form.  How you can lead one’s clouded day and its smoldering lightning strikes to the newly exposed coals of an aged fire.  Where one can take reprieve from their cloudiness, and thus coldness, and use the collection of ephemerally fiery gems to let them begin warming their body; where they will start warming their coldest regions first, and it will only be a matter of time that the primordially needed warmth will gratify them in full.  And with the warmth, the friction causing the smoldering lightning will fall away and leave the reader in a contented state of indifference whether it is cloudy or otherwise, for they have completed your journey – your closely woven vicissitudes that leaves one satiated, like a hard days work does the body.

For this I thank you, for the escape back to humanity.

An Introduction to Nonsense

Nonsense will be but an experiment.  Nonsense will not follow the confines of scientific experimentation though.  Nonsense won’t play with hypotheses.  Nonsense won’t play with statistical significance.  The only truths that will be found in nonsense will be left to the readers’ imagination.  I have no intention to convince or to pander, but only to share incoherence in hopes that you can find the beauty, the logic, or what-have-you.

I’ve called the blog CRTQ (critique) to remind us of my overarching worldview to let us consider the world we live within for hopes that we feel we have more power to direct it – for knowledge is power.

I mean to hurt none, so apologies to future insensitivity, I only strike in jest and that maybe you will take my mind’s-eye and see the absurdity I perceive, and then take it or leave it.  Remember my nonsense is an experiment, always.

The works to come will be an unknown range of things, some originals, and some not.  Some shall be inspired be aesthetics, and others by internal musings.  Either follow along or drop in for folly.  And feel free to write me or talk to somebody else about if I strike a chord, that’s my hope at least.