Most of us don't want nature to be destroyed, and probably don't really understand what is causing it, or that opportunities to have this understanding are being systematically diminished. As the physical-commodity based assets of oil, precious metals, forests, soils and fresh water dwindle, inevitably the social costs of exploitation and unregulated pollution are becoming apparent. Not abstractly, but in real ways problems loom as ever larger populations are oppressed by famine, poverty and taxation, increasingly extreme climatic conditions and mutual conflict.
"Life
as we have known it is changing at a rapid pace. Environmental,
demographical and technological changes demand that we inspect our ways
of living.... domination of humans over the rest of the natural world
that has led to overconsumption of natural resources, overpopulation,
the climate crisis, globalization fostered by transfer of goods and
services but also by the extensive use of technology by people in many
parts of the world. These changes are more rapid, complex and rampant than other in human history."
Ancient civilizations have all collapsed but they were relatively isolated geographically. Globalization has interlinked all present countries and civilizations, making them dependent on goods and services that are beyond their borders. If one fails it affects others so the question is exponential technology a self-terminating system? It seems that unbridled technology could allow anybody to have the power to be catastrophically destructive. If the profit motives of an individual becomes over-zealous to the extent of harming the environment, in time they may realize the error of their ways and make amends. But a corporate entity that survives the founders may end up in the hands of people whose employment depends on following rules designed to maximize the profits of shareholders or corporations. The more profitable corporations may even become subsidiaries of larger global corporate interests that exist outside the constraints of local or national boundaries and laws. Unfortunately, billionaires & corporations can now buy elections because of a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. After the Second World War, a decolonization process took place - for previously slaved and colonized nations - supposedly ending almost four centuries of slavery and exploitation. It was followed by the end of the cold war and the beginning of a new era of Globalization, which has come to be accepted as the dominant world philosophy for the twenty-first century.Globalisation is not a new phenomenon, but the extension of colonisation, primarily as Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is what Washington and other First World countries advocate: they want Third Worlds or developing countries to have open economies for foreign investment, but have protectionist elements in their own countries. The capitalists obsession with butting in other nations affairs under the guise of good-will while the ulterior motive is solely to establish a foothold and seat in the government of foreign country's in order to access their resources and eventually gain power and influence. The wealthy want to rule the world and to do away with all culture that isn't rooted in money and power. Technology has fostered overpopulation and at the same time made possible the concentration of wealth into the hands of a few.
t’s
been called the endgame, a term from the world of chess and it’s used
to refer to the ending scenario of any game; of when and how it will
end. - See more at:
http://emergent-culture.com/world-macro-trends-report-for-1st-quarter-2012-world-on-the-brink-of-iran-syria-war-earth-changes-2012-ows-occupy/#sthash.zxmUxcXB.dpuf
"Western
Governments and their corporate sponsors are becoming more invasive,
destructive and abusive while public rights and protections are
diminished.... It’s
been called the endgame, a term from the world of chess and it’s used
to refer to the ending scenario of any game; of when and how it will
end.... Geopolitics is fundamentally about the competition for economic
advantage and resources. A drama of epic proportions looms as the
Greatest Empire the world has ever known prepares to launch a major war
in order to sustain its unsustainable immensity for yet another
business cycle.... It’s been called the endgame, a term from the world
of chess and it’s used to refer to the ending scenario of any game; of
when and how it will end.... The good news is that a planetary culture
is beginning to sprout amongst the cracks in the concrete. And you’ve
seen what tree roots can do to concrete. It’s a slow process, but it
happens.
...Every major European nation except for Germany is bankrupt. Every “solution” put forth by leaders is a either a band-aid or a “kick the can down the road” approach. Once the Eurozone falters its reverberations will be felt around the world. The looming war with Iran and Syria may be seen as last a ditch effort to salvage the Western Finance/Power system. Make no mistake about it the System has been on life support (printing money out of thin air) since the Fall of 2008.... The US is irretrievably down the rabbit hole of deficits and debt, and that, even if there were endless natural resources of increasing quality available at this point, servicing the debt loads and liabilities of the nation will require both austerity and a pretty serious fall in living standards for most people." - Emergent Culture Globalization started with the Industrial revolution in England. It is a mix of things, including the greater connection people around the world have with each other, sharing of technology, ideas, culture, goods and information. In terms of economics, it is about global capitalism, unfettered trade (which is called "free trade" but actually doesn't exist). Economics and politics being closely inter-related, economic globalization will also lead to political globalization, with consequent loss of national sovereignty, since the process of globalization consists of concentration of resources of the world, for the benefit of a small section of people, who control the levers of power. Neoliberalism is a form of economic liberalism whose advocates support free trade and open markets, privatization, deregulation, and enhancing the role of the private sector in modern society. Since the 1990's activists use the word 'neoliberalism' for global market-liberalism ('capitalism') and for so called free-trade policies. Neoliberalism is promoted as the mechanism for global trade and investment supposedly for all nations to prosper and develop fairly and equitably, but actually the effects of neo-liberalism is that the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. "Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, but you can clearly see the ever increasing effects. The concept of neoliberalism has, during the past twenty years or so, become quite widespread globally. "Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman), after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%. Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico. As one scholar said, "Neoliberalism means the neo-colonization of Latin America."
In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs;
attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and
cutbacking social programs. The Republican "Contract" on America is pure
neo-liberalism. Its supporters are working hard to deny protection to
children, youth, women, the planet itself -- and trying to trick us into
acceptance by saying this will "get government off my back." The
beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world's people. For
the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before: suffering
without the small, hard-won gains of the last 60 years, suffering without
end." -Corpwatch
Benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top in developing countries that pursued neo-liberal policies. That allows special interest companies to exploit international loopholes to minimize their taxes, other people have to pick up the bill. That the global elite are using whatever means at their disposal to hide their money from governments isn’t exactly surprising. Tax havens create a veil of secrecy that enables multinational companies to siphon profits out of developing countries. They let companies shift profits out of the country where they were actually made and into a tax haven with a much lower tax rate. This sleight of hand deprives developing countries of desperately needed tax revenue – money that can build schools and health clinics and infrastructure. The increasing volume of operations involving tax havens countries, which leads to enormous losses in terms of tax revenues, reveals the relevance of this problem. The Tax Justice Network's report estimates that unreported offshore wealth held in tax havens has reached at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32 trillion. That kind of money can find ways to buy lobbyists, regulatory agency personnell, politicians, judges, even entire governments. Anyone who refuses to be bought, such as Sadam Hussein, can simply be eliminated. Writers and economists have been pointing out for years that the biggest winners in today’s globalized, finance-heavy economy have been a small band of super-rich. Tim Noah dubbed them “the stinking rich.” Chrystia Freeland went with “plutocrats.” No matter what you choose to name them, the largest economic gains have accrued to the top 1% club at the very, very tiniest tip of the earnings pyramid. Extreme wealth and inequality are reaching levels never before seen and are getting worse. Over the last thirty years inequality has grown dramatically in many countries. In the US the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20%. For the top 0.01% it has quadrupled to levels never seen before. At a global level, the top 1% (60 million people), and particularly the even more select few in the top 0.01% (600,000 individuals - there are around 1200 billionaires in the world), the last thirty years has been an incredible feeding frenzy. This is not confined to the US, or indeed to rich countries. In the UK inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles Dickens. In China the top 10% now take home nearly 60% of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa, which are now the most unequal country on earth. The 1% are financing globalization which is largely to blame for some global warming. Fossil fuels are acquired from overseas to power our cars, population growth is driven by cheap food production in other countries and international trade encourages India and China to produce vast amounts of carbon dioxide at precisely the moment when this should be stopped. If we are to survive we need to think in terms of local self sufficiency and maintaining a careful balance between our population and our natural resources. Global warming started as early as the 1860’s due to the Industrial Revolution that began after the Civil War. This was a time of invention and creation; where man made machine and machine changed society. Not only did the machine change society, but it also changed the atmospheric gases – more specifically, greenhouse gases. By moving industries to deregulated countries, exploitation and pollution have virtually no constraints. According to Dr.Vandana Shiva, there's rape at every level—rape of the earth, rape of our resources, rape of the economy, and rape of the poor. Scholars at Princeton and Northwestern universities have even concluded that “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened… The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Instead, policy tends “to tilt towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations.” The following is from a Politics series on Economic Liberalism at www.potiori.com
Neoliberal policies advanced by supranational organizations have come
under criticism for
advancing a corporatist agenda. Rajesh Makwana, writes that
"the World Bank and IMF, are major exponents of the neoliberal agenda"
advancing corporate interests.[122] Sheldon Richman, editor of the libertarian journal The Freeman,
also sees the IMF imposing "corporatist-flavored 'neoliberalism' on the
troubled countries of the world." The policies of spending cuts coupled
with tax increases give "real market reform a bad name and set back the
cause of genuine liberalism." Paternalistic supranational bureaucrats
foster "long-term dependency, perpetual indebtedness, moral hazard, and
politicization, while discrediting market reform and forestalling
revolutionary liberal change."[123] Free market economist Richard M. Salsman goes further and argues the IMF “is a destructive, crisis-generating global welfare agency that should be abolished."[124]
"In return for bailouts, countries must enact such measures as new
taxes, high interest rates, nationalizations, deportations, and price
controls." Writing in Forbes,
E. D. Kain sees the IMF as "paving the way for international
corporations entrance into various developing nations" and creating
dependency.[125] He quotes Donald J. Boudreaux on the need to abolish the IMF.
1 in 37 American adults is in the prison system – heavily promoted by the Clinton administration, is the neoliberal U.S. policy tool for keeping unemployment statistics low, while stimulating economic growth through the maintenance of a contemporary slave population and the promotion of prison construction and "militarized policing."[120] The Clinton Administration also embraced neoliberalism by pursuing international trade agreements that would benefit the corporate sector globally (normalization of trade with China for example). Domestically, Clinton fostered such neoliberal reforms as the corporate takeover of health care in the form of the HMO, the reduction of welfare subsidies, and the implementation of "Workfare".[121] With energy bills on the rise and an increasing awareness of our vanishing resources, it is time to turn to an alternative forms of energy and embrace policies aimed at promoting energy efficiency and green-technology development. Stronger policies focused on reducing carbon emissions could overturn entrenched economic structures and foster a green economy that works for all, while resisting the forces that exploit their labor the same way they exploit the earth. A real green energy transition could stimulate employment and effectively transfer power from the hierarchy of a carbon-based economy to a new sustainable system. Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz says that Tax Reform Save the Middle Class through fair taxation for all, including cracking down on the mega tax-dodging corporations. On a recent episode of Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers said, ”In 1983, 50 corporations controlled a majority of media in America. In 1990 the number had dropped to 23. In 1997, 10. And today, six. There you have it. The fistful of multinational conglomerates that own the majority of media in America.” We’re left with a monolithic media industry driven to maximize the next quarter’s profits and fueled by oil and gas industry advertising. As long as meaningful action on climate change will hurt the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industries, the media conglomerates and Wall Street, we can’t expect improvement. Our world is in transition from an old paradigm into a new one. Market-based schemes for the exploitation of Nature for profit are unstable and unsustainable. The exploitation of cheap labor, food, energy, and raw materials has been the foundation of a political system of power that is becoming too top heavy. Wall Street will no longer be able to bet on the financialization of nature and the risk to our common resource. And governments based on Favoritism, Cronyism, and Nepotism will become ever more intolerable. There simply must be a better way see the relations between humans and the rest of nature. “Waking up” is certainly apparent more and more among the enlightened ones, yet those who govern us are still caught up in this technocratic dreamworld they call “progress”. Five mass extinctions have occurred since life began on Earth. Species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene, and the world is on the brink of a sixth great extinction, a new study says. Learning to to encompass empathy and social responsibility is probably the only way that things will change on this planet, yet as the moral corruption is deeply entrenched. How can we awaken from the cultural hypnosis of consumerism and materialism? Obviously we need to rethink the psychological and spiritual roots of the global challenges of a world in transition and pay more attention to world trends, our collective future sustainability, spirituality, and consciousness itself. The spiritual roots of the global challenges does not refer to religion, not the old religion. "Tho shalt not." was the gist of the old religion - it was a set of inflexible rules (an eye for an eye,) concerned primarily with avoiding eternal damnation in the hereafter. The new spirituality is not about rules, but about principles, thou shalt -an abiding expectation that good will prevail It is more about the here and now than it is about the hereafter - how to be in the present. It is not about a distant, abstract heaven, but about how to live in this beautiful world, and "love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays." Those are the words are from Chief Seattle's Speech of 1854. In the sixth century BC. Taoists were referred to as the "cloud people" because of their serenity. Spirit is believed to be the energy out of which every manifestation of life is formed, whether it be a plant, a bird, a tree, an animal, or a human. Mankind's' dominion over the earth has been a disaster of disrespectful and heartless pillage and plundering. Somehow we must find our way out of indifference, and learn or relearn reverence. Conscious evolution is about the opportunity to live sustainably and compassionately. Surely, whatever there can be of hope for our future will not come from further hardening ourselves with indifference, competition, aggression, violence, or greed. Rather we must turn within to gentleness, kindness, caring, cooperation, and love, perhaps starting with some sense of gratitude for what there is in nature that evokes a sense of beauty, awe and wonderment. "We've got less than ten years to shift away from petroleum based fuels or we are going to ed up struggling with a radically different planet." - everythingscool.org Links
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Showing posts with label unsustainable. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unsustainable. Show all posts
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Earth Crisis
Monday, November 26, 2012
Memes and Isms
| The English suffix -ism was first used to form a noun of action from a verb, as in baptism, from baptein, a Greek word meaning "to dip". Its usage was later extended to signify systems of belief. The first recorded usage of the suffix ism as a separate word in its own right was in 1680. By the nineteenth century it was being used by Thomas Carlyle to signify a pre-packaged ideology. It was later used in this sense by such writers as Julian Huxley and George Bernard Shaw. In the present day, it appears in the title of a standard survey of political thought, Today's ISMS by William Ebenstein. The -ism suffix can be used to express the following concepts:
There are long lists of isms. To over simplify, an ism is a way to think about a group of people who do something different. This is a way to think about cultural changes or paradigms. The more followers or participants an ism attracts, the more likely it will be to affect the status quo. The early isms were apparently about regional, racial and linguistic distinctions which eventually became codified as social norms, politics, rules, regulations and laws. Such moral implications turned into religious prohibitions (thou shalt not). In some ways religion helped stabilize cultures and the family unit, but at a terrible price. Anytime a belief system tries to separate the human psyche into a good and a worthless portion, there is great danger. This tactic of "divide and conquer" has always been used to bring about mankind's greatest inhumanities. This polarization has been at the root of almost all murder, war, and the primary instrument of oppression. The idea that "we are good and they are bad," is invariably used to justify the worst atrocities, usually under the deceptive guise of religious bigotry. Both political and religious restraints sometimes act as a hedge against anarchy and chaos. Such repressions are usually good for the state but not so good for the individual. Old Chinese common law was severe; "steal an orange, lose a hand." Even more cruel and repressive conditions resulted from the caste systems such as in India, where people born into a lowly cast were permanently condemned to subservient poverty. Prohibitions against women and dark skinned races were once almost universal. But perhaps the most pervasive form of repression is elitism, which insures advantages for the wealthy. This has become so bad that we now live in a world where virtually everything is for sale to the highest bidder, resulting in the commodification of everything including the very planet itself -- the land, the water, and the atmosphere, as well as the plants and animals. This behavior is menacingly self destructive. And it is becoming increasingly apparent that unless it changes drastically and soon, this planet cannot sustain anything like 7 billion humans, much less the 9 billion that is projected statistically. Over time we have become so accustomed to the exploitation of any and all natural resources that we somehow failed to see this as a sort of economic Ponzi scheme. The paradigm of plundering nature and exploiting the poor lasted a long time, but is apparently unsustainable and coming to an end as natural resources dwindle. The economies and systems predicated on such exploitation must fail along with the institutions that support them. Where then can we turn for a better way? A meme is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. The word meme was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion and architectural technology. Proponents theorize that memes may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition and inheritance, each of which influence a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts. Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator. He hypothesized that one could view many cultural entities as replicators, and pointed to melodies, fashions and learned skills as examples. Memes generally replicate through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient copiers of information and behavior. Because humans do not always copy memes perfectly, and because they may refine, combine or otherwise modify them with other memes to create new memes, they can change over time. Dawkins likened the process by which memes survive and change through the evolution of culture to the natural selection of genes in biological evolution. So an idea that spreads quickly through the Internet is an Internet meme. This process speeds up the development of concepts and seems to be one of the more promising aspects of technology. If technology (industrialization) got us into this, maybe it can help with a solution. An idea whose time has come can get millions of hits almost instantly. Who says it has to be about gossip, matchmaking, music, porn, or buying and selling. If somebody comes up with a way to save the humans, wouldn't you want to know? Recent developments in contemplative neuroscience seems to offer some hope. Brain plasticity occurs throughout life and it is evident that compassion can be learned by training the human mind using attention and intention. |
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