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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI'd love to believe that the global crisis we're facing is all capitalism's fault.
Unfortunately I don't.
Capitalism, like every other socio-economic-political system that humanity has deployed over the last 10,000 years and more has had a single, common goal. That goal is to be the most effective facilitator of human growth possible. Capitalism, socialism, fascism, monarchism, feudalism - they are all organizing systems whose common aim is growth. Whether it's growth in shared or concentrated wealth, growth in knowledge, growth in numbers or growth in power, successful organizing structures from universities to corporations and political bureaucracies have growth as their goal.
(As an aside, why are there so very few anarchies in the world today? Because they are not organized they can marshal less power than their erstwhile competitors, which are all structured, hierarchic systems. As any cyberneticist can tell you, organized structure is what gives a system the control it needs to manage the flow of power.)
The engine of all growth, at every scale from bacteria to nations, is energy. Systems that make more effective use of more energy tend to prevail over systems that are less effective. The fact that capitalism in all its various forms is the dominant organizing system in the world today is testimony to the fact that it prevails over all others through its effective deployment of massive amounts of energy.
This grim implication of this fact is that we can't "get rid of" capitalism or its excesses by simply changing the rules or opting out. Changing capitalism enough to make it a humane system would require everyone to use less energy - potentially much less energy. Changing the global system enough to slow down (not even to halt, just to slow) the destruction of the planet's atmosphere, geosphere, biosphere and oceans would require everyone to stop using almost 90% of the energy we use today: all the energy that comes from fossil fuels.
What would that shift require? No more motorized transportation, average salaries a mere tenth of whatever they are today, and the loss of virtually all the modern amenities we take for granted, from food availability to urban sanitation and medical care. No half measures, mere political resistance or even direct action will accomplish this change on the necessary scale.
How many of us, no matter how altruistic, would willingly choose such a future? I certainly would not. Would you? Out of the 7.2 billion people on the planet today, how many would would abandon all their dreams of a better future and in its stead choose for themselves and their descendants, lives of impoverishment, ill health and perpetually curtailed opportunity?
If we will not (or perhaps more to the point, cannot) make such a draconian choice, there is only one outcome I can see. We will make some changes that amount to nibbling around the edges of our predicament while not addressing its core - all the while hoping that the next tiny fix will turn the tide. This pursuit of business as usual with a few adjustments will simply delay the denouement of the human experience on planet Earth by a few years, or a few decades at best. Unfortunately, change always happens, and these changes that we cannot make voluntarily will eventually be forced upon us by changing climatic and social circumstances.
Given the eternal, obstinate optimism of human nature, we will not escape the cunning trap that we unwittingly laid for ourselves when we began cutting the trees to plant our food in straight rows.
I wish I could be more optimistic, but ten years of looking at every aspect of the unfolding crisis has left me face to face with this reality, and no place to hide. The only other refuge is the one that most of us will choose in one way or another: denial.
So, what to do with all this pessimism? How are we to continue, those of us who choose to face this grim reality head-on?
My understanding is that this is a grieving process. Because of that, my suggestion is to treat it like one. Follow Kubler-Ross' five steps from denial to acceptance - but then take the process one step further. Find the gift it offers you. The gift will be different for each of us, but it's there if we look. The gift is often some form of re-connection, whether with family, community, spirit or nature - or oneself. It may be as simple as achieving a clarity and equanimity that can be used in other ways than in a forlorn hope of "saving the world". Those who can find such a gift in the unfolding calamity will find themselves fortunate indeed.
Happy hunting.
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zazen
(2,978 posts)if you haven't already. That and a lot of other works on this topic can be found either at carolynbaker.net or resilience.org.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Though I've never met her personally, Carolyn has republished some of my writing over the years:
Climbing the Ladder of Awareness
Finding the Gift
A 50,000 Foot View of the Global Crisis
Bearing Witness to Collapse
zazen
(2,978 posts)I hope to read those articles sometime. 
The only thing I "published" re her work--and I admire her a great deal--was a blog/journal critique here, from a feminist perspective. I tend to think there's a cultural feminist romanticization (or was--maybe she's changed) of post-peak life. As a radical feminist, I tend to notice what happens in frontier-ish traditional societies where there's no easy transportation, more traditional roles, and less capacity to rely on technologies to free us from a lot of biological limitations. That hasn't gone well for women, anywhere, anytime. . . and most of our (1st world) social freedoms have been concomitant industrial growth, for a reason. When energy is much more scarce, we will be harnessed again right along with the oxen if we're not careful (with immigrants and brown-skinned people perhaps more at risk if racism continues to flare).
So this rosy, we'll all get in touch with our inner goddess stuff in this equalitarian la-la- land. No. We need to be very mindful in the long descent of building as much protection into the system as possible, if it's possible. It infuriates me that a good percentage of 50% of the human race will feel entitled once again to own and predate upon women, but it will happen if we don't keep educating people. When any thing breaks down, the first thing that happens is more prostitution or rape. All of those studies with guys saying they would if they thought they could get away with it? Well, collapse means they will think they can get away with it. All the more reason for a resilient community.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I've parted company with Carolyn in the last two years because I've come to think much more like you do. Pursuing spiritual growth can be very valuable for getting one past the grief - that's how I did it. But in the end I came to see it as another Aspirin - just more feel-good self-deception. I had to move past it, back to operating in the real world.
In hard times, women and the poor get it in the neck, and all the inner goddess in the world won't stop that.
ProdigalJunkMail
(12,017 posts)we find a way to check greed and lust for power... period.
sP
Warpy
(111,261 posts)the better it works for everybody.
The strict hierarchy of kings and their vassals didn't work all that well for anyone, not the serfs at the bottom or the kings and vassals who were expected to dirty their own soft hands in warfare they or their neighbors started. Warfare was frequent. It was a simple system so it didn't work.
Likewise the system of plutocrats and corporate overlords is not going to work well and for many of the same reasons. Warfare between plutocrats can be bloodless or very bloody, indeed.
Consider the messy system they have in Scandinavia, cobbled together of capitalism wedded to its polar opposite socialism. It works for everybody, giving the rich the rock hard stability they crave while giving everybody else access to a life lived decently and all without devoting half the country's revenues to a military to force that control.
I've always advocated the messy system, capitalism innovating goods and services and creating some class mobility while socialism blunts its ability to move toward monopoly, wealth concentrated in few hands away from the labor that created it.
It bears consideration. It is working this way elsewhere.
ProdigalJunkMail
(12,017 posts)some systems have benefits that others leave out or hold down. and the cobbling you mention certainly helps, but i stick by my previous statement. it doesn't matter how well the system is designed, some greedy SOB (for power or wealth) will come along and render it a failure. you need a culture that frowns on abuses and punishes them appropriately... some places are certainly farther along than others... 
sP
delrem
(9,688 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)
ananda
(28,860 posts)And that fear is real.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)
Quantess
(27,630 posts)Is this something you question?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)But I think there are deeper forces at work as well - forces that are best understood through the fields of physics, biology and genetics. I think that unless we incorporate those forces, stopping at the purely human/cultural/political level leaves us short of a complete understanding of the situation.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)That's okay. Please continue your pointless posturing and ultimately worthless justification of capitalism. I'm going to bed.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)way to lie, cheat, steal, and kill. Doing what you talk about would not help anything.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Last edited Wed Oct 30, 2013, 10:30 AM - Edit history (1)
Both of which are, IMO, fairly immutable. However, with hard work and an open mind we may be able to change ourselves to some degree. That's all I hope for now.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)There's also the possibility of technological advances, though. Certainly we've seen enormous technological progress just in the lats 30 years - who knows what the next 30 years will bring.
Bryant
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)We've got lots of technology. Our problems stem from human nature and the operation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in open systems. I suspect that the intransigence of human nature when faced with the concept of degrowth is the result of imperatives that were implanted in our genetics by the Second Law and reinforced by the evolutionary process.
But that's a much bigger topic for another time. For now, suffice to say that technology can't rescue us from a situation that technology helped us to create. Believing it can is one of the forms of denial.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)not accurate - that's happened many times in our history as we have come to understand the world better.
I guess what you are arguing is that Humanity is an evolutionary dead end - that we can't evolve our way out of this - that our ability to reason and figure things out and adapt and evolve through technology is what creates the problem. But I don't agree that we are necessarily a dead end.
Bryant
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)and have given rise to yet larger problems. Thus we got Sevareid's Law: "The chief cause of problems is solutions."
Craig Dilworth has written an excellent book about how this has happened throughout history. It's called "Too Smart For Our Own Good", and it names this effect the "Vicious Circle Principle". Essentially it's a growth-enabling positive feedback loop.
Every species is an eventual evolutionary dead end when considered on its own. Will we give rise to future branches of the primate family tree? Maybe, maybe not.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)But perhaps that's the same survival instinct that causes all the trouble making me want to have hope.
Bryant
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)A little bit of hopium helps the medicine go down. 
hunter
(38,312 posts)This sort of thing has happened often in the history of life on earth. Humans are not anything special.
We could land softly, with a healthy stable sustainable population, without all the flames and drama and messy death, but I'm not sure humans are actually intelligent. Maybe we are some kind of proto-intelligence, but even that seems less and less likely every day now.
An intelligent species, even one with a very dim sputtering spark of intelligence, would not destroy the natural ecosystems it depends on for its own survival.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)Where do you place blame for where we are in "reality", now? You partly answered this already, but, for you to say that it has nothing to do with greed is pure, 100% bullshit and everyone knows it.
Who can honestly say that the state our planet is in right now has nothing to do with capitalism?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I don't prescribe much for other people - I consider myself more of a witness than a physician.
I don't place any blame at all. I think we're all mostly playing the roles that get handed to us by life. Some people get to be CEOs because CEOs are needed and they have the right skills and connections. They're not necessarily evil people, though part of the skill set may be a touch of sociopathy. Why should I blame someone for performing a role in society? If they declined and someone else took it on, should I blame them instead? The system is far beyond the control or direction of any single person or group of people, Illuminati excepted. It's running on its own. Who is to blame? Nobody, as far as I can tell.
"Everybody knows it" is a poor basis for forming beliefs. In some circles "everybody knows" that global warming isn't happening too. "Everybody knew" in 1800 that blacks were subhuman. I prefer to look at facts, figure out their meaning for myself if I can, and act on that basis. I think capitalism is a result more than a cause, though it is in a positive feedback relationship with our social structures, and the two are linked together through energy consumption.
You don't need to believe what I say, I won't try to argue you out of your apparent beliefs that capitalism is evil and that greed is controllable through conscious thought. I'm just putting this out there for people to think about if they wish. My views on this topic clash with most (not all, but most) others on this board. I'm presenting a bit of counterpoint to encourage thought and conversation.
leftstreet
(36,108 posts)Capitalism's goal is profits. Period.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)leftstreet
(36,108 posts)The goods, the labor, the whole thing!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)leftstreet
(36,108 posts)You didn't read any of the link
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I take a very different view of life in general and politics and economics in particular.
Life arises from the operation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in open systems.
The gradient-dissipation imperative of the Second Law is encoded into living DNA.
The behavior bequeathed to us by those origins are expressed in everything we do, from mating, to making a living, to destroying the planet's climate.
Everything we do is aimed at making the dissipation of the energy gradients in our environment more effective.
Economics is the cybernetic control mechanism that makes the whole system work.
Politics is the human control mechanism that holds societies together and keeps the dissipation activities under nominal control.
All human systems compete in a process of natural selection, and the ones that make it possible for us to process the maximum amount of power tend to win.
Winning systems tend to be hierarchical, dissipation-and-growth-oriented, and care damn little about what the components (i.e. us) feel about it.
Socialism and capitalism are simply two manifestations of this process with different faces.
Capitalism is winning the global political-economic competition because it is very good at creating hierarchies, processing vast amounts of energy, growing in size and complexity - and at not giving a shit what we think.
And the whole thing traces back to the Second Law, without a human intention in sight. Our wishes and desires are just the playful paint on this universal canvas. We think they are the point of the whole thing, but that's just because we are splashing around in the paint. The real point, which is obscured under all our frantic painting, is the canvas itself.
Most people are too mesmerized by the pretty colours of the paint to have any sympathy at all with this interpretation of life, but there you go.
leftstreet
(36,108 posts)Dumber than a box of hair. Incurious. A drain on vital resources.
If Babs had been a rabbit she'd have pushed him through the bottom of the cage at birth
(I'm just kidding. Sorta)
I have no idea what you're talking about, which makes it easy to completely disagree
There are no inherent 'laws' thermodynamic or otherwise that dictate a natural order for concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a ruling class. That class just does it because it can.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I know, this is an idea that's altogether foreign to the way we've learned to see the world. That's why I don't worry too much when people think I've completely lost my marbles
You'd be surprised how many people do get it, but it takes a bit of background. Does it make any difference to the price of tea in China? Maybe not, but then, you never know about odd ideas.
polichick
(37,152 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)polichick
(37,152 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)polichick
(37,152 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)If the scale of the economy is not increasing, growth of profits can only be accomplished by taking profits away from someone else. This leads to high levels of social conflict and ultimately to fascism.
OneGrassRoot
(22,920 posts)I say that as someone who has lost a child and experienced other tremendous losses in my life, so I'm intimately familiar with grief...and the steps from denial to acceptance.
That said, you seem to be at peace with your pessimism, as you've been sharing such views for many years now.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Though, as always, I prefer to think of it as realism rather than pessimism. All things pass, and in the end entropy wins.
I have lots in my life to be grateful for. For example, I re-connected with the woman who is the other half of my soul 4 years ago, after we were lost to each other for 30 years. The love is beyond description.
I celebrate life and love every day. Odd conundrum, isn't it?
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)Growth is endemic to all Earth's life forms, but so far, nothing else has devoured the entire planet, and I think it's a little self-aggrandizing to imagine we are the exception.
Not to say we couldn't wreck the whole thing with a nuclear war or by further damaging the oceans, but growth alone isn't going to kill us all, or make life impossible.
Populations self-regulate, to some degree, with or without "misery and vice." Crude birth rates have been dropping since the 1950s.
And I don't think it's energy that's going to put the brakes on. Even without a breakthrough like nuclear fusion, solar, wind and other renewables are right in front of us.
Water and climate change will bring crisis first and hardest, I think.
And while I agree capitalism's model of constant, unlimited growth is a problem, I don't think a drastically different social or economic system of any kind has an answer to limited resources or human short-sightedness. If there is such a system, nothing people are talking about now fits the bill.
But we will find better ways to allocate resources, or the physical laws of the universe will pull us up short.
I don't see Earth's human population finding a peaceful, sustainable balance with Nature any time soon, but an apocalpyse based on just projecting current trends failed Malthus and Marx both. We bent the curve before hitting the wall head-on.
We'll be pushed, pulled, and dragged toward sustainable systems as we go.
How well we adapt and harmonize with those forces will determine how violent or how peaceably that occurs, but based on history so far, I'd bet on a lot of small-to-medium catastrophes over a gigantic, inevitable "splat," or the rise massively draconian cultural or political change designed to fix everything.
burnsei sensei
(1,820 posts)until it shoots itself in the foot, see 1929 and 2008 for references.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)Instead of even TRYING anything else, when confronted with the abject failure of capitalism, some fall into some sort of nihilistic "Abandon hope" mindset. It's like they can't even imagine anything, but the destructiveness of capitalism carried to it's logical conclusion.
Who knows, the poster might even be right. But I'm not going to admit it until we try something else.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)--Mother Jones.
DireStrike
(6,452 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)DireStrike
(6,452 posts)The idea is to direct the productive forces of society democratically. Yes, productivity would probably be increased if we used a more efficient system. Do you think that would lead to more or less investment in truly clean energy?
Would we instantly stop using cars? Of course not, there would be a counterrevolution led by the millions of people who live in places where cars are necessary. It will take decades to redesign our cities and towns, and probably at least a decade to get electric cars working well. It would also take time to build enough wind turbines and solar panels to replace our current energy use, but it would undoubtedly be a top focus for manufacturing.
Capitalism's top focus for manufacturing is simply "whatever makes money". So we keep building flashy cars and having 3 commercials per commercial break convincing people to buy them.
There are numerous steps we could take to reduce production-associated pollution immediately under socialism. Reduce the work week to 3 or 4 days instead of 5. We've just cut our emissions by 30%. Stop having so many commercials telling people to buy shit. Habits are hard to break, but there is a reason advertising is a multibillion dollar industry. We'd be producing mostly things like solar panels and other infrastructure for a while, so we don't want people to feel like they are lacking stuff anyway. All those advertisers can stop coming in to work permanently.
Many or most of the insane things we are doing to the environment are unnecessary and motivated purely by profit, and could be fixed in short order if the productive forces were democratically controlled.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Nevertheless, virtually all socialist societies have indeed grown economically, militarily, in population and in internal structure over time. What people say their goals are and what they end up actually doing are very different things. IMO one reason capitalism has been so successful at taking over the commerce of the world is that its goals and their actions are in sync.
I've only been able to find two socialist societies that have had degrowth as a policy, and have managed to achieve it. They are China under Mao, and Cambodia under Pol Pot. These are not encouraging evidence for socialist-sponsored degrowth. I know that some socialist societies have nibbled around the edges of the topic, with stronger environmental and financial regulations, better tax systems and even China's One Child Policy. But these efforts have not constrained their overall economic growth or reduced the amount of CO2 flowing into the planet's atmosphere or the flow of garbage into its rivers, lakes and oceans.
As I said in a reply below, the world "capitalist" system is truly ginormous in terms of material, energy, economics and organization. Dreaming of dethroning it without pulling those pins out from under it - and in the process immiserating a large fraction of the world's population is, at this point in history, just a dream. By all means try it - people seem to need dreams. But only a dreamer would expect to succeed, and most of the world's ordinary people would pray fervently for your failure, and work hard to ensure it. Not because capitalism is a wonderful system (which it manifestly is not) but because your success could kill them.
I don't see how socialism can dethrone global quasi-capitalism without attacking its support structure. Given how enmeshed that support structure is with the lives of people around the world, I doubt whether there is any revolutionary appetite for that degree of risk.
fascisthunter
(29,381 posts)does'nt work. It really is THAt simple.
gopiscrap
(23,761 posts)MindMover
(5,016 posts)I am challenging you to do more than just spout your negative beliefs ...
"This grim implication of this fact is that we can't "get rid of" capitalism or its excesses by simply changing the rules or opting out."
Who says we can't get rid of capitalism as we now know it? You, who are you to make such a definitive statement .? The world and its societies have changed economic course hundreds of thousands of times over the human experience ..
And more importantly, capitalism has changed in many ways, many times, with the most recent one being bastardized by the political and judicial classes .. and it will be changed again, very soon ...
You talk about energy, as if this is some finite source that we have used so much and we are using so much and we will run out of it soon, is just pure horse manure ... when you wake up in the morning, what do you see, the sun, that is what you should worry about ending ... because that is the energy source for all energy, including yours ...
Where do you get the number 90% in your statement of belief ... I personally have stopped using 90
% of the energy I used a year ago and find that I am not at some draconian choice ... and soon enough, fossil fuels will be factored out of your equation of doom and gloom...
"Changing capitalism enough to make it a humane system would require everyone to use less energy - potentially much less energy. Changing the global system enough to slow down (not even to halt, just to slow) the destruction of the planet's atmosphere, geosphere, biosphere and oceans would require everyone to stop using almost 90% of the energy we use today: all the energy that comes from fossil fuels."
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I don't think we can get rid of it just by changing the rules of the game. It's supported by a vast, global, energy-driven extraction, manufacturing, transportation and sales network. It employs, directly or indirectly, all 7.2 billion people on the planet. It has all our money (plus some it just made up on its own). It produces the vast majority of the planet's $70 trillion GDP, and it's supported by 18 trillion watts of power - 87% of it from fossil fuels, with no replacement source in sight (pace renewable fans, I know about wind and solar, but their power so far has been additive rather than displacive in the global energy mix.) .
We may wish the global quasi-capitalist system could be changed in advance of the collapse of that gargantuan edifice (and without causing too much world-wide immiseration and death), but that's all it would be - a wish.
Capitalism will vanish just like every other socio/political/economic system in history, but the evidence of history supports the assumption that it will vanish only after the material support for its existence crumbles. I expect the driver for that crumbling will be the acceleration of global climate change and ocean acidification over the next 30 years or so. You might read Jared Diamond, William Catton Jr. and Joseph Tainter for the evidence and reasoning that supports this assertion.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)So if there are an estimated 3 billion employed with 1 out of 3 of those 3 billion working in agriculture to feed themselves leaves 2 billion out of 7.2 billion ...
http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/i2490e/i2490e01b.pdf
"with no replacement source in sight (pace renewable fans, I know about wind and solar, but their power so far has been additive rather than displacive in the global energy mix." = NOT
And you might read more of this ...
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/take/coming-soon-100-renewable-power/296
My glass is half full ... what about yours ... ?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Where does the money their customers pay them come from?
"their power so far has been additive rather than displacive"
I don't do "coming soon". I do "what's happening right now?" I'll deal with the future when it becomes the present. There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. And, speaking of cups...
My glass is just the wrong size for the amount of privatized water I can afford to buy.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)of working people for capitalism is no big deal ... NOT
I do coming soon and whats happening right now ....
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5430
and thankfully I can drink water that is affordable and will not make me sick ....
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Women not in the direct work force take care of others who are. People in craft industries buy raw materials and sell their finished goods into the capitalist system. Children who may not be employed today will be employed shortly, and in the meantime live on food purchased from the system with money their parents earn from working in the system. Those retired from daily work live either on savings gained during their employment in the system, from the kindness of family, friends and strangers who are employed in the system, or from pensions that derive from the system.
Everyone consumes something, and all consumption is of products that flow from the capitalist system, paid for by money that originates in it as well.
So, it's that level of indirection that sweeps us all into the net. Virtually all significant transactions today are monetized. and the money comes from the capitalist system. It's what turns even non-working consumers into "employees" of the capitalist system.
All of us are captives of the system. All 7.2 billion of us. There is no outside, it's a life sentence with no possibility whatsoever of parole.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)and the reason is money ... you are a capitalist ... selling your pessimistic intellectual wares for money ....
and what better way to perpetuate your own livelihood then by being a delusional fear monger ...
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Ad hom can be a sign that your debating partner is feeling intellectually cornered. If that's the case, I apologize. I didn't mean to make you feel bad.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)in our world today ...
look at Beck and O'Really and Vanitty and Pumpkin head, nothing particularly wrong about it ... they can be entertaining, just do not take them seriously ....
If you take offense, I apologize ...
It is part of my profession to make judgments based on peoples language and behaviors ....
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Sorry to have gone outside your comfort zone.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)
WiffenPoof
(2,404 posts)I am firmly in the camp of Existential thought. Mostly the works of Sartre and Camus. After carefully reading this thread
I feel like jumping off of a bridge.
(*sigh*)
Paige
Zorra
(27,670 posts)who are too afraid to give up their tidbits of temporary comfort and security to try to fix it in a direct and effective way.