Topic
But only if a weary left can lead with new ideas. Here's a few to start.
It's not the size of the stimulus, but how you use it.
It is ironic that Homo sapiens, we big-brained and clever species, can trace almost every tragedy and failing to one generic cause: a failure of imagination. We seem to be an idiot savant species -- stunningly clever at so many things, capable of greatness, creativity and sacrifice for others, melding genius and love when we are at our best, and greed and hate at our worst. But whether it is the individual who fails to imagine the consequences of punching someone in a bar or a whole society which fails (like California) to imagine the consequences of starving itself of the revenue needed to function, observers from another world could easily conclude that we are terminally stupid. Or, as John Ralston Saul put, unconscious as a civilization.
Those individuals and organizations who have fought off the madness and ruin of neo-liberal policies for more than 20 years are now presented with the best possible time to present a vision of what is possible. Globalization is effectively dead: what characterized the world for the past 30 years, the suicidal policies of what was called the Washington Consensus, will never return, at least not in its old form. The climate crisis, the damage done to the real economies of the global North, the arrival of peak oil, the inevitable return of protectionism and state intervention mean that we have left that era behind.
Not only has financial capitalism and its corruption and ersatz wealth been exposed. The Chicago boys, the intellectual storm troopers in the free-market think-tanks and editorial writers of Asper media are facing an ideological crisis. The whole edifice stands exposed as a pack of lies and deceptions created for the sole purpose of enriching the already wealthy. "There is no alternative." Really? There bloody well better be or we are all doomed. "Government is the problem, not the solution." Really? The banks and the CEOs of the transnationals who revelled in this slogan would now disagree. And what about the cause of the evil deficits -- governments "...spending like drunken sailors"? Now Bay Street believes that government isn't nearly drunk enough. And the demand that we "...run government like a business"? Just which bankrupt, crooked, reckless business would that be?
The magnitude of the moral crisis of the political right is staggering. The greed, dishonesty, hubris and psychopathic disregard for the public good renders the whole business elite utterly unfit to pronounce on anything -- not even on the economy, but certainly not democracy or how we run our collective affairs.
All of this should add up to the biggest opportunity the left has had in more than a generation to take the lead, to frame the issues in terms of Canadians' stated values and aspirations, to bury the Washington Consensus ideology in the rubble of its own destructive legacy. This is our opportunity. These two crises have arrived just in time to wake us up, just in time for us to choose to save the planet and ourselves from a truly grim future. Not just rising oceans and the loss of coastal communities, but a nightmarish dystopia characterized by global social unrest, the rise of fascism, mass starvation and wars over energy and water.
But to date there is silence.
'Denial on a gargantuan scale'
Most middle-class people -- and this includes the majority of social and political activists -- are still acting as if this is just another recession. We'll just eat out less and take a two-week vacation instead of four until it blows over. The concession to the moral crisis of climate change is to buy a Prius and think we have made a difference. This is denial on a gargantuan scale. If every gas guzzler were replaced tomorrow by a Prius, we would still have 10 times too many private cars on the road.
In the U.S. there is a growing movement to cut taxes -- in a country starved for social programs, with an education system barely competing with Botswana's, and an almost unimaginable debt counted in the tens of trillions of dollars. The U.S. is headed for the most catastrophic collapse of empire in human history. Canada is not quite as delusional, but we are still a nation in denial, determined to maintain an insane consumer culture, and damn the consequences for ourselves and future generations.
The current situation is not a normal crisis -- it is a world-changing shift that could go in any of several directions. It cannot remain static, and without progressive leadership it is certain to go badly. But where is that leadership? It is not coming from the traditional sources. Organized labour is, understandably, preoccupied with saving threatened industries. (No talk there of forcing the Big Three to focus their massive infrastructure and technical know-how on mass transit. And no government commitment to expand it.) Social movement organizations are fighting the usual single-issue battles as if the context had not changed at all. The environmental movement still resists the fact that dealing with climate change without addressing social and economic democracy is impossible. And the political parties who should be providing a vision for a better future are mired in tactical politics. Jack Layton dismisses Michael Ignatieff's musing about the need for future tax increases as "old school" and suggests that the solution is to "grow the economy."
The planet will not survive "growing the economy." In its current trajectory, our world is terminal with the cancer of rampant consumerism metastasizing to every living system we need to survive. 60 per cent of the world's ecosystems are currently degraded. The stupendous "growth" of the last 20 years has seen the rich get filthy rich and the poor get poorer, with 20 per cent of the global population subsisting on two per cent of the world's resources. Canadian families have wrung up unprecedented debt trying to maintain a middle-class consumer lifestyle that doesn't even make them happy.
The solution isn't at the mall
Buying a hybrid car isn't going to cut it. Indeed nothing short of a cultural revolution in the developed world has any chance of saving the planet and humanity. How will we know that the revolution is under way? When there is a movement not to cut taxes but to ban advertising. When there is a massive call for taxing wealth so that no individual can take more than, say, $100,000 a year out of our collective wealth. When mandatory Sunday closing returns and families spend time together outside the shopping mall. When there is no more talk of ending poverty and homelessness because it will have disappeared. When we willingly -- no, eagerly -- pay half our income in taxes so that we can have the things we actually say we want as a community.
We need, on the left, to once again become the source of Big Ideas. Our defensive politics of the last 25 years has dulled our imaginations to the point of stagnation. We are leading from behind. So-called ordinary Canadians are desperate for a vision of the future they can grasp on to and believe is possible. We have given them more of the same: the politics of despair, telling struggling working people that things are actually worse than they already think they are.
We are obsessed with "stimulating" the economy. Instead we need to have a national conversation about starving the beast. Capitalism must grow to survive and no matter how we tweak this perverse system, growth will ensure its continued social and environmental destruction. Growing the economy in the face of this crisis is madness: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Fortunately, there are people thinking about this under the umbrella notion of "prosperity without growth." Amazingly, the British government has put together a whole website full of ideas and debates about what this might look like. A project of the Sustainable Development Commission, it suggests that creating conditions for people to flourish, "Includes tackling systemic inequality and removing incentives for unproductive status competition; sharing available work and improving work-life balance, and reversing the culture of consumerism; Building a sustainable macro-economy which is no longer structurally reliant on increasing consumption."
In Canada there is the just-started, three year Climate Justice Project of the B.C. office of the CCPA. It promises to engage in ground-breaking research on climate change but through the lens of social justice.
There are others, as well. In Paris last year the Economic De-Growth For Ecological Sustainability And Social Equity Conference came up with a declaration about the world of the future. Among its many articles, two stand out as characterizing the kind of thinking that must start spreading. De-growth in the global North, says the declaration, "...is characterized by substantially reduced dependence on economic activity, and an increase in free time, unremunerated activity, conviviality, sense of community, and individual and collective health; [and the] encouragement of self-reflection, balance, creativity, flexibility, diversity, good citizenship, generosity, and non-materialism." Everyone put their Blackberrys down. Go to these sites. Send them to friends.
To be fair to ourselves, progressive organizations are exhausted and demoralized. Fighting trench warfare and rearguard actions against a powerful and ruthless adversary for 25 years will do that to individuals and organizations. But we will not find new energy and inspiration in the trenches -- and we won't inspire others from there either. Canadians' values are amazingly progressive but a generation of neo-liberal assaults has lowered their expectations of what is possible. Nevertheless, they are out there waiting for someone, anyone, to present them with reasons to be hopeful. What they want and what we need is what America's radical rabbi, Michael Lerner, calls the politics of meaning. More on that next time.
Related Tyee stories:
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nechakogal
3 years ago
We need a political party that walks the talk
"To be fair to ourselves, progressive organizations are exhausted and demoralized. Fighting trench warfare and rearguard actions against a powerful and ruthless adversary for 25 years will do that to individuals and organizations." Dobbin is right organizations are too busy piecing together fragments of support for vulnerable populations, those who have been abandoned during neoliberal assault on our communities, and it keeps them from doing the important work of citizenship building, and community enrichment. As I stated in another comment this week, we need governments, at the very least to restore core funding to community agencies and groups, stop downloading core services and get out of the way in communities to allow for citizens to create local solutions. I am not as pessimistic as Dobbin appears to be about the Greens. I see strong recognition for the social needs within our communities, fiscal responsibility, balanced with the focus on environment. There is also a commitment to thinking outside the box for solutions that will make our communities stronger. The fact that the party does not engage in the mainstream media sideshow that the other federal parties are always engaged within is also a plus. They are walking the talk, something the other two haven’t managed to do for over three decades. I wish more people would take their vote seriously and take time to review history, and read party policies. If they did they would recognize that the Greens are the fresh start we all need.
Van Isle
3 years ago
Google the Venus Project.
Google the Venus Project.
seth
3 years ago
Doin' it for ourselves.
If all progressives abandon the NDP and Green party's and join the Liberal party we can overwhelm the bastards, taking the party back before Campbell can do much more damage.
Send the Neocons over to Wilf at the BC Conservative party. Maybe he could use them.
Sandwichman
3 years ago
Prosperity without Growth
The Work Less Party has been advocating 'prosperity without growth' for five years. Peter Victor of York University supplied the macroeconomic 'meat' to the Sustainable Development Commission report. He also wrote Managing without Growth. A key strategy in both is work time reduction. I could go on for several hours about WHY work time reduction is THE strategic key. But I'll save it for my book.
The short answer can be found in a 1930 satirical article by Kenneth Burke in The New Republic, "Waste -- the future of prosperity." As Burke told it (and as it came to pass) the only way to keep the economy growing incessantly is to instill wasteful consumption habits in the population. The choice is -- and always has been -- waste or shorter hours. Only now the waste is threatening to KILL us. So there really is no choice.
Cynic
3 years ago
Good article. And as I will
Good article. And as I will never stop pointing out, the source of elite power over our lives is the banking system, and I have yet to see Murray ever mention it, nor has any article I've ever read at this progressive website. I ask you, what is the use of generating all those excellent ideas about how we can do things better when it all gets shot down with a comment like "how are you going to pay for it?" and we stare blinking at the numbers they show us, and we go "gee, look at all that debt"?
It's a con game, folks. Wake up. There is nothing more important for this planet than to expose money and banking for what it is. Then we'll really start getting somewhere. Until then, more of the same.
There are many many excellent websites that deal with the issue. I recommend these two for a start, indeed, they are required viewing for all progressives.
Money as Debt, by Paul Grignon.
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544
Zeitgest: Addendum, by Peter Joseph.
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912
Skywalker
3 years ago
Excellent piece Murray
The question is really how one can get the citizenry to think about issues in the complex format like this. Such a message would go over most heads during a campaign hence little changes. It might be the messengers. We need a few with ability to captivate audiences with more than the pablum that serves for political dialogue these days. There is so much at stake.
anarcho
3 years ago
Not everyone is without ideas
The mainstream left, ie the NDP, the CLC, may be exhausted and devoid of new ideas as Murray states, but what about the smaller groups and parties to the left of the mainstream? Here you will find people with energy, people who do not believe that “growth solves all” and people with new ideas, including economic democracy, popular power, local economies etc. Many of these ideas are influenced by the successful struggles in Latin America.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
Murray, Remember me from
Murray,
Remember me from your Reform Watch days?
There's no hope for any change until the garbage that's being taught in our universities as "economics" is questioned, examined and thrown out, for the terrible damage it has done to the world in the past 40 years.
As colonization and mass murder have been licenced by priesthoods in the past, they're now forced on the Earth by the pseudo priesthood of economists.
The purpose of globalization has always been the collectivization and kholkhozification of the world's economy under the rule of a small gang of the multinational corporate mafia.
The Soviet communists have done it with bayonets, now it is done with the perceived power of imaginary capital "created" from the air, enslaving and destroying the Earth in the name of "globally competitive free enterprise".
The leather coats of the GPU have been replaced by business suits, but the results are the same.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
Wilfred Laurier
3 years ago
Congratulations!
When I read this, I was ready to sing the Internationale and had visions of Rosa Luxemburg.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
If you know the
If you know the Internationale, you must be one of them.
As a dedicated private enterpriser, I've spent 45 years of my life fighting communism , and intend to the spend the rest fighting the same gang, now operating under the banner of capitalist collectivization.
Ed Deak.
Jeffrey J.
3 years ago
Non-violent civil disobediance
Change is possible. It lies within us, the demos. It takes hard work, tenacity and organization. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Tommy Douglas, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow. All worked tirelessly and were joined by citizens from all over. They all followed one strategy: non-violent, civil disobedience.
To think, Gandhi took on the British Empire, without cell phones! During his time the British Empire in India owned all the guns, the army, the railroads, the elite. Anyone trying to stand up to this very successful regime would have been laughed at. But with support from millions of people, Gandhi prevailed.
During the 1930's, workers who discussed their working conditions were committing a crime of conspiracy. They were charged, beaten, jailed and the mainstream press stood by and did nothing. Yet they prevailed, with support from people like Clarence Darrow.
First step: turn off your cable TV. It is even worse than the banks. It is the opiate of the masses and drains the ability to think or act.
Second step; get directly involved in your community where people are being treated unjustly.
Injustice is a universally recognized human experience. Unlike "money", it is not a "construct" but a visceral, readily identifiable mistreatment of others. Injustice will always be recognized and never embraced by its victims. Where there is injustice, there is a need for organizing by others. And where there is organizing, there is strength, which ultimately can challenge the tenuous hold the elites have on the rest of society.
Great article Mr. Dobbin as always.
mikev
3 years ago
capitalism
Mr. Deak, good to see you back!
"Capitalism is Man Exploiting Man; Communism is just the opposite."
Or how about this one:
It is as ridiculous for a nation to say to its citizens, "You must consume less because we are short of money," as it would be for an Airline to say "Our planes are flying, but we can't take you because we are short of tickets."
-Sheldon Emry
alive
3 years ago
quit harping on cars!
I am so tired of hearing that we have too many private cars!
We have too many commercial trucks carrying goods that could be grown or manufactured closer to home.
Longer distance transport should be by railway.
We have too many military vehicles, tanks, planes and ships burning up fuel for no good reason!
We have too many manufactures wasting fuel creating useless gadgets in the hope of making a profit.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
We have USAF B52s over our
We have USAF B52s over our heads every day.
Years ago I calculated that in the time while I can see those stupid mass murdering monsters, they waste the same amount of fuel I use for my truck, tractors, pumps, etc. for 5 years.
Can't even imagine the amount of fuel they're burning and polluting the world with, during a single mission.
On the other side the Russians must be doing the same insanity, not to mention all the other countries with smaller planes.
What in hell are those idiot planes doing over Canada anyway?
Ed Deak.
endofcapitalism
3 years ago
the end of capitalism and the politics of joy
"We need, on the left, to once again become the source of Big Ideas. Our defensive politics of the last 25 years has dulled our imaginations to the point of stagnation."
i couldnt agree more! let's be bold and imaginative! and let's be joyous that global capitalism is crumbling before us. this source of so much destruction is showing itself to be an enfeebled and broken system.
this does not guarantee a progressive, sustainable future, not at all. it's just as likely that we could have fascism.
but the end of capitalism does present an enormous opportunity for a better future based on grassroots organizing. we need a holistic approach to social change that recognizes the infinite ways that people can improve their communities and involve themselves in a movement for democratic sustainability.
let's embrace a positive vision for a future society based on democracy, justice, freedom, sustainability and love. our voices are needed most of all during this time of crisis. people are desperately looking for solutions.
time to step up.
my website (http://endofcapitalism.com) and impending book, The End of Capitalism, deal with these topics in more depth. i'd love feedback and collaboration from folks with similar views!
thanks
alex knight
http://endofcapitalism.com
philadelphia students for a democratic society
freebear
3 years ago
The Carbon Tax will rescue us!
Right David?
Booker
3 years ago
Crisis
Not to put a damper on things, but capitalism survived the Great Depression and it will survive this lesser depression too. Not that that's a good thing. We cannot keep on living unsustainably and now is the time for government to step in and require changes. Yes, grass roots organizations need to build support, but without enforcement and the participation of governments we will not be able to get the job done. Unfortunately, Canada is now at the back of the pack. We need new political leadership, but if the last provincial election was an indication, we aren't getting it anytime soon.
Skywalker
3 years ago
"it will survive this lesser depression too."
Yup it will, but it will be because of a little socialism for the people who vilify its notions when the profits are present. Back in the thirties one could excuse the population because they were less educated. Now the excuse for being dumb is...well, inexcusable.
Bailey
3 years ago
truth and consequences
Every once in a while this place just makes me smile. We seem as a culture to be more committed to swallowing lies than at any time since the thirties.
I really think that the only thing that can work to bring about the change the world must have to survive is for enough people to start crying bullshit when they see it, and crying it as loud as they can.
Here's the thing: liars lie.
Mr Deak points out the lies he sees with sharp observation and stubborn insistence and good reasoned logic. Mr Dobbin is pointing out the structural lies with high quality details and persuasive argument. Others cite history to remind us where the lies must inevitably lead us.
It gives one hope to hear such voices. Most of what we can hear is bought and paid for by the liars themselves.
The details of what system of economics or government emerge to replace this empire of lies are not nearly as important as that we all demand truth and stick to it like our lives depend on it.
Because they do. Our children's lives as well, and theirs.
We all have our favourite ideas about how to proceed into the future, but it's hard to start while so very many of us still buy into the bullshit.
Our only hope is for all the lies to be exposed for what they are. Convincingly, loudly, over and over and over until everybody gets to see, and only the liars themselves are left, exposed along with them.
Only then will we be able to begin to build a future that will have a hope of working, based on at least the intention to live our lives based in truth.
peasant43
3 years ago
Dark Age Ahead
Our civilization is in a profound malaise. We are incapable of even imagining something different or new. We try endlessly to find some answer from the past, hence 30 years of neo-this and neo-that.
Mr. Dobbin thinks that people are out there waiting to be led to some brighter future. A frightening prospect indeed.
Jane Jacobs' prognosis seems far more plausible.
buccaneer bay
3 years ago
Mr Dobbin........
I couldn`t have said it better.......
But unfotunately it is too late,everyone has bitten the apple,if you think we all can hold hands and come together in the community garden,well,ain`t gonna happen....
The nukes aren`t being disassembled,there isn`t one form of goverment that works,cults,sects,religion,we are destined to crash and burn.
Eveything is still here,every oil molecule,we have only transformed it`s properties,enjoy the ride before it blows up........
Mr. Dobbin,you are correct,this recession is diffrent,there will be no recovery,the earth can only support maybe a billion people,what would you like to do with the rest of them?
Yea,something is wrong allright,30 million for an actor to play a part,Mark Texeira of the New York yankees recently signed a 285 million dollar contract to play basaball......
A person can`t even opt out and set up a home and self reliance in the middle of nowhere,eminent domain will take it away........
Pleasent dreams people
OilbertaRedTory
3 years ago
Limitless growth ...
... is better known as 'tumour'
Real conservatives - conserve.
(btw : 'eminent domain' is US legalese for 'expropriation')
buccaneer bay
3 years ago
Oilbertaredtory.....
Duh! Really.........Don`t think eminent domain is not in Canada,because it is.
KWD
3 years ago
imagination no failure
“A failure of imagination” is not genetic. Imagination requires thinking, and therein lies the failure: we think the way society expects, and the way we are trained as children.
Whether it be the judgments we use about health, wealth, social status, skin color or the health of the environment, we live our lives according to the stories society tells us are reality. Judgment becomes our reality.
If our perception of reality varies too far from the “norm” we are concidered deviant. Too much deviance or variation from societal norms can have a cost: extinction. In genetics, deviation and variation are the roots of evolution.
Skywalker is partly correct. Unfortunately, in order to react (to the world we have created) in ways that will enhance our chances of survival, and allow us to evolve, we must do more than “think about issues in the complex format”. The way we think needs to evolve. We need to understand why we think the way we do. We need to reexamine the way we link judgment to reality.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
There comes a time when,
There comes a time when, people have to wake up and some, at least a small percentage do.
I was born, grew up and was educated in an ultra conservative, super religious, fascist, royalist family, society and country, where the aristocracy ruled. And nobody dared to question it. The same as we now have with the multinational corporate mafia, enslaving the world.
At 17, I fought against the Soviets in a nazi satellite army.
After the war the communists offered me the world, but I refused and became a refugee, living in camps, out of a suitcase, starving and in rags for 3 years, without a home for 6 years, in 3 countries.
So, the secret police sentenced me to 10 years in the gulags, in absentia, then arrested and tortured my mother, trying to find out how I got to England and what I was doing there ? She never recovered mentally.
All this happened because, after the war, I was in a military hospital, lying in bed for 3 months with a legwound and had a lot of time to think. All the misery around me woke me up to see the causes.
That was when I decided that no politician, or ruling class, will ever again order me to kill and get killed for some beautifully worded theory, invented by some shithead intellectual, promising the world, but delivering misery and destruction.
As we can see it now, repeated once again in our world, going downhill in an ever accelerating pace on the orders of some crooks, licenced by economists and enforced by bought and paid for governments.
In short, childhood brainwash is OK to a certain degree, but there comes a time when some people have to wake up, smell the rot and do something about it. As I have been trying to do, in a small way, for the past 64 years.
Ed Deak.
endofcapitalism
3 years ago
Wow
What an amazing story Ed! I can't imagine what that must have been like to leave your country and your imprisoned mother.
It's very courageous of you to reject the totalitarian plans of those around you and persist in a struggle for true freedom. I commend you, deeply.
I also just wanted to respond to some of the comments here. It seems there's a deep sense of despair among many of these readers, even to the point of apocalypticism. I would strongly encourage everyone to see the ways in which this despair is conditioned by society, the mass media, politicians, the corporate structure, etc. as a way to disempower the public and discourage us from making waves.
We need to cherish hope, not the fake, meaningless hope of an Obama, but the authentic hope of people organizing to improve their conditions.
Perhaps hope is needed most of all. Let's create it.
alex
http://endofcapitalism.com
Fiat lux
3 years ago
endof.... My mother was
endof.... My mother was arrested after they couldn't catch me and I turned up in England, with the help of the Attlee govt.
The main problem is that, through history, the vast majority of people have never been permitted to think for themselves and now, when they have all the chances for instant communication and exchange of information, no generation ever had before, they're happy with the bones thrown to them and have "fun"
I'm sort of interviewing people all the time, by asking innocent questions and sometimes I'm shocked by their ignorance. Many, who have voting powers, have no idea who the PM is or what party is in power.?
All they know is that capitalists "create wealth" and that "Canada has always been rich in resources, but poor in capital and we need foreign investors to bring their moneys".
Without the slightest idea of, that when you have resources, you have capital and foreign investment is a perennial foreign debt.
The overall ignorance is frightening, up to the highest levels. When I had a custom furniture business in Vancouver, many of my customers were the top VIPs of business.
I've spent many hours and days in their offices, homes and boardrooms, listened to the phone conversations and was shocked by what I've learned and heard.
Many of them, already 35-40 years ago, have been boasting about how they're going to take over the world etc. At the same time, some of them were so incredibly ignorant and even stupid that I wouldn't have employed them as sweepers in my shop.
All they knew was how to play the cash register and screw everybody else.
Now I can see their predictions coming true in spades and people still think that
everything is OK, prosperity is just around the corner, because the crooks say so.
Ed Deak.
Bailey
3 years ago
Where hope comes from
It's true enough. We've hung our hats on the love of money for so long that we really have lost the ability to imagine that anything else can accomplish anything. Such a simplistic driver makes prediction very easy. All the pesky human quirks that aren't attached to it can be discounted or ignored.
But there are other things. Human nature remains, buried under the false beliefs and conventional wisdom.
Hope starts, I think in the darker places. Shame is a revolutionary emotion, and outrage. Fear too. They can lead to despair, true, but also to change. The desperate must change the world, or succumb. They must.
So hope begins.
Money is a powerful idea, but also a pure fiction. A sort of religious idea that grows out of a social need for a way to balance energies. It's been hijacked and turned against human interests by the stupider elements, but that in itself is a demonstration of the source of its power, and all power.
Humans, acting. Money is used by humans, and misused by others. The world is just an aggregate of the actions of all who inhabit it. When we begin to act differently, to believe differently if you like, the world can change quite quickly.
The more those who see the lies shout their truths from the rooftops, the more hope there is for us.
endofcapitalism
3 years ago
hope again
hope is springing from the streets of Tehran right this moment in a way many of us have never been able to witness. now it's available on our youtubes and facebooks and twitters.
let's hope the US doesn't use this as an opportunity to extend its gloom over the last part of the middle east though.
leave it to the people - united they can overturn any "Supreme Leader."
alex
http://endofcapitalism.com
RickW
3 years ago
Ponzi Schemes & Stings
They have one thing as their mutal goal: both concentrate on who gets the money first. That is the sole reason for their implementation -- especially when governments are involved (and regardless whether these governments are "left" or "right")
Ed Deak says:
This is the result of the vast collectivization process we call "city living", where we've traded independence and critical thought for "fun" and (as Petula Clark once sang in "Downtown":
When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go - downtown.
When you've got worries all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help
I know - downtown.
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
you can forget all your troubles
Forget all your cares
so go - downtown
Things will be great when you're - downtown
No finer place for sure - downtown
Everything's waiting for you - downtown.
KWD
3 years ago
cities simply reomve barriers
City living not only concentrates people it concentrates all aspects of human behaviour. Loss of independence is simply an unavoidable comprimise of increasing population density necessary for survival in the city. Survival in the city demands a change in thinking, and behaviour.Critical thinking isn’t lost, it’s suppressed by the need for comprimise.
The same basic comprimises that exist in a rural nuclear family … that allow the social cooperation and interdependance necessary for survival … are magnified by the higher densities in cities.
City life not only exagerates and concentrates all of the disparities in human behaviour that are found in rural life, including leisure or “fun” time, it introduces opportunity for the survival … and increase … of less desirable behaviours. Those behaviours are not unique to city living. The city simply provides the venue for their expression.
However, whether critical thinking is lost or suppressed is really irrelevant when we avoid looking at why we think the way we do. Garbage in, garbage out.
alive
3 years ago
downtown indeed!
yes:
Everything's waiting for you - downtown.
I prefer to call it:
"Pablum for the masses"!
It is capitalisms payoff to you for letting them rip you off,
they allow you to "feel good" and have "fun"--- at your own expense mind you.
And it works, people have quit thinking altogether!
Talk about brainwashing.
RickW
3 years ago
KWD
If the city is a "lens" for magnifying (or releasing) the less desirable traits of humanity, then what use are cities...?
It seems to me that, if living in the city means you spend all your time earning money to buy turnips, what not just grow your own turnips and be done with it?
You would actually be ahead of the "game", in that while you are taxed on the money you make (a built-in inflation), you wouldn't be taxed on the turnips you grow (for your own consumption). You would thus reap 100% of your efforts.
Bailey
3 years ago
Families
This is a very interesting comparison. In our families we find two main characteristics; hierarchy and familiarity.
One stems from the need for coordinated use of common resources, the other from physical proximity, coupled with common interests.
Turnip growing comes in to both.
As we've seen recently, the money supply is insecure. It was doubled basically without adding any value whatever, and the increase never accounted. Those elements, like food, that don't lend themselves to manipulation from the centre, reflect true inflation by doubling in price in a short space of time.
The classic inflation stories that involve switching to unregulated paper currency also involve wheelbarrows. I point out that when the Germans paid their WWI debts by printing money, it led to a reissue of the Deutschmark. At a rate of a trillion to one.
If we are on that same path, as we seem to be, growing turnips in town seems like an inevitability. During the second war there was a program to turn lawns into gardens, to supply food outside of the agricultural supply system, which had lost many workers.
There are few lawns left in the city now. What would be a suitable alternative way to do that now, do you think?
Keeping in mind all those things, common interest, hierarchical relationships and close proximity of living spaces.
VivianLea Doubt
3 years ago
the imaginative conversation
It is inspiring to read these comments, for I think they reveal some real reflection on this present moment for humanity and the earth. I can’t think of anything more invigorating…
Murray says the great majority of people are doing very little different in response to our current crises, and maybe this is true. The question is – what would we have people do? When I look around me at those who make up my neighbourhood and community, I see some real heroes – people who go to work every day, raise families, shop for groceries, recycle their garbage, enjoy modest pleasures – I see them as heroes because they know it is not enough, but they keep striving. I think this reflects the impetus towards hope and joy, in the sense that life itself is such…
I believe, as Murray does, that imagination is the only thing that will take us forward – yet virtually all of the institutions of our society strive to deliver by the book; the prosaic calculation of this is how many dollars it takes to get X. What if we talked about the value of X…the value of garbage pick-up, and health care, or rivers, and forests is not in what they cost or the money they generate, but in how they add to human welfare. I continue to believe that the conversation is the starting point for all change. The conversation that refuses to value everything in terms of money and frames it instead in terms of how it furthers family, community, culture – the conversation that stubbornly insists that these are the only goals that matter in an authentic way for humans – the conversation that modestly and insistently brings us back to what really matters, every time.
Hope and joy are powerful words…when people are asked to reflect on hope and joy, the world changes, one small resonance at a time.
Sincerest thanks for the conversation here…
doggone
3 years ago
Good article and comments
I'm not sure I have much to add but thanks for this Father's Day/ First Day of Summer
gift. I finally had time to read it - it's father's day y'know.
Why reading stuff concerning such an awful situation should cheer me up is puzzling.
Maybe because most commentors are at least coherent and I agree with most things said.Mind you I have yet to check the "All Comments"
Maybe because I like what Murray writes generally and this topic requires urgent attention.
Maybe because I have been searching for "the Sword in the Stone" (or someone who has already pulled it)for some years.
One thing humans have going for them is the ability to "plug on" with little hope.
Hopefully some of us will be there at the end of this "March".
aorangi
3 years ago
From Crisis Comes Hope
Fiat lux2 days ago If you know the Internationale, you must be one of them.
As a dedicated private enterpriser, I've spent 45 years of my life fighting communism , and intend to the spend the rest fighting the same gang, now operating under the banner of capitalist collectivization.
Ed Deak.
Well Ed, Like Wilfred Laurier, I too know the "Internationale" but that dosen't necessarily fit me into any category.
You may have fought against communisnm in Russia or somewhere else perhaps, but where have you been fighting it since? Canada? Surely not. You'd never be able to find your target.
Communism and capitalism are theories that could both work...in theory, but not in practice. Overwhelming both is "survival of the fittest", born into us all and causing the strongest, meanest and greediest to rise to the top, dictate and control: Mother Nature's perpetuation of the species.
I have spent my life supporting policies that promote the common good yet all I see now is a proliferation of small gains in that respect and huge advancement in corruption, American global interference and predation, as well as the despoiling of our planet through obsolescence. But I still hope, because that too is born into humans, and if I don't hope, I give in.
Your comment that "capitalist collectivisation" equates with communism is an oxymoron.
"The Internationale unites the human race" (smile).
doggone
3 years ago
In the first portion of this article
Murray starts to "rock".
We need more of this: informed folks letting their hair down.
I don't think this particular soap box will nessessarily go on for ever. At some point you and I will be back on our porch without the grandchildren's Blackberry wondering why we can not get Thetyee. Good fun while it lasted but have a look at the western take on the news from Iran. The same mentality runs Canada.
See ya on the porch