----- Original Message -----

From: Larry Menkes

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 3:12 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Capitalism and the Environment

Hi, y'all,

You might like to read (or hear about) something else that Heinberg wrote in Peak Everything. Perhaps your disagreement doesn't lie as deep as it may seem.

In speaking about the lessons of cultural anthropology he says that "Comparative studies have consistently shown that human societies are best classified on the basis of their members' means of obtaining food."

"The point is, if you know how people get their food, you will reliably be able to predict most of their other social forms - ...

Of the three basic elements that are present in every human society...  (infrastructure - means of production, structure- human to human decision making and resource allocating, and superstructure- ideas, rituals, ethics, and myths that coordinate human behavior and explain the universe) .."Change at any of these levels can effect the others..." However, the fact that so many cultural forms seem consistently to cluster around ways of obtaining food suggests that fundamental cultural change occurs at the infrastructure level." 

"The industrial revolution represented one of history's pivotal infrastructural shifts; everything about human society changed as a result."" ...because a few prior inventions (steel, gears, and a primitive steam engine) came together in the presence of an abundant new energy source: fossil fuels..."

Oh, "What hath hydrocarbon Wrought?" he asked. Where's the cart? Where's the horse? Where's the driver?

Larry

On Apr 23, 2008, at 12:32, Holistek wrote:

Dave, while I really get your sincerity, I don't know that you and I can really converse.  Our differences lie at a deep level, very basic assumptions and premises, and so for us to explore that would take us into the "philosophical" discusssions that the list rightly objected to earlier as wasting its time. 

 

Furthermore, my life experience to date has shown me that, while I enjoy the engagement (I love debating), discussion at this level is rarely if ever productive.  People are intensely attached to those deep premises (which are, you might agree, not usually held rationally, but rather felt to be true), because they form the very foundation of how they see the world -- and so revising them would mean revising their whole worldview, with earth-shaking implications for everything they have built their life on.  Such exploration is usually only undertaken in a therapeutic environment, where appropriate attention can be paid to supporting a person through difficult and usually painful adjustments in their worldview.

 

So my suggestion to you is that we continue to agree to disagree.  My experience has also been that people don't need to agree on interpretations in order to share common goals, and I think that our goals (sustainable human society) are similar.

 

David Shackleton

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Dave Ewoldt

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 4:49 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Capitalism and the Environment

On 22 Apr 2008 at 4:02, Holistek wrote:

> I want to respectfully sound a note of caution about this ideological
> capitalism/socialism dichotomy. Capitalism is not the problem, and if we think
> it is, we will go off in the wrong direction. Socialist societies have been
> just as bad for the environment as capitalist. The problem is basically human
> nature, our animal nature in fact. My wife is a biologist, we have discussed
> this many times. Every animal (indeed, every plant as well) expands its
> numbers until it is limited by some environmental factor (usually, food limits
> or predation). What is different for us is that we have been able to use
> technology to exploit the environment (basically, expand its carrying capacity
> for our own species at the expense of virtually everything else). That isn't a
> consequence of any political system, it's a consequence of our inate
> biological drives.

Hey David... I just have to chime in here (bet you didn't see this coming, huh? :-)

First, I fully agree that capitalist and socialist societies have both been bad for the environment, although I don't think equally so (let's take Sweden for our example socialist society). The main problem, as so well pointed out by Roy Morrison in "Ecological Democracy", is the mantra of industrial growth both these modern political theories adhere to. What makes capitalism worse is the additional pathology of competitive financial growth used to propel industrial growth.

It's also true that in order for a capitalist/socialist/communist society to actually function in such a manner that they deliver on their ideological promises of equitable human welfare and progress, they must be democratic. The main problem here is that capitalism is anathema to democracy as it is based on competition and screwing the other guy first. This is a slightly simplified explanation, but this iswhat it boils down to. The other thing that is hard for proponents of capitalism to admit to is that both capitalism and Marxism are based on the same philosophical foundation -- they are both systems of economic determinism that either devalue or dismiss as irrelevant life itself. These two systems are not diametrically opposed; they merely argue over which class gets screwed the worst. Libertarians in particular get apoplectic over this fact.

But the real reason I felt drawn to chime in here is the continued attribution to human nature behaviors which are socially caused with zero proof, merely belief bordering on religious fervor based on out of context anecdotal evidence, of the veracity of these claims.

Part of what I have a hard time understanding is how can anyone make statements such as this without becoming debilitated by cognitive dissonance? What evidence do you have, taking the Amazonian Yequana tribe as but one example, that they expand their base, foul their nest, or act aggressively? If they don't, then it can't be claimed that it is an immutable aspect of human nature to develop those behaviors. For more background on a more natural perspective of human nature, see this interview from 1998 with Jean Liedloff, author of "The Continuum Concept."

Because we do seem to agree that many, if not all, of our current personal, social, and environmental problems stem from a way of thinking and being that disconnects us from both what we consider to be the natural world, as well as from each other (although they're really just different manifestations of the same thing).

But then you posit as true stories that spring from the exact mindset that is causing the problems. Reductionism, facticity, and separation all supply the theoretical foundation for modern biology to make statements that rationalize the worst of human behaviors as natural, instead of seeing these behaviors as reactions to traumas that are close to untenable. Enlightenment thinking involves seeing life as a machine in a clockwork universe, and blindly adhering to genetic impulses perched at the top of a hierarchy of needs.

Biologists must strictly adhere to this worldview; otherwise their world simply falls apart. The entire paradigm that modern biology works within is disconnected from and fundamentally at odds with the life they are seeking to understand. The world we have created today is rife with evidence of the actual outcomes of obstinately clinging to this ultimately destructive paradigm.

One of the arguments biologists like to use to rationalize their worldview, which you allude to, is intraspecies competition for limited resources within an ecosystem. Invasive species are often invoked to support this argument. Now, it is true that all species expand to fill an ecological niche. But let's think about what this really means, using the example of a forest after a fire. The dynamic process a forest undergoes in these conditions is for "invasive" species to come in and take hold. But they aren't crowding anything out. They are nursing the system back to health, and reduce their population when this is accomplished. It is an example of cooperation, not competition.

Organisms and their environment co-create in a dance of reciprocity. This is nature. Only human rationality is capable of breaking this intimate bond. And again, we experience with all the rest of our dozens of senses the negative consequences of doing so.

We have not been able to "expand" the Earth's carrying capacity. This commonly repeated statement shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what carrying capacity is. Carrying capacity is a dynamic process amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation that maintains the conditions necessary for the sustainability of self-organizing life-affirming relationships.

Humans have dramatically and negatively gone beyond carrying capacity boundaries, which is why we have resource depletion and a toxic environment. Natural systems can not create at the same phenomenal rate at which we can destroy. And the only reason we act this way is because we have created a system that doesn't allow our natural expectations of fulfillment to be met in any manner that could be considered natural. Our entire modern society is built on providing addictive substitutes through force-based ranking hierarchies of domination that depend on nurturing fear. This is everything but natural.

> Now, the issue facing us is whether we can come to terms with this, as a
> conscious species, and modify our nature through conscious choice. If we can,
> it will be the first time ever, for any species.

I don't think we need to modify our nature. What we need to do is pay attention to what it is trying to tell us, and not for the first time ever. But, what often tends to happen at this point in the argument is that people get accused of "romanticizing" indigenous cultures. While some people do, of course, take this to extremes, all this accusation really does is shut down the discussion, because it carries the implicit assumption that romanticizing is non-rational and thus irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst. And we worship rationality to the irrational conclusion that any other aspect of human nature has nothing of value to contribute.

Anyway, thanks for continuing with this conversation. It has been very helpful to me in refining my presentation to local government officials on both the necessity of relocalization and a realistic appraisal of its chances for success.