Discuss: The Curse of Bigness

The Curse of Bigness provides insight into what has gone wrong. It also indicates how this will be redressed by referring towards the end to the counterbalancing force. Natural forces invariably determine what is possible in materialistic operations of civilizations. Humans just make decisions, good and bad, about which of these possibilities are used. The powerful forces discussed in this article have used money to irreversibly use up so much of the limited natural material wealth that it is becoming scarce. Natural forces will now ensure that society powers down and that money loses its potency. Bigness has contributed to its inevitable demise because it did not understand the power of natural forces.

Man, EF Schumacher! I read his book, Small is Beautiful, when I was a lad of 14, a decade after it was first published! Still consider it one of the more profound thoughts of the 20th century. Amazing that it remains “counterintuitive” today, even in the face of manifold ongoing catastrophes that Schumacher himself sagely pointed out all too persistently.

As the author of this piece points out, we ought to make an intelligent and willful transition, but we may only begin the process due to compulsion, in the face of the iron laws of physics and thermodynamics. Unfortunate, because at such a late point, the transition becomes a lot more painful.

Loved this piece both for its content and its writing style. Loved too the variety of sources Ketcham references: Louis Brandeis, Justice Taney—this guy has done his research! A resident of Central Vermont, a hotbed of innovation for reliance on a local economy, I am in the process of planning a sustainability camp for kids this summer. This article was precisely what I needed to read in helping me refine the rationale for the camp and deepen my conviction of its necessity. Thanks, Christopher!

This is an excellent article, approaches some very important matters, discusses neuroscience briefly, but profoundly.  There is a psyche of bigness that covers up much pain in our society, and this article speaks to that in colorful andinteresting ways.  The movie, The Most Dangerous Man in America is the story of how one person, Daniel Ellsberg, enamoured with his bigness, felt his pain and discovered his conscience and did a great deed for the world.  Bigness turned to humility and caring. He had the support of many people but especially his wife.  It is an example we need to see happening all over.

Great piece!  Really, I love it!  Now let me challenge you: do you have the courage to apply your logic to the health care debate?  Will you publicly oppose the Democrat’s attempts at even greater centralization of that sector of the economy?  Or do you propose that the solution to corporate business consolidation is government consolidation? Another small point: Schumacher was, in fact, a Catholic convert, and he does a great job elucidating the Church’s principle of subsidiarity.  Regarding his Buddhist Economics essay he writes, on page 55 of Small is Beautiful, “The choice of Buddhism for this purpose is purely incidental; the teachings of Christianity, Islam, or Judaism could have been used just as well as those of any other of the great Eastern traditions.”

Perhaps we can agree that at least one of the global challenges presented to humanity in these early years of Century XXI is the gigantic scale and skyrocketing growth of the human population on Earth. Are absolute global human population numbers a function of food supply or not? This is the vital question for which humanity needs a realistic answer. The best available scientific evidence needs to be acknowledged rather than perniciously cloaked under a veil of preternatural thinking and inadequate theorizing about human demographics that gets conspicuously and erroneously passed along to the human family by self-proclaimed ‘experts’ as adequate scientific evidence.

The wonder of science is that it can be shared widely and validated. It strikes me a breach of “duty to warn” humanity whenever potentially vital scientific evidence is shrouded in silence and willfully denied.  Once the measure of the admittedly formidable global challenges before us is taken, ways will be found to address and overcome whatever the challenges by acting courageously according to humane, universally shared values.

My father was born in Mannheim, Germany 99 years ago. If he was alive today, he would be one person among many, I suppose, who learned tragically during the dark days of the 1930s in Deutschland that there is no safety or security in silence and avoidance. I expect he would report that denial of reality is dangerous, even deadly. Unfortunately many too many people among us still expect to find safety and security in remaining silent and denying reality. Even now many too many of us consciously choose to forget the maxim “denial of reality is dangerous” and to see the world in foolhardy, self-serving ways….not as everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows it to be.

Thanks to everyone in the Orion community for being “now-here” just as you are and for all you are doing to protect life as we know it on Earth from huge human-driven threats. You have probably been correct about the formidable challenges that are likely the result of human activity borne of carelessness, arrogance and greed. To be a species with such remarkable self-consciousness, intelligence and other splendid gifts and to do no better than we are doing now is a source of deep sadness and occasional outbreaks of passionate intensity.

Still I believe in remaining engaged with you and others in this necessary struggle for the future of life as we know it, a sacred struggle in which so many human beings with feet of clay have been involved for a lifetime. The first fifty years of my life were lived as if in a dream world, the profane one devised by the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us who have idolatrously embraced the “curse of bigness”. I had no awareness a single generation would elect sponsors of powerful, greed-mongering economic powerbrokers who would formulate policies and implement big business plans that irreversibly degrade Earth’s environs, recklessly dissipate its limited resources, relentlessly diminish its biodiversity, destabilize its climate and threaten the very future of children everywhere. My failures include not communicating well enough that I and my greedy generation were ravaging the Earth and effectively behaving in a way that could lead to the destruction of our planetary home as a fit place for habitation by the children (let alone coming generations). Even though it is discomforting and difficult to responsibly perform all our duties to science and humanity, at least we can speak out loudly, clearly and often about these unfortunate circumstances and in the process educate one another as best we can. Like you, I do not have answers to forbidding questions related to the patently unsustainable ‘trajectory’ of human civilization in its present, colossally expansive form. Much more problematic, however, is the ruinous determination of many too many experts who have colluded to consciously obstruct open discussion of the best available scientific evidence of “what could somehow be real”. If what could be real about the human condition and the Earth we inhabit is not confronted with intellectual honesty, the best available science, moral courage and careful action, how is it possible for the family of humanity to adapt to the practical requirements of “reality” in a reasonable, sensible, sustainable and timely way?

The curse of bigness could lead to an ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort that is likely to be the end result of experts choosing to remain willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute rather than skillfully examining, objectively reporting and openly discussing extant science of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth. Such willful refusal to respond ably by acknowledging evidence, speaking truth to the powerful and accepting responsibility for the distinctly human-driven global challenges, could be one of the greatest mistakes in human history. After all, what mistake in history could be greater than the ones made in our time that lead humanity inadvertently to precipitate the demise of life as we know it and to put at risk a good enough future for the children?

Brilliant article. Cell phone industry and US government are in collusion and people are dying daily. What will stop this madness?
What just happened in Maine was total disregard for human lives and for our constitutional rights. Not only were they despicable but they lacked dignity. I am speking of the HHS committee and their wonderful Dora Mills. Phooey. She should lose her job. Industry lied aobut preemption, lied about the phone manual language and lied about insurance. Thank you Chris!!

Marx pointed out that capital leads to monopoly.  Galbraith had to make a smart ‘crack’ against Marx, but Marx had already been there. 

Marx also understood that the capitalist state will aid the ... capitalists.  No surprise here.  The state has a class content.  Socialism?  Not at all, Mr. Galbraith.