Discuss: High on Progress

Take heart, kulturCritic! The referendum was just the beginning. First we have to get organized, focus our collective attention on the problem. Then we take action.

Here’s one example:

Transition Towns http://www.transitionnetwork.org/ is a global movement that began in Kinsale, Ireland a few years ago. Geologist Colin Campbell, godfather of the peak oil movement and local resident, spoke in 2005 to a group of Kinsale students, and the class resolved to transition their region away from fossil fuels. The name and idea has spread rapidly — there are now 274 Transition Towns across the world, in countries like Japan, the USA, Chile, Germany, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Finland.

The power of billions of people organizing and creating a different world - free of addictions to materialism, fossil fuels and “progress” - sounds like a revolution to me.

Rebecca - tell me when you all throw away your computers, cell phones, ipods, etc…

And if you are going to tell me there are other, alternative energy sources like wind and water, etc, you are simply playing into another magician’s hand.  Even the production of the equipment necessary to generate that powerr, let alone make the products, is a huge problem for the environment. 

And your Transition Towns are not going to bring politics or big business to an end, not even to its knees.  But, trylu, it will burn itself out eventually.  Then, the real question is will your Towns be able to live without power, withour computers, without high speed travel…

Maybe I am missing something here, but I just see how your math adds up.

Maybe you will be free of the addiction to “fossil fuels”, but never free of the addiction to FUEL generation of some kind or another.

Listen, I think the Amish have been doing your thing for quite a while (by and large).  Are we all ready for that?

Rebecca -

I also went to the site of yours, and I am not reassured by the comments of Bolivia’s Ambassador.

“The only way to get climate negotiations back on track, not just for Bolivia or other countries, but for all of life, biodiversity, our Mother Earth, is to put civil society back into the process. The only thing that can save mankind from a [climate] tragedy is the exercise of global democracy,” said Bolivia’s UN ambassador, Pablo Solon.

Civil society IS the problem; getting it back into the process means nothing more to me than watching IT progress…

And I do not see “global democracy” being the right direction for anything… Globalization is one of the KEY problems.

And, I don’t know if it is “mankind” we should be saving. anyway!!

Well, to begin at the end, the point was to save mankind - from a climate tragedy - and all of life. If you don’t care if your fellow human beings survive, I don’t know what to say to that but I think we all sink or swim together.

Getting civil society on board means to stop trusting The System - the ones who got us into this mess in the first place - to save us and collectively organize.

As far as Transition Towns - the point of that is to transition to a sustainable way of living on the earth. If that means living like the Amish - would you rather do that or go down in a roaring ball of crude oil fueled fire?

I’m not saying those are our only two choices - but what if they were?

I have lived two different times in my life without electricity, running water - no computer, cell phone, etc. One time was in a cabin in the mountains in the 90s. Another time was in a tipi for 9 months. I feel lucky I was able to experience those times. I know it’s possible to live simply and be happy and fulfilled.

Time ghost—your points are well taken. Perhaps I was too hasty in my judgment of Jensen’s thesis. Unemployed as I am, along with a high percentage of others in this country, it was perhaps too much for me to consider taking on the “powers that be” when my immediate future is fraught with so much uncertainty. But with all this “free time” on my hands, who knows?

Rebecca:

Saving “mankind” is an anthropocentric view of the situation… this is what got us into the predicament in the first place.

“Civil Society” IS The System!!.  Civilization is what Jensen is talking about.  Surely you understand that Rebecca.  You and I both know it is not just a particular political party, or corporate hegemony; it is the whole thing…  WE are the ones who got us into this whole thing in the first place!

So, I guess I would ask you to explain to me how you unwind the whole thing?

Rebecca, I am saying that the conditions for the possibility of a return NO LONGER EXIST, either in nature or in our psyches… the reach of industrial economy has seen to extinguishing the first; and our reprogramming through over 6000 years of inculcation under the curriculum of the west has seen to the other.

Sure, there can be pockets of resistance, if you will.  Hell, there are still indigenous tribes (WHO KNOW HOW TO LIVE LIKE THIS) that are resisting the onslaught of the Curriculum.  But, it is nearly impossible for them to stave it off much longer, let alone for some profoundly mesmerized Westerners like us to do so.

Kulturcritic:

You write that if “this [culture] is a disease, a disease that is progressing (like a cancer), and has no hope of going into remission (is unredeemable), than I do not understand the logic suggesting revolutionary change…”

The logic is clear.  If you don’t identify yourself with the culture/cancer itself, but rather with the once-healthy body that is afflicted by it, then you do anything in your power to get rid of the disease.  You fight for your life.  Cancer itself is ‘irredeemable’, antithetical to the life of a healthy body.  But the body afflicted by cancer is potentially redeemable.  Cancer can be beaten.  The prognosis that we are already irrevocably doomed is premature, though we are certainly doomed if we do nothing, or if we content ourselves with placebos, or with medicines that do not suit the severity of our disease.

Which is why, though the global climate referendum or the Transition Town models are both good things in themselves, they are only part of the solution.  As I said before, revolution means removing the powerful from power, or removing the power from the powerful.  These movements do not address how that will happen, except to say, ‘if everyone joined a transition town, we’d be OK.’  Yet if even I don’t find it possible to join a transition town, how can I expect people with 2 or 3 jobs, 2 or 3 children, chronic health problems, or who have never even heard of transition towns (and probably never will) to join them?  The most pressing problem we now face is how to begin a culture of resistance one that weds ideas of sustainability and justice with an uncompromising resistance to power.  Billions of people in all walks of life are fed up with this system.  They need to get together, and figure out a way to fight back.

You also say:  “I know Jensen talks about getting serious with resistance, but, is he just not suggesting that we take down the master’s house with his own tools?  How could it be otherwise? “

As Jensen points out in his books, a house can be taken down by anybody’s tools - it doesn’t matter whose.  Jensen also points out that we play right into the master’s hands when we believe that the tools, and the house for that matter, “belong” to the “master”.  The tools belong to the people who built the house, and you can bet the master didn’t get his hand’s dirty with that.  The house was built by slaves or wage-slaves, and it is theirs to tear down using whatever tools they see fit.

And, finally, you say:  “Revolution simply supplants one power structure with another, witness global politics over the past 6,000 years!!!”

This is only partially true.  When the indigenous of Europe (also known as ‘Barbarians’) brought down decadent Rome, they did not immediately take up the mantle of Empire.  It took centuries for Europe to take its place as Rome’s successor, and in the interim many different cultures persisted in their independence, with varying degrees of success.  But eventually, you are right, they were subsumed by Civilization.  And of course the modern revolutions all had as their aim the taking over of the ship of state, so of course they did result in ‘another power structure’ - that is precisely what they were shooting for!

But we are living in a unique historical moment.  It is possible to imagine a revolution with bioregionalism and political and economic decentralization as its values.  One which rejects the logic of the state, and of the centralized economy, and which views our relationship with each other and with nature as a web of reciprocities and relationships, rather than a competitive gauntlet of violence and greed.  In any case, throwing up your hands in despair is no solution.  You’re right that we are fucked - but to what degree we are fucked is up to us.

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come.”  - Victor Hugo

Personally, I think Mr. Jensen is a romantic nihilist.  Deep in the background of that position is the yearning for connection.  It is a spiritual quest and each of us has to do it alone and when you find that connection, you know what you have to do. Breaking an addiction is also a personal journey.  No one can do it for you.  Joseph Campbell said follow your bliss.  What does that mean? You decide. Do what you have to do. The I Ching says you cannot fight evil directly.  That gives it power.  What does that mean? You decide.
To bring down western civilization?
You decide. It is a question of thinking deeply and then acting. There are no gurus. You are your guru.  What effect do you want and why? There are only questions really.  Ask them.
I am beyond caring what other people do.  I will do what I have to do from my own understanding. Really what else is there to do? Think about it.  The earth does not need saving. She will continue forever with or without us. Peace and blessings.