This brought on a few good laughs. I don't see the counter-culture movement you'd expect either. In simple and probably very coarse terms I think that those of us in the developed world living the right side of the line have it far to comfortable to contemplate the sacrifices of 'tearing up the system' and that includes even me if I think about my requiring a new carbon mountain bike about every 4 yrs as a basic human right. The existential and ecological worries keep me up at night but solve them at the expense of my passions and privileges? Suddenly my hands are in my pockets. I'm half joking, but the other half is the point. Then those who are on or below the line are so under the pump thanks to the inequity that serves me so well that they've no time or energy to respond and when they do, it's not the investment patterns of govt and corporations that they focus on, it's the wolf-whistle explanations of their predicament provided by our current crop of neo-fascist autocrats and populists. And look what happened to the 60s counter culture. They gave up in the face of early neoliberalism, undermined and pacified by free market individualism that went on to provide me with a bicycle more complex and carefully engineered than a 1960s Ferrari.
This brings me back to thinking about how we're not needing to tweak or nudge civilization into a new utopian path, which I think was kind of the real motivation underpinning the counter-culture revolution, we're now grappling with a situation that demands solutions that sit outside of the functional parameters of our civilization where economic growth and the reliance on fossil fuel for all our primary needs (and underwriting the feeding of more than half of our population under current consumption patterns) are inalienable facts. The work of consciously building a new civilization is I suspect, impossible for humans as a functioning society at any scale without an accompanying catastrophe that destroys our ability to rely on those underpinning tenants. Our current oily, extractive and overpopulated comforts are an unwavering vaccination against fundamental change. Financial collapse could perhaps push us towards something better but then I suspect that global finance and economics is such magical thinking from start to finish that we could endlessly reinvent a version of this system to keep a dwindling but powerful few in a position of security and comfort until all other options for conscious and planned change are far behind us. In my alarmist moments I wonder if we're already there, at which point I just have to think about the deeper processes of evolution and pretend that these 'meta' perspectives make everything irrelevant. And to fully accept this is to fully accept that in essence, humanity has no agency. I'm still not able to admit that although something bumps around in my subconscious when I think on this.
This brought on a few good laughs. I don't see the counter-culture movement you'd expect either. In simple and probably very coarse terms I think that those of us in the developed world living the right side of the line have it far to comfortable to contemplate the sacrifices of 'tearing up the system' and that includes even me if I think about my requiring a new carbon mountain bike about every 4 yrs as a basic human right. The existential and ecological worries keep me up at night but solve them at the expense of my passions and privileges? Suddenly my hands are in my pockets. I'm half joking, but the other half is the point. Then those who are on or below the line are so under the pump thanks to the inequity that serves me so well that they've no time or energy to respond and when they do, it's not the investment patterns of govt and corporations that they focus on, it's the wolf-whistle explanations of their predicament provided by our current crop of neo-fascist autocrats and populists. And look what happened to the 60s counter culture. They gave up in the face of early neoliberalism, undermined and pacified by free market individualism that went on to provide me with a bicycle more complex and carefully engineered than a 1960s Ferrari.
This brings me back to thinking about how we're not needing to tweak or nudge civilization into a new utopian path, which I think was kind of the real motivation underpinning the counter-culture revolution, we're now grappling with a situation that demands solutions that sit outside of the functional parameters of our civilization where economic growth and the reliance on fossil fuel for all our primary needs (and underwriting the feeding of more than half of our population under current consumption patterns) are inalienable facts. The work of consciously building a new civilization is I suspect, impossible for humans as a functioning society at any scale without an accompanying catastrophe that destroys our ability to rely on those underpinning tenants. Our current oily, extractive and overpopulated comforts are an unwavering vaccination against fundamental change. Financial collapse could perhaps push us towards something better but then I suspect that global finance and economics is such magical thinking from start to finish that we could endlessly reinvent a version of this system to keep a dwindling but powerful few in a position of security and comfort until all other options for conscious and planned change are far behind us. In my alarmist moments I wonder if we're already there, at which point I just have to think about the deeper processes of evolution and pretend that these 'meta' perspectives make everything irrelevant. And to fully accept this is to fully accept that in essence, humanity has no agency. I'm still not able to admit that although something bumps around in my subconscious when I think on this.
Great analysis! You should start a blog! :-)
“Our current oily, extractive and overpopulated comforts are an unwavering vaccination against fundamental change … humanity has no agency …”
Top shelf perspective bro 😎
"To me being busy and effective looks a whole lot like what got us into this mess in the first place. "
This quote reminds me of what Jim Bendell said about contemporary activism;
"Getting busy with action can be a distraction from full acceptance of our predicament".
The irony of those of us facing the severity of our predicament being accused of "Giving Up" shouldn't be lost on any of us.
Love ya work Andy
“I’m no longer surrounded by bedraggled hippies in home-made cardigans shouting at each other over wobbly stacks of robustly phrased pamphlets …”
Funny as read bro, on point, obedience is the enemy. Best writing 💪🏽