"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Teetering on collapse
You think the glumness is a matter of choice? I just don't see the grounds for optimism, but I try not to dwell on that either ...Thank you for the beautiful summary of your thinking, which is iron clad and bullet proof, as usual. I don't think glumness is a matter of choice, I think it is a natural response to a situation that is designed to be glum. Trying to predict the future is a tempting path to frustration. I am probably influenced by living for so many years in Mendocino and being peripherally associated with the localizing movements there. I don't think that it is arguable that the mass media propaganda apparatus, that in turn is reflecting governmental policy, is directed towards inducing feelings of despair and helplessness in the general population. My optimism lies in my perception that the superstructure of our oppressive institutional structures is teetering on collapse. In the vacuum that will result from the collapse of centralized authority, decentralization and reorganization around the basic needs of local communities and relying on local resources will likely generate different, more egalitarian, more ecological institutions designed by the people that participate in them. I wholeheartedly agree that reforms in the regulation of business, such as repealing the idea of "corporate personhood," are needed. However, the institutional structures of our oligarchic system are all organized around ensuring their survival against all challenges. This conundrum is addressed most succinctly by Daniel Quinn in his small book Beyond Civilization. These survival energies will likely function more strongly the closer the system gets to the point of failure. The Soviet Union is a good model of how a system of centralized rule can collapse suddenly and leave a vacuum of power. In that case the international corporate structures were waiting in the wings to impose "privatization" (read wholesale theft of assets). In our case the collapse of our oppressive institutions will be part of a world wide collapse of centralized authority, as the means of supporting such centralized structures become too expensive to maintain. Oil depletion, soil depletion, the depredations of poverty, epidemics and starvation, plus the stresses that will be applied due to a changing climate will deprive these centralized forms of an effective means of imposing coercive authority. A good model for understanding this process is the decline of the Roman Empire. In our case the collapse will be greatly speeded up. What took a couple of hundred years for the Romans will take a couple of decades in the case of the worldwide system of oppression represented by multinational corporate hegemony. A very important part of this transition is a greatly increased level of literacy and scope of general knowledge that is a result of electronic communications. Subsistence farmers in Chiapas tend to have a very sophisticated understanding of world events and a political analysis that would have astounded such thinkers as Marx and Rousseau, who dismissed the peasant class as inert. This time the peasant rebellion will succeed. That's why I am encouraged in spite of the dismal situation we find ourselves in currently. Regardless, diversity of perspectives and differences of opinion are a strength for those seeking liberation, not the weakness that our centralized institutions have portrayed it to be from their totalitarian, tyrannical view that tends to uniformity and conformity. So the more differences of perspective we can summon in our attempt to understand our situation the better. Let a thousand flowers smell up the place. A key to understanding my view is to appreciate the role that sociopathy plays in the growth of hierarchical structures. In these domineering social structures, sociopaths have a tremendous competitive advantage over normal, fully functional, feeling people. In small, local, intimate social institutions they lose this advantage and become much less dangerous to the rest of us. The book The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout is a good primer on sociopathy. The web site ponerology.com is helpful as well. There is a neat, short YouTube piece about the political aspects of rule by sociopaths that features the book Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrzej Lobaczewski, which I am planning to read soon. Assholes will always be with us, but they don't have to be allowed to rule. Peace and love,
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