(irritatingly provocative… – promoted by pfiore8)
OK, so I've wasted a year of my life on the blogs. And a little. From this sad and fruvious abandonment, I've come to a sharply diminished sense of my own importance, a contradictory tendency towards arrogant and conceited assertion, and a great solidity in my belief that most people — myself included — are purely batshit. However, I've also come to a few questions, which I toss out to the members of our invisible college for rumination, digestion, and perhaps (finally) deposit, messy or neat as per your nature. To whit:
1. Are we more Americans or internationalists? That is, do we primarily wish to redeem America, or are we more concerned with the larger world? Par example: I think trade with China is a good thing, in the main, because it gives money and raises the standard of living (slowly) of some of the worlds poorest people. Others frame this as “it's all being done the wrong way — America should get it's house in order first and then give aid” — which sort of begs the question, in terms of scale. Still others argue from ethnocentrism. This is perhaps a bad choice in models…but you get the idea. Do you see social justice as an American issue, or in terms of a world ethic — socialism, communism, queer rights, Christianity all fit the bill — all people having equal value. What parts of your vision stop at the border? Which don't? Is your vision more about relation to power, as a citizen of a particular place, or about the well being of all people? It is of course not a strict dichotomy…
2. How do my fellow bloggers reconcile environmental activism and social justice? At some point, the problem is…too many people for resources. A LOT of people are likely to be refugees soon, if climate models and UN estimates are correct. Perhaps a billion people under the auspices of the UNHCR, or rather, some lucky fraction. Very few of them will be NOLA style refugees in industrial societies; most will have seen their crops turn to dust, their land to desert, and started walking. They estimate about thirty five thousand a day now die of poverty and it's direct effects. So it's bad, and will perhaps — very soon — be immeasurably worse. On the other hand…when I talk to my enviromentally aware friends…the consensus seems to be that we're overdue for a dieoff, as a species, and that there simply needs to be less of us. This makes great sense to me as a person who loves nature. Very tough shit if you're in Africa, though. It seems to me we don't address these two ultimately contradictory trends very well. Neither “we saved the planet: two billion human beings starved to death” or “we managed to stabilize and become sustainable; everything not human is gone” sit very well.
3. How do we have coherent, referenced discussions with hyperlinks? Are hyperlinked documents with heaps of pictures — shared collages of you-tube, current news, and the skim of academic papers avaliable without paying — compelling forms of argument for social justice? I can't develop this further at the moment, but it gnaws a bit. I also wonder if we need editors; if there is a web 2.0 system of editing, reference and workflow which could raise the content bar considerably.
4. We've adopted certain tropes from the avowed goal of the orange. Convince the middle! To this end, anything seems acceptable. Dead soldier diaries! But the thing is…I really can only get so teary about the losses of an occupying force which has cost somewhere between one hundered thousand and a million lives. ENDA is a democratic victory! Never mind the crazy transies. Our goal is to move things left before the country is entirely looted, and anything to that end is good. Or…authenticity in our voices is good. It's not just another cheap dichotomy, I think the split happens very fast on any given issue.
Anyway…blah blah blah. Not a word of this is new, Not worth much response, I think, but I wanted to throw these out there, to scroll up and away.
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…as I’m headed for bed, and might not be available to share ponies until tomorrow afternoon. I already regret posting this.
On your last question.
You have so many questions and ideas in here that are compelling, I think I just got tasered.
Oh, that was a compliment however clumsily delivered.
NOT irritating….
For example, I am both an American and an internationalist (and an Israeli) and I certainly agree that opposing trade because it is bad for American workers ignores the obvious part where our wealth needs to be less ours and more the world’s (and that we’ll be richer when everyone else is richer).
But I am not really who you are asking, am I? But this goes to where I’d like to see a community somewhere about means-based policy rather than any political ideology.
more concerned with worldwide social justice — it’s become obvious, I think, we are globally interdependent so that just makes sense to me. how that affects policy, on the other hand, is not such a simple matter.
your second question is something I think about all the time. I’ve written a bit about this … that even with the knowledge that so many folks are going to die no matter what we do, I’m not going to go along with choices that hurt the most vulnerable and leave me doing just fine. I don’t know why I feel that way or why it’s important – or even if I can do this – but it’s the start of a conclusion I’ve come to. just seems too easy to make decisions if you’re not the one who’s going to die over those decisions. bad answer, but it’s all I got now.
third question – not interested in reaching the “middle,” whatever that is.
these are just off the top of my head and your questions deserve more thoughtful answers, but am about to go to sleep and wanted to check in on this essay.
but THE question: what becomes of a species growing exponentially on a planet whose resources are finite?
I’m a little wary of screaming Apocalypse just yet – if only because we’ve been doing it for centuries now, and each generation has had its irrefutable evidence that the world really would collapse soon. It could be that some unexpected leaps in technology allow us some reprieve from the more immediate problems of overpopulation. But it still seems like just another means of biding time.
Until what? Well, I fell sorry for the generation that has to find out.
but here’s the thing. that has been nagging at me since i read it in mishima’s Japan Comes Out At Night essay
… 70 percent of younger men are unable to achieve vaginal ejaculation.
They’ve got no erection problems and they can masturbate perfectly normally, but there has been a massive increase, particularly among those in their 20s and 30s, who are suffering from vaginal ejaculation disorder, or an inability to ejaculate inside the vagina…
i’m not so sure the way we go about raising standards of living is necessarily a good thing. if it’s about potable water and arable land and basic health care, then i’m all for it.
but remember what is driving this “standard” :::: consumerism. bizarre. we are being fattened in order to be consumed. even as we are poisoned by what we consume… in food and toys and fucking toothpaste. and young men in Japan, well… i guess this is what they mean when talking about the drop in urban fertility rates. to me, this is really a cosmic disturbance.
as to people dying. we all die. a die off may be part of returning us to balance. i don’t know. how do we use resources to mitigate such a catastrophe to benefit those who will come after us… that would be my focus. future generations.
then there’s this. those people we worry about… the meek and those who live in poverty may have better skills at surviving if and when the shit really hits the fan. we think we are in control. but turn off the electricity and water and heat. throw us out there. i’m not sure if this will all play out the way we think.
hey jess… great questions…
you’ve really got my brain charging before I’ve even had my full caffeine fix!!
I’m pretty stuck on your first question though. I come down totally on the side of “internationalist.” And no sooner do I start thinking about that, than Zwoof comes up with an AMAZING diary on the front page in which he lays out a totally different view of what is happening in China than our media has led us to believe.
I’m not only an internationalist, I think there is WAY more hope for the future coming from places outside of our borders than from within. It seems that there are places all over the globe where our cultural memes and myths are being replaced by attitudes more sustainable. I see that in Zwoof’s diary, but also coming from places all over South America.
I know we’re grinding down the gears here in the US and in most places around the Middle East. And I shudder at what is happening in most of Africa. But there do seem to be places where other possibilities are opening up. And that brings me hope.
to log off due to feeling I better get down to real life, my studio awaits. Now I’m swimming in thoughts.
First I have ‘wasted’ much of the last two years here also. I am not from the center, I started on the nets as a rabid lefty who was going to fix the stupid centrists LOL. I learned actually from the centrists I learned why and how others view the system we currently inhabit, no easy answers and ones that will always remain. I learned that what you fear is what rules if you can’t let go of it. As an added bonus I found out I’m as crazy as those I oppose, as are all my compatriots here.
My response to the questions you posed 1. internationalist here. Globalism is inevitable unlike HRC. I have always felt nationalism to be a recipe or fascism, a weird tribal loyalty throw back. However our current brand of nationalism and entitlement seems to be bogus as the corporations who have no loyalty to anything other then profit and pillaging seem to be using both the nationalistic instincts and globalism which has occurred organically. I believe that until globalism includes labor and works for more then American supremacy were fucked globally. So a phrase I used to hear always rattles around in my brain ‘Act local think global.’
2. For me social justice and environmental activism go hand in hand. Industrialization does not represent solutions. It is at this point a bane a pox on the world. I too have friends supposed smart liberals, who say Humans should go, it’s time on one hand and on the other say It’s a dog eat dog world, so screw you. Seem a rationalization and a self fulfilling prophecy. I don’t really think our concepts of growth both economic or environmentally are realistic and are basically a desire to have our cake and eat it. Mother nature will bury our hubris.
As for the middle it’s where? I guess it depends on where your standing. But as for me playing to a myth of cultural centrist that is nothing but a giant marketing scheme for dominance of the money dudes, wrapped in the package of whats in it for me plus bogus loyalty to the masters of war and industry is just that bogus. The ramblings here of an international anarchist lefty who got molded into political being as I have no choice. Neither does anyone with a brain in there head. Once you look this in the face you can’t really leave.
of this great essay which will stir my mind for days.
internationalist if you prefer. I believe that every human being on the planet has an equal right to what we euphemistically call ‘The American Dream’, meaning basic human rights as outlined in the univer declaration of human Rights. I am a British born woman of Scottish and Southern US descent,. I was formely married to a hungarian amnd my children are all native born Americn citizens.
I believe the planet we all dwell in belongs equally to all of us, and we all have equal responsibility in ensuring both it and we survive the degradation we inflict on it and us.
…i’ll pick question three:
there was a world before hyperlinks, but, the idea is considered to be the brain-child of vannevar bush (no relation, one hopes…) who essentially took the concept of the footnote a step further. or, at least that is how i tend to look at it. footneotes were and will continue to be used to support ones argument.
so, your question becomes can one have a discussion without reference to matter outside of the discussion to support it? the answer is ‘yes’; however, one must have some sort of intrinsic ‘link’ to minimally the definition of the terms used.
but, if your question is can one form a refutable argument absent access to external support, the answer becomes a more qualified ‘yes’. to have a strong argument, one ought to be able to provide support in one form or another.
to your larger sub-question regarding ‘editing’ i would modify that a bit and suggest to you that the real problem is the inability of some writers to understand the structure of an argument and create one. the distinction between a normative argument and a non-normative one is lacking as well.
i offer this diary that i wrote that is a good example of how to structure an argument and use hyperlinks efficiently to support it. http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
in that diary, i address a rather poorly-made argument of another diarist.
finally, one must get past the idea that they are ‘right’ and the other person is ‘wrong’. the only thing that matters is the soundness of one argument against another. there is a false meme that tends to add gravitas to a writer who is well-known over another who is less well-known and that simply muddies the water of whether one argument is stronger than another.
I try to answer them. Most of the time, I don’t bother posting my thoughts, but I felt like doing so this time. Go figure.
1. I’m in the “fair trade” camp, more or less. Basically by that I mean I have no problems trading with other nations, but not at the expense of our own welfare. It does the world no good to raise the standard of living in one country while lowering it in another. That’s a zero-sum game we don’t have to play. Everybody can be a winner. We can raise the standard of living in developing countries at the same time we’re improving our own welfare. This isn’t rocket science. We need a global agreement on workers rights, environmental protections, health care, and so forth, and then enforce it. This levels the playing field. Nations can still offer incentives for companies to move, but it won’t be because People A are just so happy to be working 15 hour days for pennies an hour with no health care or safety precautions. You can’t compete with that unless you’re willing to give up practically everything we’ve gained since the invention of the light bulb. And businesses could profit from it, too. I can think of a dozen ways to make money in such an economic environment. The biggest obstacle is the rampant corporate greed.
2. Why do these have to be contradictory?
First, I don’t think your friends are actually advocating that we kill off a bunch of people. (Unless your friends are Republicans….) Rather, it’s how nature works. We see it in practically every species. When the population gets too large, resources become too scarce and members of the species die from starvation or injuries from fighting each other for food. And in the case of humans, just because a couple billion die does not mean it will “save the planet.” We’ve got a climate crisis that was caused by us “developed” countries. A die-off in the undeveloped countries isn’t going to do much to stave off the coming disaster. At the same time, no matter what happens with the climate, the planet will continue spinning and revolving around the sun. It’s not going to explode in some fiery burst of orgasmic retribution for all we’ve done. It just won’t be as hospitable for the current species living here.
We can save the people and save the climate. It means (at the very least) giving up oil and coal as fuel sources, but that should have been done decades ago. There are alternatives with much less environmental impact, and used in combination, we could easily keep our current standard of living and raise it for developing nations. Food isn’t scarce, either, though it may not be fancy or exotic. Between rice, soy, and wheat, and the potential to cultivate them more efficiently, there’s more than enough food to feed everyone. (And the Japanese work wonders with tofu, which is soy product; I’ve even had tofu here in America that comes near the taste of chicken and beef, even if the texture wasn’t right.) The problem is that while there’s plenty to go around, it’s not getting to the people who need it.
And as for wildlife and their habitats, again, this can be solved. We’ll have to give up a lot of wood-based products in order to repopulate forests, though once that’s complete (in a hundred years or so, if we’re lucky), we should be able to start a program of measured use. (Cut a tree, plant a tree. Take into account fires, too.) I’ll miss buying paper books, but we’ll figure something out. We’re an incredibly brilliant species when we put our minds to it.
I think the biggest problem we’ll face in the future is a population that has grown so large that we’ll have cities similar to what Asimov envisioned in City of Steel.
3. This one bothers me, also. For example, as much as I love OPOL’s recent work, I don’t see it playing to a larger audience. People, rightly or wrongly (or both), feel they don’t have much time. 20 minutes watching a video is 20 minutes not doing X or not reading Y. Multiply that just ten times and you’re looking at over three hours. It may all be fantastic content with powerful messages, but even I can’t sit through all that in one day, let alone one week. It’s too much.
I think that in order to reach a broader audience, the content (in whatever form it takes) needs to be concise. Take a small part of an issue and hit a home run with it rather than try to cover the entire depth and breadth. This may mean we need people who are willing to edit rather than write. (You don’t need to be a good writer to be a good editor, and vice versa.) I’m not really sure.
At the same time, I think we need to continue making the content that appeals to us. Long or short. Broad or precise. That content can be the source for the content that reaches the larger audience. And we can always tell the larger audience to read the source content. This could be how we open the door for some people, and I think that may be worth the effort.
4. If we’re not who we are, then who are we?
We can be authentic and still convince the nebulous middle. I don’t really think “the middle” is all that in the middle, anyway. I think there are two “middles.” One “middle” has an idea of where they want things to go. An opinion about what they want things to become, even if they can’t always put it into words. The other middle hasn’t really thought about it all that hard, or they aren’t very well informed.
The problem we on the “loony left” face is that we’ve been labeled by the propaganda machine. We’re crazy pinko commie hippie liberal socialists. (Run away! Run away!) So no matter how much people might agree with us, they’re afraid of having that label hung around their necks. Of being what they perceive to be social outcasts. (Anyone who paid attention to Dennis’ short bid for the Presidency has seen this mindset in action.)
Education. Information. That’s the key. When people are informed, they tend to make pretty decent decisions. Not always great, but the chance for making a bad decision is lessened, and that is for the good.
Of course, whatever we try to offer in the way of information is more likely to be ignored or mocked, no matter the facts or truth. And I’m not even sure what would be the best thing to try. But one thing I can assure you of is this: if we don’t try, nothing changes.
I am internationalist but I believe the theory that human rights and democratic rights will develop from enriching totalitarian states is gonna go down with the Laffer curve as bad answers on a future version of Family Feud. What is being done wrong is not so much that China and India are getting wealthier, which was needed, but their internal inequality is growing by leaps and bounds, according to the American model of “drive over the poor”. In India the rural poor are committing suicide in droves, while some guy is building a billion dollar house… and in China you best not complain too loud lest they bill your family for the bullet they used to execute you.
Furthermore, China’s economic growth might actually be coming at the cost of a one-time-only destruction of their environment (The Mother Jones article on this a couple of months ago quoted some estimates that if you put a price on the environmental destruction, China’s economy isn’t growing… obviously it depends on the price).
This talk of “our” wealth needing to go to “them” pretends that “we” have wealth, when in fact our inequality is reaching Brazilian levels right now — levels unseen since before the Great Depression. The wealth that needs to go to “them” can’t possibly be coming from East LA, if you catch my meaning, ’cause there ain’t a whole lot of it there. If you take East LA’s wealth away, Americans will start starving instead of just being hungry.
But I think my major problem with US internationalism is it takes the form of militarism, weapons sales, wars, support for dictators and kleptocrats, etc. I would rather see Eleanor Roosevelt in charge of foreign policy, if you catch my drift. As MLK Jr said, and I repeat often, a nation that spends more on weapons than it spends on programs of social uplift is spiritually dead. That puts the USA as in eleventy-seventh stage rigor mortis.
you’re not talking to me in that response.
i don’t have an artificial sense of power. and i haven’t done anything really awful. i don’t shrug off the immensity of it. but if i had to choose between two billion people or saving the water supply, i’d choose to use the resources on the water supply. if i had to choose between extinction of species and the “die off” of 2 billion humans, i’d choose our die off.
we are going to die anyway. that’s a perspective missing here. the foundation is rotting. that’s what needs to be fixed. thrashing about in pain doesn’t change the game. wanting to save people doesn’t and HAS NOT changed anything in fact. because the people we should have been volunteering to infiltrate are the Bushes and Cheneys. but we seemed to have missed that. even as we see and understand they have the power to drag us all into the twilight of humanity on this planet. so what do we do? try to save the people that they find expendable instead of pouring our efforts to unseat the bad guys. and STOP THIS SHIT.
we need to change who the decision makers are. that’s where i’d put my efforts. i’d fight to get the megaphone. and after that, i’d learn what survival means to the people i’m trying to save.
an equitable world… not a place where everybody gets to live happily ever after. but where they have a shot at it. that’s fair.
Years ago, my Dad’s vision of ‘the dinner table family’ involved engaging us in conversation about the topics of the day. We also voted on things with private, paper ballots (no, I didn’t get a dog, even with two votes, because my older sister had allergies). Enough with the story… 😉 the point I making is, “Go get the Almanac” and “Go get the dictionary” were as common to hear as “Pass the potatoes” at our table. We learned to source our opinions, or risk outright dismissal of our ideas.
For me, just for me, long diaries by people I don’t know simply don’t get read. I skim them, see seven paragraphs of opinion, and pass. If someone makes their point in one or two paragraphs, provides a link or two to bolster their point, follows with another couple of paragraphs, a few more links, and I’m either interested in the topic or sufficiently intrigued by the argument, I’ll read the diary and check out the links. Or, I’ll check out the links first, just to see if they look like a reliable source.
If the writer can’t, or won’t, make their point(s) perfectly plain and clear, they’ve lost me as a potential convert to their issue. My husband has his doctorate in Physics. He wants to talk/teach physics? He knows how to make it simple enough for me, or students, to become interested enough to want to learn more.
It’s that simple, and that hard. 😉
I support what Jay said above. I would hope those who have deep knowledge of an issue would band together, form their own cell or study group, hash out whatever the hell needs hashed out, and then employ one or two of them to bring their issue(s) to the great unwashed masses.
Economics discussion? Watch me freak out and run for the hills. But there’s always a chance someone like me can be lured in to learn if that is the goal of the group, and at least one of the group has a desire to teach.
I see the internets as sort of like the Hedge Schools in old Ireland.
http://www.irish-society.org/H…
of study and teaching, yeah. There are people on the nets who are smarter than God, and then there are people like me, who fell asleep in second grade and woke up a few years after high school.
“We” can do both. In-depth study by those qualified and/or interested (Knights, Squires, Pages) and then if action is necessary or mass education needed, another level created.
and if i sound like i’m beating an old drum, i am. tried to do this (help create a teaching/learning community) a few years ago and failed miserably.
some of my answers only seem to work for five seconds. What is real and what is important and what needs to happen is always transforming.
i can only tell you that i’m not at all sure who the winners and losers will end up being. the default thinking that we fortunate few will survive may be the biggest irony and maybe what Jesus meant when he said… the meek shall inherit the earth. maybe that’s what’s around the corner.
i don’t think this is about who’s worthy or not. it is about what to do in order to sustain life for all people. poisoned water in africa is going to end up poisoning us here. that’s why it is important to change decision makers.
those currently running the show don’t care about… no, they don’t get it. they only understand controlling resources and wielding power. they are not equipped to comprehend the big picture. people will die. then so be it. but if we are going to go for sustainability, we need the new evolutionary model of us in positions to make decisions.
btw… Americans/Europeans are a small part of the population equation and proportionally may end up losing as many relative to places where 10s of millions die. but we all have a debt here and will pay it in the ways reality dictates.
if i survive, i will not apologize for it. but i will try to do what i can so future generations have more options and more personal power.