[americandream]

You can only remedy the collective tendencies of capitalism, COLLECTIVELY. Anything else, and you might as well be pissing in the wind.

And the only collective remedy worth the effort is mass and global wide communalisation, and the complete end of the private (and its corrupting influence in overpopulated countries such as China and India). This individual effort here and that New Age style commune there still leaves the problem intact....a global economy based around creating an endless list of obsolent wants for the purposes of maintaining an increasingly larger annual profit. No amount of kumbaya capitalism is ever going to alter that fact that the bottom line and growth are siamese twins.

The solution is political, radical and populist, as it has ALWAYS been. No bean counter in a business suit is going to make this happen, nor a weedhead in the latest "save the world" ethnic fancy dress.

We won't know until we've tried it.

Pretty much everything I see advocated already has been tried--with poor results. If you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it.

We don't really have the time to go down the road of trial and error.

[Ludi]

The solution is political, radical and populist, as it has ALWAYS been.

You go first. Oh, that's right, you aren't going anywhere. You're just talking.

[mos6507]

And the only collective remedy worth the effort is mass and global wide communalisation

I think you'll discover that a lot of people have written out their own dogmatic prescriptions for what ails us. I sure have mine. But the chances that everybody's going to unify under one banner are slim to none.

I think you should come to grips with the fact that the failure of the system will lead to a war of ideas on where we go from here. This is a necessary process, and unfortunately a messy one as well, if people feel their survival depends on dragging everyone else kicking and screaming into their chosen -ism.

[careinke]

I am in agreement with Mos. We are going to have endless battles between the Isms. However, I don't think that is such a bad thing. My worst nightmare would be one world government, no matter the Ism. Because eventually it would become corrupt and there would be nothing to counterbalance it. Think an entire Nazzi world under Hitler. Or a Communist world under Pol Pot.

[davep]

I am in agreement with Mos. We are going to have endless battles between the Isms. However, I don't think that is such a bad thing. My worst nightmare would be one world government, no matter the Ism. Because eventually it would become corrupt and there would be nothing to counterbalance it. Think an entire Nazzi world under Hitler. Or a Communist world under Pol Pot.

Worldwide AnarchISM will certainly avoid that problem. That's a lot of its raison d'etre.

[mos6507]

I am in agreement with Mos. We are going to have endless battles between the Isms. However, I don't think that is such a bad thing. My worst nightmare would be one world government, no matter the Ism. Because eventually it would become corrupt and there would be nothing to counterbalance it. Think an entire Nazzi world under Hitler. Or a Communist world under Pol Pot.

A one world government doesn't have to be a dystopia. In fact, one might say that we won't have matured as a species until we can come together like that.

[mos6507]

I am in agreement with Mos. We are going to have endless battles between the Isms. However, I don't think that is such a bad thing. My worst nightmare would be one world government, no matter the Ism. Because eventually it would become corrupt and there would be nothing to counterbalance it. Think an entire Nazzi world under Hitler. Or a Communist world under Pol Pot.

A one world government doesn't have to be a dystopia. In fact, one might say that we won't have matured as a species until we can come together like that.

[mos6507]

Worldwide AnarchISM will certainly avoid that problem. That's a lot of its raison d'etre.

Good luck with that one. Anarchism will last about as long as it takes for the first warlords to establish control.

[Ludi]

But will the benevolent dictatorship allow people to live a different way, like with the Prime Directive, or will everyone be forced to live as decided by the Benevolent Overlords?

[Cloud9]

Won't happen until the V show up.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1307824/

[Ludi]

The Benevolent Overlords could do it with the Gas of Peace, as in "Things to Come."

[Homesteader]

A one world government doesn't have to be a dystopia. In fact, one might say that we won't have matured as a species until we can come together like that.]

I would posit the opposite.

We won't have matured as a species until we support and celebrate diversity and no longer kill that which is not like us, be it other species, cultures, currencies etc. . .

By definition "one world government" is a loss of diversity on many, many levels.

[mos6507]

OK, I'll link to it before someone else does.

Now back to your regularly scheduled doom...

[davep]

Worldwide AnarchISM will certainly avoid that problem. That's a lot of its raison d'etre.

Good luck with that one. Anarchism will last about as long as it takes for the first warlords to establish control.

That just depends on who has the guns.

[dohboi]

Anarchism is hard to enforce

[americandream]

Lovelock's point in his recent BBC interview is that nothing short of a global dicatarship dedicated to tacking climate risk is capable of even beginning to offer the hope of tackling the problem (whether that will succeed is another matter and only time will tell).

I suspect that he contemplates a rational dictatorship in which UNIVERSAL common good holds sway. And I say universal as it MUST take nothing short of a common objective to harness ALL mankind to this task. Anything less will be utterly futile and we might as well continue our existing ways. There WILL have to be a common understandsing worldwide of the risks we face AND the cause of those risks (irrational and excessive lifestyles premised around infantile notions of never ending growth and bubble profits).

How likely is this to happen on a planet awash with religious paranoia and class manipulation and on which humankind's major achievements have been harnessed to these nefarious ends? It will take nothing short of a disaster to impel the masses out of their slumber.

[Ludi]

I wonder who Lovelock would vote for for Dictator? Or for the Dictator Team?

[americandream]

Lovelock is a child of an older order. The same order that gave birth to Churchill and his British Imperial dream of a vast empire of endless shops, Hitler and his European nationalist dream of a car for everyone and autobahns across the length and breadth of an European dominated global Reich and Stalin, the Georgian, and leader of the multi-ethnic and atheistic Soviet collective and its creed of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Which do you think that reason dictates is the most promising form, risks notwithstanding?

I wonder who Lovelock would vote for for Dictator? Or for the Dictator Team?

[Ludi]

I'm not big on the whole "reason" thing, personally. I'm more into esthetics.

[americandream]

This exercise requires that you rise above the "I" and contemplate the broader sweep of human history and where it will ultimately compel us as a species. These issues take us beyond personal aesthetics into the realms of cultural change on an epic scale and well beyond the the self, nation or race. The compelling elements that drove us from Africa and continue to compel us. Our environment and its resources.

I'm not big on the whole "reason" thing, personally. I'm more into esthetics.