Like a value system that can stay the course? I agree, but I don't think such things should be designed from the top-down; revolt allows for wiggle room for the new to emerge.
Ahh well spotted, my mental image was of a 'leader' character distilling reason and wisdom to the engaged masses, hmmm, I can see problems with that.
"revolt allows for wiggle room for the new to emerge".... now that's worth trying to picture.
Would it be that from a foundation of fertile 'chaos' an unexpected and serendipitous event might emerge? or would it be a gentle but determined alignment into unity/harmony, a recognition and acceptance of a 'resonant frequency' that speaks to all people?
I think one critical way of thinking about unity, though, is allowing space—the womb—for its diversity. Likelihood is there will be no singular unity, so singular value set, but an interconnected and diverse set of cultures which share, perhaps, a purpose, but not a doctrine.
Well, no surprise, I went down many roads with that fine thought.
My inner Schmachtenberger bleated "A multipolar crisis requires a multipolar solution" because, of course.
We know that what we are looking at is a systemic problem. In part, a need for each of us to move our values from the me to the we, from I to us (which would include the network of all life on this planet) as you suggest, towards 'unity', that complex and complete whole.
I leave myself pondering: is there a chance, does humanity have the wherewithal, to collect our diverse wisdoms and knowledge and mould them together into an attractive new system of living, of being? A true and inarguable common good.
What it is missing is direct a call to collective action. When we are faced with this terror, we need to turn it into something or it eats us inside. Every identification of a problem should have a solution to the problem and then a clear path so that readers can participate in the solution.
Leaving it up to individuals to determine their own action is part of why the left struggles to coalesce. Sure we respect the autonomy of each person, but at some point, we need leadership, direction.
When you have a platform like this, you have the ability to connect people. So do it.
Well Glen, that's what I have been thinking too. Recently came across this, which I think has the potential to get meganumbers to find creative solutions Together.... Please let me know what you think. Peace, Maurice
Brilliant essay. It’s a jolt to the system that reminds me of Andreas Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” and the climate scientists who’ve been monkey-wrenching pipeline valves. Or the Third Act activists out there risking arrest with their nonviolent demonstrations. Maybe we are the earth’s immune system, fighting back against the dis-ease of fossil fuels and capitalist exploitation. Peace.
Hello Raquel, and again, thank you for your honesty. And I think we are in the same bandwidth with respect to this, but I also think we are not the only ones. The echoes of revolution, revolt, mutiny (I just published here in Substack a piece called "Mutiny in The Netherlands" about this same thing), but the echoes are resonating multiplied by thousands and I think soon enough those words will resonate by the millions. Mark my words. I just signed up for updates from Roger Hallam's website, https://rogerhallam.com/, titled, unequivocally, "It's time for Revolution." And, just listened to an interview someone sent me on Youtube with Col Douglas McGregor, I didn't finish it, it is 90 min long, but around the minute 22 more or less, he says that we need revolutions, the times are asking for it, all the ingredients are there, so, why do we not revolt? Because we are too comfortable. We still have a house, two cars, kids go to private school... But when the system begins to collapse, when the states cannot provide for the basic needs of its citizens and the citizens, in turn, wake up from their perpetual entertained and consumerist mode, and realize that it is getting harder and harder to make a living that can keep your comfort levels and that the state is not there for you and it is not going to be there for you when you need it, well, I think slowly, or maybe not, maybe, with the correct conditions, the revolution can start as fast as an igniting bomb. The thing is, we are still isolated, no community is even possible, we are islands of cultures in foreign countries, like me, an immigrant, there are millions feeling home not at home, not dominating the local language, feeling left out, and totally separated from everything around you by an invisible barrier... if real communities are not possible it is easier to avoid revolution. If we are busy trying to survive and pay bills, or too comfortable with our salary and pension and vacations in the snow, or if we cannot communicate with our peers and we are more afraid of each other than trust, then it will take a big catastrophe or a great leader to clarify our objectives and unify us under a worthily goal for the many and not for the few. Anyway, I say it here again so the echoes of this word resonate across the internet: Revolution! More and more visible and more and more audible. We have to reach the 25%! (Was it? 25%?)
There's one thing I particularly like in Roger's thinking, if citizens overwhelm the system it fails.
Ten people pushing against the system sees ten people in jail. One hundred thousand people, acting in unison, pushing against the system will break it. He's got a good point about unity in numbers.
You might find interesting my article “Can Philosophers Still Be Useful Today?”. There, I lay out some of the main reasons I have discovered why we don’t.
Neither - not the action nor the doer - naming has power to the degree it mobilises social agreement (as an aside, but not ENTIRELY irrelevant, that's why Plato banished the Poets from Utopia!) it creates what it names if there is agreement so it does not refer to a pre-existing reality which can then be either 'True' or 'False' (which is why the language of faith - good and bad - rings true) There are no guarentees which is what the snake oil salesmen are selling - an ethical world can only be made by all of us, not discovered by some of us....
Really feeling this at the moment. But...unsure how we can negotiate or leverage the govt at all. I don't think there is enough broad scale support right now for that.
To follow your analogy, I guess the abuser's power diminishes when the abused's alternatives become clear. At the moment our alternatives are unclear and have been put into practice in limited ways. I wonder if more off-grid communities would provide that. Although I have reservations about how these could scale, especially in the UK.
So don't negotiate, demand a fair voting system. Demand compensation for the victims of corruption (Like E. Jean Carroll just did), Support community pressure groups in their demands
Thanks Rachel for the most intelligent article on Planetary Suicide I have ever read. Yet I beg of you to define the intent of your crucial final sentence..... are you promoting violence ? Or are you promoting that we "Just Stop BUYING Oil". Peace, Maurice
Thanks Rachel, interesting as was your pod discussion. However, when you say “revolt” you seem to limit this to a general strike - fair enough but is this the only option available?
I guess we’re all searching for the next (maybe small) step we can individually take, something like a general strike leaves the initiative in others’ hands and allows us the luxury of inaction.
Or maybe we should stop paying taxes and services, stop consuming, move out of our comfort and stop participating in society. But the only way that this could have any useful results is if a very large number of people do the same. Then it would have an impact.
Continuing, widespread “disruption” to the point it’s uneconomical to ignore it looks like the first step most people can take, apparently around 3% of the population’s a trigger point.
Wonderful post. I love the idea of a global world general strike to protest and stop the global warming crisis. Maybe people could show a united global presence by picketing in their nation's capitals also. How does one go about organizing a global world strike?
Walter Benjamin said that in the act of naming, ‘the mental being of man communicates itself to
God.’ He describes name as ‘the heritage of human language’. However we use 'radical', it always carries that sense of 'root' - of disturbing or changing something beneath the surface.
So, I think, for me I prefer my powder dry on the power of naming. Saying the right name at the right moment can still make change.
'Naming' is not a power 'Man' (sic) is the power - the question then is shurely one of good faith or bad faith actors? Naming then reveals itself as either an 'ethical' human world or a monstrous lie
Yes, you are right, revolution might be too much to ask, people who argue that we scream for revolution but we have no proposed a serious alternative to our current system are right. But we know that Capitalism doesn't work as it is right now but the point is: systems alone are not good or bad, but the people who manage and administer that system are. So if we don't change our values and become more human, whatever system we choose to replace capitalism with it will also fail us, fail to work for everyone and specially for the most vulnerable.
I am terrified to think of how few people actually see things are as bad as they are to rise and join should a definitive call to action even be made.
It feels like we need something of a mass spiritual awakening in order to even realise the numbers we really need to act - before a disaster big enough draws people away from Netflix and bills just long enough to throw things at their governments.
Unfortunately I still think KSRobinson’s book ‘the Ministry for the Future’ paints the likeliest kind of scenario:
Shits gonna get real hairy, there’s gonna be serious disasters, then desperate people will be vilified and killed for taking violent measures into their own hands, and gradually, hopefully, the wheel will turn, maybe in time, just.
I don’t see the polite efforts of activists drumming up support making change before enough time has eroded the status quo, if it ever does, and time we do not have. But they do help change minds and make stories.
Just how uncomfortable will the average consumerist have to get to accept the further drop in personal wealth standards we will need to DEMAND to make a global difference... pretty damn cold I recon, but there’s always coal to burn.
So I say the myth of the disconnected individual needs to die first and foremost.
So stories and names maybe ARE rather important after all.
I wholeheartedly agree that revolt is the only option. You give some good examples of peaceful revolt. I just published a piece earlier that touches (in a non-scientific way) on the psychology of what I believe is at play in the dynamic between the powerful and the rest of us.
A starting point is to get people to talk about power at all. A great deal of differential controlling power exists because it/they continually reinforce a culture-wide taboo against talking about power.
This may seem like an abstraction, yet that's because it is so well embedded that we don't notice it.
I could write paragraphs in response to the frustration you feel but I'll leave it as this:
Revolt is not enough, we (humanity) really need something much deeper and long lasting.
AND we need billions of little humans to get on board.... I don't know what that looks like yet : (
Like a value system that can stay the course? I agree, but I don't think such things should be designed from the top-down; revolt allows for wiggle room for the new to emerge.
Ahh well spotted, my mental image was of a 'leader' character distilling reason and wisdom to the engaged masses, hmmm, I can see problems with that.
"revolt allows for wiggle room for the new to emerge".... now that's worth trying to picture.
Would it be that from a foundation of fertile 'chaos' an unexpected and serendipitous event might emerge? or would it be a gentle but determined alignment into unity/harmony, a recognition and acceptance of a 'resonant frequency' that speaks to all people?
Hah! Analogies, analogies, analogies : )
Gosh—here's hoping!
I think one critical way of thinking about unity, though, is allowing space—the womb—for its diversity. Likelihood is there will be no singular unity, so singular value set, but an interconnected and diverse set of cultures which share, perhaps, a purpose, but not a doctrine.
Well, no surprise, I went down many roads with that fine thought.
My inner Schmachtenberger bleated "A multipolar crisis requires a multipolar solution" because, of course.
We know that what we are looking at is a systemic problem. In part, a need for each of us to move our values from the me to the we, from I to us (which would include the network of all life on this planet) as you suggest, towards 'unity', that complex and complete whole.
I leave myself pondering: is there a chance, does humanity have the wherewithal, to collect our diverse wisdoms and knowledge and mould them together into an attractive new system of living, of being? A true and inarguable common good.
Hi Peter, maybe this could be the catalyst ??
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/an-essay-competition-is-launched
Let me know please what you think.... Peace, Maurice
I like this, and I think many here would recognise the role story telling has in seeding change, hope, etc.
Future-telling. There should be more of it. : )
Then can I take it that you too will submit and promote?? Cash prizes apart - think of the value all the restacking........ Peace, Maurice
Messages like this are inspiring.
What it is missing is direct a call to collective action. When we are faced with this terror, we need to turn it into something or it eats us inside. Every identification of a problem should have a solution to the problem and then a clear path so that readers can participate in the solution.
Leaving it up to individuals to determine their own action is part of why the left struggles to coalesce. Sure we respect the autonomy of each person, but at some point, we need leadership, direction.
When you have a platform like this, you have the ability to connect people. So do it.
Well Glen, that's what I have been thinking too. Recently came across this, which I think has the potential to get meganumbers to find creative solutions Together.... Please let me know what you think. Peace, Maurice
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/an-essay-contest-is-launched
Brilliant essay. It’s a jolt to the system that reminds me of Andreas Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” and the climate scientists who’ve been monkey-wrenching pipeline valves. Or the Third Act activists out there risking arrest with their nonviolent demonstrations. Maybe we are the earth’s immune system, fighting back against the dis-ease of fossil fuels and capitalist exploitation. Peace.
Hey Julie, Suzanne needs YOUR brilliant essay too. Peace, Maurice
Hello Raquel, and again, thank you for your honesty. And I think we are in the same bandwidth with respect to this, but I also think we are not the only ones. The echoes of revolution, revolt, mutiny (I just published here in Substack a piece called "Mutiny in The Netherlands" about this same thing), but the echoes are resonating multiplied by thousands and I think soon enough those words will resonate by the millions. Mark my words. I just signed up for updates from Roger Hallam's website, https://rogerhallam.com/, titled, unequivocally, "It's time for Revolution." And, just listened to an interview someone sent me on Youtube with Col Douglas McGregor, I didn't finish it, it is 90 min long, but around the minute 22 more or less, he says that we need revolutions, the times are asking for it, all the ingredients are there, so, why do we not revolt? Because we are too comfortable. We still have a house, two cars, kids go to private school... But when the system begins to collapse, when the states cannot provide for the basic needs of its citizens and the citizens, in turn, wake up from their perpetual entertained and consumerist mode, and realize that it is getting harder and harder to make a living that can keep your comfort levels and that the state is not there for you and it is not going to be there for you when you need it, well, I think slowly, or maybe not, maybe, with the correct conditions, the revolution can start as fast as an igniting bomb. The thing is, we are still isolated, no community is even possible, we are islands of cultures in foreign countries, like me, an immigrant, there are millions feeling home not at home, not dominating the local language, feeling left out, and totally separated from everything around you by an invisible barrier... if real communities are not possible it is easier to avoid revolution. If we are busy trying to survive and pay bills, or too comfortable with our salary and pension and vacations in the snow, or if we cannot communicate with our peers and we are more afraid of each other than trust, then it will take a big catastrophe or a great leader to clarify our objectives and unify us under a worthily goal for the many and not for the few. Anyway, I say it here again so the echoes of this word resonate across the internet: Revolution! More and more visible and more and more audible. We have to reach the 25%! (Was it? 25%?)
There's one thing I particularly like in Roger's thinking, if citizens overwhelm the system it fails.
Ten people pushing against the system sees ten people in jail. One hundred thousand people, acting in unison, pushing against the system will break it. He's got a good point about unity in numbers.
“Why do we not revolt?”
You might find interesting my article “Can Philosophers Still Be Useful Today?”. There, I lay out some of the main reasons I have discovered why we don’t.
Hi, thanks for the intro to Roger. Gonna look for your Nederland article. Do you know about this bril idea ?..... https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/an-essay-contest-is-launched Please let me know wat you think, Peace, Maurice
Thank you for that link. I will look into it. It seems promising!
Neither - not the action nor the doer - naming has power to the degree it mobilises social agreement (as an aside, but not ENTIRELY irrelevant, that's why Plato banished the Poets from Utopia!) it creates what it names if there is agreement so it does not refer to a pre-existing reality which can then be either 'True' or 'False' (which is why the language of faith - good and bad - rings true) There are no guarentees which is what the snake oil salesmen are selling - an ethical world can only be made by all of us, not discovered by some of us....
Really feeling this at the moment. But...unsure how we can negotiate or leverage the govt at all. I don't think there is enough broad scale support right now for that.
To follow your analogy, I guess the abuser's power diminishes when the abused's alternatives become clear. At the moment our alternatives are unclear and have been put into practice in limited ways. I wonder if more off-grid communities would provide that. Although I have reservations about how these could scale, especially in the UK.
So don't negotiate, demand a fair voting system. Demand compensation for the victims of corruption (Like E. Jean Carroll just did), Support community pressure groups in their demands
Riding in a car doing 100 miles per hour, it is dangerous to lock the brakes.
Pass the word, friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor. Actual conversation, breath to breath.
Community building.
A Gandhi would help, but beware of cooption.
Substack to substack, writer to writer
Excellent and thoughtful as always! Happy NY all.
Walk away or at least slow walk it with your credit card and cash (aka buying more s#*t).
Headlines sell despair. The advertisers sell hope & distraction. All roads lead to a cash register.
What if we had Wed. for Walk on By rather than walk in and buy? We already have Fridays for Future.
Rattle the cage a little. Ever, Jim Joan PS Perhaps Tuesday for Trees too.
Thanks Rachel for the most intelligent article on Planetary Suicide I have ever read. Yet I beg of you to define the intent of your crucial final sentence..... are you promoting violence ? Or are you promoting that we "Just Stop BUYING Oil". Peace, Maurice
Hey Maurice, I am promoting ending this violent, extractive, abusive relationship.
Thanks Rachel, interesting as was your pod discussion. However, when you say “revolt” you seem to limit this to a general strike - fair enough but is this the only option available?
I guess we’re all searching for the next (maybe small) step we can individually take, something like a general strike leaves the initiative in others’ hands and allows us the luxury of inaction.
Hey Barry, I think a general strike is one of many actions that could be taken.
Or the overwhelm of where to start with something so enormous.
Or maybe we should stop paying taxes and services, stop consuming, move out of our comfort and stop participating in society. But the only way that this could have any useful results is if a very large number of people do the same. Then it would have an impact.
Of course, that’ll never happen.
Continuing, widespread “disruption” to the point it’s uneconomical to ignore it looks like the first step most people can take, apparently around 3% of the population’s a trigger point.
For the UK that's only 180,000.... that doesn't seem impossible....
Actually 1.8m Maurice so not quite so easy,,,
Which is similar to the idea I have been pushing for a while
Have a look at this Barry, https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/an-essay-contest-is-launched
Maybe it's that small step/catalyst we individual writers can take. Please let me know what you think. Peace, Maurice
Broken link
Hmmm. dunno what to do about that, the link is correct, but Suzanne is easy to find on substack.... worth your time to dig a little
Don’t worry I found her. Cheers.
Wonderful post. I love the idea of a global world general strike to protest and stop the global warming crisis. Maybe people could show a united global presence by picketing in their nation's capitals also. How does one go about organizing a global world strike?
Promote one
Walter Benjamin said that in the act of naming, ‘the mental being of man communicates itself to
God.’ He describes name as ‘the heritage of human language’. However we use 'radical', it always carries that sense of 'root' - of disturbing or changing something beneath the surface.
So, I think, for me I prefer my powder dry on the power of naming. Saying the right name at the right moment can still make change.
Yup, Semantical errors ruin the import. Peace, Maurice
'Naming' is not a power 'Man' (sic) is the power - the question then is shurely one of good faith or bad faith actors? Naming then reveals itself as either an 'ethical' human world or a monstrous lie
Not sure about that 'naming is not a power', Nick.
Does the action have value/power (in itself)?
Or does the doer of the action have the value/power?
For me I don't think there's a clear cut answer to those questions.
Yes, you are right, revolution might be too much to ask, people who argue that we scream for revolution but we have no proposed a serious alternative to our current system are right. But we know that Capitalism doesn't work as it is right now but the point is: systems alone are not good or bad, but the people who manage and administer that system are. So if we don't change our values and become more human, whatever system we choose to replace capitalism with it will also fail us, fail to work for everyone and specially for the most vulnerable.
I am terrified to think of how few people actually see things are as bad as they are to rise and join should a definitive call to action even be made.
It feels like we need something of a mass spiritual awakening in order to even realise the numbers we really need to act - before a disaster big enough draws people away from Netflix and bills just long enough to throw things at their governments.
Unfortunately I still think KSRobinson’s book ‘the Ministry for the Future’ paints the likeliest kind of scenario:
Shits gonna get real hairy, there’s gonna be serious disasters, then desperate people will be vilified and killed for taking violent measures into their own hands, and gradually, hopefully, the wheel will turn, maybe in time, just.
I don’t see the polite efforts of activists drumming up support making change before enough time has eroded the status quo, if it ever does, and time we do not have. But they do help change minds and make stories.
Just how uncomfortable will the average consumerist have to get to accept the further drop in personal wealth standards we will need to DEMAND to make a global difference... pretty damn cold I recon, but there’s always coal to burn.
So I say the myth of the disconnected individual needs to die first and foremost.
So stories and names maybe ARE rather important after all.
I wholeheartedly agree that revolt is the only option. You give some good examples of peaceful revolt. I just published a piece earlier that touches (in a non-scientific way) on the psychology of what I believe is at play in the dynamic between the powerful and the rest of us.
https://thescrawnyape.substack.com/p/power-of-addiction
A starting point is to get people to talk about power at all. A great deal of differential controlling power exists because it/they continually reinforce a culture-wide taboo against talking about power.
This may seem like an abstraction, yet that's because it is so well embedded that we don't notice it.
https://medium.com/@jim_30512/talk-about-power-to-change-power-7bfa71357d08