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This sounds similar to the thoughts about Western philosophy and the Ecological Crisis expressed in Jeremy Lent's "The Patterning Instinct", although I found that book very hard to digest. This conversation was much easier to get your head round, I'll be looking out for Carl Safina's books.

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I found his ideas so fascinating, I'm glad you did too. He's really boiled down the essentials and given a lot of food for thought.

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Hi Rachel: You're a good interviewer, so congrats on that. Here's a quote from Morris Berman's "The Reenchantment of the World" (1981):

“… the forces that triumphed in the second half of the seventeenth century were those of bourgeois ideology and laissez-faire capitalism. Not only was the idea of living matter heresy to such groups, it was also economically inconvenient. … if nature is dead, there are no restraints on exploiting it for profit.”

This cuts to the heart of your conversation: many ideas and forces were in play at the time, but capitalism and its supporters won. Nature was therefore reduced to molecules and motion (Safina's "machinery"), and life was construed as non-relational. For my related comments, see chapter 8 in "Youth Ecological Revolution" at ecologicalsurvival.org. For a look at capitalism's extraordinary takeover of science as a whole in the 20th century, see appendix E.

In my view this line of thought is far more likely to lead to a workable survival strategy than discursive talk about cultures.

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Hey Frank, thanks for listening to the episode, and for these resources. I think what's vital is that the dialogue around how to nurture a better future be multi-faceted. This may not have been a "survival strategy" conversation, but nonetheless deepened my own understanding of the historical forces at play which have shaped capitalism, consumerism, and our relationship to the natural world. If we're to grasp the big picture, discourse is key.

My own personal concern about focusing the conversation purely on capitalism is that the resolution of capitalism would likely engender neo-feudalism, which is equally debilitating for the majority, if slightly less impactful on the natural world. That's why I think we need to grasp at the roots of extractive culture, as Carl does in this interview.

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I don't know how you perceive "neo-feudalism" or what your concerns are. However, I've addressed a post-capitalist economy in detail. Chap. 7 in "Youth Ecological Revolution" is an intro., and my book "The Economics of Needs and Limits" is the full treatment.

For me the real problem with people like Safina is that they're credible, but they understand only a small part of a very large picture. As someone who is trying to provide rational guidance to the threatened young, I find this extremely dangerous. Briefly stated, Safina's perspective is limited to the prevailing capitalist order, but youth ecological survival lies well beyond this order. If you want to dig into this more deeply, consider interviewing me.

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