I am fascinated by the common threads running through the blogs and articles I follow. (Maybe it's AI choosing them for me, or maybe morphic resonance, but I don't really care which it is.) They help me in trying to make sense of the world we are living in. My long time teacher Krista Tippett (On Being) has been working lately with the idea of embodiment, and Mandy Scott (Accidental Gods) struggling with our fear and/or hope for AI (among other things). So when I read your article I immediately thought about this recent article by Benjamin Carlson about the work of "Prophet" Marshall McLuhan. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
"It is time we embody our mistakes, and learn from experience." No argument except that this is passive. How to do that? There were 175 essays submitted to my contest looking for a vision about how the world could work, with winners of the sizable cash prizes to be announced on Thursday. Here are the submissions from 20 finalists that might inspire everyone with the possibilities they present: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/and-the-candidates-arehere.
I’m so relieved you wrote this Rachel and your challenge to Maggie’s work reproducing virtually what is already here in the interview.
I had to turn off the interview after Maggies comments that she was ‘over a 100% with you on this’ and then continued to excitedly talk about her work.
This to me exemplifies how humans can justify a means of livelihood which counters the value they’ve just endorsed.
It’s like working for Coca Cola whilst decrying plastics in fish, in our oceans etc
“neoclassical economists think they can cost the earth”
This is not technically correct, and framing it as if it is sets up a fight of combat and contention and non-peace that shuts down hope for prosperous adaptations to the changing challenges in our changing times through peaceful inquiry and thoughtful innovation.
Technically, Neoliberalism asserts that Nature is vast, and we are not. So, we can take and take and take from Nature, without ever reckoning with the consequences of our taking, because those consequences will always just disappear into an infinitely receding Frontier, reabsorbed into Nature without consequence. For us.
Problem is, there is no more Frontier. There has not been since the early years of the 20th Century, before the Great War.
To maintain that there is is to live in a fantasy of romantic nostalgia for a past that never really was as we remember it being in our selective rememberings.
The cold, hard truth of being human today, in the 21st Century, is that, Yes, Nature is still vast, but so, now, are we. We do have to reckon with the consequences of our taking, because there will be consequences.
That is why our world is in crisis.
Nature is a bank. Climate change is an eviction notice. When we take money from a human bank, there are terms. And consequences if we do not honor those terms.
When we take energy and other things from Nature, there are also terms. And we have to honor those terms. Otherwise, there will be consequences.
Science can tells us what the terms are.
Money is how we honor them.
Money for financing enterprise to shape the technologies (for taking from Nature, and honoring the terms of that taking, or not) that shape the choices that shape the economy that shapes society, and our shared future.
Instead of fighting with each other, maybe it will work out better if we collaborate on figuring out how we can innovate finance to supply money to the right enterprises for shaping the right technologies for shaping the right choices for shaping the right economy for shaping a cohesive society and keeping it ongoing in hope for a dignified future quality of life by honoring the terms of our taking from Nature.
Thank you for this!
I am fascinated by the common threads running through the blogs and articles I follow. (Maybe it's AI choosing them for me, or maybe morphic resonance, but I don't really care which it is.) They help me in trying to make sense of the world we are living in. My long time teacher Krista Tippett (On Being) has been working lately with the idea of embodiment, and Mandy Scott (Accidental Gods) struggling with our fear and/or hope for AI (among other things). So when I read your article I immediately thought about this recent article by Benjamin Carlson about the work of "Prophet" Marshall McLuhan. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#search/the+free+press/FMfcgzGxRxFhndRQrjzZgSqmMdwnZPlX
Hi Rachel, We'd love to share this post NetworkWeaver . com too. - Would this feel ok to you?
"It is time we embody our mistakes, and learn from experience." No argument except that this is passive. How to do that? There were 175 essays submitted to my contest looking for a vision about how the world could work, with winners of the sizable cash prizes to be announced on Thursday. Here are the submissions from 20 finalists that might inspire everyone with the possibilities they present: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/and-the-candidates-arehere.
I’m so relieved you wrote this Rachel and your challenge to Maggie’s work reproducing virtually what is already here in the interview.
I had to turn off the interview after Maggies comments that she was ‘over a 100% with you on this’ and then continued to excitedly talk about her work.
This to me exemplifies how humans can justify a means of livelihood which counters the value they’ve just endorsed.
It’s like working for Coca Cola whilst decrying plastics in fish, in our oceans etc
No wonder we continue down a path to extinction.
“neoclassical economists think they can cost the earth”
This is not technically correct, and framing it as if it is sets up a fight of combat and contention and non-peace that shuts down hope for prosperous adaptations to the changing challenges in our changing times through peaceful inquiry and thoughtful innovation.
Technically, Neoliberalism asserts that Nature is vast, and we are not. So, we can take and take and take from Nature, without ever reckoning with the consequences of our taking, because those consequences will always just disappear into an infinitely receding Frontier, reabsorbed into Nature without consequence. For us.
Problem is, there is no more Frontier. There has not been since the early years of the 20th Century, before the Great War.
To maintain that there is is to live in a fantasy of romantic nostalgia for a past that never really was as we remember it being in our selective rememberings.
The cold, hard truth of being human today, in the 21st Century, is that, Yes, Nature is still vast, but so, now, are we. We do have to reckon with the consequences of our taking, because there will be consequences.
That is why our world is in crisis.
Nature is a bank. Climate change is an eviction notice. When we take money from a human bank, there are terms. And consequences if we do not honor those terms.
When we take energy and other things from Nature, there are also terms. And we have to honor those terms. Otherwise, there will be consequences.
Science can tells us what the terms are.
Money is how we honor them.
Money for financing enterprise to shape the technologies (for taking from Nature, and honoring the terms of that taking, or not) that shape the choices that shape the economy that shapes society, and our shared future.
Instead of fighting with each other, maybe it will work out better if we collaborate on figuring out how we can innovate finance to supply money to the right enterprises for shaping the right technologies for shaping the right choices for shaping the right economy for shaping a cohesive society and keeping it ongoing in hope for a dignified future quality of life by honoring the terms of our taking from Nature.