Excellent thoughts, and some interesting overlap with my latest article, in which I rake the billionaires pretty well. I am unsure if it's bad etiquette to put a link to that here. The way I look at it, all of us who are aware are in this fight together, and need to find each other. The gods know I am not in this for the money, lol. If I am committing a faux pas, let me know and I won't do it again. Are we not all here to fight and share knowledge and ideas? Good work, Rachel.
Rachel, thank you for brilliant interviews and daring writing.
Of note to me is Carter Dillard's challenge of individualism. Could a deeper root of the global malaise be found? I will be tuning in to this challenge to neo liberal hegemony.
We are living today within a social contract that tells us all decisions within society are made by individuals acting individually, in the individual exercise of their own personal morality.
This rule tells us that when society makes bad choices - like externalizing costs onto future generations - that is because bad actors, with bad personal morals, are acting badly. Social criticism becomes social shaming of these bad actors, to stop them from acting badly. Social activism becomes a ratification of personal morality to support the social shaming of bad actors to stop them from acting badly.
This rule hides the decisive role of institutions in social decision making, Most decisions of importance to society are made by individuals acting with the authority of institutions, exercising the logic of the institution for which they are acting. When bad choices are being made that affect society broadly, and negatively, they are almost always choices being made by actors for institutions whose institutional logic has gotten corrupted.
Social criticism needs to focus on rectifying the logic of the institution, Social activism needs to focus on showing the people generally how that institutional logic has become corrupted, so there will be broad popular support for rectifying the logic.
Case in point today: Fiduciary Money. Fiduciary Money is supposed to be deployed in fiduciary ways, to finance a fiduciary future, for some, directly, and for all of us, consequently. Instead, Fiduciary Money is being deployed today in non-fiduciary ways that are financing a non-fiduciary future, and present.
That is not the personal moral failing of individual fiduciary professionals. It is an institutional failure of our shared common knowledge of fiduciary purpose and power, and our shared common sense of fiduciary prudence and loyalty.
The corrective action we need to be taking is rectifying fiduciary decision making, by restating and updating our common knowledge and our common sense.
If we fix fiduciary finance, we will save the children.
Interesting thoughts! We really can’t afford the rich.
My primary concern is that the foundations of this framing of ‘regenerative families’ is grounded in eugenics. It is an attempt to impose/develop a normative ‘global’ approach to what is deemed an optimal family unit. That is not new, and throughout much of the last two centuries has consistently reinforced new or existing hierarchical and often centralised power dynamics. There is and never will be a ‘blank slate’ from which power dynamics can be reset, so we have to collectively develop anti-racist and anti-capitalist approach’s that reflect the fact that those power dynamics exist. If we assume such dynamics are present, what does that mean for the promotion of a new normative approach to the ‘ideal family’?
Leaning on the challenge of the climate crisis to control/influence the reproductive rights/choices of women and families across the world is colonial. It always has been.
Excellent thoughts, and some interesting overlap with my latest article, in which I rake the billionaires pretty well. I am unsure if it's bad etiquette to put a link to that here. The way I look at it, all of us who are aware are in this fight together, and need to find each other. The gods know I am not in this for the money, lol. If I am committing a faux pas, let me know and I won't do it again. Are we not all here to fight and share knowledge and ideas? Good work, Rachel.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/the-illusions-of-fossil-fuels
Rachel, thank you for brilliant interviews and daring writing.
Of note to me is Carter Dillard's challenge of individualism. Could a deeper root of the global malaise be found? I will be tuning in to this challenge to neo liberal hegemony.
We are living today within a social contract that tells us all decisions within society are made by individuals acting individually, in the individual exercise of their own personal morality.
This rule tells us that when society makes bad choices - like externalizing costs onto future generations - that is because bad actors, with bad personal morals, are acting badly. Social criticism becomes social shaming of these bad actors, to stop them from acting badly. Social activism becomes a ratification of personal morality to support the social shaming of bad actors to stop them from acting badly.
This rule hides the decisive role of institutions in social decision making, Most decisions of importance to society are made by individuals acting with the authority of institutions, exercising the logic of the institution for which they are acting. When bad choices are being made that affect society broadly, and negatively, they are almost always choices being made by actors for institutions whose institutional logic has gotten corrupted.
Social criticism needs to focus on rectifying the logic of the institution, Social activism needs to focus on showing the people generally how that institutional logic has become corrupted, so there will be broad popular support for rectifying the logic.
Case in point today: Fiduciary Money. Fiduciary Money is supposed to be deployed in fiduciary ways, to finance a fiduciary future, for some, directly, and for all of us, consequently. Instead, Fiduciary Money is being deployed today in non-fiduciary ways that are financing a non-fiduciary future, and present.
That is not the personal moral failing of individual fiduciary professionals. It is an institutional failure of our shared common knowledge of fiduciary purpose and power, and our shared common sense of fiduciary prudence and loyalty.
The corrective action we need to be taking is rectifying fiduciary decision making, by restating and updating our common knowledge and our common sense.
If we fix fiduciary finance, we will save the children.
Interesting thoughts! We really can’t afford the rich.
My primary concern is that the foundations of this framing of ‘regenerative families’ is grounded in eugenics. It is an attempt to impose/develop a normative ‘global’ approach to what is deemed an optimal family unit. That is not new, and throughout much of the last two centuries has consistently reinforced new or existing hierarchical and often centralised power dynamics. There is and never will be a ‘blank slate’ from which power dynamics can be reset, so we have to collectively develop anti-racist and anti-capitalist approach’s that reflect the fact that those power dynamics exist. If we assume such dynamics are present, what does that mean for the promotion of a new normative approach to the ‘ideal family’?
Leaning on the challenge of the climate crisis to control/influence the reproductive rights/choices of women and families across the world is colonial. It always has been.