Pandemic Reveals the Harsh Realities of Our Society

By Natan Rebelde (March 19, 2020)

Y’all scared? Good. You should be.

I am too. But I have been, for a very long time. I hate that I feel vindicated to some degree. And the reality is, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The disruptions and collapse to come will dwarf this by comparison. But they are part of the same phenomenon: our civilization running up against the natural limits of planetary ecology.

Just as massive wildfires have become a regular annual recurrence, I suspect these sorts of epidemics will as well, likely centered around historical “cold and flu season”. It will just be the height of epidemic season, often leading to global pandemics, born of the globalized industrial consumer economy. These are the consequences of our own choices and actions as a culture. These are, in a very real sense, vengeful (and perhaps compassionate) spirits of the Earth, here to teach us difficult lessons that we’ve refused to learn otherwise.

The silver lining is that our current responses, for better or for worse, point towards many of the ways in which we must change our ways of living if we are to survive as a species upon this planet and create cultures that can sustain themselves on an evolutionary timescale (ecologically sustainable, in other words).

Many of the harsh realities of our society appear laid bare for all to see. Both our current successes as well as our failures can, should, and must inform us as to what works, and what does not. It can, should, and must show us what turns towards life, and what turns towards death. Turn towards life. It is not yet time to awaken from the dream of living. Death is inevitable, and can (and eventually should) be embraced as a friend, lover, ally, and accomplice. But life, on the other hand, is not guaranteed, and thus, a most precious gift. Honor it. Defend it. Then meet death with a grin and a hearty laugh.

Bookchin Helped Us Understand the Roots of the Ecological Crisis Today

By Paul Messersmith-Glavin (January 14, 2019)

Murray Bookchin would be 98 today.

Calling himself at times both a “Pleistocene Bear” and a “relic from a different age,” Murray was in many ways ahead of his time. He introduced ecology to the Left in the early sixties–before even Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring he would tireless point out–even raising climate change as an issue in “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought” in 1964. He welcomed the development of feminism, and was supportive and involved in developing what would come to be known as eco-feminism in the ’70s, while also heavily involved in the direct action movement against nuclear power in New England that decade.

There are plenty of critiques and problems with Murray one can point to but hey, today’s the old man’s birthday, so let’s save that for another day.

Murray’s most significant and lasting contribution, in my mind, is his observation that the ecological crisis is rooted in the crisis in society, that it is in fact a social crisis; that the attempt to dominate nature is based in humans dominating other humans, and that to solve the ecological crisis we must confront and overthrow things like racism, sexism, capitalism and the nation-state.

Cheers Murray, you’re missed.

paul-lara

Can We Memorialize Without Monuments?

By Chris Lowe (August 28, 2017)

Can intercultural gardens be an alternative to Confederate monuments to the past?

A friend of mine observed that as the movement to remove or relocate Confederate monuments goes on, it will change spaces and create new spaces.

The implication is that even while we work on this, we should also be thinking about what if anything we want to fill that space with.

What *should* we memorialize? What do we want to be remembered for memorializing? Could it take forms other than monuments?

For decades, I have preferred the idea of interculturalism to multiculturalism, because I understand culture as living process, not a dead thing, in which we exercise agency in choices about how we make meaning. Even within traditions, the act of passing, which what the Latin root of ‘tradition’ means, always involves choices of what is passed, what is not, what people work to recover. Creativity is sparked by inspiration derived from cultural appreciation, exchange, and recontextualized elements, creation of hybrid forms, grafting.

Interculturalism for me is also connected to the opposition of monoculture to historical and contemporary pre- or non-capitalist systems of intercropping by which agriculturalists managed their land and food systems to sustain the land and themselves. It is possible to romanticize that history, but I don’t think the problem of creating a sustainable economic ecology can be thought about sensibly without engaging it.

So one idea I have for memorialization would be intercultural gardens, situational gardens, allegorical gardens, relating to what we want to remember and the values we want to express or raise up. Gardens that would be living as culture is living, processes as culture is process, practices as culture is practices. Gardens that would be open and open ended, amenable to new additions, or to revisions and adjustments, as circumstances and understandings change.

Bioregionalism is the Answer to Empire

By S. Brian Willson (July 12, 2017)

COLLAPSE IS IMPERATIVE for the future of life as we know it.

Primary Meme of US culture: Profits for a few (mostly White men/patriarchy) through expansion at ANY cost =US empire. This selfish model is now global on a finite planet. John Locke defined empire as a way of life that takes wealth and freedom from others to provide one’s own welfare, pleasure, and power. It is an ecological disaster and morally indefensible.

A Previously unthinkable premise to ponder: The US as a nation and culture is irredeemable and unreformable, built on three Genocides.

Genocide #1: Our origins derive from forceful dispossession of Indigenous and their land, killing millions with impunity, justified through a myth of exceptionalism. This set in motion a pattern of a pretend society, built on lie after lie, from Manifest Destiny to Full Spectrum Dominance. The past is never in the past, as its features always remain present in the psyche.

Genocide #2 was forceful dispossession of Africans of their labor and dignity, killing millions with impunity.

Genocide #3 was and remains the forceful dispossession of “Third World” peoples of their resources and labor, killing millions with impunity.

The US, as is typical of empires, is unsustainable, built on unspeakable behaviors. The wool has not been pulled over our eyes. Our eyes are the wool. Our US model has morphed into neo-liberal globalization, destined to destroy virtually all planetary life.

But Humans ARE redeemable and reformable if we choose to re-organize into bioregionally sufficient food and simple tool cooperative cultures, similar to ancient Indigenous models. Ceasing obedience to nation states will free up our energy and imaginations to create new social configurations integrated within bioregional carrying capacity.

7_brian_s_wilson_color