Managing our Moral Task: Is that a Fact?

     Even if we lament a lack of transcendent reach into a moral domain of "forms" that somehow govern our everyday social and poltical lives--in other words, even if we find morality hopelessly subjective, and always serving the schemes of either individual self-interest or wider-scale social provincial self-interest--the bare task of grappling with the fact of moral agency never eludes us.

    We are through and through social and moral beings. Propriety, duty, rights, fairness, and evaluative sentiment are concepts that dictate the contours of choices and implicit and explicit (internalized and external) values attached to actions.

   Therefore, the question of the "Ultimate" foundation for morals ("ultimate" read, transcendent or mind-independent fact-based justification of morality) simply misses the really interesting questions.

    What are some of these questions? Given that we will always generate normative constraints on our behavior, by what means may we help win allies in our view of the good? As far as "facts" are concerned: how does moral discourse gain legitimacy from a ground of facts that are not necessarily tied to perfectly quantifiable empirical metrics? Must morality be confined to quantitative statistical analysis? Must we reduce value to some empirical domain?

    I have a pragmatic overall answer to some of the questions raised above. First, as Aristotle recognized, we must begin analysis from some set of governing assumptions. If such assumptions are undone, then so be it--but nevertheless, we always begin from the beginning (however questionable). Our hope with morality and normative analysis is not simply to find "the truth" behind a claim, and match a one-to-one correspondence with some statement of morality with a piece of naked factual data "out there" in the "objective" mind-independent world of facts. Rather, we aim to discourse toward a satisfactory sense of personal-social achievement and personal-cultural identity: we aim to define ourselves by how and what we value. We enculturate and define our subjectivity through normative assessments. We define who we are by the duties and principles we take up and honor. We build our cultural identity through our ideas about the good. Thus, any ultimately nihilistic idea of the good (or lack thereof) leaves us with Nothing in the way of identity, or criteria for evaluating the depth and width of an action. The good exists as long as we realize it through our behavior, and its contours are never finally delimited, but always underway, processually, dynamically, and evolving to not only meet the demands of species survival, but the quality of that survival--i.e., the normative and evaluative dimensions of how we survive.

   Proving morality may not be inscribed on tablets from above does not relinquish the task of grappling with our innate propensity to evaluate reality and our actions as a synergistic function of that reality.

    We are moral. Is that a fact?

   The "fact" of the matter is not "thin" or trivial. Of course, you might say, we obviously develop values. So what? Prove to me your values make sense!

   My humble point is this: There are perpetrators of nihilistic anti-value "sets." There is a call to ignore the constraints that construct identity, and focus on the the will and satisfaction of self-interested desire. The hope is to strip evaluations of the good from anything other than bare naturalistic definitions (biological-evolutionary discourse) which offer little in the way of any substantive and specific measures, and or to reduce morality to Nothing! That is, morality is a constraining illusion that serves the weak in fending off the naturally elite (Nietzschean Perfectionism writ Nasty).

   So the stakes are high. The attacks against taking up the slow, meticulous assessment of normativity are always carried out in the name of the "aesthetic," the "empirical," and the reductive. However, perhaps morality is an emergent phenomenon, complex in its nature, and not readily reducible to a simple set of bare, naked physical facts. We are not let off the hook. The social struggle to articulate our political and cultural identity always remains pressing.

How to Rethink Cost Benefit Analysis: Freemarket Fangs

One question to ask is: how any "fixed" or rigidly ideological approach (note: "rigid") can meet the novel predicaments facing us as we move forward into the oblivion of Capital.

I for one keep trying to re-think how a consumer driven paradigm may co-exist with biodiversity--a paradigm that faces the rigorous demands of life with a quantitative growth mandate. How can the current very wasteful consumer lifestyle co-exist with sustainable living, and naturally integrative lifestyles that keep the boundaries between the urban, "the wild", and the rural porous and mutually enhancing?

In other words, there must be a way for our free-market system, not as an ideology but as a current pragmatic reality, to think "greener", "smarter", and drive consumers to make choices that not only prolong our species remarkable presence on this planet, but bolster the biodiversity that is necessary to maintain that presence along with the blooming, budding breadth of our entire Ecosystem.

I am giving up this search slowly, because I believe if you look at the nuts and bolts of consumer capitalism, you may find that intrinsic to its very existence is a mandate of endless "innovative"/quantitative (rather than merely intensive) growth---GROWTH THAT IS NO WAY SUSTAINABLE. Consumer capitalism can not continue wisely, because the "efficient allocation of resources" a free-market should naturally facilitate are efficiently destroying the very ground from which a market may flourish. From a Cost-Benefit Analysis, clearing a mountain top may be the best answer to efficiently maximizing the unit production of coal, for example. Yet, the externalities of long term degradation, poisioned water tables, and destruction of biodiversity, cannot be naturally "adjusted" by the market---simply because our rate of growth is outstripping our ability to adjust, manage, or replenish--and that is because whole sets of irrational and short-term drives are what "naturally" allocate resources. Capitalism is a snake eating its own tail.

Let me share with you a short paragraph from a recent article from an Econ Journal, "Real World Economics Review" :http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue53/whole53.pdf :

Under the headline “Economic Growth ‘Cannot Continue’” the BBC on January 28,

2010 summarized a report issued by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) which asserts

that “continuing economic growth is not possible if nations are to tackle climate change.” The

NEF says that “unprecedented and probably impossible” carbon reductions would be needed

to hold temperature rises below 2°C (3.6°F) without which we face catastrophic global

warming. “We urgently need to change our economy to live within its environmental budget,”

said NEF’s policy director Andrew Simms, adding that “There is no global, environmental

central bank to bail us out if we become ecologically bankrupt.”

1 In Growth Isn’t Possible

Simms and his co-author Victoria Johnson reviewed all the existing proposed models for

dealing with climate change and energy use including renewable, carbon capture and

storage, nuclear, and even geo-engineering, and concluded that these are “potentially

dangerous distractions from more human-scale solutions” and that there are “no magic

bullets” to save us. The report concludes that even if we were to rapidly transition to an

entirely clean energy -based economy, this would not suffice to save us because: “Globally,

we are consuming nature’s services – using resources and creating carbon emissions – 44

percent faster than nature can regenerate and reabsorb what we consume and the waste we

produce. In other words . . . if the whole world wished to consume at the same rate it would

require 3.4 planets like Earth.” Given these facts and trends, Simms and Johnson argue, we

have no choice but to bring average global growth to a halt (with sharp reductions in growth in

the industrialized countries balanced by accelerated growth in the developing countries to

approximate equity but tend toward stasis on balance) and to radically reconstruct the global

economy to conform to “environmental thresholds, which include biodiversity and the finite

availability of natural resources.” The authors conclude that “a new macro-economic model is

needed, one that allows the human population as a whole to thrive without having to rely on

ultimately impossible, endless increases in consumption” and they point to Herman Daly’s

idea of a “Steady-State Economy” as their model. For a reaction to this report, the BBC asked

Tom Clougherty, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think tank, for

his response. Clougherty remarked that the NEF’s report exhibited “a complete lack of

understanding of economics .

The point the author of the article goes on to make is that the competitve nature of capitalism, namely the call to produce ever more units of production because of an ensuing enhancement of divided labor, requires endless growth or it will result in pure stagnation. Unlike Professor of Economics, Herman Daly's model of a "steady-state" free-market with the Government stepping into to limit the throughput of major vital resources, while the market allocates the rest ala Adam Smith, this author believes free-market consumer capitalism does not allow for truly restrictive interventions or slow-down. Why? Simple, share-holder based Corporate enterprises can in no way "slow down" profits in the name of sustainable growth or prudent ecological choices, because it has profits and investment shares to maintain (a CEO will be booted if that profit and growth does not continue yearly, quarterly, or whatever). Think about it: would you want your pension investments to "slow down". We see right now what a belly-up consumer economy looks like: high unemployment, and loss all the way down.


Thus, a new mandate arises. I believe we are at the brink of a paradigm shift that must arise if our species is to survive--and I believe there is enough credible evidence to show that we have very little time, and a short, short window before we reach thresholds that simply leave our predictions dangerously moot.

We have to think outside consumer culture---not because it is "evil", but because we simply will not survive in any sort of pleasant manner on this planet much longer.

Here are some basic practical questions to address (or individual actions that may be taken in an everyday way), and in later postings we can sink our teeth into abstract macro-economic models:

(1) Can we really maintain consuming so many disposable items? We can only effectively recycle in balance with our environment. In other words we consume at a level that outstrips an ability for the environment to replenish itself. Recycling is fine, but reduction is the only real answer. In other words, we might begin giving up certain conveniences that will have a larger impact of destroying the possiblity of any future conveniences (i.e. conveniences whose full outcomes are species die-off).
IT CAN BE DONE. How? Just do it (as the maxim goes).

The can of soda--the disposable camera--the endlessly plastically packaged consumer products at the grocery store.

Do you remember when you washed a head of lettuce instead of buying plastically packaged lettuce? Do you remember when bags were not all made of plastic?

(2) Avoid--if you can---buying plastic of anysort (when at all possible). There are plenty of grocery stores where you can bring packs or satchels and fill them with rice, beans, pasta, cereals, flour, without having to purchase so many plastic packaged items.

(3) Next time you are at Starbucks and typing on your computer, sipping coffee, bring your own cup or ask them why they don't offer you "to stay" ceramic cups. We simply cannot keep up with all that must be recycled by endless lids and to-go products.

THEY ARE DESTROYING OUR ENVIRONMENT IN A VERY REAL AND VERY NON-ABSTRACT WAY.

--It is our built urban environment, that has kept us more and more separate from "the wild" and "the natural" that fogs our ability to see the depletion and destruction we are standing upon. However, smarter more integrative civil engineering can reduce that fog---we don't all have to become "tree-loving" nature people. We simply have to rethink how our activites relate to a broader natural and cultural context---maximizing structural and environment integrity (not just short-term financial investment gains). We have models of cities that better integrate "natural" and urban environments without resorting to sprawl.

(4) Pay attention to who you buy from. Huge industrial and agro-business that works from monocultures (like Tyson Chicken, Chiquita Bannanas, etc.) are doing more to deplete our water tables, destroy arable top-soils via over fertilization, and run-out smaller local and organic farmers. We know this---the facts are all there---we simply have to say no with our purchasing power.

Finally, we must re-think where a mandate of endless growth will lead us. The opposite is not stagnation. The opposite is a revaluation of our values, a world in which we foster attentive virtuosity rather than sporadic quicktime sound bites of consciousness and consumer saturation--where we dare to slow down and ask ourselves how our actions effect a larger whole--not for moral rightousness, but because diversity and ecological growth requires recognizing and maximizing (rather than depleting) our natural environments.

This is a mandate for a more creative future. A future not only based on immediate animal conveniences, but a recognized and evolved sense of interdependence.

Consumer capitalism will not bring us this future. Remember what has been in the past need not be in the future--we can evolve new forms of exchange and new types of markets---but we have to slow down and dare to ask, think, and sacrifice along the way. On the upbeat, not every "sacrifice" is a privation--rather every change of direction is an opportunity to create different types of relationships and relatedness to ourselves, our world, and eachother.

Best to You---K

 

Sentor Saxby Chambliss of Georgia Promotes Subsidizing Oil Negligence

Recently, I sent a petition to the office of Sentaor Saxby Chambliss of Georgia regarding legislation concerning offshore drilling and compensation measures for oil companies found negligent in their drilling practices.

His office replied with an unsurprising lack of support for Senator Reid's  S.3663 Oil Accountability Act.

Again, ideology seems to chokehold thinking aimed at less bias and deeper critical engagement. Still, his response betrays yet another GOP memeber comfortable waffling on the GOP's proposed spirit of deregulation and "Invisible Hand" economic policies. Senator Chambliss contends that removing the cap of $75 million for compensation from oil companies found negligent may jepoardize small businesses and jobs.

Does that not sound like a subsidy to you? Essentially, someone must pick up the bill for the envionmental and economic devastation of oil spills--who would that be? You the taxpayer. Chambliss unwittingly proposes we should clean up the spill, not the responsible party.

Would it not make sense in a free market that a business should suffer for its poor choices? Granted, jobs would be lost, but isn't that the kind of "economic adjustment" touted by our friends in the GOP. Well, should the Government stay out, or shouldn't they? I'm afraid only our Libertarian friends remain consistent in their platform.

Something rotten in Georgia?...not just the oil-polluted Savannah River?

Below, I've provided in brackets the Senator's response, and below that, my counter response. Please read on.

Saxby Chambliss to me

[Dear Mr. Perri:

Thank you for contacting me regarding oil spill and energy legislation. I appreciate hearing from you. 

It is imperative that we increase the security and reliability of our nation's energy supply.  On June 24, 2010, Senator Burr and I introduced S. 3535, the "Next Generation Energy Security Act of 2010."  Our bill focuses on several matters, including: using natural gas for vehicles and expanding nuclear power generation, as well as addressing spent nuclear fuel recycling, promoting electric vehicles and continued support for renewable energy sources.  S. 3535, if passed, would lead our nation down the path of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, decreasing emissions, and keeping energy prices low.

Furthermore, the recent disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has raised numerous concerns about the safety of oil and natural gas production that must be addressed.  It is our responsibility to ensure that domestic resources are produced as safely as possible and that environmental damage is avoided at all costs. Nevertheless, the exploration and development of domestic resources continue to be a vital component of our nation's energy policy, and I remain supportive of domestic offshore oil and natural gas exploration conducted in an environmentally responsible manner. 

On July 28, 2010, Senator Harry Reid introduced S. 3663, the "Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act of 2010," to address the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and to change our nation's energy policy. I have several concerns with various aspects of this bill.

First, S. 3663 proposes to completely eliminate the oil spill liability cap, which, under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-380), is currently limited to removal costs plus $75 million.  However, if an oil spill is determined to be the result of gross negligence or willful misconduct, then the liability cap does not apply.  While I agree that the responsible parties must be held accountable for the costs associated with the response and clean up efforts and that the liability cap should be increased, I am concerned about the effects that completely removing the liability limitations would have on smaller companies in the industry.  Congress needs to increase safety and liability in a way that will not inhibit our ability to explore for these resources or kill jobs.

I am also concerned by any component of the "Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act of 2010" that would increase the per-barrel amount that oil companies are required to pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.  The measure as currently written in S. 3663 amounts to a 500 percent tax increase, the cost of which would be directly passed on to consumers.  Furthermore, this bill proposes to use this new $16 billion tax, the revenues of which are intended to pay for the cleanup and damages from an oil spill, to pay for totally unrelated measures, such as a Home Star Program and the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Congress should be focused on ways to prevent future oil spills and effectively mitigate any damages that result, rather than using a disaster to justify new taxes to pay for completely unrelated projects. 

I will continue to support efforts to improve the security and reliability of our energy supply and effectively address the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  However, I oppose measures under consideration that will greatly increase energy costs, add to the national deficit, and unnecessarily hamper exploration and production of domestic natural resources.  Senator Reid has postponed consideration of S. 3663; however, should this or any other legislation regarding this issue come before the Senate, I will keep your thoughts in mind.]

Dear Senator:

     Thank you for your prompt and valuable response. However, I would encourage you to clarify some important points that I am not entirely satisfied with.

     First of all, if small oil companies should be found negligent and subsequently responsible for devastation on both the natural and economic environment that has far reaching costs into the unforseeable future, why would you be so entirely concerned with providing some sort of "SAFETY CAP" to essentially subsidize business negligence? Are you not of the party that praises the free adjustments of a free market? Yet, you would want the Government to step in and help mitigate the costs of a business that potentially "deserves" to (perhaps) fail if their actions should deem them unworthy of existing in the market.

     It seems that Senator Reid's bill works as a hard disciplinary force that enforces businesses to take the utmost care in performing actions that can and do effect public goods and public resources---like the Gulf of Mexico, for example.

     Also, given the fact that expert engineers and oil companies themselves admit that offshore drilling in those conditions at those depths are as difficult to navigate and control as space travel and walking on the moon,  let's reflect and ask ourselves why we would take such risks in the first place for crude oil? Based on the incentives our markets provide, it seems we are in more and more desperate need to supply a demand that continues to increase with no end in sight. The problem here is that we are dealing with a finite resource and a potentially infinite demand---and I am sure you understand Senator, at some point that demand cannot be fulfilled.

     So would you rather spend money and time piecing together very expensive bandages (like offshore drilling in very unfriendly ocean environments--a desperate act to gather crude oil) or help encourage (in a more than cursory manner) alternate technologies?

    How can we be sure, Senator, that ideology does not intrude on our decision-making? As citizens of our beautiful nation we are continually attempting to self-reflect and make critical choices not based on allegiance to any specific ideology other than sound judgment that promotes freedom, a flourishing market, and a nation and planet worth living on. I think it would behoove us to reconsider your stance on Senator Reid's proposal, and ask yourself why exactly we should be afraid that removing a cap limitation on oil companies would be imprudent.

   As you are a thoughtful and dedicated man, I would appreciate you addressing each of  the points I have put forward with data, figures, and facts. I also would be more than willing to bring such things to the table and enjoy discoursing with you--if you feel  compelled with me to engage in that age-old democratic virtue of discourse and conversation with the consituents who gave you the current job you enjoy.

All my best, and God Bless America--

Kevin Perri

P.S. So far I've only received an automated "out of the office" response to my counter.

Neither a Doomsdayer Nor a Consumer Be--Notes on the Zero-Sum

     We inhabit what James Carse (Finite and Infinite Games, 1986) described as a complex system of Infinite Gaming.

     Cold War tactics that view the economy and international relations as a game defined by clear boundaries (sovereign nations, definite outcomes, and clearly defined win/loss enemy/friend binaries) are supplanted by infinite games woven over time with only probabilities and blurred boundaries:

     "Simply stated, in contrast with previous eras, we are confronted with imperatives for managing processes of interaction with one another and our environments that extend indefinitely in time and space....Borders demarcating spheres of interest and influence have evaporated." (See Peter Hershock, Buddhism in the Public Sphere, p. 139)

     In response to astute comments added to my last post, I have been mulling over the issue of specialization, and the temporal constraints in taking true ownership of one's democracy. Put simply, who has the time or the specialization to endure the litany of issues and tables of facts and figures that would allow one to responsibly take charge in their district? The answer is simple: the representatives we vote for. After all, that's what they're paid for, right?

    I will follow this post with a succinct and more developed sense of what I was scratching at in "Author Your Own Life"---but the bottom line is this: Enough data from a diverse range of experts in their respective scientific, economic, and political fields points to a variety of different but ultimately related international crises: from poverty and food shortage in the coming years, to climate change, water shortage, and the continued Die-Off of species. My hope, and all those who are passionate in maintaining hope, is that collective action at local level and municipalities, along with a radical unhinging of corporate sponsored politics, will offer us sustainable and democratically realized solutions and alternatives. We cannot merely wait for the market to "correct" itself (a Libertarian Hope) or the workers to finally gain world-wide ownership of production means (the Marxist Hope) or the virtuous balance of Government and corporate wealth coming to the rescue (The Progressive-Liberal Hope). I call these "hopes" and not "dreams", because they all aim ultimately at securing social justice and meaningful lives. They all derive from a noble source. However, they alone cannot fully cope with the unprecedented struggles that currently lie before us.

     Once again quoting Raj Patel is worthwhile, because he points out that no silver-bullet solutions exist. Rather a complex range of different local movements designed to cope with the intricacies of local habitats and farmlands, etc., along with global regulatory commitments, and individual sacrifices (or habit adjustments for us in the affluent West) can offer the best solutions: infinite gaming, with creative and improvisational output. The one ideology in play here is what Peter Hershock calls, "relating freely in mutual contribution" or "appreciative and contributory virtuosity." Our value cannot only be driven by prices and profits, but by a recognition of our unavoidably tangled and interdependent existences, and our willingness to realize care and contributory virtuosity as our driving motives:

         "It would be foolish to sugarcoat the challenges that lie ahead, both personal and political, if we are to feed the world. In a world with 9 Billion people, we'll need to cut back on meat. If meat's to be eaten at all...the global allowance will be 25 kilograms of meat and 50 kilograms of dairy per person per year--any more, and the climate will suffer [and then we really wont be eating meat!]. Suppressing the Western diet's lust for flesh will be hard to do--it'll mean taking on all manner of food processing and retail interests, as well as our own habits--but we will need to get used to paying the price for our two-hundred dollar hamburgers, and ensuring that everyone can make similar consumption choices. We'll also need to make time for politics, which involves changes that will affect everything from watching TV to reducing the extremely long working hours that we have come to accept as normal"--Raj Patel (The Value of Nothing, p.164).

     To make time for democracy. To deliver sustainable choices for our immediate environment while governments busy themselves with turf battles and red-tape, we have to minimize the mad-rush they've sold us on, because it is that very rush that keeps us working 50 to 65 hours a week. When we're left with only the energy to watch television, the corporations win, the planet loses, and you (and our kind) goes away. I have hope, because I know we can coordinate efforts, and I know that science geared toward public interest, and invigorated shifts in paradigms will ultimately build a sustainable future.

xoxo

K.P.M.

Author Your Own Life

  "Porto Alegre in Brazil has a celebrated 'participatory budget' process, where citizens gather in forums to decide how funds will be spent in their neighborhoods...this is what happens when people stop being consumers in a market and become authors of their lives, political subjects who both preside over resources and develop democratic ways of sharing them." ---Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing (p.146)

     How have we managed our fitness for democracy? Between the 40 to 65 hours of work you've spent a week (if you're "lucky" enough to have work these days) how much time presented itself to you for community meetings I'm sure you were chomping at the bit to attend? Who decided the sustainability, opportunity costs, and budgeting decisions for the most recent development project in your neighborhood? You voted for McCain or you voted for Obama or you voted for neither--but did you vote for your block, your city, your state? Who controls what directly develops around you in the immediate world of your daily industry? Or are you a modern day tourist? Do you zip in and out of the neighborhood with enough time to eat, procreate, enjoy your cable programming, go to work, and play with the money you've earned--a renter of your existence (even if you "own").

     For myself, so far only a "tourist", I know I have had very little input in the goings-on in my neighborhood. Part of the reason (for me at least and most certainly for many) is that my neighborhood keeps changing. Or, I should say, I enjoy the luxury of relocating periodically. However, my mobility, my shifts in occupation and location, betrays either one of two things: either I'm a migrant worker or I'm a middleclass to upper 1%-er with greater or lesser independent means along with a network of family-earned money and resources at my disposal. I fall into the latter category. Thus, my sense of going "local" is a bit skewed when it comes to political machinations, and authoring my neighborhood and community. My roots are "wide" or simply virtual, and if only virtual, then my political input at the local level also exits only virtually.

     I by no means assume that democracy only functions in provincial local communities, and that well respected and industrious individuals who maintain multiple or temporary homes have no input in our representative, and let's face it, corporate owned and distributed democracy. I simply point out the fact that the more far-reaching our democratic virtues pervade, the more responsibility we must shoulder as a community working together, however rancorous and painstaking that process may be. Bottom-up politics must supplant the profit driven corporate owned top-down decision making pervading our democracy. We can only contribute to organizations so much before we have to roll up the sleeves and participate and enforce the kind of world we hope to achieve.

     So my question is this: are you willing to facilitate, grow, and painstakingly participate in your democracy? Voting is the bare minimum--absolutely bare. We all know this, because our cynicism pervades throughout all our cultural commodities--our dissatisfaction with knowing how much and yet how little a single vote counts. Cynicism is itself a commodity packaged in ironic and unsustainable lifestyles of affluence that are costing us biodiversity, and disproportionately falling on the shoulders of women and the poor. Our new model cell-phone (with necessary minerals mined from the Congo, rape capital of the world) and BMW ultimately grow out of the endless pilfering of the Global South. We understand that the decisions that most impact our lives are deferred and very rarely handled by us. We know the multinationals rule. Some of us celebrate this.Some of us resign. Some simply don't care. For others of us, the market possesses all answers and all cures (oddly enough people who believe this are very rarely those born to poverty or shackled by the accidental factors of being born a woman or an "unfavored" minority).

     But when did we begin describing ourselves as an "economic human"--what Raj Patel calls homo economicus? Are our Hobbesian brutality and greed, our "profit-motives" really "natural"? Are we as hard-wired for generosity and altruism as we are for greed and egoism? Could anything other than a model of infinite growth and profit-motive underlie our basic relationships and narratives?

    We have to continue to ask those questions. History reveals how the matrix of economy and government have continually grown and changed our construction of self-identity. We must activate our sense of civic duty and responsibly participate in decision-making that has both local and far-reaching global ecological and economical consequences. However, if we maintain our self-interpretation as that of a "consumer", merely a flow of desire in a self-correcting market of commodities, then we may continue to sleep and allow those with the greatest financial capital to decide what is of ethical value, ecological value, aesthetic value, and spiritual value. YOU ARE NOT A CONSUMER!

    The red pill or the blue? (sorry for the reference, but apparently cliches are as much a commodity as innovation).

Perri M.

It's the Biosphere Stupid!

Chilean economist, Manfred Max-Neef, spoke candidly with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now regarding a coming economic-biospheric catastrophe. His astute ability to directly connect these two concepts was a refreshing reprieve from the same old status quo narratives of political pundits, corporate media outlets, and Democrat and GOP maneuverings. He firmly established the thesis that our economic woes are rooted in a toxic sludge of personal and corporate greed, a drive to develop infinite growth on a planet of only finite resources, and an inability to humanize economics so that, paradoxically, in emphasizing humanity we are inevitably forced to value biodiversity and nature for its own intrinsic worth.

For those critical thinkers that would listen, please check out the following link for a gist of his work:

http://www.activistpost.com/2010/09/dramatically-poisonous-economy-heading.html

Ultimately, what Max-Neef calls "Barefoot Economics" promises hope for a "new beginning" after a coming cataclysmic economic collapse.  His model devises an economy serving life and humanity. In other words, his scathing critique carries with it a message of hope.

Honestly, the "hope" and "change" that Obama's campaign promised can only really take root if we are able to peer into the maelstrom that is our currently crowded, interdependent, and corrupt world economy. Health care reform cannot alone reform a system designed to placate the debt addled middle-class with diversions while banks enroll the Government in their sometimes naive, sometimes well-meaning, and sometimes vile and cynical schemes.

Somehow Anti-Corporate has become "Anti-Business", and concern for the environment still remains a kind of naive game for "bleeding hearts" and rancorous idealists rather than a serious and primary concern in public policy and economic and business models.

There is nothing "fringe" about concern for the very basis of any tangible economics---it's the Biosphere Stupid!

Perri M.