In the heat of this alarmingly severe California drought, farmers and planners have gotten desperate. One measure has been to tap into the wisdom of native American elders regarding management practices that sustain the health of the associated ecosystems while helping to recharge aquifers and reservoirs through optimizing precipitation capture.
I would like to submit that one of the most imperative actions right now is to catalog a compendium of indigenous knowledge and wisdom, world wide. Soon, we will realize the end of our current social system, and we will need to replace our mythology; our characterization of humans and the world around us.
We have been living under this absurd philosophy for so long now, that many will feel quite lost without the familiar stories (e.g. "the American dream," "prosperity through market economics," etc.). The best alternatives will have their derivatives in the many-millenia-backed mythologies that were developed and refined in concert with our resource systems. Of course, we will have to weave them together, along with the best that our age has provided. But this should be a gradual process, founded on
core principles that we can all agree underlie anything that will carry us far into the future as a species.
I've written considerably about the problems with the current social paradigm, but for convenience (and because each iteration brings new insights), I'll summarize them:
Probably pretty obvious, but capital and free market based society is necessarily wasteful, short-sighted, and dirty. Because the imperative is individual material gain (especially since corporations are individuals too), any way to outsource or reduce costs for any potentially profitable venture is encouraged. That, clearly, includes all sorts of destructive and wasteful practices.
A bit redundant, but since resources are extracted from our earth, living systems are at risk of being disturbed during the extraction process as well as by subsequent processing of those resources. Also, monetary-driven social growth pays little heed to ecological system health. Finally, the consequences of our aforementioned wastefulness and dirtiness have lead to what appears to be a system-wide collapse. While our biosphere has, according to the fossil and geological record, shown remarkable resilience, the short-term nature of our life-spans, and the relative fragility of our species, means that the consequences of anything remotely as severe as some of the more extreme climate disasters of the past could be catastrophic.
Because of the individualism that characterizes our current paradigm, and the extremely narrow focus on the material gains of the individual, much value has been placed on the tactical abilities that might be applied to that game. "It's just business" has been used to turn the tables on what would otherwise probably be viewed as selfish deceit, now highlighted as an example of clever success stories. This value is pernicious in its tendency to erode trust between people, ultimately weakening the connections between members of a community. It also undermines security, as there is always present a risk of someone inventing a novel tactic that you didn't protect yourself from.
This focus on strategy and tactics is similar to what one might find in learning chess or some other game from a skilled player. And that shouldn't be surprising, because we have a contrived social structure that has become a patchwork of policy, red tape, special cases, and exceptions. Our market society is a game, whose rules are being constantly revised, generally according to the whims of those who are "winning." Buying into the game means necessarily sacrificing some significant portion of one's life to the work of gaming for comforts, status, or whatever. This is why a "job" is so appealing; because it means that you can think less about many aspects of the game -- they're "handled." The expectations for workers, however, are constantly being pushed. Whether you're an entrepreneur or a worker, it is likely that you'll have to work much more than you will be able to live. We suffer from a collective life imbalance.
This one is hot right now in the media, as we're ramping up toward another political slog on the way to another presidential election. Bernie Sanders is the biggest bullhorn on this one, but many of the mainstream candidates are also claiming that this is a problem. Regardless, it's inevitable in our system, as more resources means more influence, even over the policy-makers. And that leads to even more resource accumulation among those who are influencing policy with their resources. Classic snowball.
So, what are the core principles that should guide the development of the new mythology, the new social stories? Next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment