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this is the part where i struggle. maybe there is a theoretical collectivist / ecological / socially just future, but i just can't see how we get there. it appears to me that the only things that will change behaviour on a societal or global scale are large shocks and / or the things we rely on becoming unavailable so that the option not to change is removed.
'We' is a broad category - I figure there's some small percentage of us who feel a century or two before their time, who have always been aghast at business as usual, and are absolutely busting for a chance to try some better ideas.
How to get from here to there is the rub tho innit. I have a couple of angles on that... (haven't read the thread yet so I may echo some stuff already said)
So how about this - there are these quaint notions of the social contract and the consent of the governed and so on, but after close to half a century of neoliberalism all those promises are looking conspicuously empty; the bells and whistles are falling off the whole brutal charade.
So where is the organised system for finding a more optimum system of organisation? And who dares to say we don't need one? Surely a number of politics nerds, tired of watching the shitshow and having stupid arguments with folks stuck in the matrix, would be keen to get that ball rolling?
Presumably there are a number of small groups I've never heard of already working towards something similar; there must be some way to avoid a People's Front of Judea situation and federate them...
It seems apparent that if you want to be above the law, you need to be a large corporation. So let's defeat capitalism with its own instrument. Forget the political system, mired in corruption - corporations do just as much or more to determine our way of life, with very little standing in their way. Especially the corporation you work for. So why couldn't we have a co-op, dedicated to maximising the potential of its members and finding that optimal system of organisation, employing all the relevant facts and tools which are barely utilised elsewhere?
Facts about human nature, like how much more effective intrinsic motivation is than extrinsic motivation. That we evolved and have spent almost all our time as humans in flat, cooperative structures rather than hierarchies of dominance. Tools, like those afforded by the communications revolution - which Salvador Allende was keen to utilise before I was born, but the CIA was having none of it. Today those tools are abused to hypnotise us and pit us against each other to drive engagement to get those all-important ad clicks, but what if our phones could talk to each other without relying on cell towers, and were the infrastructure of a future government which involves everyone?
The corporate structure enveloping all this could be like a cell membrane, inside which, money is subject to as much de-emphasis as possible, insulating members from the sort of crap which precludes actualisation, like having to be somewhere five days a week. Capitalism relies on a zero-sum arrangement in which human potential is more or less minimised; what if the structure is geared towards synergy and maximising potential? Maybe such a corporation could eventually outperform all the other corporations and swallow everything up? What if a billionaire or two could be sold on the idea of going down in history as one of its greatest heroes rather than just another obscene glutton? I can see this idea possibly snowballing.
Or at least, it could set the stage for those compelled to find better ways after this dumpster fire burns to the ground. There's probably no averting the litany of catastrophes industrial capitalism invites, but what happens afterwards in the wreckage? Do we just have to learn archery to fight over the scraps, or can we devise a framework robust enough to carry us through the looming hellscape?
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Kimmo
as i was saying, when I was 16 and studying (i use the term loosely) A level biology, i became interested in the population phases exhibited by bacteria in a culture (usually in a petri dish or some other finite environment).
as i'm sure many people will know, the population of bacteria typically shows 4 phases:
lag (slow growth)
log (exponential growth)
stationary
death (exponential reduction)
so what? well two things are pretty much beyond debate: we are in the log phase of human population growth, and exponential growth of anything cannot continue to infinity (maybe the universe, who knows, i'm not a physicist but even if the universe can expand forever, i don't think that will help any beings living on a finite lump of matter such as the earth).
so that suggests that exponential growth must stop at some point, and after that something else must happen, which could either be an extended phase of stationary population, or a short phase of stationary population, or possibly we could miss out that phase altogether and go straight into decline.
for me, the essential concept is resource exploitation. populations which are effective at exploiting resources can grow. as resources are finite, at some point the effectiveness of the resource exploitation starts to decline. because we are clever, we adapt and find different ways to exploit resources, and different resources to exploit. however this, in my view, cannot carry on indefinitely. arguably, solar and wind are sufficiently abundant to be considered infinite, but i can't see a model where these resources alone are sufficient to allow continued population growth indefinitely.
and then there is the other cause of the death phase - the build up of waste resulting from resource exploitation, aka drowning in your own shit. not sure how renewable energy can help with that, on a global scale.
so we know that we need to change our ways, manage population growth and the rate of and effects of our exploitation of resources. but what is the motivation to change?
this is the part where i struggle. maybe there is a theoretical collectivist / ecological / socially just future, but i just can't see how we get there. it appears to me that the only things that will change behaviour on a societal or global scale are large shocks and / or the things we rely on becoming unavailable so that the option not to change is removed.
i wish that i had a more positive message, and i have complete respect for those who are trying to drive change, whether in small ways or large ones. fwiw one of my kids is a climate change activist. i was previously involved in left wing politics, and i still respect and admire some of the left wing thinkers i encountered at that time. for now, i'm just trying not to be too much of a d*ckhead and not make too many blatantly awful decisions.