Exiting The Anthropocene and Entering The Symbiocene. | glennaalbrecht Exiting The Anthropocene It has been proposed that humans are now living within a period of the Earth’s history appropriately named ‘The Anthropocene’ (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). The name is derived from the observed human influence and indeed dominance of all climatic, biophysical and evolutionary processes occurring at a planetary scale. The issue is not simply climate change (as bad as that is) it is the whole Capitalist development paradigm that is at the dark heart of mal-development; that is, development that undermines and destroys the very foundations of all life on Earth. Gone is the relative stability and predictability of the past 12,000 years as the established patterns and regularity of Holocene phenology begin to fall into chaos. In the Anthropocene, the so-called ‘new normal’, or what I prefer to conceptualise as ‘the new abnormal’, life will be characterised by uncertainty, unpredictability, genuine chaos and relentless change. Entering The Symbiocene Sumbiocracy
Darwin's Wedge & Dumb Competition | Errors We Live By “Competition creates efficiency,” is preached as if it were a law of nature. But nature itself teaches a different lesson. Biological competition can create foolish costs, and collective doom. “Darwin’s Wedge” shows why and reminds us of the point of being human. Our competitions, and the myopic logic of free markets, needn’t be dumb as trees. “Tree trunks are standing monuments to futile competition” says Richard Dawkins. What can market lovers learn from nature's competitions? A $62 billion monument to “futile competition” exists in healthcare. Robert Frank coined “Darwin’s Wedge” to describe situations where individual incentives diverge from collective goals (sometimes even risking collective doom). Competition’s benefits arise from the constraints it creates. Illustration by Julia Suits, The New Yorker Cartoonist & author of The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions.
A New Economic System for a World in Rapid Disintegration (Photo: Antoine Collet; Edited: LW / TO) We live in ominously dangerous times. The world capitalist system -- having fueled colonialism, imperialism and the constant intensification of labor power exploitation for roughly 500 years -- now threatens the planet with an ecological collapse of unprecedented proportions. Simultaneously, the phenomenon of global warming, driven mainly by the dynamics and contradictions of a fossil-based economy, has prepared the soil for the eruption of new sources of conflict with the manifestation of historically unique destabilizing social forces. Nonetheless, the catastrophic scenario sketched out behind the operations of global capitalism does not merely represent the other side of a wild socio-economic system bent on constant and abstract growth in pursuit of ever greater rates of profit. Corporate Capitalism and Social Disintegration Yet, the choice between "barbarism or socialism" has never been clearer. Rethinking "Development" and "Progress"
Understanding Reductionist vs. Holistic Thinking | The Weiler Psi Reductionist thinking rules the world. Without it, technology and the progress that comes with it would not have occurred and we would have very little in the way of sciences. The modern world as we know it would not exist without the technical marvels that come from putting pieces together in novel ways to create often spectacular new inventions, many of which change our lives in profound ways. Reductionist thinking works perfectly for this: Which is made from this: A car is a very complex thing, but you can break it down to its individual parts and understand them in detail. Reductionism has been highly successful in so many areas that one of the most basic problems with this approach has been virtually ignored. Can anger be broken down into its pieces? Can you really apply any reductionism to this emotion? Emotions are acts of consciousness and consciousness is hard to explain because our minds and vocabulary is inherently reductionist and consciousness is irreducible. Like this:
The Commons as a Tool for Sharing the Wealth - Commons Strategies David Bollier I recently spoke at a conference, “Property and Inequality in the 21st Century,” hosted by The Common Core of European Private Law, an annual gathering of legal scholars, mostly from Europe. They had asked me how the commons might be a force for reducing inequality. Below are my remarks, “The Commons as a Tool for Sharing the Wealth.” Thank you for inviting me to speak today about the relationship between property law and inequality – a topic that receives far too little attention. Oh yes, there is this nasty side issue known as inequality. I wish to argue that hunger, poverty, inadequate education and medical care, and assaults on human dignity and human rights, are not bugs in the system. Property rights lie at the heart of this dynamic because they are a vital tool for defining and patrolling the boundaries of private wealth, and for justifying the inevitably unequal outcomes. What exactly do I mean by the commons? Elinor Ostrom David Bollier Creative Commons
A New Alignment of Movements? Part I: The General Challenge - Commons Strategies by Pat Conaty and David Bollier “In September 2014, the Commons Strategies Group convened a three-day workshop in Meissen, Germany, of 25 policy advocates and activists from a variety of different economic and social movements. The topic of the “deep dive”: Can leading alt-economic and social movements find ways to work more closely together? Can there be a greater convergence and collaboration in fighting the pathologies of neoliberalism?” This is the first of two parts. Read the full paper in the Commons Transition Wiki Download as a PDF In September 2014, the Commons Strategies Group convened a three-day workshop in Meissen, Germany, of 25 policy advocates and activists from a variety of different economic and social movements. The activists hailed from movements devoted to the Social and Solidarity Economy, Degrowth, Co-operatives, Transition Towns, the Sharing and Collaborative Economy, Peer Production, environmental justice, and the commons, among others. Overview Peer Production
Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE? Urban Times - Be the Change Kevin Kelly How climate change is behind this week's extreme cold snap Baby, it's frigid outside. A large swath of Canada, from the Prairies to Nova Scotia, is under a deep freeze. Temperatures in Winnipeg are dipping down to –36 C Monday night with a windchill of almost –50 C. Even in parts of the U.S. This may leave some, like U.S. president Donald Trump, wondering where global warming has wandered off to. The fact is, it's climate change, or global warming, that's behind this extreme cold. Ever since the bitter winter of 2014, a new winter-weather catchphrase has been making the rounds: polar vortex. The polar vortex is nothing new. "This air mass always exists, and it often gets bumped and pushed around. That's what happened this week: the jet stream managed to split the descending polar vortex into three. The jet stream Though it's a relatively new area of study, there's increasing evidence that suggests this phenomenon will happen more often and become more extreme. And it's linked to the Arctic. Climate vs. weather
Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth | Cities In the time it takes you to read this sentence, the global building industry will have poured more than 19,000 bathtubs of concrete. By the time you are halfway through this article, the volume would fill the Albert Hall and spill out into Hyde Park. In a day it would be almost the size of China’s Three Gorges Dam. In a single year, there is enough to patio over every hill, dale, nook and cranny in England. After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on Earth. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world with up to 2.8bn tonnes, surpassed only by China and the US. The material is the foundation of modern development, putting roofs over the heads of billions, fortifying our defences against natural disaster and providing a structure for healthcare, education, transport, energy and industry. Concrete is how we try to tame nature. Our blue and green world is becoming greyer by the second. The dangers are recognised.