Justified Pessimism

Okay, Ian. Let me give you an example of a good left-wing blog: DownWithTyranny. Every day, Howie brings attention to injustice taking place all over the country and all over the world. He highlights crooks, liars, scandals, swindles, corruption, and idiots everywhere ruining the fabric of our society, and provides narration on the dark and dire times so many of us face.
HOWEVER, he, unlike you, also provides answers. He provides solutions. He spends time talking about what we can do about it. AND he also talks about people who trying to do the right thing. He introduces and supports politicians who want to represent struggling families instead of the special interests Obama is loyal to, and motivates readers to help those politicians with their campaigns. He has a page with a list full of Democrats who will fight for the 99%. I especially like how he talks about what can be done to clean up the Democratic Party of corporate insiders.
You don’t do any of this. All you do is talk about how stupid everyone is, and never provide any examples of what your readers can do to stop the downward spiral, or mention people who are doing the right thing, even though they exist. You only talk about the problems, never the solutions. Which is one of the many reasons why you are ridiculous.

“Sanity”, Ian does provide solutions. The problem is that the solutions are clear, obvious, and utterly impossible to implement given the current political system.

Change the political system, you say? Easier said than done in a world of 24/7 surveillance. Why do most Americans, for example, not participate in protests? Well, simple: Because if they do, they’ll be arrested. And if they’re arrested, they’ll be convicted (99% of those arrested either plead guilty or are convicted in the end, because by and large prosecutors can convict a ham sandwich of murder, nevermind a protestor of “resisting arrest”). And if they’re convicted, it will be placed on their credit report — their official record — when the next dump of records from the courthouse to the credit reporting bureaus takes place. And once that happens, that’s that — you’ll never get a job outside of scrubbing toilets again, because nobody hires convicted criminals.

Is there a solution to that? Yes. But where Ian and I disagree with you is when, where, and how that solution can be practicable. We hold that the majority of Americans are not going to be willing to put their bodies on the line — what it will take — unless the situation is so dire that mass starvation is threatening the American people, and even there it’s going to be a race between the forces of progress and the forces of regression to see who can take control of this mass movement first. And if the forces of regression win… well. Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union will look like a day care center and the carnage of Europe 1939-1945 will seem like a quaint skuffle in the parlor by comparison.

My final comment here: The biggest problem facing the forces of progress is the fact that we have no real ideological “hook” to hang our hats upon, because pragmatism — looking at problems, looking at solutions, choosing the most viable solution, and implementing it — is not sexy. The forces of regression, on the other hand, have sound bite “hooks” to hang their hats upon, eagerly hanging their hats on “Capitalism”, “freee-dom”, and so forth though they practice none of these (crony capitalism is *not* capitalism in any real sense of the word, and a world where even our every movement is monitored by our oligarchs — via our cell phones — hardly qualifies as “freedom” by any traditional definition of the word). Communism failed because of its inherent ideological contradictions, but while it was still extant at least provided an ideological alternative to the framing presented by the forces of regression. We have no consistent frame as progressives because it’s impossible to frame expediency and pragmatism, there is no consistency possible when you do what’s right in a given situation rather than what agrees with a specific ideology. This is the biggest problem to face progressives right now, and one we have to think about, because we all know that people look for simple answers to complex questions when times get hard — and there’s a hard time a’comin’, faster than I like, and if the regressives win the hearts and minds of those who want simple answers, we’re all Rome in the 5th century AD — where Rome went from a metropolis of over 1.5 million, the center of civilization in Western Europe, to being 40,000 or so heavily armed survivors huddled in the ruins of a once-great city.

Minus Sanity; all the above echo my sentiments exactly.
Huffpost and virually all of the MSM are delusional in their analysis, optimism and offer absolutely no viable/realistic solutions.
Nothing offered is basically any different than the status quo extant in the western world today.
Iceland is the possible exception and Greece could be, may be, if…

^ That was hammer-on-nail Ian. I’m pretty much done with this posting shit; an avalanche of blah, blah, blah, pontificating, and just general hostility for differing points of view. In the end you do speak, point to subject, and rarely step into disputes; all of which I applaud. “Viva la differance” (you got to add your own French accent).
So, I’ll be sticking around for a while longer; at my age and genetics; that’s as optimistic as I get.
You go man!

Guest and Ian, yes, the Gays are being used as a ruse, or a foil as a divisive wedge in any potential Left Flank. They will be discarded and scapegoated when the time is ripe, just as Hitler did in Germany. They were useful in gaining power, and once power was secured, they were quite literally executed. All of this is in the Playbook writ large.

Bless you Ian. In trying to withdraw from your site, craw filled past endurance with vain opinion, had decided to give it up for lent (lent usually being what is given up for lent), an you had to post this one and comment superbly as well.

About the only issue that could be contributed to is pointing out that history is the great storehouse of the human experience, almost every scheme concocted by mankind resides there, the key to which has many parts, the largest being some knowledge of history, another an ability to understand, to critically read, and to synthesize from the artifacts presented, history is never absolute or complete. Often history is the story of the victors, containing clues as to why the victory happened as well as fragments preserved of the vanquished and how that loss occurred. Under attack without a clearly drawn resource available and facing an existential threat to the core of being, the erstwhile combatants effectively hobble their efforts. It is disingenuous and futile to attack neoliberal economics without a shared working idea or language of what basic economics is in the first instance, same for social engineering, or constructing a political edifice that shelters from the abuse of political power, or any of a myriad other complexities that the modern world is built upon. Self imposed ignorance, many times sheltered by strong opinion or belief has become a fatal cancer to the body politic, acting as a counter-antidote to the necessary medicines of survival, obscuring vision of the enemy at the gates in a generated fog of false diversions. Language itself has become fungible, meaning detached from words, traditions usurped by the expediency of corruption until nothing is as it appears. Laws of primordial pedigree unrecognized and unheeded, their power usurped by courts populated by ideological sycophants of some self-serving philosophy. This is a house built upon shifting sands, a house that cannot sustain itself, a house without future. There are many ways to withdraw consent to power, it is the reader’s duty to discover them, find those which can be done, and apply to the limits of the reader’s ability.

End of message. All the best …

Plenty of truth here to ponder, think about and act on…but also, live now, live today for yourself and for your family and friends. Read critically, garden, take care of your health and simplify. Poetry and music are balm for the soul. If you listen to your most quiet inner self, you will know when it is time to fight and who to fight against.

Last week I ruffled a few feathers by raising the question of why rich elites promote the idea that the world is overpopulated. I neglected to point out the obvious answer – that it provides cover for the terrible outcomes of elites’ policies. It is exactly what Henry Carey wrote about the British empire’s Rev. Malthus, and free trade, back in the 1850s: “We thus have here, first, a system that is unsound and unnatural, and second, a theory invented for the purpose of accounting for the poverty and wretchedness which are its necessary results. The miseries of Ireland are charged to over-population, although millions of acres of the richest soils of the kingdom are waiting drainage to take their place among the most productive in the world, and although the Irish are compelled to waste more labour than would pay, many times over, for all the cloth and iron they consume. The wretchedness of Scotland is charged to over-population when a large portion of the land is so tied up by entails as to forbid improvement, and almost forbid cultivation. The difficulty of obtaining food in England is ascribed to over-population, when throughout the kingdom a large portion of the land is occupied as pleasure grounds, by men whose fortunes are due to the system which has ruined Ireland and India. Over-population is the ready excuse for all the evils of a vicious system, and so will it continue to be until that system shall see its end…. ”

This week, allow me to raise another troubling question: who really runs “the left”? Do you know who Thomas W. Lamont is? Google his name. Better yet, look up his name in the index of Quigley’s TRAGEDY AND HOPE. If you don’t know who Lamont was , then you won’t be properly gobsmacked by next looking at his son, Corliss Lamont, who was the money-bags for the left in the U.S. for most of the last half of the 20th century.

Why is the left useless and ineffective? Perhaps, because its masters intended it that way?

Well done, Ian (like you needed to hear it from me.)

Tony Wikrant, thanks for posting this more nuanced argument for “over-population” skepticism. The oft-maligned Malthus’ objections to this decrial of the elites was contemporaneously correct – there were still resources that were being withheld. This is a different time – and Malthus is more popularly known for pointing out the limits of this Petri dish that we call the world. I don’t mean that as a quibble to your comment – I completely agree with what you have written.

I would add that (and this is a further buttress to your position) laments on “over-population” are like the complaints about immigration – they are both attacks on symptoms, conveniently ignoring the causes.

Ian, know this too. For every squirrely character out there that listens to you and survives, there are a few others we save because we survived long enough to do it.

I’m thankful for the Popeyes Spicy Fried Chicken I’m eating as I review these wonderful posts.

Love That Chicken From Popeyes

I urge people here to read anything and everything by David Graeber. His “Revolutions in Reverse” is available free online and is filled with real hope as he grounds his ideas in thousands of years of history and his own actual activism in the “anti-globalization” movement. Graeber says that they were so busy being depressed about the failure of Seattle 1999, they didn’t realize they had eventually neutered the IMF in South America and East Asia. Big accomplishment!

His book “Debt; the First 5000 years” is a rich read. The examples of “gift societies” are wonderous. I practice gifting and it works for me. I give something with no desire for direct exchange. In some Northwest American tribes, they competed with each other by seeing who could give the most up .
As Everything Jake noted, Graeber’s response to the patriarchal moralizing and dangerous Hedges piece “The Cancer in Occupy” is eloquent and peaceable. Oh, and nuanced and researched as opposed to the Hedges’ piece.
Graeber points to the young anarchist group Crimethinc who have been very eloquent in their statement of purpose.

I agree with Badtux’s most likely outcome scenario. There’s literally a world of difference between what I would like to see happen and what actually will happen.

I like that people are rejecting liberalism and re-discovering anarchist ideas/thinkers. Hey, there is hope–it’s just not in this wretched system.

I agree a new order will arise from the ashes. May we live long enough to see it.

Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel hearings in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.

spoken by Lee Brian, the 26-year-old son of an oil executive.

Here is an excerpt of his speech:

My oral evidence today comes in the form of a story, an experience I had three years ago which directly reflects the impacts this project will have on me, and my community.

The story begins after a lifetime of debating with my father -he thought it was high time for me to finally experience first-hand the magnitude and power of the oil industry.

So in the summer of 2009, I had the opportunity to spend one full month on one of the world’s largest oil refineries, producing 800,000 barrels of oil per day. At the time, it was under an expansion project to produce up to an astonishing 1.2 million barrels per day and for confidentiality reasons, the company and details of the project will remain unnamed.

The catch was that this refinery was in a very rural area in a northern province of India – right on the coast of the Arabian Sea, and bordering Pakistan.

So here I am, 23 years old traveling to India, and needless to say, tensions were high upon arrival. Coming through the airport, between the H1N1 virus
outbreak and the one year anniversary of the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks of 2008, the military presence was simply overwhelming.

I landed in Mumbai, or Bombay to the locals, and spent a day travelling to the northern province of Gujarat, Ghandi’s home province. Situated outside the small village of Jamnagar, I stayed in a secured complex surrounded by high walls, meant for expatriates – in literally the middle of nowhere. The
land in the region was primarily used for agricultural production, but due to the strategic location on the Arabian Sea, naturally there was large military and industrial presence in the area as well.

Each day I would wake up at 6 a.m., and travel roughly an hour to the refinery. Guarded with AK47s, I remember the first day of my arrival I had
the whole place in a stir, wondering why I was there. And to tell you the truth, I was thinking the exact same thing. It’s not easy being in a foreign country, being the only young Caucasian male in sight, amongst 50,000 workers constantly staring at me. But my fears quickly subsided as I spent more time there each day, and learned about the gracious, kind and humbled culture of the East – regardless of the portrayals the media would have you believe.

I spent each day with 2-3 different managers from each department, and was able to learn a large portion of each faculty of discipline during my time
there. I was very fortunate to have received such an in-depth, bird’s eye view of the entire project — and not even the most qualified engineering intern would have had this opportunity. The experience itself changed who I am, fundamentally, forever.

I learned about the entire EPCM – that is, the production process from engineering, procurement, construction, and management – I spent many hours
and days with managers from piping, documentation control, distributed control systems, civil, biological, chemical and environmental engineering instrumentation, quality control, marine operations, water management -electrical and on-site power production – from construction management,
procurement and materials, product creation and commercial supply, safety and security, and loading and unloading via rail, truck, VLCC (very-large
crude carriers) and ULCC (ultra-large crude carriers).

I am not exactly sure if the average person could fully appreciate the sheer magnitude of the operation, and the intricate interrelationship dynamics between workers, departments, managers and corporate headquarters. It is nothing Discovery Channel would ever be able to portray.

The experience made me question many of the fundamental assumptions I had been making regarding the industry itself. I was realizing just how tricky of a situation we are in globally. My naïveness of the reality and immensity of this substance was not fully actualized until I had this experience. I
can say right now, that I fully respect the power of oil.

One such day on the refinery stood out in particular. It was a hot, sunny and humid day, after monsoon rainfall my entire time there – I think it was
most likely the Prince Rupert weather following me overseas – and on that day a hand full of managers thought it would be fun to take me out to the Jetty, where they loaded and unloaded the super tankers. Situated a lengthy route away from the refinery itself, we drove down to towards the coastline.

On our way there, we drove past many different villages. Each one looking extremely impoverished. I learned later that this was not always the case. There was a time in this region where fishing, farming and the local economy truly flourished. But once the refinery project was approved, among other projects in the region, they built a pipeline directly through nine different villages. Over a period of time, there was pipeline breakage which contaminated an underground aquifer, and spoiled the wells and water supply of the majority of the surrounding villages. As industry expanded, and land bought and sold, men were forced into cheap labour at the refineries, after lifetimes of sustainable farming and fishing – now dependent on one or two companies for employment. Women, children and elders went starving after losing access to fresh water, with no accountability for cleanup – just left to fend for themselves. I ask, what would be the case here in our region? Do you see any potential similarities?

Converging onto a thin strip of man-made road spanning about two miles in length, we arrived at the Jetty, greeted by military personnel. After a lengthy process of clearing me for entry, we walked onto a couple of massive docking stations. To my right, men were conducting repairs on a rather standard sized vessel, no larger than the ones you would see here in our Harbour. In the distance, an ULCC fresh from the Middle East was rolling in from the horizon. The size of the vessel stopped me in my tracks. After 10
minutes, the ship stopped and made a slow bank horizontally out at sea.

I asked one of the managers — Jitesh was his name — why the ship stopped so far out. He told me that because of the size of the ship, they had a floating unloading station, and through another piping system they unload and load way out there, and that connects to the main routing station at the Jetty, to be piped a few miles back to the refinery.

I asked him why, and he said ‘even though we have docking stations here, it is for the smaller vessels that are used for domestic purposes. But these larger vessels that come from the Middle East can run aground easily.’

This, in open seas, I thought.

So we all stood there, suspended in what felt like an eternal moment -the heat waves rising above the calmed Arabian Sea, and the ship danced in the
horizon as I stood dumbfounded by its sheer mass. One man comments: “I always forget just how large those vessels are.”

A few moments pass as we all stood, just watching.

Out of the silence, Jitesh says to me “Do you see what we are doing here Mr. Lee?”

I asked “What’s that, Jitesh?”

He replied, with an unexpected, sobering tone: “We are destroying future generations for now, and forever.”

And in this kind of slow motion life moment, I felt this kind of tingling feeling on the top of my head– and with sweat dripping down from the inside of my hard hat onto my face, the sun beaming into my eyes – I squint over at six men slowing nodding their heads in silent agreement.

It was such a profound statement, and in that moment, there was silence.

On the way back, I had a lengthy discussion with Jitesh about the ‘whys’ of it all – about life, the human condition, and the challenges we face in the
21st century. Although I will not cover that conversation due to procedural constraints, I will say that I learned some extremely valuable lessons that
day.

I learned that it is not because every man and woman who participate in industry are all evil, bad people – being in India, on this refinery, there was this certain kind of ‘rush’ I felt. I felt a kind of new power within
myself –being in a productive, hard working, problem solving environment where there is grit, and dirt, and sweat, and mud and building and pumping
and drilling and hammering and huge turbines at massive pressures doing crazy stuff. There is this feeling you get when you’re working with other professionals in a high stake environment — and on some very obscure and messed up level, I can understand how those who work in industry can get
excited about growth and yet subsequently, can turn their eyes off towards any adverse impacts they are creating as a result.

Like I said, on a very obscure and messed up level.

And I just have to be fully honest and mention this, the feeling is addictive – you can literally feel it in your veins. And this coming from just one month of experience, with a totally different ideological
perspective.

The major thing I witnessed in my time on the refinery that I feel constitutes as evidence was my observations of the relationship dynamics
between corporate headquarters and the managers on the refinery. What I witnessed time and time again, was the technical experts knowing the damage,
risk and adverse effects of the project, versus what corporate would portray to the general public after reading their materials.

There was a clear and present dual world operating simultaneously –completely undeniable if you are on site. So what I saw, first hand, was this dynamic between ‘what is really happening’ and what the corporate headquarters will have people believe is happening. And as we have seen in our planet, this situation is not an isolated event.

Based on my experience, what I learned was that the global system of infinite growth attracts men and woman of a certain… level of understanding, a certain type of person who will be attracted to the ideals of the current economic measurement that coordinates the global psychology of things, and a
type of person who externalizes themselves and detaches from connection, and so whole-heartedly believes in their reality, their perception of things,
that they project their fears out onto everyone else — and their ego becomes the driver, blindly leading them down a path of self-destruction. And they are people of high intellectual prowess, but unfortunately have yet to develop the deep wisdom that we all possess within us as human beings.

And we call these people CEO, and Prime Minister.

The Enbridge Northern Gateway Project is simply just one of thousands of projects across the globe that are by-products of a severely flawed global
system. Even if this pipeline does not go through, there will be another proposal of the same magnitude appear somewhere else – and this will go on and on, until we either address the fundamental root of the issue – or face the slow decline of our civilization.

We are psychologically stuck. We are good at what we know, but are too scared to try anything else. If we could directly transfer the mobilization power of oil into a new energy economy, into a new economic measurement, into a new level of coordination and cooperation -where the true cost of development is clearly laid out -we may have a chance.

Because you simply cannot infinitely grow, within a finite system of resources – period.

So I do not sit here today, in anger, or in blame, or in judgement. And on behalf of my generation, I forgive these men and women for their lack of awareness, heart and understanding.

They too were born into an established system, conditioned into a certain way of thinking, and as far as they know, they did and are doing their best. But now, it is time to let go of the 20th Century, and enter into a new global direction towards a path of healing and new design.

In closing, it’s time now for a full scale, mass mobilized transition process off the fossil fuel economy. We need to use all of our resources we
have left wisely to create a whole new system of operation that is global in scale. This process needs to have the mobilization power comparable to the
proportions of the Manhattan project, and then some. It’s time for us to journey into a new dream, a new way, with new design and new fundamental
principles. It’s time for us to end a millennia of pain, suffering, shame and unconsciousness. It’s time to create resilient, sustainable and flourishing communities, that have the adaptive capacity to respond to any challenges they may face in their external environment – and be able to effectively respond specifically to the coming age of peak oil, climate change and rampant global economic instability.

It’s time for us to dismantle the institutions that are beginning to imprison us. It’s time for us to un-learn, to remove the power structures, and to decentralize the grid so that individual communities can produce
their own food, energy and own internal means of production for hundreds to thousands of years to come.

And ultimately, it’s time for us to become the true masters we are meant to become – true, planetary mastery — in balance with the emotional, cultural,
spiritual and psychological wellbeing of every inhabitant. It’s time for us to embrace the new consciousness that is emerging at this time, where by
busting open the hearts and minds of our people, we will propel ourselves forward into a new golden age of humanity that is imminently upon us.

We are those people.

So, if on one hand, you had an unpredictable path, that leads into a new dream, a new way of life for all of mankind and on the other hand, you had a
predictable path that leads to the slow, inevitable decline of a civilization.

Which path would you choose?

I think D* can be adapted in many ways. For example as a federated front end to some p2p technology like Triblr. In addition to its other modes of operation like pods. Bottom line is you cant have the potential of D* without decentralization.

Without decentralization you just end-up with another flavor of g+ FB etc.. Rather than a REVOLUTION! 🙂

@ groo

thx, it’s really lonely out here.

To BC Nurse Prof:

Thanks for the statement of Lee Brian.

You said you want to be able to give your farm to someone who knows how to use it. I suggest you offer it first to Lee.

Badtux PERMALINK
February 24, 2012
There is a *reason* why I blog as a penguin. Just sayin’.
– Badtux the Cautious Penguin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would suggest that your nom-de-plume won’t protect you from identification.
If one is really that concerned then any posting on public forums is a betrayal of identity; as is e-mail, facebook, twitter and all the other methods of the wasting of electrons.
I’m not even in the states, yet every phone call and sent e-mail from outside of the states, is monitored by the NSA and who knows how many other agencies.
At just shy of 67; I just don’t give a shit any more, but I still post here and at SP’s place.
I post less and less as the futility becomes apparent; but there are some simpatico individuals here for company.
As BC Nurse says; it’s lonely out there.
I understand Formerly T-Bears reluctance to continue, but as long as Ian’s place remains the collection point for the distilled wisdom of the few; it makes for nice company most of the time…
Cheers

“Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask
anything of them.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“It didn’t work. We lost. Every one of the most important fights, we lost.”

From the outside of the health care fight I could tell: we pulled out all the stops, and we lost. It must have been horrible from within.

I am going to have to get an ebook copy of Brust and Bull’s Freedom and Necessity (probably the world’s only Victorian pagan Marxist romance–Engels appears as a secondary character), just so I can quote it. Ah, but it seems I already have; to John Emerson, writing in a similar vein.

“‘James, this is a harsh life, and no one can command another. Sometimes those who pass through the fire of the movement leave nothing of themselves behind but ashes. Some become so exhausted they cannot continue.’”–Brust & Bull, Freedom and Necessity.

Take care of yourself, and–I say–save yourself for another day.

BC Nurse Prof, you’re not alone. There are many more of us than we imagine. I empathize with you because I feel very much the same way. I’ve done very similar things in my life and have run up against the Establishment. My last career position, several years prior, before they escorted me to the door, they revealed a file six inches thick they had on me. They completed a full investigation on me, and had accumulated that much data. Of course, they wouldn’t show me what was in the file, and I still to this day cannot imagine what would warrant six inches of paper, but there it was. This is a company that knowingly supplied Iraq with heavy equipment when the sanctions were in place and yet every person, with the exception of a small handful, were Heartland Conservatives through and through. It received an immaterial fine and a slight slap on the wrist. This was the character of this outfit….and it’s the character of most outfits.

I haven’t gone back, and I refuse to go back, at great personal economic sacrifice. I received a threat from the State of Alabama about rescinding my CPA status if I don’t pay the dues and complete continuing education requirements. I threw it in the trash can. They’re a bunch of crooks in charge of watching the crooks. I know. I’ve been right in the middle of it, and at its basic core, it’s a sham. I cannot go on living a lie for a living.

I am now repulsed whenever I am in the the presence of corporate personalities. You know of what I speak. They have a sense of false arrogance about them. There’s an intangible dimension to their disposition, but it’s the same, and highly recognizable, across the board. One aspect is the stare down, especially the higher up the corporate food chain the monster is. It’s standard issue to stare down anyone you believe is in opposition to you, and these amoral people believe everyone is in opposition to them. So, I avoid having to be in their presence, not because I fear them, but because they draw my energy from more positive endeavors, and I don’t want to give them a shred of it. I have guided my children to laugh at them in irreverence whilst embracing the retarded, meaning the exact opposite of what the system wants them to do. These corporate types are seen as retarded by my children, and the retarded are seen as peers in need of assistance on occasion. My goal is to keep my children, to the extent it is possible, from the clutches of the Corporate Beast.

BC Nurse:
I’m 35 and have spent the last 17 years working in the medical profession (first as a nursing assistant and then as an office admin for a home-care agency) and when you wrote that, “Nursing students are, in general, idealistic little pampered princesses who want to “help people” I knew precisely what you were speaking of. It took only a few short years for me to truly understand the massive and corrupt American Healthcare industry that we have and I can assure you that many of your students that brushed off your lectures without a second thought will find themselves reflecting back on the one person in their academic career that didn’t hold the ugly truth of it all from them. I wish there were more people like you living in my backwards Midwestern city (Where the most recent rally cry from our General Assembly has been a tirade against those homosexual recruiting, baby killing, Girl Scouts) that I get together routinely for coffee and unfiltered discussions about politics and civics.

Ian: Your timing is ironic for me on a personal level as I was JUST talking about the perils of being excessively optimistic yesterday. It is FAR easier to be justifiably pessimistic/realistic than to bear an undue burden of unrealistic/excessive optimism. Intentionally or not, you’re one of the most Zen-like bloggers in regards to contemporary politics and issues. I always enjoy your posts and how you stick to the rational and logical and don’t buy into the polar extremes that are pitched to the public 24/7 by MSM profiteers.

Still, a series of events eventually forced that discontentment to the surface. Working for corporate polluters, white-collar criminals, militaristic multinationals, and the like can have its deleterious effects on one’s psyche, no matter what it pays at the end of the month. I realized in fairly rapid fashion (about ten minutes, actually, even though it took me ten months to extricate myself from the firm) that I could not separate my ethics from my earnings or my morals from my meals. I wanted to work with people, not for (or even against) them, and likewise had a strong desire to try and make the world a better place rather than the worsening one experienced by the vast majority of people.

From Debt of Gratitude: Less Earning, More Learning

Another great post. The comment thread has a lot to recommend it too. I’m also reminded of this Alternet post from the summer of 2011:

“Don’t look on the bright side: pessimism, not magical thinking, is what will save us”

by Marty Kaplan.

Although I’m inclined to think Badtux is likely right. (Also, I guess Kaplan’s “will” in the title is optimistic too.)

“Health care fight?” What health care fight? There was never a health care fight. There was a very lengthy and acrimonious health insurance fight, which the public interest lost, but there was never a health care fight.

BC Prof

The nursing culture especially can be brutal to dissenters. I know as I’ve been there. I was severely penalized for my political activities many years ago in London, England. It threw me off my professional path. However, after laying buried in deep trauma for a while, I was able to break free, regain my strength, and move on.

Resistance can be a lonely experience but it has to be done. So don’t give up. I appreciate your courage.

Being not nearly as eloquent or wise as many of the folks around here, I just want to add my thanks first to Ian for this post. I always appreciate every time you put something down here and for the discussion it brings here. Which leads me to my thanks also for all the folks who’ve gathered here and contribute so much as well. I find a lot of succor in all your words.

Keep the torch burning, folks.

Colin Ward’s kind of anarchism or left libertarianism is a “description of a mode of human organization, rooted in the experience of everyday life, which operates side by side with, and in spite of, the dominant authoritarian trends in our society.”

I didn’t know much about left libertarian thought before Occupy. Once I read David Graeber I remembered that a friend of mine gave me a book by Colin Ward called “A Very Short Introduction to Anarchism”. Then I found a book called “Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward by David Goodway. I had forgotten all about Oscar Wilde being a libertarian. Being a theater and film major, it was a delight to rediscover the rebels in my field like Wilde, Shaw, Ibsen in the era when anarchism was more of a common word.

Colin Ward also said that” anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism.”

I was inspired by everybody here to write a piece called “Obedience is for Dogs”. Like to know what you think. http://themontanamaven.com/

You can’t win them all but you can sure lose them all which is what America is going to do with our country and our constitution if we don’t stop being so stupid, keep writing IAN as you’re only telling the truth.

Formerly T-Bear PERMALINK
February 27, 2012

Where do you find this stuff? Asymptote? My brain is reeling absorbing this completely new concept (to me). Well done you!
Note worthy quotes, in order;
“…they realize that the only way to further increase their distributional power is to apply an even greater dose of violence. “
~~~~~~~~~~~
“In order to have reached the peak level of power it currently enjoys, the ruling class has had to inflict growing threats, sabotage and pain on the underlying population.”
~~~~~~~~~
One key manifestation of this infliction is illustrated in our last chart, Figure 17.”
Figure 17 is a stunner!
~~~~~~~~~~~
With the underlying magma visibly shifting, the shadow of the asymptote cannot be clearer.
=======================
This was initially intimidating; but proved very readable and so-to-the-point; it would be hard to miss-understand. This will never be seen in the MSM or most other fodder for public consumption unfortunately.
I am so happy you have stuck it out here; your contributions are invaluable, at least for this one.
Thanks

Controlling the aftermath of any potential, or imminent collapse. Don’t you think a system as diabolical as this one doesn’t have that covered? You don’t think it’s already operational? If it is operational, how would it look? What would be its message? I posted the following in a previous thread, but I will post it again since there is a different audience and some more people who may appreciate its gravity. Take a good, hard look behind the curtain of The Oil Drum and ASPO. Look familiar? Of course it does.

The Net – The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet

In another forum, I posited that one way in the current economic crisis differed from the one faced by FDR is that today’s PTB are aware of the lack of potential growth today as contrasted with the days when cheap energy was ubiquitous and unquestioned, thus rendering Keynesian remedies more palatable at that time since future recovery of wealth (through growth) was a near certainty.

(Sorry about the long sentence paragraph – it just wouldn’t shut up!)

This fascinating restatement of economic conditions buttresses that view, using different parameters (from the longer article at T-Bear’s link):

It is at this latter point, when power approaches its asymptotes, that capitalists are likely to be struck by systemic fear – the fear that the power structure itself is about to cave in. And it is at this critical point, when capitalists fear for the very survival of their system, that their forward-looking capitalization is most likely to collapse.

“Forward-looking capitalization” roughly analogues “Keynesian stimulus.”

This addresses the problem that I encounter everywhere that we are mostly arguing about symptoms, rather than the core disease – whether it be immigration, drug war, consumer debt, ratio of FIRE-sector to productive industry, and even the consumer hologram’s bread-and-circuses themselves.

I came back here this morning to see if there were any further comments and got all of this feedback on what I had said. Thanks to all, I didn’t expect this, I just threw it out there because I am getting so sad and dejected. My poor husband, much younger than I, is on the tenure clock and working so hard to please everyone, as he must, to get in the door. I rose up in the ranks to full professor and thought I could now write what I wanted to write. No dice. I saw where “The University” as an institution in the U.S. was heading and I hated it. I was in administration by that time and I missed the classroom. As a Canadian, I could leave, but had to wait for hubby to get his Ph.D. and be able to come, too. So we left. I had job interviews in Canada and in New Zealand. I blew the interview in NZ and I know exactly the moment I did so because I saw the looks on their faces. So here we are and I love the place we live. Hubby became a Canadian, too, and we bought land. When the U.S. model of a “university” came here to our nice little college, I despaired. Now we have a new prez, a few new deans, and the pressure’s on. Money, money, bring in more money. No money, no promotions. I told my dean “I don’t do grants. That’s the people’s money. It’s not right. I’ve been a waitress (and a lot less) and I’ve stolen food to live. I won’t ever write a grant.” Well, I guess that was my death knell. I’m a damn good teacher and the few students who learn about the real world when in my classroom keep in touch when they graduate. Maybe they’ll make a difference, I don’t know. I’ve written about nurses as social agents of the status quo, but editors don’t like that kind of stuff. Except one. She overruled the reviewers and published it. I still get calls and emails from doctoral students saying, “We had to read your article in my class. I hated it. Until now. I finally see what you mean. Will you be on my committee?” Some made it to their degrees, some didn’t. I’d really rather talk compost and tomatoes, but I can do poststructural eco-feminist theoretical discourse analysis for a salary, at least to pay the taxes on the farm. I have one doctoral student left, studying at Rush University in Chicago, but living and teaching nursing in Mississippi. I think she’ll make it, she’s so close, and so smart, but the Michel Foucault part is pretty hard on her. I really really want to see her teaching this stuff to nursing students in Mississippi. But I’ll still never write a grant.

MontanaMaven,

Do’nt know if I understand this correctly, but is reminds me of this (a German professor ca in the 1930’s, talking to his students):
“Meine Herren, studieren sie vorwärts, studieren Sie rückwärts, aber studieren die forsch”

Translated:
“Gentlemen, study forward, study backward, does nit make a difference, but study forcefully.”
(Students were ‘gentlemen’ then, because they mostly came from the upper classes.)
Which is strange statement, because intensity (i.e. collective energy) trumps direction.

Actually it should be the other way round:
1st: Determine the direction.
2nd: Go this way.

If one reverses the priorities, one gets a twisted system, which is prone fall prey to hidden forces, who direct the energy in the direction of their advantage.

German ‘Naziism’ was very much about that: Disconnect the energy from the goals.
Quite like the rider and his horse.
Training/subverting the ‘horse’ to the will of the ‘rider’ seems to be quite an apt metaphor for what is going on in the large scale.

BC nurse, thanks for your comments. It must be very lonely in Academia indeed. I left the nursing profession– I agree with your assessment of nursing students. There is much talk about wanting “to help” people, but it is a very paternalistic sort of help.
At my university the profs receive grants to combat smoking and obesity among the poors– especially among those in the southern part of our state. It is the same old crap. Ignore the fact that there are too many dirty power plants, focus on demonizing habits of the poor.
And… pretend to take a “holistic” view of health but don’t include things that I consider part of health such as housing, schools, parks, etc.
My alma mater has taken its share of dirty money from the fracking industry I might add.
Nursing is an awful job if you are any sort of dissident and if you question our consumer society and the dogma of unlimited growth– after all what is the promise of medicine but unlimited growth. We sell the idea that everyone may be “cured” with the just the right application of technology.

BC,
My hospital went through the stupid Magnet certification process. Magnet certification requires that hospitals adopt something called “shared governance”. As far as I could tell this “shared governance” amounted to nothing– it probably would fit your definition of empowerment as a strategy of oppression.
Management and administrators could always come up with new tasks and paperwork for nurses to give the appearance that they were doing something important. One thing it seems like nurses can’t– must– never get is a reduced patient load.

Agnes:
Yes, the stupid “magnet hospital” trick! Another good idea that was deliberately morphed into something else that supports oppressive situations for patients and nurses alike with management on top and us bent over. If you really want to know, the reason nurses can’t get a reduced workload, the reason students are taught to give backrubs before bedtime but graduate to find there’s no time for that, the reason I finished so many shifts with my legs crossed because I hadn’t been to the bathroom in 8 hours, the reason we don’t strike because “it’s hurtful to patients”, etc. etc. The reason for all of these things and more is that……ssshhhh, don’t tell anyone……WE’RE NOT A PROFESSION. We tell ourselves we are. We tell our students we are. We tell the public we are. But we’re not. There are still nurses in Canada who punch time clocks. Is that a mark of a profession? Nurses do the hours and shifts they are told to do. Is that a profession? I call this a “pink collar occupation.” So. What would happen if we quit our jobs, got together and offered our services on our own terms? When I was going through my doctoral program, I worked weekends for a nursing services company in Seattle. They had contracts with the main hospitals all over the Puget Sound area. The hospitals only hired as many nurses as each ward needed. When the flu went through and knocked enough nurses out, they called this agency for “temps.” I got paid double what the regular nurses got, took care of the easiest patients, and went home. I could decide not to go if I wanted to. I could do two shifts, or one or three or whatever. It was my decision. I was a professional. Could we do that now? Can we hang out our own shingles and practice nursing? Sure, but no one does. Why? Because they’re chicken-hearted, that’s why. They’ve been told to be good little girls and do what they’re told. How do men in nursing handle this? They go into administration and make big bucks and keep bankers’ hours. Or they teach. We females in nursing have got to grow a pair (of ovaries, that is) and change our entire view of work. The coming collapse may be the time to do this.

If anything elicits justified pessimism, this from Al Jazeera does:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012227143813304790.html

Another Library at Alexandria is no more, and the world is just that much more the poorer for the loss.

Formerly T-Bear,

this library story You cite should not come unexpected.

The basic story seems to be:
What cannot be monetarized, or even what hinders monetarization, has no worth.
Empowerment of the many through knowledge also does not belong to the agenda of the few.

The astonishing thing is, that the ‚few’ are as stupid as they are wicked, and this combination trumps intelligence, insight and compassion.

The old dichotomy between the rock and the water nowadays reads as IP versus open source, amongst many similar dichotomies, which taken together constitute the syndrome of a more general disease.

Those, who, make us so pessimistic, has to be remembered:
STUPID (FILTHY RICH) WHITE MEN.

Know your enemy!

One person, who deconstructs the problem quite clearly, is Naomi Klein.
EG in her essay “Der neue Antihumanismus”, where she quite precisely pinpointed the problem:
Stupid white men, with a well filled purse, who trade their whealth and status versus phony pseudo-reality and phantasy-future.

Their ‘thinking’-pattern is that of dominance, hierarchy and control.
‘Reality’ or the rest of the lot are just sideshows in their illusionary worldview.
Over those they dominate in word and deed.

Thank You guys.
Glad to be your servant.

Here is the link to the (German) essay of NK:
http://www.blaetter.de/archiv/jahrgaenge/2012/februar/der-neue-antihumanismus

Sorry. I id not find an English equivalent, but this is NK at her best.
Bing/google- translate may help.

To be pessimistic wrt that to me means,
to surrender to a stupidity of monstrous proportions, which is right before my eyes.

Which I do’nt!

My nom-de-plume; Celsius 233, is of course, the metric for Fahrenheit 451; probably one of my all time favorite movies/novels.
It, as much as Orwell’s 1984, aptly describes our present situation. It may be closer actually, to our present conundrum; with the attacks on all forms of freedom of expression in today’s world.
That the U.S. is leading the way forward in this attack/suppression is the height of irony; but surely not un-expected given the legislation and rhetoric flowing from the right and not being fought from the left. That dichotomy is no longer relevant and is illustrative of the movement toward fascism by both factions. In fact, there is no longer a left and right; there is just us and them.
This polarization is the death-nell of the last remnants of our republic. Democracy is a sham and false flag rhetoric of the fascisti who would be our masters and en-slavers.

Formerly T-Bear,

Your links basically reflect Naomi’s position of the German essay. But this (German) one is much more to the point, and harsher. (Sorry. I only overflew them.)

Her argument -which she borroved from Kahan- is, that people (my loose transcription)
‘prefer denying reality to questioning ones own worldview’
…
‘the billionaires of this world promote- via think-tanks- an a genda which secures and promotes their wealth’
…
‘climate-deniers are by and large exactly those people, who profit from our dysfunctional system’
…
‘the group of selfconfident conservative white men believe times more than the rest, that climate-change will never happen’
…
‘The solution is more free trade’
…
‘this converges with theories of racial superiority’
…
‘They lack any compassion for the sufferers of climate-change’.
…
‘ those men have the dominant positions of power’ (McCright and Riley Dunlap )
…
‘everybody is the creator of his own fate’.

And on it goes.
———-
Now me again.
This is a selfstabilizing semantic net, where the growth paradigm, infinite resources,
the right of the capable and strenuous and some other ingredients all nicely fit together in a social-darwinist system.

Somehow this is the essential clash of ‘civilizations’, and, as Ian points out :
WE ARE ABOUT TO LOOSE THIS BATTLE.

I stop here, because most of the commenters here know this anyway.

It is just about bringing it into the right order, so that the logic of all that becomes evident.

Anyway.

all the best

@ Formerly T-Bear
March 3, 2012
@ 233ºC
Grateful for the Project Gutenberg link. The Fahrenheit 451 connection was immediately manifest from the Al Jazeera article. The world’s horizons have become diminished by corporate commercial fear. Boycott the corporation; withdraw consent to wanton power. What would be the titles of your books and where obtained?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks so much for asking; but with no PM feature here, I’m hesitant to say.
I think you can understand why; given the recent past.
Cheers.

Formerly T-Bear,

appreciate Your impressive prose, as ever.

Actually I think, I know what is going on.
You do.
Naomi Klein does.
Others too.

It is a matter of expressing it clearly.

Just as an example.
Over at the agonist Steve Hynd made this ridiculous post:
http://agonist.org/steve_hynd/20120303/saturday_carblogging#comment

I was so infuriated, that I wanted to comment, but the agonistas closed comments some time ago.

Some agonists thankfully smelt the rot.

It may be far fetched, but underneath all that is a subtle question about ‘beauty’, which is a social construct, and not a platonic idea, which the good Steve Hynd does not seem to understand in the farthest.

Sorry for the digression.