a world with (economically viable) nuclear fusion energy widely available would be hundreds of times better than the current fossil-fueled hellscape that is modern civilization.
I'm sympathetic to your views, but there's a paradoxical danger in your framing of "civilization vs ecology", which plays into the hands of capitalist apologists and reactionaries, who can ruefully agree with you in one breath, but also dismiss all of it as merely describing some universal and eternal, ahistorical "human condition".
So while you are rightfully sceptical of, say, "socialism", correctly noting that we cannot point to any countries that are ecosocialist paradises, there's still something to be said for an historically grounded understanding of our predicament, which will inevitably point in the direction of collective social action, including control of the means of production by and for the majority of inhabitants of our planet (inhabitants who can, must, and will cultivate a very different kind of ethics towards the living world than currently prevails, if only as an urgent imperative of simple survival).
Thanks for taking the time to put together such an informative and thoughtful provoking post. I can't even start to list all the things I found useful or inspiring in this.
"The science of conquest is not the only type of science. There is another; a science that is based on observation, thesis, and evidence, that is based on a peer-review that does not take place in university buildings, but rather in forests, in grasslands, along rivers, in the oceans."
That kind of science is the original science .... observation and sharing of what is observed across generations...
a world with (economically viable) nuclear fusion energy widely available would be hundreds of times better than the current fossil-fueled hellscape that is modern civilization.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2024.2388051#
I'm sympathetic to your views, but there's a paradoxical danger in your framing of "civilization vs ecology", which plays into the hands of capitalist apologists and reactionaries, who can ruefully agree with you in one breath, but also dismiss all of it as merely describing some universal and eternal, ahistorical "human condition".
So while you are rightfully sceptical of, say, "socialism", correctly noting that we cannot point to any countries that are ecosocialist paradises, there's still something to be said for an historically grounded understanding of our predicament, which will inevitably point in the direction of collective social action, including control of the means of production by and for the majority of inhabitants of our planet (inhabitants who can, must, and will cultivate a very different kind of ethics towards the living world than currently prevails, if only as an urgent imperative of simple survival).
Thanks for taking the time to put together such an informative and thoughtful provoking post. I can't even start to list all the things I found useful or inspiring in this.
"The science of conquest is not the only type of science. There is another; a science that is based on observation, thesis, and evidence, that is based on a peer-review that does not take place in university buildings, but rather in forests, in grasslands, along rivers, in the oceans."
That kind of science is the original science .... observation and sharing of what is observed across generations...
The world is horrifying 💔🇵🇸