The world is a multicolored thing
Dharmadeva
The world is a multicolored thing
http://getrealgetradical.blogspot.com/2010/02/save-environment.html
By Trond Øverland - Journalist (1981), editor (1993), psychosynthesis therapist (2005). Throughout I've been a proponent of Prout, working with and in the Proutist Universal global office in Copenhagen.
Instances
of persons accumulating rather than only consuming are well known. Such as
displaying rows upon rows of weird and wonderful cars, or closets laced with
thousands of pairs of shoes. Mad accumulation of material objects in a world
where others go without the basic necessities presupposes an accumulation of
wealth that should really have been limited by law. Prout's first fundamental
principle establishes that no one should be allowed to accumulate physical
wealth without clear permission or approval by society.
Green-minded politicians suggest increased taxation of consumption of fossile
fuel as an appropriate step towards regulating consumerism and even
transforming capitalism into something good. I personally think this is just
another highway to hell. Something as mad as the present consumerism, which is
a symptom of profit-motivated capitalism's genuine way of having its way with
us at any cost, is not something that can simply be regulated. It is an evil
that needs to be removed at root and not at leaf or flower. Moreover, I happen
to sympathize rather deeply with the world's poor who must harbor dreams of
consumption that remain not understood by value-oriented Western intellectuals
crusading to save the world from the evils of consumerism.
Rationing consumption, such as disallowing families from running more than one
car, are as expected in times of war and other extremes. For all I know it may
now be time for such rationing in the US and other places. But this would not
solve any real problems. Just as an attempt to rationing people's answering to
the call of nature in India would most probably have very little
effect on the massive hygienic and waste problems there. Any real change
needs to be systemic. India is extremely overpopulated in very poorly developed
places, while the US suffers from extreme consumerism financed by borrowing.
Both these symptoms of system failure hurt the environment badly.
Steps taken against over-consumption accompanied by education seem to generate
awareness in some measure. The question is whether popular education has been
sufficiently radical for real change to occur. The exploitative system has
undoubtedly been allowed to develop since Rio 1992, Kyoto 1994, etc. all the
way to Copenhagen six weeks ago. The Danish, like most Europeans, have since
some time been given the job of sorting their recyclable garbage at home, which
is a big change from a decade or two ago in terms of ecological participation.
Still capitalism rules ok.
It is as if the whole world will be privatized in the near future. In our brave
new environment-conscious world we find ourselves laboring under the same old
exploitative laws plus many new ones in strange ways. Increasing imbalances and
disparities are being shifted to new and more intractable positions. Good
people have been given bad conscience and dutifully sort their rubbish. Those
who are really bad have gone to much worse. Thus a rhetorical question: Would
it be our duty to remedy symptoms or cure the disease properly and completely?
It was neither unsustainability nor exploitative mechanisms that lead the world
last year to question capitalism. A financial crisis had made the masses
uncomfortable about their personal future and the systemic hit the collective
conscious full on. While the sudden surge crisis consciousness may have receded
briefly to lull in the collective subconscious (thanks to a global policy
of quantitative easing, i.e. printing of money bills) those who continue to
discuss sustainability in any depth continue to arrive at anti-capitalist
conclusions. The solution to global warming and every other major problem today
is system change. The short version: Capitalism has had its day and it is time
to go home now.
My suggestions at the moment:
1) Consumption correction may be reformist and educative but it will not serve
the greater purpose, system change. A genuine offer with regards to consumption
would be rational distribution and maximum utilization of human and
environmental potentialities, not burdening citizens further by banning
consumption and increasing their environmental taxes.
2) Let local collective bodies determine modes of production and consumption as
far as possible, except in cases where regional and world political bodies
should come into play. We do need a world government to take care of rouge
states such as the US who never come even close to the table as far as real
climate work is concerned. Such measures would provide a balancing to current
sustainability thinking heavy on consumption correction, and not be in conflict
with it.
3) Consumption-motivated production is rational and sustainable and can only be
a reality if supported by enlightened monitoring. We don't need professional
politicians but leaders who represent the people working hand in hand with
informed expertise. If the party politics system continue much longer it will
be the last of us.
Get real, get rid of party politics. And remove that green while you're at it.
The world is a multicolored thing.
Posted by Trond Øverland at 9:16 AM