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The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-168
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
> “The new policy embodied in Oct. 7 is: Not only are we not going to allow China to progress any further technologically, we are going to actively reverse their current state of the art,” Allen says. C.J. Muse, a senior semiconductor analyst at Evercore ISI, put it this way: “If you’d told me about these rules five years ago, I would’ve told you that’s an act of war — we’d have to be at war.” <
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Other issues:
Prigozin Affair:
Xinjiang:
Capitalism:
European Disunity:
Use as open (not Ukraine related) thread …
The last OT was good. I’ll chime in with a couple of remarks regarding “materialism” here.
I can’t lay out in one post all the issues concerning materialism and its various roles in mostly western societies, where it rose to prominence with the renaissance, in conjunction with Descartes’ rationalism and Newtonian physics, and became something of a surrogate for the meaning of life (no less) after the roman catholic church lost its totalitarian monopoly on this very question in the reformation. But the topic is of an importance literally beyond imagination, and I suggest to float it in the bar conversations for a while.
The term materialism gains its current meaning along the fault lines that opened after the pope lost his monopoly on being right, enshrined and enforced qua dogma. People started questioning things, about god and the nature of reality and the meaning of life in a world devoid of the christian belief in an afterlife in paradise. The process ist still ongoing, and new questions have emerged, like those around the quantum findings. The quite artifical sense structure (ideology) of former catholic rule, where books were mostly disallowed and otherwise written in latin for a good 1,000 years, during which Europe forgot about Aristotle for a while, unraveled, and the void it left was filled with many inventions in arts and science etc, but the void did not go away completely. At the time of Nietzsche’s deed on the creator (it probably had to be done), the lack of spiritual roots had become krass, and ideas were born into political philosophy which appear today as hapless attempts to answer the role of man and the meaning of his life. The will to power is a famous example, a less obvious but very poisonous is calvinism. Nietzsche himself tried to give sense to our deeds by coming up with the idea of ewige Wiederkehr which is actually nothing but a Newtonian closed-orbit trajectory for all of creation, in which we are bound to repeat our mistakes again and again through all eternity, hence it follows that we should do our best to avoid making them. Nietzsche tried to prove the idea mathematically for while, but gave up (it is untrue anyway, as we know from Poincaré’s theorem, the one behind the butterfly effect).
Marx is another prominent figure of those times. His insistence on objective knowledge, attained through proper scientific method (i.e., empirically), is, seen in another light, him trying to come to terms regarding the nature of man, of which nothing was known with a fair degree of consensual certainty. Dostoyevsky’s The Demons comes to mind, a tale about some radically minded figures attempting to do the same. The european monarchies underwent deep transformations, where liberalité was the order of the day, and egalité became the framework to hold peoples, societies and nations together, while those political entities became ever more fractured internally at the same time, culminating in the concept of the “individual”, which I find a very telling concept. It is now every man for himself, like the grains of sand that is left over after a pax (literally the hammer blow!) by the power elite using a strategy of divide et impera has fractured society completely.
The void left when the meaning of life suddenly became uncertain after the collapse of totalitarian catholic ideology and rule has still not been filled. Worse, over time the problem began to fade into the background noise, where enormous catastrophes were happening all over Terra. It happened at a time where our planet was coming to be seen as one, mainly from a european perspective again. Then they started plundering it with breathtaking arrogance, destroying ancient alien civilizations in ways I can’t possibly fathom. I imagine a man like Francisco Pizarro was not even realizing what he did; this despite the fact that he planned the conquest for years in advance (after discovering the sea route first he went back to Spain and was granted possession of the new territory from the spanish king before returning to conquer). The excesses of the 20th century I shall just name here.
The Soviet-German war is the example I’ll pick to make a first point here. It was Herrenrasse against Untermenschen for one side, and arguably (Suvorov-Schwipper) the Soviets would have picked the fight, too. But there is still a most important difference between the two sides’ ideologies: Soviet communism had an inclusive idea about the nature of man (Menschenbild. It seems to me that what currently is happening on the global stage looks a lot like “the world war” that really blew in 1914ff is coming to a conclusion. Germany, and with it Europe, are destroyed and will not come back. The Anglo-Saxon empire is dealing it out with Russian Federation, and they are losing. I really wonder against whom – I’ve been always been a slavophile, but I honestly can’t tell what Russia has become after going through this episode of history. I suspect we in the west are seriously underestimating them, not just in a MIC-like sense template.
This all goes to say that materialism must be understood as an attempt to answer a problem of understanding the nature of reality, ultimately leading to the great Kantian question “What shall I do?”. The answer it gave is born into a void, and it sucked up many unrelated problems during a time of great confusion and turbulence. Historically, the idea of materialism started as a scientific method, the very method which called for empirical verification of all “knowledge”, known also as the objective one. Everything else was discarded as superstition by many, to include those held in high regards by many well-meaning people. Marx is one among many, but my personal foe of choice is Adorno. This needs a quick remark here.
Of course, liberalité came with many good things. The right of people to decide certain things for themselves is true progress of the highest order. Among these are the right to choose one’s god and devotion, to choose one’s partner and mate, and one’s interest in life in the way of occupation. It is basically fine to choose one’s gender as well, if it really must be done, which is a very real problem in rare medical (and other freak) cases. But his does not mean that it is fine to make a strawman of my indignation and throw it at the political enemy, be it the russian foundation or the own population as subjected to propaganda in the west. These kinds of disputes are easily intermingled, and the elites are using the confusion as a weapon against us. psychohistorian had it right when he remarked that left/right is not the real problem, but up/down is.
The kind of selfishness at display here is immense, though nothing new. There is a certain disposition in man to fail at the realization that, with him, others are present. Heidegger, in his book on Kantian metaphysics (1929), gets all angry in disbelief when he wonders how philosophy had not managed to prove the existence of the “outside world”, commonly called reality. I find this bizarre, as I wish he’d realized another question had not only not been conclusively resolved, but rarely if ever got asked in European philosophy: Are there others present?
It is ridiculous to see how an absurd and sick concept like solipsism is carried all over the place in western culture – and it is tragic to have Heidegger going down this obscene dead-end when he was in company of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein, who managed to reach a point of understanding that overcomes the materialism/realism conundrum and the “mind body problem” and the nominalism dispute as well, basically by discovering that the metaphysics of substance rests on a bad prerequisite, the substance, which acts as the first given in all frame of mind which subscribes to it, and thus necessarily must end up in the impossibility to reconcile awareness (sentience) with the “things” out there. The mind-body problem is stated in a way that no logical answer is possible.
After the old god was done away with in Europe and people despaired of existential emptiness and dread, materialism was at hand to at least provide some sort of reliable knowledge (“facts”). But it is still not understood that materialism depends on a specific way to attain knowledge (the empirical method), and that this method is directed at an unquestioned prerequisite, the substance. Consequently, many believe that metaphysics is just obsolete fairytales for weirdos, left behind for good by “science”. In truth, this is nothing but Zeitgeist, and it is about to change. Because it must. With it will come a new Menschenbild, where I and Thou are beings among others (including Gaia), building communities for people, who surely like to be curious about others and their ways and of course trade stuff with them. They’ll have a very basic right to live by their own ideas and traditions, as do all living things arguably. This kind of empathic awareness for the beings that inhabit Terra is, by its very nature, not an ideology that needs to be fought for, it is not an abstract theory, and in fact it doesn’t really need any convincing for those who get to the point of insight (which is very difficult to do, not only for westerners, as the world of things and stuff is what many people inhabit, think buddhism for one example). It is, in the end, a plain observation. You can only fail at it by not recognizing where you ended up somehow: on this strange planet, at the time of a particularly bad shit show. As to why this happens to us, well, this is a question for another night . . .
Posted by: persiflo | Jul 16 2023 22:18 utc | 130
@ karlof1 | Jul 16 2023 23:35 utc | 140 with the note of barflea itch
Oh, but that these folks would spend as much energy working on changing global finance to be a public utility for all
But NO! That is hard work for well intentioned adults and instead lets create lots of textual white noise to drown out the reality of our form of social organization which we can do something about.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 16 2023 23:46 utc | 143
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Ellen Brown
I think that banking as a Public Utility is a great idea. It would block out the financial ruling class in a short time and allow poor and older people on fixed incomes the ability to put a roof on their house or replacing a broken air conditioning system without spending the last of their savings and going broke.
In The Public Bank Solution (2013) she traces the evolution of two banking models that have competed historically, public and private; and explores contemporary public banking systems globally. She has presented these ideas at scores of conferences in the US and abroad, including in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Croatia, Malaysia, Mexico and Venezuela.
Ellens latest on Common Dreams.
How the US Could Solve the Federal Debt Trap
Options include reducing the Pentagon budget, dealing with interest, taxing financial transactions, and establishing a national infrastructure bank.
ELLEN BROWN
Jul 15, 2023
Common Dreams
0“Rather than collecting taxes from the wealthy,” wrote The New York Times Editorial Board in a July 7 opinion piece, “the government is paying the wealthy to borrow their money.”
Titled “America Is Living on Borrowed Money,” the editorial observes that over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), annual federal budget deficits will average around $2 trillion per year. By 2029, just the interest on the debt is projected to exceed the national defense budget, which currently eats up over half of the federal discretionary budget. In 2029, net interest on the debt is projected to total $1.07 trillion, while defense spending is projected at $1.04 trillion. By 2033, says the CBO, interest payments will reach a sum equal to 3.6% of the nation’s economic output.
The debt ceiling compromise did little to alleviate that situation. Before the deal, the CBO projected the federal debt would reach roughly $46.7 trillion in 2033. After the deal, it projected the total at $45.2 trillion, only slightly less—and still equal to 115% of the nation’s annual economic output, the highest level on record.
Acknowledging that the legislation achieved little, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after the vote that he intended to form a bipartisan commission “so we can find the waste and we can make the real decisions to really take care of this debt.” The NYT Editorial Board concluded:
Any substantive deal will eventually require a combination of increased revenue and reduced spending… Both parties will have to compromise: Republicans must accept the necessity of collecting what the government is owed and of imposing taxes on the wealthy. Democrats must recognize that changes to Social Security and Medicare, the major drivers of expected federal spending growth, should be on the table. Anything less will prove fiscally unsustainable.
The Elephant in the Room
Omitted was any mention of trimming the defense budget, which currently accounts for more than half of the federal government’s discretionary spending and nearly two-thirds of its contract spending. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calf.), who cast the sole dissenting vote on the recent $886 billion defense budget in the House Armed Services Committee, has detailed some of the Pentagon’s excesses. For decades, he writes, legacy military contractors have charged the federal government exorbitant sums for everything from fighter jets to basic hardware. Lockheed Martin, for example, has used its monopoly on F-35 fighter jets to profit from maintenance that only they can provide, with the work needed to support and upgrade existing jets projected to cost taxpayers over $1.3 trillion. TransDigm, another contractor responsible for supplying spare parts for the military, was found to be charging the Pentagon more than four times the market price for their products.
Rep. Khanna concludes, “Keeping America strong starts at home. It means ensuring access to quality, affordable healthcare and education, strengthening our economy with good-paying jobs, and giving Americans the tools they need to pursue the American Dream… Bloated military spending is not the answer… We can’t continue to sign a blank check to price-gouging defense contractors while Americans struggle here at home.”
In an address to the UN Security Council on Ukraine aid on June 29, 2023, Max Blumenthal added fuel to those allegations. He said:
Just June 28, as emergency crews work to clean up yet another toxic train derailment in the United States, this time on the Montana River, further exposing our nation’s chronically underfunded infrastructure and its threats to our health, the Pentagon announced plans to send an additional $500 million worth of military aid to Ukraine…
This policy,… which sees Washington prioritize unrestrained funding for a proxy war with a nuclear power in a foreign land… while our domestic infrastructure falls apart before our eyes, exposes a disturbing dynamic at the heart of the Ukraine conflict—an international Ponzi scheme that enables Western elites to seize hard-earned wealth from the hands of average U.S citizens and funnel it into the coffers of a foreign government that even Transparency International ranks as consistently one of the most corrupt in Europe.
The U.S. government has yet to conduct an official audit of its funding for Ukraine. The American public has no idea where their tax dollars are going. And that’s why this week we at the Grayzone published an independent audit of U.S. tax dollar allocations to Ukraine throughout the fiscal years 2022 and ’23.
Among other dubious payments they found were $4.5 million from the U.S. Social Security Administration to the Kiev government, and $4.5 billion from USAID to pay off Ukraine’s sovereign debt, “much of which is owned by the global investment firm BlackRock. That amounts to $30 taken from every U.S citizen at a time when four in 10 Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency.”
The Black Hole of the Pentagon Budget
The Pentagon failed its fifth budget audit in 2022 and was unable to account for more than half of its assets, or more than $3 trillion. According to a CBS News report, defense contractors overcharged the Defense Department by nearly 40-50%; and according to the Office of the Inspector General for the Defense Department, overcharging sometimes reached more than 4,000%. The $886 billion budget request for FY2024 is the highest ever sought.
Following repeated concerns about fraud, waste, and abuse in the Pentagon, in June 2023 a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to ensure the Defense Department passes a clean audit next year. The Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023 would require the Defense Department to pass a full, independent audit in fiscal 2024. Any agency within the Pentagon failing to pass a clean audit would be forced to return 1% of its budget for deficit reduction.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) observed that the Pentagon “and the military industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades… [W]e have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only agency in the federal government that has never passed an independent audit.”
“From buying $14,000 toilet seats to losing track of warehouses full of spare parts, the Department of Defense has been plagued by wasteful spending for decades.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the Pentagon “should have to meet the same annual auditing standards as every other agency… From buying $14,000 toilet seats to losing track of warehouses full of spare parts, the Department of Defense has been plagued by wasteful spending for decades… Every dollar the Pentagon squanders is a dollar not used to support service members, bolster national security, or strengthen military readiness.”
But defense audits have been promised before and have not been completed. In 2017, Michigan State University Prof. Mark Skidmore, working with graduate students and with Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015. As reported in MSUToday, Skidmore got involved when he heard Fitts refer to a report indicating the Army had $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments (or spending) in fiscal 2015. Since the Army’s budget was then only $122 billion, that meant unsupported adjustments were 54 times the spending authorized by Congress. Thinking Fitts must have made a mistake, Skidmore investigated and found that unsupported adjustments were indeed $6.5 trillion.
Four days after Skidmore discussed his team’s findings on a USAWatchdog podcast, the Department of Defense announced it would conduct its first-ever department-wide independent financial audit. But it evidently failed in that endeavor. As Bernie Sanders observes, the Pentagon has never passed an independent audit. It failed its fifth audit in 2022. Whether it will pass this sixth one, or whether the audit will lead to budget cuts, remains to be seen. The Pentagon budget seems to be untouchable.
Tackling the Other Elephant: The Interest Monster
If the sacrosanct military budget cannot be trimmed, what about that other massive budget item, interest on the federal debt? Promising proposals for clipping both the interest and the debt itself were made in conjunction with earlier debt ceiling crises. In November 2010, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, wrote:
There is no reason that the Fed can’t just buy this debt (as it is largely doing) and hold it indefinitely. If the Fed holds the debt, there is no interest burden for future taxpayers. The Fed refunds its interest earnings to the Treasury every year. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion in interest to the Treasury, nearly 40% of the country’s net interest burden. And the Fed has other tools to ensure that the expansion of the monetary base required to purchase the debt does not lead to inflation.
In 2011, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul proposed dealing with the debt ceiling by simply voiding out the $1.7 trillion in federal securities then held by the Fed. As Stephen Gandel explained Paul’s solution in Time Magazine, the Treasury pays interest on the securities to the Fed, which returns 90% of these payments to the Treasury. Despite this shell game of payments, the $1.7 trillion in US bonds owned by the Fed is still counted toward the debt ceiling. Paul’s plan:
Get the Fed and the Treasury to rip up that debt. It’s fake debt anyway. And the Fed is legally allowed to return the debt to the Treasury to be destroyed.
Congressman Alan Grayson, a Democrat, also endorsed this proposal.
Taxing the Bubble Economy
In a July 8, 2023 article on Naked Capitalism titled “The United States’ Financial Quandary: ZIRP’s Only Exit Path Is a Crash,” economist Michael Hudson points to the speculative bubbles blown by the Fed’s Zero Interest Rate Policy, dating back to the Great Recession of 2008-09. The result is a Ponzi scheme, says Hudson, and there is no way out but to write down the debt or let the economy crash.
According to Fed insider Danielle DiMartino Booth, it is those speculative bubbles that Fed Chair Jerome Powell has attempted to pop with the drastic interest rate hikes of the last year, eliminating the “Fed Put,” the presumption that the Fed will always come to the rescue of the speculative market. That tack actually seems to be working; but the approach has resulted in serious collateral damage to mainstream businesses and the productive economic base. (See my earlier article here.)
The budget gap could be closed by imposing a tax of a mere 0.1% on financial transactions, while eliminating not just income taxes but every other tax we pay today.
Another way to trim the fat from the “financialized” economy is a small financial transactions tax. That solution was also discussed in an earlier article (here), drawing on a 2023 book titled A Tale of Two Economies: A New Financial Operating System for the American Economy by Wall Street veteran Scott Smith. He argues that we are taxing the wrong things—income and physical sales. We actually have two economies—the material economy in which goods and services are bought and sold, and the monetary economy involving the trading of financial assets (stocks, bonds, currencies, etc.)—basically “money making money” without producing new goods or services.
Drawing on data from the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve, Smith shows that the monetary economy is hundreds of times larger than the physical economy. The budget gap could be closed by imposing a tax of a mere 0.1% on financial transactions, while eliminating not just income taxes but every other tax we pay today. For a financial transactions tax (FTT) of 0.25%, we could fund benefits we cannot afford today that would stimulate growth in the real economy, including not just infrastructure and development but free college, a universal basic income, and free healthcare for all. Smith contends we could even pay off the national debt in ten years or less with a 0.25% FTT.
Funding Infrastructure Through a National Infrastructure Bank
Another way to fund critical infrastructure without tapping the federal budget is through a 1930s-style work-around on the model of Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation. HR 4052, a proposal for a national infrastructure bank on that model, is currently before Congress and has widespread support. The proposed bank is designed to be a true depository bank, which can leverage its funds as all banks are allowed to do: with a 10% capital requirement, it can leverage $1 in capital into $10 in loans.
For capitalization, the bill proposes to follow the lead of Alexander Hamilton’s First U.S. Bank: Shares in the bank will be swapped for existing U.S. bonds. The shares will earn a 2% dividend and are non-voting. Control of the bank and its operations will remain with the public, an independent board of directors, and a panel of carefully selected non-partisan experts, precluding manipulation for political ends.
America achieved its greatest-ever infrastructure campaign in the midst of the Great Depression. We can do that again today, and we can do it with the same machinery: off-budget financing through a government-owned national financial institution.
Granted, these proposals are not likely to be implemented until we are actually facing another Great Depression, or at least a Great Recession; but Michael Hudson and other pundits are predicting that outcome in the not-too-distant future. It is good to have some viable alternatives on the table for consideration when, as in the 1930s, politicians are compelled to seek them out.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
https://www.commondreams. rg/opinion/how-to-solve-federal-debt
Posted by: Ed | Jul 17 2023 0:33 utc | 153
UW professors……. UWDude…………
okay, i am dense… what are the letters UW in reference to here?? universe weather? lol…
Posted by: james | Jul 17 2023 3:12 utc | 175
I never even argued about global warming. Until covid came along. Then I got sick of it all.
You will also find I never argue about Socialism, communism, capitalism, libertarianism, anarch capitalism minarchism or any of the other -isms.
I am not, nor was I ever a professor, in any topic,Nor has “global warming”, ever a huge concern.
Nor am I a Christian, or believer in any religion, at all, but the Biblical passage ” by their fruits shall ye know them”, now rings true.
Global Warming rebranded multiple times, changed its tactics, and definitions, perhaps, but that doesn’t change what I experienced online, watching flame wats on the topics. I read many white papers, which were interesting theories, but their predictions certainly failed.
And you can call it failure “corporate propaganda” all you want, I know what I read in tens of thousands of posts over time, and it was all the same, and I didnt say anything one way or the other for 15 years, knowing I didn’t know if it would come true or not.
But over time, it became obvious. No flying cars, no sea Level rise, no mass desertification and starvation. No end of the world, which was better far the most shrill a voluminous chorus from tbe believers.
Them we get the “if you dont believe in global warming” you are anti-science!
Get the fuck outta my face, with that bullshit, you arrogant pricks! Some even deigned to claim this is not insulting!
Just like Christianity, I cant be a good person, and cate for the environment, as a minimalist, nope, for thou shalt not get into Enviro-heaven, Without believing in AGW, not by works alone, you must believe in science! By you faith in the experts, you too can make prophecies of doom that never come true!”
Just like christians who say. I deny God exists because I dont want to serve him, and I know God is real, Nope, the chances of their god being the creator, is a million times less likely than there is a creator, which itself is quite questionable.
No, I’ll never confess to this religion of false prophets. And I live in an enviro-heaven many times a year, the true gardens of eden. I love this planet. And yet another curse on those who proclaim, because I dint believe their science, I don’t love this planet.
I will not curse humanity for being human, I will only try to understand.
Posted by: UWDude | Jul 17 2023 3:53 utc | 177
“In this regard, again I recommend the works of Iain McGilchrist who has recently taken things to a whole new level. Simply put, he is joining matter, spirit, philosophy, imagination, literature and sanity. The collective deadening of the soul due to the widespread superstition that physical materialism is its principal legacy, which also means that most of the world’s problems – including pollution, societal confusion etc. – could be resolved by moving past this unnecessary block.”
Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 17 2023 0:55 utc | 159
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Mr. Scorpion, what a load of fish that you just spued on this page. Let’s take it one at a time.
[1]. Simply put, you are arguing that one can join matter and spirit. How does one join matter (materialism, or if you prefer physicalism) i.e., the world we live in and the only thing that we can say truly exists with the spiritual (a non-material, non-
physical) concept that is beyond knowing but may exist in our minds.
I leave out the other things philosophy, imagination, literature and sanity, because they are not, in my opinion, relevant until we have resolved the first two items Mind (spirit) and Matter. That is the proper phrasing of the question.
As a rule, religion has determined that we humans are the product of Gods mind, thoughts, consciousness, or spirit. Therefore, Gods mind is primary, and matter (the brain) is secondary, i.e., a prison for the mind as long as we live inside a material body and a material world.
There are a few people who are solipsistic that believe that only they exist, and therefore only their mind, not Gods mind exist. As far as I know you could be among them.
A non-religious person (an atheist) would argue that the mind, thought, consciousness, is a product of matter organized in a specific way, i.e., the brain. Therefore, the brain (matter) is primary and thought, consciousness, mind is secondary. It is safe to say that while a living body can be unconscious, we have no evidence of a conscious dead person, outside of myth and false beliefs.
[2]. The collective deadening of the soul due to the widespread superstition that physical materialism is its principal legacy, which also means that most of the world’s problems – including pollution, societal confusion etc. – could be resolved by moving past this unnecessary block.”
Gee mister Scorpion, I think you have it all backwards; “…the widespread superstition that physical materialism is its principal legacy [?]…” Do you deny the existence of the “physical world?” Do you live in some kind of non-physical world as a spirit? I recommend that you go outside and remove your shoes, then find a big rock and kick as hard as you can, then tell me that physical materialism is a widespread superstition. I will be waiting for your reply with bated breath.
Posted by: Ed | Jul 17 2023 4:47 utc | 183
Interesting thread – not for any sense that it might make but for the noise that it reveals, drowning out the signal. And the strong signal here is respect for the world we live in, and gratitude for its bounty, and kindness to all its inhabitants. And the ethic of stewardship, which has existed and does exist, and can exist.
Here in the USA, the native Americans showed us how to manage an entire continent in a sustainable manner. We couldn’t see it. We were driven, instead, to despoil.
This is the answer though, as some have suggested. Clean up the world, plant a billion trees, ten billion, however many it takes until nature rewards us again as responsible stewards. And end the spoiling. Kill death, plant life.
As to how to accomplish all this, that’s the only discussion worth having as we move forward. It is perhaps possible. It’s the task ahead for the entire human race. What clarity, what happiness: we have a task and that task is clear.
~~
As this thread shows, the matter of global climate seems undecided, to say the least – after all these years it’s still a mind-fuck to try to get the right answer. I think here that Scorpion’s view is the correct one, namely that the field is so large and complex – and rightfully so – that there cannot be any one single view of it.
All this argument here is simply a demonstration of the complexity of the all the slices. Imagine, if we removed all the passion and retained simply the data points, how we could come to see the complexity of the situation.
And to UWDude’s view, derived from the correct posture of waiting for 15 years, undecided, waiting for the results to prove the models, and then finding the models and predictions at fault – I would offer that the failure of a prediction doesn’t mean the total rejection of the elements that went into it. Not total. Don’t throw it all away. Keep about a fourth.
~~
I have come to divide everything by four. Every dire prognostication, I reduce to a fourth of its claim. So, yes, the sky is falling, but much more slowly than we think. There is time to reflect, to consider, to weigh and to decide. There is time for sanity.
And sanity is the way forward, I think. Sanity is the natural state of the sentient being, when passions are restrained.
It would be tempting to look at this thread and think that we are a long way from being able to restrain our aggressions. But actually, what shows most from all the clamor is the need for sanity. This is the signal that rises above the noise, the signal produced in all the noise.
These threads would be an excellent place for all participants to practice that art of restraint, that invitation to sanity. And I’m serious – this is not rhetoric, this is a practical suggestion of a personal practice, without which one will achieve nothing anyway, except more confusion.
One will fail to help anything in this world if one is not sane.
These threads should be calm and collegial, as they so often have been in the past. But with this most compelling of all matters, imagine what we could achieve in our discussions if we could share information and be colleagues again. Imagine the magic that could arise, the rain that could fall on a parched land.
Posted by: Grieved | Jul 17 2023 5:11 utc | 185
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