Ecosystem vs Economy (Capitalism versus Balance)
as the forests are burning... the carefully cultivated rainforests and their deep, complex, cultured soil... you must understand that soil is more precious than gold, soil is rich, soil is complex, soil is incredible
as the forests are burning, remember the message carbon based lifeforms brought us, "what about the forests?" (this quote is from a sci-fi film, "silent running", on the same theme)
[N.B. Long post but written entirely by me. M-dashes courtesy of WinCompose, not khat-gbp.]
REGARDLESS of what you believe about the causes and effects of climate change, we are seeing the ravaging of old-growth forests and soil destruction and surface desertification. this is just a plain fact of reality. increased forest fires, drier weather, cloud seeding stealing water from the normal atmospheric patterns (and causing flash floods and soil washaway and landslides), desert expansion. rainforests nearly gone, most of the amazon is gone now. EVEN IF this climate change is good, even if it is not anthropogenic, even if whatever excuses or justifications you want to make are true —
EVEN IF all that IS true —
we are doing a disgustingly abysmal job of taking care of the nature and ecosystems of the planet.
we should be guardians, gardeners, wardens, protectors, caretakers, housekeepers. we should be integrated, we should be observators, we should be acting in coherence with the tao, the natural way of things.
AS SOON AS anything goes out of balance, something brings it back into balance. This happens at the instantaneous level of timeframe. Non-balance cannot persist for longer than one frame of time. We may observe something to be out of balance, but that is just from our opinionated perspective of what "balance" is, or should be.
There is indeed a "should" of balance, and that "should" is the balance in which life can thrive — according to the perspective of Things Which Are Alive. Thus, we can make intentional actions to swing the balance in the beneficial direction.
Currently, "we" are doing that, but the "beneficial direction" is that which increases financial gain. We must change our focus...
When we look at the concept of balance on a larger timescale, what we call "in balance" is actually more like "stability", such like we have in our bodies, "homeostasis". This self-same stable condition is what allows development of anything, from weather patterns to microorganisms to cells to life to evolution to lineages to family to communities to societies to economies to technologies to arts & music and you get the picture.
As the planet's ecosystem (and sub-ecosystems) heat up, they contain more energy, yet they still go through the daily cycle of heating & cooling — this means there is a larger-magnitude flux because there is more energy within the system. Things change more extremely, more rapidly, more suddenly. Self-maintaining ecoystem stability mechanisms still operate, and you get a rubber-band effect, wherein the conditions of apparent stasis are maintained within a flexible range until SUDDENLY the stasis management snaps and the stability vanishes (think of it like electron levels in an atomic shell). We are seeing this already, in pockets around the world, and it is increasing.
Things Take Time.
What we are seeing today is only the beginning. If you look at what's happening now, and compare it with the recent past, it is not too dramatic a change. But there are indicators that the regular life does not really see, and these indicators tell us that a series of changes have been set in motion.
For me, there are two paths to take, and we really have to take both at the same time.
Try our absolute best to curb our impacts on the planet, and kill captalism outright. We may have started an unstoppable sequence of changes, but it is still possble to reduce the harm that we are causing and will cause, and we still have a duty to the Kingdom of Life to behave with respect and consideration.
Prepare for the worst. Learn skills & knowledge which you can use for survival, for yourself, your family, your community. Things which don't depend on computing, internet, electricity, etc. Carbon tax is likely to become a thing, may even be the default currency unit (as we've seen in several sci-fis). Electricity consumption may be prohibitively expensive. AI may become the default way of undertaking tasks, which will reduce us to a monoculture of single-solution "only one way is right"-thinking. Apparently the magnetosphere is weakening, which will increase the risk of electricity grid outages. And global guvts & corporations are increasing in power & control, making it easier than ever for them to just turn systems off when we misbehave or when there is a crisis (or a "crisis"). 15 years ago, wifi was uncommon and cellular data was touching 3G. Nowadays if the internet goes off we feel lost and separated and somewhat dis-abled.
You may read that and feel that I'm being alarmist. You'd be right.
Just because we are in stability now, doesn't mean it will continue into perpetuity. It is a period. It was a good period, but it's lasted long enough for multiple behemoths to rise up and reign over us. Indeed, the human species is one of these behemoths, lording over any subkingdom in the Kingdom of Life that does not bow to us willingly.
I am alarmist because not enough people are understanding what could be coming. I say "could be" because I cannot say "is", but equally, you cannot say "is not". The time for optimism has passed. I do not think that any powerful entity is going to save us. Not the governments, not the corporations, not the companies, not the militaries. We have oh-so-carefully segregated our layers of society, and now the scientists cannot even make themselves heard.
Yes, many scientists are corrupted, and for only the same reason as most of us — their jobs don't pay highly enough, and/or their income is not stable, so they need to manipulate the system in order to get funding for research jobs so that they can put food on the table and take care of their kids and partners and parents. A grey lie here and there, just to get the project approved; and a twist of the statistical razor, to ensure that the experimental results align with the vested interests of whichever company, institution or government funded them. Sure, it's very well possible that a lot of what we read and hear about climate change itself is falsified or twisted in some way.
But I don't think the overall story is fake — I think it is just being used to prop up the greenwashing shift from oil into renewables. As it stands, anyone could get hold of a renewable resource capture device, and thus live "off-grid", disconnected from the network, and thus become useless to capitalist corporations whose lifeblood is literally us and our money. True renewables technologies cannot be released into the wild until the infrastructure is in place that ensures we will continue in our mortal tithe to the energy corporations. Now we are almost there so they are being (a bit) more honest about the climate change situation. Plus the fact that electrification of everything allows for greater surveillance and greater node control — I'm sure you're aware by now that, if you drive an electric car, with a computer-controlled engine, your vehicle can be remotely accessed and remotely deactivated. What a motivator to be an obedient, quiet, law-abiding citizen! We need vehicles which operate on basic physics, something that cannot be interfered with.
The Capitalist Machine is not human. It is inhuman and inhumane. It is fundamentally devoid of compassion, empathy, consideration for life. Everything and everyone is reduced to a monetary value — what is the profit or loss of supporting, ignoring or deleting something (or someone)? It. Is. Not. Going. To. Get. Better. The Capitalist Machine is alive, and it is a giant beast, and that beast is an uncaring, narcissistic monster. It is only self-serving. And it is toxic too, because it gradually warps, and then forces, all its subjects into becoming fractal images of itself. Despite most of us simply being servants unto this beast, we all still have to operate as micro-capitalists, hence the rise of side-hustles and 40+-hour work weeks and general psychic exhaustion.
We've all been trained to believe that violence is inherently evil. What we have not been allowed to realise is that (most) types of violence are subjectively labelled. Physical violence is the most taboo, while invisible forms of violence are unknown, ignored, and even laughed at. Systemic violence plagues all of us, from colonialism to racism, discrimination, slavery, waged slavery, technocratic serfdom, economic repression, cultural oppression, ethnic cleansing, and more, you should get the idea — violence exists in myriad forms and most forms are invisible.
So what about violence in defence, against the violentor, against the violent agent? Is that evil? Is that wrong? Is that unreasonable? Is it right to be apathetic in these situations, to allow the agent to continue to destroy us, our communities, and other groups? When an oppressor is so powerful that you cannot do anything against them, the only remaining realm to take action in is the physical. As has been posted a million times by now, the social revolutions that actually brought about real change were not peaceful.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I had some thoughts to share about forests cos I put CBL on to help me focus on my linguistics project. Naturally the thoughts led into one another, because everything is connected... and the endpoint is always politics, because the political condition is, imho, the reason for the problems we are in. And I always reach the same blocking point: as a planetary species, we have been divided up into easily controllable units (countries & states), our resources are not controlled by we the people, and our wealth is perpetually transferred to the govts & corporations and billionaires, who all continue to do reprehensible and deranged stuff with that wealth.
I don't know what the solution is. Honestly I'm in abject anxiety every day about this stuff and when I talk about it, most people seem to choose to avoid the topic. I have a few friends who are open to discussing it, but still we reach the same blockage.
The best media I've seen recently is a sci-fi series called Extrapolations, all about our near-term future and how humanity has to cope with climate change, and how the richest of the world continue to wring wealth out of us by making the situation progressively worse. — And that, that was produced by Apple. Apple. One of the largest tech companies in the world. Say what you will about their energy sources, but how do they get the rare-earth minerals for the devices? Did we just forget their FoxConn situation?
We've reached a sub-era in which capitalism entities are able to criticise capitalism, in which celebrities are able to mock capitalism in their performances, and it's all fine, cos the grip of capitalism is so strong that they aren't even at risk of being silenced because their words & messages have such little power. A question arises here too: is this even capitalism any more? The politics is leaning towards fascism, and the economics appears to be leaning towards feudalism. Yes, I'm echoing things I've heard cos I'm not any kind of expert in these fields, but what I've heard also aligns with what I'm observing around me, and experiencing in my own life.
the end
[[ p.s. please share your thoughts and perspectives and ideas ]]
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