I'm a thousand percent onboard the desire and intention of combining movements into a synergistic whole which has transformational power. (Power-with, not power-over) And I'm a thousand percent with your perspective, Patrick, in which such synergistic combinations and convergences of movements is what is presently called for.
That said, I believe my diagnosis of why this isn't already occurring in a big way may differ a bit from yours (?). Personally, I think the problem of common visioning is MOSTLY the result of the power structure of mainstream media and education. Media and education shape our culture more than any other factors I can think of -- even as compared with political parties and churches! And what we call "mainstream" media and education have -- as I see it -- been captured by the very same ethos as has captured our governing bodies (parties, institutions).
As I like to say it, "all politics is the politics of an ethos".
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines 'ethos' as "the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution". Ethos, then, is very similar in meaning to the common sense of the word 'ideology,' but there are perhaps important particulars to distinguish these words from one another -- a topic not unworthy of conversation.
Speaking of Merriam-Webster Dictionary ..., that same dictionary defines 'obsolete' as "[a] no longer in use or [b] no longer useful". In my diagnosis of the core problem of our current culture (material, economic, political, social, etc.) our problem is best understood -- primarily -- as one of several layers of obsolescence of type b.
The ethos of the dominant culture in the so-called 'developed world' is obsolete in its fundamental ethos -- which includes core factors such as anthropocentrism (human-supremacy, human exceptionalism...), economism (presuming 'the economy' to be the most important factor in our social and political lives, devotion to economic growth at any and all costs, favoring competition over cooperation, etc., etc.... These are all what we tend to call "mainstream" values in the dominant culture of the USA, and of a fair number of other modern nation states. This ethos is embodied in the cultural forms of what the mainstream regards as a worthy ethos for education and media, politics and culture. But there is a fundamental mismatch between this historically popular, mainstream set of factors of ethos and what the natural world demands of us if we are to steer off our presently wildly ecocidal course as a culture / civilization. So the future cannot, and will not, be 'mainstream' in these ways. The mainstream of our culture -- at least as it is presented to us by the established forms of 'media' and 'education' (politics, etc.) is simply not compatible with any kind of future at all -- much less one we can proudly proclaim as a just and right ethos-basis for our culture.
Anyway, I could go on and on, of course, but I'll end, for now, by saying that on several occasions, while reading your article here, you used the word "we" -- as if there is such a common "we" that "we" orient around or to. It's a rather mainstream conception of 'we'. But is not a 'we' I orient to or around, for I am unabashedly contrary to the ethos of that mainstream 'we'. I regard it as the enemy of life. It is not my friend. And so my life is largely devoted to opening up spaces of imagination about what it might mean to be 'we', really -- which is to say to be part of a 'we' which unabashedly refuses the mainstream discourse of the corporate-capitalist-industrial-military complex and its media and schools.
That said, with your help -- and the help of others similarly wise -- I've come to reject the notion that my essentially anarchist orientation on the political need be wildly segregated and removed from what I've come to call "state politics" (which most folks call the politics of government). In this time of transition which will certainly be ongoing for the rest of your life and mine, and well into the present century, I think what we really require is for my radical, mostly anarchist politics to meet with your slightly less anarchist perspective -- which embraces 'state politics' as necessary, at least -- in such a way that we cross an 'aisle' which isn't at all like the divide between the two dominant political parties here in the duopolistic USA. I think you and your fellow-travelers know a thing or two about the role 'state politics' must play in the transition we're in. And I know me and my anarchist friends, too, know a few things worthy of converging into a common vision of a new, emerging politics. And so I want us all to come together now in a warm embrace, and to speak from our hearts about our common and shared visions and hopes. We are not enemies. I am not an enemy of the state. The state is not my enemy. An ideology -- a broken ethos -- is my enemy. And education is its only possible cure.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, James. Education and media are reflections of the dominant forces in society, which are corporate and commercial. This is the ethos that gains most play, and increasingly so. Spaces for consideration of alternatives have been systematically closed. One might say this is why we need to create our own educational and media institutions, though to gain the needed weight, they need to be tied to the broader movement I envision here. The political is where we make choices in limited spaces, allocate limited resources. So I do see this as an area we need to develop a common vision that ramifies back to policy. There is an interplay of state and community institutions in this, and finding ways to build alternative community institutions is certainly part of the picture. I appreciate your moving past what can be a dogmatic anarchist perspective on the state. I do think we need the broad sense of “we” and acknowledge there is dialectic of needing to break away from suffocating conformity. Sometimes you need to get outside something to gain clear perspective. How to do that when you’re enmeshed in systems to make changes in them is a tricky balancing game. I think it is best to say we don’t all have the same project. There are additional thoughts I did not get in this piece on seeing things run in parallel. We need bodies to address government units. We need bodies to address bioregional realities, watershed councils and such. They will exist in complex relation to one another. Ultimately I agree change at the deepest level involves changing the story, and this will take institutions of education and media to do so.
A structure and plan can come later...just housekeeping. What is needed, and what a "movement of movements" lacks is a core philosophy. If this isn't an ecological core that dictates the agenda of the movement, it is just floundering and treading water. It has been tried..and it has always failed. it always will. The only successful movements have been those with a unifying core that shapes and dictates theory and practice. A structure and plan are abstract and arbitrary and can be shaped as people want. The recusal of reform movements from an ecological philosophy and analysis is why we are failing. A proper ecological analysis subsumes all the social and economic issues with which humans are concerned. These issues must be addressed only in the context of ecology and planetary survival and must be shaped and conform to the exigencies of earth's systems and species. If you havent learned this yet, you are just wasting your breath. That's why the green movement/party has failed. You need to read Greta Thunberg and Bill Rees. Your heroes...McKibben, Hedges, Hirsch, etc....are tangential, ineffective and ideologically perverse. They are not leaders and have done little or nothing that has any influence or impact because they
are ideologues , not leaders, and have never addressed the fundamental causes of planetary collapse.
Not sure what you are asking for. I have no copy of the last comments I made so i have to re read your comment and write my comments again. You should warn your readers to keep copies of their comment before they send them or they could be lost. Hope you can get this problem resolved!
Something is wrong with your web site. This is the third time that my comments have not gone through. Unfortunately I did not make a copy of my comments so they are lost. Let me know when you have fixed your problem....LS
No intersectional community, movement or society can reverse our march over the precipice unless it confronts Overshoot and adopts as its central doctrine a biocentric ethic that does not elevate humanity over other species. The heated debate over climate change is a narrow one that only allows discussion about energy policy. Climate change is only one of many factors that have led us to Overshoot; biodiversity loss is another one. Multiple political and social ideologies are battling each other, "ignorant armies clashing by night" and refusing to confront the ultimate cause of planetary collapse. Overpopulation, overconsumption, habitat destruction, ocean fishery collapse, disappearance of insects, permafrost melting....all of these are in Overshoot mode and are not addressed today in discussions except by a handful of scientists and activists. Our media and political institutions have failed us; as Greta Thunberg says, it is only "Blah, blah, blah". We lack principled uncompromising leadership, not appeasement or tinkering at the margins. Without this central comprehensive that our entire society is in terminal death throes barring radical change in human behavior, values and consumption, multifaceted political organizing is just spitting into the wind. (That the US Green Party in which Patrick participated failed to understand this is why they disappeared into oblivion).
Agreed we have exceeded planetary boundaries in many areas. That is part of the body of work you will see on this site. For example this piece, which sets climate in the entire context of ecological crisis. https://open.substack.com/pub/theraven/p/toward-the-ecological-republic?r=36q38&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Without the kind of broad-spanning movement I write about here, it is hard to see us dealing with the overshoot crisis. The sense of common good has to include the entirety of nature. Having biodiversity advocates in a community congress with advocates for climate, education, criminal justice reform, etc. offers a way to integrate all these perspectives. In a practical sense, the kind of transformative changes we need in economies, societies and infrastructures to avert collapse are going to emerge out of movements and a movement with a broad vision, beyond single-issue politics. Re the Green Party, it was and remains an effort to create such a politics. I would add that at the local level the Green Party has hardly disappeared in the US. There are many local officials. https://www.gpelections.org/greens-in-office/ At the national and state levels, the Greens have been caught in a system designed for two parties, reinforced by politicians from those parties passing laws to make third party organizing difficult. I did not address the relation between a movement of movements and political parties here, but I think that because of those obstacles a movement has to be organized outside of a party format, but be positioned to have impacts on parties and politicians. p.s., I seem to remember that you were pretty active in Green circles back in the 90s when I was active. At least you were present on lists.
I think you need to approach people from where they are, rather than telling them all their concerns need to be subsumed under your own overarching concern, no matter how important that concern is. Low-income workers struggling to pay the bills, ethnic communities concerned with police violence, people living on the streets, are going to see biodiversity as abstract when they are facing their own survival crises. That is why we need to create venues for dialogue and connection, to build programs for the common good that of course entail preserving the natural world of which we are a part. I don’t think it’s a hierarchy but an understanding that good social relations are also good ecological relations. A society that treats its own with decency is more likely to treat all of nature the same. We won’t get there without a broader movement in which people can see themselves. That burst of progress in the 60s and 70s came from a broad uprising that involved many issues and increasingly joined them. Antiwar, civil rights, anti-poverty, environment. Toward the end of his life MLK embodied that unity with the Poor People’s Campaign (and probably lost his life as a result). If we want that kind of progress we need to find ways to join together to push for it.
Beautifully stated, Patrick. Here in Seattle, because of the high cost and short supply of housing, things are pretty tough. Progressives are split between those who believe loosening land use codes for developers to build more market rate buildings and those who want a more holistic, controlled approach that addresses cost, displacement, etc. The market rate group has declared war, in the form of name-calling and marginalizing, everyone else. It's really sad, and I have no idea how we'll ever move forward and heal the rift. Wishing others all success.
I'm a thousand percent onboard the desire and intention of combining movements into a synergistic whole which has transformational power. (Power-with, not power-over) And I'm a thousand percent with your perspective, Patrick, in which such synergistic combinations and convergences of movements is what is presently called for.
That said, I believe my diagnosis of why this isn't already occurring in a big way may differ a bit from yours (?). Personally, I think the problem of common visioning is MOSTLY the result of the power structure of mainstream media and education. Media and education shape our culture more than any other factors I can think of -- even as compared with political parties and churches! And what we call "mainstream" media and education have -- as I see it -- been captured by the very same ethos as has captured our governing bodies (parties, institutions).
As I like to say it, "all politics is the politics of an ethos".
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines 'ethos' as "the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution". Ethos, then, is very similar in meaning to the common sense of the word 'ideology,' but there are perhaps important particulars to distinguish these words from one another -- a topic not unworthy of conversation.
Speaking of Merriam-Webster Dictionary ..., that same dictionary defines 'obsolete' as "[a] no longer in use or [b] no longer useful". In my diagnosis of the core problem of our current culture (material, economic, political, social, etc.) our problem is best understood -- primarily -- as one of several layers of obsolescence of type b.
- continued -
- continued -
The ethos of the dominant culture in the so-called 'developed world' is obsolete in its fundamental ethos -- which includes core factors such as anthropocentrism (human-supremacy, human exceptionalism...), economism (presuming 'the economy' to be the most important factor in our social and political lives, devotion to economic growth at any and all costs, favoring competition over cooperation, etc., etc.... These are all what we tend to call "mainstream" values in the dominant culture of the USA, and of a fair number of other modern nation states. This ethos is embodied in the cultural forms of what the mainstream regards as a worthy ethos for education and media, politics and culture. But there is a fundamental mismatch between this historically popular, mainstream set of factors of ethos and what the natural world demands of us if we are to steer off our presently wildly ecocidal course as a culture / civilization. So the future cannot, and will not, be 'mainstream' in these ways. The mainstream of our culture -- at least as it is presented to us by the established forms of 'media' and 'education' (politics, etc.) is simply not compatible with any kind of future at all -- much less one we can proudly proclaim as a just and right ethos-basis for our culture.
Anyway, I could go on and on, of course, but I'll end, for now, by saying that on several occasions, while reading your article here, you used the word "we" -- as if there is such a common "we" that "we" orient around or to. It's a rather mainstream conception of 'we'. But is not a 'we' I orient to or around, for I am unabashedly contrary to the ethos of that mainstream 'we'. I regard it as the enemy of life. It is not my friend. And so my life is largely devoted to opening up spaces of imagination about what it might mean to be 'we', really -- which is to say to be part of a 'we' which unabashedly refuses the mainstream discourse of the corporate-capitalist-industrial-military complex and its media and schools.
That said, with your help -- and the help of others similarly wise -- I've come to reject the notion that my essentially anarchist orientation on the political need be wildly segregated and removed from what I've come to call "state politics" (which most folks call the politics of government). In this time of transition which will certainly be ongoing for the rest of your life and mine, and well into the present century, I think what we really require is for my radical, mostly anarchist politics to meet with your slightly less anarchist perspective -- which embraces 'state politics' as necessary, at least -- in such a way that we cross an 'aisle' which isn't at all like the divide between the two dominant political parties here in the duopolistic USA. I think you and your fellow-travelers know a thing or two about the role 'state politics' must play in the transition we're in. And I know me and my anarchist friends, too, know a few things worthy of converging into a common vision of a new, emerging politics. And so I want us all to come together now in a warm embrace, and to speak from our hearts about our common and shared visions and hopes. We are not enemies. I am not an enemy of the state. The state is not my enemy. An ideology -- a broken ethos -- is my enemy. And education is its only possible cure.
Onward!
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, James. Education and media are reflections of the dominant forces in society, which are corporate and commercial. This is the ethos that gains most play, and increasingly so. Spaces for consideration of alternatives have been systematically closed. One might say this is why we need to create our own educational and media institutions, though to gain the needed weight, they need to be tied to the broader movement I envision here. The political is where we make choices in limited spaces, allocate limited resources. So I do see this as an area we need to develop a common vision that ramifies back to policy. There is an interplay of state and community institutions in this, and finding ways to build alternative community institutions is certainly part of the picture. I appreciate your moving past what can be a dogmatic anarchist perspective on the state. I do think we need the broad sense of “we” and acknowledge there is dialectic of needing to break away from suffocating conformity. Sometimes you need to get outside something to gain clear perspective. How to do that when you’re enmeshed in systems to make changes in them is a tricky balancing game. I think it is best to say we don’t all have the same project. There are additional thoughts I did not get in this piece on seeing things run in parallel. We need bodies to address government units. We need bodies to address bioregional realities, watershed councils and such. They will exist in complex relation to one another. Ultimately I agree change at the deepest level involves changing the story, and this will take institutions of education and media to do so.
A structure and plan can come later...just housekeeping. What is needed, and what a "movement of movements" lacks is a core philosophy. If this isn't an ecological core that dictates the agenda of the movement, it is just floundering and treading water. It has been tried..and it has always failed. it always will. The only successful movements have been those with a unifying core that shapes and dictates theory and practice. A structure and plan are abstract and arbitrary and can be shaped as people want. The recusal of reform movements from an ecological philosophy and analysis is why we are failing. A proper ecological analysis subsumes all the social and economic issues with which humans are concerned. These issues must be addressed only in the context of ecology and planetary survival and must be shaped and conform to the exigencies of earth's systems and species. If you havent learned this yet, you are just wasting your breath. That's why the green movement/party has failed. You need to read Greta Thunberg and Bill Rees. Your heroes...McKibben, Hedges, Hirsch, etc....are tangential, ineffective and ideologically perverse. They are not leaders and have done little or nothing that has any influence or impact because they
are ideologues , not leaders, and have never addressed the fundamental causes of planetary collapse.
Not sure what you are asking for. I have no copy of the last comments I made so i have to re read your comment and write my comments again. You should warn your readers to keep copies of their comment before they send them or they could be lost. Hope you can get this problem resolved!
Something is wrong with your web site. This is the third time that my comments have not gone through. Unfortunately I did not make a copy of my comments so they are lost. Let me know when you have fixed your problem....LS
If you email me your reply I will post it with an explanation of why I’m doing so.
I will report it to substack. All I can do. I’ve heard about other glitchy things in the comments section.
No intersectional community, movement or society can reverse our march over the precipice unless it confronts Overshoot and adopts as its central doctrine a biocentric ethic that does not elevate humanity over other species. The heated debate over climate change is a narrow one that only allows discussion about energy policy. Climate change is only one of many factors that have led us to Overshoot; biodiversity loss is another one. Multiple political and social ideologies are battling each other, "ignorant armies clashing by night" and refusing to confront the ultimate cause of planetary collapse. Overpopulation, overconsumption, habitat destruction, ocean fishery collapse, disappearance of insects, permafrost melting....all of these are in Overshoot mode and are not addressed today in discussions except by a handful of scientists and activists. Our media and political institutions have failed us; as Greta Thunberg says, it is only "Blah, blah, blah". We lack principled uncompromising leadership, not appeasement or tinkering at the margins. Without this central comprehensive that our entire society is in terminal death throes barring radical change in human behavior, values and consumption, multifaceted political organizing is just spitting into the wind. (That the US Green Party in which Patrick participated failed to understand this is why they disappeared into oblivion).
Agreed we have exceeded planetary boundaries in many areas. That is part of the body of work you will see on this site. For example this piece, which sets climate in the entire context of ecological crisis. https://open.substack.com/pub/theraven/p/toward-the-ecological-republic?r=36q38&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Without the kind of broad-spanning movement I write about here, it is hard to see us dealing with the overshoot crisis. The sense of common good has to include the entirety of nature. Having biodiversity advocates in a community congress with advocates for climate, education, criminal justice reform, etc. offers a way to integrate all these perspectives. In a practical sense, the kind of transformative changes we need in economies, societies and infrastructures to avert collapse are going to emerge out of movements and a movement with a broad vision, beyond single-issue politics. Re the Green Party, it was and remains an effort to create such a politics. I would add that at the local level the Green Party has hardly disappeared in the US. There are many local officials. https://www.gpelections.org/greens-in-office/ At the national and state levels, the Greens have been caught in a system designed for two parties, reinforced by politicians from those parties passing laws to make third party organizing difficult. I did not address the relation between a movement of movements and political parties here, but I think that because of those obstacles a movement has to be organized outside of a party format, but be positioned to have impacts on parties and politicians. p.s., I seem to remember that you were pretty active in Green circles back in the 90s when I was active. At least you were present on lists.
You might recall that I sought the presidential nomination of the US Green Party in 2004 but was undercut by
illegal maneuvers by the party leadership whose main purpose was to squash Ralph Nader and anyone who
threatened Democratic candidates for office across the country. As an environmental activist, organizer and
writer since the early 1970s, I have watched the deterioration of the energy generated at Earth Day 1970,, to the
point where activists today have no inkling of the accomplishments of the movement that followed that date and
resulted in tremendous progress in policy making, legislation and general awareness of environmental issues.
That initial excitement and sense of achievement has now been displaced by ideology, Identity Politics and a
huge void in the understanding of science and nature. Without this basic understanding, those recruited to any
kind of new movement will continue to see their own interests as paramount and central to any kind of political
or social concordance. I continue to believe that there must be ONE movement that puts the totality of the planet’s
species and systems at the center of its philosophy and agenda, one in which all the other issues and movements
are subsumed by a comprehensive ecological philosophy based on science and the laws of nature, not on purely
human needs. This does NOT mean ignoring social justice issues. It simply means redefining and restating the
policies and objectives of the broader movement as AN ECOLOGICAL MOVEMENT at its core, NOT a
collection of movements with different goals or values. The US Green Party failed to do this because it never
came close to being this movement due to the personal hidden agendas and ideologies that thought that
all these differences could be melted together into one giant party. As someone who was active in the green
movement from the 1980s on, it became clearer and clearer to me that the movement and later the party was
doomed to failure. On top of this was sheer opportunism of the leadership that hoped to shape the USGP
into the left wing of the Democratic Party, accompanied by a fear of Ralph Nader, whose broad support
in the country threatened the influence and position of Democrats. Those of us who were dark horses for
Nader’s nomination in 2004 were shut out of the nomination process through devious actions and deliberate
violations of party by laws. You can read Carol Miller’s account of the nominating convention on the web.
Included in my own accounts was my recollection of how Lynn Serpe literally hid my nominating signatures
in a dark drawer in a dark locked hotel room so as to expel me from the whole process. The corruption of the
party plus its utter lack of any ecological consciousness foretold the end of the USGP as any national party or even
political presence.
I think you need to approach people from where they are, rather than telling them all their concerns need to be subsumed under your own overarching concern, no matter how important that concern is. Low-income workers struggling to pay the bills, ethnic communities concerned with police violence, people living on the streets, are going to see biodiversity as abstract when they are facing their own survival crises. That is why we need to create venues for dialogue and connection, to build programs for the common good that of course entail preserving the natural world of which we are a part. I don’t think it’s a hierarchy but an understanding that good social relations are also good ecological relations. A society that treats its own with decency is more likely to treat all of nature the same. We won’t get there without a broader movement in which people can see themselves. That burst of progress in the 60s and 70s came from a broad uprising that involved many issues and increasingly joined them. Antiwar, civil rights, anti-poverty, environment. Toward the end of his life MLK embodied that unity with the Poor People’s Campaign (and probably lost his life as a result). If we want that kind of progress we need to find ways to join together to push for it.
Beautifully stated, Patrick. Here in Seattle, because of the high cost and short supply of housing, things are pretty tough. Progressives are split between those who believe loosening land use codes for developers to build more market rate buildings and those who want a more holistic, controlled approach that addresses cost, displacement, etc. The market rate group has declared war, in the form of name-calling and marginalizing, everyone else. It's really sad, and I have no idea how we'll ever move forward and heal the rift. Wishing others all success.