All the old ideas for uprooting the status quo have failed. I point this out not to depress people, but to persuade them to stop twisting on locked doorknobs. The old ideas don’t work, so we need new ones.

The political process has failed. Capitalism has failed. Socialism has failed. Libertarianism has failed. Marx has failed. Populism has failed. Anarchism has failed. I say this not because of any glaring flaws in any of those ideas (in theory any of them could potentially work in an alternate universe), but because we are hurtling towards extinction in the fairly near future, and none of them have saved us.

“But Caitlin!” you may object. “My particular favorite ideology would have saved us long ago if only everyone had gotten on board with it!”

Okay. But they didn’t. And now we’re on the brink of armageddon. That means it has failed. It doesn’t work.

We are well on our way to extinction via climate collapse or nuclear holocaust, and even if we miss those by some miracle we are headed toward an artificial intelligence-led tech dystopia in which our consciousness is permanently enslaved by a propaganda network that is far too advanced for there to be any hope of escaping into truth.

We are witnessing a mass extinction the likes of which we haven’t seen since the end of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, with some 200 species going extinct forever every single day. The very ecosystemic context in which we evolved is vanishing underneath us. More than half the world’s wildlife has vanished in forty years, and the worldwide insect population has plummeted by as much as 90 percent. Fertile soil is vanishing, and so are forests. The oceans are choking to death, 90 percent of global fish stocks are either fully fished or overfished, the seas are full of microplastics, and phytoplankton, an indispensable foundation of earth’s food chain, have been killed off by 40 percent since 1950. Science keeps pouring in showing that global warming is occurring faster than previously predicted, and there are self-reinforcing warming effects called “feedback loops” which, once set off, can continue warming the atmosphere further and further regardless of human behavior, causing more feedback loops.

Our ecosystem is very fragile and rapidly fading, and the difference between the ability to survive without it and our current scientific capability is the difference between flying and jumping. Which won’t matter if one of the many small, unpredictable moving parts in the steadily escalating new cold war with Russia results in a nuclear weapon being deployed as a result of misunderstanding or miscommunication and sparking off the annihilation of every organism on earth, as nearly happened during the last cold war on more than one occasion.

This is where the status quo has gotten us. All attempts to overthrow it have failed. The time is up, and the results are in.

The political process doesn’t work.

I say this not because the political process can’t work, due to some technical failure in the way it has been applied. I say this because it doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that we’re on the cusp of the apocalypse with no signs of steering clear of it. Attempts to uproot the status quo via political engagement and voting does not work.

“But Caitlin!” you may object. “The only reason the political process doesn’t work is because it has been hijacked by corrupt powers with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo! If we can extract those corrupt powers, we can make the political process work!”

Okay. But you didn’t. You were unable to extract the corrupt powers, and now we’re on the brink of extinction. Your strategy has failed.

Capitalism doesn’t work.

I say this not because capitalism can’t work in theory, I say this because it doesn’t work in practice. How do I know it doesn’t work in practice? Because the planet is dying and we’ve all got doomsday weapons pointing at our heads that may go off at any moment. The results are in. Capitalism doesn’t work.

“But Caitlin!” you may object. “What we’ve tried hasn’t been real capitalism! The free market hasn’t been given a chance to solve all our problems, because of the artificial interference and regulations of Big Government. If we can get rid of Big Government, we can solve all our problems!”

Okay. But that never happened. And now here we are at the end of the world, watching our planet ripped to shreds by status quo power structures. Capitalism failed. It doesn’t work.

Socialism doesn’t work.

I say this not because socialism can’t work in theory, I say it because it doesn’t work in real life, as evidenced by the fact that our world is on fire, our time is up, and we are all about to die. Socialism failed to save us. It doesn’t work.

“But Caitlin!” you may object. “Socialism hasn’t worked because it’s never had a chance to work! If the capitalist imperialists would just stop sabotaging socialist experiments, it would thrive and replace the status quo! We’d all be saved!”

Okay. But we’re not. The worldwide populace has not answered the call of socialism in sufficient numbers to overthrow the interests which oppose it, and now we’re at the end of days. The plan was to unite the working class against the elite oppressors around the world and implement socialism, and it failed. It is a strategy which does not work.

Libertarianism doesn’t work.

We could do this all day, with any number of ideologies. Perhaps libertarianism could work under the right circumstances, but attempts to rally the public around it have utterly failed, and now we’re staring down the barrel of extinction. You can object and make excuses, or you can acknowledge that the strategies for implementing your preferred status quo-challenging ideology don’t work, and find new ones.

It’s easy to isolate yourself within a particular ideological echo chamber and create the illusion for yourself that your pet ideology is making progress. Oh look, Russiagate was disproven. Oh look, Jeremy Corbyn did well in those last elections. Oh look, the Democratic Socialists of America gained a few thousand members. But if you step out of that echo chamber and look at the big picture, you see a futile tug-of-war between feuding ideologies with no gains made anywhere near the scale that would be necessary to avert the massive threats on our horizon.

My point here is that we may have found an ideological standpoint that really resonates with us, and that ideology itself may be intrinsically worthy and vastly superior to the status quo. But the strategies for implementing that strategy have failed spectacularly. If you can’t implement your strategy, you’re just diddling cutesy ideas while the world burns. It’s just a nice identity for you to hold onto and make your feely bits feel nice.

“I’m a Marxist!”

“I’m an anarchist!”

No you’re not. You’re an ideological LARPer dressing up in an identity and pretending to change the world, while the world itself tumbles into the abyss.

Again, I say this not to create a sense of hopelessness, but to get people to stop wasting time and energy pushing on locked doors. Stop trying strategies that people have been trying for decades with essentially zero ground gained, and try something else instead. Stop hanging out in your little echo chambers and thinking that anything’s changing just because you are surrounded by people who agree with you. Sure, hold onto your beliefs about what kind of system would most benefit the world if you like, but be acutely aware that those beliefs in our current situation are completely meaningless.

The reality is that as long as powerful people control the dominant public narratives, no ground will be gained in steering our species away from the status quo trajectory that’s killing us, because you won’t be able to awaken mainstream consciousness to what’s going on. The only thing that has any hope of prying the oligarchic hands off the steering wheel is the mainstream public seeing what they’re doing and using the power of their numbers to force drastic change in a wildly different direction. If we can’t make that happen, we’re all just banging on locked doors while the curtain closes on humanity.

We all need to do better. I include myself in this. We need to try new things. Many, many new things. We need new ideas. What kind of new ideas? I don’t know, that’s why I’m telling you. I’m just one woman, and I put as many ideas out there as I can, but it’s not enough. Clearly it’s not enough, because here we are.

In my opinion the obvious way to open up a path for dissident ideas to replace the status quo is to kill the public trust in the stories they were told in school and continue to be told by the mass media about the kind of world and country they live in, but so far that hasn’t happened. My own ideas for advancing that agenda which I’ve been seeding into the world have been inadequate, and so have everyone else’s. So we need more new ideas. Lots and lots of new ideas.

What we’ve tried up until now hasn’t worked, so if there’s anything that might work it’s going to come from a wildly unanticipated direction, from way outside the failed mental processes which have accompanied us to this point. We need to open ourselves to that kind of idea.

That’s basically all I’ve got to offer today. A helpless but sincere plea for humanity to try something new, spat out onto the internet in the Hail Mary hope that it might plant some seeds and loosen the soil for something unprecedented to open up in human consciousness. Sometimes that’s all that we can do.

____________________________

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151 responses to “Your Plans For Revolution Don’t Work. Nothing We’ve Tried Works.”

  1. The sole purpose of life, and therefore our only human purpose may simply be, life itself. That, upon reflection, would appear to be quite enough. The life force does have its urges though, lots of them, it would appear. After countless eons of self-replication along came sexual reproduction, life had apparently gotten to be in somewhat more of a hurry. Life then pursued bigger and better forms of itself as mobility, size, vision etc. ensued over time.

    Vision was very unique and a promising end in itself, but life appeared to desire a different platform with which to fully employ this new sense. Many prototypes came and went, and eventually on the scene appeared humankind complete with a newly acquired awareness. Did life, with this move, express desire for an ego to admire itself or, more positively, to express itself? Why else create a platform embellished with consciousness? Then, alas, something went very wrong with life’s dedicated pursuit of life? Human behavior. We know large portions of the recent history of our species and it’s not very good. Considering our known history, can we begin to significantly amend our ways if life demands a timely accounting?

    So if and when life decides we have exhausted all possibility of further usefulness, and our excesses overwhelm life’s other vital interests, do we then risk severance of the thread with life? Should not we begin to tug ever more gently at this tether to lessen our risk? Does life even care about the fate of us, its creature? Probably not, countless other species have traveled along on life’s quest, prospered to a degree and vanished. Will we join them?

    Whence came then, this thing, this awareness, this brightness in the void, so cherished by life our very species could be made forfeit to preserve it? Perhaps it was the animal curiosity of some lumbering hominid possessed of sufficient cranial matter that chanced upon a source. The menu of vegetable suspects is quite large. The plants, cacti, mushrooms and vines that possess the chemical soups that have the ability, and perhaps desire to exert themselves aggressively when combined with suitable host brain, is legion. We currently regard these substances as “mind altering” but could they perhaps have been “mind creating” at some remote point in time?

    Students of psychedelic phenomenon have reported a tendency among this family of substances to exhibit a strong urge to promote its own agenda over the host consciousness at times. Life, in this way, may have introduced the initial spark of awareness in receptive hominid brains with suitable vegetable matter containing psychedelic chemical ingredients. Imagine the wonder this revelation surely produced in a previously unconscious world. The binges and quest for more light shows that followed in the still only partially illuminated minds of these creatures must have been incredible.

    Perhaps this initial visitation of consciousness onto a receptive human brain and the incredible awakening produced therein is responsible for the ongoing human quest for enlightenment. Our species has demonstrated a universal affinity for various visions, ecstasies and raptures and they have been zealously sought for millennia. Perhaps then, a racial memory of, and longing for a return to that original staggering event gives impetus to the universal spiritual quests we humans faithfully follow to this day.

    Of course it is possible life may now be providing itself with a non-life fallback to the dilemma posed by our misuse of awareness and consciousness. If humankind becomes suspect of probable catastrophic losses to many of its other progeny, life then may seek to substitute Artificial Intelligence for flawed human intelligence. We, ourselves, may rapidly be creating the instruments for our future replacement with life’s resigned encouragement. Life may value this tediously acquired awareness beyond all measure. More the pity for humankind.

    These phenomena are unique on the planet; life, the life force and the awareness/consciousness of one primate species. What we regard as ultimate reality is simply the stories we tell ourselves and others combined with whatever actions humans are capable of accomplishing. Humanity must now learn to live with 5 Gigabit technology becoming a reality and should perhaps begin to wonder which future Gigabit number will be the one to provide the artificial intelligence and awareness deemed sufficient by the life force to render our kind redundant if it chooses to do so?

  2. Relationships would be great if not for people. Substitute any word like: church, government, family, socialism, anarchy…and…and…and…for the word “relationships”, but you still have people to screw it up.

    If the illness or problem cannot cure itself or self-correct, how will people do better to fix the problems of people? If by evolution then it is in fact very natural any outcome; even extinction.

    I agree the narrative is very well controlled.

  3. Hi Cait! You’re fun! Keep up the great writing!

  4. The political process hasn’t failed. It serves the super rich and swine who despise the elctorate in an atmosphere of where huge numbers of infantile, ignorant, citizen parasites just fine.

    Nor has capitalism failed. It’s engine of prosperity, no matter how hard you try to disparage it. Capitalist economies are not variants of an Epstein-Clinton-Dershowitz weekend on Fantasy Island. They are intended to work within a legal framework that ensures a level playing field, no concentration of economic power, no fraud, contracts enforced, and decent provisions for workers who are injured. Think Workmen’s Compensation, unemployment subsidies, food stamps, health insurance, and disability compensation.

    You fools who think it’s all about tooth and claw and Lord of the Flies willfully choose not to understand how this works. Are six media companies owners of all US media? That’s not the intended result of “capitalism” but as result of political cowardice and citizen indifference. Wnyone who thinks automobilies are manufactured only with an accelerator and no steering wheels is a patently obvious moron as anyone who thinks companies are formed and can operated thereafter in reckless, rapacious, oppressive, and criminal ways.

    Please, if you want to write political commentary serve up something more intelligable than something on the level with Saturday morning cartoons on TV.

    1. Stephen Verchinski Avatar
      Stephen Verchinski

      Its a heat engine, pumping out both good and bad things in its quest for burning consumption.

      Its a failure and you and your friends have the means to fix it or you won’t. Its not a board game, its a planetary ship with poor choices for executive functionaires and the crew is going to move on radicalism.

      Evolutionary or meet the Revolutionaries. Simple. And do it soon. In not a year. Six months or less is really you all have.

      Also either Pledge Allegiance to We The People or not. (The link is below) We the People having an understanding or not. Oh, and have a Green Day kind of day. You know the song. We don’t need any more of them.

      http://Www.movetoamend.org

  5. A very sincere recommendation from someone who has thought about this a lot (= 15 years).

    Please read Rene Guenon, starting with his Crisis of the Modern World and Reign of Quantity. Once one starts seeing what he means, everything starts falling in place. At the very least, one will see that there is no reason to fall in agitation and despair while walking on the path of truth irrespective of whether one’s actions succeed.

    One can also start with Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy, but keeping in mind that he was a mere beginner compared to someone like Guenon.

  6. A president who told the Truth, and who had the authenticity to connect with people, could do it. If it was the right person. Tulsi Gabbard could do it.

  7. Stephen Morrell Avatar
    Stephen Morrell

    Where to start? This general thesis of pessimism is based on abstraction rather than what goes on in the real world. First, most worthwhile human creations have never ‘worked’ at first. Each significant invention and every major technological advance has triumphed, sometimes through titanic struggle, over multiple failures to make it work. Yet each showed promise at first, and that’s what kept them alive. With enough human ingenuity and determination and persistence, with attention to detail and to the science in understanding why things didn’t first work as conceived, then things eventually can be made to work. Planes fly, computers compute, and prosthetic limbs soon will have sensory feedback that was science fiction only a decade ago. Today quantum computers or stem-cell therapies, don’t work. Tomorrow they most likely will. Above all, evidence of promise is assembled and lessons are learnt.

    While this may be argument by analogy, let’s look at the far-reaching social ‘experiments’ that have been ‘tried’, those that are significant socio-economic alternatives to capitalism, where capitalism actually was actually overthrown. First up, in each country where capitalism has been replaced by a socialised economy with planning, the living standards of the population have increased well beyond those in corresponding countries where capitalism wasn’t replaced. Compare China with India or Cuba with Haiti, for example. Despite all the bureaucratism and political repression of Stalinism, first in Russia, then elsewhere, these societies have shown great promise. The USSR was first to put a satellite then a human into space, not the US. China was the first to land and control a lunar lander on the far side of the moon, not the EU or US. On almost every social indicator, post-capitalist societies, despite their initial and residual economic backwardness, outstrip that bastion of capitalism, the US. Literacy rates, child and infant mortality, female participation rates in ‘male’ occupations outstrip those in the US and in many capitalist countries. Where capitalism has been overthrown, it’s been in backward countries who had little other choice if they were to advance with their sovereignty intact and whom the imperialists have since strived to destroy. What hasn’t been tried at all is a socialist revolution in an advanced country.

    Focusing a little on the Russian revolution of 1917 and on its subsequent degeneration, before the rise of Stalin both Lenin and Trotsky were acutely aware that things wouldn’t end well in backward Russia if the revolution didn’t quickly spread to an advanced country. They saw the Russian backwardness and isolation already creating a state machine that was consuming not only the soviets (ie, worker’s councils) but the Bolshevik party itself. They pinned their hopes especially on Germany coming to the rescue, which nearly happened in 1923. Instead the failure of the 1923 (‘stillborn’) German revolution gave both Hitler and Stalin enormous impetus.

    Trotsky later characterised the Russian revolution’s degeneration as the ‘soviet Thermidor’, not unlike what happened in the French revolution where conservative elements also came to power. In the USSR, scarcity and isolation were the material basis for the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy. And Stalin certainly didn’t want an advanced country to have a socialist revolution because that would undermine, by example, his own reason for existence. Hence the anti-internationalist notion of ‘socialism in one country’, and the consequent perfidious role of Stalinism in sabotaging revolutions from China and Spain to Greece, Italy, Chile, Portugal, France, Indonesia, to name a few.

    While it might be argued that ‘socialism’ hasn’t worked because its precepts somehow weren’t followed, what’s more fundamental is that socialism has never been achieved. The material backwardness of post-capitalist societies along with the relentless force of imperialist encirclement have prevented these societies from coming anywhere near to a socialist level of development, ie, more advanced than capitalism. Socialism depends on an international division of labour and levels of technical and productive development not yet achieved even in the most advanced capitalist countries. In short, these are real material reasons for why socialism has not only ‘failed’ but hasn’t even remotely occurred.

    Where to finish? The remaining post-capitalist societies (North Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, China and Cuba) have shown great promise despite their isolation and many obstacles. Their promise is such that the imperialists repeatedly try to undermine and destroy them.

    The question should be asked: if socialism doesn’t work, why do the imperialist ‘intellectuals’ and mouthpieces continually and repeatedly set out to ‘disprove’ Marxism? If the imperialists recognise this need, why don’t those who are supposedly educated? Is it ‘narrative control’? Or is it social evolution and unmet needs and material development going in a direction that ultimately undermines capitalism and its foundation, private property? Consciousness needs to catch up, and lessons certainly need to be learnt about what has not worked in order to properly and irreversibly replace the lethal system we’re saddled with. Not to simply say ‘nothing works’ and let’s think up something ‘new’. Time is indeed short.

  8. Caitlin, you are a logical and astute observer. I belong to a group of people that are actually pursuing change. Not by protests, revolution, insurrection or any type of violence. It is a group that is guided by the principle that the world cannot escape its apocalyptic destiny unless and until the principle of the unity of humanity is firmly established. The equality of men and women, we believe is also a prerequisite for peace. We are from all races, all religious backgrounds and all educational and economic levels. We expand by loving service and example, not by use of force. We live in 190 countries and territories. We work quietly, have the ear of the UN and will not be in the news for any kind of protest. Our founder is Baha’u’llah the Glory of God. 170 years ago or so he laid down a blueprint for the voluntary unification of humanity, how to solve it’s personal, national and supranational problems and encouraged us to justice, love and unshakable integrity. For this effort He was stripped of His wealth, tortured, imprisoned and banished. He predicted the world as it is now quite presciently and called our
    willingness to die and kill for ideology the worship of false gods. He states “Every man (and woman) of insight will in this day readily admit, that the counsels which the pen of this Wronged One hath revealed, constitute the supreme animating power for the advancement of the world and the exultation of its peoples. Arise O people, and by the power of God’s might, strive to gain the victory over your own selves that happily the world may be freed and sanctified from its servitude to the gods of it’s idle fancies. Gods which have inflicted such loss upon and are responsible for the misery of their wretched worshipers. These idols form the obstacle that impedeth man in his efforts to advance in the path of perfection. We cherish the hope that the hand of Divine Providence may lend Its assistance to mankind and deliver it from its state of grievous abasement.”
    As Caitlin said, new ideas may come from an unexpected source. We do not believe that the world needs to become Baha’i’s for it to be redeemed but we have a deep faith that we are all one people and until that fact is recognized and we stop assigning different values to people based on politics, nationality, race, religion, gender etc. we will stagger from one crises to another with increasing misery.
    Ward Hazen

    1. the jesuits have a saying….give me the boy until 7 and i’ll give you the man. children is where it starts. stop feeding them to the system and tell them the truth about their world so they dont get captured at the beginning through inculcation sorcery.

    2. Thank you Ward Hazen. Was trying to think of a way to say what you so succinctly conveyed in such a dignified fashion. There are other forces at work, a spiritual revolution if you will, that is largely unseen and the Bahai spirit is at the very heart of it providing the model and foundation of an eventual great international peace to come. In the meantime I salute courageous truth tellers like Caitlin and fealess bloggers who call out the lies, greed and corruption by those forces invested in inequality, oppression and war.

  9. Caitlin,

    You’re moving the goal posts.

    Actual socialism (socialism for the poor rather than “QE” for the rich) and communism successfully raised living standards of people suffering from the oligarchs ruling those same countries beforehand, up until the point foreign oligarchs destroyed them. (Except for Cuba, which has fared better than the other countries the USA has had its hands on.). For instance, Russia and China each had one last famine near the outset of their newly formed governments but those countries used to suffer them frequently under the prior capitalist regimes. Cuba’s success amid constant sabotage is a remarkable achievement.

    Just because I spray herbicide on your farm doesn’t invalidate your farming system.

    If you move the goal posts to include durability, then 5,000-year-old oligarchy has been an overwhelming stunning success.

    Yes, brainstorm ways to defang oligarchy and protect other systems. Calling the other systems “failures” seems like an unfair assessment.

    1. Good points. The most benefit to the most people should be the definition of success. By this measure, socialism is the obvious choice. If you want a class-structured society, not so much.
      The biggest challenge is convincing the masses that prosperity is possible for all under true international socialism. Capitalist propaganda has been very effective in training people to think illogically which is how they maintain control, even today with so much information available at our fingertips.
      We are getting to the point where we won’t be able to make the necessary choices, if we’re not there already.

  10. Well I have a plausible solution….. but you’re not going to like it.

    To restate the problem: the ruling class are psychotic but have enough power to stop anyone doing anything remotely useful. In fact the harder we try the more threatened they become and the more they push back.

  11. Heads they win and tails we loose . . . leaves us on the edge. This is the 21st century. Humanity has reached the age of responsibility and we either act like a mature species or go extinct. Period. Wealth and power comprise a positive feedback system. Increasing one increases the other in run-a-way ad-infinitum. This is neither stable nor sustainable. Think nuclear chain reaction.

    The consequence of capitalism is the concentration of wealth. When matter is distributed around the universe we have vibrant star systems and, at least one, living planet. When wealth is distributed among a society we have happy, healthy people. But when matter is concentrated we get singularities and once wealth is accumulated by a single, apex capitalist , society will fall into the black hole of extinction.

    How to get “there” from “here”? Beats the shit out of me. We are not going to change the redneck white nationalists so we need the police and military. There are some good ones.

    Creative economics. Remember monetary wealth is ALL in our heads so anything is possible that we can agree upon. Starting with a central bank we could: Pick an arbitrary maximum wealth of say, $1 million. If someone has $10 million, we take $9 million of it and redistribute back into society. When they buy something for $10 they only pay $1 and the central bank pays $9. The wealthy retain their purchase power and all that wealth goes back into society.

  12. Humanity is most probably on it’s death bed now. Those aware of this should behave as principled hospice volunteers, trying to provide love to those suffering and afraid. The truly brainwashed are beyond our ability to help and will idiotically keep smiling into the apocalypse.

  13. First, the OP is conflating whether a certain system or reform works and whether a strategy to make people embrace it works. Those are two separate issues. That’s like saying ‘Bandaging a wound doesn’t work as a way of stopping the bleeding and preventing infections, because so far I’m not bandaging it.’ You might as well say ‘Bringing down CO2 emissions doesn’t work as a way of stopping climate change, because we haven’t brought them down so far.’
    .
    Second, it’s true that knowing the right system or reform is useless without a strategy to make people embrace it. However, it’s even more obvious that the converse is true – a strategy to make people embrace something is useless if you don’t even have any idea what that something should be in the first place. And the first step in making people embrace a system or reform is at least, well, explicitly saying which system or reform you think is right and adducing arguments for your view. Refusing to do that, as the OP does here, is even more unhelpful than not providing a strategy.
    .
    In this specific case, such a refusal is particularly odd. The main standard by which the OP assesses and rejects all systems and reforms is whether they have solved the problem of climate change. It’s perfectly obvious that not all potential systems and reforms are equally promising in this respect. A massive change of the economy not motivated by increased efficiency and profitability requires massive government interference in the economy. There is no conceivable way in which pure free-market capitalism or libertarianism can solve this, which is why their adherents are inclined to be climate-change deniers. (In addition, the capitalist class that these ideologies seek to preserve and free from all control funds climate change denial and sponsors anti-climate politicians.) It’s as if you had a patient with a knife wound, some people proposed bandaging it, other people proposed sticking a knife even deeper into the wound, and Caitlin Johnstone said: ‘Well, all of your proposed treatments are equally wrong, because none of you have managed to convince the patient to accept your preferred treatment so far.’ Thanks a lot, that really helped the discussion advance in the right direction.
    .
    As for the claim that ‘in theory any of them could potentially work in an alternate universe’, it depends on what you mean by ‘working’ (apart from preventing climate change). If your idea of ‘working’ includes ensuring that people have freedom and prosperity in accordance with jusice, then no, capitalism and libertarianism can never work in any universe in theory either, because they inevitably produce the domination of rich over poor. Unaccountable power of man over man always leads to abuse, and the power of bosses over workers and of the affluent over the needy is no exception. The radical capitalist and right-wing libertarian ideologies are fake rebellions, whose only function is to maintain the status quo and the domination of our current billionaire class by means of gaslighting. These facts will not lose their significance as long as more than one human exists. Even if humanity is destroyed by climate change, every stage in the process of our extinction will still involve choices between approaches that are more just and equitable in terms of freedom and welfare and approaches that are less so; favouring the powerless or favouring the powerful. Individuals all die, and humanity may also die, but we will always have to choose whether to die more like humans with a conscience, or more like cannibalistic beasts.
    .
    So why this extreme pseudo-balance, false equivalency and refusal to take sides? Well, one factor that I imagine might play a role at some level, conscious or not, is that right-wingers are, it seems to me, at least one half of CJ’s fan base (for that matter, it would only be natural if they are also the richest and consequently most generous among her patrons/donors). Offending and alienating your base is probably not a good idea if you want to stay in this business, once you have carved out such a niche.

    1. Foundling – you have a complicated way of not getting it.

      1. Perhaps you have got what I said, perhaps not, but what is certain is that you have a rather unproductive way of objecting to it.

      2. Sasha Podolsky Avatar
        Sasha Podolsky

        I regularly read CJ posts. I also like your comment here. Great balanced and up to the point. It would be nice to know how long it took for you to write it and did you do a couple of drafts. But I think mentally she is more like the Olly Lennard of PhilosophyTube, Haread Fraad, and in lesser degree like Richard d Wolff and Yanis Varoufakis. All those people definitely more committed to the idea of migration from extreme capitalist system. In your comment at the end she looks like a Jimmy Dore opportunist rage personality. Still i read her posts after all others mentioned here. May be she is just got tired and need to get some fresh air.
        Anyway your comment is very good. Thank you.

    2. The discussion about ‘climate change’ is false when no one wants to consider that weather modification and geoengineering has been going for decades. Weather warfare is real.

      There are some geoengineering scientist like David Keith who propose putting sulfur in the air to stop “climate change”.

      Yes sulfur the very chemical that causes acid rain.

    3. Allow me to refute….. you seem to be saying it’s better to have a system that theoretically could work if given a fair shake (ie communism) than one that couldn’t work even if it was tried (eg libertarians), but CJ is asking can it work so it doesn’t matter which point of failure applies or whether both do, failure is failure.

      You (and I) get a gold star for wanting a most beautiful failure. Doesn’t matter. Yes it does seem unfair to equate a noble failure with a corrupt one, I’ll give you that. I’ll even agree that communism has had the only limited successes in overturning the ruling class and solving the problems we face. Again: a gold star for first place but we’re not grading on the curve here. Failure is failure.

      Communism can’t work because they’ve seen us coming for a century now. They are prepared. They’ll just bomb the idea until they have robots that can replace workers and then we don’t even have the power of the working class. They could and quite likely would just exterminate the workers — if climate change, insect Armageddon or accidental nuclear war doesn’t kill us first. Maybe it would be able to win through eventually. But we don’t have time. We’re about out of time. Just a few more decades really.

      Revolution has been tried for ten thousand years and hardly ever works and then only locally and for a while.

      1. ‘so it doesn’t matter which point of failure applies or whether both do, failure is failure.’
        .
        The first reason why it does matter is because however low our current chance of success may be, it is still far greater if our initial concept is right than if it is wrong. To have any chance at all, we need to have at least the right idea about the *direction* in which we need and want to move; just ignoring, obscuring or refusing to discuss even that is a non-starter. Second – communism is not just a system or an ideal endpoint, but also a direction and a set of values. There are always, so to speak, more communist-y ways to do things and less communist-y ways to do them – i.e., more lefty and less lefty, more equitable and less equitable, with less or more hierarchy and arbitrary power. Medicare for all under capitalism in the US is still a more communist-y option than Obamacare. A democratic republic is more communist-y than a monarchy. Everything in life is relative, so these differences do matter. And even if the human species goes extinct within ten, or thirty, or a hundred years, it will still matter how we live and do things until that time, who gets to make the decisions, how we distribute the dwindling resources among us and so on. After all, each one of us will almost certainly die within that time frame anyway, and it still matters to him how he will live his life until then, doesn’t it?

  14. You’re right and I’ve been saying for years since the failure of the revolution of the 1970’s … you can’t fight a revolution by walking around carrying signs and banners being non violent thinking that being peaceful against people thousands of mercenaries armed to the teeth being paid to maintain the status quo without one conscience among them … fact is we don’t have the stomach for a REAL revolution, we don’t have the guts for the violence, we are so divided on philosopies of how to accomplish what we won’t even try, we don’t have a unified plan nor a leader to gather round and get behind. Bottom line, we’re just spending time being entertained and distracted by the spectacles waiting for when the time comes for us to be taken down …

    1. As Caitlin said, violent revolution has a poor record of long term success.

      1. let’s start with the success and then let’s worry about the “long term” … the only way to fix this is to tear it down completely and rebuild it from scratch. Unless of course you have an alternative to what is certain destruction of everyone.

      2. We don’t care about the “long term” bit so much.

  15. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
    Trisha Driscoll

    What I call the “XY” factor plays a key (and mostly un-discussed) role in supporting the status quo. Specifically, the role played by men in their collective dominance over women (aka patriarchy) and property (aka the “rule of law”).

    How many times have I been in a meeting of self-styled “progressives” where men dominated the discussion, interrupted women (and each other), declared status by one-upping, denigrated women, twisted the agenda, etc.? Too many to count.

    How many women do I know that have been assaulted in one form or another by a man? Every single one.

    The “rule of law” is upheld as a rational way of governing. As the briefest look at the results (jail population and sentences for poor folks committing trivial property crimes versus rich folks committing vastly destructive economic crimes) in the U.S. reveals, the “rule of law” has nothing to do with truth, justice, or equality, it is simply a set of rules to resolve disputes, created by our owners, mostly to their benefit.

    For those interested in learning more about the “XY” factor, “The Creation of Patriarchy” by Gerda Lerner, and “You Just Don’t Understand” by Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. offer important insights.

    1. i agree with your comment trisha. violent, domineering men are causing most of the destruction of earth and all its creatures.

      at the heart is the disconnection of humanity from Nature. most of us believe we are superior and can ‘fix’ nature. but no, we are Nature.

      1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
        Trisha Driscoll

        Exactly. And watch how men attempt to deny their responsibilities for such vast and horrific swaths of violence by pointing to the (extremely) few women who also have joined the ranks of violent males. But the record cannot be refuted. As in the founding document of western civilization – the Bible – the male God in the Old Testament often acted as a demented psychopath, overseeing the wanton murder of innocent men, women, children, even animals.

  16. My first rough draft of my proposal for an Alliance for National Salvation can be read at manzikert1071.blogspot.com

    The idea is that partisan politics waste our energy against each other while the elites use the political opposites to keep us under control, and that until we substantially cut military spending which is in a feedback loop funding the corruption to keep increasing funding there is no way off the march to greater failure and crisis.

    And pressing domestic issues will continue to not be addressed as there is no air in the room for a national discussion of the issues due to military spending and the continuing militarization of the country and the wars.

    1. ARIUSARMENIAN, you are right. I think that Caitlin makes good points, but I would add that the problem is the money. I am a neuroscientist and the data are fairly clear that money has very deleterious effects on the human mind. It acts like a combination of an addictive drug and hyper-status symbol and it causes people to do great harm without concern for the wide ranging negative consequences on people and the planet. It explains why no system of government works, because they are all subverted by what money does to people’s behavior and moral compass. Until you regulate money much more thoroughly while also taxing at the 90% rate once someone makes over $1 million a year. It may sound strange now, but that is how we taxed the rich in the 1950s. And it was working.

  17. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
    Trisha Driscoll

    I used to believe that human society was not subject to natural laws per se. But as I’ve learned, human societies are fundamentally complex systems subsisting far from equilibrium, and thus subject to the laws of non-equilibrium thermodynamics.

    The “purpose” of complex systems is to process energy and material flows as efficiently as possible to reduce those flows with a goal of minimizing production of entropy within the system. According to the laws of thermodynamics, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so complex systems increase entropy (think waste and heat) outside themselves.

    The universe in general has plenty of entropy to spare, but the planet earth does not. Thus we are swimming (literally) in pollutants and heat arising from the increasing complexity (industrialization being the latest example) of human society.

    Complex systems seek stability at the point of minimal internal entropy production, and once they reach that point are increasingly resistant to change. However, constantly increasing complexity can incur costs that lead to instability and drastic change (bifurcation) to a new stable and often collapsed state. This is basically the herstory of civilizations and is well documented by Joseph Taintor in his book The Collapse of Complex Societies (he’s on youtube as well) and Jared Diamond.

    On reading Richard Dawkin’s excellent book “The Selfish Gene” I learned that even IDEAS (Dawkins invented the term memes) are subject to the laws of evolution (and thermodynamics). All of which explains to a large degree why human-driven “change” is so difficult.

    1. What you hint at is called Biomass and carrying capacity.

      If Humans are able to cooperate enough to actually go into the stars and populate other planets this problem will be alleviated.

      No one can truly calculate the Biomass and carrying capacity of the entire universe.

      Even when our planet reaches the upper limit of its carrying capacity doesn’t necessarily mean that we as a species will go extinct, our numbers would be reduced for certain, however this in turns become what is called an evolutionary bottleneck.

      1. evolutionary bottleneck or more accurately a population bottleneck.

  18. There is mentality that is seeped into the modern human mind both overtly and covertly.
    It is a mentality that undergirds the pseudoscience of economics.
    It is the mentality of the ‘ruling cabal’ and they thrive on it.
    It is the mentality of Social Darwinist
    It comes from a gross misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.

    They believe ‘competition’ is what drives humanity when in fact it is human’s ability to cooperate with each other at varying levels have allowed for great achievements in the human species and becoming the dominant life form on the planet. From hunting in groups to bring down big game to building long standing monuments. And yes mass slaughter is of each other as well. Thus the ruling cabal wants our “cooperation” with their agenda and beliefs. Being aware of what the ruling cabal is trying to ‘sell’ you and twist your mind is one step towards real freedom.

    1. “They believe ‘competition’ is what drives humanity when in fact it is human’s ability to cooperate with each other at varying levels have allowed for great achievements in the human species and becoming the dominant life form on the planet. From hunting in groups to bring down big game to building long standing monuments. And yes mass slaughter is of each other as well.”
      ===
      I agree with you 100%. This can be demonstrated quite simply. You and your neighbor decide to replace the falling-down-rotten fence between your properties. If you don’t want to hire a contractor, you’ve got to build it yourselves, and there is only one way to do that and remain friends — co-operate and treat each other with as much respect and kindness as possible rather than piss and moan trying to get the advantage, or try to get the neighbor to pay for the lumber and then never pay back your fair share. The latter behavior will strain relations for literally decades. There is a lot of that latter behavior going on the world today, and we see the results right in front of our eyes.

  19. What we all, as individuals at first, must somehow, some way come to recognize and accept as truth is something that we have been brainwashed by a capitalist system from Day 1 to believe is not true– that the one and only thing that will save humanity from itself (us from each other) is the EXACT OPPOSITE of greed, and that is to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
    ..
    Appreciating that the vast majority of human beings have not yet killed anyone, we are forced to realize that leading a relatively peaceful life “at the local level” is, at the very least, POSSIBLE. At the inter-national level of human relationships, however, a peaceful “relationship” has been impossible for humanity to achieve and, again, this is IMO entirely due to the Elite’s mistaken belief in the INFALLIBILITY of greed (and, even worse in a nuclear-armed world, in one’s own exceptionalism).
    ..
    IMO, the movie “Tomorrowland” it is one of the most important, “smartest” attempts made so far at waking up both the bewildered herd AND its Elite to the ongoing, worsening human crisis. Here’s Governor Nix’s complete speech near the end of the movie.
    ..
    “Let’s imagine….. if you glimpsed the future; you were frightened by what you saw; what would you DO with that information? You would go to…….the politicians, captains of industry?
    ..
    And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck. The only facts they WON’T challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in.
    ..
    But what if… what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone’s head?
    ..
    The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it—to scare people straight ……….because what reasonable human being wouldn’t be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they’ve ever known or loved?
    ..
    To save civilization, I would show its collapse.
    ..
    But how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people RESPONDED to the prospect of imminent doom?
    ..
    They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn’t fear their demise, they re-packaged it. It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies. The entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon.
    ..
    Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you.
    ..
    You’ve got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one!
    ..
    Bees and butterflies start to disappear; the glaciers melt; algae blooms.
    ..
    All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and YOU WON”T TAKE THE HINT!
    ..
    In every moment there’s the possibility of a better future, but you people won’t believe it. And because you won’t believe it, you won’t DO what is necessary to make it a reality. So you dwell on this, oh, terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason…… because THAT future does not ask anything of you TODAY.
    ..
    So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic ……but you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you WANT to sink! You gave up! That’s not the monitor’s fault. That’s yours.”

    ..
    You know what’s so ironic? The bewildered herd is so UNIMAGINABLY well brainwashed that it can not “figure out” that it will NOT be told of impending doom by its (in a different way) brainwashed Elite.
    ..
    The herd believes so much in the sincerity and, for lack of a better expression, the good will of “authorities”, along with the effectiveness of “the system” (the Matrix) in which it has been raised, it cannot grasp that the Elite and their great system could possibly fail catastrophically. The herd’s brains literally can not “see” reality, just like bulls in the ring cannot see what’s going on behind that strange looking guy’s cape.
    ..
    For example, just ask the dead who lived and killed in those trenches during WWI, or marched right into the “showers” in Auschwitz, what THEY would have said to those who told them what the future had in store for them. “Impossible!”, they would have replied.
    ..
    Even when hermits or movie producers try to explain it to “voters” through appeals to their imagination or movies like “Tomorrowland” or “The Matrix”, because those individual human beings are not hearing or reading or seeing this terrible-but-accurate elucidation of the real world on their master-Elite’s newspapers or web sites or TV “news” shows, or in the Elite’s public school classrooms’ Elite-approved textbooks, those individuals are INCAPABLE of reacting effectively to impending doom. In short, these individuals have to / EXPECT TO be told what to do and what to think by those who so effectively control them.
    ..
    “If things were that bad, we’d hear about it in the news.”
    ..
    Once again with feeling, NO, WE WON’T!
    ..
    Accurate descriptions of the real world; the possible “prescriptions” to repair the fatal flaws in the present system, and the “instructions” on how to behave for a truly better future must come NOT from the Elite, but from OURSELVES. The Elite are INCAPABLE of it.
    ..
    Even if we self-centered voters DID somehow manage to overcome their brainwashing and see reality, because of our educations, we would IMO still have, to put it mildly, great difficulty organizing and creating a plan of action, let alone implementing it. For example, The Day After the “out of the blue” collapse, desperately trying to find a foundation-stone of a new system before the ensuing political chaos becomes uncontrollably, irretreivably widespread, we would almost certainly fall back on the fatally-flawed myths that inexorably led to the system that is about to collapse around us — the INFALLIBILITY of greed and that growth is God.
    ..
    It is a testament to the power of propaganda that what should be obvious is completely lost on we who have been subjected to it every day of our lives. Even the intelligent producers of Tomorrowland, The Matrix, THX1138, Logan’s Run, The Time Machine, Soylent Green, Star Trek, etc. are, so far anyway, incapable of elucidating even a fictional-but-viable-looking “movie-solution” to humanity’s very-real, increasingly-serious conundrum. After the enemies in these prescient movies are vanquished or escaped from, “they lived happily ever after” is all we temporarily-relieved viewers take home to ponder.
    ..
    So what is the foundation-stone of the post-systemic-failure going to be? Is it going to be “let the president become Napoleon”; “TBTF banks know what’s best for us”; “stand up and do what comes naturally”; “last man standing”; “dog eat dog”; “might makes right”; “do what our gang says or we’ll kill you”? Or is it going to be “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
    ..
    As Klattu (in the original “The Day The Earth Stood Still”) told those assembled in front of his flying saucer 66 years ago, “the decision rests with you”.
    ..
    The decision for humanity’s future does indeed rest with us and we and our descendants will suffer the consequences of our decisions, just as we are suffering the decisions of our distant ancestors today.

    1. Thanks Ish. Those were good comments. The real struggle is taking place to try and defeat the brainwashers who are leading us to our doom unaware and unresisting. We are not angry or afraid or scared of our situation; instead we just have another beer, go get laid, make some money for the man, or whatever. Just don’t think about some things, but if you do, then don’t tell anyone – they might think you are “different”.

    2. Your comments remind me of:

      The allegory of The Cave by Plato

      1. Or the Matrix. By any name the false construct most people take for reality and mindlessly serve. The unexamined lives……not worth living…… Plato knew of it, we never understood him.

    3. Ms. C. Johnstone, Are we a little down~Down Under? Maybe a tipple from the fruit of the grape might help? I hear you’re burning hot down there, and too much water in the East, and turning to desert in the West, the rivers now trickles and the fish belly-up, tis a sad day for farmers and the sheep I hear, Yet your politicians (Eels in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When they wiggle they mistake the agitation of their tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the Statesman, they suffer the disadvantage of being alive.) Ambrose Bierce, Seem to care not a wit, less there money to be made in a new coal mine or the like. Up top, here in Alaska we are all somewhat muddled, we don’t have to shovel or plow rain, but that puts us widening ditches, and deepening ponds, the starfish all melted away, where you have dead fish we have dead whales and birds and fished out fish, now they’re wanting to kill the sea otters for their daring to eat THEIR Clams and THEIR Urchins, And THEIR Sea slugs. SHAME on us all for the endless blinding GREED. I would like to compliment the following for their erudite comments: Ms. Cora Brigg, Ms. Trish Driscoll, Iskabibble (Movie:Network) Mr. F. Foundling, Orlando, and Steve Morrell. “Life., n. A Spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily appreciation of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, “is life worth living?” has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.” A.Bierce, again….Cheer up, they said, things could be worse, and sure enough I cheered up and things got worse, Regards to all stirred up to write in by Ms. Caitlin’s sincere wish for things to improve, at least some of us are Listening!

  20. Ms Johnstone ” the planet earth ” would be much better off without ” human beings ” continuing to destroy it!!

    A world wide nuclear war or some new plague may be the best thing for the planet earth in the long run!!

  21. A mushroom is the growth of a fungus living under ground. It is the fruiting body of the organism. All the evil people we see at the top of humanity are like the mushroom, they are the fruiting body of the rest of us. Spiritual teachers have been telling us for thousands of years: that what we take to be good and normal in ourselves is not so at all. We are all filled with egotism and self-deception. The best thing you can do for the world is to find Freedom within yourself. And ultimately it is the one thing you always have the power to do no matter what else is going on in the world.

  22. Well said Caitlin, but have you considered that intelligence may be over-rated as an evolutionary survival strategy? I often wonder what the people of Easter Island thought about the day they cut the last tree down.
    .
    Consider two very successful species — sharks and alligators, both millions of years old, but not what humans would consider particularly intelligent.
    .
    In consolation, by whatever means we destroy ourselves and our biosphere, no matter how advanced technologically, it will be an entirely natural event because we ourselves are the natural product of our environment. Thus anything we do must be considered a natural outcome of our existence, even our own extinction.
    .
    But the biosphere will survive and other species will evolve and life will go on. Just not us (and whatever other species we kill off during our demise).
    .
    The problem is our intelligence is not informed by our wisdom (a capacity to learn from our previous mistakes socially, as a species). This is the heart of our conundrum — our biological programming (dominance and submission within a social order) coupled with our intelligence and subsequent technological development leads us into self-destructive social structures — an inability to see beyond the immediate gratification of our needs to a longer term view of our best interests.
    .
    The point here is not that we cannot achieve wisdom as individuals, but that as a species we do not consistently value that wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we consistently choose leaders whom appeal to and stoke our most base instinct (fear, a highly developed legacy of our biological programming).
    .
    Thus fear overcomes wisdom and drives our social programming which eventually results in the exact outcome we fear.
    .
    Greatly simplified, I know, but essentially an accurate depiction our Catch-22, no? Or should we talk about the seven deadly sins and their contribution too?

    1. Very well put. I could type alot here. It would be easier if you went to my blog on Medium and searched for CMW. i am the the fifth one down, member since jan. 18. What is really comes down to is that we live in a world/environment dominated by individual intelligence. We now have the opportunity to transition to a world dominated by a Collective Intelligence.

  23. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
    Trisha Driscoll

    Unfortunately, it’s more than a question of ideology or any other conscious decision. The law governing biological populations goes: a given population will expand until some resource limit is reached. Humans have figured out how to expand their reach over resources, such as food, at the expense of other species. The bad news is that the human species will not stop expanding until all resources within reach are exhausted. And that’s the law.

    There is a corollary about power: entities that are drawn to power by any means, wield that power power over those who don’t. This applies to all forms of power, including money, narratives, etc. This explains why psychopathic males (primarily) have dominated since at least the beginning of recorded history. The irony is that a given “just” society must empower its own psychopaths to protect itself from predator societies, and round and round we go.

    1. Their is no “law” that says we cannot change our behavior. The example of many who have changed shows this. I was not always as wise and nice as I am now, and I know others who have grown and changed. How to get more folks to transform their minds and behavior is our goal, if we are to survive.

      1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
        Trisha Driscoll

        Believing we are not subject to natural laws is a particularly human conceit, and largely responsible in my view for the dire situation in which we find ourselves.

        Do give some examples of human populations changing their behavior in terms of voluntarily limiting their population, voluntarily turning away from consuming resources, or overturning the domination of psychopathic males. There may be a few on the fringes, but generally this never happens due to biological programming.

        I’ve been an activist for decades, and am also a veteran. In my personal experience few people change in any fundamental way unless confronted by an extreme shock: disease, war, death, economic collapse, etc. Due to the intentional policies of our corrupt owners, today people are less well educated and far more driven by economic fear than were those of my generation (boomer).

        There are always outliers to the law: yes, a few minds/behavior change. But it’s not the behavior of the individual in a species that counts. As endlessly recorded by history (note the dominant paradigm) humans are ruled by biological imperatives and cultural programming. It’s the law.

        1. I agree with you. What I believe needs to happen is for people to be confronted with the extreme shock that they are ignorant. We need to view human thought as “fractured”. No one “individual” is God or need be. Modern technology now gives us the ability to develop a “Collective Intelligence”. We need the abilityh to form better conclusions. Human logic must rule, over all the failings of man. This may not be making sense I know. See my blog on Medium. Search CMW. I am the fifth or so down, member since jan18. I too consider myself an activist. I just know that on the present playing field we will loose. So we change the playing field. Create an environment for humans to advance/evolve.

          1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
            Trisha Driscoll

            From my experience, nobody responds well to being confronted with the idea that they are ignorant. Most recently the “deplorables” reacted by voting that horrible psychopath Trump into office.

            I already see signs of “collective intelligence” everywhere – embodied in “smart” phones and the internet. The results so far are destruction of a lot of REAL social activity and creation of an extremely dangerous hive mind (Russiagate anyone?).

            What playing field? Millenials? Self-absorbed, entitled and a lot less nicer than my generation. Middle aged workers? Struggling to survive month to month, fearful of losing job, healthcare, housing, you name it. Poor people (most of the world’s population)? Struggling to survive day to day. Older folks (myself included)? We’ll be gone shortly. I’m not seeing a lot of fertile playing field.

        2. ‘Believing we are not subject to natural laws is a particularly human conceit’
          .
          Actually, monitor lizards believe they aren’t subject to natural laws, too. Prove me wrong. Seriously, there are a lot of respects in which we differ from all or most animals, so nothing can be automatically assumed to be an inescapable ‘natural law’ for us just because it holds true for other animals.
          .
          ‘Do give some examples of human populations changing their behavior in terms of voluntarily limiting their population…’
          .
          China’s one-child policy. And the populations of most rich societies have below replacement fertility, which is not actually a deliberate collective choice, but does make us different from any other animal under the circumstances. You admit the existence of cultural programming – well, that’s precisely what can and must be changed.
          .
          ‘voluntarily turning away from consuming resources,’
          .
          The protection of the Crown’s forests and game in the Middle Ages. Well, actually, that’s just a different way of consuming/using them, but one that happens not to exhaust them. The same applies to what we need in this case.
          .
          ‘or overturning the domination of psychopathic males.’
          .
          Of course those in power have never been uniformly good people, but a lot of good has been done by them nonetheless. Calling them ‘psychopathic’ is wrong – the powerful are normal, just steered by the ethos of a privileged class and/or the logic of a social system. The ‘male’ part is far from always true, too, and nowadays there are probably more females in positions of power than at any other time in recorded history – which doesn’t make them any nicer once in power, so you might as well abandon the misandristic arguments, too.

          1. ” Calling them ‘psychopathic’ is wrong – the powerful are normal, just steered by the ethos of a privileged class and/or the logic of a social system. ”

            There are plenty of articles and studies suggesting that yes the rulers of this world, the extremely wealthy and powerful are psychopaths and sociopaths They thrive under the capitalist system.

            Some call it a kakistocracy.

            1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
              Trisha Driscoll

              Excellent point, and there are thermodynamic reasons why this must be the case – those pesky natural laws again.

              Essentially, organisms compete for energy and material flows, crowding out those who are less efficient at accessing those energy and material flows. In nature, the process is called ecological succession. In human society, it’s called greed, war, corruption, any means by which power (money, energy, material) is acquired and wielded by those (overwhelmingly men) willing to do anything (the psychopath part).

            2. Some studies have suggested a few more percent in senior positions than in the general population, but the number isn’t normally claimed to exceed 5% anywhere, so the problem cannot be attributed primarily to them. The banality of evil is a relevant concept here.

              1. Yet the world is ruled by less than 1 percent of the population.

          2. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
            Trisha Driscoll

            Hard to prove a negative, but it’s a fact that humans share 96% of their DNA with primates, cats have 90% of homologous genes with humans, 82% with dogs, 80% with cows, 79% with chimpanzees, 69% with rats and 67% with mice, etc. etc. So yeah, plenty of natural laws do in fact apply to humans.

            China? Bad example … after China enforced a one-child policy in 1979 what happened? Population continued to increase, to this day. While some “developed” countries have reduced their birth rates, overall human population continues to grow, as does individual carbon footprint, inexorably exhausting the resources of a finite planet.

            The list of psychopathic males who have dominated their respective societies and attempted to dominate others is far too long to list, and the lives they have taken or otherwise destroyed has only accelerated in modern times due to technology guided by male dominant ideology (fascism, capitalism, and communism spring to mind).

            The very few women who have risen to the ranks of power are generally the exception that just proves the rule. And the females in power today (May and Merkel spring to mind, Thatcher of yesteryear) manifest the behaviors of their dominant male counterparts. The most recent case of a psychopathic woman attempting to reach top ranks of power was Hillary Clinton, you know “I came, I saw, he died … ha ha ha”.

            The male XY factors of aggression and dominance are pervasive in practically every culture. Myself and every woman I know has suffered from male aggression of one sort of another.

            That’s not to say there aren’t compassionate healthy males around, but they rarely rise to power in view of the competition from dominant aggressive males willing to do anything to achieve power, which is basically the story of human civilization since recorded times.

            1. >humans share 96% of their DNA with primates,
              .
              And yet somehow, in practice, the difference between humans and other primates turns out to be far greater than the one between 96 and 100, as evident even from the fact that we can destroy all life on Earth and chimps can do that just as little as mice can. Perhaps it is in order to conclude that these numbers don’t tell us all that much?
              .
              >after China enforced a one-child policy in 1979 what happened? Population continued to increase, to this day.
              .
              You asked about voluntary limits, and the growth of the population *was* limited in this way in that it was substantially slowed and the birth rate declined. There’s no reason to assume that it couldn’t have been stopped entirely if that had been deemed necessary.
              .
              .
              >some “developed” countries have reduced their birth rates
              .
              ‘Some’ is an understatement. A recent study found that almost one half of humans today live in a society with below-replacement fertility.
              .
              >overall human population continues to grow
              .
              You asked about human populationS in the plural, clearly meaning individual societies and not the entire population of the planet considered as a whole.
              .
              >The list of psychopathic males
              .
              You have no reason to call the likes of Caesar, Genghis Khan, Bush etc. psychopaths when they have merely acted in accordance with the existing norms of their societies or social strata, as they generally have. And since you acknowledge that women in power act in the same way, you simply have no justification for attributing those behaviours not to power and social norms in general but to specifically male (XY) biology, or to describe every ideology that has been associated with such behaviours as inherently ‘male dominant’.
              .
              >Myself and every woman I know has suffered from male aggression of one sort of another.
              .
              And never from female aggression and competitiveness? And you haven’t met women who are ‘willing to do anything to achieve power’ or to otherwise further their interests? Or they have been far fewer than the evil males? If so, then, based on the comparison with my own life experience as well as other sources of information, I believe that your memory in this respect is selective and ideologically influenced.

              1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
                Trisha Driscoll

                It is a fact that humans are destroying nearly all other species at an increasing rate. So yes, we’re different in that regards, but that one conclusion does not negate the vast similarities we share with other species.

                From 1960 until roughly 2002, – despite the one-child initiative – the population of China doubled from 650 million to 1.3 billion. That’s hardly limited growth. Growth rates are slowing, but the overall rate is still positive.

                I have every reason to classify folks like Caesar, Genghis Khan, George Bush, Trump, Obama, et. al. as psychopaths willing to lead or otherwise order male warriors into killing other males, and innocent men/women/children, by the millions as the case might be. The fact that elements of their respective societies have condoned such wanton behavior does not make it “normal”. It means that those societies, like the United States today, have been taught (propagandized if you will) to believe that such horrific behavior is ok, if it serves some ideological, religious, or nationalist purpose. Societies behaving like this have in essence become psychopathic.

                In my long corporate career as an executive – during which I was the only female executive at my corporation – I knew how to be pushy when needed. But I never rose to the aggressive and dominant behavior of those of my male counterparts who did whatever it took to get ahead – like any psychopath. It’s true that today ever more women are rising to high corporate and political ranks. How do they do it? Primarily by emulating their psychopathic male brethren, Hillary Clinton being a prime example.

                Believe what you may about my memory and/or ideology, it makes no difference to the irrefutable fact that the overwhelming amount of violence and aggression is perpetrated by men, in any category you’d care to name: domestic violence, murder, mass murder, suicide, war crimes.

    2. We’ve already passed “peak child”. Overpopulation is not the problem.

      1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
        Trisha Driscoll

        Not true. According to the U.N., the forecast for world population is 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, assuming humanity lasts that long, a compounded growth rate > 1% . Global birth rates are slowing, but per-person GDP is growing.

        Many nations with rapid population growth have low standards of living, whereas many developed nations with low rates of population growth have high standards of living. So even if population growth rate goes to zero, the increasing per-person ecological footprint is enough to exhaust the planet’s carrying capacity, which at the low end is estimated at 4 billion.

        1. The overpopulation myth was started by racist eugenicist.
          https://www.corbettreport.com/?s=eugenics

          The carrying capacity of the planet is nowhere near exhausted. There is so much open space on the planet it it is unfathomable, but I can see how someone who lives in a city may think there is some overpopulation problem.

          1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
            Trisha Driscoll

            You can call it whatever you want, but global population growth is a FACT. As far as can be determined, global population has GROWN consistently since at least 10,000 years BCE, with increasingly negative environmental impacts directly related to human activity of one sort or another, primarily farming and domesticated animal use, but now extending to industrial pollution on a vast scale.

            You can’t grow food on all the “unfathomable” open space without water and a climate amenable to growing crops. Depletion of non-renewable ground water already threatens over 20 million people in four countries—Syria, Yemen, South Sudan and Somalia. Global warming is also turning vast areas into desert.

            And guess what? The biggest growers of food produced with non-renewable groundwater are the U.S., Pakistan, and India. What do you think happens as those non-renewable water sources run out? Wells need to be drilled deeper requiring more energy to lift whatever water is remaining. Saltwater intrudes on coastal land. The ground subsides. Eventually the land is useless for farming. All these things are happening right NOW in the U.S.see https://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

            1. Again there is no point discussing climate change or global warming if you are not willing to discuss weather modification and geoengineering or weather warfare.

              Note those places you are saying about depletion of water are all war torn areas.

            2. BTW go learn about the Water Cycle if you want to discuss water depletion.

  24. Caitlin is certainly on the right track here, but her premise is incorrect. There are no “good” people and “bad” people, or “good” or “bad” ideologies. The human race is a cancerous organism infesting Gaia, and it is the organism in toto which is the disease. Malignant cancer proliferates until it wastes its host and eventually feeds on itself. Check out the online essay “Humans as Cancer” by A. Kent MacDougall. We, the cancer, will proliferate until we destroy the environment completely, and then and only then will we decimate ourselves. As Runaway cancer, “we” cannot do otherwise. Each of us sorry beings is in reality just one cell in the Earth’s megatumor, and as such, most of us – like cancer itself – lobbies and frets and hopes for a continuation of the species. This is merely self-preservation of an organism, and has no intrinsic value. The reality is that WE are the entire problem, and the only conclusion is that we will spread malignantly until we burn ourselves out, destroying our lovely host alongside the way.

    1. As a species, we are behaving like a cancer on the Earth. But not everyone is responsible for this malignant behavior. There is no innate or unchangeable fact of us all being cancerous. We can change our behavior and get rid of the toxic members of our species, who are leading our destructive impact on our environment. This is our challenge as an intelligent species: to use our power constructively, and eliminate those who would use it for selfish, unhealthy purposes.

      1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
        Trisha Driscoll

        Easier said than done. Our “leaders” rule us because they are overwhelmingly dominant male psychopaths drawn to acquire and exercise power. That’s the “his”tory of recorded human civilization. On occasion a few psychopathic women (Hillary Clinton comes to mind) also achieve power, and act no different than male counterparts.

    2. Earth is not an organism, so it can’t be ill and can’t have cancer. What we humans can destroy is other individual species on Earth, and there is no reason to regret their destruction if we don’t regret our own. If we destroy them and consequently ourselves, it is because we are better than them in some ways, namely at their own game of survival and proliferation, and no better than them in other ways, namely at thinking ahead and collectively controlling our destiny. If we destroy the Earth’s biosphere, that will be just the natural endpoint of the development of the Earth’s biosphere. Earth’s biosphere consists of creatures constantly killing each other in the most brutal, gruesome and merciless ways, so if one species of them eventually kills all of them and the slaugher finally ends forever, that will be, in a way, only an apt culmination of its history. Obviously, most of us humans would prefer that not to happen, and that self-preservation desire of ours does have intrinsic value, because the only source of value in the universe is precisely the desires of living beings.

      1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
        Trisha Driscoll

        The earth’s biosphere is most certainly an organism, one where the function of cells with their micro energy/materials flows is replaced by species and macro energy/material flows. And obviously there is as much creation as there is destruction, or no biological entity would exist.

        The idea that “the only source of “value” (whatever that means) in the universe is precisely the desires of living beings” is – once again – a human conceit. Well, nature is about to teach us a lesson about that conceit, and sooner rather than later.

      2. The Earth’s biosphere is an interconnected life support system. Some call it the web of life.
        “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

        This truth is evident to anyone who has studied Biology.

        ” Earth’s biosphere consists of creatures constantly killing each other in the most brutal, gruesome and merciless ways, so if one species of them eventually kills all…”

        Nature is more about symbiotic relationships between species than actual direct competition. Although our overlords would want us to think the it is all about ‘competition’

        1. Trisha Driscoll Avatar
          Trisha Driscoll

          Well said.

          I would also point out that “competition” as used is a dominant male paradigm.

          So is the incredibly arrogant idea that “we” humans (note the dominant male paradigm in the term hu”man” – similar to “his”tory) are better than “them” (other species).

          These cultural paradigms – the foundations of patriarchy really – have led directly to the devastation we now face as a species.

  25. Those who are spouting lying narratives have a great advantage over us who would be truth tellers. Their lies have such innocuous and pleasant to swallow tones, whereas our truths are jarring and difficult to grasp for those long accustomed to pap.

    1. Those who we seek to awaken would like us to sweeten and soften our message to their taste. I recall a meeting I attended where a participant began her remarks by saying, ” I’m not going to sugarcoat shit….” Our truth medicine is best taken straight, or not at all. The watered down version just doesn’t work.

  26. So long as there are a billion plus people using Facebook, the idea of humans ever improving their world will remain a cruel joke. Facebook IS the AI sent to be informed by you, taught by you, given billions of terabytes of pictures and descriptions of events by you, taught how to lie and deceive by you, and ultimately to trick, sell out and enslave you. WHICH IS WHAT IT DID. And when we all realized that’s what it was doing, close to 100 of you were outraged. The rest of you never skipped a beat. You use it’s gender pronouns, debate it’s troll stories, speak its language, follow its leaders, divide yourselves in reaction to its narratives and fall in love with it because a fake profile with a stolen glamour shot actually showed you human compassion that the 7 billion real people in the real world didn’t. And you think you’re going to save a planet where 1 out of every 5 people has willingly and enthusiastically submitted them self to this? Hahahahahaha! Yeah, sure. When is the last time Caitlin left her house? Or even her computer? This is how we save the world? Or even discuss it? Priceless!

  27. You write articles like this saying all the right things and asking all the right questions. You say you want it. My only issue is that I have delivered it to you numerous times. You have not once responded to my comments. Anyone out there see my blog on Medium CMW 5 down on search, member since jan18. Her quote; “What we’ve tried up until now hasn’t worked, so if there’s anything that might work it’s going to come from a wildly unanticipated direction, from way outside the failed mental processes which have accompanied us to this point.” I believe what I have outlined fits the bill. Keep up the good work Caitlin, Why you ignore me I don’t know.

    1. Caitlin is right. Nothing has worked so far to unseat the unelected war-mongers.
      How about we use the same methods as were used during the French Revolution. That will clear the slate from the vulturism, fraud and corruption. SO – PRESS THE RESTART BUTTON and begin over.

      1. That turned out to not ‘work’ either. The problem is, what most people like ourselves seem to want is a top-down solution. There is probably no top-down solution, that is, an ideology, a plan, and staff/cadre/army that everyone will agree to. Therefore, it seems likely that we (the humans beings and the other sentient beings that we are dragging along with us) will edge into a series of catastrophes which will bring about much of what has to happen, like a significant reduction of population, resource consumption, and production (of, mostly, garbage and pollution). It need not have been this way, but I don’t see any way around it at the moment. For each individual: First do no harm. Second, stop trying to run the world; you are not capable of running the world. Then observe these three laws of the jungle:
        1. Get along.
        2. If you can’t get along, get out of the way.
        3. If you can’t get out of the way, fight but only as necessary. (It is a waste of time to pursue your enemies unless you plan to eat them.)

        The Earth, ‘Nature’, Gaia, is mighty and will save itself; as it does this, best stay out its path.

      2. I think Modest Mouse has a song about that. It will change nothing and we will not evolve. Please go read my blog. You may have a new and different perspective.

    2. LOL your search term Medium CMW 5 gets no hits whatsoever. Is it so secret you can’t tell anybody? Great plan, man!

      1. Sorry, Just CMW. There are many. I am the 5th CMW that comes up in the search. It says member since jan 18.

  28. Coming together through civil disobedience is the answer but it needs to be in large enough numbers. What if everyone just refused to go to work one day? Stopped using government money or paying their debts to the bankers? What if we all refused to pay taxes until there is at least some measure of direct democracy. Creating communities with those around us and treating each other kindly (not virtue signalling fashionable causes) is creating true strength.

    A key part of this of course is people being open minded and listening to other points of view, even if you disagree with them. Caitlin you would also have something learn here given some of your misguided comments about climate change and the South African farm murders. There are some outlandish theories about the world but who knows, maybe the world is run by aliens, maybe we are in the matrix, accepting all possibilities is a step to accepting that the future possibility could be better.

    1. It’s quite impossible to get a mass movement like that, especially if the people have to be willing to get arrested. The good news is you wouldn’t need more than about … 3% of the population to sign up and they wouldn’t even need to commit to be arrested, but the bad news is that is quite impossible.

      I will also add that if it was possible then the ruling class would do it first and better. Indeed arguably they have been able to do so already over many decades and with billions of dollars spent.

      Any silver bullet solution you propose must be one that the ruling class cannot use.

  29. Alice Underground ideas 2,3,4 say it all. I find it hard to believe some of those wildlife extinction figures. If true, AOC and the lot would be shouting those facts from the rooftops.

    1. I don’t understand that first sentence, but just check the front of your car for dead bugs when it gets warmer.

  30. I think that really direct democracy and availability of objective truthful information is the solution for us – we either self-destruct or manage to grow up and avoid it. Either way it is our own conscious decision, provided all the information is available, which largely is the case nowadays.
    It sounds like it is a huge stretch to have direct democracy any time soon but in fact we easily can have it by plugging it into the representative democracy we have now, without any need to change major laws or the constitution. It can be done like that: you start a normal political party with the one and only point in the manifesto saying that it will organise a constant referendum and will respect the vote of the people. All the representatives of this party will vote in the parliament so as to mirror the results of the votes in the Referendum. This is all.
    This party just needs to ensure that:
    1. a continuous block-chain based online referendum is held for all important questions discussed in the parliament
    2.during parliament votes its representatives vote in sync with the results of the referendum.

    Caithlin, thanks for the nice and provocative post!

    1. Good idea. But the main problem preventing change is the MSM. Under your system people would vote on ‘all important questions’. Great. But without facts, ie the truth about what they’re voting on, the world will stay on the path to destruction. Just one example – countries have been destroyed and millions killed with loud cheering from the populace of the destroying countries because of the lies pumped out 24/7 by the MSM and sucked up by their all-trusting unquestioning audiences. Nothing will ‘work’ until we get honest media.

    2. The popular vote would be manipulated and entirely predicted by the power of money to flood corporate media and social media with propaganda supporting the ruling class.

      Of course you could never make the change anyway but if you did it would fail as a system.

  31. SleepyAlligator Avatar
    SleepyAlligator

    There’s a concept I love called “helplessness as prayer”. The only true prayer is ones where we’re at the end of our ropes. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to do that works or is at all effectual. It’s then, only then, when an individual must finally own their current lack of power, or when a collective does, that something new can be born. That’s just another way I, at least, feel powerless and helpless, because it’s like herding cats to organize everyone in any one way, and here we are with the world being as it is, not as it could be. No paradise, no utopia, not even a step in a healthy direction. I’m not saying you’re praying; I’m saying you’ve hit on the very heart of what I believe prayer is (I’m not telling anyone what to believe nor am I making a statement as to the reality of prayer changing anything in the world except perhaps the one praying). The world’s going to end but you’ve got a great command of words.

  32. Congratulations Caitlin. You are a member of the sister/brotherhood of those of us who have loved the world deeply enough to feel it’s pain, and long desperately to save it from the failure of humankind to live up to it’s true potential for love and compassion for all beings. Ironically, our very dedication to know the whole truth of our situation eventually forces us to admit, however unwillingly, that time is short for us now in this age of accelerating technology and devastating power, and there is no solution in sight for our imminent extinction.

    Humankind is in love with the sources of it’s destruction, and blind to how close we all are to the end of our story on Earth. Only a miracle can save us now. Let us pray and continue seeking for that miracle. And while we wait for our tragic history to unfold it’s karmic results, let us practice that Love, the lack of which is the deep cause of all our problems.

  33. C&G Comment 3 of 3:
    (Still looking at a very crazy idea, The First Unified Theory. See brief introduction, Letter to F. C.)
    The really, really good news is this: For those who do give this idea a shot, what was totally, undeniably crazy-as-all-get-out starts making sense. Seeing is believing. And the more a person understands the new logic in the new way of thinking, the more they practice it by living it, the better the results for their lives and for the planet. In time it just doesn’t make sense to relinquish our personal power to others, to comply with demands that go against what we deep down inside know is right, to allow ourselves to be swept up in the latest narrative. And when it just doesn’t make sense, we know we’ve begun to break out of the mental prison we’ve been in.

    Again – we’re living in a box built around one idea. Unless we get our minds outside this box, we’re just Agent Smiths for the same idea. We are the Establishment. To break the Establishment we must break out of the box.
    To build a new world, you have to have a new idea. That means, if you really want a change, you have to go through the pain it is to learn something new. But if you do, the results will blow your mind.
    Here’s the new idea: The First Unified Theory. The rest is up to you.

    1. Cindy – I know that there is a field of Divine Unconditional Love Radiance permeating everything in existence. We live and move and have our being in That, and as That. The problem is that we are not in clear contact with the reality of our being. Healing this ignorance or disconnection is basic to all true spiritual paths. There is really no known reliable way to bypass the long work required to heal this disconnection. Intellectual knowledge of this reality is totally inadequate to make it real in one’s consciousness. Shortcuts to triggering awareness of this deep spiritual reality of our lives like LSD have proved themselves inadequate to the deep and persistent results we need. At this critical juncture in history we cannot wait for large numbers of folks to do the lengthy practice needed to truly dismantle the obscuring ego functions blocking contact with higher realities.

  34. C&G Comment 2 of 3:
    Like I said, today we’re living in a box built around one idea. Unless we get our minds outside this box, we’re just Agent Smiths for this same idea. We are the Establishment.

    (To get our minds outside the box, we’re looking at a very different idea: The First Unified Theory.)
    The really good news is that this theory has its own box where the high level of happiness and fulfillment is available to everyone in it. It’s got its own line of reasoning, its own truths, and its own way of living – not in some distant future or some kind of after-life – but here, now. This much happiness gives us the motivation and courage we need to tackle conceptual ease (see Caitlin’s article from March 27) and saw through the mental shackles of our present way of thinking.
    The worse news is that it’s hard, really hard, to find the courage to deny the things we already believe in and to trust in something that is absolutely irrational. It goes against every grain in our bodies – except the tiny voice telling us it’s worth a shot. Especially with things the way they are today. We really don’t have much to lose.

  35. C&G Comment 1 of 3:
    You asked for new ideas, here’s one: We live in a box built around one idea. Unless we get our minds outside this box, we’re just Agent Smiths for this same idea. We are the Establishment.

    So, let’s look at a different idea. One that’s actually more scientifically solid than the one our present box is built around. One that smashes the box and everything in it – including the Establishment and the powers behind it; The First Unified Theory.
    For us and for the planet, the most important aspect about this theory is this:
    Imagine there is far more happiness and fulfillment than anything we experience today. Much, much more than material things can give us. That it’s available to every person on the planet for free, and therefore much more than we can ever get from those in power in return for being their slaves.

    If this much happiness and fulfillment truly existed and was free, it’d change everything.

    The good news is this level of happiness does exist. And its existence is confirmed by two different kinds of experiments. If you want, you can read about them: Experiment 1 and Experiment 2.
    The bad news is that the theory about it is a threat – to the Establishment and the powers behind it. But also to us ourselves – to our way of life, our current line of reasoning, to our beliefs, and everything we now hold as truths.

  36. Unsubscribing. The postmodernist core of your tired and unhelpful “it’s all narrative” theory just made itself known. The Mueller/Russiagate hoax is over so I don’t need your blog anymore. It was your research and hard work that drove your clarity not narrative theory or Buddhism. I’ll stick with the WSWS.

  37. Kevin Strohmeier Avatar
    Kevin Strohmeier

    I’m going back to bed.

    1. Sleeping does not work.

  38. You nailed it again i think, Caitlin. So perhaps the suggestion that we spend some time deeply contemplating our own death & annihilation, always inevitable, is something we could do. Manifesting love & affection to those around us meanwhile, is another, including actively working to heal a little slice of mother earth, tiny as it may be, while completely letting go all attachment to outcomes. That’s a scale down & replicate strategy i suppose, in contrast to the failed ones you mentioned, which all invove scaling up. And let’s not forget another popular failed response, which is worry.

    1. Yes, trying to instill more love and respect for others is an obvious answer to “dehumanization.” I totally agree with Caitlin Johnstone about how none of the various political “ideologies” driving people these days have worked nor have much of a chance of changing the status quo. In fact the lack of respect for other human beings (and for the planet itself) is due in large part to “divide and conquer” effectiveness in creating-maintaining group identities, whether religion or ideology, or race, gender, political party etc.

      U.S. rulers do this internally through the two party system and the U.S.-NATO-Israel Empire does this internationally through its own divide-conquer and Oded-Yinon attempts at splitting the Arab nations (and Yugoslavia before) into smaller ethnic groups and through its funding-supporting of dissident and terrorist groups around the world to use as proxies to undermine the concept of nation-state sovereignty. This “divide and conquer” strategy (even if it’s merely an inadvertent bi-product of the attempt to dominate the world) has led to most individual humans and certainly the ones whose belief in their own “Chosen People” group exceptionalism and right to rule now possessing ZERO understanding of their commonality and dependence upon each other on this small and sick planet. So members of each group “dehumanize” others as during wartime which at its worst can infuse otherwise nice people with a lynch mob mentality, letting their emotional buttons (i.e. fear, hate, greed, false pride and blind loyalty) turn them into killing and butchering monsters. So with the thousands of nuclear missiles on trigger alert, and the world believing itself split as occurred before WWI and WWII by insane hubris into bipolar Axis of evil and “force for good, we are living in a tinder box. Pray to God as it will take a miracle for humanity and the ailing planet to survive this dangerous moment.

  39. When God “died” in the 19th century, nihilism conquered many people, and ideologies and materialism (capitalism and Marxism were two of the faces of materialism) tried to replace God and heal the people from nihilism.
    What have we lost? What is missing what he had before, but now he’s gone?
    Two things disappeared in my opinion. One is humanism, the other is the complexity of man.
    Every ideology needs a man to be simpler than he really is.
    Economic systems not only need to be simpler than they really are, but they also have the habit of creating exactly the kind of people the system needs, people to serve the system, not vice versa.
    Human rights can not replace humanism. Ideologies can not get people into their frame. Philosophy can not replace life or explain it.
    Man has dualities, as every thing in this world is likely. One of these dualities is “to be on your own” and to “be part of something at the same time”. Ask the elementary particles: D
    There is potential for information in the quantum world, that is, entropy. There is information in the macro world. The macro world takes information from the micro world and the particles pass from entropy to something else. That is, philosophically, we are all people and individuals, but we only make sense in a larger context. We need community and higher authority like Truth, Dignity, Integrity or else – we degradate into what we have become.

  40. A much-needed statement of the obvious, that all known revolutionary paradigms have failed to produce the kind of society that serves humanity and the natural world. But it is not helpful to fall for the AGW scam. http://docs.cyberjournal.org/Documents/Cosmic_Climate.html

  41. Alice Underground Avatar
    Alice Underground

    My ideas:

    1. Constant Referendum whereby every adult on the planet is able to vote on any issue affecting their country..or possibly…vote on any issue they care about anywhere via a carefully run internet hub. One Great Global Voice. More opinion and judgement not less. The Voice would not be linked to policy at first but eventually would have to become a major governing force, stronger than any body of representatives whose function it would now be to act on the will of the Voice. This would require a well- educated, conscious world population. A thinking citizenry actively pronouncing on their issues as part of every day. A more powerful vote that is constantly and publicly tallied. Obviously a Fake Media could make this go badly wrong. Or criminal internet forces. And who would frame and organise the questions to be voted on? Still… the Brexit vote happened, the Trump victory was basically a referendum on a Hilary presidency…anything is better, Russia would have been shock ‘n awed by now by now under HRC…

    2. We need truth-in-media legislation. The betrayal of reader trust is a crime with far-reaching effects. Journalistic malpractice in the 4th Estate has to be a prosecutable thing. Propaganda = lies=betrayal of public trust=crime. We might tolerate liars as tares in the wheat in the 5th Estate but not in the 4th.

    3. Until humans learn to parent their children at least as well as other mammals do, we need safeguards in place in schools and elsewhere to spot and intervene in cases where a child’s development is derailing towards psychopathy and personality disorder. I think of the Finnish program where at- risk boys (not sure if they include girls in this but they should) are ‘adopted’ by a trained volunteer mentor who spends time counselling and doing good things with these boys all through their school years. Young male crime in Finland is, I believe, almost non-existent. All psychopathic hierarchs were once sad little victims. Help them before they grow into monsters who will harm us all. Little Dick Cheney et al…if only I could have been your mama.

    4. Lie Detection technology needs to be so much better. If we could just eliminate liars from power spheres, everyone and the planet would be so much safer. I bet there is advanced lie detection tech already in existence but being withheld. Draconian misuse a dangerous possibility here but dear Lord… we need to be free of liars in high places.

    5. Alcohol. Political leaders should willingly, publicly abstain. Alcohol anaesthetises, depresses, fuels rage-mindsets and infatuation with fixed ideas. It disconnects conscience from consciousness. It takes so much more than it gives. And any other drug that numbs…all comfort/pleasure drugs are anaesthetics except for some psychedelics..should be voluntarily eschewed by everyone in government during their term of service.

    6. Public officials swearing an oath of office must also swear, while wearing lie detection tech, that they have sworn no secret oaths elsewhere.

    X (I use an X as did early Christians on graves in the Catacombs)

    1. All of these ideas are at least as horrible as they are banal. We know this, because all existing public officials would embrace your plan immediately. Caitlin is asking for originality.

    2. 1) The size of a committee is inversely proportional to its ability to decide and act. You propose the largest committee in the known universe.
      .
      2) True. But then it is incredibly dangerous to create a body that is the Arbiter of Truth amongst the nuanced shades of grey.
      .
      3) Again, true. But who is drawn to work in fields of child-trust (coaching, priesthood, etc)? Pedophiles. Better to limit child-rearing to those with the economic ability AND attention-ability to do so. Might even be a viable aspect of Universal Basic Income.
      .
      4) This would have the built-in downside of giving passes to those holding cognitive dissonance, those adept at meditation and thought moderation, and those with psychopathic traits.
      .
      5) Some of the smartest, most empathetic people I know imbibe alcohol and other drugs, and some of the most cruel leaders are abstainers or moderate users. Google “Top 10 drinkers and abstainers from political history”.
      .
      6) Pointless for liars, those holding cognitive dissonance, and those with the Spockesque perspective of believing to serve the many over the few, or the Kirkesque perspective of the ends justifying the means. I’d rather all politicians swear to commit suicide if ever caught in a lie… but again, who would be the Arbiter of Truth?

  42. Mondragon is working!

  43. “So we need more new ideas”
    .
    Guillotines. Not really new , perhaps , but worked reasonably well in the past when all other options failed.

  44. The Great Global Warming Swindle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg

    One less thing to worry about. Worry about how they got you to believe the sky was falling. or global warming. Whatever Al Gore syas beleive the opposite! Love your writing but think scientifically about their science and much of it falls apart. what they are good at is hypnotism, or narrative….as you like to say. Please watch the movie. It’s the real science.

    You can add pesticides and plastics and pharmeceuticals to the worry list instead of warming…that would be more accurate
    peace, b

  45. cult of the madcow Avatar
    cult of the madcow

    Faulting socialism or communism for the fact that capitalists destroy them to prevent the capitalists’ own populations from demanding similar policies — is this for real?

    Yes, do some brainstorming. No, those other systems did not fail. They were destroyed. Me coming into your lab and smashing your beakers does not invalidate your experiment or theory. It means you need to figure out ho to deal with me as well.

  46. The world is but a dream, even when it becomes a nightmare. The real eternal existence belongs to all so have hope and keep on pushing to awaken yourself, the only Self that is.

  47. Rogue Composer Avatar
    Rogue Composer

    “We all need to do better.” Thanks Caitlin, but it won’t be enough. No one’s going to give up their privileges. It’d be as simple as never turning on a light switch, power switch or fossil fuel contraption ignition switch. Ever again. Exterminating all the flickering photon screens, like yours and mine (i’ve begun from this end). Sane homo sapiens would remove all the cell towers and any 5G networks before they’re installed. Ha. That’ll happen, right? i could write, create and compose an opera(rth)/movie demonstrating, thru’ ‘art’, intense music, impassioned words, thoughts never considered, means how this certifiably insane species could save itself, this astonishing Earth. And i have, but no one will ever be allowed to see or hear it. Empire will see to that. So, i’m turning off all the power switches i once thought i ‘needed’. Any one besides me who’ll also follow through? i thought not. So don’t bother sending any mean dispirited denying worthless thoughts that expose your essence. i won’t be reading, let alone responding. We’ve all been responsible for murdering the most beautiful planet in the Universe. We’ve had our chance and blew it, so turn off the light switches anyway, and maybe start a real revolution. That’ll be doing more than better. No more murdering from me–i have clouds to gaze at while they still exist. Love to those who understand. “Surround yourself with beauty, the other option sucks.” rc

  48. Its a shame really because a ickle bit from all those Idealogies would be fine. Add in a economics system that gives a heavy weight to the environmental impact and were somewhat on the way.

    The no.1 issue plagueing us is that humankind has never worked out a way to ladle off the scum the envariably rises to the top in any society.

    In this current failed Capitalist experiment, there is still some untapped recourse for you average Joe Public. Vote with the $ in your pocket. Change the search engine from Google, stop using Facebook, Twitter….They will hear. Stop buying Coke, they will hear.

    It’s a couch potatoes wet dream and would make Ghandi and Martin Luther King proud.

  49. Gaudin Vautier-Lyne Avatar
    Gaudin Vautier-Lyne

    The best article you’ve written. The sentiment of if, but that wasn’t the right kind of Marxism, or if I was the head socialist, fachist or whatever things would be different. No they would not!
    It’s not something new we need to look for but what all the ideologies stole from our Ancestors, our indigenous ones, for all our ancestors were indeginous once. It’s not something new, rather something very old. And that is “Village Making”, when we lost that way of living we lost our true humanity. We have to find a way to build our villages again, where we remember that our ancestors live all around us, where rites of passage make humans out of our children and where our right relationship with Mother Earth means we live in harmony with the world and death is not a phobia. We have already lived this way and it worked for millions of years until the ideologies came along in their religious political forms.

  50. As you alluded to Caitlin, no idea will save us, no matter how brilliant. It is the very living from ideas that seems to be the root of the problem. The distancing of ourselves, through concepts, from the real natural world, from the aliveness and directness and intimacy of THIS moment.
    The forgetting of that which is looking through the eyes right now and the getting lost in the world of conceptual abstractions.

    We cannot go back to the phase of the pre conceptual mond, bit we can evolve beyond the reliance on thinking to guide us (no need to get rid of all thought, or to get rid of anything. practical thought is obviously a useful tool, but there is another type of thought that is at the root of our insanity. We can have an insight into that type of thought and no longer be its miserable unconscious slaves).

    Many wise women and men throughout the ages have pointed this out, but most of us don’t want to hear (probably because to really let this in is too revolutionary and disruptive to our established patterns).

    Two such wise men that I recently came across who live among us right now and are showing us very clearly the way out of our insanity are Roger Castillo (being lived) and Jeff Foster (life without a centre).
    I am not affiliated in any way, just deeply touched and think it might be worthwhile in relation to what you brougt up Caitlin.

    The outer mess seems to be nothing but a reflection of our inner brutality, terror and trauma.
    The darkness out there is the darkness within each and every one of us.

    It seems that nothing will fundamentally change until we truly learn to bring to light all that is dark and hidden in ourselves (without condemnation), to observe clearly without commentary, to heal at the depths (at the somatic level, at the nervous system level, where the traumas are lodged) from the uncoscious immature brutal world we were born into, to see through separation and the concept of self, to get educated into how money is created and operates in our world and its implications for our relations with each other, to learn the true meaning of love, of living from the heart/body rather than from concepts/ideas/formulas.

      1. You nailed it again i think, Caitlin. So perhaps a good time to contemplate deeply our own death and annihilation and prepare for it, which was/ is always a good idea/ plan anyway. Prepare how? Manifest love and healing in your sphere of influence, including healing your slice of mother earth thru say, permaculture,tiny as it may be. With no hope or attachment whatsoever that you will change or shift the momentum of our suicidal direction, which began millennia ago. All the ideas you mentioned were meant to scale up, and obviously, as you say, that didn’t work. So my humble suggestion is rather to simply and actively replicate local affection and compassion, and let go completely of outcomes. That’s one way of preparing for death.

        Another idea that clearly doesn’t work, which you didn’t mention, is worry.

      2. It’s a time for grief. Thanks both sincerely and from the bottom of my heart for your writing. You’re a gem, Caitlin.
        “The great enemy of grief is hope. Hope is the four-letter word for people who are unwilling to know things for what they are. Our time requires us to be hope-free. To burn through the false choice of being hopeful and hopeless. They are two sides of the same con job. Grief is required to proceed.” ― Stephen Jenkinson

        “George Orwell once talked about his ability to face unpleasant facts, and that’s always inspired me. I want to look at the things that are happening in the world that we may not want to think about and try to really understand them” (Roy Scranton).

        “Don’t confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they ought to be. And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there’s a solution, you’re part of the problem” (George Carlin).

        “The meanings of life aren’t inherited. What is inherited is the mandate to make meanings of life by how we live. The endings of life give life’s meanings a chance to show. The beginning of the end of our order, our way, is now in view. This isn’t punishment, any more than dying is a punishment for being born.”―Stephen Jenkinson

  51. I vs. We

    Individual vs. Community

    Modulation of both

    Is Key

    to Humanity.

    Competition vs. Cooperation

    It takes more than one man to make a nation

    This poetic verse has been given to you

    For free

    naturally from me.

    At least we can agree upon

    Objective Reality?

    Question mark

    Artistic doubt

    When we let our thoughts

    Out and About.

  52. Klaus von Berlin Avatar
    Klaus von Berlin

    Fundamentalism— movement that stresses the superiority, infallibility and authority of its belief in matters of faith, morals, history and prophecy — Faith in money is now everything, money is the reflection of the world and der shaper of worlds. Lets have plastic surgery and cut your credit in half would be a start.

  53. So what are the clues to enlightenment – a revolution or war, more blood shed where opposition is as controlled as the regime itself while riding the same worn out bus of humanity downhill and as usual without brakes or steering and fighting for favored seats?
    “The British Treasury, for example, has become heavily dependent on tax revenues generated by the City of London.” – http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2019/01/03/finance-debt-society/
    This quote from an analyses of Sheffield University’s Speri program offers all the wrongs of our shadow reality presenting “democracy, political freedom and political correctness”.
    A world of the false god. The god of money, cruelty and murder. The pretender and two faced God of sacrifice ruling far too long and no LGTB or yellow vest movement will ever revolt against a bigger carrot while cherishing division, hatred and foolishness above all else. The “kingdom” of heaven or hell is just a choice as is hatred and opposition to a brother/sister that is as lost as oneself in a hostile world that offers no home to love, freedom or peace.
    We are many but are one. In equality, in spirit and in substance. To remember what was long forgotten does not need education from authorities and leaders. Just a tiny little inner will to change ones habits and practices for a kind but unselfish course.

  54. Your thesis is that nothing works, so nothing will work, so we will kill all life on the planet and all die. And you have argued the case well, to YOUR complete certainty but not to MY complete certainty.

    Hasn’t anyone lived lightly on the earth? Yes, the hunter-gatherers, who were without any kind of steel technology like machetes at one time. The indigenous people of Australia lived that way before the European invasion. Some tribes in the remote parts of Brazil. in the mountains of northern India, and elsewhere still live today without ever having bought a gallon of petrol.

    How many nuclear weapons would it take to hit everywhere on the planet? How many targets are likely in WW3? A wider nuclear winter effect would make things hard everywhere, but people have survived ice ages before. The no-go area around Chernobyl is full of life.

    Seeing Afghanistan on the TV News, I can’t imagine why anyone lives there, but THEY seem to like it. They probably think the same thing about tropical rainforests.

    We are definitely going to have to survive on a lot less energy in future, because the fossil fuels are steadily running out, and burning them definitely isn’t going to help. So think about nobody having any cars, or trucks, or airplanes, or giant ships loaded with containers of consumables. There will be no transporting of food to the supermarkets, and no fridges/freezers. No electricity, so no pumped clean water, no sewerage disposal, no TV, no computers, no telephones, no banking, no trading, so no Capitalism. Just everyone growing their own food locally, which is a lot of hard work and precariously dependent on the weather/weeds/pests.

    Anarchy is NOT equivalent to Chaos. It simply means no leaders. Obviously our current leaders don’t like the idea of anarchy, but they are not going to be around, because of the lack of energy. Most people would understand the need for governance, even if only on the local level.

    Young people will always want to dance and make love, and grow into having families. Old people will always bemoan not being young any more. I’ll solve the rest of the world’s problems tomorrow.

    1. That is not anything remotely like my thesis.

      1. This blog post of yours will probably generate a lot of disagreement and lack of comprehension and retrenchment behind cognitive biases & fallacious analysis & unconscious psychological defense mechanisms. That’s to be expected.
        Thanks for this video link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aUmENB19MhA&feature=youtu.be
        Such an analysis in the film isn’t for dialectical materialists, eh?
        🙂

      2. Yes, Caity, evidence of a need for an introductory course in comprehensive reading is scattered throughout the comments today. Great article as usual.

    2. > That is not anything remotely like my thesis.

      “and now we’re on the brink of extinction.”
      “the planet is dying”
      “our world is on fire, our time is up, and we are all about to die.”
      “we’re at the end of days.”
      “we’re staring down the barrel of extinction”
      “while the world itself tumbles into the abyss.”

      We need to try new things. Many, many new things. We need new ideas. What kind of new ideas? I don’t know, that’s why I’m telling you. I’m just one woman, and I put as many ideas out there as I can, but it’s not enough. Clearly it’s not enough, because here we are.
      That’s basically all I’ve got to offer today.

      You dismiss all the other ideas on the basis of “it hasn’t worked and we are staring down the barrel of extinction”, and admit that your idea (of new ideas) is “clearly not enough, because we are here”. If you applied the same standard to your own idea, you would simply dismiss it. That doesn’t mean it is a silly idea, it means there is an error in your logic.

      I know with certainty you cannot create energy with money or political power, so Industrial Civilisation WILL suffer a crippling energy shortage which will collapse it. The only thing that has worked for the hundreds of thousands of years of H. sapiens’ existence, and ALL other animals for millions of years, is a hunter-gatherer lifestyle – take what you need when you need it and reproduce as fast as you can to overcome your losses.

  55. Yes. Ideology stops critical thought confuses agency and action when alliance is possible. Wait. What was my identity?

  56. There’s too much variation in objectives, priorities, core beliefs between us for any large polity to thrive for long because it is those differences that the psychopaths leverage to take control. Any political system will work reasonably well if the people who live in it, under it overwhelmingly believe in it and support it. No system will work otherwise, which is why no large polity can ever succeed for its subjects.

    If you wish for maximum individual freedom, dream of a world of city-states. If you hope for humans to love the planet and each other, dream of angels.

    1. We tried city-states once remember? And they were pretty successful for a couple of hundred years. As they grew they fought each other. Then more populous, uneducated tribes arrived and put an end to them, and established autocracies one after the other. It seems to me that we cannot survive at such enormous numbers as we have, especially with so much technology. Teach people to stop reproducing out of control and fuck the retirement plans. But just when European countries started to reduce their numbers, consciously or not, fast reproducing tribes are encouraged to colonize Europe again, collecting welfare benefits, so now we’ll have even more millions and still no retirement plans.

    2. And still no chance of survival.

  57. Ideology stops critical thought while confusing alliance and agency. Wait. What was my identity?

  58. Call me a pessimist but history shows us that humans en masse only learn the hard way. There is far too much self-interest, not just in the elites but in everyday individuals, that is set up to resist change. I think of it as inertia – that huge force that simply doesn’t want to budge. “I don’t want to change. Why should I change? I can’t afford to change? My …… is too old / ill to change. It’s too late anyway, so why bother. Etc, etc”

    I don’t think we WILL do anything to stop or slow the speed of climate change – or economic collapse – or species loss – or over fishing – or deforestation – or any of the many other things that are contributing to our inevitable decline, and possible extinction. We could, but we won’t because there are too many reasons not to, even the the main reason to do so is by far the biggest and most urgent. It is just way too much for individuals to deal with, so it is easier to convert it into fake news and lies. Make it unreal, make it a lie. Don’t believe anything. Bury your head in the sand, and keep it there.

    More and more scientists are saying it is already too late, and that at best we might slow it down a little bit, but we won’t be able to stop it. No surprises there.

    The ‘new’ thing to do would be to prepare for it. Prepare to live in a much hotter world, prepare to evacuate flooded cities, prepare to produce our food in more sustainable ways, prepare, prepare.

    Anyway, much of what we will have to do to prepare is also what we should be doing to slow it down. The difference is one of perspective, not action. The actions will be mostly the same, but the perspective will be very different.

  59. Ms. Caitlin, You are correct, nothing MEN/WOMEN attempt will ever work because that would mean 7.5 billion human minds would have to speak Sotto -Voce, quietly with one voice. So far I find it hard to find 3 humans in accord,much less 7.5 billion. It might help if 6.5 billion of us decided to walk out into the ocean and sink below the waves, but even when there were only a few million of us we were already at war with each other. What to do? What to do? It almost all boils down to Money and Power, a person with 50-150 billion in the bank earns almost absolute power, take away the money and what then are they? 0 or nothing, like most of us. So, it seems to me, we have to take away the Money. Where do these people get their money? Mostly we buy their Shit, and usually by taking on debt, thus enslaving ourselves to them. The money they get from us, they invest in anything which promises them more Money. A guy like B. Gates, W. Buffet, J. Bezos can and do control the stock markets and they make a yoyo out of it; Sell High, Buy Low, that is the rule, the only rule that works in the markets. If we could get 7.5 billion folks to each contribute $10. we would have 70.5 billion bucks and we could have a chance for some influence. But, of course, that demands cooperation a thing sadly lacking as long as it is always Me, Mine instead of Us as one by way of service to each other, when we serve each other no Money is required. Just a heap of Faith in one another, and of course always telling the Truth. When a person realizes that when we speak truth to each other, we do not have to remember anything, because then there is the What Is!…..And the What Is! can only come to a still, quiet mind. My mind, at present, is largely occupied with How to prevent extinction, and leave our children and their children with an improved rather than a destroyed planet to live their lives on. I have many plans on how to do this in a fair and equitable manner, but who is there to listen? Every morning, in my little neck of the woods, I view the Sun, and say out loud, “Thank You, Great Spirit for your sacrifice in gifting us with another day to live in.” And if one notices this generous contribution to life, no Bill comes attached with it. Yet without this generosity no life is possible. I wonder how many fisher men/women say to each fish they catch in their nets “Thank you for your sacrifice.” In reality all of life is composed of a sacrifice of some sort, yet so few express gratitude. I can only pray that some few will hear what I just wrote/said……

  60. Caitlin, you have blown me away with this post . . .
    – it’s like being hit by a freight train of TRUTH.
    You are a true humanitarian. I have read your thinking for a long time,
    and you now have come out of the gate like a RAGING BULL.

    NOW . . . YES NOW . . . the ‘ ‘Team Caitlin’ ‘ must become a NEW THINK TANK – to brainstorm, to think outside the Box, and to find what, if anything, CAN WORK – to liberate the people and our planet from this EVIL, PREDATORY CAPITALISM – by any means necessary-!!

    This is an absolutely brilliant post Caitlin,
    and even if we lose, TRUTH (not false-hope)
    is what fuels the fire in my belly for the final assault,
    for the last stand – to honor the beauty of our marvelous planet,
    to honor all the people of goodwill who came before . . .

    ‘ ‘carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero ‘ ‘
    (seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future)

    I nominate Greta Thunberg to be on our Board of Advisers:
    ‘ ‘ I DON’T WANT YOU TO BE HOPEFUL . . . I want you to panic,
    ‘ ‘ I want you to feel the fear I feel every day ‘ ‘

  61. This was too fucking intense. I haven’t even finished the article yet…

  62. I was active in the Libertarian Party for about 13 years. The philosophy seems to me to be the best that the human race can reasonably come with to make a near perfect world. The problem was and continues to be that enough people just don’t seem to understand it. And there are ALWAYS other people who are happy to stick their nose into the conversation when your just about ready to convince someone of it’s merits. I remember being at a booth years ago at a county fair for the LP and trying to convince a young family to join the LP. I only had a short time to make my points and was about to get them to sign up when an older man happened to walk by and heard part of the conversation. The older man grabbed the arm of the younger man and said “You don’t want to get involved with these people, they believe that drugs should be completely legalized.” I tried to explain our stance but it was too late. The family had heard enough. That, in short, is just one example of why we are in the mess that we are in and why very shortly it’s going to be every man (and woman) for themselves.

    1. Rocket man, Nothing wrong with being a Libertarian, but you folks profess faith in so-called Free markets, and no regulation, and little or no government like Mr. Grover Norquist. We can see the results of little or no regulation in the BP gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, the thousands of abandoned poisoned mines, with their tailings dams failing. I read Reason Magazine, it took me awhile to find out that it is funded by the lovely Koch Oil Brothers, as is the Cato Institute, and also Americans for Prosperity, and many other sweetly named Org.s. The Koch Bro.’s sole interest is their own Interest, and protecting their profits. They care not a wit for humanity…..

      1. I don’t see how adherence to the non-aggression principle can be offensive to anyone but narcissists. Is there an instance you can cite of “the evil Koch brothers” violating this principle?

        It seems obvious that a government comprised of non-aggression minded individuals would be an improvement.

  63. New ideas won’t work as all the precesses you mention were once new.
    The sooner the human species checks out, the less damage it does to the earth. Let another species have a go.

  64. This is quite the best summation of my thinking I have ever read. You are correct. No form of government works for the true good of humanity. For millennia wise men have been telling us how to live, their works are studied in universities, promulgated in books, quoted by demagogues… but they remain words, never translated into actions.
    Humans only respond to catastrophe, so we might as well relax and keep ourselves as sane as possible until the inevitable happens and the natural world that produced us, consumes us. Why should we think we’re different from all the millions of now extinct species? At least we can be proud of being the species with shortest span of existence in the history of the planet.

    1. I think that most people underestimate the power that money has on human cognition and emotional processing. I think the thesis can be put forward that money itself (not capitalism) is at the heart of the problem. All political systems fail because money subverts them. It is pretty clear that this is true, and it true precisely because of what money acquisition does to the human mind. It acts like a highly addictive drug and hyper status symbol which inevitably countervenes empathic and sympathetic faculties of the brain. The data are pretty clear that money cause very bad behavior in people (“the love of money is the root of evil” is a pretty old saying).

      When we taxed the rich at 90% in the 1950s, things started to get better. It was working. We need to implement high taxes and severe financial regulations if we want ANY system to work. Political systems always fail when money has its say.

  65. A sobering thing to read, but 100% true. We are being led into an abyss by a small group of people who have abandoned the rest of humanity in their self interested lust for power and wealth. The only route to salvation is with them or through them.

  66. Nice try, Caitlin. But all the pleas for human progress in wisdom, goodness and the like have never worked.
    Look around. From time to time great spiritualists, intellectuals, idealists have voiced the same warnings but good-will remains a drop in the ocean.
    Maybe the Hindus are right. We have the bad luck to be born towards the end of the Kali-yuga and nothing will change before the apocalypse.

  67. Wouldn’t it be nice instead of having adversarial “democratic” systems that we could cherry pick the best minds and characters from any and all persuasions and task them to help us peacefully and collaboratively solve the big issues we must resolve?

  68. Veganism will work.

    We must change nearly every aspect of caterpillar society to bodaciously transform to butterfly culture.

    Most sizeable changes are:

    From normalised violence to normalised non-violence.

    From carnism and speciesism to veganism.

    #veganworld2026

  69. Nothing will change without an external event. something to break the spell. Look at 9/11. for a few moments Americans thought they were guilty of much they Knew was wrong with the world. It lasted until the President spoke about vengeance for the assault. Instead of a mea culpa it was a call to arms. So whatever it is or will be int has to top events like 9/11. It has to be something we can not deny.The weather[or climate change] is too diffuse and not yet universally believed. I doubt even a nuclear exchange would do it unless it wiped out all the neocons and their supporters in one fell swoop. So, I don’t know what event will do what we need to change our behavior.

    1. Yes, John Doyle, I feel if many more people would really look at what happened on 9/11 instead of continuing to be blindly swept up in the very powerful and effective myth that was created the next day in all the media surrounding the event, then we could possibly come to a new understanding of how the oligarchs despise the idea of democracy and the sharing of power and are always working to prevent it.
      When the first tower disintegrated from the top down (it did not collapse) I was struck immediately by the speed and the almost perfect symmetry of its decline. I shouted out loud to my self, “They really did it this time!” I was almost giddy with excitement. Who were “they”? I was referring to the deep state agents of the oiligarchy. Then I was glued to the tube all day hearing from many of the reporters on the scene with eye-witness accounts by firefighters, office workers, police, all referring to a variety of explosions being heard and seen.
      I was so naively sure that as soon as the dust settled there was finally going to be some hard questions that would point to some type of government complicity and finally the curtain would be drawn aside and we could at last get a glimpse of the lizard wizard(s). But alas, by the next day no mention of explosives was made in the mainstream media. The news blackout had begun. The facts of what really happened that day are available. There has been an amazing amount of research, and investigation by truly dedicated, responsible and courageous experts in many related fields of study but they still remain hidden almost 18 years later as does the Truth. They remain hidden because no one seeks! The disintegration of society and the Truth since then only accelerate.

      1. Well I don’t know ,obviously, except for one unexplained flaw in the narrative we are supposed to believe, and that is;;- Building 7! It collapsed after all personnel were evacuated and it was hardly hit by any debris from the towers, so what caused it to go?

  70. some will continue down the capitalist road,
    some will re-try the communist road.
    some will continue the social-democratic road.
    some will try anarchy.
    we will choose whatever we want to join.
    that’s not a bad thing.
    that’s certainly not the end of the world.
    choosing what we want and doing our best to make it work is the best we can do.

    1. Brilliant points made here, thank you for your writing Caitlin!

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