Get Apocalyptic: Why Radical is the New Normal
from YES! Magazine:
Get Apocalyptic: Why Radical is the New Normal
Feeling anxious about life in a broken economy on a strained planet? Turn despair into action.
by Robert Jensen
posted May 24, 2013
Feeling anxious about life in a broken-down society on a stressed-out planet? That’s hardly surprising: Life as we know it is almost over. While the dominant culture encourages dysfunctional denial—pop a pill, go shopping, find your bliss—there’s a more sensible approach: Accept the anxiety, embrace the deeper anguish—and then get apocalyptic.
We are staring down multiple cascading ecological crises, struggling with political and economic institutions that are unable even to acknowledge, let alone cope with, the threats to the human family and the larger living world. We are intensifying an assault on the ecosystems in which we live, undermining the ability of that living world to sustain a large-scale human presence into the future. When all the world darkens, looking on the bright side is not a virtue but a sign of irrationality.
........(snip)........
But toughest to dislodge may be the central illusion of the industrial world’s extractive economy: that we can maintain indefinitely a large-scale human presence on the earth at something like current First-World levels of consumption. The task for those with critical sensibilities is not just to resist oppressive social norms and illegitimate authority, but to speak a simple truth that almost no one wants to acknowledge: The high-energy/high-technology life of affluent societies is a dead end. We can’t predict with precision how resource competition and ecological degradation will play out in the coming decades, but it is ecocidal to treat the planet as nothing more than a mine from which we extract and a landfill into which we dump.
We cannot know for sure what time the party will end, but the party’s over.
Does that seem histrionic? Excessively alarmist? Look at any crucial measure of the health of the ecosphere in which we live—groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species, and reduction of biodiversity—and ask a simple question: Where are we heading? .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/love-and-the-apocalypse/radical-is-the-new-normal
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My oldest daughter is pretty much the same and she's also trying to get into working class politics which will inevitably lead her to Marx, even without my leanings playing a part. She's only been working full time for 4 or 5 years now and she already sees the injustice inherent in the current system.
Now, my youngest? Her high point in socialist thought was an on line test she took when she was 12 or so. It said she was a socialist. That was a funny story that I still tell. Of her coming to me asking what a socialist was and me finding out WHY she was asking that question.
As Trotsky put it paraphrasing, the choice is socialism or barbarism.
Yeah, they're very cool and I love having conversations with them. They were not raised up with the rah-rah American capitalism like I was so they see through the BS much sooner. Your kids seem like great people. Let's hope they all make a difference.
Agreed.
The funny thing is that I never even talked politics with them (much anyway) until they were almost grown and they still turned out to be lefties.
A major step for me as I had been pretty apolitical and apathetic before that. I was going through a divorce and went at the urging of some friends. She just loved it and has been a very vocal Progressive ever since.
It's just the way it is. Check out our web site:
www.workerspower.net
We're NOT Stalinists, we are Trotskyists. Who knows you might like it! A few of the articles there are mine, the latest being the one on the budget.
& R
No actually, I wanted to kick the thread without looking too presumptuous.
Thanks for the help.
--I have been thinking along the same lines recently--that we have to convert our frustration and fear into action. Really it has become obvious that the best results will arise from the grassroots.
A toast 
to all the radicals here!
Unfortunately, Jensen's bright-eyed, roll-up-the-sleeves enthusiasm is still a form of denial - especially in the face of what he already knows. Here's the situation and the prognosis as I see it:
1. There are currently 7 billion human organisms on the planet. We use the equivalent of 12 billion tonnes of oil a year to do what we do, maintain what we've built in the past and provide a (small and shrinking) margin for growth. That's the energy equivalent of four cubic miles of oil. Every year.
2. A truly sustainable human population is one that would be able to live here in perpetuity without damaging the non-human portion of the biosphere. Even on a pristine planet (which this is manifestly not, any more) such a human population could not safely exceed 35 million people - but ONLY if they don't ever grow beyond that number or use any fossil fuels whatsoever. Given that our actions have already severely damaged the biosphere (as Jensen notes) the upper limit for true sustainability is possibly no more than 20 million humans.
As far as I can tell, getting from Point 1 (ecocidal species) to Point 2 (safe planetary citizens) within a couple of hundred years just isn't something that can be done voluntarily, or without enormous coercion, resistance and pain.
The most probable outcome is going to be that we'll all do our best, but nothing will really change our trajectory until we hit some limits to growth. Those limits will likely be a combination of rapid climate change and energy or food shortages of different degrees around the globe.
I used to think that a vast monolithic global crash would be the likely outcome. I don't think that any more. As I say in the linked article above,
Still, there are those physical limits I mentioned above. They are looming ever closer, and it seems a foregone conclusion that we will begin to encounter them for real within the next decade or two. In order to draw a slightly more realistic picture of what might happen at that point, I created the following thought experiment on involuntary population decline. It's based on the idea that our population will not simply crash, but will oscillate (tumble) down a series of stair-steps: first dropping as we puncture the limits to growth; then falling below them; then partially recovering; only to fall again; partially recover; fall; recover...
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[/center]Even this rather dire scenario takes 2000 years to get us close to "true sustainability", and still leaves plenty of room during the next few hundred years for further degradation of the planet's carrying capacity.
Human intelligence is the very best limit-avoidance mechanism that has ever evolved on this planet, by many orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, humans overall appear to see opportunities far more clearly than consequences. As a result, even on the down-slope we will continue to chew away at the essential support systems in nature. That means that by the time we get to a population and consumption level that was previously sustainable, the planet's carrying capacity will have been eroded to below that level:
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We have no way of telling where the equilibrium point will be. All we can tell from here is that it will be at a population level that is drastically lower than it is today.
To be absolutely clear, after ten years of investigating what I affectionately call "The Global Clusterfuck", I do not think it can be prevented, mitigated or managed in any way. If and when it happens, it will follow its own dynamic, and the force of events could easily make the Japanese and Andaman tsunamis seem like pleasant days at the beach.
The most effective preparations that we can make will all be done by individuals and small groups. It will be up to each of us to decide what our skills, resources and motivations call us to do. It will be different for each of us - even for people in the same neighborhood, let alone people on opposite sides of the world.
I've been saying for a couple of years that each of us will each do whatever we think is appropriate to the circumstances, in whatever part of the world we can influence. The outcome of our actions is ultimately unforeseeable, because it depends on how the efforts of all 7 billion of us converge, co-operate and compete. The end result will be quite different from place to place - climate change impacts will vary, resources vary, social structures vary, values and belief systems are different all over the world.The best we can do is to do our best.
Here is my advice:
- Stay awake to what's happening around us.
- Don't get hung up by other people’s "shoulds and shouldn'ts".
- Occasionally re-examine our personal values. If they aren't in alignment with what we think the world needs, change them.
- Stop blaming people. Others are as much victims of the times as we are - even the CEOs and politicians.
- Blame, anger and outrage is pointless. It wastes precious energy that we will need for more useful work.
- Laugh a lot, at everything - including ourselves.
- Hold all the world's various beliefs and "isms" lightly, including our own.
- Forgive others. Forgive ourselves. For everything.
- Love everything just as deeply as you can.
Good luck to us. We're going to need it.
