Calling all Future Eaters: We can engage in civil disobedience or we can be destroyed

[Karmadillo]

But, but, but if we engage in civil disobedience & maybe save future generations from catastrophe, our corporate masters might not give us a fix for our new iphone!

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/19-2

Published on Monday, July 19, 2010 by TruthDig.com
Calling All Future-Eaters
by Chris Hedges

The human species during its brief time on Earth has exhibited a remarkable capacity to kill itself off. The Cro-Magnons dispatched the gentler Neanderthals. The conquistadors, with the help of smallpox, decimated the native populations in the Americas. Modern industrial warfare in the 20th century took at least 100 million lives, most of them civilians. And now we sit passive and dumb as corporations and the leaders of industrialized nations ensure that climate change will accelerate to levels that could mean the extinction of our species. Homo sapiens, as the biologist Tim Flannery points out, are the "future-eaters."

In the past when civilizations went belly up through greed, mismanagement and the exhaustion of natural resources, human beings migrated somewhere else to pillage anew. But this time the game is over. There is nowhere else to go. The industrialized nations spent the last century seizing half the planet and dominating most of the other half. We giddily exhausted our natural capital, especially fossil fuel, to engage in an orgy of consumption and waste that poisoned the Earth and attacked the ecosystem on which human life depends. It was quite a party if you were a member of the industrialized elite. But it was pretty stupid.

Collapse this time around will be global. We will disintegrate together. And there is no way out. The 10,000-year experiment of settled life is about to come to a crashing halt. And humankind, which thought it was given dominion over the Earth and all living things, will be taught a painful lesson in the necessity of balance, restraint and humility. There is no human monument or city ruin that is more than 5,000 years old. Civilization, Ronald Wright notes in "A Short History of Progress," "occupies a mere 0.2 percent of the two and a half million years since our first ancestor sharpened a stone." Bye-bye, Paris. Bye-bye, New York. Bye-bye, Tokyo. Welcome to the new experience of human existence, in which rooting around for grubs on islands in northern latitudes is the prerequisite for survival.

<edit>

As climate change advances we will face a choice between obeying the rules put in place by corporations or rebellion. Those who work human beings to death in overcrowded factories in China and turn the Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone are the enemy. They serve systems of death. They cannot be reformed or trusted.

The climate crisis is a political crisis. We will either defy the corporate elite, which will mean civil disobedience, a rejection of traditional politics for a new radicalism and the systematic breaking of laws, or see ourselves consumed. Time is not on our side. The longer we wait, the more assured our destruction becomes. The future, if we remain passive, will be wrested from us by events. Our moral obligation is not to structures of power, but life.

more...

[NoNothing]

1. Also, the sky is falling

Run to the hills!

Run for your life!

[Newest Reality]

6. People that see deeply into this crises

by reading and researching and paying some close attention are, as Hedges is pointing out, also aware that there is really no safe haven for most of us.

There is nowhere to run and hide, and no, this has nothing to do with a Chicken Little analogy. The sky remains where it is while the rest of it strains towards a convergence for a perfect storm. The cancer has gone global, (the result of what they call globalism) and has spread far and wide.

Granted, many are cleaving unto their comfort zones, seemingly immune and willfully ignorant. That works well as the corporate media strive to continue to convince as many people as possible that their simulation of reality is an assurance that the system is intact, stable and beneficial to humanity.

[another saigon]

15. very well said!

:applause:

thank God for real journalists like Chris.

[Subdivisions]

8. So, you don't believe in climate change? You don't think there's a problem

with resource depletion? You don't think there's a problem with a global economy? You don't think corporations are enslaving people? You don't think unjust wars are a problem?

Okaaaay.

So, let me get this straight, you either think everything is a-ok or you accept there are problems but believe them to be fixable?

[NoNothing]

17. I accept there are problems

(Although no I don't think corporations "enslave" people, that belittles the actual horror of slavery.) And I also see that humanity has a nearly perfect multi-millennial record of adapting, improvising, and overcoming the problems it faces. This despite an endless chain of people predicting imminent collapse for just as long.

Maybe this time will be different, maybe. But I wouldn't bet on it. Every generation we thought it was the end. And every time we have been surprised.

[bergie321]

19. You don't think it's slavery

Because instead of bringing people over here, we move the dangerous jobs to them? Instead of forcing them to work or die while providing them with substandard housing, food, and basic medical care, we give them just enough money to buy substandard housing and food but no medical care?

I would say that slaves had it better than some of the workers in the new "global economy". At least the slave owners cared if their slaves died because of the cost involved in bring slaves over. Now, corporations have abundant supplies of local workers who are so poor and desperate that they are willing to risk their lives for pennies to feed their families because corporations have decimated the global food market making it more expensive to grow food than it is to buy excess American GMO "food".

This is in no way a defense of slavery.

[NoNothing]

21. No, it's not

Because at the end of the day, if those people don't want those jobs, they can choose to continue doing whatever it was they were doing before. Unless of course their government forecloses that option, in which case it isn't the corporation enslaving them, it is their own government, with the corporation filling the role of willing accomplice. But this is not that common - much more often, people accept low wages for hard work because it's an improvement over their previous situation of utter poverty for back-breaking toil.

Fundamentally you don't understand what the problem with slavery *really* was. It had nothing to do with how comfortable or well-fed the slaves were. It has everything to do with choice.

[bvar22]

22. Yes. Corporations don't enslave people.

If they did, they would be forced to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide Health Care to their assets.
They found out it was cheaper to just work the life out of them for low wages, and let them die in the streets.

[Warren DeMontague]

24. No, I do. Depends on the resource. Define "problem". Wholesale, no. Yes, unjust wars are a problem.

Even just wars are a problem, particularly if you're in the line of fire.

However, no, I don't agree that climate change means "WUR DOOMED!!!!1111", that Paris and New York are going to disappear unless we all move into burlap yurts, or that tired, half-assed dorm room che poster anti-corporate gibberish is any kind of a grown-up response to a real problem; a real problem that, yes, is going to require our best thinking and adaptability (including humanity's favorite pastime, new technology) but isn't going to be solved by people who consider it just another excuse to toss tired old dialectical materialist cliches at the wall to see if, this time, finally they will stick.

Corporations are not going away, and Chris Hedges has proven himself (with his bi-weekly anti-Obama screeds, among other things) to be something of a doofus. I have no doubt that when Ralph Nader finally crawls back out of whatever hole he's been hiding in, (still flush with cash donated to him by conservative Republicans in 2004) Hedges will be one of the first on board the train.

[The2ndWheel]

2. Adapt to, not control

"We have fallen prey to the illusion that we can modify and control our environment, that human ingenuity ensures the inevitability of human progress and that our secular god of science will save us. The "intoxicating belief that we can conquer all has come up against a greater force, the Earth itself," Hamilton writes. "The prospect of runaway climate change challenges our technological hubris, our Enlightenment faith in reason and the whole modernist project. The Earth may soon demonstrate that, ultimately, it cannot be tamed and that the human urge to master nature has only roused a slumbering beast.""

How does it go when humans try to control other humans? Not very well. The same thing happens when we try to control our environment. It happens again, and again, and again, and again.

[ixion]

3. You can see this in all facets of the 'green' lifestyle, from organic food to building

techniques. The system is designed to support and enforce the status quo consumption line, and to try and break out of that is to risk the wrath of the corporate enforcers, a.k.a. the 'government'.

[marions ghost]

20. right

not to buy the stuff that is force-fed, not to agree with the status quo about what constitutes the good life, what constitutes "quality of life" is to be a pariah in this society, if not a traitor.

Going green is a big problem for the capitalist economy--they started fighting it hard under Reagan and we are reaping the negative consequences.

Going green is only one aspect of creating sanity in this world, but a key one.

[bvar22]

23. Less is More.

Its a process.
Next year, we will !!!CONSUME!!! even less.

[marions ghost]

29. +1

not everybody can do this, but I'm glad you are. :thumbsup:

Nice garden!

[stray cat]

4. So what type of civil disobedience specifically saves the world?

[slackmaster]

5. LOL, wut?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_extinction_hypotheses

[HughMoran]

7. buzzword hogwash heaven

Meaningless gobbledygook - unrec & hide.

[Subdivisions]

9. So, you don't believe in climate change? You don't think there's a problem

with resource depletion? You don't think there's a problem with a global economy? You don't think corporations are enslaving people? You don't think unjust wars are a problem?

Okaaaay.

So, let me get this straight, you either think everything is a-ok or you accept there are problems but believe them to be fixable?

[HughMoran]

10. I don't read buzzword gsarbage

Read whatever you want into that if it makes you happy.

[Subdivisions]

11. So, what do you read? n/t

[HughMoran]

16. Read? I'm illiterate.

Those hundred or so posts in the oil spill thread were done by my technical assistant. I'm using voice to text to write this message ;)

[Subdivisions]

18. It was a serious question. I'm not trying to be obtuse. n/t

[yella_dawg]

12. Unrec and hide

Then proceed to carry on the conversation in further posts. Weird.

[court jester]

13. Here's a tiny bit of disobedience: The Government will *not* be entering my body-mass

index into some kind of national database.
Furthermore, I will not be buying mandatory insurance.
There will be no debate about either whatsoever.

And I am Not Alone.


cRahm it!

[another saigon]

14. I know Chris is hard to take

but then hard truths usually are and he never hesitates to call them as he sees them. I appreciate his candor and passion.

k&r

[MilesColtrane]

25. "Copenhagen was perhaps the last chance to save ourselves. Barack Obama and the other leaders of...

the industrialized nations blew it"

There it is. Barack Obama is the destroyer of human civilization.

C'mon Chris! You should have known the slogan was '(Climate) Change We Can Believe In',

Besides, we had a good run.

:sarcasm:

[Warren DeMontague]

26. He personally invented the internal combustion engine.

sorry, infernal combustion engine!

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. Hedges absolves the voters in democratic countries of the blame they really share

There's a simple reason that the governments of democratic countries don't do a great deal about climate change; because the voters, on the whole, don't care about it enough to want any change in the prevailing consumer lifestyle.

When Hedges advocates civil disobedience, he's advocating a minority rising up against the majority who are happy with the "do very little, and hope something turns out right" policies of governments. As a professional writer, he really ought to specify who 'we' are when he uses that term so much in a piece. Occasionally, 'we' in the article means the 'sheep' who are happy with the status quo. At other times, 'we' are people who know 'we' have to act now (which, presumably, will include not just taking over the United States, the EU countries, and Japan, but also China, seeing how that country is now the biggest greenhouse gas emitter).

While it's true that a US (or EU) civil war would stop the consumer demand, and throw the world economy into a huge depresion that would cut consumption a lot, it seems an overly drastic, not to mention deadly, way to do it. "We had to destroy the village to save it", in effect. And since Hedges gets no more specific than 'break the law', and his purpose is to change the entire industrialised way of life, I have to assume he is calling for the overthrow of the current governments, and the prevention of consumerism and consumption.

[Bluenorthwest]

30. Do you make the same assumptions about others who

taught civil disobedience? Dr King? Rosa Parks? When Martin Sheen or Dan Choi chain themselves to a fence in protest, are they calling for the overthrow of the government? All of them are trying to change or did change entire ways of life. Do you characterize them according to the same assumptions? If not, what marks their tactics as different from Hedges in your view?
The hyperbole you use is your own, not Hedges. Civil disobedience has a long and useful history, very little of which has to do with overthrowing governments. Did King want to do that? No, he did not. Of course, the right wing and Republican Party said that he did, but he did not. Nor does Hedges.

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. They had specific demands, and plans on how the government could satisfy them

Hedges, on the other hand, is just calling for law breaking, because he wants the current way of life for the average American ended. No, King, Parks, Sheen and Choi were/are not calling for the change of "entire ways of life"; they wanted equal rights given to sections of society that were/are denied them. Hedges wants the consumer society ended for everyone; an end to using fossil fuels, and general resource consumption by everyone. He thinks that chaos in society will bring this about - in an unspecified manner. I repeat, very few people have voted for this, and, unlike civil rights, which involves passing laws to get people treated equally, and can thus be done by government decree, changing the entire economy of the world cannot just be done with simple changes to laws.

I think Hedges likes the sound of the phrase "civil disobedience", and admires the people who have used it in the past, and thinks that calling for it constitutes a 'plan' to fix any problem. You can
use it to gain publicity, but that only gets you a small way to any solution. Most people in democratic countries have already heard of climate change; what we need is for them to decide the problem is so serious that far-reaching alterations of our economies and lifestyles are needed (eg the end of personal transportation, or personal carbon rations that you can't exceed).

If you think civil disobedience is at all appropriate for fixing climate and resource problems, perhaps you could do what Hedges failed to, and explains what disobedience you have in mind, and how you think politicians, corporations and people in various countries will react?

[Bluenorthwest]

32. I don't have any in mind. I just asked a question because

the assumptions about what Hedges is calling for seem far, far over the top here. I included Mr Sheen specifically because he has, for many years, been a participant in civil disobedience around environmental and energy issues. He does want a major change of the way we live. As did King.
So Martin Sheen thinks it is appropriate for drawing attention to climate and resource problems, as did the Mahatma. The salt, remember? That's my point. To slam Hedges for talking about doing what King did is just kind of daft. The status quo defenders said King was a Communist revolutionary. This is not about my opinion, I'm just interested in the consistency of thinking on display.
I'm not here to do the personal dress down thing. And I fully agree that civil disobedience is usually best as a publicity generating mechanism. I made the points I made, which you seem to have missed in favor of what you wished to read. Words have meanings.

[muriel_volestrangler]

33. Salt? I'd say that was a rights matter

Indians weren't allowed to produce their own salt, but instead had to buy it from a British government monopoly. It's more like the Boston Tea Party than an environmental demonstration.

And this is not just something governments can decide to fix. We need people to change their attitudes and lives. Civil disobedience has been aimed at governments, not the general population.

Hedges is still just playing at politics, rather than suggesting anything worthwhile.

[Bluenorthwest]

35. Salt was a resourse being unfairly controlled

You brought up resource issues. I know the history, and assumed you would also recognize it as a resource issue, because it was. I did not say it was environmental, I said it was about resources. Basic resources.
You are playing word games. Good day.

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. Our current global resource problems are that we use too much of them

and hence they are environmental problems. The OP talks about "the exhaustion of natural resources". Gandhi's protest was about the poor Indians having to pay the rich British for a basic commodity in their own country. It was about economics, not the environment.

If you want to liken our present-day resource problems with those Gandhi protested about, you'd be supporting open drilling everywhere, the removal of gas tax, and the abolition or nationalistation of BP; or the removal of regulations on water use - things to increase the use of resources. This is not 'word games'. Gandhi wanted the removal of a (foreign) government control over a resource. Hedges (and I agree with him on the basic principle, though not on how to achieve it) wants greater control over how resources are used.

[Robb]

34. I read this entire post

...and I still don't understand. Is someone going to fix my iPhone, or what?