Oh Internet, you’re idiomatic (and irony-infused) iconoclasm toward inbred ideology will illuminate and inspire me to infinity.
(Source: fuckcopyright.blogspot.com)
I made a horrible mistake last night—in front of a theatre full of essentially anti-oil-liberals, I uttered likely the most conservative-sounding remark of the night: the words “natural capitalism.”
Unfortunately, no-one had a clue what I was talking about, and must have assumed I was a right-wing Big Oil supporter looking to sidestep—by way of a change of subject—the vast human and environmental costs associated with the Alberta Tar Sands.
Not so!
Check the website: natcap.org (the brief summary there is enough to give you a general idea).
The jist of it is this:
- pre-Industrial Revolution there was a shortage of human power, and a seemingly limitless amount of resources
- now, there is an increasingly finite set of resources, with an unprecedented amount of human potential able to be tapped
- this fundamental reversal precipitates the kind of economic change that’s currently budding, namely that:
- sustainable development is not a hindrance to economic growth; rather, it is quite the opposite (layman examples abound here)
- it will be business—not so much social, cultural or ideological revolution—that will drive forward the “radically more productive use of natural resources” and sustainable development in general
P.S. You can also download all the chapters free from their website (here).
Personally, while I generally wince at the very sight of business suits—let alone their politics or morals—I think this is by far the most reasonable sounding argument for the …saving of the Earth(!).
If only we could stop the corporations in question from ultimately corrupting anew… (and this is a major issue, no doubt).
P.S. The comic above deals with ‘Green tax shifts’—a key component of Natural Capitalism—though I doubt the author of the comic is even aware of the natcap project (no one is).
Good news everyone: Today is BUY NOTHING DAY! Fuck yea!
Here’s to making every single day one less centered around acquiring new consumables!
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Oh noez, you haven’t seen the latest video from the Story of Stuff Project: The Story of Electronics?! That’s cool, just click the play button above (because consuming ideas is waste-free).
P.S. Check out 3:38 of the video—Radio Raheem cameo whaaaaat!!!?!
There are three basic skills that students need if they want to thrive in a knowledge economy: the ability to do critical thinking and problem-solving; the ability to communicate effectively; and the ability to collaborate.
The Century of the Self - Part 3 of 4
Where’s part 2, you ask? Well it’s here, of course, on Google video. I’m not going to post it because—while it is still highly interesting—I don’t think it’s as eye-opening as parts 1 and 3 (and #4 I haven’t watched yet).
#3—above—is about how the Hippie revolution sought to counter the corporate control of their unconscious desires (this sounds like a conspiracy type statement, but if you’d watched the first two, you’d realize these are the terms the people who did this manipulating openly use themselves…). Since political action was being distinctively crushed by the police/state, they turned to inner-directed change in order to try to overcome the maladies of a consumerist, materialist society.
Trust the business-types, however, to hire some brilliant(?) scientists, sociologists and researchers, who subsequently penetrated what made the Hippies tick, and managed to begin marketing to them just as effectively as they had to citizens of 1950s conformist society. Their strategy: target their individuality. The weapon of the 1970s/80s non-conformist was their pledge to individual self-actualization (Maslow-style) rather than fitting into the “machine’s gears”. What they didn’t realize, however, was that they increasingly became dependant on the products of the same corporations they were supposedly fighting against to gain their individual status—whether it be through unique/small-run clothing, tailored vehicle specs, or the general customization afforded by recently invented computer-controlled manufacturing processes.
In short, the counter-culture lost sight of its original goals, and ended up being primarily responsible for the foundation of the next level of corporate control of the masses (again, this isn’t my wording; interviews with those who were responsible for implementing these advertising strategies jovially discuss these terms on camera!).
There are shit-tons of issues that come up in this video that are still just as relevant in today’s context. My—and my generations—tendency to jump to meta-analysis warns me of how morally-detached people can comfortably become when looking to pay the bills, even metaphorically. The many interviewees questioned seemed to show no sign of remorse for how they willingly manipulated the lives of millions in order to further their company-at-the-time’s brand. Nor do they seem at all perturbed by digging into the inner-most psyche of focus-group attendees or survey respondents in order to categorize them as optimal consumer ‘types’. Like the Nazis with their systematized mass-murder, we’ve become totally disinclined to question the utter irresponsibility with which we institutionally manipulate others for our own ends. Sure, on some level humans need to exploit some ‘thing’ in order to survive, but we’ve taken this a far stretch from survival—we aren’t just killing our enemies/others, we’re killing ourselves by evolving away from empathetic connection.
Herein ends the stream-of-consciousness grade-twelve-level written response, and, if you know me fairly well, begins the hypocrisy :(
