SATURDAY, DEC 24, 2016: NOTE TO FILE
An Ecolate Manifesto
Words, words, words
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: WOULD RATHER KNOW, FROM THE WIRES, OUT OF THE ETHER
Abstract: Another attempt to 'boil it down'. Apologies in advance if some language seems strident, but we are playing a global endgame. 'Ecolate' is a Garrett Hardin coinage, meaning systems science literate.
TUCSON (A-P) — The Washington Post and New York Times refused to publish my manifesto because I haven't forced them to yet. So:
An Ecolate Manifesto
'For the first time in history a conviction has developed among those who can actually think more than a decade ahead that we are playing a global endgame. Humanity's grasp on the planet is not strong. It is growing weaker. Our population is too large....' — Edward O. Wilson, Half Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life 2016
Keep your eyes on the ball: Don't be distracted by wordsmith ideologues offering political/economic 'solutions' or religious 'salvation'. Face the biophysical realities that determine the endgame. Endeavor to 'know' (iterate towards) some understanding of the world system (and real solutions) without believing/asserting you 'know' anything. Listen to Nature who has all the answers and seek out the condition now that will come anyway.
In More Words
Plan A is to 'save the world' before hitting the wall of biophysical limits. ['We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.' ―David Suzuki]
Our fragile collective grasp of reality currently urges 'damn the inconvenient warnings of world scientists, full speed ahead!' while arguing about who gets to drive, and who gets to sit where and for how long (social justice/equity/rights issues as distraction).
Failure to get a better collective grip on what-is, on Nature as the nature of things, the non-delusional world system that is still out there after our mouths stop moving, has multiple species extinctions as a consequence that could include humans. It's a high-stakes endgame (how many more species will go extinct and will humans be among them?).
The mass of humans do not think more than a decade ahead (5-year plans typically fail as few can think beyond 'next paycheck' or 'next quarter's profit'). Don't expect the 99+% to figure out what has to be done (by reading Wilson, et al. or 'believing' experts who have) and use democracy to demand needed non-feel-good changes.
To 'save the world', students and other would-be members of the intelligentsia need to 'get smart' as autodidacts, figure out what's-a-happening, tell better evidence-based stories, and FIGHT the good fight within the global intelligentsia for a systems-based worldview dominance from the top down lead by 'those who can actually think more than a decade ahead' who would rather know (Mother Earth) than believe (in belief, illimitable growth, human exceptionalism, narratives of race, rights, nationality, freedom, politics, dignity, religion, salvation, etc.). For example, replace the 'pretend science' of neoclassical economics as taught in some 22,000 colleges and universities, often a compulsory course like theology at 12th century Oxford, with better stories. To depower the feudal system, the God's Mandate narrative had to be questioned. To depower 'civilisation', make questionable the Growth's Mandate narrative....
We the People don't get a vote as to what works. Nature 'decides' what works. Down with democracy, up with naturocracy. In ecolate time, a decade is little more than 1.8 cosmic heart beats.
Students as learning machines are among those most able to change memes, are they who most need to read E.O. Wilson, Seneca, et al. Those who would rather 'believe' and 'party on' (than iterate towards knowing by endeavoring to listen to Nature as some poets or scientists do) need to be marginalized, not the other way around.
When the shared belief in the growth hegemon falters secondary to an increasing inability to believe in it (as evidenced by the degrowth to come), those in a position to say 'I told you so' could fill the coming leadership vacuum to install a new reality-based OS for humanity to operate under provided one is developed first. Otherwise ISIS and ilk (ideologues with 'solutions', e.g. the 'self-righteous Left' and 'dogmatic Right' and 'Greens' and 'fascist antifa', XR, GND... ad nauseum) will. The belief in political solutions will not save us.
Transitioning sooner (from our problematique, our human predicament, to 'what works') will be better. If soon enough and we turn things around within pockets of sustainability before hitting the wall, then it's Plan A, or if after collapse, it will be Plan B to reboot. So Plan A and Plan B may be the same, differing only in terms of when and to what extent they are implemented per intelligentsia guidance.
The default Plan X-As-Usual is to let the ideologues with 'solutions' and/or 'salvation' dominate per history-as-usual. Plan A involves 'revolution'ary change, as tweaking the SYSTEM will not 'transform' it into its opposite.
We need prescriptions for our continued evolution.
Those who can think only in terms of 'off with their heads' (politics-as-usual) will loose even if they 'win'. The revolutionary change needs to be memetic: educational and maturational. A fundamentally different narrative/OS based on what-is, on biophysical reality, is alternative and would be ℞evolutionary.
We need to transition to a steady-state eco-nomy via degrowth, but you can't replace a belief in 'growth' with a belief in a post-degrowth 'steady-state' (that is as good or better than 'life as we know it' now even if it will be). Finding and facing reality as best we can per best-guess (science); putting our best grasp of what-is above human wants or preferences (or 'rights'), would be revolutionary, would make for a different OS, for different 'rules of the game'.
Marginalize infantile likes/dislikes, for/against, pick/choose, good/bad, cling/reject, optimism/pessimism, believe/disbelieve... all self-serving self interests and prattle about human exceptionalism to realize that we are the environment. Endeavor to know and to know what you don't know. Get good with reality (therapeutically reverse our behavioral sink).
We need to FIGHT for our collective sanity. Those who fight with knives, guns and bombs will merely be fighting over who will inherit the rubble—which, as usual, won't matter. So think of replacing (in effect destroying) the current growther SYSTEM by replacing (questioning is merely a beginning point) its core meme one mind at a time rather than ineffectively tweaking it to 'make it work better' by 'reforming'/'transforming' it so growth can continue.
You can't token the hegemon to death. Think a clean install of a new OS based on degrowth (managed descent) leading to sustainable non-growth within limits that is strictly obedient to the system Laws of Mother Nature. Develop the needed new OS now based on an 'ecolate' worldview. If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy (in the long-run beyond a few generations).
When people come to fervently demand 'solutions' and 'salvation', either sane humans with a reality-based OS will trade upon such credibility as they merit or the ideologues-as-usual will tell people what they want to hear. It's a high-stakes endgame.
This fact has to be hammered into the intelligentsia's blindered head. We would do well to avoid extinction or 'a boot stamping in the human face forever'. Orwell had little influence until the intelligentsia realized that he had told them so.
A few elite intellectuals could turn things around by unifying the intelligentsia behind an ecolate OS (when the possibility they might be wrong creeps in to create a teachable moment), who could persuade the public to upload a new OS for Humanity 4.0 (CIV 4.0).
Bottom line: This is a FIGHT for our collective sanity and survival as responsible members of Earth's geobiosphere.
