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MONDAY, JULY 15, 2019: NOTE TO FILE
The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg
A review of a series of blog articles
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SOCIAL MEDIA VERITIES, FROM THE WIRES, ALTERNATIVE POV
Abstract: Cory Morningstar is an independent journalist who wrote a six-part look at those who seek to associate themselves with Greta Thunberg. The details are a look at business-as-usual (BAU) practices of NGOs and their big business/player supporters which many readers may not be aware of. Everyone who has politicized climate change, for or against, has an agenda which may or may not include saving the world by exaggerating or denying the issue, and may involve varying degrees of error, ignorance, and illusion embraced and promoted by would-be saviors pursuing self interests as usual. BAU includes viewing oneself as right and other players who differ as deceivers ever, which excludes the possibility that all are delusional pundits, competitive swimmers awash in a sea of error, ignorance, and illusion, as usual, so a pox on all their concept-mongering houses.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The introductory quote:
“What’s infuriating about manipulations by Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest good will of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.” — Hiroyuki Hamada, artist
Statements need to be unpacked. This one is featured by author Cory Morningstar in a series of ACT I to ACT VI missives called THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX; THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH BEHIND YOUTH CO-OPTATION; THE MOST INCONVENIENT TRUTH: “CAPITALISM IS IN DANGER OF FALLING APART"; THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE! & THE 100 TRILLION DOLLAR RESCUE; THE NEW GREEN DEAL IS THE TROJAN HORSE FOR THE FINANCIALIZATION OF NATURE; A DECADE OF SOCIAL MANIPULATION FOR THE CORPORATE CAPTURE OF NATURE on her blog The Wrong Kind of Green.
This series has been given the imprimatur (approval or endorsement on July 10) of Mary Odum, daughter of systems ecologist H.T. Odum whose science is of interest to me. Mary's twitter offerings are the only ones I've ever followed as some link to information/POVs of interest. She started a Facebook page years ago, the only one I've ever Liked mainly because it had so few Likes, and because in a sane world where people realized that a prosperous way down was vastly preferable to collaspe as usual, it would be one of the highest trafficed/Liked Facebook pages (but was <40 when I Liked it a few years ago, now up to 50!). Both pages, and her website feature thoughts along the lines of our possible Prosperous Way Down, i.e. ones that might actually save the world. I also follow one Facebook page (Alice Friedemann) and for the same reason, despite the occasional facepalming offerings (to paraphrase Steven Weinberg: "With or without religion/politics, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil or for smart people to believe stupid shit — that takes politics/regligon."). Cory Morningstar has an active Twitter presence, Facebook page, and her blog is written in the style of social media. The above quote is featured at the start of all ACTs but the last one, so I'll pay attention to the message that presumably frames her own [with unpacking comments].
“What’s infuriating about manipulations by Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest good will of the people, especially young people." [NGOs depend on money and increasing membership/supporters which can be bought/manufactured in many ways, as size and influence is proportional to funding needed to grow the organization, so not an extraordinary claim nor even of concern, just a BAU fact. NGOs serve the SYSTEM, even those whose stated goal is to change or destroy it, e.g. environmentalist groups since 1962 when evironmental concerns were politicized. Morningstar offers six articles detailing the commonplace as if offering revelations from on high. So I have issues, but not so much with the content that I will largely not vet as most claims about who did what, said what, seem credible (I did vet one dubious Einstein quote for which there is no evidence he ever said it—certainly never wrote it, and it shouldn't have taken Morningstar more than the few minutes it took me to discount it, but I quibble, as in social media you say what you want or have Einstein say what you want him to say, and vetting is like so not what works)]. Even if every claim was certifiably true, it is the spin, the metanarrative of good and evil, right and wrong, true and horrid, that is facepalming. There is perhaps something to be said for endeavoring to understand the world, but Nature doesn't care what we like or dislike, what we are for or against, or want or don't want—only self-centered humancentrists do.
"They target those who were not given skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class." [The educational subSYSTEM fails all but you-know-who (me and thee who are self-taught), and we can think for ourelves (by following trending news on social media if you listen to the right oracle of verities) and we have the skills and knowledge to know what's what and how the system works (or maybe we don't know enough to have an opinion). Growing the economy is in the interest of the putative 'ruling class' as it is of the person who hopes to make enough money this year to buy a pair of shoes (or a Coke) and everyone in between. It is in everyone's short-term self interest to serve the control hierarchy (outliers seek to replace the 'ruling class' with a control SYSTEM that listens to them, that they are a part of and run or help run as the new elite ruling class who has all the answers) that forms within complex societies and always has (see past ten thousand years of history). Servants of the SYSTEM self-organize per system principles as they relentlessly pursue self interest as that is what the current socio-polictical economic SYSTEM selects for (for a time during growth/empire-building phase). Does the educational subSYSTEM, formal and informal, serve the social control SYSTEM, the emergent property of all who live within and depend on it? Will the educational subSYSTEM give those who are a product of it an understanding of the remorseless dynamic that automatically thwarts all efforts to change it that they are captured and being dragged along by? It hasn't yet, nor has social media, nor the wordsmiths and concept-mongers, the merely eloquent that all media selects for including, perhaps to a lesser extent, the academic.]
"Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals." [During the growth phase, capitalism works best to grow the economy. During transition and descent it will not work as growth will not be selected for in a biophysical system that cannot keep on growing humans (or their livestock, pets, crops). All competing complex political control subSYSTEMs are variant forms of complex Skinner Boxes that create humans of NIHM and outcomes no one planed or voted for that self-organized to grow the economy. There was no smoke fille room in 1712 where someone said, "Hey guys, let's have an Industrial Revolution."
When Khrushchev asserted that "We will bury you," he meant that the USSR and its planned economy would outgrow that of the capitalist's West as all leaders of nation-states viewed growth as the sine qua non of their existence, or if they didn't, they and their country was left in the dust of rapid post-WWII development, i.e. the system was selecting for growth and for a bit more time still is. If Bernie Sanders was in power instead of Trump, he would have grown the economy too, stupid, but he would have tweaked the benefits of growth to better benefit commoners to help keep the SYSTEM going by delaying off-with-their-heads revolt, even though he would likely have no idea that was the outcome of his policy tweaks, anymore than Solon had any idea his reforms, ending debt-slavery, would lead to institutionalized slavery in Athens.]
"Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.” — Hiroyuki Hamada, artist
[So Hamada isn't a capitalist, corporatist, colonialist, or militarist..., doesn't like the ruling class, nonprofit NGOs, and is against those who are or who support the current SYSTEM, i.e. he is not a supporter of the Euro-Sino Empire. I am not either and have committed what remains of my life to working to destroy technoindustrial society, but Hamada is part of the problem, not of any solution that might work. Those who would destroy the current growther SYSTEM should consider thinking ahead, eschew wordsmithery (mere eloquence), and propose an alternative SYSTEM that could work long-term. Hamada is FOR what the more successful servants of the global empire are AGAINST, and they are FOR, in practice if not in word, what he is AGAINST. But if "the struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the minds worst disease," then Hamada's manifesto is an expression of pathology. I'm guessing that neither Hamada nor Morningstar see themselves as pathogens, as members of a complex society that selects for psychosocial pathologies, including cognitive pathologies that wordsmiths exemplify and celebrate as humans of NIMH.]
Cory Morningstar's missives on social media, like those of everyone else, select for those who agree, like, and share her statements, who Like her words and cognitive bias uninformed by any science as a way of knowing, but abounding in sciency facts as selected to confirm one's conclusions. Ever increasing numbers of followers reinforce her way of thinking, making it seem right. There is no place in the conceptual ecosystem of social media, however, for competing POVs. The moment she or any of her concept-consumers detects a departure that threatens the shared and evolving narrative, it is dismissed/ignored or vigorously corrected, and the POV becomes a closed belief system as usual, one of an ever increasing number until the complex society that enables the prattle collapses as usual.
Those who would rather know than believe self-select out of the shared narrative storytelling and competing variants. Contraians may offer competing narratives that others don't like, and so become a voice in the digital wilderness. If they fail to tell others what they want to hear, or persist in telling people what is true but unpleasant, then they can expect to be ignored, marginalized, denied, obfuscated, vilified, demonized, imprisoned, or killed (in roughly that order if need be). Among those who would rather believe than know, social media (and taverns) selects for post-truth claims.
But being a contrarian, I read all of Morningstar's series of articles as I could be wrong, and if I'm wrong, about everything or anything that matters, I'd rather know than believe I'm right. The above was written before reading the articles (the part she wrote, as I habitually vet sources), and so serves as a confession of bias, error, ignorance, and illusion.
In the Beginning, ACT I:
"WE DON’T HAVE TIME: As this term is quickly becoming the quote du jour as a collective mantra to address the ongoing environmental disaster that can best be described as a nod to the obvious, it’s true that we don’t have time. We don’t have time to stop imperialist wars – wars being the greatest contributor to climate change and environmental degradation by far – but we must do so. Of course this is an impossible feat under the crushing weight of the capitalist system, a US war economy, and the push for a fourth industrial revolution founded on renewable energy. Yet, inconvenience has nothing to do with necessity in regards to addressing a particular situation. What is never discussed in regard to the so-called “clean energy revolution” is that its existence is wholly dependent on “green” imperialism – the latter term being synonymous with blood.
But that’s not what this series is about.
This series is about new financial markets in a world where global economic growth is experiencing stagnation. The threat and subsequent response is not so much about climate change as it is about the collapse of the capitalist economic system. This series is about the climate wealth opportunity of unprecedented growth, profits, and the measures our elite classes will take in order to achieve it – including the exploitation of the youth."
So to add to Hamada's list of things to be AGAINST: environmental disaster, imperialist wars, climate change, environmental degradation, capitalist system, US war economy, fourth industrial revolution, alleged clean energy revolution, green imperialism, elite classes, exploitation of the youth, environmental racism, eco-imperialism, the non-profit industrial complex, oligarchs, financialisation of Nature, social engineering, and the bloody mindedness of the uninformed (who don't know what she knows) who just don't get it. Trump and the Koch Brothers are in complete accord, they just have different lists.
The content of the first paragraph may not be what the series is about, but it is the conceptual framework within which a narrative of business-as-usual in the present as it has been in the more distant past is detailed but with a spin. Part of the pattern is to frame all discourse within a politicized universe of discourse apart from which not a concept worthy of consideration exists. The POV is relentlessly humancentric with all players strutting their moment on the stage peering through a political lens darkly, not unlike those at Oxford in the 12th century viewed all issues through a religious lens darkly, which lead to an inquisition and the burning of Giordano Bruno. Who is in power, who is from what slice of the political spectrum, who ends up burning whom on their rhetorical stake (or real one) is BAU, and Morningstar's pretense of being superior to those she despises, who views herself as better informed and fundamentally different in kind (and ideologically she may be), is facepalmingly stupid. Trump and the Koch Brothers don't see themselves as part of the problem. Greta and Cory and Mary don't either. All indulge in self-praise and other-blame. But I have met the enemy, an he is me.
I can offer the same unthinkable thoughts as I offered Greta in an open letter:
Let me speak more clearly: It is criminal negligence to mislead the public on such important matters [existential threats to the biosphere and humanity], and that means you [Greta] and XR and all the nonprofit NGOs 'fighting' climate change. We must protest ourselves, the pathology of the believing mind, our error, ignorance and illusion—but try telling that to humanity (or XR enthusiasts).
Depoliticize the issue of climate change, and all other for-and-against issues to minimize cognitive pathology. No entrenched side of any politicized issue has any real solutions as blame-and-justify true believer minds cannot think in terms of them. If there was an us-vs-them narrative that isn't part of the pathology, it would be an 'us vs Nature and we loose' narrative that no human (who is also an Anthropocene enthusiast who may or may not know it) can believe in, so stop believing anything. Seek to know rather than believe. Learn to think in systems which excludes self-centered humancentric thinking. 'Seek out the condition now that will come anyway.' —H.T. Odum
