“In Defence of Inaction”

I think Dave Pollard sees it very well.

“In Defence of Inaction” by Dave Pollard

http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2014/04/20/in-defence-of-inaction/

I have, of late, had a falling out with many of my fellow

'progressives', similar I suppose to that of Paul Kingsnorth, who is

being savaged  <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/magazine/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-he-feels-fine.html> by Naomi Klein and others for giving up on the environmental movement and non-local activism, and by humanists for losing faith in our species' capacity for innovation and change.

I should say at the outset that I agree that our political and economic

and legal and educational and social systems are dreadful, unfair,

teetering, and totally inadequate to our needs. I agree that this is a

world of horrific inequality, inequitable and unjust privilege, massive

suffering, and outrageous patriarchy. I agree that corporatism and

corruption and propagandist media are rampant and destructive and

destabilizing. I agree that militarized police and torture prisons and

drone killing and massive global surveillance are repugnant and a

fundamental threat to our personal safety and security and the very

principles upon which our nations are founded.

And I fully acknowledge that the fact I'm white, male, boomer generation

and relatively wealthy provides me with enormous privilege compared to

others, including relative freedom of movement, freedom from fear of

harrassment and assault, and greater social, political and economic

opportunity.

But when I hear arguments that "we need" to stand up for our 'inherent'

rights and freedoms, and wrest 'control' of the levers of power from the

obscenely wealthy elite, and denounce and protest injustice and

inequality, and acknowledge and renounce our role as privileged

oppressors, as the first steps to a true social revolution in and

political and economic reform, leading, somehow, to a radical

redistribution of wealth and power, and a more just society, I am

reduced to despair.

I used to believe people, and perhaps some other creatures, had 'rights'

and 'freedoms'. I believed that someone was in control. I believed there

were answers to the predicaments we face.

But now I realize that there are no rights or freedoms. The concept of

rights and freedoms is a sop that the rich and powerful of this world

use to appease the fury and frustration of the poor and disenfranchised.

The 'granting' of rights and freedoms means nothing, because they can be and are taken away whenever those in power choose to do so, and are

simply ignored when they interfere with the exercise of power or

accumulation of wealth by those who allowed them to be granted.

We don't have freedom of expression, or speech, or assembly: Under the

current surveillance state I can be stopped, arrested, held indefinitely

and incommunicado, tortured, 'disappeared' or simply killed, by a drone

or in a secret gulag, whenever someone in power decides I'm a threat to

that power.

Likewise, there is no 'upward mobility' for just about any demographic

segment of our human population worldwide; most people are trapped,

socially and economically, right where they are, no matter what may

happen to the place where they live.

There is no true democracy, anywhere: the real decisions are made in

secret meetings between bought politicians (many of them in power

fraudulently or due to gerrymandering and other corruptions of the

'democratic' process), who represent only their rich and powerful

donors, and the bankers, lawyers and corporate executives. The 'laws'

and 'regulations' are just smokescreens to make it look as if the

people's interests are being considered.

There are no rights of recourse against corporate abuses: most

industries are oligopolies, and corporate law is designed to protect

them and their wealthy shareholders and executives from the wrath of

outraged citizens, while enabling these corporations to sue citizens who

pose any threat to their profits or 'leadership'.

All that's happened over the past three decades is that the illusion of

rights and freedoms has largely disappeared, as those with wealth and

power ratchet up the rhetoric that militarized police, torture prisons,

ubiquitous surveillance and the oppression of dissent are 'necessary'

for public safety and security (especially the safety and security of

the rich and powerful).

There are no rights or freedoms. There is only power, and its exercise

in the interest of further enriching the rich and further concentrating

power.

I used to be outraged and angry about all this, but now I'm just letting

it go. It's just too easy to see this as a moral struggle, as a fight

against pathology, greed, and tyranny. I don't think it's that simple. I

think everyone's really trying to do what they believe is best, not only

for their loved ones but for everyone. I know some of these people, and

their stubborn, destructive wrong-headedness is completely

understandable to me (from their strange but deeply-held worldview).

Increasing concentration of power doesn't mean is that there is an

'elite' in control of everything in our society. Vast wealth and power

does not translate to control, especially in a world where all our

systems are collapsing simultaneously: our economic systems, running on the fumes of belief in perpetual industrial growth; our nearly-exhausted energy and resource systems, utterly dependent on ample and cheap oil (one barrel of oil replaces /12 person-years/ of labour, and we

currently use /100 million barrels/ per day); and our climate systems,

which have long passed the tipping point to catastrophic change

comparable to that of the 'ice ages' (though in the opposite temperature

direction).

The rich and powerful are as much prisoners of these massive, complex,

crumbling systems, as much cogs in the machine, as the rest of us: they

just get better wages and benefits than the rest of the inmates, and

will until the systems fall apart, at which time they'll be no better

off than anyone else.

No one is in control. The enemy, if there is one, is not a cabal of

elites, but a set of co-dependent collapsing systems that every one of

us has a vested interest in trying (insanely) to perpetuate. Systems we

have all helped co-create and are almost all dependent on.

David Korowicz, in his study On the Cusp of Collapse

<http://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-10-10/cusp-collapse-complexity-energy-globalised-economy>,

explains how our massively complex global human systems are far beyond the control of any coordinated group of people:

Our daily lives are dependent upon the coherence of thousands of direct

interactions, which are themselves dependent upon trillions more

interactions between things, businesses, institutions and individuals

across the world. Following just one track; each morning I have coffee

near where I work. The woman who serves me need not know who picked the berries, who moulded the polymer for the coffee maker, how the municipal system delivered the water to the café, how the beans made their journey  or who designed the mug. The captain of the ship that transported the beans would have had no knowledge of who provided the export credit insurance for the shipment, who made the steel for the hull, or the steps in the complex processes that allow him the use of satellite navigation. And the steel-maker need not have known who built the pumps for the iron-ore mine, or how the oxygen for the furnace was refined.

We cannot hope to 'fix' these systems through political or economic or

legal or educational reform, or putting some more democratically-minded group 'in control' of them. Fighting for possession of the steering

wheel of a car careering over a cliff cannot produce useful change. Even

trying to bring down our economic systems before they do even more

damage is probably futile: It's unlikely to significantly accelerate,

mitigate or delay the inevitable collapse, and I'm not sure its effect

on catastrophic climate change would be substantial either. There is

simply no point trying to change any of these systems; it's a waste of

time, and, as Buddha said "Our problem is we think we have time." But

some would insist we try anyway, so at least "we can say we tried". I

think that's a pathetic argument.

So here we sit, all of us, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, with

no real 'rights' or 'freedoms', no hope of 'reforming' massive,

self-reinforcing and entrenched systems utterly out of our control,

coming apart because they are totally unsustainable, and no credible

knowledge of what might work to even mitigate the imminent and

catastrophic end of the industrial 'growth' economy, the end of the

all-too-brief age of abundant cheap energy, and the end of a short few

millennia of astonishingly stable climate.

The question we must each ask ourselves, I think, is this: /If we

acknowledge that our systems and hence our civilization cannot be

reformed or 'saved', what can we do now that will make a real

difference, for the future, in our communities and for those we love?/

The insanely rational answer to this question, I think, is (a) probably

nothing, and (b) it's too early to know.

So if I seem impatient or annoyed when you ask me to be outraged or

supportive in your movement to reform civilization, I'm sorry. I think

it's too late.

I'm in the process of writing a book of stories of how all of this might

play out, just one scenario, the story of, in the short term, a Great

Migration of billions of people towards the poles in search of livable

habitat (what an amazing, terrifying and liberating journey that could

be!), and, in the longer term, the blossoming of thousands of local

communities, new and unimaginably diverse, self-sufficient, joyful and

utterly alive human cultures, whose total impact on the planet will be,

due to our much smaller numbers and minimal energy and technology

resources, pretty insignificant. I need to write such a new story to be

able to begin to let go of the old, civilized one.

Maybe that's not enough. Maybe there's more I could (I've stopped saying "should") be doing: learning new essential skills and capacities,

helping in the process of rediscovering how to build and live in

community together, healing myself and helping others heal from the

ravages of civilization's innumerable, constant and monstrous stresses,

and just trying to live a joyful, exemplary, modest and graceful life. I

may get around to these things. But for now I'm just writing, watching,

reflecting, trying to figure it all out.

It's too early and too late, I think, to do anything more.