Surviving Capitalism (Not) : 'Just Business': Capitalism is an Anti-Social Disease

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

'Just Business': Capitalism is an Anti-Social Disease

by Dave Lindorff from This Can't Be Happening. Great read. So many insightful observations about the nature of capitalism. Here is just one:

For a while, mankind, and the earth, could tolerate this sociopathic ideology, but we’ve clearly reached the point where it has to be recognized as a fatal disease. Capitalism and the greed it engenders and elevates to a virtue now threatens to finish us all off.

This touches on the purpose of my blog--that capitalism cannot co-exist with planetary limits and thus is doomed. We will go down with it if we do nothing. It's no longer a matter of social justice, it's now a matter of survivability.