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

Monday, November 8, 2010

A Ghost Agreement

by George Monbiot from his blog. 

People who write articles like this simply do not understand, or refuse to understand, the fundamental contradictions between the dynamics of capitalism and ecology.
When they meet to consider the gradual collapse of the natural world, they send their office cleaners and defer the hard choices for another ten years, while the media doesn’t even notice that they have failed to produce a written agreement. 
"They" and the "media" are one and the same--just different components of the capitalist system.
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