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

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Peak Oil, Peak Debt, and the Concentration of Power

Click here to access article by Charles Eisenstein from The Oil Drum. 

I haven't had time to fully read this article or comment on it, but it looks interesting to me. The first thing that struck me--and, this is typical of many articles written by academics--is that the author is writing about the capitalist system but is unable to name it. He writes around the subject by using  phrases which really refer to capitalism without naming the system. See if you agree.
It should not be surprising, since the profit motive has been the primary driver towards these peaks, that we should be approaching a peak in the realm of money as well, a peak that we might call "peak debt." The crisis in money is ineluctably related to the crisis in everything else, because the viability of our money system depends on growth: the conversion of nature into goods, and relationships into services. This conversion cannot proceed much farther, due to resource depletion and the inability of society and biosphere to sustain more damage.
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