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

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, March 5, 2020

The Automatic Earth, for wind ensemble + electronics, addresses the ongoing climate catastrophe and evokes the psychological effect of the impending disruptive change to our entire way of living on the planet, even under a best-case scenario. Our way of life is unsustainable, therefore it will not continue. The piece weaves together two threads: the climate crisis, and the technological transformation of what it is to be human. The tandem acceleration of technological wonder and ecological catastrophe means, at best, a strange, unrecognizable future, likely within our own lifetimes. I do not know if we will survive as a species: if we continue as we are now, average world temperature will increase around 8ªC within eighty years, which would result in runaway warming and a Venus-like atmosphere that virtually no life on earth can withstand. If we do survive, it will be via monumental feats of geo-engineering and human re-engineering, surpassed only by an extraordinary change in our willingness to cooperate with each other. Humanity will be forever altered. This way of life will die. The question is whether or not we will die with it.
... God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
  • Bernie Needs New Strategy For Biden His “Good Friend” featuring Jimmy Dore of The Jimmy Dore Show (via YouTube). (Note: Because Dore is once again (like in 2016) disillusioned by Bernie's (Sanders) namby-pamby (def.) campaign, he goes off on a rant against Sanders and his advisors for running such a campaign. Also, see this about another such comedian.)