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, January 12, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, January 12, 2021

  • An Exhausted Planet Limps Into 2021 by Robert Hunziker from CounterPunch. My reaction: The only thing that I can disagree with this article is this sentence: "Adopt eco economics as a healthy replacement for the neoliberal brand of forever-growth capitalism, cruising along on a golden paved road to never-never land of fantasy and ecstasy." Plain capitalism was never going to restrain itself from "the forever-growth" phenomenon because the wealth and power that the system delivers to families is too powerfully addictive. Transnational capitalism (they call it "neoliberalism") is only an updated version of capitalism, and it is not responsible for our crisis. It is the system itself. The denial of this fact only comforts upper-middle-class careerists who find the thought distasteful, that their role was essential by assisting capitalists to own and control everything on Earth. They want to shed their guilt in pursuit of their own comfortable lives by denying their collusion with capitalists, and that they might be also responsible for this crisis that threatens all life on Earth.
  • Apartheid News by Bernhard (German blogger) from his weblog Moon of Alabama. 
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