Perhaps if our relationship with the rest of the biosphere had been more attuned to that of some aboriginal peoples, we would be more inclined to see the peaceful reciprocity that evolved therein. And please try to refrain from a focus on biosphere interactions that seem un-peaceful like a wolfpack taking down a young elk or bison. That viewpoint comes of our distancing from Nature and our desire to control it on terms that are at odds with the frugality, reciprocity, recycling of materials etc. that are the biosphere's operational principles. We have immense difficulty appreciating the systemic perspective, in which the whole really is more than the sum of its parts. Aboriginals practiced ecological economics, an interaction with the biosphere that played by the macrosystem's principles of operation. The moment of great narcissism when we turned our species' face away from that path was the moment we became pariahs within a system that doesn't hold dissidence as a value, save perhaps in the value of genetic variation as the substrate for evolution.
While I agree that "There are so many lights that can yet be switched on. So many potential doors currently hidden in darkness creating the illusion that there is no exit." I am also convinced that beyond one of those doors must lie a society that recognizes its collective interest as tied to the rest of the biosphere, that moves at least closer to the aboriginal understanding of the necessity for ecological economics as the replacement for consume-and-discard economics. Until that becomes the central focus, other economic arguments, e.g., capitalism vs. socialism, become less relevant. But can we find a way through that door without the racism and classism implicit in continuing the current and longstanding first-world/third-world narcissism?
Perhaps if our relationship with the rest of the biosphere had been more attuned to that of some aboriginal peoples, we would be more inclined to see the peaceful reciprocity that evolved therein. And please try to refrain from a focus on biosphere interactions that seem un-peaceful like a wolfpack taking down a young elk or bison. That viewpoint comes of our distancing from Nature and our desire to control it on terms that are at odds with the frugality, reciprocity, recycling of materials etc. that are the biosphere's operational principles. We have immense difficulty appreciating the systemic perspective, in which the whole really is more than the sum of its parts. Aboriginals practiced ecological economics, an interaction with the biosphere that played by the macrosystem's principles of operation. The moment of great narcissism when we turned our species' face away from that path was the moment we became pariahs within a system that doesn't hold dissidence as a value, save perhaps in the value of genetic variation as the substrate for evolution.
While I agree that "There are so many lights that can yet be switched on. So many potential doors currently hidden in darkness creating the illusion that there is no exit." I am also convinced that beyond one of those doors must lie a society that recognizes its collective interest as tied to the rest of the biosphere, that moves at least closer to the aboriginal understanding of the necessity for ecological economics as the replacement for consume-and-discard economics. Until that becomes the central focus, other economic arguments, e.g., capitalism vs. socialism, become less relevant. But can we find a way through that door without the racism and classism implicit in continuing the current and longstanding first-world/third-world narcissism?