Great discussion once more. Christina is dynamite, she connects the dots so clearly! We do need systems change, as she notes. Problem: The people's lever on change is democracy, but that, so far, is proving unable to offset rapacious extractive capitalism (or authoritarianism, for that matter). Over-production of plastics, like the over production of all the other crap, is driven by the need for ever-increasing consumption, growth and profits. If you belong to the 1%, you're thrilled. Party on. For the rest of us humans, ff we are resigned to this economic "reality" - we're doomed. If the people could just figure out how to get their hands on the means of production, though... Nate, please DM Mr. Marx for a future episode?
Haha - but I kind of agree. I note, Nate, that whenever you seem to be rounding the corner to solutions, often in the final 10 mintues? you have a tendency to swerve and sway back to doominess, and to focus on the personal and sentimental. Instead of digging into the real options available to people for collective action. Unions; political actvism; civil disobedience... Zizek, Saito, Kallis, Malm, there are plenty of well-known thinkers (often outside the USA) with ideas about how to act together politically to alter political and ecological realities, realities that are treated in this podcast with, ultimately, a strange kind of resignation. I think that's what I Know Nothing is getting at?
Great discussion once more. Christina is dynamite, she connects the dots so clearly! We do need systems change, as she notes. Problem: The people's lever on change is democracy, but that, so far, is proving unable to offset rapacious extractive capitalism (or authoritarianism, for that matter). Over-production of plastics, like the over production of all the other crap, is driven by the need for ever-increasing consumption, growth and profits. If you belong to the 1%, you're thrilled. Party on. For the rest of us humans, ff we are resigned to this economic "reality" - we're doomed. If the people could just figure out how to get their hands on the means of production, though... Nate, please DM Mr. Marx for a future episode?
You highlight these things in this pathological way that allows us not to act. It's using the truth as a form of denialism.
Oh, is that the boarding call for your flight?
Haha - but I kind of agree. I note, Nate, that whenever you seem to be rounding the corner to solutions, often in the final 10 mintues? you have a tendency to swerve and sway back to doominess, and to focus on the personal and sentimental. Instead of digging into the real options available to people for collective action. Unions; political actvism; civil disobedience... Zizek, Saito, Kallis, Malm, there are plenty of well-known thinkers (often outside the USA) with ideas about how to act together politically to alter political and ecological realities, realities that are treated in this podcast with, ultimately, a strange kind of resignation. I think that's what I Know Nothing is getting at?