[FRIAM] the Big (Bright) Green Lie

Steve Smith sasmyth at swcp.com
Fri Apr 23 15:28:25 EDT 2021


Merle -

I don't know how much traction you will get amongst this group of
radical technophiles (self sometimes included).   Unfortunately I think
that is one of the most effective modes of those promoting the Big
(Green) Lie (appealing to technophilic/technoutopic sentiments for "full
speed ahead").   Another is (also unfortunately) to recruit the
conspiracy nut types to (ab)use this line of thinking to fuel their own
anti-human agendas.   In the moment it looks like a narrow ridge to walk
down. Maybe "the Donald" has done us a service with *his* Big Lie, to
attune us to our susceptibility to "Big Lies"?

I have followed Derrick Jensen from early on (when he published Language
Older than Words
<https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf>) and
have a strong sympathy for what he is oft accused of as
"Anarcho-Primitivism".   This movie (and the book) Bright Green Lies is,
in my estimation "not wrong" in most if not all of it's positions.  But
that is not enough.

I used to be part of a regular community centered around Jensen but I
had to drop out, not because of Jensen's ideas or actions, but because
the radical fringe that was drawn there couldn't hold two impossible
thoughts in their heads/hearts at the same time.   There was (in my
opinion) a strong draw to a sort of "revenge aesthetic" among the more
radical who were indulging in the most extreme form of your own (you
introduced us to it most of a year ago) /Cassandrafreude/.   They
elevated Jensen to the prophet of a Cult of Personality, somewhat
against his will...  I haven't tracked this lately but the centroids of
these movements implied by the likes of Jensen, Paul Hawken, Bill
McKibben have entered mainstream and may ultimately represent the
current phase of the evolution of the *first world's*
post-capitalist/climate-change aesthetic.

So I believe that an important aspect of YOUR work is evolving to
include not just exposing the Big (Green) Lies we tell ourselves, but
healing the implicit rifts growing within the diverse coalition of
progressive/humanist/environmentalists/pan-somethingists or helping
them/us to build a healthy ecosystem of somewhat diverse and often
competing *strategies* for achieving a common *stated* goal. 

The most critical aspect of BrightGreenLies' story for me is that it is
self-contradictory to recruit (or rebuild) a hyper-capitalistic
profit-centric mega-industrial framework to "rescue us" from the
trajectory that is fundamentally part of their model of their mere
existence.    That is not to say that I have a "better plan" really (nor
do I endorse many of those implied by BrightGreenLies), but I definitely
accept that if the likes of Elon Musk or (even) Bill Gates ends up
"rescuing" us from the slow-moving disaster (aka "Jackpot
<https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2020/02/william-gibson-apocalypse-it-s-been-happening-least-100-years>"
in Bill Gibson's vernacular) we are in, it will only be a delay or
divergence from the most obvious, most imminent of disasters we are
bearing down on.   I believe (but cannot begin to prove) that we are at
the beginning of a cascade of birfurcations and that whatever is on the
"other side" of that is going to look *radically* different from what we
live with now (from first to third world, inclusive).   I highly doubt
*all* of the Utopian (and most of the Dystopian) visions we tend to
dwell on with Gibson's particular version being only one zany example
juxtaposed maybe with that of Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz>".

I believe it is critically hard to simultaneously optimize one's
local/personal/individualistic circumstance while also trying to
optimize a global measure as well.  I don't think we are particularly
well wired for this... but it IS our ability to abstract and language
and cognize which *might* allow us to evolve our
*sociopoliticaleconomic* (nod to DaveW) selves off of the family of
trajectories we have set ourselves upon (and double down with movements
*like* the Big Green LIe).   There are folks with the
intellectual/abstractional/synthetic capability here to participate in
that IMO,   but finding the right perspective and a place to obtain
traction to do so remains an unsolved problem.

For better or worse, I believe movements like McKibben's
<https://350.org/> and Hawkins' <https://www.drawdown.org/>and Gates
<https://www.gatesfoundation.org/>' and Sanders'/AOC
<https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf> are
perhaps necessary excursions from what to the "enlightened" might feel
is a "shortest path".   I want to invoke another thread here with
Stephen's "Least Action Path" conception, but in this arbitrarily high
dimensional space of "human endeavor" convolved with the
"biocryoatmogeospherical" space with which we are co-evolving (again nod
to DaveW) sociopolitcaleconomicspiritually.

I hope your attempt here (and elsewhere) to harness "the likes of us" or
more importantly to get us to "harness ourselves" (there's an image,a
corrolary to "hoisting oneself on one's own petard"?)

Carry On (while I Rattle On)!

 -Steve


> I'd like to start a new stream for those interested, but first you
> have to watch this film:  
>
> https://www.brightgreenlies.com <https://www.brightgreenlies.com>
>
> -- 
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @merle110
>
>
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