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<p>Merle -</p>
<p>Thanks for commenting on the film-maker: A good background on
Julia and the documentary:</p>
<p>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/adv/article-how-canadian-filmmaker-and-environmentalist-julia-barnes-decided-to/">https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/adv/article-how-canadian-filmmaker-and-environmentalist-julia-barnes-decided-to/</a></p>
<p>I didn't realize it just premiered on yesterEarthDay.</p>
<p>The point of my anecdote about Jensen is that I don't think *he*
carries the baggage, but it *does* follow him around! Which is
always the problem with popular movements, they are, well...
Popular! in the best and worse sense of the term.</p>
<p>I feel blessed to have found Jensen's works early (by some
measure), it has helped keep me from falling into the
TechnoUtopian basin of attraction entirely. The complex
(precessing figure-eights for the most part) orbits I *do* follow
in this topic can be very unnerving (one day looking to Elon Musk
or Bill Gates or the latest advancement in Solid State Battery
Tech or the Stock Market's euphoria around Green Tech, etc. and
the next day noticing the unintended (and un-tended-to) side
effects of the last round of "technical fixes to non-technical
problems").</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 4/23/21 1:38 PM, Merle Lefkoff
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAEmKtrwpk_eqa9Lig3zAhiiCzeoCpK4cRwUzBNO2scR-LdunTA@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Thanks Steve. I'm
still processing and appreciate knowledgeable and thoughtful
feedback. I'm very interested in Julia and her efforts (I
think she's 25), which seems to me to add authenticity to the
quest for what the hell to do next. And I agree that Derrick
has a lot of baggage and is a drawback. Julia decided to make
the movie after she read the book. </div>
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<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 1:28
PM Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br>
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<p>Merle -</p>
<p>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"?<br>
</p>
<p>I have followed Derrick Jensen from early on (when he
published <a
href="https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Language Older
than Words</a>) 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.</p>
<p>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) <i>Cassandrafreude</i>.
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.<br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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 "<a
href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2020/02/william-gibson-apocalypse-it-s-been-happening-least-100-years"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Jackpot</a>" 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
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">A Canticle for
Leibowitz</a>".<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>For better or worse, I believe movements like <a
href="https://350.org/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">McKibben's</a> and <a
href="https://www.drawdown.org/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Hawkins' </a>and <a
href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Gates</a>' and <a
href="https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Sanders'/AOC</a>
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.</p>
<p>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"?)</p>
<p>Carry On (while I Rattle On)!<br>
</p>
<p> -Steve<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">I'd like to
start a new stream for those interested, but first
you have to watch this film: </div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><a
href="https://www.brightgreenlies.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.brightgreenlies.com</a><br>
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<div>Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.<br>
Center for Emergent Diplomacy<br>
<a
href="http://emergentdiplomacy.org"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">emergentdiplomacy.org</a></div>
<div>Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA</div>
<div><br>
mobile: (303) 859-5609<br>
skype: merle.lelfkoff2<br>
</div>
<div>twitter: @merle110<br>
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<div>Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.<br>
Center for Emergent Diplomacy<br>
<a href="http://emergentdiplomacy.org"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">emergentdiplomacy.org</a></div>
<div>Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA</div>
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skype: merle.lelfkoff2<br>
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<div>twitter: @merle110<br>
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