<div dir="ltr"><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></div><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">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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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">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">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">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">McKibben's</a>
and <a href="https://www.drawdown.org/" target="_blank">Hawkins'
</a>and <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/" target="_blank">Gates</a>' and <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf" target="_blank">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>
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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">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">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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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.<br>Center for Emergent Diplomacy<br><a href="http://emergentdiplomacy.org" target="_blank">emergentdiplomacy.org</a></div><div>Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA</div><div></div><div><br>mobile: (303) 859-5609<br>skype: merle.lelfkoff2<br></div><div>twitter: @merle110<br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>