{"id":238,"date":"2014-05-26T14:12:39","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T20:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/?p=238"},"modified":"2014-05-26T14:13:33","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T20:13:33","slug":"aux-armes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/2014\/05\/26\/aux-armes\/","title":{"rendered":"Aux Armes!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Complex societies collapse when individuals withdraw energy from public tasks, for reasons that seem good at the time. The fatal step is to privilege private life over survival of the community. In the old Greek city-states, people with those priorities were considered idiotes<\/em>: narrow, limited, self-oriented people.<\/p>\n

In our case, we have been effectively guided away from mutual endeavors by consumer advertising (the \u201ccentury of the self<\/a>\u201d), the results of which are now wired into our psyches, our land use, and our technologies. The crude fascist propaganda of 80 years ago is hardly necessary today, having been far surpassed by the corporate matrix in which we live, and the surveillance state. We are heavily alienated from nature and one another. Our resulting narcissism is supported by a level of material grandeur (and waste) unmatched in history. (Those not possessing an adequate portion do not find it grand.)<\/p>\n

The party is over. Industrial civilization on this scale has been possible only with the rapid depletion of irreplaceable natural stocks, irreversible damage to ecosystems and planetary homeostasis, and exploitation of others.<\/p>\n

If elite lifestyles and control are to continue, exploitation must be intensified. We can understand the dynamics of this quite well without a NASA-funded study (comments on one are here<\/a> by the wise Florentine chemistry professor Ugo Bardi).<\/p>\n

The most important tasks for us in such a time are to a) wake up and b) act. Action, if halfway successful, will bring more awakening, better action, and so on.<\/p>\n

This is not really happening in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re observing the opposite \u2013 general withdrawal and an increase in passivity even among those who are politically aware and seemingly sympathetic. It\u2019s time to \u201cwarrior up.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of people imagine that being educated, or holding opinions, or talking with like-minded friends, or reading a Bulletin or press release by the Los Alamos Study Group, are political acts. Dream on.<\/p>\n

Others imagine that decreasing one\u2019s ecological footprint will help save the earth \u2013 by reducing one\u2019s impact, by setting a good example, and by working out the kinks as to how to do it. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 This is mostly a delusion. The more private one\u2019s actions, the less communal and governmental they are, the less important they are. The other 99.9% will consume what you do not and greedy corporations will organize that extraction, exploitation, and consumption very professionally. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Your example will not be voluntarily followed.<\/p>\n

Still others imagine that \u201cinner\u201d peace exists and is more important than community and planetary survival, or that planetary survival will be taken care of by others.<\/p>\n

Others imagine that writing white papers will change the minds of people whose salaries and careers depend on not<\/em> changing their minds.<\/p>\n

The whole notion that we can save ourselves without achieving political<\/em> change, with change in government and law<\/em>, is quite mistaken.<\/p>\n

When people do attend some quasi-political gathering, that attendance is often passive. Often, the more passivity is involved, the greater the sense of transcendence<\/em>, the greater the feeling that \u201csomething is happening,\u201d the greater the excitement. Celebrities, if present, provide transference. Various staged spectacles that disturb no one, attending a lecture, going to a \u201cdemonstration\u201d \u2013 all this may seem great at the time but if it does not result in political organization and personal commitment, what good is it exactly? Filling in a petition on-line, what is that? There may be an exact<\/em> perverse logic here \u2013 the more passive and disempowering something is, the more important, transcendent, and attractive it seems to be.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of other substitutes for actually taking political action, ourselves. We could make a long list. We each have our favorite distractions. Many of them bring social and professional accolades.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty much axiomatic that anything which does not cause a disturbance, and\/or does not require some sort of sacrifice or commitment, is not effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Complex societies collapse when individuals withdraw energy from public tasks, for reasons that seem good at the time. The fatal step is to privilege private life over survival of the community. In the old Greek city-states, people with those priorities were considered idiotes: narrow, limited, self-oriented people. In our case, we have been effectively guided… Read More »Aux Armes!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ZtEt-3Q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}