Where Are We Headed?

This brief article “Tackle climate crisis and poverty with zeal of Covid-19 fight, scientists urge"  in today's Guardian is prescient and important I believe. It’s not the only or unique piece I’ve read with a similar perspective, but it illuminates that we are in a key opportunity moment. If we honestly believe that returning to business as usual once the current pandemic is past us is the way to go, then we will almost certainly continue on a path with increasing and accelerating challenges that will overwhelm our ability to survive them. If we feel a change is necessary then of course we need to come to some agreement, not just within the U.S., but globally, on what principles should drive our collective decision-making. 

What it comes down to, or what I think the vast majority of we humans want, is a "Good Society". Now where we differ is how we might define what a 'Good Society' looks like. In my last blog, already more than five months back I had written about sociologist Erik Olin Wright's last book before he succumbed to cancer, wherein he lays out four theses as summarized succinctly in the afterword written by Michael Burawoy. “First, another world is possible; second, it could improve conditions of human flourishing for most people; third, elements of this world are already being created; and finally, there are ways to move from here to there.” (p. 154) 

Wright directs us throughout the work to consider three essential cluster of values in both critiquing capitalism and in forming alternatives – 

Equality/Fairness

Democracy/Freedom

Community/Solidarity

Fast forward to a new work by economist Lloyd "Jeff" Dumas, Building the Good Society: The Power and Limits of Markets, Democracy, and Freedom in an Increasingly Polarized World.  

In this new offering, Dumas despite his long tenure as an economist who can crunch numbers with the best of them, manages to open economics up beyond a plethora of numbers and graphs to the underlying purpose of an economy - to build a good society. While I’m not quite finished with the book, it is clear that Dumas believes that freedom, democracy, and personal development, and preserving the web of life are at the heart of what a good society must be built on. I found some of his more insightful passages around the notion of meaningful work, the role of attitude, meritocracy, and authority. 

The tone of the volume like that of the late Dr. Wright, is one of honest reflection, not didactic nor arrogant, but almost as if offering a gift. While I haven't completed the book yet, I see that he concludes by condensing his argument into six fundamental principles. These principles and idea align not only with the late Dr. Wright’s but they are alive and well and at the center of the work of a number of organizations here and abroad.

Democracy Collaborative                                  

Post Carbon Institute                                         

Transition Network                                             

Schumacher Center fora New Economics  

Next System Project                                           

We already have a globally agreed upon approach to what a good society should look like with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals, 169 targets and 240 indicators that every member nation of the United Nations agreed to in 2015, will move us much closer to building that society, not just here in the U.S., but around the globe. That most of the American public is ignorant of this agreement, and that only a few institutions, businesses and communities are focusing on realizing them, does not mean they should be abandoned. Rather it's time to make them all of our work.

As the late songwriter, Phil Och's implored, these are Days of Decision.

We might also revisit and absorb the Declaration of Interdependence that the David Suzuki Foundation offered almost 30 years ago. The pandemic has made this all the more clear.

This we know

We are the earth, through the plants and animals that nourish us.
We are the rains and the oceans that flow through our veins.
We are the breath of the forests of the land, and the plants of the sea.
We are human animals, related to all other life as descendants of the firstborn cell.
We share with these kin a common history, written in our genes.
We share a common present, filled with uncertainty.
And we share a common future, as yet untold.
We humans are but one of thirty million species weaving the thin layer of life enveloping the world.
The stability of communities of living things depends upon this diversity.
Linked in that web, we are interconnected — using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life.
Our home, planet Earth, is finite; all life shares its resources and the energy from the sun, and therefore has limits to growth.
For the first time, we have touched those limits.
When we compromise the air, the water, the soil and the variety of life, we steal from the endless future to serve the fleeting present.

This we believe

Humans have become so numerous and our tools so powerful that we have driven fellow creatures to extinction, dammed the great rivers, torn down ancient forests, poisoned the earth, rain and wind, and ripped holes in the sky.
Our science has brought pain as well as joy; our comfort is paid for by the suffering of millions.
We are learning from our mistakes, we are mourning our vanished kin, and we now build a new politics of hope.
We respect and uphold the absolute need for clean air, water and soil.
We see that economic activities that benefit the few while shrinking the inheritance of many are wrong.
And since environmental degradation erodes biological capital forever, full ecological and social cost must enter all equations of development.
We are one brief generation in the long march of time; the future is not ours to erase.
So where knowledge is limited, we will remember all those who will walk after us, and err on the side of caution.

This we resolve

All this that we know and believe must now become the foundation of the way we live.
At this turning point in our relationship with Earth, we work for an evolution: from dominance to partnership; from fragmentation to connection; from insecurity, to interdependence.

Beginnings and Endings

As I approach the conclusion of seven years of blogging under the moniker of Possibilitator, it is clear that my production has dropped precipitously. It has been clear since early this year that my ability to read and write at the earlier level is diminished. So as I looked back recently at some of those posts I was surprised at the numbers. If I actually publish this one it would be the 269^th blog over that time, but only the 4^th this year. The blogs have been viewed nearly 100,000 times by lord only knows whom, maybe Russian bots.

It was interesting to read the initial post that gave the blog its name – Possibilitator. In reading it this past week I can still say I am happy with what I proposed to do seven years ago. I was not dogmatic in always following the ideal expressed in that post, but largely I did. The hope has been to share some ideas of others that I encounter along the way that resonated with me at the time, and that I judged were of high enough quality to suggest they might be worth your time. Almost nothing I have referred to in this blog have been best sellers, or voices you might hear on broadcast tv, or read in local or national newspapers.   

What it shows me is that all over the world, there are many people thinking and acting to more clearly understand the world we share and to try to make it better, not just for themselves, but for everyone. Obviously, they don’t all propose the same analysis or solutions, but the intention is obvious and encouraging. In essence they share a view of possibilities. Nothing promised or guaranteed. Since my current reading is greatly reduced in amount and depth, there has been less to share. Pulling something out of that which I read has become a challenge, one that I am not winning. But there is at least one title recently that I would like to make more visible to others.

It was the last book authored by noted sociologist Erik Olin Wright, who passed away in January after a short battle with cancer. He had visions of a bigger book, but what he has packed into this short (less than 150 pages) tome is both insightful, cogent, and lovingly shared. In reading a few of the obituaries and memorials to him it affirms the tone of his book is one he lived.

How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century was meant to be a book in two parts as he describes in the preface.

“I wanted to write something that would be engaging to any reader interested in thinking  about these issues. But I also found it difficult to write about new arguments and themes without the usual academic practices of entering into debates with alternative views, documenting the sources of various ideas that contributed to my analysis, using footnotes to counter various objections that I knew some readers might have, and so on. My problem was basically that I was writing for two different audiences: people who would be interested in the issues but not the traditional academic elaborations, and readers who would feel the book was not intellectually rigorous without those elaborations.” (pp. xi-xii)

The cancer interfered with those plans, but luckily for us he managed to complete part one - for a general audience.In it, Wright lays out an analysis of the failures of capitalism and provides possible approaches to address them. He lays out four theses as summarized succinctly in the afterword written by Michael Burawoy. “First, another world is possible; second, it could improve conditions of human flourishing for most people; third, elements of this world are already being created; and finally, there are ways to move from here to there.” (p. 154) 

I won’t try to summarize the many good points in this remarkably cogent and erudite book. You should read it for yourself. Ask your library to order it. But Wright directs us throughout the work to consider three essential cluster of values in both critiquing capitalism and in forming alternatives – 

Equality/Fairness

Democracy/Freedom

Community/Solidarity

I have a growing realization that it’s at this basic level that our deeper conversations must go to move ahead as a single family on a finite planet. Wright helps us consider those fundamental values and their different meanings to different folks. Spending some time with him and his ideas through the pages of this book is a good tonic, regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum. His tone is a compassionate one, not an angry one. It makes it an easier read. That he dedicated his last days on earth to offer these ideas to us is quite a gift we should treasure and share. Hopefully a couple of readers of this blog will find their way to it and be glad they did.