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.