General discussion on Ethics, Political Structures and understanding others views

so all the doomsay stuff is waste of breathe? cost of living is sky rocketing for absolutely no purpose, and all this wasted talk on PO just give the greed corporations more ammunition to rip us off. instead of in mark's words sort of talking about a better governance lets unite now as a society and push for the governance we need and it is not with political parties they are corruptible and corrupted.

look at the environmental damage being done in canada i think producing shale type oil

len

 

I'm up for it Len.

What's your plan? Where do we start? How are we going to stop these 'greed corporations' and corruptible political parties?

 

For some, 'wasted talk' is actually seen as a beneficial indeed, essential part of the learning process.

Peak oil is a reality. As stated in the above-supplied article:

At present, most of the world’s oil is still obtained from a few hundred giant onshore fields in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Venezuela, among other countries; some additional oil is acquired from offshore fields in the North Sea, the Gulf of Guinea, and the Gulf of Mexico. This oil comes out of the ground in liquid form and requires relatively little processing before being refined into commercial fuels.

But such conventional oil is disappearing. According to the IEA, the major fields that currently provide the lion’s share of global petroleum will lose two-thirds of their production over the next 25 years, with their net output plunging from 68 million barrels per day in 2009 to a mere 26 million barrels in 2035. The IEA assures us that new oil will be found to replace those lost supplies, but most of this will be of an unconventional nature. In the coming decades, unconventional oils will account for a growing share of the global petroleum inventory, eventually becoming our main source of supply.

Global 'conventional oil' supplies have 'peaked'. It costs more (both in a monetary and socio-ecological sense) to recover 'unconventional oil'. Ergo, we pay more at the pumps. The effects of human-induced climate change is a largely unseen, deferred 'cost'. Hence why some people still struggle with the concept and reality of it.

For some, 'talking [learning] about a better governance' is the first step toward achieving a better system of governance:

Libertarian Municipalism (LM) is not a 'political party'. LM is the political arm of Social Ecology (SE). LM sees people as individuals, important in their own right, but none so more important than the community as a whole. LM requires people to engage as political beings, face-to-face. Any community (at any level) decisions that are made as a result of LM are derived from directly democratic processes. LM is 100% transparent. Corruption cannot exist in a direct democracy (such as LM), because people are fully informed and engaged in the process.

An open invitation to learn more and to participate (rather than to denigrate):

The Politics of Social Ecology: A 'study and discussion' group. All welcome!

 

LM or SE not known by the populas, sounds like someones dream, we need direction now surely? and we need to put people first, none of which i see when talking to people around me, something i don't see others around here doing much of. the common man masses do not believe in the science hype.

don't want to participate in any political parties.

i get denigrated often even gagged every time i post is that the sort of control you want in your dream.

len

 

Len, with all due respect, I suspect the people you talk with are hardly representative of the wider community. However, I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised if you can enlighten me otherwise.

There is a reason why some people struggle with science, they are for the most part scientifically illiterate.

As previously stated, LM is not a political party.

You are correct, LM is 100% about 'control' - that is, self control!

Through education (or the abrogation of irrational and ignorant thought processes), anyone can engage in the LM (as part of the SE) process. But it must start with the individual.

As the old saying goes: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".

Further (free) reading:

https://www.social-ecology.org/category/social-ecology-journals/

 

What you offer very much as political system by another name sounds like a wolf in sheeps clothing, what we need is to be a community with a leader just as head of teh group, but not dictatorial and blocked from favoring those the leader approves of much like here hey?

len

 

LM as a component of SE is the binding agent. But of course before it can be realised, all 23-plus million Australians first have to be introduced to and schooled in the concept. Hence the open invitation, here.

Communitarian-based 'anarchy', in the true sense of the concept, is the planned for and expected outcome.

Oh, is not just what 'I' propose, there are many who have come before me - none less than the late, great 'father' of SE, Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) - and many more that will follow. Not to mention all of those who are currently working around the world to turn it into a reality as we speak (read: type).

I don't understand what you mean by 'putting the cart before the horse' as far as science is concerned. Perhaps you would care to elaborate?

The so-called 'lawlessness in our major [presumedly, Australian?] cities' is a figment of the tabloid media's imagination. Served up on the nightly 'news' to enthral the masses and to keep them amused. A bit like a modern day freak show, or a contemporary version of Daniel in the Lions Den - one of my favourite stories in Sunday School, before I was expelled at the age of four. Current crime statistics do not bare out the imaginings of commercial television 'current affairs' programs - Australia's cities have never before been as safe as they are now. As we have previously discussed, here.

In sum, SE and its political arm LM (as do the ethics and principles of permaculture) provide the people with a solid platform in 'good moral ethics'; all we need do is adopt them. Writing of which, I must get back to our work...

 

g'day mark,

the cart before the horse, simple words, they came out with a fix before really factualising that their theory had teeth. So your new politics has to be taught? well that will never happen, that sounds like what the greedy corporations and gov' do now, indoctrinate something into being needed, just another brick in the wall thing. kids are brainwashed in schools now all for the good of science.

i see by your words it has a great leader so it is already worship in the minds of supporters (an 80 year old author). so there are no shootings, bashing's, hit and runs, it is all those who receive it, their nightmare, not yours.

don't just mention moral ethics mark spell them out.

just sounds like a new comfort zone for some to hide behind from the doomsayers

len

 

So is it that you don't think the implementation of Mark's ideas are practical/possible or is the ideas themselves that you have an objection to Len?

Do you think that just because an idea (no matter how good it is) is too difficult to implement that it is not worth trying?

I'm still interested in hearing how you think we might bring people together under the banner of 'good ethics', because I'm not sure I see that as being easily implementable either.

If you think that the current political system is faulty, what would you replace it with? How would you go about implementing it?

To me this is where the difficulty lies. I don't think that we lack good ideas, I just think we lack the road map, the implementation plan.

 

G'day Len

Who is 'they', what is their 'fix', and their 'theory'? I'm sorry, mate, and contrary to popular belief, I'm not a mind reader.

Once again, not 'mine'. And yes, but perhaps not 'taught' in the sense that you might be thinking of. LM, as an adjunct of SE, is a voluntary undertaking. It relies on people's innate ability to wash their minds clear of 1,000's-of-years of intellectual and physical oppression, and then open them to a whole new understanding of personal liberation and municipal responsibility. A system of 'self teaching', if you can imagine.

At most schools, certainly. On many levels, and according to many doctrines. For the 'good of science'? What do you mean? Science is science. It (when it is conducted according to the tennets) is pure objectivism.

No, MB was just another follower (albeit an extremely wise one). I should have qualified my 'fatherhood' statement. He was, undoubtedly, the father of modern SE. I say this because SE is as old as human construct itself. When humans first climbed out of the trees and started to bipedal across what we now refer to as Africa around 3.2-million years BP, they were already thinking about the best way they could live within (i.e. exploit) their socio-ecological (SE) environment.

Care for the planet, care for the people, redistribute the wealth. Sound familiar?

Doom? I find it quite liberating, myself. Anytime you care to join us, you know where we live and learn.

Cheerio, and (as always) thanks for reading, Markos.

 

a bit of loosness here mark,

but just what i expected false science is taught above all else.

your moral ethics are very sketchy, people will have no true meaning of where it comes from or where it is going, the ethics are all one liners

anyhow mark cut to the chase, what are we going to do in real terms to give people hope and direction and geoff lawton's book for kids is not going to be it either

anyhow this thread is gafunk

my belief has liberated me and many others we'll stick with that thanks

len

 

'Gafunk'?

 

[video=youtube;AWtCittJyr0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWtCittJyr0[/video]

 

Yeah, probably not a good idea, especially if you are just after a nice, relaxing evening.

I've watched about a third of the vid. Ironically, my battery is in the red, so I'll have to watch the rest tomorrow.

However, thanks for sharing. I'm sure the rest of it will be just as interesting.

Oh, and if you'd like to join us anytime, feel free.

 

grahame,

before you could even begin to think along mark's lines you would need a community who has decided enough already(110%+ that is), eg.,. quakers, amish etc.,.(used as examples of same direction individuals supporting each other as best they can) but they are only groups in communities, and if they get dissenter's they can expel them to the outside world(where we are) and people can opt' out and come to the same outside world.

you can't teach that in schools, it starts in the home, over decades of following high moral ethic's, like back in the late 40's and 50's and early 60's, when people lived by different moral ethics, no need for security screens on homes, no need to lock the door, our community morals have crashed because we can't point to anything more than a secular constitution(which will turn and bite us - so to say), back then long before myth science convinced farmers they needed more land to make more profit, so they moved away from their consumers, out into the bush, and used DDT and dieldren(which still contaminates the soils of the gatton area, even though the farmers have moved further out.

so first in mark and his supporter's dreams how do you 1st and foremost encourage families to see that they need to change, and if they did would we then need what is basically another political system?

so far the moral ethics that mark indicated, are nothing flash they are the general sort of idea many follow/want or simply reject.

anyhow me and mine would love to see real change from the hearts of all, get the brainwashing of science out of our schools, we never had it in our day, if kids want to know about science let them inquire, that while all along they are learning true moral standards.

we need to be doing, not dreaming

len

 

Yes I think most people who want to see these ideas that mark is passionate about become a reality realise that it is not going to happen overnight, perhaps even in their own lifetime, but they see it (and I include myself in that) as very important and worthwhile. Sometimes real lasting change can take a long time to mature.

Actually on this I have a slightly different view. I personally think that the vast majority of people still have the same internal moral and ethical compass, perhaps even stronger than in the past. The people I meet are overwhelmingly good people deep down. But there are a couple of reason why we seem to see more moral degradation in the world. One reason is TV and Internet and particularly sensationalist media coverage of the 'bad' things that are happening.

The second is that there is a real imbalance in the world, the haves get more, the have-nots get less. I think you agree on that one!. This disparity leads to more 'need' to break their moral codes. Further to that there is increasingly less to go around. When faced with hunger and lack, people will drop their morals to survive. Moreover, the system is set up to make it very difficult to act morally because the system is morally corrupt. Corporation in itself is a corrupt notion. I believe this is why we are seeing such high levels of mental heath issues too.

I think people really want a change, we here it from the punters in the street every election, but the politicians are incapable of offering them any real change. My feeling is that the individual people are not faulty, they still have a moral compass, they still want to be good people. It is the system we operate under that is faulty.

I don't share your view on science being the issue here, rather it is the same issue as in my last point... We as a society are trying to squeeze more and more productivity out of a rapidly depleting soil resource. This is to feed an exponentially growing population, and a 'growth economy'. We moved away from coaxing the land to give us what it could reasonably sustain to a type of agriculture that actually mines this resource unsustainably. I agree that scientific advancements have allowed for this, but it is not the science per se that caused it, it just facilitated it. I don't really blame the farmers for this, nor do I blame the scientists. In fact there really is no-one to blame as I don't think it was a conscious decision.

I actually think many people as individuals are beginning to understand that this political system is not working, and in some cases there are local movements that are 'circumventing' officialdom. The difficulty with LM is that it is radically different from the current system because its give responsibility back to the people. The problem is that we have given away any power we had to the system, to political leaders we don't know and in most cases have never met. That giving away of power has made us feel weak and impotent in the face of the force the political parties, and the media does a great job of keeping us down... All we can do is live it ourselves and talk about it to the people in our circle of concern and influence.

I think they are great ethics and they are expanded on in some of the permaculture literature. I don't see how they differ from the other ethical codes out there, because they are based on the very same...

I too, I have very serious reservations about the whole school system as it stands today. But, I don't think the worst of 'brainwashing' in schools is the scientific stuff. In fact that is probably the least brainwashing bit. In many cases school is nothing more than a holding tank for children whilst parents go out and try to squeeze a little more out of the increasingly shrinking world pie. But I also see some encouraging changes happening in some schools.

And I couldn't agree more that NOW is the time for us all to do something about it all.

For me, I am instilling morals and ethics into my children. I am practising permaculture. I am talking to people about a better way. I am voting for the political party that is at least talking about the right sort of things. I'm a being the change I wish to see in the world and I am attempting to solve the things I see as problems by looking at the problems with what I trust is a different level of consciousness. I don't know that there is much more I can do.

I someone gives me some more steps I can take, I'll have a go at taking them.

One thing I am not going to do is to allow myself to be a victim, nor to complain about things without attempting to change them.

 

Unless I get any objections I am going to move all this LM, political discussion out of this thread and into a new thread of it's own. I will do this once I have made pancakes and eaten them for breakfast. I may also take the time to have a nice cup of coffee too...

 

grahame,

dissecting a post like this makes it harder to reply to (that of course maybe the aim)

the ethic's mark mentioned are hardly moral, and yes there are many out there driven by a deeper morality one that once was, they mostly are living in denial, of what those morals can deliver

mark and his supporters dream i hope don't happen over anyone's night, we need an about face.

yes in the world largely promoted here is about the poor getting poorer and the greedy getting richer that cannot be changed even in marks world, that takes something much deeper in people than being seen to be!

there are those seeking the truth of our roots you won't see them here at all you could walk past them in teh street and would never know, something i do rarely is get into public debates but one i had while many of us were lined up for blood testing a bloke who worshiped geology but detested climate science anyway i gave him my version and many in the queue gave an accolade i wasn't fishing for one lady cheered and clapped.

anyhow move it where you may but support bill in keeping me blocked, undemocratic

len

 

Thanks for your response Len. I'm sorry that dissecting the posts makes it difficult for you to respond. I certainly am not in the business of deliberately making it difficult for someone. I find it much easier if I can break it down and address each point in turn. I also like to respond to the whole post, in order to give the persons view respect. I myself, get annoyed when someone just picks out an issue they take particular umbrage with and concentrate only on that, rather than addressing the whole post. But I guess that is a personal matter.

Don't feel obliged to respond to my posts at all though. On the other hand feel free to ask me any questions about my views in order to delve deeper into it. Going by your responses to me I get the distinct feeling that you are not understanding where I am really coming from, who I really am and what sort of a world I would like to see come about.

I think perhaps my understanding of what Ethics and Morals mean are different to yours. I can honestly say my understanding of the world and the universe seems very different to yours too. But I think we want the same physical world outcomes. Peace, Abundance, Health and Caring all seem like worthwhile pursuits. If they are not in your set of pursuits then we have nothing more to say to each other. If they are, then surely you can respect that which ever roads we travel in order to arrive in that same place are all good roads to take?

 

Move it, Eddie. It's a bit gafunked leaving it in here.