On Effecting Flexibility of Worldview

An interesting question just occurred as I was having a second cup of coffee and reading Endgame – Derrick Jensen (2006) – “Can a person whose worldview is based on a rigid and un-provable ideology (economic, political, religious, whatever) change that view?”

No.

So why think about it?

Because virtually every human being who wields power has such a worldview.

Is there something that can be done about that?

Maybe, but probably only one or two that are currently legal in most industrialized countries.

Dam (sic) Civilization

Starting a couple of months age, I hit a wall in my reading regimen. Books that were too long, too specific or overly academic put a ponderous damper on my enthusiasm for the (truthful, meaningful and real) written word.

Then, for Father’s Day, my granddaughter gave me a copy of Alan Weisman’s Countdown (2013), long but the subject needed it to be. I got back on track and followed up quickly with Jane Jacobs’ Dark Age Ahead (2004) and John A. Livingston’s Rogue Primate (1994). The stage was set for my current read – Endgame, Derrick Jensen (2006).

“There are two million dams in [America], 75,000 of them over six feet tall. Every one of these dams will someday fail, yet before constructing these two million dams, nobody bothered to find out what would happen to the rivers when the inevitable happened.

What makes this even more inexcusable, absurd, obscene—evil—is that we can say the same thing about deforestation, the murder of the oceans, the manufacture of CFCs, the fabrication of plastics, the burning of oil, in fact all of civilization. Nobody bothered to find out what effects these would have on the natural world. The reason is clear: those who make the decisions don’t care.

If the entire culture is predicated on an unexamined self-assumed right to exploit everyone and everything around you, why should you bother to think about the effects of your actions on others?”

This is a book which, with the exception of the section on dam removal that I am currently reading, I have thought through. Over several years, countless periods of sleeplessness, usually bracketed around 3:00am have enabled me to independently come up with so many of the concepts Jensen built this work on: western society is insane, corporations and their institutions are the enemy of the Earth, governments and their institutions are the enemy of the Earth, civilization is the enemy of the Earth, globalization must be dismantled, financial systems must be dismantled, current systems of government must be dismantled, civilization itself must be dismantled, “This culture is insane. It must be stopped.”

So, to me, the book reads like an old and trusted friend, corroborating my thoughts on all the most extreme and most urgently needed changes to reality; REAL reality, the reality of the only planet in the multiverse which will ever support the lives of homo sapiens (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

It’s no wonder Vince Ready walked away

Take a close look at these two tweets from Premier Clark about negotiations with the teachers as she sees them:

1/2 We remain committed to negotiating a fair deal with the BCTF as soon as possible, but it has to be affordable for taxpayers.

2/2 We want a deal that gives teachers a raise and invests in classrooms, but it must also be in line with settlements for other unions.

In the first, she sets herself up as judge-and-jury of fairness and affordability; that sounds a bit like Vladimir Putin judging what is best for Ukrainians. In the second she says that a deal with the teachers “must also be in line with settlements for other unions” – which other unions represent members who are responsible for children’s education and future?

For me another telling clue to the depth of difference between Christy Clark’s society and mine is her use of the word “invest” when talking about children, their education and their future. Thankfully, my world is not about deals, money, investment and standard-of-living; it is about learning, sharing, cooperating and quality-of-life. I hope this is true for the majority of parents and look forward to the day it becomes true for politicians.