Rachel Findley’s Recent Comments

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  Joy

  "there can be joy in losing the consumer economy..."

  I can speak to that, from personal experience. But I know plenty of other people who find the prospect of losing their stuff and wide-ranging travel a real threat.

  The more people who opt out, and who clearly enjoy their new ways of living, the less threatening the transition will look. It will really start to look like fun when we build communities to support new ways of living, economically, medically, educationally and personally.

  If there is no broad agreement on goals, coercion is not likely to work much better than Prohibition or mass sterilization in India in the Seventies. With broad agreement on goals and values, incentives or coercion can work to "bring along the laggards" as odograph put it.  In a democracy (or even in the absence of democracy) a lack of consent will bring down a government or at least prevent its laws from working.

  With consensus, people will change the way they live and accept regulations that support the consensus. Think of WWII--not just rationing but the draft, blackouts, Victory gardens, war bonds, displacement of Japanese people... you really do have to think about what the consensus includes; it can be life-destroying and  life-affirming simlutaneously; propaganda can, for awhile anyway, support measures that are toxic to the body public.

  Does it seem like it will take too long to reach a broad agreement on measures that protect the environment and support democracy, equality, culture? Maybe it will--so we had better get going.

  Lots of joy. Quick. Now.
  On A guest essay from Jan Lundberg posted 2 years, 2 months ago 16 Responses