What if the bailout works? Naomi Klein on Sarah Palin
An interesting article from Naomi Klein (author of No Logo) in the Guardian.
"The US bailout is a robbery in progress, the greatest heist in monetary history. But consider for a moment: what if it actually works, what if the financial sector is saved and the economy returns to the course it was on before the crisis struck? Is that what we want? And what would that world look like?What she means is that Sarah Palin was symbolic of the kind of rampant capitalism that refuses to acknowledge any ecological limits to economic growth. Remember "drill, baby, drill"? Read the rest here.
"The answer is that it would look like Sarah Palin."
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5 comments:
The article reminds me of American movie / tv culture we've all grown up with where there's always a bold new frontier to explore (like Alaska) ?
If even the Earth is depleted one day, Hollywood Sci-Fi has already got the next step planned. The classic Star Trek motto "...to boldly go where no man has gone before." springs to mind. Thus the illusion of infinite growth limited only by our imagination.
Very true - it is part of the frontier mindset, in which nature is a limitless expanse that needs to be tamed and harnessed for human goods. It was a highly productive assumption in the 18th and 19thC when we had plenty of cheap energy and there was arable land without dense human population.
But not so smart in our current changed situation. But we can't simply blame Hollywood; they just tell us the stories we want to hear.
Have you read Clive Hamilton's 'Growth Fetish' ?
I randomly picked up his latest book 'The freedom paradox: a post secular ethics'. His analysis of the problem is interesting, even if his solution, a mix of German idealism and eastern mysticism, is bit flawed.
I've had a few people recommend that book - I'll have to have a look at it.
However, the main point of my project is not to offer another critique of the growth fetish, so it might have to wait a little bit.
Yes Sarah Palin and everything she represents is the past in its worst form.
No one on the "conservative" side of the culture wars divide seems to have noticed that everything has now changed and that the old ways are now very much part of the problem and cant/wont work.
This reference addresses the current situation. It is also a statement that something entirely new HAS appeared Under the Sun--and hence a completely new possibility for Humankind altogether.
http://global.adidam.org/books/not-two-5.html
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