"John shares his views on the environmental situation, he looks at the ways that attitudes have been blocked on effective change on both the personal and societal levels, and then he shares ways that we could develop as a civilisation if only we can face the challenges from within"
Sound quality is a little rough at first but soon improves
To give an idea where I head to with this talk, heres a snippett from my notes
Quote:
Global Warming, CO2, Going Green, Climate Change
These words are being thrown around in society more and more these days, and inevitably these words are being understood in different ways and leading to polairsed opinions
Nigel Lawson calls Climate Change a Cult, a dangerous cult, an irrational set of beliefs that will harm our society and advantasge our economic oponents: he tells us this in his confidence to make an assesment based on his role as Energy Minister in the Thatcher Government
James Lovelock calls climate change the inevitable reality that will lay waste to human civilisation and lead to the 21st century seeing pain and suffering on a scale never imagined before as the chaos in the climate makes itself felt in all human affairs, coupled with the massive consequecnes of human behaviour
Some say climate change is nothing to do with CO2's and caused by increased radiation from the sun. Some say global warming isnt happening and cite the lack in temperature rise the last 7 years as proof of this. Others say this pause in temperature rise is part of the overall adjustment cycle and that changes elsewhere are delaying the heating effect which nevertheless will soon come. Others say that no, the globe will become massively cooler as the effects of human pollution continues to make itself felt
I say all of this contains truth, but in itself is also irrelevant: at least in that it fails to make the true point:
We are undoing the very matrix of life on this planet: we are unmaking the very essence of ourselves, the foundation of our own bodies, our own life, our own existance, by being slaved to our desires and oblivious to our true needs
Our addiction to a world of take, make and throw away is nothing more than prolongated mass suicide: that is the real cult threatening our society. And it lies not in some shadowy organisation or sinister philosophy, but inside our own ignorance of ourselves
_________________ Free your Self and Free the World
Last edited by John White on Fri May 09, 2008 12:07 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 11:31 am Post subject:
I'm looking forward to seeing this when I get home John. It sounds from your extract as if you've been careful to avoid the more simplistic interpretations of the often seemingly conflicting information that becomes public.
I've always found it to be disconcerting that the 'business as usual' and the 'NWO plot' factions end up reinforcing each other in their preferred 'do nothing' meme. _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 4:06 pm Post subject:
Just had a look and a listen to it running in the background John.
Genuinely proud to know you mate and your deep insight into clandestine social engineering, compartmentalisation, psycological mind control by accountants I suppose.
Is it Social Anthropology?
Anti-slavery?
Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Posts: 3187 Location: Here to help!
Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 1:16 am Post subject:
Thanks for the kind comments all
Malvern Messages continues to be something of a shoestring operation though hopefully that will start to transform sooner rather than later. If tie clip mikes could be made out of shoestring I would certainly have one already
In making videos of the local talks I do I'm not looking for perfection, I just figure its better to have some record of the talk to share around more widely than not. however we are gearing up to making a more conventionally watchable film and it seems likely this subject area is the one we will choose to do that with, certainly in terms of content theres a heck of a lot I never got close to discussing during this talk, especially the energy/peak oil situation, so there is a lot more to explore and put before people and a voice over approach with film pictures and diagrams with an acompanying sound track would be the best way to deliver that
With regard to social engineering I would have to agree that there is far more social engineering that gets delivered through the forces of beaurocracy/accountancy than ever gets delivered through controlled demagogues of the power elite. And as Robert Anton Wilson once observed, no force creates more chaos than beaurocracy _________________ Free your Self and Free the World
John, that was a great speech. Very interesting. I particularly resonated with what you said about consumerism. I've written myself about how the word "consumer" is being used, almost in a euphemistic sense, to describe citizens and human beings. It's one of the most obvious examples of Orwellian language around. It frustrates me how we're so obsessed with what we have and Conformist status, power, possessions. I've known many brother and sister porters who've loved portering, but have quit the service for jobs they hate, because the jobs they hate give them more of the trinkets and trappings of Conformist status
The various scares that keep coming and going are another very obvious thing. It's global warming today, but before it was the Millenium Bug, BSE, deadly bacteria in cheese and eggs and, more recently, Avian flu. If global warming has its day then something else will replace it! _________________ "Lynda, you're sweet. From what I've seen of your world, do you think anybody votes for sweet?"
Doctor Who- Bad Wolf
"Because he refused to compete in games of domination he was indomitable"
from The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Posts: 3187 Location: Here to help!
Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 8:18 pm Post subject:
Cheers Hagbard
I wouldnt nessacarily say I see "Global Warming" as a "scare" in as much as I see it as a symptom of a larger problem of which global warming is a part: how relevant it is remains to be seen... obviously it is used as a scare, and that does make me ask: what is that scare distracting our attention away from?. The loss of biodiversity and the build up of toxicity in the the environment certainly seem to me to be part of what the media spin about Global Warming is acting to hide from out view, so thats the basis I took for my approach to "the real" in the talk _________________ Free your Self and Free the World
Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Posts: 3187 Location: Here to help!
Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 10:40 am Post subject:
I want to make this thread as useful as possible, so I thought I'd post my notes onto it so there is a written record of what the talk covers. I didnt use ALL of these points, and there are a few bits I put in the notes to consider but decided not to deliver... equally there is some other stuff that I feel is useful POV but which I didnt go into on the night
Theres a fair bit of this, so I'll post the notes in a few chunks, heres the first batch:
Quote:
the Materials Economy
Extraction Production distribution Consumption Disposal
Limited Model: Linear Models on a finite planet cannot run indefinately
There are people all along the system: but the biggest most important people in the sytem and to the system are fictional people: We call them governments and corporations. Due to alterations in the legal framworks of society throughout the 20th Century corporations have asserted themselves as legal persons with access to legal human rights: this has allowed the corporation to level itself into a protected position within society: but it is also an enourmously poweful legal person, with massive resources to pay for law and lobby for its interests: the "politician in the pocket". Of the top 100 economies in the world over half are not countries with governments but legal fictions we know as corporations, and this has given the corporation massive control over the shape of society globally and to define what can and what cannot be done
Extraction
Also known as natural resource consumption: AKA trashing the planet
We chop down trees, blow up mountains, use up the water kill all the animals and leave wasteland behind: but there is a limit: we run out of resources
So the 20th century saw the obvious solution of trashing other peoples countries to exceed the limits impossed by the amount we can trash our own: we call this Empire, or "Foriegn Policy interests"
In the last 3 decades over 1/3rd of the plantary natural resource base has gone: burned up consumed and trashed
The US has only 4% of its original forests left: and over 40% of the water us undrinkable: 5% of global population uses 30% of global resources: if the whole planet consumed at US rates we would need several more planets to live on: we only have ONE
75% of global fisheries are either at or beyond capacity: there is no serious talk of "the end of fish"... and 80% of planetary forests are gone: 2000 trees a minute in the amazon
Indigenous peoples according to international law made by governments and corporations, dont own the resources in the lands they live in even if they have been living there for hundreds of years
Not only do they not own the resources, but they dont buy a lot of stuff: if you dont own resources and dont buy stuff, you have no value to the system. People are then pushed out as their envirnment is trashed aroudn them and are forced off the land and into cities, at the rate of 200,000 a day. Once in the cities people are then forced to join and take part in the system simply to continue to survive, the vast majority as factory workers
Production
We combine Energy (invariably petro-chemical) with the natural resources and add toxins (inductrial chemicals) to create toxic products and toxic by-products: toxins in toxins out
Of the 100,000+ Industrial chemicals used in manufacture barely a handful have ever been tested for health impact on humans (what would be the point? They are obvious toxins): and none have been tested for synergistic impact: that is the impact when two or more are combined together
Therefore we are existing in an "ignorance is bliss" situation
An example: BFR: Brominated Flame retardents
These are neurotoxins, that is toxic to the nervous system and to the brain.
By Law/regulation, we are taking our fabrics and furniture and treating them with neurotoxins in order to "protect us" when the house burns down: even our pillows. People are sleeping on pillows doused with neurotoxin for 8 hours a day. Is this the best way to protect our heads from catching on fire?
All of this exposure to all of these toxins means they can ultimatley end up in the one place we dont want them: inside our own bodies
The food at the top of the food chain with the highest amount of toxins is human breast milk... this means the smallest and most vunerable members of our society are recieving the most concentrated dose of toxins possible simply by the act of nuturing. Where is the protection of government where it is most needed?
Facotry workers bear the brunt of exposre to the toxic output of industry
People forced off their land into the cities spend their lives in a toxic environment making toxic products simply to try to survive
200,000 a day across the world leave their traditional homes to go into cities almost invariably into slums
US industry alone admits to 4 billion pounds of toxic by products each year... thats admits to of course... and of course this toxic output is outsourced to "developing nations" along with the production of the goods for US domestic consumption
Distribution:
Sell as quick as possible!
But the true cost of distribution is hidden from the consumer: this is called "externalising costs"
Literally we dont pay for the stuff we buy
Lets say I go down Argos and buy a £4.99 radio. Its probably using metal from south africa, oil from the middle east, plastics from china, and assembled in Taiwan. £4.99 barely pasy the rent on the shelf space the wages of the shop worker and the rates to run the shop. It certainly doenst pay for all the hundreds of people and thousands of miles of transportation involved in actually creating the raido and getting in onto the shelf
The environmental costs of exploiting the resources and the costs to the lives of the people forced into cities and toxic factories to make the radio arnt featured in the £4.99 price tag at all
Thats because if the system doesnt create a value in the model we call the global monetary system then value doesnt exist as far as the abstraction of the system is concerned: thigns without value carry no cost: even though that hidden value is actually costing us, ultimately, the planet. And of course the disparity between currencies maintained by the global banking system also hides and absorbs a massive amount of those costs it does asscribe value to: all to prtect the ability of the system to sell us a radio for £4.99
If we truly placed a value on that Radio how much would it be? £100? £200? £5000? Ultimately, given the process that radio is an outcome of, could we ever price it high enough?
Consumption
After distrubution we come to the part that we all most familiar with: becuase we make it happen: consumption
We are not seen primarily as fathers, mothers, craftsmen, teachers or farmers: but as consumers
Our value to the system: to "society" as sentiant beings is measured only by how much we consume: how much we contribute to the arrow on the graph of GDP. Vast amounts of money is created as credit soley to make sure we are able to continue to fulfill that role: the only role the individual is permitted to take. Yet Shockingly only 1% of what we buy is still in use 6 months later
This is not an accident: this is by design
In the 1950's the economic analyst Victor Lebow summed up the system with the following words:
"Our enourmously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption- we need things burned up replaced and discarded at an ever accelerating rate"
And in the time since then we have seen consumption rise to dominance as the single purpose of our economies: not justice, not fairness, not equity, not co-operation, not responsibility: but consumption
Consumption is driven by advertising: this much is obvious: but beneath the advertising consumption is driven by two ongoing techniques: planned obselecance and percieved obselecance. Obselecance is vital to the continued operation of the Materials Economy: if things dont wear out they cant be replaced
Planned obscelecance is the art of deliberate design to make a product to wear out as fast as possibkle whilst still maintaining enough faith in the bran for people to go out and buy another one. Plastic tat is obvious enough, but it apllies to goods on all levels, especially expensive goods like white goods, computers, cars, it applies in fact to everything: planned obselecance is at the heart of all industrial design across the planet
But even then goods simply cant wear out fast enough to keep "economic growth" going year in year out: and that is where percieved obselecance comes in
Percieved obselance is persuading people to discard and throwaway perfectly useful goods. It it acheived primarily by changing how stuff looks year in year out
Becuase our sense of self and self worth is measured by the amount we consume, by changing what the latest goods look like it is obvious when we have not updated our goods recently: look at how teenagers are persuaded to be obsessed over how current their mobile phone looks
Advertising messages tell us how our goods must be percieved if we are to be percieved by others as succesful: so if your stuff is a couple of years olf everyone else can tell and we are under enormous peer pressure to consume more
After all what is the purpose of an advert if it is not to tell us what we have isnt good enough? But by consumign we recieve release, emotional catharsis: and becuase we identify ourselves with the stuff we own and what we look like, ultimately the illusion of personal salvation
This is why the advertising budgets of corporations vastly outstrips the manufacturing budget in many cases: without advertisign there is no corporation becuase there artn the people programmed to give the system, this illusionary fictional person, what it needs for its continued existance
All of this is re-inforced massively becuase the consumption part of the materials economy is overwhelmingly what the media shows: buy stuff to look cool and be succesful: all other perceptions of the materials economy are pushed to the fringes of the MSM where they are shown at all and thus the true situation is made hard to percieve
Across the planet people work harder than ever before: some analysis's say we have less real leasure time than at any point since the middle ages: and overwhelmingly in the west that time is used on tow activities: watching TV and shoping
This binds us into a Work/Watch/spend cycle... becuase of course what do we have to do once we have watched the advert and spent on the product? Go back to work to pay for it! But all of this ends when we simply step off it, stop consuming, and turn off the TV
Disposal is the final stage of the Materials economey, and also one we are very familiar with: becuase its us who have to throw out the nonsense
US waste production is at 4 1/2 pounds per person per day: all of which ends up in landfill or incinerated. But for every pound of waste the consumer produces, industry produces 70
Landfill is exported along with production: the vast amount of UK waste is going into chinese landfill at this current time. Scandalously this includes much of the material being domestically sorted for recycling: we are only recycling a small percentage of that sorted waste, most is going into landfill overseas
Even worse than going into the earth to fill the soil with toxins, much of it is incinterated, directly releasing all the toxins used in manufacture into the atmosphere: hence the biggest cause of climate change is the process of consumption
Toxins in, toxins out all along the chain: and we pay the real cost, becuase unlike the convientant fiction of economics, the real costs cannot be escaped from
We are after all all on this rock together
_________________ Free your Self and Free the World
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