Belo Monte Dam approved :(

[applejuice]

While we agree in a lot of points, we also disagree in a few parts. The entire economy of the world is based on Industry and Services. Man evolved from hunter to collector and the result of that is what we call Economy. Aurora, I think your vision is very noble, but that may be naive given our context. Socialism is a failure. The system that Europe has adopted is Social-Democracy, which takes good things from both systems. But, unfortunately, the part of Socialism is quite expensive (France had to pass a modification to the age of retirement to allow their Pensioner System to survive). In the case of Brazil, they need power not only to satisfy their desires of World Cup or Olympic Games, they need it for their citizens. Their citizens need water, food, transportation and to be connected just like we are connected now, every day, and that requires a lot of power. It is something ugly to depend on other countries to fulfill those needs. This time, it was the turn of the Xingu to be, in a manner, sacrificed. What we can do is to remember that, to reflect about what takes to just have water in our houses, to have a cellphone or to write in Tree of Souls. I am certain that if what I said is done, people would take more care on how they use the stuff we have, which most people think is granted. Maybe tomorrow we will be able to make a retribution by using our intelligence, to all those who were unaccounted for to fulfill our needs.

[Tsyal Makto]

But when do we stop sacrificing the few remaining pristine places of Earth on the altar of development? How many more traditional peoples will be forced to give up their traditional lifestyles and lands? The dominant culture must always expand to survive. More people, more extraction, more production, the culture always needs more. The "tomorrow" you dream of will never come. The world needs to make a stand now, either with new lifestyles, new means of production, new outlooks, or preferably all of them. We can't just keep saying "well, maybe next time," because eventually there won't be anything left for there to be a next time. THAT is what Avatar was about. NOT replacing lightbulbs, NOT buying a Prius, NOT buying the sustainably harvested coffe, all that does is try to add a green spin to a culture that is unsustainable. Avatar was about having a totally new outlook on nature, the need for not just sustainability, but harmony, and that involves fundamental changes to how we live, and how we view nature.

Like I also brought up before, what about the uncontacted peoples of the Amazon? Do you want to force modern living on them?

Oh, and IMO Europe is closest to the mark. Corporations are eating my country alive. And we have a political party that openly denies scientific fact.

Laissez faire capitalism or "neoliberal" politics are bound to lead to a strongly hierarchical and stratified society that very much has a defined rulership and governance, just not one elected by the people but instead elected by the shareholders and not bound to human rights and a constitution but to the rules of the economy.

That's the funny thing, isn't it? In theory, a marketplace with little intervention should seem compatible with libertarianism as it was originally meant, but in reality it underminds original libertarianism, because strong-armed fat cats and corporations often make decisions that limits the freedoms of workers. Again, think of the Guilded Age. The "captains of industry" lived pretty damn free, and well, but their workers didn't. In other words, "new boss, same as the old boss."

There definitely is a distinction between neglect and "dog-eat-dog" society and Anarchy. Anarchy means without rulers - Nation states are one form of rulership, but corporate rule is also a form of that - as is monarchy or dictatorship. The essence of what truely is meant by Anarchy in the positive sense is a situation that has no rulers. Such a situation does NOT come from a laissez faire mentality or neglect or abolishment of all rules. The idea is to get rid of rulers, not to get rid of rules, but to let the people make their own rules.

Agreed. The problem is that people like politicians and Ayn Rand are muddying the waters, and are redefining both libertarianism and anarchy. They are turning libertarianism into a form of, dog-eat-dog quasi-anarchy under the under the guise of laissez faire economics/neoliberalism (which, in reality, results in something like "Lord of the Flies," again, Guilded Age), and are redefining anarchy as the policy of neglect, of a world without rules (which the dominant culture has been doing for a while, which is why they've pretty much become interchangable in the US, as our economic policy slowly becomes one without rules). Both anarchy and libertarianism in their original forms (as envisioned by people like Chomsky or Orwell, or hell, even Marx to a degree) are good, but the dominant culture has turned them both on their heads into destructive philosophies.

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

That's what libertarianism has pretty much become, in the United States at least. Libertarianism, as originally intended, was never about economics, it was a social policy (heck, Noam Chomsky calls himself a libertarian socialist, what I sorta define myself as). It was people like Rand (no she wasn't an anarchist) who hijacked it and slowly changed it into an economic policy of extreme laissez faire capitalism, and so called "libertarian" US politicians recently have slowly been crossing into anarchy territory by pushing her philosophy to the extreme (some want no environmental or child labor laws).

Completely agree. This anarcho-capitalist longing that some people seem to have is pretty bizarre. There's a great article about the ridiculousness of their movement here:
Floating Utopias -- In These Times

[auroraglacialis]

Thanks for the agreement on some points, applejuice

Originally Posted by applejuice

Aurora, I think your vision is very noble, but that may be naive given our context.[...]The system that Europe has adopted is Social-Democracy, which takes good things from both systems. But, unfortunately, the part of Socialism is quite expensive

One problem I see is that the definition of these words and social systems are very much unclear. I think, but this is even more offtopic) that written language has some severe problems as a concept, in this case it assigns fixed words to fluctuating concepts so that what was meant by the word changes over the past 150 years while we still are lead to believe (because of the assumption that "black on white" writing gives about perpetuality) that the concepts are also constant.
So it is a matter on how you in this time define socialism. Yes, Europe is not really socialist, even though many neoliberals in the US actually call it so. It is a mixture of several concepts, some socialist, some democratic and a lot of them neoliberalist. The people and equality benefit from the social and democratic concepts (universal healthcare, free education, pension plans, social security for jobless, anti-monopoly laws) but suffer from the neoliberalism (increasing privatization of once publicly funded services like rail, mail, telecommunications; deconstruction of laws to protect workers, provide a safe pension etc). The neoliberalist parts are IMO concessions "we" make to living in a world that is dominated by powers like the USA who insist on these rules.

Of course having a socially just and more egalitarian society is "costly" in that everyone has to contribute to it. That's the whole point of it, to distribute costs to all members of the society. A system with less socialist parts may look cheaper for those who either are rich or lucky, but becomes very costly for those who are poor and happen to be in bad luck (looking job, home, health).

State-enforced socialist policy however is very invasive in the personal lives of people, who are forced to pay taxes, healthcare bills and so on. That forceful action is not received well by many and that is understandable (though many actually do accept it as the price to pay now as a insurance to benefit from the social systems in case one self runs out of luck one day). The problem behind that is mass society itself, as in a mass society, the naturally occuring social structures that humans build also move up the scale and into a realm of anonymity. We do not KNOW the person who benefits from our payments to social security - he is not our kin, so we prefer not to pay for "that lazy bum" - as opposed to the situation in smaller communities in which I may know the "lazy bum" and he is Fred or Carl and while I do not like him so much, I will agree to do my part and give him as my social duty some bucks until he can recover.

I think calling my vision naive is not appropriate. Idealistic maybe, but not naive, unless you want to call other thinkers with prominent names naive as well. It is idealistic and that is something that is needed. Because without idealistic visions nothing can change. A fatalistic view of "get a grip, this is how the world works, deal with it" may be in order if one does not care and just wants to participate in it and maximize the own standing in this economic world, but if people before the French revolution, the American independence, the abolishment of slavery or the freedom of India would have thought so as well, we'd still live in a world or Kings and Queens and slaves.

This time, it was the turn of the Xingu to be, in a manner, sacrificed. What we can do is to remember that, to reflect about what takes to just have water in our houses, to have a cellphone or to write in Tree of Souls.

That we can do, but it is not "all we can do". Because that would again be fatalistic, to say that this time it is these people that have to suffer so that I can have cellphones or write on ToS - next time it is some other people, or some other race or some other country that has to bear the brunt - and always it is the natural world that has to bear most because it cannot even speak up. As I said - the same thought could apply to slaveowners in the past USA - they could say that it is the black peoples liberty that has to be "sacrificed" and all that one can do is to reflect upon that after all it needs to be so in order to have large mansions and beautiful gardens.

What I am saying is, as Tsyal also says, that history repeats itself, that there always is a tendency for those who are privileged in some way over others to try and keep or increase that privilege. The citizens of Rome lamented over too many rights for slaves or women, so did the people in the past USA - the aristrocrats lamented over the emerging citizenship and so on. What happens is that always as at any time people with privilege will say that the system in place now is needed to continue (because it ensures their privilege). Certainly from their point of view that is correct, but I would say it is time to acknowledge that this is the case and consider to defect from it, to become a traitor to it. For sure, if the free market economy and neoliberalism would end globally, a lot of people in the industrialized nations would loose big time. But they would only loose what they are gaining now by the use of an unjust system at the expense of others.

And one thing that people always did all over history as an excuse if they were challenged to the injustice was either to pull out some lame justification (like that black slaves are worth less in the eyes of god, that women have not a full soul or that animals are not fully conscious) - or to promise for some distant future in which things will be all better. That kind of salvationism is the "opium of the masses", it is for example the use of religious beliefs to force people into acceptance of their dire situations by saying that the future will bring salvation, that after death there is heaven or rebirth in a better life, that some future event beyond our own scope will set everything right. Frankly that is wishful thinking or at best faith and I think to rely on faith as a solution is something I would not advocate at all.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

But when do we stop sacrificing the few remaining pristine places of Earth on the altar of development? [...] The world needs to make a stand now[...]

Exactly. One thing that is in my mind a lot is that I go out now to what people call forest and feel like it is Nature. I look at the trees and the squirrels and the shrubs and find it nice and natural and think I should really defend it. But I ignore the lack of bird song, the logging roads slicing the forest in neat 500m-grids, the lack of mushrooms and fern, because I do not know what to look for. And then I think how would people 100, 200, 500 or 5000 years ago have experienced the forest and what would they think of the state they are in a few hundred years later? For someone from 2000 years ago, what we call forest wouold be nothing like what he knows as forest - it would appear like a parkscape maybe or a tree farm. What will the generations after us think of as forest? Some enclosed spots of fabricated wilderness with a bridge over it for visitors to experience the forest without touching it? We got used to the world having only a few pristine places and we'll get used to loosing more of them as well, looking "the other way" towards the few that is left but eventually those are like zoos, like museums and this is not what I'd like to see.

Both anarchy and libertarianism in their original forms (as envisioned by people like Chomsky or Orwell, or hell, even Marx to a degree) are good, but the dominant culture has turned them both on their heads into destructive philosophies.

Originally Posted by ISV Venture Star

Completely agree. This anarcho-capitalist longing that some people seem to have is pretty bizarre. There's a great article about the ridiculousness of their movement here:

It is a very crazy thing to define freedom only as freedom from rules or freedom to do whatever the individual wants to do. Freedom is a word that can be bent and this definition of freedom is not one that serves anyone but the few that can profit from it. True freedom is something very different - it is the freedom to have choices but mostly, true freedom is the freedom from opression and the will of others without own participation. It is not freedom to be able to pollute a river or the air or the ocean or to enslave people without anyone having the ability to intervene. It is freedom to be able to live in a way that is not impeded by the ones who want to pollute the air we breathe or to enslave us. It is not freedom to have no rules at all, but to live according to rules we know make sense and we agree upon.

Here is another analogy - this society is like a spoiled child that wants to shed the rules that parents made. Once that child gets older and moves out, it may first break all the rules the parents set up - stay up late, eat junk food, watch 10 hours TV a day, sleep until the afternoon everyday, pile waste and junk in the room - but soon there is a realization that this is not working, not healthy and not sustainable for the own life. Then one recognizes the need for some rules. In the end, the rules may even be the same as the ones made up by the parents before, but the rules have been made by the person from own conclusions. And this is what makes a mature person. A mature society would behave similarly - not blindly imposing rules on people, but also not cutting them loose from all rules. The difference is self-governance over governance by others and that self governance certainly knows rules.

[iron_jones]

Cities need energy.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by iron_jones

Cities need energy.

Cities are the cancer on this planet

Really - city need everything because they have nothing themselves. They need food, energy, resources, goods and mostly produce little zeroes and ones in the virtual world and waste.

[iron_jones]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Cities are the cancer on this planet

Really - city need everything because they have nothing themselves. They need food, energy, resources, goods and mostly produce little zeroes and ones in the virtual world and waste.

And here you are living in a house with electricity and running water and you seem to be on a computer. Do you ever go out and buy food?

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by iron_jones

Cities need energy.

...so it doesn't matter if unethical methods are used to generate that energy?

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by iron_jones

And here you are living in a house with electricity and running water and you seem to be on a computer. Do you ever go out and buy food?

Yes, i am part of the problem. I try to minimize it and fully intend to change my way of living into a way that will use way less resources and become far less dependent on external things than regular city dwellers, but that is besides the point as just because I am at this moment part of the problem does not invalidate the things I say in the least. The daughter of a slaveowner can be opposed to her fathers actions despite living in his house, can she not? And the wife of a hunter can be opposed to hunting despite depending on the money her husband makes by his job, can she not?

[Vawm tsamsiyu]

Actualy citys are better then everyone building a house and just spreading out. Imagine if everyone in newyork built a house instead of living in an apartment. It may not be perfect but the housing spread would be insane otherwise

[iron_jones]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Yes, i am part of the problem. I try to minimize it and fully intend to change my way of living into a way that will use way less resources and become far less dependent on external things than regular city dwellers, but that is besides the point as just because I am at this moment part of the problem does not invalidate the things I say in the least. The daughter of a slaveowner can be opposed to her fathers actions despite living in his house, can she not? And the wife of a hunter can be opposed to hunting despite depending on the money her husband makes by his job, can she not?

But the slave owner's daughter doesn't own the slaves.

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by iron_jones

But the slave owner's daughter doesn't own the slaves.

So you are saying what? We should embrace our destructiveness? Revel in it?

Yes, we are all part of the problem. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to change ourselves and reduce our environmental impact rather than accepting the cheapest and dirtiest solutions to our energy and material needs.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Vawm tsamsiyu

Actualy citys are better then everyone building a house and just spreading out. Imagine if everyone in newyork built a house instead of living in an apartment. It may not be perfect but the housing spread would be insane otherwise

In respect to land use by houses, yes, in respect to footprint - not really, as the citydwellers do happen to have quite a large ecological footprint - just not in the area they live in but elsewhere. So instead of needing land around a house to have a garden for food, a well or creek for water and solar panels on their roof for energy, they need only an appartment, but they need to import all of the things anyways - food, water, electricity. That importation means that somewhere else there has to be that same land used for food production, a reservoir for water and to bring it back to the topic for example electricity from a dam. Each of that means that that person still uses that land, even if s/he does not live on that land. Plus all the things have to be transported to the city.
The main things city living saves is space for living quarters, as you can stack people upwards and if the people have a desire to move around a lot, then that may be done a bit more efficient in a city if you take typical suburban commuters as a reference. In all other aspects, there is not really an advantage to cities ecologically and rather a drawback in the need for transportation and the disconnection from the land used which allows to be wasteful without realizing it. Plus people have more health problems, mentally and physically in cities.

Originally Posted by iron_jones

But the slave owner's daughter doesn't own the slaves.

And I do not own the mines or power plants.

I do profit from the privilege that the industrialized countries do have, but I do not own its factories or armies. The slave owners daughter profits from the food and housing she is provided by her family that has slaves. So in a sense Germany is sort of my family, but that does not mean I have to stand behind the things that country does - just as the slave owners daughter does not have to support slavery. Maybe that disagreement will cause some trouble between the slaveowners daughter and her family and maybe it will cause some trouble for me in time, but to claim that one cannot be opposed to something one was born and raised into makes no sense to me. In fact many very successful opposition in history was done by people who were born or grew up into positions that were based on their privilege. I do not see my task as a person living in industrial civilization to blindly embrace that system, I see my task in looking at what it really means and using the knowledge that life gave me to analyze the situation and draw my conclusions and actions. I am deliberately skipping any German history comparisons now as I know you folks here do not like them, but maybe you know what reference I would be able to make here - for your convenience I will draw examples from something I know less about but that should be similar - the "underground railroad" in the past USA. It certainly was run by people who were white and free to help people that were darkskinned and enslaved and indirectly all while people in the USA at that time profited from the economics of slavery just as nowadays all industrialized people profit idirectly from the exploitation of "third world countries" and the natural world.

[CyanRachel]

Originally Posted by apache_blanca

Same here. I feel bad for all the indigenous people. There's so much to learn from them ("the wealth of this land is not under ground, it's all around us") but somehow since they are "less civilized" , they are considered sort of less important. Especially if they sit on the sh**e somebody (who thinks he has a better idea about how the world should be turning, or a better religion, or skin colour, but most of all better guns & machines) wants...

There was a TV interview with an indigenous rights defender, I only got the last minutes of it. The presenter asked if Avatar helped in any way. The guy replied that yes it did - attracting the attention to the cause. "But it is still a fairytale. Guys with bows & arrows against the machines? It's the machines that always win..."

This is sad. Very sad only.

Agreed. This is terrible news for the Amazon and the indigenous tribes who will be impacted by this dam. So sad.

[applejuice]

We all agree that nobody should face the fact of being forced to live their home. We also agree the fact that we should protect our environment. I think we also agree that people needs water and electricity nowadays to live an ordinary life (one which is above poverty levels). Unfortunately, most of the times, to fight against poverty is not always compatible with protecting the environment. Most industry requires the exploitation and manufacture of natural resources. Countries then have to decide whether they will allow to preserve their natural resources or to use them to get out of the poverty cycle. Most decisions are always controversial and subject to judgement. I haven't seen any significant opposition inside Brazil to stop the construction of the dam. Most people knows that without electricity, there's no industry, no employment, more poverty (can anyone here writing conceive life without electricity?).
There was a similar situation in my country a few years ago. The government was planning to build a dam in the Beni river, which would have flooded a large part of Madidi. The project has been put aside due protests but now we are facing a serious electricity shortage. Right now, the problem could be called a minor issue, but the National Grid Commission has warned that we could face major power issues at year's end that could leave entire cities without electricity for days or weeks.
That's the main issue, to decide whether to protect the environment at the cost of leaving entire cities without energy.