Revolution is the political part of E.A.R.T.H. In this introduction, I try to outline where we are at politically, what progress has been made, what is yet to come and how we might help get there.
A fairly middle of the road environmental party of which I am a member, the Australian Greens, is often labelled extreme by conservative opponents. This is a discussion of what it means to be labelled extreme.
A friend was publishing The Equal Standard magazine as part of her Phd, and asked for submissions on the topic of Extremism. I did two versions and this is the one which got published.
I wanted to write an explanation of why I thought anarchism was the only philosophy capable of taking us into the future. It ended up being more of an extended mind dump, so forgive me for that, but I hope you find something interesting in it. Caveat lector!
A long stream of consciousness I wrote in my twenties at the point I started to become who I am today. I've changed since then, and I've written better things since then, but the direction of my ethics as expressed in this article hasn't changed too much.
An email was sent to an environment collective I was part of asking how it is that the conservatives so easily won the 2004 Australian federal election when they were so clearly morally bankrupt? This is my vitriolic answer.
Greed and competition are not the result of immutable human temperament; greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the money we are using. We can produce more than enough food to feed everyone, and enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The job of the central banks is to create and maintain this scarcity, and the direct consequence of this is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive
— Bernard Lietaer
A new perspective
Clive Ponting
Reading such vast works is both incredibly stimulating, but in some ways frustrating. As enjoyable as they are to read, the details slip away so quickly and one is just left with impressions. The main theme of this book is that we have been taught world history from a Western centred perspective. The central narrative of this is that since the Ancient Greeks, the West has been on a triumphant march to its domination of the world in almost every sphere. Ponting dismantles this view, showing that for much of this time, especially between the end of the Roman Empire...