Attempting to shed a little light on what’s underneath the question of how the Green New Deal seeks to produce policy and practice for a planet in peril, I contribute something.
Consider.
The much larger but integral question of how humans and human culture are going to live with the rest of the biotic and non-biotic fields of forces will require a complete shift of mind and spirit, not just an acquisition of knowledge and a proper deployment of responses. We are going to have to change what we imagine the self to be; we are going to have to change our human place in a co-extensive world of nested sets, whose agencies, such as they are, we’ll call for now inter-sovereignities. The very definitions of things are going to have to change–for we do not even know how to think properly about the questions yet–we still think of them with 19th century language tools, and lo and behold, too often come up with 19th century (whatever) descriptions, and of course, solutions. In short, these tools (of language) helped create the mental underpinnings that helped justify and construct the capitalist dystopia that envelopes us; so it is likely that these same implements will reproduce and not repair.
On the path certainly.
We must give up the no longer romantic notion (not even existentially) of being the privileged character “ON the Earth”. We must be WITH it; LikeWISE–must quit thinking of the planet as our private warehouse full of boundless supplies where we smart shoppers and effective managers get the best deal in town and keep a firm handle on the vital areas of inventory and control. But how should we presume and how should we begin? And from WHOM do we learn?
Quit digging:
While some religious people have begun to address this the most complex and critical moment in human history–as a whole, they are too compromised (aren’t we all?) and have too much at stake to undermine their own operation. Scientists and engineers–committed to their modus operandi–still provide technological solutions if only to staunch the bleeding here and yon, but they also offer crucial information about the Earth processes around us. Seems that we will be stuck with the imperfect for awhile, since without this we can not move on with the bigger project of reinventing homo–for the sake of Earth.
But some people can somehow see outside of the panopticon they have helped create to keep an eye on themselves–we must discover and bring what they know to the fore, contribute to it, and share this widely.
Consider.
Aside from the entertainers among them–who provide prophylactics for the fall from the garden, the philosopher poets have been largely expunged from economic and cultural life (this alone may suggest their true worth). Let us unearth the ones who have something to say, learn how to read anew, and begin the work, internally and externally, across the co-extensive plateaus (your friends, colleagues, the wind, the weather, etc), to grieve and reshape “our” selves for the sake of the world. The way we look is the way we look at it.
This could be something worth the passing on.