Green Mass Group - Recent Comments

Excluding Jill Stein from any debate is an outrage

liveandletlive — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:26:27 GMT

she has her signatures; she will be on the ballot. This is nothing more than a few people in the media deciding to take democracy into their own hands. That is a serious problem.

She did an amazing job in the debate

liveandletlive — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:19:16 GMT

I noticed that she is being excluded from the debate on NightSide with Dan Rea coming up on September 14th. Honestly, that should be illegal. It appears to me to be discriminatory.

Well, she held her 3%

liveandletlive — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:13:03 GMT

that's good. Don't give up. We just need to plant a million lawn signs in a few weeks, after the primary signs come down.

Awesome

himmler123 — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 05:04:56 GMT

Elegant and bold

I don't think that eschewing industrialism

rossl — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:20:00 GMT

means living completely without it. In the book "Seeing Green," there is a green quoted as saying something like, I only push for smallness because now everything is too big - what I really seek is the human scale. And that, to me, is an essential idea of what being green means...and that does apply to what you're saying. The answer isn't living like the Amish, it's finding a good balance between technology/industry and tradition/back-to-the-earth living. In other words, finding a way for humans to live so that we are not in conflict with the earth, but working with it - and in my mind that doesn't mean giving up computers or bicycles (in fact, the latter are essential to that way of living, I think). It might just mean more efficient computers that run on renewable energy that are completely recyclable and turned off at night, and computers with an internet that we don't let dominate our lives or separate us from others.

Perhaps that's impossible. But that's how I see it.

I think you should know, Eli,

rossl — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:15:16 GMT

that after reading a piece you wrote a few months ago about the difference between being green and being progressive - after a bit of a shift in my thinking had already taken place - I read "Seeing Green" and "Green Politics" at your suggestion. Because of that I've gone from being an independent progressive to a strongly Green political ecologist. Thank you.

And as for the Iraq war and industrialism...well, have you posted this anywhere else? Because you're one of the better voices out there pointing out the difference between the industrialism of progressive Democrats and the Green ecological point of view.

no thank you and....

annie oakley — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:14:13 GMT

don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.

Strat doc, web site, and Islamist "resistance"

michael horan — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:22:26 GMT

JPB: can you send me a draft of the strategy doc to which you refer? michaelhorangrp[at]yahoo.com.

The web site is a work in progress. There's much left to, especially of a archival nature. We do what we can when we can--I have my hands full just trying to keep it reasonably up-to-date. You are welcome to join us in our online endeavors. Meanwhile, I beg your patience.

As for your commentary:

I'm still struggling--as I have been for years--with your defense of Indigenest movements. Your argument, if I read it correctly, reminds me of a statement Arundhati Roy made back in 2004:

Then the only people who are actually engaging the forces of empire are the resistance movement in Iraq or the people in Palestine. And because they are not pristine and secular and feminist and democratic and perfect, all of us curl up in moral distaste. We have to find a way of becoming the resistance or we have to find a way of supporting whatever resistance there is.

I've had those lines in my head for years. But I have to say, that while I'm no friend to empire, the enemy-of-my-enemy is not necessarily my friend, and I shudder at the shameful rhetoric emanating from leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, which is as rotten as that that comes Avril Lieberman and his ilk. I see nothing noble or to be gained from murdering civilians, either, whether it's perpetrated by the IDF or some al-qaeda offshoot. While I think it wise to continually to pressure the US goverment to end it's astonishingly uncritical and unqualified endorsement of Israeli policy in re the occupied territories, I'm not certain that I can call myself "pro-Palestinian," since I'm not even certain that most Palestinians would agree on what that means. Those Islamist resistance movements are--and this IS an overstatement, as I'm aware of the leadership positions occupied by women in Palestine--viciously homophobic and by and large misogynistic--also viciously.
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Right about "ecological politics" being a very old paradigm. I don't use the phrase, myself, as it sounds vageuly adademic, but I've considered the Green Party a literally revolutionary one in that we're genuinely old-fashioned in many of our beliefs. Kinda funny--the right has co-opted phrase "traditional [famiy] values to basically mean eschewing gay relationshps, abortion, wanton promiscuity, and dope (or, in a dated phrase, "acid, amnesty, and abortion"); to my mind, that's cosmetic, mere culture war fodder--economically, and at a more profound cultural level, we're actually the traditional values people.

Technology or society?

Patrick Burke — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:09:43 GMT

While I think I teased out some distinctions between myself and Michael clearly enough in the other "Greening" post, I can see some other analyses where I differ from you Eli or at least would like to explore the differences.

And pointing out disagreement or differing perspectives is not an exercise in opposition but one of clarifying thought and learning from one another. I am a fan of the idea of overlapping consensus. In other words, people have differing values and perspectives on the world. What sustains community and creates the swell for common action is where values, plans, and visions overlap, as well as an ability to respect and understand differences.

I'll focus on the distinction between left and right. Its a heuristic device to simplify political ideologies. When it first arose in France the demarcation was between people who supported the monarchy, nobles, and clergy (the right) and those who did not (the left). So classical liberals, secularists, social liberals, proto-socialists, agrarians, and so forth all sat on the left. Nowadays the political spectrum is usually defined in economic terms, so the liberals of yesteryear are on the right and everyone else center and left.

Greens criticize this framework and rightfully so. Its too economistic, too materialistic, and lacks complexity. And our modern mass media have defined it in such a way as to make a desert of political language and discussion.

I would agree that Marxian Socialism would be on the industrialism side of the equation and with a few exceptions, ( like if you pick and choose your Marx or take up eco-socialist critiques from the likes of Joel Kovel and John Bellamy Foster) the thrust of the Marxist worker's movement is to make capitalism humanistic but not of necessity ecological.

However, when you get beyond orthodox Marxism (and especially Marxist-Leninism) there are plenty of examples, from utopian socialisms, to anarcho-communism and the anarcho-collectivism of Krotpotkin, to quasi socialistic stuff of Chartists, Diggers, and the historical Luddites, to religious socialisms from Tolstoy, Buber, and Bloch, to the variety found in left and council communisms, autonomism, and thinkers like Castoriadis, Fromm, Marcuse, Gorz, etc.

So given this history and these lines of thought, its hard to call all socialists fans of Industrialism. But we like to call them leftists and many would self-identify that way. What they agree on is some notion of human rationality, of Enlightenment, of human equality, and the potential for democratic decision-making to govern society.

The German Greens, where this idea of "neither left nor right but Forward!" came from, were attempting to bridge the gap between conservative agrarians, religious ecologists, a few "eco-fascists", (the right) then eco-centrists, eco-libertarians, Realos, (the center) and eco-anarchists, eco-socialists (the left). Deep ecologists with a heavy critique of humanity per se, well they're all over the place.

The ecological right has much less faith in human rationality or its possibility. And when I say rationality I do include a holistic emotive and reflective capacity, not just some cold heartened logic or anthropo-centrism. Individuals might be rational but society isn't, so its best to stick to traditions, ritual, authority, and leaps of faith to keep humans restrained.

Having said all that I think the concept of Industrialism focuses too much on technology to explain the rift between humanity and nature. According to this view (correct me if I am horribly off), technology has a strong level of independence from humanity, so history could in fact be reduced to the march of new technologies, their greater energy consumption, and the growing materialism they tie humanity to.

I would say yes we are tied to technology rather closely, but there are processes and social systems that precede Industrialism enough to make it a symptom rather than a cause. The ethics of domination, the development of hierarchy, the creation of instrumental rationality (humans as objects, nature as object) in bureaucratic and economic relations, I think underlie why our technologies can be so anti-ecological and destructive. And it can be argued that capitalism or at least its fundamentals were in place before Industrialism proper.

So I hesitate with Industrialism as the correct category to combat because you could replace the technology with new kinds of instrumental rationality divorced from high technology or simply with mysticism and authoritarianism. So I end up agreeing with Michael at least on the point as concerns Tech neutrality and the problem lying in social and power relations.

"hate speech?" damn straight

michael horan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:39:35 GMT

Well, ya got that right. Glad I conveyed how I'm feeling about--umm, "the gentlemen from Al-Qaeda"--better?--who attacked my home city and murdered my friend.

But--c'mon. There's months' worth of valuable material on here begging for comment, and if you find michael horan's rhetoric not to your liking, surely there are more worthwhile subjects for your first comment ever --as in replying in substantive fashion to the posts by the other thinkers who frequent this site.

Because I'm not at all sure what's to be gained by ad hominen admonishments of this nature.

Elegant, and piercing. Go Nat!

Patrick Burke — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:39:32 GMT