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David Attenborough Desperately Needs To Catch Up On Pope Francis

By Lionel Anet

06 July, 2015
Countercurrents.org

We are facing multifaceted problems stemming from the socioeconomic system; a simplistic solution, like a non-polluting energy source can’t prevent the looming disaster we are now facing. The extraordinary convenience and high energy output of oil has allowed many destructive activities, if we could replace oil with a non-polluting and sustainable medium we might do even more damage to the ecosystem. David Attenborough, incomprehensibly, for our esteem naturalist, sees a desperate need for a non-polluting source of energy as the solution. That’s not the problem we are facing, we already have the wherewithal of sustainable non-polluting energy, what we don’t have is an efficient socioeconomic system to sustain the 7 billion people let alone the 9 billion plus people expected. In comparison Pope Francis, in his recent encyclical doesn’t shirk at what is needed, and that is a different socioeconomic system.

Until the 1970’s societies help to sustain its people, but since then individuals and families are gradually expected to be self-sustaining and self-financing from cradle to grave. Today, money is all-important, it’s our master, and we become its slave. Since 1970s, worldwide, the market gradually is taking over all aspect of social securities and services. Therefore money is taking centre stage; it became the survival need, the more money we have the greater the clout over those who have much less (competitive democracy). Free choice is a elusion the game of life is played by and with money and as capitalism is a competitive identity one cannot have enough of it to feel safe, that means money is our ruthless dictator. No matter of money one has, there’s always anxiety, the less one has the more distress one is in, but the more one has the more anxious one is of losing it. There’s no escape because individuals can’t be more powerful than money. Neocons have given free-range to money and now it’s everyone’s master and that’s why no one is in charge of their life.

Therefore we feel helpless and sense that the trouble is our faulty gens. If that were so there would be no hope of turning to a cooperative state, which is essential for our survival. But how did we get this feeling that our nature is responsible for our demise, which paralyses us in the face of gross dishonesty and therefore unfairness. Overwhelmingly, even people of good will, are dysfunctional since they have to function in a dysfunctional socioeconomic world. But what’s worst is we are all nurtured in that socioeconomic system, therefore it’s a great effort to get out that mode. Nevertheless, we must adopt a more natural mode that conforms with our genetic need of a very social life. What we are facing is the most severe predicament, which is immeasurably greater than the WW2 faced by Britain. In that conflict Britain, like its allies put itself on a war footing, that’s anything that was not necessary for the war and the maintenance population’s physical and mental health was put off until the end of the war. That meant all people lived as efficiently and simply as possible, to ensure the best participation of everyone, in spite of the food shortages, due to submarine attack. By using rationing and subsidies, with the resulted that everyone in Britain had enough to eat for the first time, a necessary measure to ensure they had the most effective participation.

That indicates we can survive the effects of our existing lifestyle by abandoning competition and adopting cooperation as the ultimate mode of life. We need factual information almost immediately, that’s generally available to enable an interconnected change to be in time to avoid the high possibility of billions of deaths. It’s a matter of the wealthy few to realise their defencelessness in the face of global warming and associated danger, and that money may even be a liability for them. Presently we tend to see those people as our enemies, but if we are to influence the wealthy ones, which is the first step to our survival, we must see them like everyone, as potential friends for our survival.

Lionel Anet is a member of Sydney U3A University of the Third Age, of 20 years standing and now a life member


 

 





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