We created a lot of value for shareholders

 

There is a lot of talk about saving the planet, but never does the idea that Capitalism is to blame filter though. How could that be other than it is true, and an unwelcome idea.

If it was false and unwelcome it would just be openly debated and rubbished. If it was true and welcome then it would be all over every bill board.

This leaves the two options that it is false and welcome or true and unwelcome. Well if it was false and welcome there would still be efforts to paste on every billboard but a reluctance to discuss it in depth like for example ideas of "terrorism" or "Holocaust." No one debates these things they are just erected in 100mile high letters for all to see.

Which leaves true but unwelcome. Unwelcome means it will be hidden, true means it will not be debated. This is where we are with the idea that Capitalism is destroying the planet. No one wants to present this idea, and even less want to discuss it.

Of course the geopolitical implications are vast. All those wars and Imperialist Western expansion of the last few centuries now look like the problem not the solution.

"Civilisation" as we know it, is then the actually the problem. Or to put another way, there is something wrong with "civilisation."

A simple thought tells us that this must be true. If civilisation was important to humans then how did humans come about before civilisation? Civilisation is not essential, its an inessential added feature of human life.

Okay this gets complex because a "human" is not a fixed thing, and humans change and evolve so the Modern Human of a 21th Century economy has a completely different set of skills to their ancestors living off the land. But as the "bug out" brigade sort of remind us things don't "need" to be this way. "Bug out" people like Chris McCandless do make a mistake though, humans have always lived in a community even in their most "primitive" state. Who teaches you what to eat if not your parents and community even in the most basic ways of life. As John Donne writes in "Meditation 17" (1623) "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main", we exist both as individuals but in a community as bricks both exist by themselves but collectively make a wall. In Pink Floyd's "The Wall", Pink represents "The Wall" as an entity separate from himself, but this egotistical perspective always over looks the other half that we only exist because of The Wall. It is an idea completely misunderstood by thinkers like Ayn Rand and endemic in the thought space of America than an individual somehow exists by them self. And given that individuals do not exist by themselves we always think about individuals in their community context. A 21st Century AD human is not comparable with a 21st BC human because they come from different communities.

So "civilisation" is essential to humans embedded in civilisations, but not universally as many humans exist and necessarily existed pre-civilisation and obviously civilisations have not existed forever. But when talking about modern Western "humans" we are talking about different humans to non-civilisation humans.

I prefer to see "civilisation" not as progress, but as dependency. Modern humans really do depend upon a lot. In the past humans had much simpler dependencies. It is that dependency that correlates with "shareholder value" because the more that a human "needs" the bigger the economy and greater the value of shares. After all it is humans "needing" that drives value.

I sometimes wonder whether Buddhism and other religions are going to run into a headwind with Capitalism. Christ is always saying that the rich are furthest from Heaven, and Buddha emphasises middle way and avoiding excess and even more to avoid identifying with things in general: "things" serve only to sustain our body and have no other use. All this is the end of "economics" as the West tries to promote it. But there are a large number of "wealthy" Capitalists who are against this way of thinking because were people to start becoming "frugal" that would collapse their pyramid of wealth. And in there lies the problem at the top.