Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

[marmar]

from truthdig:


The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies (VIDEO)

Posted on Apr 13, 2014
By Chris Hedges

Editor’s note: The following is the transcript of a speech that Chris Hedges gave in Santa Monica, Calif., on Oct. 13, 2013.

The most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a species is found in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage. He is our foremost oracle. He is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabethan England or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to czarist Russia.

Our country is given shape in the form of the ship, the Pequod, named after the Indian tribe exterminated in 1638 by the Puritans and their Native American allies. The ship’s 30-man crew—there were 30 states in the Union when Melville wrote the novel—is a mixture of races and creeds. The object of the hunt is a massive white whale, Moby Dick, which in a previous encounter maimed the ship’s captain, Ahab, by dismembering one of his legs. The self-destructive fury of the quest, much like that of the one we are on, assures the Pequod’s destruction. And those on the ship, on some level, know they are doomed—just as many of us know that a consumer culture based on corporate profit, limitless exploitation and the continued extraction of fossil fuels is doomed.

“If I had been downright honest with myself,” Ishmael admits, “I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.”

Our financial system—like our participatory democracy—is a mirage. The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month. It has been artificially propping up the government and Wall Street like this for five years. It has loaned trillions of dollars at virtually no interest to banks and firms that make money—because wages are kept low—by lending it to us at staggering interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent. ... Or our corporate oligarchs hoard the money or gamble with it in an overinflated stock market. Estimates put the looting by banks and investment firms of the U.S. Treasury at between $15 trillion and $20 trillion. But none of us know. The figures are not public. And the reason this systematic looting will continue until collapse is that our economy [would] go into a tailspin without this giddy infusion of free cash. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_and_the_collapse_of_complex_societies_video_2014

[Dirty Socialist]

1. K & R

That's pretty frightening. The news about the banks infuriates me.

[2naSalit]

2. K&R

Bookmarked to view later, thanks for posting.

[el_bryanto]

3. This sentence makes no sense

"The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month." What? U.S. Treasury bonds are not worthless subprime mortgages and it's irresponsible to suggest so.

Possibly two ideas that got mashed together. It doesn't seem to be his main theme anyway (which seems to be environmental).

Bryant

[shanemcg]

6. If I understand correctly

This cash is given to Wallstreet Banks at 0% interest with the banks handing over these worthless CDS things as "collateral".

[xchrom]

4. Du rec

[snooper2]

5. He needs to stop watching the History Channel and turn on "Through the Wormhole"

LOL