[QatzelOk]

We all know that extreme power accumulation is a bad thing. A three-year-old with a bag of Mickey Mouse hand-grenades is dangerous and pointless.

Likewise, adults have shown throughout history that the exaggerated accumulation of power leads to violence and deterioration of the quality of life. In our time, global warming demonstrates the lethal effects of endless power accumulation - of giving a billion people a few hundred horsepower and 50,000 BTUs of power. In the same way, urban crime and perpetual wars demonstrate the violence that results in a concentration of resources into a few, powerful hands. The cancers of the earth's environment all became critical because of the power accumulations that were made possible by the Modern Industrial State.

And yet, almost all of the earth's institutions are currently geared towards encouraging power accumulation. Media programs us to judge others on the basis of accumulation of goods. Schools funnel us into ways to earn more money. Some of our best minds are in business school figuring out ways to screw other people out of their labor, or how to defend this same labor against other business grads. Our best minds, involved in deceit and the abuse of the witless.

Likewise, the Modern Industrial State seems incapable of existing without wars and racism. It feeds into a propaganda of growth, which helps build up unnaturally vast dynasties of accumulated surplus labor.

So do we have to destroy all our institutions (media, schools, government, trade) in order to re-tool them towards encouraging a diffusion of power? Or can they be reformed away from their rewarding of power concentration?

Reformed or destroyed?

Or do you enjoy power accumulation?

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

I think they can be reformed, but only if and when there is a serious, organized and disciplined movement against the power structure. We need to be aggressively promoting new ideas and defending anti-hierarchical social structures on moral grounds.

[QatzelOk]

We need to be aggressively promoting new ideas and defending anti-hierarchical social structures on moral grounds.

But won't these aggressively-promoted new ideas just get perverted until they end up reinforcing the current power structure?

I'm wondering if it's possible to "reform" a power structure when the entire world's institutions - even family and friendship - have been altered to create powerful people and to make people desire ever-increasing amounts of power, at the expense of everything else.

Is power really reformable, or do you need to shut it off completely before you can make any meaningful change?

[QatzelOk]

Radical destruction is hardly necessary when peaceful change is already occurring.

SUVs got bigger, suburbia got more sprawling... meat diets got meatier...

I don't see the peaceful change that you are suggesting eliminates the need for anything more noticeable.

[Paradigm]

SUVs got bigger, suburbia got more sprawling... meat diets got meatier...

SUV sales are dropping like flies, and sprawl isn't likely to be very prominent during a housing crisis like we have now. I can't comment on meat consumption.

[QatzelOk]

SUV sales are dropping like flies

After 10 years of growth.

A hundred million consumers are stuck with these monsters for another decade, and they will cause more and more damage to the environment as they age and fall into the hands of worse drivers.

The "peaceful change" that has taken place since the earth found out about limits to growth (1973) has mainly been spin and denial. The hard decisions don't get made because they would cost big oil and big auto too much cash, and their bottom lines are more important to the average American than survival.

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

This is the stubbornness that has really been hurting American progress.

We should have been promoting conservation and renewable energy all through the 1980s and '90s. Instead what do we get? SUVs, unusually cheap oil, more urban sprawl, and accelerating carbon emissions.

Now that the writing on the fall is finally getting a stronger light shone upon it, we're seeing a second movement toward sustainability. But as usual the oil and car companies, as well as their political apologists, have tried to drag their heels as much as possible.

[QatzelOk]

We should have been promoting conservation and renewable energy all through the 1980s and '90s.

How are you supposed to promote conservation and renewables (consuming less) in an economy that rewards all forms of growth with a positive GNP increase?

How can you slow consumption in an economy that is increasingly geared towards transferring more and more power (and a greater percentage of profits) to a shrinking elite?

Is it even possible to conserve anything in Consumer society, or does it just keep vacuuming up resources until everyone and everything are dead?