Eco-Optimisim

Ken Hanly khanly at mb.sympatico.ca
Thu Aug 9 10:03:37 PDT 2001


I wonder if the influence of relativist ideas and work such as that of Foucault with its emphasis upon power relationships is not partly responsible. It is power not truth that is important. Empower people. Also activists are interested in changing the world rather than worrying about the "truth" of everything they say. Language is used instrumentally. Those opposed to GM seeds for example seem much more sophisticated in their propoganda than Monsanto. This is not to say there are not risks with GM seeds. There are many. However, the complexity of the issue is consistently ignored in favor of blanket condemnations. An otherwise intelligent leftist I know claimed to be against all biotechology. This is a fellow who is widely published and has some excellent analysi. I just cringe when I hear statements like that. I cant understand how it is possible to be so careless and just plain stupid. Yeah. Like we are going back to all animal insulin. Stop using microbes to do oil cleanups. Hell. No more brewing... Recently pro-GM websites have expanded but still Google searches would turn up more anti-gm websites I imagine. Michael Pugliese can check this out. Anyway I am wandeirng. I guess Marx's injunction that the point is not to understand the world but to change it, is being taken without the corrollary that you had better understand it before you change it or you wont be able to change it or if you do the result may not be at all what you thought.

If grain prices get much worse and input prices continue to rise there will be a lot more land turned into pasture and woodlot around here Already I see several sections down the road gone back to the bison with woodlots and pasture. A lot of land was broken in the early days that ought not to have been. I imagine in the former soviet union this phenomenon will be evident on a great scale. At one time there were a great many new areas opened for agriculture that were not really suited for it. The same is true in parts of the prairies. There are many areas around here that have school markers, abandoned homsesteads etc. grown over with woodlots with some pasturing.

Cheers, Ken Hanly

----- Original Message ----- From: Gordon Fitch <gcf at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 6:57 AM Subject: Re: Eco-Optimisim


> Gar Lipow:
> > ...
> > For comparison I can think of a lot of occasions when feminists have
> > gotten their facts wrong. (For example male violence against women does
> > not peak during the Superbowl.) And it is not that uncommon for
> > individual feminists to be contemptuous of working class men. In spite
> > of this would anyone fail to recognize that the an attack on the
> > feminist movement as either counterfactual or anti-worker is
> > fundamentally wrong.
> > ...
>
> I think the question is not the validity of environmentalism
> or feminism or their application to the poor or the working
> class, but whether lying is a good strategy for advancing the
> causes, and if not, why it was employed. I speculate that it
> is a bourgeois habit, which can be observed in their way of
> dealing with the government and the media. Unfortunately, I
> don't have the resources to track down the geneaology of
> each fiction, so my speculation remains a mere speculation.
>



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