From his latest, via ConsciousChoice.com. Very interesting subject matter:
Toward the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson realized the American Revolution had failed to provide institutional mechanisms to keep the creative spirit of insurrection alive in the populace. He wanted to institute a township system, giving more self-determination to local communities, or “elementary republics.†For Jefferson, the goal of a democratic republic was to make everybody feel “that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election one day a year but every day; where there shall not be a man in the state who will not be a member of some one of its councils great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.†He worried that the representational government devised by the federalists had deprived people of a public space where their freedom could be meaningfully exercised.
Unlikely as it seems, the Jeffersonian model may get its chance in the next few years, due to the converging forces of peak oil and climate change. Richard Heinberg, author of Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, calls the project that confronts us “a species-wide effort toward self-limitation.†Such a project requires global coordination and cooperation to reduce resource consumption and energy use, while industrialized countries “forego further conventional economic growth in favor of a costly transition to alternative energy sources.†For Heinberg’s “powerdown†approach to work, the U.S. would quickly decentralize food, energy and industrial production, and return a great amount of decision-making power to local communities.
I’m still really curious how, if this is “the plan”, then how do we prevent localism from turning into separatism? Not so much a criticism of Pinchbeck at all, as a subject which has been milling around in my head lately with the way things are going.
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3 Comments
That notion of the “elementary republics” is really similar to something I was thinking about behind my Fuck Yeah! America piece: that *America* is a fractal, replicating itself on all levels within holonic systems - or some such. Transition Towns and resilient communities seem to be the way a certain faction of intellectual opinion in the US is turning. And I’m very much on board with it - especially when its embedded with a return to “classic American” value systems.
Toward the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson realized the American Revolution had failed to provide institutional mechanisms to keep the creative spirit of insurrection alive in the populace.
Bullfuckingshit. It certainly wasn’t TJ who had anything to do with this.
I mean, look at the fact that the “freedom lovers” are the most slavishly addicted to slavery in interest of “freedom” and “freedom” now deems that any “insurrection” is the antithesis of anything that could possibly be free. I mean, look at that! Revolutions are comfortably compared to soft drink or video game console switches (soon to be straight up: “Console Switch”). A revolution is not possible any longer. The term is useless.
I mean fuck. Has Pinchbeck even been kind enough to proffer what the “pre-loading” of meaning into the year 2012 is worth, other than that it forms a self-fulfilling prophecy that by the “YEAR 2011!” every goddamn human will instantly become “Mayan Calendar Experts”? Why? Cos, doubtless, there are 48 hours, 60 minutes, NIGHTLINE scripts being written about this shit right now. EVERYBODY will be informed! Hooray! Give DB a call scro!
But loook at the time! It’s 48 hours before 60 minutes from some certain time. Time travel is alive and well and hopefully PT Barnum is still dead.
That said, something is still going on. More people are curious about something more than what they envision those before them as having and what they, themselves strove for, for themselves. People are into something more complex.
Problem I see, is that somewhat more sophisticated widgets will replace the Hussein Hula Hoops of the roaring twenty otts.
Whoops. I meant “DP” as in Daniel Pinchbeck, not “DB”.