politics, economics, and civilizations
# 4031
The world was in decline before COVID-19 and before the first major effects of climate. These are all considerations that will arise when some of us try Gardenworlds, that nexus of food, shelter, and culture, that we will locally try to achieve.
To be sure, there is Plato’s lament that certain truths are uncommunicable. Whatever may be said about such truths, they cannot be said to have any philosophic value.” *. From the book Politics and Vision
I disagree. If something is experienceable but unspeakable, that is really interesting, and raises the question, what impact on life and society it has? What characterizes civilization more than the state is our need to be open to what is unspeakable. Go out into the night and look at the stars (an assumption I know, but even this can be imagined successfully). There is a sense of the night air but also of the unbounded universe. This is related to what is usually called spiritual. The state stops at the boundaries of rules, laws, and regulations and, implicitly, trade and war. Civilization is much larger. Our problem is, in our materialist frameworks, we think a lot more about what is limited by states than what we do about what is outside, such as mood, tone, feeling, love, and art. The state is narrow and pragmatic. Reality is as broad as the human imagination moved by the big questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? where did the Big Bang happen? If there is no end to the universe, where are we in it? People think about these and culture, and civilization, must engage the spiritual* quest if we are to keep people engaged. The failure of our leadership to think past STEM means that problems like Israel-Palestie, financial inequality, and climate cannot be understood. Take Russia. The US promised no NATO Expansion., touching deep long-standing (a few centuries) Russian concerns. yet we ignore that we broke our promise and look like idiots when we reduce the tension to market forces and energy. Or consider cows and methane - if we cull cows, where does leather come from? We need a much better understanding of politics and its intersection with climate and economy.
Politics, says Shelden Wolin is about things like
the power relationships between ruler and ruled, the nature of authority, the problems posed by social conflict, the status of certain goals or purposes as objectives of political action, and the character of political knowledge.”
These are not primarily material objects, nor do they quantify comfortably