Thanks David G. In total agreement regarding the need to raise the level of thinking and debate in society - and the internet is a magnificent tool for this purpose (while at the same time serving of course entirely the opposite agenda).

Re: there is no evidence of a redeemer (in whatever form), I disagree - I think there are positive signs all around, some of which, strange as it may seem, are actually making some headway amongst the powers that be (including, in the case of local and sustainable food systems, the US Dept of Agriculture). If you doubt me, have a look at this - http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=KYF_COMPASS. While the USDA's main motivation is economic growth, I have no doubt (and I have spent years researching this) that local food systems and economies do have transformative potential.

Trouble is that such hopeful signs are drowned out amidst all the other noise, sorry, news.

I am happy to keep writing on this topic in the more focused way you suggest, other commitments permitting, though I wonder if OLO would be the best venue, given that it seems to be something of a magnet for trolls, neo-cons and neo-libs of various types, whose abuse and attacks must tend to put off all but the hardiest of posters of a different mind. If you have alternative suggestions I'd be grateful.

Nick, my first blog was titled: The Philosophers Well and I intended it would be place where people of a philosophical bent would exchange ideas.

It went slowly and, thinking it sounded too intellectual I changed it to Seeking Utopia which went gangbusters but didn't seem to be achieving what I had hoped: a serious, thoughtful, mature blog.

My last blog (which is still going more or less} is called Dangerous Creation and is based upon the premise that humans pose the major danger to the planet and will probably go the way of the dinosaurs in the very near future. It's not a message that thrills people.

Perhaps I should return to my first blog and see what it might achieve in these uncertain, worrying times although getting people to think (and not simply regurgitate their rote learning) is an awesome task.

What to do about trolls, egomaniacs, self-agrandizers, time-wasters, fruit loops, fanatics, plants, and dikkheads, etc, is a perennial problem for the writer. It is hard to be courteous sometimes but if what you write appears publically, you take your chances.

I do agree that there seems to be a slight movement towards a more community-based society and even some attempts at forms of rural self-sufficiency.

But I fear the implosion of the capitalist system will swamp everything in due course, either that or a nuclear war.

Take care.

There is certainly some validity in that view, David G.

>>...humans have already reached the peak point (perhaps it was during Ancient Greece) and are now rapidly regressing back to the stage where our knuckles dragged on the ground and we spoke in grunts!<<

Our presence here has always been somewhat anomalous, given the relatively mindless, or instinctual, existence of earth's other inhabitants. Our evolution has however never strayed too far from the fight/flight basics, so it matters little how technologically "advanced" we become, it will never compensate for the feeling, deep down, that unless we grab everything we can get our hands on, we "lose".

Painting a picture of a situation where raw nature does not hold sway over our actions will always be at a disadvantage against reality. Wishful thinking has of course always formed part of our evolved mental make-up - religion being a classic example of this condition - but it will never yield anything useful, bar the occasional warm-and-fuzzy moment of introversion.

Not sure it was the Greeks who were "the peak", though, given that their society was run by a relatively small number of the populace - no women, of course, basically because they weren't really citizens at all - and that they were a people who found slavery to be a perfectly natural human state.

But if it was (and I can't think of a time that overall qualifies as the "high point") then civilization didn't actually get very far at all, did it.

Which makes me puzzle why you expend so much energy railing against the inevitable.

Pericles, thanks for your comment which was perceptive and positive.

I don't know why I bother either quite frankly but something inside me keeps my nose to the grindstone trying to alert the world to the danger it faces unless we radically change the way we live and the current 'values' we hold (or are taught to hold by the manipulative Predators and the Parasites).

Sometimes I think the dominoes are falling and nothing can stop them. I am caught between fight and flight myself (except there is nowhere to run to).

Perhaps Omar had the right idea: many glasses of red wine and thou!

SM, after all this the best you've got is a couple of wikilinks to Keynes and Friedman?
I'm not entirely unlettered in economics and was looking for an economist who wasn't dedicated to the system and recognises it is unsustainable. Did you bother to read the link to the economist I provided above? http://newleftreview.org/II/76/wolfgang-streeck-citizens-as-customers
I doubt it. But you would just dismiss it in any case

Thanks Poirot for the article. Perhaps SM will read and consider it. Fat chance.

David G, I didn't write the poem, Banjo Paterson did.

Squeers,

You asked for the names of some preminent economists and some links to their works, The Wiki links I gave, gives you a very brief summary of Keynes and Friedman, (probably the two most influential and respected economist of the last century), and gives references/links to many of their works. If you want to limit yourself only to "an economist who wasn't dedicated to the system and recognises it is unsustainable", you basically exclude all those that have actually made a contribution and are left with those more interested in political posturing.

I can only lead you to wisdom, I cannot make you think.