"Whatever the case, I personally consider there are more effective ways of combating the deviations, abuses and excesses of financial capitalism than reading Eisenstein's book," says Banjo. What are these effective ways? Please share them with us!

The chapter yet to be written involves a modern version of the French Revolution. France, back then, had corrupt Royalty who needed to be sent packing. We have corrupt corporations and politicians and media who also need to be 'vanished'.

But to achieve this, humans need to be exposed to a new vision, given a new hope, something that replaces the bleakness of the capitalist world and its greed-driven, power-hungry, endless-war ethos!

Human must change or perish. It's simple really.

Problem is, David G...that the French peasants were living in hovels and eating dung for breakfast.

The stroke of genius in the present system is for Western proles, at least, to live like Kings (even though they're tethered like drones to the system)

Poirot, give the uncertainty surrounding the future of the capitalist system, people across the world might, one day, become carbon copies of the French proles prior to the famous Revolution!

The plutocrats and oligarchs are trying desperately to get the world economy moving again but it seems to be semi-conscious, perhaps even close to death. Soon they'll be handing out thousand dollar bills on street corners and urging people to 'shop till they pop'.

We live in uncertain times!

P.S. I am finding this 'you can't post for three hours' nonsense hard to take. Talk about stifling debate!

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Dear Squeers,

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"You seem much more confident in your worldview and your grasp of complicated philosophical issues than I am ..."

Michelangelo spent his lifetime liberating mythical personalities imprisoned in blocks of Carrara marble extracted from a quarry about a hundred kilometers north-west of Florence.

I have spent mine dissipating heavy clouds of doubt that constantly envelope my world views on almost every issue I can think of.

There came a time when Michelangelo finally put down his chisel and hammer, considering his work was finished.

There comes a time when I consider it is no longer reasonable to continue to doubt, and that I can see sufficiently clear on a specific issue in order to take a stance - and assume the consequences, come what may.

That does not oblige me to ignore any future insights. Like the scientists, I only hold a position firmly "until a better explanation becomes available".

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Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos":

I share Nagel's and your interests and interrogations on most of the subjects treated in Nagel's latest book as in his previous books.

I have never succeeded in identifying and examining my own mind employing my thought process as the only tool. I doubt that he has either.

The value of his input is necessarily limited to challenging traditional thought patterns.

A multidisciplinary approach including chemists, physicists, biologists, philosophers and others is probably the best way forward.

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" You seem to draw back abruptly into a conservative shell".

I am viscerally attached to freedom - not just mine, but everybody's. For that reason I reject all forms of categorisation.

I claim the right to agree with Hitler, Stalin, Marx, Che Guevara, Ronald Reagan, or Cardinal Pell, ..., if I happen to share their views on some particular subject.

If you saw me in a "conservative shell" it must have been for some very good reason - which I cannot recall.

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Banjo Paterson,
I appear to have given offence/reached the limits of opinion--which can look like wisdom when it's eloquently supported, or given encyclopaedic breadth--the hallmark of the dilettante, I'm sorry.
It's perfectly reasonable to continue to doubt; indeed it's unreasonable not to: most of OLO is unreasonable.
In any case do you really think you can see sufficiently clearly on the specific issue of consciousness, say, to take a stance? How much reading have you done on the subject? You pursued the topic here, yet we haven't discussed specific objections to materialism in any detail. I've merely been at pains to show that there's much more to know and plenty to doubt. Holding "a position firmly "until a better explanation becomes available" sounds reasonable but tends to ossify thereafter rather than bend.
You say you've "never succeeded in identifying and examining my own mind employing my thought process as the only tool". Yet is not this an item of "faith" for you? But how hard have you tried? Have you studied phenomenology, for instance?
Your last paragraph sounds like a manifesto, but it doesn't bear scrutiny. How do you define "freedom"? Have you ever experienced it?
"I reject all forms of categorisation" sounds impressive, but these are hypothetically-imposed "method", to give a distinguishable semblance of order to intellectual chaos and prevent a fall into dilettantism.
"...if I happen to share their views on some particular subject".
What is the "I" that's prepared to share? Whence comes its motley of opinion, and by what means? You make a strong case for a unity of consciousness materialism can't account for!
I meant a conservative shell of opinion (I apologise if I seemed to suggest you were any of those other epithets); notice how you've steadfastly resisted, above, what I've urged as mere possibility.
Opinion is always arbitrary and ignorance should be cherished.
But please treat all of the above as rhetorical, directed at all, indeed as a reproof to the rest of us; you're probably the least opinionated voice on OLO, and certainly one of the pleasantist.

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Dear David G,

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"Whatever the case, I personally consider there are more effective ways of combating the deviations, abuses and excesses of financial capitalism than reading Eisenstein's book," says Banjo. What are these effective ways? Please share them with us!

The economy is global. The solution will necessarily be global.

For the solution to be global there will have to be cooperation among the major nations, not all of which are democratic. That can only be accomplished by international diplomacy at government level, spearheaded by at least one of the world's political and economic heavyweights.

Any decision to establish common rules and control measures in order to combat the deviations, abuses and excesses of financial capitalism will necessarily be political.

Getting this off the ground is a major challenge. Somebody has to have the motivation and political punch and will to pick it up and run with it. Somebody like Barak Obama, Angela Merkel or François Hollande, or a combination of those three.

I doubt the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), would have the credibility or the authority to conduct a mission of this nature and importance.

Once a political agreement of principle will have been reached, a task force of competent economists and policy makers representing the interests of the potential major signatories to the agreement would need to be set up in order to elaborate the mechanics of the rules and control measures to be implemented.

On completion of its mission, the task force would need to submit its findings and recommendations to the potential political signatories to the agreement for acceptation.

A process of ratification would then need to be instigated by each of the signatory nations in accordance with its statutory law in order for the terms of the final agreement to be integrated into its domestic legislation and put to execution.

A major political project of this nature would be no less than a revolution, albeit a peaceful one.

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