In this lecture, Professor Mirowski responds to the question of how it is that science came to be subordinate to economics and the very future of nature to be contingent upon the market. Charting the contradictions of the contemporary political landscape, he notes that science denialism, markets for pollution permits and proposals for geo-engineering can all be understood as political strategies designed to neutralize the impact of environmentalism, as they all originated in the network of corporate-sponsored think-tanks that have made neoliberal accounts of society, politics and the economy so prevalent that even the most profound crises are unable to shake their grip on the political imagination.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I
YouTube
Prof. Philip Mirowski keynote for 'Life and Debt' conference
Life and Debt: Living through the Financialisation of the Biosphere
How can it be that the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis and the deepest financial crisis since 1930s have done so little to undermine the supremacy of orthodox economics?
The lecture…
How can it be that the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis and the deepest financial crisis since 1930s have done so little to undermine the supremacy of orthodox economics?
The lecture…
Forwarded from zeitgeist.earth
"Made in January of 1975, Buckminster Fuller: Everything I Know captured Fuller’s “entire life’s work” in 42 hours of “thinking out loud lectures [that examine] in depth all of Fuller’s major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics. Autobiographical in parts, Fuller recounts his own personal history in the context of the history of science and industrialization.”
He begins, however, in his first lecture at the top, not with himself, but with his primary subject of concern: “all humanity,” a species that begins always in nakedness and ignorance and manages to figure it out “entirely by trial and error,” he says. Fuller marvels at the advances of “early Hindu and Chinese” civilizations—as he had at the Maori in Tomkin’s anecdote, who “had been among the first peoples to discover the principles of celestial navigation” and “found a way of sailing around the world… at least ten thousand years ago.”
The leap from ancient civilizations to “what is called World War I” is “just a little jump in information,” he says in his first lecture, but when Fuller comes to his own lifetime, he shows how many “little jumps” one human being could witness in a lifetime in the 20th century. “The year I was born Marconi invented the wireless,” says Fuller. “When I was 14 man did get to the North Pole, and when I was 16 he got to the South Pole.”
When Fuller was 7, “the Wright brothers suddenly flew,” he says, “and my memory is vivid enough of seven to remember that for about a year the engineering societies were trying to prove it was a hoax because it was absolutely impossible for man to do that.” What it showed young Bucky Fuller was that “impossibles are happening.” If Fuller was a visionary, he redefined the word—as a term for those with an expansive, infinitely curious vision of a possible world that already exists all around us."
http://www.openculture.com/2019/07/buckminster-fuller-tells-the-world-everything-he-knows-in-a-42-hour-lecture-series-1975.html
He begins, however, in his first lecture at the top, not with himself, but with his primary subject of concern: “all humanity,” a species that begins always in nakedness and ignorance and manages to figure it out “entirely by trial and error,” he says. Fuller marvels at the advances of “early Hindu and Chinese” civilizations—as he had at the Maori in Tomkin’s anecdote, who “had been among the first peoples to discover the principles of celestial navigation” and “found a way of sailing around the world… at least ten thousand years ago.”
The leap from ancient civilizations to “what is called World War I” is “just a little jump in information,” he says in his first lecture, but when Fuller comes to his own lifetime, he shows how many “little jumps” one human being could witness in a lifetime in the 20th century. “The year I was born Marconi invented the wireless,” says Fuller. “When I was 14 man did get to the North Pole, and when I was 16 he got to the South Pole.”
When Fuller was 7, “the Wright brothers suddenly flew,” he says, “and my memory is vivid enough of seven to remember that for about a year the engineering societies were trying to prove it was a hoax because it was absolutely impossible for man to do that.” What it showed young Bucky Fuller was that “impossibles are happening.” If Fuller was a visionary, he redefined the word—as a term for those with an expansive, infinitely curious vision of a possible world that already exists all around us."
http://www.openculture.com/2019/07/buckminster-fuller-tells-the-world-everything-he-knows-in-a-42-hour-lecture-series-1975.html
Forwarded from zeitgeist.earth
"I’m confident the world is getting worse, but despite which path we’re on, we have to identify the problems and accept them for what they are if we wish to have any chance addressing them.
I try my best to not make this series into a rant about every little problem or mishap that’s going on. Even in a sustainable society accidents would happen and natural catastrophes would occur, seasons would vary in intensity from year to year and so on. So what I present here is my best attempt at distilling out anthropogenic anomalies.
I define a “sign of collapse” as a negative market externality that the current socioeconomic system for whatever reason hasn’t dealt with and is now ending up hurting people or the ecosystem. I try to pick studies and news that shows the occurring consequences of the current system’s failure to deal with externalities.
I’m also trying to make the argument, and feel free to disagree with me and have a discussion, that “the collapse” that some people are waiting for that will apparently “wake up” people is occurring right now, and if you want to do something, you better hurry before it’s too late."
https://www.reddit.com/r/TZM/comments/c805sl/signs_of_collapse_2019_q2/
I try my best to not make this series into a rant about every little problem or mishap that’s going on. Even in a sustainable society accidents would happen and natural catastrophes would occur, seasons would vary in intensity from year to year and so on. So what I present here is my best attempt at distilling out anthropogenic anomalies.
I define a “sign of collapse” as a negative market externality that the current socioeconomic system for whatever reason hasn’t dealt with and is now ending up hurting people or the ecosystem. I try to pick studies and news that shows the occurring consequences of the current system’s failure to deal with externalities.
I’m also trying to make the argument, and feel free to disagree with me and have a discussion, that “the collapse” that some people are waiting for that will apparently “wake up” people is occurring right now, and if you want to do something, you better hurry before it’s too late."
https://www.reddit.com/r/TZM/comments/c805sl/signs_of_collapse_2019_q2/