#polycrisis

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Luddites didn’t hate looms. They smashed looms because their bosses wanted to fire skilled workers, ship kidnapped Napoleonic War orphans north from London, and lock them inside factories for a decade of indenture, to be starved, beaten, maimed and killed. Designing industrial machinery that’s “so easy a child can use it,” isn’t necessarily a prelude to child-slavery, but it’s not not a prelude to child-slavery, either. The Luddites weren’t mad about what the machines did — they were mad at who the machines did it for and whom they did it to. The child-kidnapping millionaires of the Industrial Revolution said, “There is no alternative,” and the Luddites roared, “The hell you say there isn’t!” Today’s tech millionaires are no different. Mark Zuckerberg used to insist that there was no way to talk to your friends without being comprehensively spied upon, so every intimate and compromising fact of your life could be gathered, processed, and mobilised against you. He said this was inevitable, as though some bearded prophet staggered down off a mountain, bearing two stone tablets, intoning, “Zuck, thou shalt stop rotating thine logfiles, and lo, thou shalt mine them for actionable market intelligence.”

-There Is Always An Alternative: Remarks presented to York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Graduating Class of 2023

[sataniccapitalist]

[wildcat2030]

Sometimes words explode. It is a safe bet that, before 2022, you had never even heard the term ‘polycrisis’. Now, there is a very good chance you have run into it; and, if you are engaged in environmental, economic or security issues, you most likely have – you might even have become frustrated with it. First virtually nobody was using polycrisis talk, and suddenly everyone seems to be. But, as often happens, people seem to mean quite different things with the word. So, what does ‘polycrisis’ mean? The term reverberated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022, and in Davos the following January, as The New York Times noted. In the Financial Times, Jonathan Derbyshire chose it for his 2022 ‘Year in a Word’ piece, defining ‘polycrisis’ as a collective term for interlocking and simultaneous crises. Then 2023 opened with the World Economic Forum adopting this buzzword for its Global Risks Report, highlighting how ‘[c]oncurrent shocks, deeply interconnected risks and eroding resilience are giving rise to the risk of polycrises’. The report explores the interrelation of geopolitical, environmental and sociopolitical risks. The World Economic Forum used the term to advertise the report, with headlines like ‘We’re on the Brink of a “Polycrisis” – How Worried Should We Be?’ or ‘Welcome to the Age of the Polycrisis’.

[warllikeparakeetiii]

IMPACTS of Earth Tipping Points on Societal Breakdown, Radicalization, Polarization, Anomie, Wars…

In recent videos I have discussed the major Earth System Tipping Points that we are fast approaching.

Here, I chat about how these nonlinear climate changes are likely to impact society. In fact climate change is already having profound impacts to human societies and is decreasing our resilience and even agency to respond.

Already, we are seeing increased societal breakdowns, social unrest, more conflicts, radicalization and polarization, and overall dysfunction and “anomie”. Anomie is an old sociological term for individuals losing interest and touch and connection with their communities.

For example, people living in high-rise buildings often don’t care about or even know anybody in their buildings, even next door neighbours.

As climate change accelerates rapidly, we are losing our window to respond in any meaningful way.

I discuss various case studies of interactions and connections between climate, physical changes, societal impacts, and effects for:

- AMOC collapse

- coral reef collapse

- Lake Chad drying up

- Amazon Rainforest Collapse

- Arab Spring

Basically, we are all connected. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Cascading domino like effects are all around us.

Please donates to http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos connecting the dots on abrupt climate system mayhem.

[trentboswell]

Not Long for This World - The Twisted Poetry of a Climate Apocalypse - The Unimaginable Horrors of Our Approaching Collective Nightmare, the Total Collapse of Human Society - by Kevin Trent Boswell

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVBKZV9R

[sustainableyadayadayada]

WEF Global Risks Report 2023

And now, without further ado, the top ten global risks for the next ten years according to the World Economic Forum: World Economic Forum Well, what is very clear here is that environmental issues are at the forefront here. We can’t just pretend our human activities are a small part of the larger biophysical system any more, and that the biophysical system therefore has an inexhaustible ability…

[giftofshewbread]

2023 END-TIMES PROPHECY (70th Week of Daniel Revealed)

( What's interesting is the 'enemy' also has a date, 2030 Agenda, The Great Reset, So to me, the enemy knows, but just for some reason doesn't know that they don't win 2030, when they think they will have absolute global control, hmmm, Jesus comes down and with a word, it all changes and Jesus has his millennial reign... The enemy knows the date 2030, they know there is a rapture, hence why the UFO narrative has begun, to explain the disappearance of all those rotten Christians. i believe also, that 2023 is the year of the enemy implementing their 'Polycrises',  THEY told us so from Davos now, so glory hallelujah, Let's Fly People, it's Rapture Time, Maranatha Jesus !) Leho Lechem

[theculturedmarxist]

Down through the years, the ideologists of the ruling classes have repeatedly accused Marxists of exaggeration and even “catastrophitis,” as they drew out the deepening contradictions of capitalism, which threaten the very future of civilisation.

Those who agree with such assessments, endlessly regurgitated through media and academic outlets, would do well to examine the “Global Risks Report 2023” of the World Economic Forum (WEF) prepared for the annual gathering that is taking place this week in Davos, Switzerland.

The report paints a devastating picture of a socioeconomic system hurtling towards disaster, outside of the control of the ruling elites for which the WEF speaks.

The executive summary begins by noting that the first years of the present decade “have heralded a particularly disruptive period in human history.”

Then follows a paragraph worth quoting in full:

As 2023 begins, the world is facing a set of risks that feel both wholly new and eerily familiar. We have seen the return of “older risks”—inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, capital outflow from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare—which few of this generation’s business leaders and public policy-makers have experienced. These are being amplified by comparatively new developments in the global risks landscape, including unsustainable levels of debt, a new era of low growth, low global investment and de-globalisation, a decline in human development after decades of progress, rapid and unconstrained development of dual-use (civilian and military) technologies, and the growing pressure of climate change impacts and ambitions in an ever-shrinking window for a transition to a 1.5C world. Together, these are converging to shape a unique and uncertain and turbulent decade to come.

The Marxist analysis of the present situation is presented in the New Year’s Perspective of the World Socialist Web Site (2023: The global capitalist crisis and the growing offensive of the international working class), which notes that the accumulating pressures of the world capitalist crisis have “attained the equivalent of critical mass: that is, they have reached the point where the dynamic of crisis has passed beyond the ability of governments to control the movement toward a social cataclysm.”

Everything in the Global Risks Report confirms, in its own way, the veracity of this analysis, which is probably why the WEF document has received little or no coverage in the so-called mainstream media.

The report traces out a series of deepening crises, including the ever-worsening economic outlook, the intensification of geopolitical conflicts and tensions that are not confined to Ukraine, but extend far more broadly, the rapid deterioration of health and health care, and the effects of climate change, both in terms of the weather and the decline in biodiversity.

One of the most significant shifts in 2022 was the ending of the ultra-low interest rate regime initiated in response to the global financial crisis in 2008 and extended after the financial crisis of March 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The monetary tightening implemented by the Fed and other major central banks to suppress the global wages upsurge by the working class is driving the world economy into recession.

But according to the WEF report:

Even if some economies experience a softer-than-expected landing, the end of the low-interest rate era will have significant ramifications for governments, businesses and individuals. The knock-on effects will be felt most acutely by the most vulnerable parts of society and already-fragile states, contributing to rising poverty, hunger, violent protests, political instability and even state collapse. ... Governments will continue to face a dangerous balancing act between protecting a broad swathe of their citizens from an elongated cost-of-living crisis without embedding inflation—and meeting debt and servicing costs as revenues come under pressure from an economic downturn, an increasingly urgent transition to new energy systems, and a less stable geopolitical environment.

The report warns that social unrest and political instability will not be confined to emerging markets, as economic pressures hit the middle-income bracket:

Mounting citizen frustration at losses in human development and declining social mobility, together with a widening gap in values and equality, are posing existential challenges to political systems around the world.

The global slowdown and the development of recession in many parts of the world will increase geopolitical tensions and conflicts:

Economic warfare is becoming the norm with increasing clashes between global powers and state intervention in markets over the next two years.

Economic policies will not only be used defensively, but “increasingly offensively to constrain the rise of others.”

The report also points to the increase of military spending as a proportion of GDP by the US, along with others, and notes the decision by Japan to double its military spending:

Widespread defence spending, particularly on research and development, could deepen insecurity and promote a race between global and regional powers towards more advanced weaponry.

This will be accompanied by the rise of blocs that tie together countries across security, trade, innovation and investment.

The report does not raise it, but this assessment blows out of the water the World Economic Forum’s earlier pronouncements that the globalisation of production and finance through the operation of the “free market” would lead to peace and prosperity.

That analysis, advanced in the years following the dissolution of the USSR, ignored the fact, emphasised by the Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, that such organic peaceful development was impossible because the world is riven by the contradiction between global economy and the nation-state system in which capitalism is rooted.

The WEF report contains little analysis of the extent of the pandemic, apparently subscribing to the view, contrary to the evidence, that COVID is in the past. But it does point to the crisis in health care and the threat of further pandemics, under conditions where health care systems are facing “intensifying financial pressure.”

It states:

As COVID-19 recedes from the headlines, complacency appears to be setting in on preparing for future pandemics and other global health threats. Healthcare systems face worker burnout and continued shortages at a time when fiscal consolidation risks deflecting attention and resources elsewhere. More frequent and widespread infectious disease outbreaks amidst a background of chronic diseases over the next decade risks pushing exhausted healthcare systems to the brink of failure around the world.

Health problems will also continue to mount because of the effects of climate change and the disintegration of ecosystems, leading to an increased occurrence of zoonotic diseases—those which, as with SARS and COVID, start in animals but then leap over into the human population.

An objective measure of human progress is the increase in life expectancy. Today, for the first time since World War II, it is starting to decline. According to the report: “People are living more years in poor health, and we may soon face a more sustained reversal in life expectancy gains beyond the influence of the pandemic.”

On the issue of climate change, as the prospect of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius fades into the distance, the report notes that climate and environmental issues are a core source of risks over the next decade, but are at the same time “the risks for which we are seen to be the least prepared.”

It adds:

The lack of deep, concerted progress on climate targets has exposed the divergence between what is scientifically necessary to achieve net zero and what is politically feasible.

The same point could be made on the question of COVID elimination, which, however, the WEF chooses to evade. It does not even approach an explanation for the policy of mass infection pursued by governments all over the world because that would mean touching on the “holy of holies”— capitalist property relations, on which the global economy is based, and which make impossible the application of science where it conflicts with the interests of private profit.

Summing up the situation, the report says that present and future risks

interact with each other to form a “polycrisis”—a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part.

Or, as the World Socialist Web Site’s New Year Perspective explains, the crisis of capitalism has reached a “critical mass.” That perspective makes another decisive point—that the actions of capitalist governments are increasingly irrational, and instead of alleviating the crisis, intensify it.

The same point is made in another way in the conclusion of the WEF report:

Without minimising the need for an effective response, the over-prioritisation of current challenges can quickly descend into a doom-loop of continuous global shocks, whereby resources are absorbed by crisis management, rather than directed to preparedness for future risks. Complex challenges cannot be solved by short-term decision-making—and yet long-term thinking alone is insufficient in the face of currently unfolding crises.

The image comes to mind of the boy rushing to put his finger in the dyke as the whole structure gives way to the flood.

Anyone still labouring under the illusion that the ruling classes have some progressive solution to the deepening crisis should read the concluding paragraph.

There we find the following:

In a complex risks outlook, there must be a better balance between national preparedness and global cooperation. We need to act together, to shape a pathway out of cascading crises and build collective preparedness to the next global shock, whatever form it might take. Leaders must embrace complexity and act on a balanced vision to create a stronger, prosperous shared future.

In other words, the ruling elites, above all the oligarchs gathered at Davos with a collective wealth of trillions of dollars, whose actions over decades have led to an existential crisis for humankind, are somehow to turn on a dime and lead the way out of the disaster.

In fact, they have no policies to halt the deepening catastrophe, nor can they develop any, because, in the final analysis, it is rooted not in their psyche, but in the objective contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, which they defend above all else.

The capitalist ruling classes, and their political representatives, are the chief obstacles to human progress. But that does not mean they have no program. They do. It is to place the full burden of the crisis of their system on the backs of the working class and oppressed masses.

They are condemned by history, but are still a living social force, with vast resources and centuries of counterrevolutionary political experience. The way forward does not lie in appeals for them to change course, but in summoning the power of an even greater social force—the international working class—to remove them.

But for that enormous power to become transformed from potentiality to actuality, the working class must be armed with a clearly worked out program, grounded on the historically developed program and strategic lessons extracted by the world Trotskyist movement, represented today solely by the International Committee of the Fourth International, over the course of a century of unrelenting political and theoretical struggle.

The conclusion is a simple one. As the New Year’s Perspective of the WSWS outlined, the future of humanity depends on the triumph of socialism, and the achievement of this necessary objective depends on the building of the ICFI as the world party of socialist revolution.

[iamadarshbadri]

We Have Always Been in "Polycrisis"— And Now We Know It!

Not many terms in societies have gained as much prominence as the term “polycrisis” has done in the past few years. The term “polycrisis” has been used, misused, reused, and abused over the last two years. Having gained prominence against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian War in Ukraine, polycrisis seeks to represent the multiple, intricate, oft-conflicting crises the world…

[terasikip]

Pilar Presidensi G20 Indonesia 2022 dan Upaya Perdamaian Dunia

Pilar Presidensi G20 Indonesia 2022 dan Upaya Perdamaian Dunia

Terasikip.com – Indonesia jadi Presiden Group of Twenty (G20)– suatu forum negara negara yang menguasai 80 persen perekonomian dunia– di tahun yang susah. Berikut ulasan mengenai Pilar Presidensi G20 Indonesia 2022 dan upaya perdamaian dunia. Dunia merambah “polycrisis” pada tahun 2022, ataupun krisis simultan yang terkombinasi dari krisis pandemi COVID 19, krisis pangan, krisis tenaga akibat…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Thus: Margaret Thatcher’s dictum, “There is no alternative,” a polite way of saying “Resistance is futile,” or, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” This is inevitabilism, the belief that nothing can change. It’s the opposite of science fiction. As a science fiction writer, my job is to imagine alternatives. “There is no alternative” is a demand pretending to be an observation: “stop trying to think of an alternative.” At its best, science fiction demands that we look beyond what a gadget does and interrogate who it does it for and who it does it to. That’s an important exercise, maybe the important exercise. It’s the method by which we seize the means of computation for the betterment of the human race, not the immortal, rapacious colony organisms we call “limited liability companies,” to whom we represent inconvenient gut-flora, and which are rendering the only planet in the universe capable of sustaining human life unfit for human habitation.

-There Is Always An Alternative: Remarks presented to York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Graduating Class of 2023

[manorpunk]

[chicago-geniza]

Writing the most deranged essay imaginable about Extremely Online Theistic Personalism and Polish Catholic intelligentsia converts 1914-1944. Oh you took Teresa as your communion name after St. Teresa of Avila? [Does a twirl] Oh you've been getting really into Augustine & St. Thomas? Yeah I bet, what are you gonna do next, quote Tischner at me and write a blog post about mysticism and martyrdom and the call to social justice?

[deadandphilgames]

A note from Daniel (new epilogue from You Will Get Through This Night)

Thank you for reading This Night. Writing this book in 2021, while sitting locked down in a lightless basement apartment for months, had a certain self-fulfilling irony that was not lost on me.

In many ways, I wrote this book for not only my past self that I wish could have known these things when I needed them most - but for the guy sitting in an incredibly uncomfortable, hunched, t-rex-esque position typing, that needed it right then. Like many of you, I thought those particularly fun couple of years were a temporary inconvenience, that I wouldn't have to age the book by diving into. And here we are. I hope you enjoyed that new chapter about resilience and whatever the hell a 'polycrisis' is. Turns out certain global events do have an additional effect on our mental health - it's understandable that you may try to power through it and pretend it never happened, but we all deserve to take whatever time we need to honestly process how life makes us feel. I hope you're doing alright. My journey of reflecting honestly on my own life experiences and lifestyle while writing was …like spontaneously punching yourself in the stomach. "Wow. I really live like this? That is apparently not conducive to a healthy mind. Oops. Guess I'll go touch some grass." I'm happy if that made this a more entertaining read occasionally.

Even now, I find myself continually re-reading the book in those small moments of first emotional reaction to situations where I now at least think "Wait - what was I supposed to do here? Right. Not catastrophise." If this is you - that is fine. You are not expected to perfectly memorise this book or retain all knowledge you hear in life. I know I don't. If you're ever sat next to me in the emergency exit aisle of a plane, know that you may be required to physically throw me out of the door in order to inflate the slide because I was busy during the briefing, imagining how my life would have been different if I actually had the nerve to dye my hair black that time in school. I am at peace with that.

It was honestly terrifying for me to try and mine the content of my life to try and actually illustrate advice for people that may really need it …for me to honestly look at the balance between joking about my mental health, and really getting real. Hey - if your attempt at opening up via some humour comes out a bit offensive, you still get points for at least putting it on the table. That's progress.

This is not a book about me. I am here just as an example of terrible behaviour that you have permission to have an inappropriate public transport snort at, and as a writer who has repeatedly not finished traditional 'self-help' or scientific study books for being dry, unrelatable and preachy. I just hope you found this moist, identifiable and accepting of all of your beautiful flaws. So many flaws. I often worried if any of the material was maybe obvious, or something you could stumble across on the second page of Google - then I had a small moment of honesty with myself contemplating my own ignorance, commitment to procrastination, attention span …and the fact that factually just 0.63% of all people searching online, ever bother clicking to the second page of results. If you already knew some of this, good for you. Honestly. You must literally be happy with yourself. I'm just looking in the mirror and trying to do something for the 99.37% of humanity that spend their lives never successfully researching how to not lay awake at night fantasising about their doom. Look forward to the upcoming pocket size book of 'offensively self-destructive jokes' by Dan - or 700-page memoir of my yet un-girthy, mostly unremarkable life so far if that's what you're really looking for.

Perhaps the most terrifying result of releasing this book into the world, has been coming face to face with those of you that have read it. For in these moments, all of my protective self-deprecating persona comes crashing down in an instant when someone says this book made them feel better. Hearing that this book was the first time they finished anything tangentially related to self-improvement, or that just one thing they read was a new perspective on a part of their life they needed, makes me feel my mission in life is already complete. Seeing it be recommended by bookstores amongst all the other choices, hearing that people have shared it with their therapists or had it suggested to them by a professional, is an unbelievable seal of approval that I appreciate. I am so inarticulably grateful to have been given the opportunity to do anything that could make your life easier, more peaceful, more enjoyable. I've met people who annotated this book with post-its, told me they listen to audiobook exercises on their commute - and even a few people that have had illustrations tattooed onto them as a symbolic reminder of a message.

All of this puts that year of typing like some kind of infinite monkey at a typewriter into perspective. I'd do it all again. Mostly. It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the guy whose name is printed on this book, and I just hope that reading it helped you, as much as writing it helped me.

Love and good luck.

- Dan

[probablyasocialecologist]

Sourcing food in biotech  factories requires a reorganization of the food system to be highly centralized, arranged into corporate-mediated value chains flowing from industrial processing facilities. To my mind that is exactly the corporate industrial food chain model at the root of so many of our current problems. We don’t want the food system concentrated in the hands of less and bigger corporations. Such a concentrated food system  is unfair,  extractive, easy to monopolize and  very vulnerable to external shocks  - which we are going to see more of in our unfolding century of crisis. Consider which food system is more likely to fall over in the face of climate catastrophe, dictatorship  or cyberattack: - a handful of large electrically dependent food brewers  or a distributed network of millions of small farms and local food relationships  spread across diverse landscapes? Which brings us to Chris’s other central premise in ‘Saying No to a Farm-free Future’ - the one that George does attempt a partial response to. Chris argues that the way to organise food to survive in the face of climate crisis is to withdraw away from the corporate controlled industrial agrifood chain  and attempt instead  to put power back into the distributed local ‘food web’ of small growers, local markets and peasant-type production . This ‘food web’ may sound  ‘backwards’ to modernist global north sensibilities of someone like George but it is what still characterizes much of  the food systems of the global South. It is also better suited to our times of crisis and challenge. Strengthening food webs is not a “one stop” bold  breakthrough. Rather its a distributed social process of ‘muddling through’ together  in diverse and different ways that are at best  agroecological and collective, culturally and ecologically tailored to different geographies. The food web (or ‘agrarian localism’ as Chris terms it) can’t be summed up in one shiny totemic widget. It doesn’t fit  a formulaic  “stop this, go that” campaign binary (“stop eating meet , go plant-based”).   Leaning into the complexities of  local agroecological diverse food webs is maddeningly  unsellable as a soundbite.  George presents agrarian localism as a ‘withdrawal’  but its more in the gesture of “staying with the trouble” - a phrase feminist scholar Donna Harraway so brilliantly coined to dismiss  big, male, over simplistic technocratic solutionists who claim to have the ‘one big answer’ to our global polycrisis. (sound familiar?). Staying with the trouble and leaning into food webs means embracing a messy politics of relationship, nuance, context, complexity and co-learning. It means a single clever journalist sitting in Oxford can’t dream up a cracking saviour formula all by himself in the space of a 2 year book project. . its why (and how) we build movements - to figure this stuff out collectively. So relax - take off the armour - make friends.