Conversation on cohesive force

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Starts from Conversation on reciprocity

NW: Most people are unable to conceive of how their own effort could really contribute in a meaningful way to the problems of survivable planetary conditions for human life.

Al Gore is is involved in raising hundreds of millions of dollars to raise global warming, for example, to the number 2 priority in national governments in the U.S. and around the world.

George Lakoff gave up on the idea that metaphors alone could make for significant change in these areas and that would be an attractor for funding.

DW: A major question is how to actually attain some coherent force among millions of individuals planetwide to implement the multitude and diversity of on-the-ground activity that would contribute (1) toward local instances at sufficient scale for long term sustainability and significant contribution to needed planetary reciprocities (2) toward implementing diverse sources of diffusion of diverse contributions that contribute to planetary reciprocities.

NH: Consider for example, a project on "regenerative systems for dead spots," a project that takes up one or a few such dead spots, applies the appropriate intelligence, imagination, redesign, ..., ..., and activity to regenerate them, and whose success kindles moving on to the next set of dead spots. Where do I get the money?

This raises a second problem: The tendency of all and everybody is to want to fix. If we just fix things, however, the culture of extraction will simply use it as another place to extract value from. One has to go back to setting limits. That is, it is insufficient simply to solve a problem. Imagine me fixing ocean or coastal dead spots with the Japanese or American fleets following me or the EU funding more fishing boats, as it just did. Its way more complex that just solving some problems. This goes back to Conversation on shrinkage and growth‎ and Conversation on shrinkage and growth‎.

DW: So its really a matter of having the cohesive force of setting limits not just of fixing problems. And thats a problem that most people don't understand or think about.

NH: It requires that the breaking of limits on ecosystemic limits becomes universally criminalized. But Dave Hansen a couple of weeks ago told congress that the heads of oil companies knew all about this years ago and should be put in jail, but of course there is no such legislation. Perhaps we need a new kind of criminal system, new because the culture rewards extraction. In the legal domain, money talks, and money has cohesive force.