Books in the Life Of | George Monbiot

On 29th November George Monbiot visited us here on Broad Street and we talked about his latest book "Out of the Wreckage". With this video we are proud to launch our brand new monthly series Books in the Life Of. We hope you find this thought-provoking and please do let us know your thoughts!
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Buy George Monbiot's book here:
Out of the Wreckage
blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...
How Did We Get Into This Mess
blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...
Feral
blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...
Heat
blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...
Other books mentioned in the interview:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...
The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent
blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...
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[@jimilee4660]

I can see why the algorithm thought I might like Mr Monbiot.

[@tuncalikutukcuogluen-aquas2893]

An inspiring interview. Monbiot is so wise because he can bring many disciplines together; ecology, anthropology, neuroscience, history... Disciplinary boundaries in modern industrial science and education make people stupid and dangerous.

[@rmleighton1]

Chomsky has believed in the Good in people is hard wired in in us. Like learning your parent's language and helping your neighbor in stress.

[@amaliaamada8497]

Great questions, great interview!!

[@zezona2]

Very nice.

[@emmaguild866]

Zool, what a great name. Great stuff George.

[@juliewake4585]

I read The Road a few years ago and I have to say it depressed me thoroughly. I suppose I must need at least a little bit of hope: I can see where George is coming from but I found this very difficult to read.
Maybe I’m just not intelligent enough to see the point of the book and walk away from it with some good thoughts.

[@mox1578]

That's exactly the point mate, the fact you feel so disgusted and disturbed was exactly the books intention, it's scary stuff but unfortunately it could some day be reality.

[@Kiyarose3999]

Bedrock ‘single words’ how about, Compassion(to widen our circle of compassion to include all sentient life) , empathy etc instead!.

[@inekandbo]

There is severe epidemic of relion- phobia in the so called rational world. even with this beautiful compassionate insightful person.

[@fuckfannyfiddlefart]

It's not phobia, it's simply education and progress beyond the need, desire or usefulness of superstition.

[@bundleofperceptions1397]

The human race is soon going extinct, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. The only thing we can control is how well we face the event. Given that we are talking about humans, we can expect it will definitely not be with dignity and respect.

[@reforest4fertility]

Yeah, all we need is..........democracy, believe it or not. By that I mean hygienic infrastructure, education (not inculcation) of women & all such hallmarks achieved thru Keynesian New Deal benefited nations. Then you get low infant mortality, low death rate, but a birthrate so low as to be still outstripped lowering population to the point of needing immigration for economic growth. On other side is economic constriction, military impositions causing high infant mortality & high deathrate, but causes a birthrate that outstrips & has caused overpopulation...that isn't really over, cuz the carrying capacity of Earth is greater than let be, due to scorched earth resource extraction. To end that before it ends us all vote Bernie Sanders in US, Jagmeet Singh in Canada & Corbyn in UK, pull-ease!

[@robertjsmith]

lets have western Buddhism for a bit.

[@inekandbo]

No I did not listen long enough, he is profoundly spiritual.

[@cthoadmin7458]

Why do we need to try to make things better? What’s wrong with making things less bad? Net zero emissions, More affordable housing, less homelessness and destitution, a fairer tax system, better schools, better hospitals, better care for the elderly…. We could do all these things without necessarily changing the system. Utopian thinking always frightens me, something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

[@sodalitia]

3:10 He doesn't really address the antinatalist premise here. The "altruism, kindness, community feeling" is irrelevant here. Antinatalists argue that life itself entails more harm for potential sentient being than not being born at all. The pessimist view is not based on what we think the human nature is, but on the idea that life itself is a harm, because suffering outweighs pleasures in life. Monbiot goes completely off the tangent here. If we go this route however we should question his positivity bias. So what is exactly an evidence that humans are fundamentally "altruistic, kind and community oriented"? Why the human history, and I don't claim in nature its any different, is littered in the struggle and quest for domination and accumulation of wealth by enslavement of other members of own species? Even before capitalism, there was feudalism, before feudalism slavery, before slavery...not sure if there ever was before, since even "innocent" primitive tribes found in Amazon practiced warfare and taking slaves from neighboring tribes not so long ago. Basically Monbiot needs his bias about allegedly altruistic human nature, because his doctrine of community self governance is based on this assertion. This assertion, that humans are intrinsically good is the thin line between what Monbiot promotes and misguided results of communism. No, we don't need another "storytelling", because this kind of mythical thinking led us to ideologies justifying every oppression system ever existed. The empirical evidence says nothing about human nature, because there is no such a thing as "nature of things" in science. What it does say however is what humans do in given circumstances in most predictable manner. The account doesn't look pretty.

[@End-Result]

Some very salient points there.

[@jimilee4660]

What a load... Communal behavior has always been a central feature of our species. As he touched on, the deviants, psychopaths, exert a disproportionate influence within the community because they rationalize that they can destroy the species, of which they are a part, for their own gain.

[@naveed210]

Imo the left’s critique is very accurate of the modern social/political/economic landscape. But I hear what you’re saying. I do sometimes wonder if the left are pursuing a phantom goal. The altruism he speaks of & human nature to share & support others etc is very difficult to ground if the “why” question can’t be answered. Although a spiritual pursuit is more common today with left wing voters than right wing voters, this attempt to connect with the human nature can only be found in the Devine. The left are reluctant to root their beliefs in the transcendent, believing it would breach their individuality. As far as modern day “conservatives” go, they’re just a totally lost cause.

[@devondrickjeffers1258]

I would argue that the framing of human behavior under moral codes of "good vs. bad" is, all at once, too rigid and too general.
Morality is flexible. The line between what is good and bad is always moving based on culture, perception, circumstance, past experience, etc. Add to this the fact that humans are intelligent and very complicated creatures, morality can easily bend to the will of an individual to serve a purpose. For instance, if someone raped my daughter, I could-- temporarily --move morality to the side and kill the offender. While murder is generally considered bad, once the murder is complete, i could still consider myself a good guy for getting justice, and would i be wrong in this instance? Using morals as a guide, it would be hard to say--it would be difficult to make a true moral judgement without more context, and the same could be said of many other an example (I presume that this is why a "court amongst peers" exists).
The point being made here is that humans, regardless of background, are naturally drawn to survival, and we will help others survive as long as it doesn't impede on our own survival. That's the "good" in us. In other cases, we will encroach on other people's lives or drain the world of its natural resources to ensure our own survival. That's the "bad" in us. I put both good and bad in quotes because we should really talk about human behavior in terms of "smart vs. dumb"-- and this is strictly speaking in terms of survival. Smart behavior ensures survival for a person with minimal expense to the world (preserve resources, people-energy, etc); smarter behavior ensures survival for a larger group of people (and naturally, smart behavior requires that your survival not come at the direct expense of other people's survival as this too is defined as a drain of resources). Stupid behavior, on the other hand, either gets people killed or it drains the world of its resources (food, water, trees, people-energy, animals, time, etc.) for minimal to negative impact on the survival of the people (read as having a negative effect on survival, impacting only a few people, or impacting many in an insignificant way). For example, I recall seeing a photo of white settlers standing next to a mountain of dead bison. My understanding is that that particular drain on the world's resources had a direct and negative impact for natives. For white colonists, the dead bison served no direct positive outcomes or assurances for survival-- instead, dead bison and the subsequent dead natives were regarded as part of the equation for a temporarily booming fur market. THAT was stupid in practice-- the costs immensely outweighed the gains in that scenario. THAT can be argued through metrics, and not an amorphous conception of good and bad.
Bottom line: We can look at life like a chess game where we're playing against nature. Moving pieces on the board is the difference between conquering nature (securing and sustaining food, shelter, clothing, water, etc. ) or losing friends and family in the battle against nature. We may also look at being in checkmate as losing your life (and likely many others around you). In this game, we would all try our best to make smart decisions-- not good, morally upright decisions, but smart decisions. At this stage, the masses realize that we could make smarter decisions than the people who control the corporations, resources, and our lives in general. They have more power and control over resources, but we have the smarts and we have numbers. We have to engage in the chess game, as it were, against the corporate elite, and the question we have to ask ourselves is simple: do we want to be good, or do we want to be smart?

[@Kiyarose3999]

OMA, it’s blatantly obvious, we are a Social Animal, FULL STOP!.