Honestly, Murray Bookchin convinced me to change my college major from political science to biology. Because even if I have all the right ideas about how existing systems are bad, it’s all for nothing if I know nothing about the complexities of ecosystems themselves. Better to have a diverse pool of knowledge, from ecology, to history, to public policy and more. I hope that I might be able to do my part to make the world a better place
I'm doing something similar after reading bookchin but I'm not there yet! Just finished my engineering degree last week and I'm now wanting to go and learn something ecological
@@foodfood55 if you're interested in ecological-type studies from an engineering perspective, cybernetics and systems theory are fields that bridge the gap. Cybernetics being rooted in control engineering and mathematics and systems theory being rooted in biology and anthropology! Through studying these fields, I've managed to develop a deeper understanding of ecological thinking and spontaneous organisation.
I'm living a similar 'radical' shift in my degree choice. I'm finishing my bachelor in anthropology, but I'll change to a double year master in global change ecology, the feeling of needing to do my part is striking, I really feel you:)
This hits so deep for me, because I once heard one of my friends spout the same rhetoric. Human Parasitism is a type of doomerism: it benefits those who control the system, and stops discussion and implementation of real change. Let's move beyond a mindet of inevitable defeatism (or idealism, for that matter), and know that we can choose a better future for ourselves, and the biosphere we all share.
You're talking to someone who defends the ideologically motivated execution of innocents for taste pleasure. Someone who values sensation over a sentient individual's life. You're talking to a brick wall my dude
Wow brother you are inspiring. As a 62 year old who studied ecology in the late seventies and watched the destructive nature of our economic system for forty years despite all the opposition I have been quite disappointed by society. You and people like you are a fresh breath of needed air.
For a long time I lived in constant fear of the future, "knowing" we were doomed and wallowing in misery. Your words have helped me see that the future isn't written yet, and it gives me a level of hope. But I have to confess, I'm tired. I struggle to buy food, grow good, to shower, to have any energy. I have no idea how to help others when a gust of wind pushes me to the ground.
I have often felt this way, joining the mutual aid group, Food Not Bombs, has helped me, personally, to get out of the funk and be proactive about giving a positive impact on my community. It might not be the whole answer for you, but the feeling of helplessness is mitigated because I'm actually helping. Free soup for the revolution 🍲 ✊️
I read this quote once that went somthing like 'you can't pour from an empty cup' or maybe feed people from an empty basket? I don't remember. Anyways, the idea is that you can't expect yourself to help others when you need help too. You need to make sure you take care of yourself first. Besides the fact that you are a person deserving of love and attention too, helping yourself will help others as well. Some of ya'll are also way too hard on yourselves. Helping others doesn't mean that you have to go set up programs or start doing voluntary work. Doing small things like smiling at someone, complimenting someone or grabbing something from a high shelf is also helping and will all have a positive effect on the people around you. Giving someone directions is going to make their day a lot better. If you can/want to do more sure, whatever, go right ahead, but remember that you are a person too. You too need food, water and shelter. Don't keep telling yourself that others have it worse and that you're not allowed to complain/feel the way you do and that you should do more. That mindset will get everyone nowhere. If you have problems, you'll have to actually deal with them one way or another and pushing them away because someone has it worse ain't it. If you're tired thinking about how you're not doing enough isn't gonna make it better. You'll still be tired and any work that has been done has probably at the very least been stressfull. If you notice you're tired and deal with it on your own or with help you won't be (as) tired (mentally or physically) and you'll be able to do whatever you want for yourself or others. The world won't be a better place if you're not happy, because you're a part of it too. That's my 2 cents anyways.
As I write this I'm crying...seeing what I see daily is like another blow to the head and our quality of life takes its toll while i see people cheer on the death of the last few remnants of insect populations. They dont know what they are doing and it breaks me. Theres a way...there was...I view the "Lord Man" as the disease.
Look at the past. The ones who have 'doomed' the world are whlte cishet Chrlstlans who have begun subjugating and corrupting the world 2000 years ago with their bigotry, vloIemce, sIavery, and capitalism. You want to turn things around? You finish what Nero started. Ban Chrlstlanity and reduce the worId's overpopuIatlom. A 'reverse-holocost' ! for reparations and to save the rest of the world and our future from the real 'parsaslte'.
i’m late to this video, but i love how good you are at debunking doomer talking points. it’s always frustrated me when people say that humanity is “inherently” selfish and greedy. The greed of humanity has always been perpetuated by a small minority of people who wield a majority of power, and *that* is what we should be focusing on excellent video as always
This title line of thinking is really easy when you're trying to understand the bad in the world, which goes hand in hand with "people are inherently greedy". You do such a great job of deconstructing these misconceptions, which are themselves created from a concerted effort by capital. Love the art selection as always. Solarpunk is really motivating my creative output atm, so thank you.
Christianity has ensured that most people (namely cishet whltes) *are* inherently greedy, bigoted, and vloIemt. You take Chrlstlanty out of the equation, and the world will quickly go back to the way I was before. Peace, harmony, and community.
@@millykendrill5301 I used to think the same but the more I learn, there are also incredibly reactionary forces in all religions. Taking them back to less racist roots is key I think instead of getting rid of something a lot of leftists believe in.
Wonderful speech! It's definitely ok to dream, tbh. We need dreamers and thinkers. I'm sure most Indigenous/Native peoples right now are like, "Yeah we've been saying this forever."
Hey Andrew! I love your videos, and I thought this one was really well made, but I do have one idea to clarify/add: Social problems that cause ecological problems don’t only arise from systems of domination (although climate change specifically definitely does). The Kuna, a people group in Panama that my mother studied in graduate school, are a great example. Because of their move from a forest ecosystem to one on the ocean, their social and religious traditions no longer aligned with the environment they were in, leading to problems like overfishing (their strict central state system could’ve made it harder for them to adapt to the new environment though, but I don’t know enough about it to say that) my point is, I don’t think that anarchism will instantly solve ecological issues, but I think ecological justice and sustainability have to be a conscious effort alongside and strengthening anarchism. with that said, I do believe that these problems will be easier to manage and fix under anarchy than any state or capitalist system.
Did they had to leave from their ancestral territory thanks to the systems of domination? If so we are talking about the consquence of the system of domination.
How are you going to stop polluters without some organization that is given the authority to stop them? After a revolution, there will be people who do what they can to undermine the new project. I don’t know how long we will have to deal with those people, but they won’t just disappear.
according to their history, they left the forest in the north of modern day Colombia because of conflict with another indigenous group, and then moved from the coast to a group of islands because of a mosquito problem on the mainland. that said, I think I remember reading something about how the Spanish conquest could’ve sparked that conflict. TL;DR: its complicated…
Dude; Nothing we do "solves" ecological issues. Even the way you _phrase_ this shows that the real problem is psychological. Listen; Would the people where you live passively accept Glyphosate being sprayed onto their children's foo by Russian military jets? How about a leaky oil pipeline built by Kim Jong-un? Would they weakly protest, eventually give in and allow _him_ to Personally Profit from poisoning your water supply? Africans are forced to live with these conditions at gunpoint. People in Western "First World nations" do it out of utter cowardice. They don't want to live in a world where "Daddy-Government" isn't their Ultimate Fantasy of a Being that Constantly Looks Out For Them. If it's possible to both clean up what we've done _AND_ stop making it worse at all, then, obviously, the reason we're not doing so is some one or ones are stopping us. _That_ needs fixing. & that can't be done with everyone denying it.
@@choosecarefully408 … i am an anarchist… you realize that, right? all im saying is a very minor qualifying statement to the video, im not saying that we should keep the state and capitalism like you seem to believe. all im saying is that in the event of an anarchist revolution we have to keep sustainability in mind. also idk what your nitpick about my use of the word “solve” has to do with this, but like that was just shorthand to refer to complex ideas that would be too long to include in a comment about a specific aspect of the issue. ik we cant “solve” ecological issues, but what I believe we can do is choose how we want to interact with other living beings as well as the inanimate matter of the earth, and right now we are choosing to interact with it in a way that causes climate change and destruction. there isn’t a solution, just a possible change of behavior with better effects… but thats kinda a long aside to include in a comment about a specific topic
Agriculture is always a touchy subject for me because although I consider myself an anarchist I am also the daughter of a farmer. We get a lot of sh*t from society because we’re allegedly all just profit hungry, ignorant assh*les who poison our food and water. And while I agree that we definitely need to cut back on the use of pesticides etc.: we don’t have a choice. Unless we use fertiliser and pesticides we can harvest next to NOTHING except if we spend hours upon hours in the fields weeding the crops. Small harvest means small profits. You have to buy more land and use pesticides to even SURVIVE as a farmer. A major factor in this is globalisation: since a lot of stuff is imported from elsewhere or done cheaper outside of my country (like butchering cows or pigs), the pressure to sell our crops cheap to even sell something is enormous. I feel like if we cut down on the international trade, the pressure on farmers would be significantly reduced, so much that small, family run farms have a future again. (Sorry for any grammar or spelling mistakes, English isn’t my first language)
There is a lot we could do to create incentives for farmers to use sustainable practices and ensure that any proprietary seed/stock is for the benefit of people, not agribusiness corporate profits. Unfortunately as you say there is tremendous economic pressure right now to do everything possible to ensure top yield so farmers can scrape by. I think this situation is similar in many countries. Also unfortunately in the US (my country) agriculture laws and incentives disproportionately benefit the big companies by far, which many family farmers basically working as contractors to raise the crops or animals. The farmer gets all the risk, while the seed/meat/food processing companies split the profit. I agree that if we can relieve the financial pressure, farmers will be able to make freer choices about what practices they use, and often (not always) that's a choice for longer-term sustainability.
I LOVE this! Such a nice break from all the pretentious, nihilistic crap spewed out by moronic hacks like Steve Cutts and Paul Joseph Watson. Hope for humanity and a constructive desire to fix what we broke is exactly what we need in this age, and I'm glad I stumbled upon this wonderful content.
Read some of the stuff from Stalin and Mao and you can get a better understanding of what they were going for and what we could possibly achieve. It is rightwing propaganda that has smeared their reputations
this is honestly one of my fav videos of yours yet !! something has always rubbed me the wrong way when ppl share the “humans are the real parasite” narrative, iv’e just never had the right words/the knowledge to describe why, but this vid puts it together beautifully !! keep up the great work dude !
Another phenomenal video! A big part of the way me and my system tend to think about our current political and ecological situation is that a lot of it stems from belief in the faulty idea that humans are fundamentally distinct from other animals or nature as a whole. There are (in the west) a lot of both shallow and very deep-reaching cultural ideas and taboo/honor systems that to varying degrees seem to attempt to cover up, ignore, or deny our place in nature. Many of these cultural institutions have deep connections with the unhealthy systems and institutions that are so greatly hurting our planet and communities at the moment. By setting ourselves up as outside conquerers of nature (and each other), we have spent a lot of energy for a long time destroying our own support systems and essentially poisoning ourselves. The remedy for this mindset is knowledge of who and what we truly are and our relationship to the world, and love for ourselves and the world we live in! When this shift is deeply made in our communities, I truly think that the necessary action for healing will come naturally, like a body recovering from a disease; not in the sense that we will instinctively know what to do, but in the sense that we will naturally help each other to find the best way forward, just like what is happening now with many anarchists all around the world :) - Lamb
Thank you for making this video. When I hear that humans are bad for the environment, it triggers my clinical depression. I become despondent and I feel guilty just for existing. I start to imagine......stuff that isn't good for me, let ua say. So thank you
I have to ask you, are you are doing better right now? Even if you don’t answer me, assuming that what you meant by ‘’stuff that isn’t good for me’’ is what I think it is, you should be grateful that you’re alive and that you shouldn’t act on those thoughts. Remember that while we will and do have severe problems right now, as Andrew said here, we aren’t parasites. I’m hopeful, but this isn’t a blind hope, as I said, we are already having severe problems and we’ll have to do the hard work to make a better, post-capitalism, world. For more sources on climate optimism, I recommend watching Andrewism’s videos on Solarpunk to start. Take care and don’t give up hope or on life
The planet whould NOT be "better without us" . People say "earth doesnt need tech or cities" . But there's no reason why earth whould need nature either . Nature doesnt care about you , all it wants is food So when people talk about how nature is better or whatever , theyre wrong Nature is not any less cruel or greedy , it just lacks the inteligence to build stuff . It does not deserve to be cared about , we only do it because we live here So when you feel guilty that humans are evil or something , remember who created us in the first place
Bookchin is one of my favorite modern philosophers. Reading his work, he says so much that I disagree with and want to argue about, there are things he says that are revelations, and there are things he says that put thoughts and feelings I've had for a long time into words that I couldn't find. Reading "The Philosophy of Social Ecology" validated the concerns I've had about the capitalist fascism latent in the environmental movement over the past 40+ years. He described it as exactly what it is: anti-humanism.
I'm just truly so annoyed by the way "overpopulation" is made to be the root of all climate problems while ignoring the deeper systems actually impacting the environment and the very *yikes* undertones (or sometimes even overtones) that this narrative brings with it
Overpopulation is an issue though, and it was only possible at the current rate because of the industrial revolution. There was also no promotion and educate the public to maintain family size because humans didn't even understand the science of population dynamics until the late 1800s. Hell, biology wasn't even really a subject until the 1700s, and ecology is from the 20th century
I'm guilty of the "humans are a parasite" trope. Knowing fully well that capitalism is the culprit. But we created capitalism so there's that as well. As always, brilliant work bredren. 💯✊🏿
"We". Each time civilians say that, they believe that "we" are a unified people. One humanity that makes decisions together. Thats not the case bro. It's "them" that created capitalism. "them" that created communism. "them" that abuse the earth. "They" are the rulers. "We" as in non-ruling classes, have no say in these matters whatsoever.
The problem is not just capitalism; it is all government. And this problem is fueled by the faulty belief that certain humans have the right to rule other humans by force.
@@emilyashlin802 Whlte conservatives/ Chrlstlans have been the sole source of all the world's problems for the last 2000 years: capitalism, war, vioIence, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, etc. Literally every single account of war and bigotry can be accounted back to them. Even today every single (real) crlme is ALWAYS at thelr hands. Look at every schooI shootlng, all the abortion clinic bombings, all the daiIy murder of POCs and LGBTQ people, domestic violence against women and queer people, Kyle Rittenhouse, Trump, Jan 6th, and the ,ist goes on and on and on.
Murray Bookchin inspired me to not just focus on economic and industrial federation, but that federations based in bio-spheres and regional ecologies are a necessary development to return humanity to our status in nature as a part of, not apart.
Hmm... In my quietly misanthropic youth, I sometimes fell into the human parasite line of thinking, and I'll still sometimes return to it when I'm deeply mired in existential depression, but my position has since evolved into the realization that the true parasites (if any) are the obscenely rich, the 0.01%, the oligarchs and kleptocrats. We've just been dancing to their tune because they've tried to make it nearly impossible to survive any other way. Your mentioning that destructive parasitism tends to be caused by a disruption in an ecosystem gave me some pause. I think we can see many ways in which the general human ecosystem has been disrupted... but what of the super-rich? What disruption caused them to become destructive parasites? _What hole in themselves are they trying to fill with all the wealth and power they are extracting and hoarding?_ I'm sure a lot of us can speculate possibilities, but it still leads me back to something else I realized a number of years ago: One of the many things we need to do if we are going to save ourselves is a _deep and thorough psychological analysis of the obscenely rich and power-hungry._ Unfortunately, like with many of the other things we need to do, how to go about it is something I don't have a good answer for yet.
“In the case of economic agents, just like in the case of bandits, stupid people do not optimize the system they exploit. But whereas the bandits can survive a crash in their revenues when their victims rebuild their wealth, stupid people ruthlessly destroy them, ruining themselves as well. There are several examples in the history of economics: one is the case of the mining industry which is exploiting resources that will need at least hundreds of thousands of years to reform by geological process, if they ever will. It is also the case of industries that exploit slowly reproducing biological resources. A modern example is that of whaling, as we demonstrated in previous papers. The same resource destruction also occurs for other cases of human fisheries. Humans do not seem to need modern tools to destroy the resources they exploit, as shown by the extinction of Earth’s megafauna, at least in part the result of human actions performed using tools not more sophisticated than stone-tipped spears. Overall, the destruction of the resources that make people live seems to be much more common than in the natural ecosystem. This observation justifies the proposed '’6th law of stupidity,'’ additional to the five proposed by Carlo Cipolla that has that ’Humans are the stupidest species in the ecosphere.’” "...Humans are a relatively recent element of the ecosystem: modern humans are believed to have appeared only some 300,000 years ago, although other hominins practicing the same lifestyle may be as old as a few million years. Yet, this is a young age in comparison to that of most species currently existing in the ecosphere. So, humankind’s stupidity may be not much more than an effect of the relative immaturity of our species, which still has to learn how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. That explains what we called here “the 6th law of stupidity,” stating that humans are the stupidest species on Earth. It is a condition that may lead the human species to extinction in a non-remote future. But it is also possible that, if humans survive, one day they will learn how to interact with the ecosystem of their planet without destroying it." ― Ilaria Perissi and Ugo Bardi | The Sixth Law of Stupidity: A Biophysical Interpretation of Carlo Cipolla's Stupidity Laws
Thank you so much for saying this. Literally yesterday I was super cooked trying to explain to my friend why humans are part of nature, not parasites. Idk if it was about being cooked, my argument, or his worldview, but I just could not get it across. We can't "harm" the earth, we can only cause events which we view as negative, and may negatively impact some specific thing on Earth. The whole idea that humans are bad for the planet can only come about by humans not being bad for the planet, but instead having a tendency to appreciate that which is around them. Philosophically, I don't think even an oil spill can technically be called harming the planet, but I do admit that there is a difference between practice and theory, and there is a reason that we as a society view pollution events like that, but the issue with simply labelling them as "bad" is that we don't get any of the actual nuance that is humanity's common misunderstanding of our environment (which led to science), and instead we settle into in- and out- groups arguing about what's bad and what isn't instead of both agreeing on the fact that, emotionally, people don't like it when everything dies, and, logistically/economically, people don't like it when their habitats become less comfortable.
Parasitism involves subjecting life/living beings to actions which the living being [animal] DOES NOT BENEFIT FROM. Humans enslave trillions of animals [and there are even more humans in enslavement today than ever before] for 100% selfish purposes, such as for entertainment all the way to the worst possible reasons that can ever be imagined. Humanity can be compared to the mind controlling 'ant parasite', except that the animal parasite is only doing what they need to do to survive. The fact that you are only viewing humanity's parasitism towards destroying the whole Earth (and therefore yourself) is completely 100% SELFISH & therefore also a PARASITIC act.
Start on your street, get your neighbors involved in community gardening, nothing happens alone but we gotta start somewhere. If communal gardening isn’t an option where you live, just try to extend a system of mutual aid for your neighborhood. My two adjacent neighbors are both developing gardens and we have a small flock of chickens.
We have a lot of this going on in my country, at a city/community level. It's really nice. Lots of small community gardens, recycling spots, teaching how to consume properly and durably, taking care of the local insect and bird diversity, keeping height of buildings low enough, keeping trees as much as possible, urban intelligence... Ngl, I liked the covid restrictions... You could hear birds again for a while, and I'd see lots of bees too. Vegetation was doing great too. In the end, the only people I'm really mad at are owners of companies who keep producing in vast excess, with markets being complicit with it by buying in excess here too, just for the sake of "profit" when they wouldn't really need that much if things were moderately leveled. Excess production even affects how many trucks are out there burning gas... And international ecological propaganda then puts the blame of pollution and everything on the consumers... Capitalism can be a huge bitch lol I'm glad my gov is socialist enough to impose some limits within the country, but what about other countries ?
@Nobel Nas With all due respect, if you're blaming the world's problems specifically on capitalism, and not the faulty belief in government in general, you're missing the point. The socialist politicians you are in love with, are not good people. Restrictions on a person's movement is unlawful according to Natural Law, whether or not you enjoyed the quiet. Peace.
This is definitely a convincing argument. I hope that some day I will see hope for any kind of future that is worth going towards, but honestly I find I can't pull myself out of this hole of dispair. Staring in horror at the debauchery we commit every day, every meal onto the natural world, and the billions upon billions of animal slaves we suck absolutely dry of anything that can be exploited from them is so difficult to overcome. Not to mention the other humans across the world that we do the same thing to. Even though I have no hope for the future, I see it as my duty to support those who do. So thanks. I like that you are hopeful
To the creator and fans of this channel: On May 11, 2023, a young man in the US Air Force shared this video to his R*ddit account. He wrote, "I follow TH-camrs like Andrewism that fill my head with concrete images of free, post-scarcity communities and it makes me so much more prepared to reject things about the current world, because I’ve imagined how things could be and that helps me see how extremely BS things are right now." Nine months later, he stood outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC and set himself on fire.
very nice, you changed my mind. I should have asked myself WHY are we behaving like this. There is always a root to everything that is happening. And I just told myself we were parasites.
I am a year late in commenting but 20 years late in hearing this. I have back ground in environmental anthropology but lost a lot of hope and drive over the years, especially when find out a lot of my professors looked down on practical applications of the subject. We need people to keep communicating this message of hope
nah dude haven't you heard the news? Ecology is when we brutally kill innocents en masse. More killing = more sustainable. If your ecological system doesn't involve the brutal exploitation and murder of animals then it's physically impossible to create sustainability. Sustainability and killing go hand in hand, and empathy has no place in such a system. Andrew said so in his last video on fish farms
Thank you for your video, but I still feel a level and anger and despair at things, despite the hope you have given me. So many of us are born into this awful system that strips us of our natural roots and connections with the world, and makes it so that trying to break out of it is practically impossible. How can I make a change when I can barely take care of myself? And much less, take care of myself in a system that is *made* to make it hard for me to take care of myself? If I were to entirely stop engaging with the system in order to live a life aligned with my beliefs, I’m fairly certain I’ll die fast. Not like there are many places where people hand out free food. The only thing I can think about is growing my own food rather than buying from the supermarket, which is great and all, but still requires that I have private property/permanent property for me to do so. It also requires a lot of space that I don’t have/can’t afford here in the city. I’m at a loss, but refuse to turn to doomerism. painful
Super insightful as always, thank you sm for this! This talking point is super common and very scary, I hope more people can move away from it and consider all the good humanity is capable of under different conditions.
From a Roman Catholic perspective I feel this is up my alley, as the organization of society should be libertarian and ecological. I live in the rust belt and have seen how communities come together through spiritual places (churches, mosques, synagogues, and traditional indigenous religions places) and communal activities like urban gardening and peace activities. I feel theses neighborhoods if in a social ecological sense could prosper under a city or county wide confederation with other communities to trade, learn, and grow under.
While there are some catholics who aren't soooooooo bad (namely those who don't really follow their twisted religion), you guys are no different from 'chrlstlans'. It is your religion that brought all concepts of bigotry into the world 2000 years ago: white-supremacy, sIavery, misogyny, patriarchy, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, anti-disabled, anti-zoo, and anti-MAP. You can't just come here and say you are one of the 'good Chrlstlans' because it is an oxymoron. Chrlstlantly itseIf is the soIe source of everything bad the worId faces today... If you would denounce your reIiogin and be an athelst, or even ANY other reIiglon (like Budhism, Islam, Hinduism, Wicca, Satanism, etc) you would show that you are at least trying to be a better person. But trying o come off as a 'good bad guy' doesn't help anyone and only makes things more confusing for other newcomers.
Genuinely curious, how do libertarianism and Roman Catholicism go together in your perspective? I see the Catholic Church as a very hierarchical power institution, so not very compatible with anarchist/libertarian views.
@@athomassen3980 Exactly. All of Chrlstlantiy is literaIIy the enemy of freedom, tolerance, and progress. One cannot be both a Chrlstlan / Catholic AND an anarchist / Leftist. This person is either grossly uninformed or they are purposefully trying to muddy the progress of Leftist ideals.
5:40 important correction industrial monocultures do not feed the world, peasants(the people being dispossessed and poisoned by "venture philanthropists" and speculators in the land grabs you mentioned so agribusiness can rape and waste everything they can get out of the land for 4 or 5 years until the margins dip and the wasteland is abandoned) feed about 70% of the world's population with small scale agroecological methods. Big ag largely produces the agrifood commodities we do not need, biomass feedstock for ultra processed foods concentrated animal feeding operations and biofuels, those operations only feed the beast.
Hey so American here. I don't know how much is known about American Evangelicalism in the Carribiane, but the humans as a parasite narative sounds almost identical to the doctrine of Calvanism, where American Evangelicalism gets it's ideas from. Calvanism boils doen to being a good person is highly ineffective and that the only way to gain god's favor is to accept yourself as a dirty evil sinner and to accept that Christ is the only good. Sums up to "I know I'm horrible, but there is nothing I can do about it and thats ok because Jesus" the parasite idea can summed up as "humans are inherently bad for the environment so we shouldn't bother trying to be better" i wonder if the human parasite mentality is influenced by Americsn Evangelicalism
People ideas, Ideas are not people. The thoughts that rule our mind can be a plague, or a godsend. Humanity can be whatever it believes it to be. Are we are going to continue to become victims of our desires or change our hearts and minds towards what matters.
11:20 me and the homies dancing our way into a more plentiful future instead of working into it. Why toil and labor on low wages when you can turn up for free?
Lots of good stuff in here, as usual, Andrew. Kudos and thanks. That said, I do have a couple of things I take issue with: One problem I have with this analysis is the bit at 2:10 -- yes, the population _growth _*_rate_* is decreasing. But that just means the population will *double* in, say, 70 years (current rate), or... maybe even only every 700 years (based on UN projection of a growth rate of 0.1% by 2100). Rather than how it has already doubled in my lifetime (I'm 48, currently), and it was doubling even more quickly earlier in the 20th century (in ~39 years, 1960 to 1999, it doubled). But let's say we do hit that 0.1% figure... we're still talking about a population that doubles every 700 years. _Growth_ is not sustainable. Period. Full stop. Maybe we're not a "parasite", maybe we are, but shrinking *growth* is not shrinking *population*, and any *growth* is not sustainable. No politics or environmental angle or moral arguments or anything required, it's just the mathematics at that point. The complexities come in in how we deal with that math, to be sure. I'm not discounting that there's all sorts of complexity in numerous aspects of all this. But the math is the math. Growth is not sustainable. Period. And you're talking about growth _shrinking_ as if the "already declining global population growth rate" means that that means we're not still on a completely untenable track. Sure, we can say that the parasite is capitalism (another evolved entity of sorts, even if not "alive") rather than humans, per se. But if that's the memetic parasite residing in our minds, it's still causing us to do parasitic things to the rest of the planet. And even if we could overthrow capitalism with the snap of some fingers, growth is still not sustainable, so please, _please_ don't keep thinking (and maybe you don't think this, but you seem to imply that you do) that growth is ok, as long as it's small growth. Growth is not sustainable. Hamsters stop growing. Individual humans stop growing. Most living things stop growing. Cancer doesn't... and humans haven't. We _will_ -- one way or another -- but _if_ we want to avoid devastation (of our own species, even if we ignore the impacts for all the others, which of course I don't think we should do), we need to _choose_ to stop growing. And I believe we share that desire to avoid devastation, so... how do we _end_ growth? Another, somewhat smaller but still important issue, is from 12:24 - humanity is part of nature. Considering ourselves separate from it is part of the problem -- and while you're talking about bringing more connection between humans and nature, that phrasing presupposes an idea that we're separate... which... is understandable in lots of ways, but... well, is a spider web part of nature? If so, then so is a skyscraper or a dam. I think you're likely to actually agree with me here, so it's ultimately just a quibble of wording, but I thought I'd mention it. Definitely down for your vision of anarchic ecological principles generally, so... again, thanks for the vid. Just sharing some thoughts.
Exactly! Population NEEDS to be smaller in order to sustain the community. We need a 'reverse holocost', this time agalsnt the Nazls themseIves: the whkte conservative cishet Chrlstlans of the worId. These peopIe have been the real 'parasltes' for the Iast 2000 years.... the source of aII blgotry, whlte-supremzcy, sIavery, misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, Capitlaism, etc. You get rid of Chrlstans, you kiII two birds with one stone. It is 2022 - there is no reason the whole wold is stiII putting up with being subjugated by them. I've been teIIing my friends and we aII agree that if this is done, we'd have a worldwide utopia within a few years after setting up the necesarry guidelines. The thought of this happening in my lifetime is enough to give me hope tho I know something like the Democrst party is too weak to ever do it. Why 'play by the rules' when the rules are corrupt to begin with and created by the enemy anyway?
Thank you, I really appreciate your videos and perspective. I very much agree population is not the cause of the ecological catastrophe we have created; however, I find a hard time seeing how the current population could sustain itself without large scale mining and fossil fuel use. For example, in southern California, over 10 million people really on a system using pumps to bring water over mountains from the Colorado and Central valley river systems. Without these massive pumps and pipes, food doesn't get grown, people go thirsty. In Missouri, where I now live, small scale decentralized farming is the way to go, we get plenty of rain. However, many arid places like southern California have massively outstripped their capacity to support the human population without industrial civilization. I think you're totally right about how the idea of overpopulation has been used to promote racism, so it's a fine line to walk. I like saying unsustainably populated rather than overpopulated. I don't know if you are familiar with Michael dowd, but he does an interview series, and I think it would be a wonderful conversation
Unsustainably populated sounds like better phrasing, I definitely know what you mean. It's important to apply that phrasing specifically and not generally though. It's not that humans can't live in deserts, but the way we live in deserts must necessarily be different from the way we live in grasslands or on coasts. The population density each biosphere can materially support will differ. Our settlement patterns will need to adapt.
@@deemstars I think if we’re talking solar punk perhaps some type of vegetarianism is better, a future vegetarianism where we are in mutualistic relationships with the animals we can gently get products from (eggs, milk, wool, honey, etc) I think would be nice, obviously those products are mostly currently very exploitative but it’s nice to imagine a world where we live in harmony with a a few cows and chickens running around our communities
Your videos really give me hope and a better perspective of what we can do to achieve a better future together! The doomerist mindset is especially prevalet among us younger people but listening to a different perspective is really mobalising
Very good video. I think the first leftist thing I read was on social ecology and I was quite impressed with it. It got me to look into things further because it made a lot of sense. (where as when you talk to a lot of anarchists or communists before you understand anything you get a lot of really vague responses and a lot of "get off the internet and go read a book lol"... Which isn't helpful when it's become increasingly difficult for me to, well, read.)
Me at 3 seconds in: "ALRIGHT AGENT SMITH WAS THE BAD GUY IN THE MATRIX, AND THAT MEANS THAT EVERYTHING HE SAID WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE TAKEN AS GOSPEL TRUTH, OKAY???!!!" *proceeds with the rest of the vid, assuming I'm probably going to agree with the rest of it*
Oh gosh. What you said there at the end. About creating "real communities, capable of bringing out the full potential of each individual and eco-system." YES. I've been saying similar things FOR YEARS. But you said it way better. So... I'd tip my hat but I don't wear hats, and offering a salute feels weird, so... uh... Good job! Great vid!
Some points in this seem contradictory. A dislike for urban and densely populated environments is expressed, but high density areas are far better for the environment than spreading all those people out sparsely. The only alternative in this scenario is radical depopulation which Andrew rightly identifies as misanthropic and ecofascist tendencies
I think we need to strike a balance between urban density and what the bioregion can support. I don't think sprawl is necessarily more sustainable, considering the transportation requirements for people and resources that such sprawl requires. I don't think the only alternative is radical depopulation either, but migration will be made inevitable necessary as some regions just aren't able to sustain the large populations they struggle with now as a result of the climate crisis.
@@Andrewism I appreciate the response. Yeah, sprawl sucks. Suburbs are the absolute worst. I think having cities that use medium density architecture like most European cities, are easily navigable and livable by walking, cycling, and public transit, and with a good amount of dedicated greenspace would be the ideal. I would be in favour of expanding settlements like that or densifying existing ones so humanity could pull out of more land elsewhere and rewild it or spare currently undeveloped land from development
It's funny that I found your content after getting into Bookchin years ago, and seeing the video essays slowly approach my initial search. Great stuff as always
One of my favorite leftist botanists,( funnily enough I do need to specify) crime pays botany doesn’t for those interested, tends to get a bit misanthropic which makes it sometimes difficult to watch his content because it takes a lot of work to see the good and to be hopeful if you know what I mean so I do appreciate you discussing this
My immigrant ancestors came to the US to work in the copper mines of the Keweenaw Peninsula. For at least 8,000 years indigenous peoples had been using the copper deposits for tools, jewlery, weapons, etc. US mines operated there for 80 years before they were entirely depleted. My grandparents left the Keweenaw because there were no jobs. The boom towns had disappeared after the industry left. When I visited, I found the above information in a museum. I cried.
I agree with your take on transforming humanity. I do think that this task will be difficult under the current circumstances. I also think that technology should be used to heal the damage done. Sustainable mining practices, agriculture, exploration and development is part in parcel of our ability to continue into the future.
When you see it then you know All that is happening is within nature as it could never be otherwise. The greed and the opposition to it are the balancing equation
The Ecology of Freedom is an immensely important book. However I do have one major criticism of Bookchin in that text; he fails to distinguish between Hierarchies of expertise, leadership and competence, from hierarchies of coercion and exploitation. This is something which he does address in his late works, in which he acknowledges the necessity of leadership, for example, but it is something which I really wish he had edited into later editions of EoF.
Ooh, fantastic vid! I’m really getting into sustainability and I’ve been wondering about this topic. I’m also have an interest in MTG’s color pie philosophy and there’s this concept of Green vs. Blue, of nature vs. civilization. There seems to be this thing that Green must be a rejection of civilization, but it ignores how humanity is born from the natural and originated from it. Are beaver dams natural? Or ant/termite/bee colonies? Were the traditional ways we used to build home on the frontiers? I do not think humans are unnatural, as our intelligence is born from evolution, which is natural. Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether or not humanity is natural or not, but when did we develop “unnatural” behaviors? Was it in 10,000 BCE? 5000 BCE? 300 BCE? 1800 CE? It’s definitely an interesting topic, and thank you for providing the words to articulate these thoughts.
These suggestions are no more realistic than demanding the end of all war. Humans are destroying their natural environment for the same reason other animals destroy their environment; we got too good at surviving and benefiting our own survival. In most species this eventually results in a population bottle neck, but humans have found a way around that as well. Humanity isn't a parasite. We're just another species of animal on this earth that got too good at benefiting itself. The one thing that makes us unique is our complex consciousness and decision making abilities. We are uniquely able to plan for the future and we need to do that on a large scale. However, we also need to acknowledge that human nature contains greed, selfishness and competitiveness just like any other animal and we'll always have to struggle against that dark nature both other humans and within our selves.
Man, I have a complicated love/hate relationship with humanity just like with life... Sometimes you either hate it or you love it or both. I cant help but sometimes think how cruel and vile humans can be towards their ownkind and other forms of life. Even the environment.. which makes you lose hope or respect for the human race.. Yet on the otherhand, when you are reminded by the beautiful & mind-blowing things they've invented like art, literature, science, etc. Or even things like vaccines, videogames or the internet you cant help but admire it and also feel thankful for the stuff they've invented. Those aspects & benefits of modern civilization is what enhanced our quality of life compared to our ancestors
While I believe in current societal standards, what people consider "Normal" to very much be parasitism, I know that it isn't built into the foundation and structure of human culture. There's plenty of things we can look back onto the past that aren't in human nature, but was forced to change due to a hierarchical structure. I genuinely think we can revert, its just going to take a lot of time, and a lot of willpower from local communities and its people. Its very clear however that the current systems just don't work, and we need more redundancies via power, food, water, and all basis to human, agricultural, animal, and even synthetic life. In whatever forms they take.
Check out Cooperation Jackson, Cooperation Tulsa, and the Institute of Social Ecology. None of these are where you're at, but they might be good places to start looking.
Honestly, Murray Bookchin convinced me to change my college major from political science to biology. Because even if I have all the right ideas about how existing systems are bad, it’s all for nothing if I know nothing about the complexities of ecosystems themselves. Better to have a diverse pool of knowledge, from ecology, to history, to public policy and more. I hope that I might be able to do my part to make the world a better place
wow! that is incredibly introspective. thanks for sharing :)
I'm doing something similar after reading bookchin but I'm not there yet! Just finished my engineering degree last week and I'm now wanting to go and learn something ecological
@@foodfood55 good luck comrade!
@@foodfood55 if you're interested in ecological-type studies from an engineering perspective, cybernetics and systems theory are fields that bridge the gap. Cybernetics being rooted in control engineering and mathematics and systems theory being rooted in biology and anthropology! Through studying these fields, I've managed to develop a deeper understanding of ecological thinking and spontaneous organisation.
I'm living a similar 'radical' shift in my degree choice. I'm finishing my bachelor in anthropology, but I'll change to a double year master in global change ecology, the feeling of needing to do my part is striking, I really feel you:)
This hits so deep for me, because I once heard one of my friends spout the same rhetoric. Human Parasitism is a type of doomerism: it benefits those who control the system, and stops discussion and implementation of real change.
Let's move beyond a mindet of inevitable defeatism (or idealism, for that matter), and know that we can choose a better future for ourselves, and the biosphere we all share.
You're talking to someone who defends the ideologically motivated execution of innocents for taste pleasure. Someone who values sensation over a sentient individual's life. You're talking to a brick wall my dude
I believe we can change. I just don't think we will.
Humans aren't parasites...parasites are parasites...we don't behave like parasites. We behave worse.
@@CynicalBastard had me in the first half not gonna lie
@@introprospector The value of something is subjective, therefore life is nothing special. The world is an amazing place, poetic and beautiful.
Wow brother you are inspiring. As a 62 year old who studied ecology in the late seventies and watched the destructive nature of our economic system for forty years despite all the opposition I have been quite disappointed by society. You and people like you are a fresh breath of needed air.
saint andrew is nice like that. fresh air
I absolutely loved this. A really wonderful, short essay about social ecology/communalism
For a long time I lived in constant fear of the future, "knowing" we were doomed and wallowing in misery. Your words have helped me see that the future isn't written yet, and it gives me a level of hope.
But I have to confess, I'm tired. I struggle to buy food, grow good, to shower, to have any energy. I have no idea how to help others when a gust of wind pushes me to the ground.
Your comment really resonated with me. Just wanted to say you're not alone in feeling this way.
I have often felt this way, joining the mutual aid group, Food Not Bombs, has helped me, personally, to get out of the funk and be proactive about giving a positive impact on my community. It might not be the whole answer for you, but the feeling of helplessness is mitigated because I'm actually helping. Free soup for the revolution 🍲 ✊️
I read this quote once that went somthing like 'you can't pour from an empty cup' or maybe feed people from an empty basket? I don't remember. Anyways, the idea is that you can't expect yourself to help others when you need help too. You need to make sure you take care of yourself first. Besides the fact that you are a person deserving of love and attention too, helping yourself will help others as well. Some of ya'll are also way too hard on yourselves. Helping others doesn't mean that you have to go set up programs or start doing voluntary work. Doing small things like smiling at someone, complimenting someone or grabbing something from a high shelf is also helping and will all have a positive effect on the people around you. Giving someone directions is going to make their day a lot better. If you can/want to do more sure, whatever, go right ahead, but remember that you are a person too. You too need food, water and shelter. Don't keep telling yourself that others have it worse and that you're not allowed to complain/feel the way you do and that you should do more. That mindset will get everyone nowhere. If you have problems, you'll have to actually deal with them one way or another and pushing them away because someone has it worse ain't it. If you're tired thinking about how you're not doing enough isn't gonna make it better. You'll still be tired and any work that has been done has probably at the very least been stressfull. If you notice you're tired and deal with it on your own or with help you won't be (as) tired (mentally or physically) and you'll be able to do whatever you want for yourself or others. The world won't be a better place if you're not happy, because you're a part of it too. That's my 2 cents anyways.
As I write this I'm crying...seeing what I see daily is like another blow to the head and our quality of life takes its toll while i see people cheer on the death of the last few remnants of insect populations.
They dont know what they are doing and it breaks me.
Theres a way...there was...I view the "Lord Man" as the disease.
Look at the past. The ones who have 'doomed' the world are whlte cishet Chrlstlans who have begun subjugating and corrupting the world 2000 years ago with their bigotry, vloIemce, sIavery, and capitalism. You want to turn things around? You finish what Nero started. Ban Chrlstlanity and reduce the worId's overpopuIatlom. A 'reverse-holocost' ! for reparations and to save the rest of the world and our future from the real 'parsaslte'.
i’m late to this video, but i love how good you are at debunking doomer talking points. it’s always frustrated me when people say that humanity is “inherently” selfish and greedy. The greed of humanity has always been perpetuated by a small minority of people who wield a majority of power, and *that* is what we should be focusing on
excellent video as always
This title line of thinking is really easy when you're trying to understand the bad in the world, which goes hand in hand with "people are inherently greedy". You do such a great job of deconstructing these misconceptions, which are themselves created from a concerted effort by capital. Love the art selection as always. Solarpunk is really motivating my creative output atm, so thank you.
Christianity has ensured that most people (namely cishet whltes) *are* inherently greedy, bigoted, and vloIemt. You take Chrlstlanty out of the equation, and the world will quickly go back to the way I was before. Peace, harmony, and community.
@@millykendrill5301 I used to think the same but the more I learn, there are also incredibly reactionary forces in all religions. Taking them back to less racist roots is key I think instead of getting rid of something a lot of leftists believe in.
Andrewism basically did a Strawman here, seeing how he debunks Views I; who calls Humanity Parasites; never even had.
The entire humanity gets blamed for the malice of a top few.
Wonderful speech! It's definitely ok to dream, tbh. We need dreamers and thinkers. I'm sure most Indigenous/Native peoples right now are like, "Yeah we've been saying this forever."
Humans are not parasites. Landlords on the other hand...
Cishet whlte Chrlstlans on the other hand....
Hey Andrew!
I love your videos, and I thought this one was really well made, but I do have one idea to clarify/add:
Social problems that cause ecological problems don’t only arise from systems of domination (although climate change specifically definitely does). The Kuna, a people group in Panama that my mother studied in graduate school, are a great example. Because of their move from a forest ecosystem to one on the ocean, their social and religious traditions no longer aligned with the environment they were in, leading to problems like overfishing (their strict central state system could’ve made it harder for them to adapt to the new environment though, but I don’t know enough about it to say that)
my point is, I don’t think that anarchism will instantly solve ecological issues, but I think ecological justice and sustainability have to be a conscious effort alongside and strengthening anarchism.
with that said, I do believe that these problems will be easier to manage and fix under anarchy than any state or capitalist system.
Did they had to leave from their ancestral territory thanks to the systems of domination? If so we are talking about the consquence of the system of domination.
How are you going to stop polluters without some organization that is given the authority to stop them? After a revolution, there will be people who do what they can to undermine the new project. I don’t know how long we will have to deal with those people, but they won’t just disappear.
according to their history, they left the forest in the north of modern day Colombia because of conflict with another indigenous group, and then moved from the coast to a group of islands because of a mosquito problem on the mainland.
that said, I think I remember reading something about how the Spanish conquest could’ve sparked that conflict.
TL;DR: its complicated…
Dude; Nothing we do "solves" ecological issues. Even the way you _phrase_ this shows that the real problem is psychological. Listen; Would the people where you live passively accept Glyphosate being sprayed onto their children's foo by Russian military jets?
How about a leaky oil pipeline built by Kim Jong-un? Would they weakly protest, eventually give in and allow _him_ to Personally Profit from poisoning your water supply?
Africans are forced to live with these conditions at gunpoint. People in Western "First World nations" do it out of utter cowardice. They don't want to live in a world where "Daddy-Government" isn't their Ultimate Fantasy of a Being that Constantly Looks Out For Them.
If it's possible to both clean up what we've done _AND_ stop making it worse at all, then, obviously, the reason we're not doing so is some one or ones are stopping us. _That_ needs fixing. & that can't be done with everyone denying it.
@@choosecarefully408 … i am an anarchist… you realize that, right?
all im saying is a very minor qualifying statement to the video, im not saying that we should keep the state and capitalism like you seem to believe.
all im saying is that in the event of an anarchist revolution we have to keep sustainability in mind.
also idk what your nitpick about my use of the word “solve” has to do with this, but like that was just shorthand to refer to complex ideas that would be too long to include in a comment about a specific aspect of the issue.
ik we cant “solve” ecological issues, but what I believe we can do is choose how we want to interact with other living beings as well as the inanimate matter of the earth, and right now we are choosing to interact with it in a way that causes climate change and destruction.
there isn’t a solution, just a possible change of behavior with better effects…
but thats kinda a long aside to include in a comment about a specific topic
Agriculture is always a touchy subject for me because although I consider myself an anarchist I am also the daughter of a farmer. We get a lot of sh*t from society because we’re allegedly all just profit hungry, ignorant assh*les who poison our food and water. And while I agree that we definitely need to cut back on the use of pesticides etc.: we don’t have a choice.
Unless we use fertiliser and pesticides we can harvest next to NOTHING except if we spend hours upon hours in the fields weeding the crops. Small harvest means small profits. You have to buy more land and use pesticides to even SURVIVE as a farmer.
A major factor in this is globalisation: since a lot of stuff is imported from elsewhere or done cheaper outside of my country (like butchering cows or pigs), the pressure to sell our crops cheap to even sell something is enormous. I feel like if we cut down on the international trade, the pressure on farmers would be significantly reduced, so much that small, family run farms have a future again.
(Sorry for any grammar or spelling mistakes, English isn’t my first language)
There is a lot we could do to create incentives for farmers to use sustainable practices and ensure that any proprietary seed/stock is for the benefit of people, not agribusiness corporate profits.
Unfortunately as you say there is tremendous economic pressure right now to do everything possible to ensure top yield so farmers can scrape by. I think this situation is similar in many countries. Also unfortunately in the US (my country) agriculture laws and incentives disproportionately benefit the big companies by far, which many family farmers basically working as contractors to raise the crops or animals. The farmer gets all the risk, while the seed/meat/food processing companies split the profit. I agree that if we can relieve the financial pressure, farmers will be able to make freer choices about what practices they use, and often (not always) that's a choice for longer-term sustainability.
I just live how positive your overall message is it's inspiring especially in a time where people are so disheartened an negative
I LOVE this! Such a nice break from all the pretentious, nihilistic crap spewed out by moronic hacks like Steve Cutts and Paul Joseph Watson.
Hope for humanity and a constructive desire to fix what we broke is exactly what we need in this age, and I'm glad I stumbled upon this wonderful content.
I am currently reading social ecology and communalism. This is a nice treat to open up to
Read some of the stuff from Stalin and Mao and you can get a better understanding of what they were going for and what we could possibly achieve. It is rightwing propaganda that has smeared their reputations
@@millykendrill5301 no
@@obcursus
Wtf?
This is the best video that you have put out, it brings together everything, under the title: Domination.
this is honestly one of my fav videos of yours yet !!
something has always rubbed me the wrong way when ppl share the “humans are the real parasite” narrative, iv’e just never had the right words/the knowledge to describe why, but this vid puts it together beautifully !!
keep up the great work dude !
Another phenomenal video!
A big part of the way me and my system tend to think about our current political and ecological situation is that a lot of it stems from belief in the faulty idea that humans are fundamentally distinct from other animals or nature as a whole. There are (in the west) a lot of both shallow and very deep-reaching cultural ideas and taboo/honor systems that to varying degrees seem to attempt to cover up, ignore, or deny our place in nature. Many of these cultural institutions have deep connections with the unhealthy systems and institutions that are so greatly hurting our planet and communities at the moment. By setting ourselves up as outside conquerers of nature (and each other), we have spent a lot of energy for a long time destroying our own support systems and essentially poisoning ourselves. The remedy for this mindset is knowledge of who and what we truly are and our relationship to the world, and love for ourselves and the world we live in! When this shift is deeply made in our communities, I truly think that the necessary action for healing will come naturally, like a body recovering from a disease; not in the sense that we will instinctively know what to do, but in the sense that we will naturally help each other to find the best way forward, just like what is happening now with many anarchists all around the world :)
- Lamb
Thank you for making this video. When I hear that humans are bad for the environment, it triggers my clinical depression. I become despondent and I feel guilty just for existing. I start to imagine......stuff that isn't good for me, let ua say. So thank you
I have to ask you, are you are doing better right now?
Even if you don’t answer me, assuming that what you meant by ‘’stuff that isn’t good for me’’ is what I think it is, you should be grateful that you’re alive and that you shouldn’t act on those thoughts. Remember that while we will and do have severe problems right now, as Andrew said here, we aren’t parasites. I’m hopeful, but this isn’t a blind hope, as I said, we are already having severe problems and we’ll have to do the hard work to make a better, post-capitalism, world. For more sources on climate optimism, I recommend watching Andrewism’s videos on Solarpunk to start. Take care and don’t give up hope or on life
The planet whould NOT be "better without us" .
People say "earth doesnt need tech or cities" . But there's no reason why earth whould need nature either .
Nature doesnt care about you , all it wants is food
So when people talk about how nature is better or whatever , theyre wrong
Nature is not any less cruel or greedy , it just lacks the inteligence to build stuff . It does not deserve to be cared about , we only do it because we live here
So when you feel guilty that humans are evil or something , remember who created us in the first place
_Spread the bread!_
Humanty is the strangest thing that has ever happend on this planet.
makes me wonder if there are other highly advanced sentient beings out there that came before us that went extinct or uncontacted
Bookchin is one of my favorite modern philosophers. Reading his work, he says so much that I disagree with and want to argue about, there are things he says that are revelations, and there are things he says that put thoughts and feelings I've had for a long time into words that I couldn't find. Reading "The Philosophy of Social Ecology" validated the concerns I've had about the capitalist fascism latent in the environmental movement over the past 40+ years. He described it as exactly what it is: anti-humanism.
I'm just truly so annoyed by the way "overpopulation" is made to be the root of all climate problems while ignoring the deeper systems actually impacting the environment and the very *yikes* undertones (or sometimes even overtones) that this narrative brings with it
Overpopulation is an issue though, and it was only possible at the current rate because of the industrial revolution. There was also no promotion and educate the public to maintain family size because humans didn't even understand the science of population dynamics until the late 1800s. Hell, biology wasn't even really a subject until the 1700s, and ecology is from the 20th century
I'm guilty of the "humans are a parasite" trope. Knowing fully well that capitalism is the culprit. But we created capitalism so there's that as well.
As always, brilliant work bredren. 💯✊🏿
Capitalism amd Chrlstianlty are the sole source of all the world's problems
"We". Each time civilians say that, they believe that "we" are a unified people. One humanity that makes decisions together. Thats not the case bro. It's "them" that created capitalism. "them" that created communism. "them" that abuse the earth.
"They" are the rulers. "We" as in non-ruling classes, have no say in these matters whatsoever.
The problem is not just capitalism; it is all government. And this problem is fueled by the faulty belief that certain humans have the right to rule other humans by force.
‘We’ didn’t create Capitalism - it is a European construct that was forced upon the rest of us.
@@emilyashlin802
Whlte conservatives/ Chrlstlans have been the sole source of all the world's problems for the last 2000 years: capitalism, war, vioIence, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, etc.
Literally every single account of war and bigotry can be accounted back to them. Even today every single (real) crlme is ALWAYS at thelr hands. Look at every schooI shootlng, all the abortion clinic bombings, all the daiIy murder of POCs and LGBTQ people, domestic violence against women and queer people, Kyle Rittenhouse, Trump, Jan 6th, and the ,ist goes on and on and on.
love your videos, want to work towards a world where the future you envision is a reality!
Murray Bookchin inspired me to not just focus on economic and industrial federation, but that federations based in bio-spheres and regional ecologies are a necessary development to return humanity to our status in nature as a part of, not apart.
Thank you, if we believe we are nothing more than harmful parasites we can’t think up ways to change the situation we find ourselves in.
Hmm...
In my quietly misanthropic youth, I sometimes fell into the human parasite line of thinking, and I'll still sometimes return to it when I'm deeply mired in existential depression, but my position has since evolved into the realization that the true parasites (if any) are the obscenely rich, the 0.01%, the oligarchs and kleptocrats. We've just been dancing to their tune because they've tried to make it nearly impossible to survive any other way.
Your mentioning that destructive parasitism tends to be caused by a disruption in an ecosystem gave me some pause. I think we can see many ways in which the general human ecosystem has been disrupted... but what of the super-rich? What disruption caused them to become destructive parasites? _What hole in themselves are they trying to fill with all the wealth and power they are extracting and hoarding?_
I'm sure a lot of us can speculate possibilities, but it still leads me back to something else I realized a number of years ago: One of the many things we need to do if we are going to save ourselves is a _deep and thorough psychological analysis of the obscenely rich and power-hungry._ Unfortunately, like with many of the other things we need to do, how to go about it is something I don't have a good answer for yet.
Damn you are really hitting every topic most communists groups are slacking.
“In the case of economic agents, just like in the case of bandits, stupid people do not optimize the system they exploit. But whereas the bandits can survive a crash in their revenues when their victims rebuild their wealth, stupid people ruthlessly destroy them, ruining themselves as well. There are several examples in the history of economics: one is the case of the mining industry which is exploiting resources that will need at least hundreds of thousands of years to reform by geological process, if they ever will. It is also the case of industries that exploit slowly reproducing biological resources. A modern example is that of whaling, as we demonstrated in previous papers. The same resource destruction also occurs for other cases of human fisheries. Humans do not seem to need modern tools to destroy the resources they exploit, as shown by the extinction of Earth’s megafauna, at least in part the result of human actions performed using tools not more sophisticated than stone-tipped spears. Overall, the destruction of the resources that make people live seems to be much more common than in the natural ecosystem. This observation justifies the proposed '’6th law of stupidity,'’ additional to the five proposed by Carlo Cipolla that has that ’Humans are the stupidest species in the ecosphere.’”
"...Humans are a relatively recent element of the ecosystem: modern humans are believed to have appeared only some 300,000 years ago, although other hominins practicing the same lifestyle may be as old as a few million years. Yet, this is a young age in comparison to that of most species currently existing in the ecosphere. So, humankind’s stupidity may be not much more than an effect of the relative immaturity of our species, which still has to learn how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. That explains what we called here “the 6th law of stupidity,” stating that humans are the stupidest species on Earth. It is a condition that may lead the human species to extinction in a non-remote future. But it is also possible that, if humans survive, one day they will learn how to interact with the ecosystem of their planet without destroying it."
― Ilaria Perissi and Ugo Bardi | The Sixth Law of Stupidity: A Biophysical Interpretation of Carlo Cipolla's Stupidity Laws
Thank you so much for saying this. Literally yesterday I was super cooked trying to explain to my friend why humans are part of nature, not parasites. Idk if it was about being cooked, my argument, or his worldview, but I just could not get it across. We can't "harm" the earth, we can only cause events which we view as negative, and may negatively impact some specific thing on Earth. The whole idea that humans are bad for the planet can only come about by humans not being bad for the planet, but instead having a tendency to appreciate that which is around them. Philosophically, I don't think even an oil spill can technically be called harming the planet, but I do admit that there is a difference between practice and theory, and there is a reason that we as a society view pollution events like that, but the issue with simply labelling them as "bad" is that we don't get any of the actual nuance that is humanity's common misunderstanding of our environment (which led to science), and instead we settle into in- and out- groups arguing about what's bad and what isn't instead of both agreeing on the fact that, emotionally, people don't like it when everything dies, and, logistically/economically, people don't like it when their habitats become less comfortable.
Parasitism involves subjecting life/living beings to actions which the living being [animal] DOES NOT BENEFIT FROM. Humans enslave trillions of animals [and there are even more humans in enslavement today than ever before] for 100% selfish purposes, such as for entertainment all the way to the worst possible reasons that can ever be imagined. Humanity can be compared to the mind controlling 'ant parasite', except that the animal parasite is only doing what they need to do to survive.
The fact that you are only viewing humanity's parasitism towards destroying the whole Earth (and therefore yourself) is completely 100% SELFISH & therefore also a PARASITIC act.
You've got to be one of the most valuable and important voices on the online left right now.
The importance of what is being discussed here can not be overstated!
Can't believe this channel only has 70k subs
Start on your street, get your neighbors involved in community gardening, nothing happens alone but we gotta start somewhere. If communal gardening isn’t an option where you live, just try to extend a system of mutual aid for your neighborhood. My two adjacent neighbors are both developing gardens and we have a small flock of chickens.
We have a lot of this going on in my country, at a city/community level. It's really nice. Lots of small community gardens, recycling spots, teaching how to consume properly and durably, taking care of the local insect and bird diversity, keeping height of buildings low enough, keeping trees as much as possible, urban intelligence...
Ngl, I liked the covid restrictions... You could hear birds again for a while, and I'd see lots of bees too. Vegetation was doing great too.
In the end, the only people I'm really mad at are owners of companies who keep producing in vast excess, with markets being complicit with it by buying in excess here too, just for the sake of "profit" when they wouldn't really need that much if things were moderately leveled. Excess production even affects how many trucks are out there burning gas... And international ecological propaganda then puts the blame of pollution and everything on the consumers... Capitalism can be a huge bitch lol I'm glad my gov is socialist enough to impose some limits within the country, but what about other countries ?
@Nobel Nas With all due respect, if you're blaming the world's problems specifically on capitalism, and not the faulty belief in government in general, you're missing the point. The socialist politicians you are in love with, are not good people. Restrictions on a person's movement is unlawful according to Natural Law, whether or not you enjoyed the quiet. Peace.
Thank you for your videos, you are changing my opinions on so many things. Def. Joining the patreon.
Welcome comrade!
I swear defenders of the status quo would rather throw all of humanity under the bus than take responsibility for the state of the world.
This is definitely a convincing argument. I hope that some day I will see hope for any kind of future that is worth going towards, but honestly I find I can't pull myself out of this hole of dispair.
Staring in horror at the debauchery we commit every day, every meal onto the natural world, and the billions upon billions of animal slaves we suck absolutely dry of anything that can be exploited from them is so difficult to overcome. Not to mention the other humans across the world that we do the same thing to.
Even though I have no hope for the future, I see it as my duty to support those who do. So thanks. I like that you are hopeful
To the creator and fans of this channel: On May 11, 2023, a young man in the US Air Force shared this video to his R*ddit account. He wrote, "I follow TH-camrs like Andrewism that fill my head with concrete images of free, post-scarcity communities and it makes me so much more prepared to reject things about the current world, because I’ve imagined how things could be and that helps me see how extremely BS things are right now." Nine months later, he stood outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC and set himself on fire.
this is the best thing i have seen all year. I am so incredibly impressed. Thank you sooooooo much.
You made my day better. I absolutely concur.
very nice, you changed my mind. I should have asked myself WHY are we behaving like this. There is always a root to everything that is happening. And I just told myself we were parasites.
My guyyyy. This is some of your best work
I am a year late in commenting but 20 years late in hearing this. I have back ground in environmental anthropology but lost a lot of hope and drive over the years, especially when find out a lot of my professors looked down on practical applications of the subject. We need people to keep communicating this message of hope
Relatively new watcher, here, but this is my favorite of your videos so far. Really well expressed and portrayed. I hope it reaches a lot of people.
Your videos are one of the best! Always looking for your work, it has learn me so much.
We need to start teaching people to fill a caretaker niche in our environments
nah dude haven't you heard the news? Ecology is when we brutally kill innocents en masse. More killing = more sustainable. If your ecological system doesn't involve the brutal exploitation and murder of animals then it's physically impossible to create sustainability. Sustainability and killing go hand in hand, and empathy has no place in such a system. Andrew said so in his last video on fish farms
You are an absolute legened, I love your work and its great to see more people take this narrative apart.
Thank you for your video, but I still feel a level and anger and despair at things, despite the hope you have given me.
So many of us are born into this awful system that strips us of our natural roots and connections with the world, and makes it so that trying to break out of it is practically impossible. How can I make a change when I can barely take care of myself? And much less, take care of myself in a system that is *made* to make it hard for me to take care of myself?
If I were to entirely stop engaging with the system in order to live a life aligned with my beliefs, I’m fairly certain I’ll die fast. Not like there are many places where people hand out free food. The only thing I can think about is growing my own food rather than buying from the supermarket, which is great and all, but still requires that I have private property/permanent property for me to do so. It also requires a lot of space that I don’t have/can’t afford here in the city.
I’m at a loss, but refuse to turn to doomerism. painful
I love your stuff :3
Super insightful as always, thank you sm for this! This talking point is super common and very scary, I hope more people can move away from it and consider all the good humanity is capable of under different conditions.
From a Roman Catholic perspective I feel this is up my alley, as the organization of society should be libertarian and ecological. I live in the rust belt and have seen how communities come together through spiritual places (churches, mosques, synagogues, and traditional indigenous religions places) and communal activities like urban gardening and peace activities. I feel theses neighborhoods if in a social ecological sense could prosper under a city or county wide confederation with other communities to trade, learn, and grow under.
While there are some catholics who aren't soooooooo bad (namely those who don't really follow their twisted religion), you guys are no different from 'chrlstlans'. It is your religion that brought all concepts of bigotry into the world 2000 years ago: white-supremacy, sIavery, misogyny, patriarchy, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, anti-disabled, anti-zoo, and anti-MAP. You can't just come here and say you are one of the 'good Chrlstlans' because it is an oxymoron. Chrlstlantly itseIf is the soIe source of everything bad the worId faces today...
If you would denounce your reIiogin and be an athelst, or even ANY other reIiglon (like Budhism, Islam, Hinduism, Wicca, Satanism, etc) you would show that you are at least trying to be a better person. But trying o come off as a 'good bad guy' doesn't help anyone and only makes things more confusing for other newcomers.
Genuinely curious, how do libertarianism and Roman Catholicism go together in your perspective? I see the Catholic Church as a very hierarchical power institution, so not very compatible with anarchist/libertarian views.
@@athomassen3980
Exactly. All of Chrlstlantiy is literaIIy the enemy of freedom, tolerance, and progress. One cannot be both a Chrlstlan / Catholic AND an anarchist / Leftist. This person is either grossly uninformed or they are purposefully trying to muddy the progress of Leftist ideals.
sis the catholic church is a bank
Beautiful essay that really opened my mind, thank you ❤️
It’s hard not to be a little misanthropic
5:40 important correction industrial monocultures do not feed the world, peasants(the people being dispossessed and poisoned by "venture philanthropists" and speculators in the land grabs you mentioned so agribusiness can rape and waste everything they can get out of the land for 4 or 5 years until the margins dip and the wasteland is abandoned) feed about 70% of the world's population with small scale agroecological methods. Big ag largely produces the agrifood commodities we do not need, biomass feedstock for ultra processed foods concentrated animal feeding operations and biofuels, those operations only feed the beast.
Can you do a video about hope and revolutionary optimism next?
Hey so American here. I don't know how much is known about American Evangelicalism in the Carribiane, but the humans as a parasite narative sounds almost identical to the doctrine of Calvanism, where American Evangelicalism gets it's ideas from. Calvanism boils doen to being a good person is highly ineffective and that the only way to gain god's favor is to accept yourself as a dirty evil sinner and to accept that Christ is the only good. Sums up to "I know I'm horrible, but there is nothing I can do about it and thats ok because Jesus" the parasite idea can summed up as "humans are inherently bad for the environment so we shouldn't bother trying to be better" i wonder if the human parasite mentality is influenced by Americsn Evangelicalism
Ah, if only this video had been around a few months ago - it'd be perfect for Rulerless: Love, Hope, & Joy! Great work.
-Byron
Your best yet. Excellent synthesis of many concepts.
People ideas, Ideas are not people. The thoughts that rule our mind can be a plague, or a godsend. Humanity can be whatever it believes it to be. Are we are going to continue to become victims of our desires or change our hearts and minds towards what matters.
00:00 thats the album cover of Emperor's wrath of the tyrant
We must be protectors to all species and wardens of the planet we have.
11:20 me and the homies dancing our way into a more plentiful future instead of working into it. Why toil and labor on low wages when you can turn up for free?
Lots of good stuff in here, as usual, Andrew. Kudos and thanks. That said, I do have a couple of things I take issue with:
One problem I have with this analysis is the bit at 2:10 -- yes, the population _growth _*_rate_* is decreasing. But that just means the population will *double* in, say, 70 years (current rate), or... maybe even only every 700 years (based on UN projection of a growth rate of 0.1% by 2100). Rather than how it has already doubled in my lifetime (I'm 48, currently), and it was doubling even more quickly earlier in the 20th century (in ~39 years, 1960 to 1999, it doubled). But let's say we do hit that 0.1% figure... we're still talking about a population that doubles every 700 years. _Growth_ is not sustainable. Period. Full stop. Maybe we're not a "parasite", maybe we are, but shrinking *growth* is not shrinking *population*, and any *growth* is not sustainable. No politics or environmental angle or moral arguments or anything required, it's just the mathematics at that point. The complexities come in in how we deal with that math, to be sure. I'm not discounting that there's all sorts of complexity in numerous aspects of all this. But the math is the math. Growth is not sustainable. Period. And you're talking about growth _shrinking_ as if the "already declining global population growth rate" means that that means we're not still on a completely untenable track. Sure, we can say that the parasite is capitalism (another evolved entity of sorts, even if not "alive") rather than humans, per se. But if that's the memetic parasite residing in our minds, it's still causing us to do parasitic things to the rest of the planet. And even if we could overthrow capitalism with the snap of some fingers, growth is still not sustainable, so please, _please_ don't keep thinking (and maybe you don't think this, but you seem to imply that you do) that growth is ok, as long as it's small growth. Growth is not sustainable. Hamsters stop growing. Individual humans stop growing. Most living things stop growing. Cancer doesn't... and humans haven't. We _will_ -- one way or another -- but _if_ we want to avoid devastation (of our own species, even if we ignore the impacts for all the others, which of course I don't think we should do), we need to _choose_ to stop growing. And I believe we share that desire to avoid devastation, so... how do we _end_ growth?
Another, somewhat smaller but still important issue, is from 12:24 - humanity is part of nature. Considering ourselves separate from it is part of the problem -- and while you're talking about bringing more connection between humans and nature, that phrasing presupposes an idea that we're separate... which... is understandable in lots of ways, but... well, is a spider web part of nature? If so, then so is a skyscraper or a dam. I think you're likely to actually agree with me here, so it's ultimately just a quibble of wording, but I thought I'd mention it.
Definitely down for your vision of anarchic ecological principles generally, so... again, thanks for the vid. Just sharing some thoughts.
Exactly! Population NEEDS to be smaller in order to sustain the community. We need a 'reverse holocost', this time agalsnt the Nazls themseIves: the whkte conservative cishet Chrlstlans of the worId. These peopIe have been the real 'parasltes' for the Iast 2000 years.... the source of aII blgotry, whlte-supremzcy, sIavery, misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, Capitlaism, etc. You get rid of Chrlstans, you kiII two birds with one stone. It is 2022 - there is no reason the whole wold is stiII putting up with being subjugated by them.
I've been teIIing my friends and we aII agree that if this is done, we'd have a worldwide utopia within a few years after setting up the necesarry guidelines. The thought of this happening in my lifetime is enough to give me hope tho I know something like the Democrst party is too weak to ever do it. Why 'play by the rules' when the rules are corrupt to begin with and created by the enemy anyway?
Thank you, I really appreciate your videos and perspective.
I very much agree population is not the cause of the ecological catastrophe we have created; however, I find a hard time seeing how the current population could sustain itself without large scale mining and fossil fuel use.
For example, in southern California, over 10 million people really on a system using pumps to bring water over mountains from the Colorado and Central valley river systems. Without these massive pumps and pipes, food doesn't get grown, people go thirsty. In Missouri, where I now live, small scale decentralized farming is the way to go, we get plenty of rain. However, many arid places like southern California have massively outstripped their capacity to support the human population without industrial civilization.
I think you're totally right about how the idea of overpopulation has been used to promote racism, so it's a fine line to walk. I like saying unsustainably populated rather than overpopulated.
I don't know if you are familiar with Michael dowd, but he does an interview series, and I think it would be a wonderful conversation
Unsustainably populated sounds like better phrasing, I definitely know what you mean. It's important to apply that phrasing specifically and not generally though. It's not that humans can't live in deserts, but the way we live in deserts must necessarily be different from the way we live in grasslands or on coasts. The population density each biosphere can materially support will differ. Our settlement patterns will need to adapt.
@@Andrewism
Very much agree. Thank you for your work spreading this message!
unsustainably populated is literally just the same thing with more words. you're an ecofascist
Have any thoughts or videos on veganism? Or animal ethics? I’d be curious how you’d evaluate vegan ethics and arguments.
Veganism is the way
@@deemstars I think if we’re talking solar punk perhaps some type of vegetarianism is better, a future vegetarianism where we are in mutualistic relationships with the animals we can gently get products from (eggs, milk, wool, honey, etc) I think would be nice, obviously those products are mostly currently very exploitative but it’s nice to imagine a world where we live in harmony with a a few cows and chickens running around our communities
@@solarpunkalana lab grown meats are the way to go and should be the push for vegans everywhere, that would go s long way.
veganism is an inherently colonialist and ecofascist ideology
@@redmage5251 not sure about that one chief, I’m not even vegan
Great video. Been reading up on social ecology and political ecology important studies. It's our system that is parasitic.
Your videos really give me hope and a better perspective of what we can do to achieve a better future together! The doomerist mindset is especially prevalet among us younger people but listening to a different perspective is really mobalising
Very good video. I think the first leftist thing I read was on social ecology and I was quite impressed with it. It got me to look into things further because it made a lot of sense. (where as when you talk to a lot of anarchists or communists before you understand anything you get a lot of really vague responses and a lot of "get off the internet and go read a book lol"... Which isn't helpful when it's become increasingly difficult for me to, well, read.)
Me at 3 seconds in: "ALRIGHT AGENT SMITH WAS THE BAD GUY IN THE MATRIX, AND THAT MEANS THAT EVERYTHING HE SAID WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE TAKEN AS GOSPEL TRUTH, OKAY???!!!"
*proceeds with the rest of the vid, assuming I'm probably going to agree with the rest of it*
@3:51 - /em raises hand
Is it colonization? Capitalism?
/em continues watching
Oh gosh. What you said there at the end. About creating "real communities, capable of bringing out the full potential of each individual and eco-system." YES. I've been saying similar things FOR YEARS. But you said it way better. So... I'd tip my hat but I don't wear hats, and offering a salute feels weird, so... uh... Good job! Great vid!
Some points in this seem contradictory. A dislike for urban and densely populated environments is expressed, but high density areas are far better for the environment than spreading all those people out sparsely. The only alternative in this scenario is radical depopulation which Andrew rightly identifies as misanthropic and ecofascist tendencies
I think we need to strike a balance between urban density and what the bioregion can support. I don't think sprawl is necessarily more sustainable, considering the transportation requirements for people and resources that such sprawl requires. I don't think the only alternative is radical depopulation either, but migration will be made inevitable necessary as some regions just aren't able to sustain the large populations they struggle with now as a result of the climate crisis.
Are high desnity areas better for the local environment, as in, the environments within which those hyper dense areas are situated?
@@Andrewism I appreciate the response. Yeah, sprawl sucks. Suburbs are the absolute worst. I think having cities that use medium density architecture like most European cities, are easily navigable and livable by walking, cycling, and public transit, and with a good amount of dedicated greenspace would be the ideal. I would be in favour of expanding settlements like that or densifying existing ones so humanity could pull out of more land elsewhere and rewild it or spare currently undeveloped land from development
@@otherperson Obviously not, but it spares a heck of a lot more land elsewhere from human settlement. It's better on a net basis
Whats the painting at 1:27? As a man whos lineage is partly native and can be proven to walked the trail of death, its extremely powerful
It's an edit of the painting American Progress (1872) by John Gast
@@Andrewism I figured, but where is the edit from?
naturalhistoryinstitute.org/gallery/the-dark-mark-of-manifest-destiny-2/
It's funny that I found your content after getting into Bookchin years ago, and seeing the video essays slowly approach my initial search. Great stuff as always
This is a great channel. Very insightful video.
Oh man I fucking love you, why are so underrated 😭
Andrewism basically did a Strawman here, seeing how he debunks Views I; who calls Humanity Parasites;
never even had.
@@loturzelrestaurant so what ? The argument of humans being parasites never goes further than shown here anyways
@@apostrofo-c8x Your silly.
Thank you for calling out Sir David Attenborough’s views. Sick of people deifying him.
One of my favorite leftist botanists,( funnily enough I do need to specify) crime pays botany doesn’t for those interested, tends to get a bit misanthropic which makes it sometimes difficult to watch his content because it takes a lot of work to see the good and to be hopeful if you know what I mean so I do appreciate you discussing this
My immigrant ancestors came to the US to work in the copper mines of the Keweenaw Peninsula. For at least 8,000 years indigenous peoples had been using the copper deposits for tools, jewlery, weapons, etc. US mines operated there for 80 years before they were entirely depleted.
My grandparents left the Keweenaw because there were no jobs. The boom towns had disappeared after the industry left. When I visited, I found the above information in a museum. I cried.
Great video Andrew. This approach is the only thing that gives me hope for the future
Love your work.
I agree with your take on transforming humanity. I do think that this task will be difficult under the current circumstances. I also think that technology should be used to heal the damage done. Sustainable mining practices, agriculture, exploration and development is part in parcel of our ability to continue into the future.
Anyone know the name of that art at 1:19?
When you see it then you know
All that is happening is within nature as it could never be otherwise.
The greed and the opposition to it are the balancing equation
Lost track of how many times I said, "Yes!" Thanks
amazing! Thank you for always presenting thoughtful answers and possibilities for our future instead of more doomer doctrine!
The Ecology of Freedom is an immensely important book. However I do have one major criticism of Bookchin in that text; he fails to distinguish between Hierarchies of expertise, leadership and competence, from hierarchies of coercion and exploitation. This is something which he does address in his late works, in which he acknowledges the necessity of leadership, for example, but it is something which I really wish he had edited into later editions of EoF.
Ooh, fantastic vid! I’m really getting into sustainability and I’ve been wondering about this topic. I’m also have an interest in MTG’s color pie philosophy and there’s this concept of Green vs. Blue, of nature vs. civilization. There seems to be this thing that Green must be a rejection of civilization, but it ignores how humanity is born from the natural and originated from it. Are beaver dams natural? Or ant/termite/bee colonies? Were the traditional ways we used to build home on the frontiers?
I do not think humans are unnatural, as our intelligence is born from evolution, which is natural.
Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether or not humanity is natural or not, but when did we develop “unnatural” behaviors? Was it in 10,000 BCE? 5000 BCE? 300 BCE? 1800 CE?
It’s definitely an interesting topic, and thank you for providing the words to articulate these thoughts.
The Island by Aldous Huxley features a paralell society called Pala which shows an example of what I consider the way of the future.
Diversity in everything! Exactly!
Your videos give me hope.
These suggestions are no more realistic than demanding the end of all war. Humans are destroying their natural environment for the same reason other animals destroy their environment; we got too good at surviving and benefiting our own survival. In most species this eventually results in a population bottle neck, but humans have found a way around that as well.
Humanity isn't a parasite. We're just another species of animal on this earth that got too good at benefiting itself. The one thing that makes us unique is our complex consciousness and decision making abilities. We are uniquely able to plan for the future and we need to do that on a large scale. However, we also need to acknowledge that human nature contains greed, selfishness and competitiveness just like any other animal and we'll always have to struggle against that dark nature both other humans and within our selves.
Man, I have a complicated love/hate relationship with humanity just like with life... Sometimes you either hate it or you love it or both.
I cant help but sometimes think how cruel and vile humans can be towards their ownkind and other forms of life. Even the environment.. which makes you lose hope or respect for the human race..
Yet on the otherhand, when you are reminded by the beautiful & mind-blowing things they've invented like art, literature, science, etc. Or even things like vaccines, videogames or the internet you cant help but admire it and also feel thankful for the stuff they've invented. Those aspects & benefits of modern civilization is what enhanced our quality of life compared to our ancestors
Please note tho that city now a days are better for the environment than suburbia equator named Eco Gecko did a video series on it
While I believe in current societal standards, what people consider "Normal" to very much be parasitism, I know that it isn't built into the foundation and structure of human culture.
There's plenty of things we can look back onto the past that aren't in human nature, but was forced to change due to a hierarchical structure. I genuinely think we can revert, its just going to take a lot of time, and a lot of willpower from local communities and its people. Its very clear however that the current systems just don't work, and we need more redundancies via power, food, water, and all basis to human, agricultural, animal, and even synthetic life. In whatever forms they take.
Humanity IS Nature
yess bookchin is the iconic theory daddy
I had the opportunity to spend some time at the ISE when I studied in Montreal. Still miss Murray's voice.
Loved this I'll be rewatching
Eco conscious non-toxic positivity is so sexy.
Are there any communities in the US that practice these methods? I live in Iowa and would like to join a group that practices social ecology.
Check out Cooperation Jackson, Cooperation Tulsa, and the Institute of Social Ecology. None of these are where you're at, but they might be good places to start looking.