The first thing I noticed in going to this new website is that 12 of the leaders in the group picture of two dozen followers had allowed their head hair to grow long. Ten let their facial hair grow. And only two had no hair growth on top their heads. Only three had obviously attempted to degrowth their head hair. I’m not sure how many waxed the hair on their Netherlands or shaved their arm pits but it’s obvious that most allowed their hair grow - or wish it could.
I’m
hoping none of them have worst type of growth- cancer. But I’m pretty sure most of them would like
to have their income to grow so they can spend more time volunteering for their
degrowth movement. Unfortunately, like
most people, they need to eat, probably like sleep indoors. Perhaps even grow some children. And even grow
their movement so their children will have a healthy and sustainable future. I’m guessing they are focusing on their
degrowth campaign on the 1% of humanity that makes over $40,000 a year because it
is their environmentally destructive consumption patterns and lack of a consciousness
about it that is most destructive to our planet’s life support system. I’m hoping they will insist on degrowth of the
world’s poor people who would also like their children to grow into healthy
people instead of wasting away do to easily preventable malnutrition or
infectious diseases - if their parent's income could grow.
I’m
also assuming those who framed this clever name for their movement desire more
growth in their membership, donations, and media attention. Who can blame them? I’m guessing they may also want local and global
peace conditions to grow given the environmental unsustainable path of war,
genocide, and poverty. But that would
require growth in the knowledge and investments in indigenous methods, new technologies,
and the wisdom to use these -- in achieving the United Nations 17 Sustainable
Development Goals ASAP.
I’m
also hoping that this degrowth movement understands that the greatest barrier
to their success – the biggest factor working against them is the degrowth of
the human brain.
Human brains actually grew in volume almost fourfold in
the past 2 million years. In the more
recent past they’ve been shrinking. Scientists believed that brain degrowth
began about 10,000 years ago when the growth of farming changed our diets. New research based on fossils and modern brain
research data suggests the shrinkage actually started between 3000 to 5000
years ago. This may link the evolution as
the driving force. As humanity’s growth
in the development of complexity of societies (religion, politics, economics, culture...)
it meant humans started relying increasingly on collective intelligence rather
than individual knowledge. Humans became
so social that we no longer had to know everything and learn everything about the
complexity of nature which is our essential environmental life support system that
our technological infrastructure is built upon.
So now our ‘modern’ species prefers
to defend the mental concepts that have evolved within a global array of religious,
cultural, economic, and politics tribes that are willing to kill and die for
those concepts. In the past that defense
of ideas required an evolution of weaponry to sustain the dominance of each
tribe. A perpetual arms race that can
end only to ways. The end of
civilization as we know it or perhaps our species extinction given the level of
technological power modern humans have. Or
‘we the people’ of earth unite and codify the genius of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet
‘Common Sense’ with Thomas Jefferson’s wisdom that he penned in the Declaration
of Independence which followed. Paine believed
that because no man can live alone. But
we are not angles and needed some means to manage our differences – government. He asserted that the only legitimate purpose
of government was to balance human freedom and security. Then Jefferson asserted that humanities inalienable
rights are a product of “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” (the Golden
rule?). It’s unfortunate that the
smaller brains of the other founding fathers could only agree on a constitution
that ignored that wisdom. A wisdom
Jefferson confirmed when he said that every law and constitution should be “changed
every 19 years.” Because “the future
belongs to the living. Not the dead!”.
It should be a ‘self-evident’ truth because Abraham Lincoln
called our nation’s Declaration of Independence our “Apple of Gold.” And our constitution “Its Frame of Silver”.
If one’s mind today can grasp the variety and growth of
unsustainable trends posted daily in our newspapers and social media apps it
would understand the degree of dysfunction in our government and our global governance
system, it would see that ‘everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable. And we need global solutions. Our ‘whole of government’ approach isn’t comprehensive
or holistic enough to resolve the interdependent problems every nation and
human now faces. ‘Independent’ governments may pass laws - and try
like hell using ‘independent’ agencies squabbling between their ‘independent’ states,
but debt will eventually crush it all. Because
of our smaller brains sparking reactionary impulses and emotional voting
patterns, result in short term thinking. Corporations might have quarterly
thinking. But both are unsustainable
and a product of our mind’s evolution that lost touch with the minds original
purpose. Ensuring that the tribe survives
and thrives. All humanity really needed
now is for our diminished brains to grasp the simple and obvious fact that our ‘tribe’
is now the entire human family. That
human variation is our genetic strength in an ever-changing universe. And adaptation to change is more powerful
than any weapon we can create. And lastly,
sovereignty belongs to individuals. Not nation
states, unless “we the people” give it equally to all of them. And we
need to do it soon. The growing lethality of AI combined with the
growing dysfunctional political governance and economic systems of various tribes.
All tribes have become unsustainable.
While our brains have decreased about 10% in volume (roughly
the size of a golf ball) it’s clear that size alone does not dictate intelligence
or the capacity to survive. Some scientists
believe cockroaches will survive longer than humans. Hopefully
we humans still have enough intelligence to act wisely and virtuously. John Adams believed that our Constitution was
only fit for a virtuous people. It’s unfortunate
that our American culture values freedom more than virtue. Virtue simply being the Golden rule. And if we don’t choose wisely soon to live by
the “Rule of Law” we will likely perish by the law of force.
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