A call for green evolution
The word Green is thrown around effusively these days. I find it appalling and saddening what has become of that once idealistic vision.
It is now used to sell a cynical future that looks much like the old, misguided past and holding a magic promise for more of the same. CFL's and hybrids for the masses, we'll spend our way out of this environmental mess!
My 28 years of activism have carried the green agenda, both little g and Big G. I have focused mostly in energy and environmental justice issues because that is where our efforts can make a great difference and where our actions, or lack thereof, are most telling. I believe in participatory democracy, generally anarchist in disposition.
I have come to feel that, despite the good work of Greens statewide and locally, the answers are, ultimately, not so much political as social. As Marx observed in 1843, the Hegelian goal is emancipation:
"Human emancipation will only be complete when the real, individual man (sic) is absorbed into himself the abstract citizen; when as an individual man, in his every day life, in his work and in his relationships, he has become a species-being (politically accountable to the whole); and when he recognizes and realizes his own power as social powers, so that he no longer separates this social power from himself as political power."
Politics helps give a stage for debate, but don't do much to make us feel "accountable to the whole". Politics is more divisive than unifying- perhaps a "divide and conquer" mechanism of some secret ruling elite?
Politics is played in this country like a full contact sport, and the terminology used to report on it reflects that. Political "races", mostly toward the center, are turning off a growing number of disaffected voters.
Political contests enforce the “life is a game” mentality, and may the best fundraiser win. Politics deals with voting blocks and polling data that can all too easily lose sight of the people behind the numbers.
Life is not a game. It is serious business. People are hurt every day by the “moves” and “plays” from which the systems gamers take their permission to act.
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