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John Michael Greer, an old friend of the podcast, blogs at his Ecosophia Website, and is the author of a score of books ranging from the social and political commentary of The Wealth of Nature and Not the Future We Ordered, to a large body of science fiction and fantasy.
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Wow, wow, wow, Jim listening to you two gentlemen talk tonight was such a soothing blessing to me that I am almost (not quite) speechless in being able to describe my thanks for this gift. You certainly seem to be a wise man and as such I credit you being able to understand how fortunate you are to be able to have such intelligent conversations with people like John Michael Greer. Thank you for sharing this and for all of the work you do for us as well.
In your discussion, you asked why do we not have any good leadership. For me at least, the answer is clear. Real leadership, certainly when change is required, must be able to lead people to change what they are doing that is not right or that is leading the system off course. In order to do that, leadership must be willing to man up and tell it like it is. To say “STOP, we must change” and that pisses people off. Our system, our “electorate process”, is a popularity contest and is played to an audience of consumers, hopelessly addicted to more and more of whatever it is that they are told to consume. America wants happy, happy and nobody is going to get elected, or certainly not re-elected telling people that the party is over or that it is time to sober up. And no government so constrained is ever going to do anything to solve any problems, not with that millstone around its neck.
Again thank you. This was one of the best conversations I have ever listened to.
Yes, that was rather enjoyable. JMG sounds well rested. I’d love to just be able to sit at the table and listen – I’d buy the beverages. If we could add Orlov, even better.
Oh my. I thought I was a SJW aristocrat and I’m 15 ounces into a tall boy out of the can…(18:40). I knew the conversation would be fun–am I drinking too fast or does it depend on whether I go through 3 before the end?
A commenter on a news article I read about the “Covington Catholic” fracas remarked that their takeaway of the whole thing was this: That if there are hostile foreign powers out there using social media to divide and polarize American society, we seem awfully predisposed to make it very easy for them to do that. I tend to agree.
WRT colonizing Mars: The soil of The Red Planet is chock-full of toxic substances known as perchlorates that will make farming it for food effectively impossible. Do the acolytes of progress imagine we will be able to somehow purify that soil???
I believe that it is more about funneling of government expenditures into the corporate coffers of the outfits that will be working on the technologies to advance the idea. Exactly what was done with the Moon projects. Follow the money works every time.
Bingo! For the modern economy there are only two sayings to solving most problems.
1. Follow the Money
2. The love of money is the root of all evil.
There is no intention to ever do anything more than maybe a few “tester” rockets to Mars and then have the whole idea and the billions of dollar invested in it simply vanish from the public consciousness.