[Xmca-l] Re: Burning...

[Martin Packer]

I’m not sure I understand the objection to generalization. For instance, some of the press are calling these fires “wild fires.” If they were, that might indicate that the problem was caused by inadequate land management. But they are not; they are fires deliberately started by loggers in order to clear areas of the forest for farming, and by farmers to ‘prepare’ previously cleared land for cultivation. Farming is principally of soy and beef, both sold outside Brazil. Before cultivation the land is treated with insecticide to a depth of several meters. As a result soy cultivation requires fertilizer, obtained by sucking up fish and other sea life and grinding them into sludge which is then applied to the crops.
 
Bolsinaro has now deployed troops to help fight the fires. But he has also stated today that his focus will continue to be on the sustainable development of the Amazon reason in order to create economic growth for Brazil.

Like I said, capitalism. Sure it is a system, with interconnected constituents. But I would say that it is just as important to grasp the big picture as it is to understand any constituent. Bolsinaro is being a rational capitalist, within the scope of that system. However, what capitalists in general seem unable or unwilling to grasp is that there is an ever bigger system, where human economic and political activity is coupled with the flow of water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, life and habitat around the planet. It’s one thing to point out that capitalist accumulation creates inequities. It’s another thing entirely to point out that it is destroying the basis for its own existence. Any activity that does that is not merely unfair, it is insane. 

Martin

"I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually with the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)



> On Aug 23, 2019, at 8:17 PM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
> 
> I think that once we have grasped the simple fact hat we live in a capitalist world, and that there is a hellovalot that has to happen between now and a situation where we don't live in a capitalist world, we need to think about how to understand and change our situation ...
> 
> Rather than the truism that the object of all government and economic activity in the world is capitalist accumulation, I think we should recognise the truth put forward by the Regulation Theorists, which agrees with Activity Theory -- government and economic activity can be conceived of as a number of independent, interconnected activities (projects) like business management, trade, wage determination, distribution, price determination, a finance system, as well as environmental protection,  taxation, legislative, judicial, political and policing systems - every one of which is culturally variable and is within the grasp of governments and an organisation people to challenge and change.
> 
> The destruction of the amazon forests and their crucial role in maintenance of everyone's atmosphere and the world's biological and cultural resources is a real problem. I don't know the answer. But we can't solve by starting with the largest possible generalisation. 
> Units of analysis comrades.
> 
> Andy
> Andy Blunden
> https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
> On 24/08/2019 8:46 am, Martin Packer wrote:
>> Hi David,
>> 
>> I don’t think what you’re saying negates the assertion that capitalism, with its pernicious tendency to turn every aspect of nature into “raw” materials and “natural" resources, is the source of the problems in the Amazon and many other parts of the world. You’re probably correct, though, in suggesting that the solution might turn out to be more capitalism. It is, after all, the game that we play so well, and in fact the only game that we know how to play.
>> 
>> So transition rather than revolution? Okay, I’m game. Who takes the first turn?
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Aug 23, 2019, at 4:14 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Wagner:
>>> 
>>> You were, I remember, interested in gaming culture. But if I remember correctly, you weren't just interested in gaming culture "in the wild"--when you look at gaming culture on line  in the wild, you see that it's often associated with misogyny, violence, and Alt-right motifs (e.g. the "Lost Cause" of southern slavery in the USA--my brother, for example, has been doing a regular blog for Matrix games on the anniversaries of the civil war, and his work is very often commentated by pro-slavery gamers).  You were interested in gaming culture as a vehicle for teaching-and-learning in schools--both as a vehicle of conveying content, and as a way of mediating the role of the learner from passive recipient to active participant.
>>> 
>>> Well, consider THIS video, which was made by a transexual woman who started out (male) in the on-line gaming culture making videos to try to talk to Alt-right people about their support for Donald Trump. I apologize for the coarse language, and some of the rather risque jokes, but you will see it is part of the message. (I also do not endorse the call to vote Democratic: Al Gore ended "An Inconvenient Truth" with a stirring call to elect democrats, and in 2008 Americans dutifully did, with no discernible effect whatsoever on any of the issues raised in this film.)
>>> 
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6GodWn4XMM <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6GodWn4XMM>
>>> 
>>> Now, in some ways, it is srikingly similar to your video--the spokesperson is carefully chosen and made up, there is a direct appeal  to the (male) viewer which doesn't eschew sex appeal. But here's what I think is different.
>>> 
>>> a) ContraPoints manages to use many of the Alt Right's own arguments--their aesthetic, their humor, and even, at one point, their own racism (when she argues that unless climate change is tackled, we will have to deal with hundreds of millions of dark-skinned refugees). She even ends with the idea that all successful political struggles are essentially aimed at mythical enemies.
>>> 
>>> b) ContraPoints, nevertheless, does not have to disguise her own Marxist agenda or her own actual persona--she simply presents it as part of a panoply of gamer identities.
>>> 
>>> c) ContraPoints is neither minimalist ("don't take an airplane to ISCAR") nor maximalist ("no es fuego, es capitalismo!")--she doesn't want to simply "meliorate" capitalism, nor is she happy to simply blame capitalism for everything (in fact, elsewhere she points out that capitalists themselves are not to blame--since they are helpless and largely harmless patsies for Capital itself, hence Martin's appeal to Bill Gates!)
>>> 
>>> d) Instead, ContraPoints is a transitionalist (no pun intended). That is, she begins with simple demands which are in no way anti-capitalist--but which neveretheless compel attention even in children (that's the point of the eroticism, the watermelon, the knife, etc, but she could also do the same with the demand for a living minimum wage, or protection for indigenous peoples, or simply putting out the fires). Because these demands are not inherently anti-capitalist, the inability of capitalism to satisfy them needs to be explained. In real political struggles, this is often done by the capitalists themselves: we cannot make a profit if we increase wages, protect indigenous people, or--in the case of Bolsinaro--try to put out the fires (Bolsinaro says Brazil doesn't have the resources, which is probably true). A transitional programme then demands proof--open the account books to prove that there is no money for minimal wages, no land for indigenous peoples, no resources for fighting firest. It is then capitalism itself which has to demonstrate its own bankruptcy--and create its own, united, educated, and purposeful gravediggers.
>>> 
>>> Of course, the most obvious objection to this kind of transitional programme is that her humor is misplaced and that this struggle is not a                     game. Sometimes the humor is beside the point--the suicide rate among transgender women is somewhere around forty percent, and some of ContraPoint's work has a strong flavor of the person in the bath self-medicating and self-treating. But I know that you, of all people, will never object that struggle is not a game!
>>> 
>>> (By the way, I'm not going to ISCAR either--same reason!)
>>> 
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Sangmyung University
>>> 
>>> New Article: 
>>> Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without SELF: Vygotsky’s
>>> pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s construalism in understanding narratives by
>>> Korean children, Language and Education, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>>> To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663 <https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663>
>>> 
>>> Some e-prints available at:
>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663 <https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 7:35 PM Wagner Luiz Schmit <wagner.schmit@gmail.com <mailto:wagner.schmit@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> A short video about this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfiutlJ7uWc <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfiutlJ7uWc>
>>> 
>>> So yes, it is capitalism
>>> 
>>> Wagner
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 9:08 PM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
>>> This is a satellite image not of fire per se but of the carbon dioxide the fire is releasing (redder = more CO2) from the weather site Windy.
>>> 
>>> Perhaps worth sharing? Who has Bill Gates' email address?
>>> 
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 

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