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Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by flash <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=flash' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 16, 2024, 8:45 am

https://ageoftransformation.org/confronting-fascism-at-the-end-life-cycle-of-industrial-civilisation/

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by Ian M <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ian+M' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 16, 2024, 7:52 pm, in reply to "Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

'As renowned physicist Paul Davies has famously argued, life can be defined as a profound combination of ‘hardware’ and ‘software’: the biological structure of matter as well as the complex information which, encoded via DNA, codifies how that biological structure is organised and behaves.'

[sigh] Nafeez needs to get off his computer and back to the real world. The basic energy analysis of society is sound but his technocratic bias prevents him from developing a critique of civilisation, thereby setting up new horrors such as lab grown food [sic] and renewable energy [sic - and conflated with electricity generation] to perpetuate the dominant culture and, incidentally, keep him in his nice metropolitan bubble where he never has to get his hands dirty or have any real engagement with the 'natural world' he writes about with no real knowledge of what it actually is. In fact civilisations are 'fundamentally different to life' in that they undermine, simplify and destroy biological diversity, with field-scale agriculture (which makes civilisation possible) epitomising the process: clear a forest or wetland and the thousands of species that lived there and supplant with a handful of domesticated species.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jason-godesky-thirty-theses/#toc2 (also written by a tech nerd, admittedly)

Also the political analysis is pretty simplistic, Trump:bad, Brexit:bad etc, and appears to take for granted that there are actual functioning democracies in the west capable of representing the will of the people rather than imposing the dictates of corporate power. There is no party-political 'left' remaining in the UK, US or much of Europe, and 'centrism' is well to the right of where it was 40 years ago. This is because of elite sabotage & manipulation of the political process and corporate control of the media, and doesn't express the will of the majority of people.

I agree there will be 'new shoots' and possibilities for renewal and building better societies, but I don't think they will look like Nafeez thinks they will. He says 'the heart of this crisis is our relationship with the natural world' but then immediately pivots to talking about energy, ie: fossil fuels, electricity, mined resources. This maintains a relationship of domination, whereas what we need is mutuality, repair, balance and to undo the alienation that views the 'natural world' as something 'out there' which we're separate from. This can't happen for people still living in cities, plugged into alienating technologies and having all their physical needs met via industrial processes occurring out of sight in the hinterlands. I hate to say it, but I think rural Trump voters and working class populists elsewhere in the west have a better grasp of this than Nafeez and metropolitan liberal-leftists like him.

As Vinay Gupta put it at the first Dark Mountain festival back in 2010, 'collapse means living in the same conditions as the people who grow your coffee':

cheers,
I

Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously
http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by flash <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=flash' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 16, 2024, 9:39 pm, in reply to "Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

Thanks Ian, I don't fully understand a lot of this stuff and your critique was helpful.

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by Fionn <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Fionn' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 16, 2024, 10:07 pm, in reply to "Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

Ahmed has carved out an academic niche for himself in London...I doubt he's seriously interested in rocking the boat too much. While bringing to light certain truths, he'd have been shunned long ago if he actually went to the crux of the matter and addressed the contradictions inherent in his analysis. As you say, his timid mention of the relationship between civilisation and the natural world only shows how detached his perspective is from it. He's more comfortable paddling in the jargon of change and techno-fantasies than actually taking the plunge and getting his hands dirty by growing some spuds.

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by t <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=TomskiD' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 16, 2024, 11:04 pm, in reply to "Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

I am glad that Ian has cracked Nafeez Ahmad's hermetic naval gazing. I couldn't decode it meself. Secondly, as an outlier in this board conversation, I find myself repeatedly astonished how ppl accept this notion that being close to land and agriculture will somehow save the world. Being polite, I will just point you to the fact that we are on a train that is in motion and that agriculture atm still forms a relatively small part of the problem .. as a big picture. This pov just may be somewhat short of being in the 'primitivism' cult

which is possibly, according to some alternative future (SF) history, the inevitable product of completely collapsing civilization as we know it. This is the least of our problems. It is also defeatism in the face of the neoliberal capitalist system we have here in the west. K264 has an easy life .. hehe

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by Fionn <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Fionn' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 17, 2024, 12:52 pm, in reply to "Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

In general 'being close to land' and agriculture is a death sentence for biodiversity and the environment. One can argue this has always been the case but has greatly accelerated with onslaught of industrial farming techniques in the 1950s. Ireland has 0.1% of its land under native forest cover, the lowest in Europe, and also the lowest levels of organic agriculture...hence our plummeting biodiversity levels. Solutions are only taken seriously in terms of how profitable (in monetary terms) they are to land owners and the economy in general...the usual short-term thinking pervades.

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by t <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=TomskiD' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 17, 2024, 5:32 pm, in reply to "Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

In general 'being close to land' and agriculture is a death sentence for biodiversity and the environment.

My comment 'being close to land' was alluding to Ian's post. It is unlikely that he would advocate agricultural practices that are harmful to the environment.

As you say:

Solutions are only taken seriously in terms of how profitable (in monetary terms) they are to land owners

This dovetails to what I said:

It is also defeatism in the face of the neoliberal capitalist system we have here in the west.

In other words if you change the current 'for profit' system that would be the first step towards dealing with the problem. There is no harm in dipping one's toes into living off the land, organically etc except that it perhaps misdirects one's efforts to change the system first.

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by Ian M <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ian+M' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 17, 2024, 8:32 pm, in reply to "Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

Not sure I understand your objection, t. For me landwork gets to the heart of so many issues with mass civilised society, not necessarily just in the case of food production, but addressing the other fundamental human needs of shelter, clothing, warmth, medicine etc. The dominant culture has expended a huge amount of effort over the centuries and millennia to undermining human autonomy, skilled labour, subsistence-oriented economies, belonging to place etc. with the purpose (often explicitly stated) of removing people from the land, de-skilling them, making them dependent on centralised production, turning them into tax payers, wage labourers and consumers. If we're completely dependent on the civilised system to provide for our every need then we're completely at the mercy of elites and/or the whims of international markets, and must put all of our efforts into work that supports civilisation or face starvation, homelessness, moneylessness. So re-learning some of those lost skills and trying to get a foothold on land that people were cleared from (esp relevant in Scotland where we are) is the best way I can think of to 'change the system' in a meaningful way.

re: defeatism, it rather depends on how whether we're talking about a few isolated, struggling small businesses here & there as is the case currently, or a mass movement leading an exodus from the cities. Hard to imagine at the moment, but in the long term rising costs and depleting resources will make metropolitan life harder and harder to sustain and basically force a reversal of the enclosure process. Plenty of ways it could go wrong, but in the end I think that is the only way to 'save the world' and solve a load of civilisation's ills in one fell swoop. The transhumanists (always a tendency in civilised philosophy - sky gods, heaven, looking to the stars) are going to have to come back to earth. With a thud if they got too high

Fionn said: 'In general 'being close to land' and agriculture is a death sentence for biodiversity and the environment.' - well yes, it rather depends on how it's done. Field agriculture, esp of grains, tends to generate exports and the mercantile/royal/military class to control them. The challenge is how to keep what you produce for yourself and rid yourself of the parasites that are always trying to take it off you and get you to produce more for their benefit. Easier said than done...

cheers,
I

Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously
http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by t <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=TomskiD' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 18, 2024, 9:47 pm, in reply to "Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

Not sure I understand your objection, t.
Naturally, my 'objections' are difficult to place into context, despite myself pushing back on disorganised vs organised activism in my other posts. It's like circling the drain type of feeling for someone that may have been there, a kind of out of body feel (no claims of 100% certainty in any of my analysis btw). Anyway, I have the thread that needs looking at, and I will respond at some point. I'll let you know

Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed

Posted by Ken Waldron <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ken+Waldron' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on June 17, 2024, 1:10 am, in reply to "Re: Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation by Nafeez Ahmed"

"...collapse means living in the same conditions as the people who grow your coffee"

-Great quote...thanks.

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