I may have mentioned this before, but listening to Avakian reminded me of a line from poet Gary Snyder's broadside from 1969 reprinted in his great collection Turtle Island: "Since it doesn't seem practical or even desirable to think that direct bloody force will achieve much, it would be best to consider this a continuing 'revolution of consciousness' which will be won not by guns but by seizing the key images, myths, archetypes, eschatologies, and ecstasies so that life won't seem worth living unless one's on the transforming energy's side."
Avakian is one of those key archetypes, a writer/activists who sees things clearly, and an agent of the "transforming energy" if ever there was one. I also count Chris Hedges, his colleague Dwyane Booth, aka, Mr. Fish, the great Robert Scheer, Wendell Berry, and of course Paul Street in that company. Avakian's vision might seem "pollyannishly dream like" to Jazzme, but it strikes me as the only possible roadmap for a livable future. Now more than ever, failure to create an alternative society based on eco-socialist and truly democratic principles will indeed mean "the common ruin of all" as Marx and Engels predicted. It's going to be, like always, a struggle getting things going in earnest and making the "ecological view" the new standard for human affairs, but as reality in the form of climate crisis continues to assert itself, the necessity for total revolution will eventually be obvious to enough humans to realize that an evolutionary path to a happy destiny is not compatible with the ethos of capitalist exploitation. Anyway, thanks for consistently attempting to expand human consciousness about these life-and-death matters in the face of political and cultural resistance based on greed, ignorance and bullshit.
Ordered: From Ike to Mao Amazon $6
Thanks for the advice
Cheers
I may have mentioned this before, but listening to Avakian reminded me of a line from poet Gary Snyder's broadside from 1969 reprinted in his great collection Turtle Island: "Since it doesn't seem practical or even desirable to think that direct bloody force will achieve much, it would be best to consider this a continuing 'revolution of consciousness' which will be won not by guns but by seizing the key images, myths, archetypes, eschatologies, and ecstasies so that life won't seem worth living unless one's on the transforming energy's side."
Avakian is one of those key archetypes, a writer/activists who sees things clearly, and an agent of the "transforming energy" if ever there was one. I also count Chris Hedges, his colleague Dwyane Booth, aka, Mr. Fish, the great Robert Scheer, Wendell Berry, and of course Paul Street in that company. Avakian's vision might seem "pollyannishly dream like" to Jazzme, but it strikes me as the only possible roadmap for a livable future. Now more than ever, failure to create an alternative society based on eco-socialist and truly democratic principles will indeed mean "the common ruin of all" as Marx and Engels predicted. It's going to be, like always, a struggle getting things going in earnest and making the "ecological view" the new standard for human affairs, but as reality in the form of climate crisis continues to assert itself, the necessity for total revolution will eventually be obvious to enough humans to realize that an evolutionary path to a happy destiny is not compatible with the ethos of capitalist exploitation. Anyway, thanks for consistently attempting to expand human consciousness about these life-and-death matters in the face of political and cultural resistance based on greed, ignorance and bullshit.
Hi Paul
Lots to digest here. Your prose radically different from usual style. It's a revolutionary step for me to pivot from:
-Hopefully optimistic the progressives in US politics build their numbers high enough to withstand the neocon assault in Congress
........and....
-rallying behind Revcom which ideals seem pollyannishly dream like.
Peace
PS sorry to disappoint