Bee's everwhere going missing . Mass extinction event ?

[Aerial Boundaries]

I'll just leave this here.

This isn't news as such, we've been aware of this for decades and it's pretty much like we're in a fugue state about the whole thing. Completely asleep. Who would possibly want to acknowledge something like this?

They've labelled it the Holocene extinction event.

I don't mention this often, even to my friends in real life, but I still maintain only the destruction of the capitalist system can really bring about the change we and the planet need. The current system is making very little progress on this issue, and frankly most of the ruling class turn their heads away from the destitute and the planet they are responsible for ruining and look towards their wealth instead.

The people at the top don't give a shit, and contribute comparatively little to society when held up against the amount of damage they do with their greed. They need to go, now. I don't care how, they need to fuck off.

[noisy]

Well said AB. I totally agree.

I know that people have a lot more time for bees, but I haven't seen any wasps at all so far and summer has started here in the UK. They would persistently bother us here due to the fact we have a large back garden, with the occasional nest/bike over the years ( under the eaves, a bad place to have one,getting in through open windows ).

And now, not one ??? Strange. An Entomological crisis - Extinction of Hymenoptera ( I believe is the proper term )
Or just a Mass Bee Exodus - Do they know something we don't ?

P.S. I just realised that I haven't seen many ants either, and they were always all over the place. ( all classed as Hymenoptera )

[fujee]

I'll just leave this here.

This isn't news as such, we've been aware of this for decades and it's pretty much like we're in a fugue state about the whole thing. Completely asleep. Who would possibly want to acknowledge something like this?

They've labelled it the Holocene extinction event.

I don't mention this often, even to my friends in real life, but I still maintain only the destruction of the capitalist system can really bring about the change we and the planet need. The current system is making very little progress on this issue, and frankly most of the ruling class turn their heads away from the destitute and the planet they are responsible for ruining and look towards their wealth instead.

The people at the top don't give a shit, and contribute comparatively little to society when held up against the amount of damage they do with their greed. They need to go, now. I don't care how, they need to fuck off.

I think a few post-Marxists posit that the limit of capital is nothing other than total ecological collapse, and I am inclined to agree with that. For all the insight Marxism and Western Marxism offers, the idea that late capitalism will corrupt and engender revolution 'naturally' is surely a facile conclusion to draw in this current climate. Waiting for the revolution, as in classical Marxism, is tantamount to the wait for a bus that will never come. To me, it really does seem late capitalism is the final stage, and we are stuck in it, until some catastrophe occurs.

[Aerial Boundaries]

I have half a response typed up to that but I am incredibly mashed, so I'll leave the rest for whenever I wake up.

[Mexicola]

For the record, I'm putting these articles here in lieu of a separate thread. It's not just about the bees, although clearly that is a massive issue within the bigger picture.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... ?CMP=fb_gu

[Jonse]

I'll just leave this here.

This isn't news as such, we've been aware of this for decades and it's pretty much like we're in a fugue state about the whole thing. Completely asleep. Who would possibly want to acknowledge something like this?

They've labelled it the Holocene extinction event.

I don't mention this often, even to my friends in real life, but I still maintain only the destruction of the capitalist system can really bring about the change we and the planet need. The current system is making very little progress on this issue, and frankly most of the ruling class turn their heads away from the destitute and the planet they are responsible for ruining and look towards their wealth instead.

The people at the top don't give a shit, and contribute comparatively little to society when held up against the amount of damage they do with their greed. They need to go, now. I don't care how, they need to fuck off.

I clicked on bees and got politics.

Or maybe not. Fuck the word "politics". Such an ugly word. I'm not going to focus on any more "political" problems, only human problems. You should mention that more often because it gets people to think even if they say you're full of shit. I agree. As someone who supports the fuckin' free market I still agree. There comes a point when something that might have been good is no longer good and it needs to be replaced with something better. And people always ask me "what, you know anything better[than capitalism or socialism generally]?"...no, I don't. They don't either. Doesn't matter though.

Also I'm going to bookmark that "sixth extinction" thing because I read it and have a few things to say about it later.

[Mexicola]

Surely not

[Aerial Boundaries]

I think a few post-Marxists posit that the limit of capital is nothing other than total ecological collapse, and I am inclined to agree with that. For all the insight Marxism and Western Marxism offers, the idea that late capitalism will corrupt and engender revolution 'naturally' is surely a facile conclusion to draw in this current climate. Waiting for the revolution, as in classical Marxism, is tantamount to the wait for a bus that will never come. To me, it really does seem late capitalism is the final stage, and we are stuck in it, until some catastrophe occurs.

I am also inclined to agree with you. Bear in mind however that the wait and see people are only one admittedly large camp of Marxists. One I was a part of in college.

One of the essential elements of Marx's theory as far as I understand it (I am shamefully rusty) is that revolutions past and present spring from systemic changes in the environment and production technologies. Those induce a change in the economic structure which has an eventual impact on the common ideology of the lower classes giving all the classic ingredients for a massive fundamental change in society.

As it stands we are experiencing a twofold material change right now. On the one hand we have the environmental crisis, and on the other we have emerging advanced technologies, both in communications (which are fundamental to organising production) and in practical applications. The extraction of new types of non-harmful fuel, biotech, advanced robotics, efficient microprocessors and quantum computing, etc. The latter situation may both enable us to eventually do away with the human side of production entirely, and produce in ways which do not harm the environment (note that this is not definite, we may indeed find that the limits of our planet coupled with little interest in true space exploration at the current time may render this infeasible before we wipe ourselves out.) This poses a huge problem to the ruling class, as that kind of gradual change would lead to mass unemployment (discounting white collar intellectual labour.) It is difficult to say, but one outcome could be just the kind of change in ideology that is necessary for a revolution, violent or non-violent, quick or gradual. If so it probably would not be in form like the ones we have witnessed in history, I think.

My point is that whichever comes first, the technology or the collapse of the worldwide ecosystem, could dictate which way the axe swings. At the moment the environmental issue is coming at us at full speed. So I agree with you under certain quite likely conditions.

Side note: See when I said that in a certain direction we could do away with human involvement in production? This is a very bad thing in capitalism obviously, as unemployment is not sustainable nor is it wanted by anyone including it's supporters. But the true communism that I still believe is a more ideal, freer, happier way to live relies entirely on that! In that situation, a revolution in capitalism would have a more perfect basis for forming a better society than ever before.

I clicked on bees and got politics.

Or maybe not. Fuck the word "politics". Such an ugly word. I'm not going to focus on any more "political" problems, only human problems. You should mention that more often because it gets people to think even if they say you're full of shit. I agree. As someone who supports the fuckin' free market I still agree. There comes a point when something that might have been good is no longer good and it needs to be replaced with something better. And people always ask me "what, you know anything better[than capitalism or socialism generally]?"...no, I don't. They don't either. Doesn't matter though.

Also I'm going to bookmark that "sixth extinction" thing because I read it and have a few things to say about it later.

It sounds weird, but to me everything to do with culture or society is political. My definition of politics is matters concerning the behaviour between one or more humans. Pretty broad definition there, so I wont be surprised if people disagree. You are quite sensible not to use the actual term and refer to it in a different way, as soon as you say politics people tend to switch off or go into a defensive position.

I wont get into a discussion here about the free market as that would side track this thread even more haha. If you are in the mood to be exhausted by super-duper-serious debate PM me. I might take a while to respond though



I am so sorry to have completely derailed this thread...

[Jonse]

lol, this thread was necroposted in so I doubt it matters.

I have no debate because there's really nothing to say. I mean it really goes no further beyond "are you producing something that isn't hurting anyone in any way or creating a monopoly? are you also not promoting an absurd level of consumerism with whatever you produce?" and if the answer is no then I don't really care or think that the government getting involved (at least over here) would make things better. But the answer is almost always yes, so ultimately I'm just supporting an idea, same way I'll support the idea of a true commune on a national scale if I see it work out. And what's happened here hasn't worked out for quite some time and so it's a detriment to society and continuing it is just kind of this way we further destroy ourselves for just...like no reason at all. It has me jaded, it's really depressing. I look at stuff like videos of the congress over here and the president speaks and says something just really general and straightforward that pretty much everyone agrees with and the political party that elected him will stand up and clap...and the other one will just kind of sit there and frown, and that's all they ever do regardless of what's said.

And I just kind of see it all as this elaborate adult version of just passively going "nananananaaaanaaaaa!" to a player of a game on the opposite team, and we play this game because we can't just beat up each other with blunt objects anymore. I have no other way of describing it.

[jcnporter]

I'll just leave this here.

This isn't news as such, we've been aware of this for decades and it's pretty much like we're in a fugue state about the whole thing. Completely asleep. Who would possibly want to acknowledge something like this?

They've labelled it the Holocene extinction event.

I don't mention this often, even to my friends in real life, but I still maintain only the destruction of the capitalist system can really bring about the change we and the planet need. The current system is making very little progress on this issue, and frankly most of the ruling class turn their heads away from the destitute and the planet they are responsible for ruining and look towards their wealth instead.

The people at the top don't give a shit, and contribute comparatively little to society when held up against the amount of damage they do with their greed. They need to go, now. I don't care how, they need to fuck off.

I clicked on bees and got politics.

Or maybe not. Fuck the word "politics". Such an ugly word. I'm not going to focus on any more "political" problems, only human problems. You should mention that more often because it gets people to think even if they say you're full of shit. I agree. As someone who supports the fuckin' free market I still agree. There comes a point when something that might have been good is no longer good and it needs to be replaced with something better. And people always ask me "what, you know anything better[than capitalism or socialism generally]?"...no, I don't. They don't either. Doesn't matter though.

Also I'm going to bookmark that "sixth extinction" thing because I read it and have a few things to say about it later.

I would consider the dominant system in the world to be neoliberal capitalism, however others would argue that we are still dominated by socialism.
With respect to the environment, it's kind of a moot point - the danger is the world economy's need to constantly expand or we end in crisis or collapse. It's driven both by our monetary system and the stock market, which require ever-expanding amounts of money (debt) and profit. It has a symbiotic relationship with population expansion.
The solution is to do away with our current type of capitalism that requires this expansion, but the types of socialism that have so far existed may not necessarily fix the problem.
It's also a choice to an extent between freedom and authoritarianism - can we choose to protect the environment or are we happy to have restrictions imposed upon us. The kind of freedom most of us say we would like could lead to environmental (or population) collapse, the alternative is trusting power to the few, which is where we are now.

[Aerial Boundaries]

"but the types of socialism that have so far existed may not necessarily fix the problem."

Words such as Socialism, Communism and Anarchism are so far removed from their real meanings these days. Socialism has never as far as we know existed in any form proper. Some 20th century societies have called themselves socialist, but that is a different thing.

"The kind of freedom most of us say we would like could lead to environmental (or population) collapse, the alternative is trusting power to the few, which is where we are now."

Yet, we have little freedom, and the environment is collapsing anyway. I see nothing for the current system to offer us any more really. It is also unknown what proportion of the population truly trust in our governments and corporations. I would argue a significant proportion of us are truly unhappy with the situation but feel there is nothing that can be done.

"however others would argue that we are still dominated by socialism. "
Hm. I'm not sure who says this apart from right wing americans and UKIPers haha.

[jcnporter]

Yet, we have little freedom, and the environment is collapsing anyway. I see nothing for the current system to offer us any more really. It is also unknown what proportion of the population truly trust in our governments and corporations. I would argue a significant proportion of us are truly unhappy with the situation but feel there is nothing that can be done.

As you say that's the great unknown, isn't it? That's what I was getting at - how many of us are ready for the responsibility of greater freedom? I get the feeling that many are happy to pass their responsibility for the planet to governments.

"however others would argue that we are still dominated by socialism. "
Hm. I'm not sure who says this apart from right wing americans and UKIPers haha.

Indeed, unfortunately there's a lot of 'em!

[TheStatPow]

In The Hitchiker Guide To The Galaxy the dolphin does escape from earth before everything goes to shit. So I guess right now the bees are doing the same.



We're fucked D:

[re-phaelam-ed]

i was just in Napa Valley....there was a SHIT TON of bees.
but, yes heard the bees are at risk.

the thestatpow says....bees go...we go.

humans are the problem...we are a fucking cancer on this planet.

[fujee]

I think a few post-Marxists posit that the limit of capital is nothing other than total ecological collapse, and I am inclined to agree with that. For all the insight Marxism and Western Marxism offers, the idea that late capitalism will corrupt and engender revolution 'naturally' is surely a facile conclusion to draw in this current climate. Waiting for the revolution, as in classical Marxism, is tantamount to the wait for a bus that will never come. To me, it really does seem late capitalism is the final stage, and we are stuck in it, until some catastrophe occurs.

I am also inclined to agree with you. Bear in mind however that the wait and see people are only one admittedly large camp of Marxists. One I was a part of in college.

One of the essential elements of Marx's theory as far as I understand it (I am shamefully rusty) is that revolutions past and present spring from systemic changes in the environment and production technologies. Those induce a change in the economic structure which has an eventual impact on the common ideology of the lower classes giving all the classic ingredients for a massive fundamental change in society.

As it stands we are experiencing a twofold material change right now. On the one hand we have the environmental crisis, and on the other we have emerging advanced technologies, both in communications (which are fundamental to organising production) and in practical applications. The extraction of new types of non-harmful fuel, biotech, advanced robotics, efficient microprocessors and quantum computing, etc. The latter situation may both enable us to eventually do away with the human side of production entirely, and produce in ways which do not harm the environment (note that this is not definite, we may indeed find that the limits of our planet coupled with little interest in true space exploration at the current time may render this infeasible before we wipe ourselves out.) This poses a huge problem to the ruling class, as that kind of gradual change would lead to mass unemployment (discounting white collar intellectual labour.) It is difficult to say, but one outcome could be just the kind of change in ideology that is necessary for a revolution, violent or non-violent, quick or gradual. If so it probably would not be in form like the ones we have witnessed in history, I think.

My point is that whichever comes first, the technology or the collapse of the worldwide ecosystem, could dictate which way the axe swings. At the moment the environmental issue is coming at us at full speed. So I agree with you under certain quite likely conditions.

Side note: See when I said that in a certain direction we could do away with human involvement in production? This is a very bad thing in capitalism obviously, as unemployment is not sustainable nor is it wanted by anyone including it's supporters. But the true communism that I still believe is a more ideal, freer, happier way to live relies entirely on that! In that situation, a revolution in capitalism would have a more perfect basis for forming a better society than ever before.

Yep, totally agree with this, and your point about Marxists as a group is spot on, there is this perception of the left and especially of left-wing academics that they are all die-hard historical materialists, but you find now that it is actually a very small group of thinkers and academics who would consider themselves 'Marxist'. Personally, I've encountered far more people sympathetic to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism than I have Marxism, which makes for good seminars as most students encounter Marxism early on as their 'consciousness-raising' theory to champion, which sits against older tutors who want you to see problems from a different, less homogenised perspective.

Marxism seems to make total sense initially, and often is very apposite at exposing the spectacle of capital and its ideology (especially Adorno's work on Art and Jameson's work on Postmodernism) but then, for me at least, the totalising conception of history which it posits is too much of a grand narrative for it to now apply successfully to this infinitely more complicated world, especially compared to when Marx was writing.

[Aerial Boundaries]

I think parts of it are still relevant, particularly when you look at the way capitalism corrupts itself from the inside (or as Alasdair Gray put it "Man is the pie that bakes and eats itself, and the recipe is separation.") We can see that kind of thing with mass unemployment, and the way the ruling class paradoxically tries to make workers less efficient by depriving them of necessities (i.e. look at what is happening with the welfare state in multiple Western countries), as well as the whole boom and bust cycle itself. Recent times have proven that some of Marx's predictions have held up even in this day and age.

It is quite amazing that any of it holds up at all in a way, seeing as it was incomplete even when he wrote it. He died before he got to really finish the whole theory up. He never got around to writing in depth on historical materialism or the 'dialectic' method which is a real shame.

I am sort of lost these days as I imagine many political people are. I've had to come to terms with the fact that Marxism doesn't describe the totality of modern society, even though it has made huge contributions to my own view of the world (I still value it for that too, it completely opened me up to a different way of thinking). Anyway, I haven't yet found the missing pieces of the puzzle and that has been eating away at me for some time. I don't think I'll ever give up the idea that a truly socialist society is the way to go however. It's just a question of getting there...

[fujee]

Well I think this is what more contemporary strands of theory - like Poststructuralism - tries to do. It rejects the totalising, grand narrative theoretical approach, as in Hegel and Marx, and instead looks for instances of critique which might prove fruitful in application at specific sites. I have no doubt Marxism is useful and still clearly applicable today in certain circumstance, but the classical Marxist conception is not something that sits completely comfortably with me, it can't possibly remain as dogmatic as it once was because the world is now a more complicated place than Marx foresaw, in terms of subjectivity, ideology, technology, identity etc..

Anyway we have well and truly derailed this thread, back to the bees. Save the Bees!

[Aesthetics]

[The Telepathic Kid]

bye me