City Strolls - events - meetings
Monday, November 10, 2008
Capitalism in Crisis, and the Power of the Imagination a talk by Dr. Richard Greeman Saturday 15th November, 7.30pm, free
Ecotopia, Capitalism in Crisis, and the Power of the Imagination
a talk by Dr. Richard Greeman
Saturday 15th November, 7.30pm, free
hosted at the Electron Club in the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
"Ecotopia is a bet you can't refuse. Global capitalism in crisis is structurally unable to halt ecocidal productivism and the looting of the environment for quick profit. As a result, the planet is likely to become uninhabitable in two or three generations as tendencies like global warming, nuclear proliferation, flooding, epidemics, food shortages, pollution of air and water, and destruction of human communities increasingly combine in destructive synergy.
If there remains a marginal (say 1 in 100) chance for human society to survive, it would entail replacing the competitive profit system with a planetary network of producers -- a cooperative commonwealth or democratic socialism. Against the near certainty of planetary catastrophe under capitalism, we must bet on the unlikely dream of a harmonious, healthy ecosocialist world. The `Ecotopian Bet' is one we can't refuse.
Let us then begin by dreaming the dream, by imagining a technically feasable, ecologically sustainable post-capitalist future and historically possible roads leading to it. One such road, based on theories of cybernetics, chaos, emergence and an idea of Cornelius Castoriadis, I call the 'New Archimedes Lever.' It involves connecting the historically proven lever of solidarity with a global electronic platform (the Internet) in order to `lift the earth' before it succumbs to capitalist ecocide." - Richard Greeman
Longtime U.S. libertarian socialist Richard Greeman was awarded his Columbia Ph.D in April, 1968 while occupying Columbia University as one of the radical leaders of the student strike. He is best known for his translations and studies of the Franco-Russian novelist and revolutionary, Victor Serge, whose posthumous novel Unforgiving Years, has just been published by N.Y. Review Books, translated and introduced by Greeman. He is one of the founders of the Praxis Research and Education Center in Moscow, Russia, and lives in Montpellier, France. He is the author of "Beware of Vegetarian Sharks", available at http://www.lulu.com/content/923573.
For those who can't make it the the talk will be streamed live online at: http://www.anarchotv.net
For people in Edinburgh the talk will also be taking place on November 16th, 7.00pm, at Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh.
=========================
The Electron Club is a voluntary run space where people interested in things like free open source software, circuit bending, hardware hacking, computer recycling, streaming, audio and video editing, green technologies, and amateur radio can meet, use equipment, and share and disseminate their skills and ideas.
There are a number of ongoing groups and project at the Electron Club, for more information see the website: http://www.electronclub.org
contact: info@electronclub.org
=========================
_______________________________________________
Announce mailing list
Announce@electronclub.org
http://www.electronclub.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/announce
Bob, 21:38
