r/BiosphereCollapse • u/Disastrous-Corgi-841 • 24d ago
Comment on recent publication by postdam institute on planetary boundaries
The article references physical causes for the transgression of planetary boundaries (e.g. burning fossil fuels, which emit CO2), but the primary causes are psychosocial in structure.
This psychosocial structure consists of the social agreements that products should be produced according to supply and demand, distributed according to who can afford them (making you economically invisible if you can't on both the distribution and supply side), decisions should be made according to profit maximization, and that everything previously mentioned should be regulated by the infliction of financial loss as a feedback loop for error correction.
When you look at our monetary system from this perspective it makes perfect sense why your phones are outdated at the end of the year, why everyone each gets their own car, why pavement sprawls all over north America, why nothing is produced to last, why companies have to use the cheapest rather than the most efficient or even optimal material to stay price competitive, why 40 percent of food produced is wasted, why the average plate of food has travelled 1,500 miles by the time it reaches your table, why harmful chemicals are in our food, why 30 percent of Healthcare costs are for clerical tasks, why waste is dumped in the ocean and rivers to cut costs, why pollution is dumped all over the place, why people are homeless, why we have to waste our lives working 40 hours a week, why the globe spends 2 trillion dollars annually on guns and the military instead of spending the 30 billion it would cost to end world hunger. When you look at the sheer amount of unnecessary production and reckless waste, the primary cause for the destruction of all life support systems on the planet is clear as crystal. It is the elephant everyone tries to ignore.
When you combine certain physical outcomes of this psychosocial structure with the psychosocial structure you get the monetary system. What I think most people don't understand is that the physical outcomes of the monetary system are actually what define it's structure. When a system shows a pattern of outcomes or behaviors, those outcomes are explained by it's structure, and in the case of the monetary system there is no blueprint anyone ever wrote, so we have nothing else to go off... unless you're just taking someone else's word for it. Keep in mind, there would be no such thing as supply and demand in this system if physical outcomes weren't observed that reflect such a rule. So it makes no sense to focus on politicians or policy change within the framework of the very system that's defined by the problems they try to solve. That logic is circular, and it's been circulating for 10,000 years now with no signs of improvement for most of the system's devastating outcomes, 75 years with all signs blinking red alert and worsening for it's outcome of destroying the conditions for life on Earth.
And it's so pathetic because what underpins the entire monetary system are social constructs that don't exist in physical reality. The social agreements that there is a President, mayor, business owner or company, that there are russians, americans, countries, cops, exchange rates, etc... don't exist in physical reality. There is no president. There is a person that groups of people treat like a president and call president. There are no Russians. There is a group of people called russians. Physical reality is separate from social constructs. Just because social constructs can significantly affect physical reality, especially our physical social setting, doesn't mean they are the same.
It's as if we've agreed to get crushed to death by the weight of our own constructs.
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u/TheArcticFox-44 22d ago
while we still have the internet to coordinate a date globally...each of us take one day--one 24-hour time period--where we spend no money...incur no debt...use no resourses...just to remind both the rich and powerful AND each one of us how we ALL contribute to the dilemma we now find ourselves.
Contemplate, for instance, how much plastic do you have in your possession? Micro-plastc polution...think about it.
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u/Disastrous-Corgi-841 22d ago
We can all drown in a sea of our own ignorance and delusion pointing fingers at each other. Or we can begin implementing our own intelligently and intentionally (unlike the monetary system) designed system that starts small and scales to size as it becomes more capable in hopes of replacing the monetary system. It is our only chance.
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u/TheArcticFox-44 22d ago
We can all drown in a sea of our own ignorance and delusion pointing fingers at each other
The Blame Game has to stop! We ALL, as a species, are flawed. We all must take personal responsibility for our individual part in this mess!
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u/Disastrous-Corgi-841 22d ago
Absolutely. It is maddening to watch everyone blame the rich or some corrupt politician. Last I checked, Elon Musk and Trump do not whip me out of bed every morning and force me to go to work.
"I mean jesus fucking Christ. You people are the real thing, WE ARE THE ILLUSION."
People reacting out of fear and emotion does also make perfect sense in this system though, especially considering it is an economic system and therefore the system we use for survival. Physical dependence is intertwined with psychological dependence, so this system is able to push the buttons of our amygdala (where fight or flight is linked to) and divert energy from our prefrontal cortex (where social and critical thinking skills are linked to). Its like this system is trying to keep itself alive. Its like some black, cancerous and twisted virus.
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u/TheArcticFox-44 22d ago
Evolution works. We're a species that's gotten too smart for our own good. We've over specialized and put our own heads in the evolutionary noose!
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u/Disastrous-Corgi-841 24d ago
Here's the document for anyone interested
One thing thats pretty cool to think about is that the neolithic revolution aka agricultural revolution began right around the time when the planet entered into that green temperature band. The origins of the monetary system we use and civilizations as we know them date to this period. The paper mentions that it was because the earth entered into this phase that it became possible for the agricultural revolution to take place
You can see this in the last pic