Capitalism

Must it be all-or-nothing? One of the things that is happening to the human race is that our spiritual nature is slowly growing in strength relative to our animal nature. It's pretty much agreed now that slavery is bad, in contrast to Roman times. Practice is still catching up with theory, but I don't doubt that eventually it will.

A less profound example: lots of people take the time to separate out recyclables from other trash for no reason other than it is the right thing to do.

We've been through a period of astounding growth and change, and there are problems with how we do things. That is different than saying that progress, per se, is the cause of our problems.

I read a book by Barry Commoner years ago where he discussed some of the unsustainable things that we are doing (such as dumping more and more fertilizer into the watershed in order to get smaller and smaller increases in productivity). He was very clear, however, that he was not talking about going back to the nineteenth century, but rather using our experience to engineer a better ecosystem.

I think it's important to be able to see one aspect of Rome as parasitical on the surrounding rural communities, not because it was a bad coming-together-of-political-social-and-economic-forces (word, please!) in the overall context of human history, but rather for what it can teach us about the current world situation and how we can develop a vision to drive towards in building a sustainable world.

Stripped of any specifics that have been attached to the concept in the last fifty years, who can argue with the principle of sustainability?

Anyway, saying that capitalism is our only hope is not much different than saying that human nature is our only hope. It's always been with us and always will.

Darn Almarea, we may actually end up agreeing on some things. I really like your model of human endevour. Mistakes, corrections, more mistakes, more fixing but from a far enough distance generally going up and better.

Since this thread started in the escatology thread, I think a little eschatology is ok.

In general, there are two models for the end of times. One, Jesus finally has had enough, his hope in us has failed. His little experiment has crashed. He returns mad as hell and everybody gets a really bad spanking. The second model (the one Jesus prefered, IMO) has humanity slowly gradually getting better, over coming the defects in our nature, learning to care for and treasure creation and eventually we "get it". Jesus returns, pleased as punch, hugs and handshakes all 'round. And we move in with him.

I believe that socialism and or communism both have demonstrated that they foster the first model. The jury is still out on capitalism. It has had some startling successes and some grim failures. It is in dire need of tinkering and adjustment just now. But we need something not tried before, not something already worn out.

BTW, Commoner was wrong. following his book, agricultural productivity has continued to skyrocket. Techniques like "no-till" farming and efluent pooling/processing from livestock have made small progresses in favor of the environment. I'm very hopeful because there is money to be made. We will find a way.