Thursday, April 26, 2007

more meta context

Following my discussion of prevailing metacontexts, their assumptions and origins, this post presents a pithy summary of the prevailing ethos within academia and the media that establishes the politically correct metacontext of western society. The consequences of this metacontext are profound, particularly in terms of the larger perspective on the global future and the ongoing and/or imminent clash between Islam and Christianity.
The most neglected imperative for sustainability remains the social dimension of future development. Economically, all places on the planet can flourish and the global environment be sustained: we have the knowledge to do this. That we don't is a function of social aspects of culture, political will and ideology: that the social imperative for sustainability remains poorly and inadequately addressed is a direct result of the prevailing metacontext outlined by these two posts.
Implementation of sustainability entails real environmental intervention (and not just protests, concerts, celeb fests and post-modernist rhetoric) that requires:
  • leadership
  • clear principles
  • moral integrity, and
  • individual empowerment
none of which can be achieved unless the dominant mind set, the social metacontext, is changed.
Ecomyths are important only in that they are a beacon to the lack of awareness endemic to the intellectual framing of contemporary issues. They are the embodiment of the prevailing metacontext of stasist belief and control.

update:
I come at these conclusion from a libertarian, dynamist, frre-market perspective. I take great solice in the fact that thinkers from a contrasting ideology reach the same conclusions. Here, from a discussion with Frank Furedi:
  • The thrust of mine and others’ questioning of environmentalism comes from a view which used to be considered the hallmark of left-wing thinking – namely, we must understand that the problems that face the world are not biological or natural or problems of religion; they are social problems. In contrast to other sections of society, one thing that defined left-wing thinking was to appreciate that, whether it is poverty or unemployment or whatever, these are social rather than natural problems. I think the critique of green politics continues within that tradition, a tradition that began with the nineteenth-century critique of Malthus and which continues through the arguments on spiked about environmentalism today.’