OBITUARIES: Murray Bookchin, 85; Writer Pioneered Social Ecology

[Viking12]

Murray Bookchin, 85; Writer Pioneered Social Ecology and Influenced Green Parties
By Valerie J. Nelson, Times Staff Writer
August 9, 2006


Murray Bookchin, an anti-capitalist thinker who in the early 1960s was among the first theorists to bring ecology into the political debate, arguing that economic policies based on profit were harming the environment, has died. He was 85.

-snip-

A self-described eco-anarchist, Bookchin raised an alarm about pesticides and promoted alternative energy sources in his 1962 book "Our Synthetic Environment," published several months before Rachel Carson's better-known "Silent Spring."

-snip-

Through his writing, Bookchin introduced a theory called social ecology, which blames environmental woes on human behavior and a capitalistic, consumer culture.

To save the planet, he said, people needed to change how they treat one another.


http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-bookchin9aug09,0,6697568.story?coll=la-home-

[Dead_Parrot]

1. Rest easy, Murray

And be grateful you're going to miss what happens next.

[NNadir]

2. What a brilliant man.

Of course capitalism is the root of all evil and the environmental problems of the day can be answered by demanding anarchy. This is why the great socialist paradise in China is free of environmental problems.

This is why places like Somalia and Rwanda - which have anarchy and not much capitalism - are environmental paradises, much like Lebanon.

I do so love social theory. It's so meaningful and so useful. I mean, "Green" ideology is just a vast success, which is why wishful thinking is leading to the complete collapse of the atmosphere which will have the happy result of producing anarchy, after which everything will be much better.

All of the dead in all of the anarchic cultures around the world are relieved of any worries after all. True they had to watch their children be raped or tortured in front of their eyes, or starve to death, but now that they're dead, they are relieved of any concern about the matter. In any case what the fuck do the "greens" care about any of that? Being green is about white people, and let's face it, the people of Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, not being all that white, are ill equipped to enjoy anarchy as much as we here in our little would be utopias enjoy talking about anarchy.

Let's face it, dead people in anarchies are nowhere near as cool as a bucket of methanol, a few kilos of lye and a biodiesel contraption located in the garage of the mc mansion, or a bottle of pure grain alcohol, tax exempt. You can always dump the methanol saturated glycerin in the back yard, and as a point source, nobody's going to know.

Talking in complete abstractions that have nothing to do with the laws of chemistry and physics is clearly the answer to all of the problems of the world. You want to deal with energy? It is enough to say "Capitalism sucks," and everything will be all better. The laws of physics and chemistry, have no bearing on anything having to do with energy - it's a matter for people with the word "social" in their titles, like "socialist" or "social science." It's amazing that no one has seen how easy it is to solve. Of course, there are a few people telling us about these wonders - but it is very difficult to hear what they are saying since their heads are so far up their asses, the sound is somewhat muffled.

Well back to reality. More or less, I'm unavailable, since I'm out on a mission to recover the 313,978,781 people who were killed by the new Chernobyl at Forsmark, which is the greatest environmental tragedy of our times. A diesel malfunctioned - which is of course international news, not because anyone was injured really, but because a bunch of people who don't understand anything at all about energy or physics, can say the word "nuclear" when describing this "Chernobyl." Bleeding burned people, all of whom are white Swedes, litter the Baltic, and the entire army of "eco-anarchists" - whatever the fuck that piece of tortured language is supposed to mean - are out on a rescue meeting, driving the big diesel powered Rainbow Warrior around collecting the bodies.

We would ignore these people, of course, if they were coal miners - especially if they were in Asia or in the Ukraine - or if they victims of air pollution - but we know what's sexy and whats not. How do we know: There are plenty of assholes, thankful, to remind me of victims who count and victims who don't count.

Speaking only for myself, it's is shame it took this particular asshole, Bookchin, 85 years to die. I'm going to guess that his "green" acolytes won't last quite so long, because, even as they preach of wholly theoretical nirvanas, the lives of every fucking person on the planet is in severe danger, those who deserve it, and those who tried, albeit without much hope given the magnitude of slogan reinforced ignorance, to seriously prevent what is about to happen.

But I give up. I'm so fucking sick of this fucking world; I'm so fucking sick of ignorance, I'm coming to point of accepting that the best I can hope for dubious booby prize of schadenfreude. I'm so angry, because none of this had to be. Whatever. It's all useless now. There is no justice in the sense that Murray got to die in bed and not at the hands of the anarchists he so prized. Many of his acolytes won't get to die in bed, because the fraction of people who die comfortably in bed is about to precipitously decline. Again, all that's left is some hope of schadenfruede.

They don't die in bed here, of course, but their malnutriton goes far beyond the intellectual malnutrition who could take a pixilated bunch of slogans and confuse it with thinking:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/davidblair/apr06/anarchyindarfur.htm

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Not a fan, I take it?

:hi:

[Viking12]

4. Whew, must be tough work takin' on the strawmen like you do....

Quite obvious you've never read Bookchin.

[NNadir]

5. And I assumed you were not reading me.

Didn't I ask you to put me on "ignore?" Didn't you just make a grand pronouncement about having done so?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=61914#62082

Why not spare yourself from anything I have to say? Our level of mutual respect is pretty clear, and as you've declared previously, you find me unpleasant.

No, I have NOT read Bookchin, nor do I care to do so or see any reason to do so, given the clear stupidity represented in his obituary.

I can tell in fifteen seconds the difference between a person who can identify the core of the problem - which is a matter of physics, chemistry and technology and - to the extend that population dynamics and carrying capacity are involved, biology - and people who are too distractable and intellectually disorganized to flesh out the real issues because they too chase after their pet irrelevant windmills.

It is easy to blame "capitalism" for everything that's wrong with the world, since "capitalism" is a broad abstraction. Everyone is talking about the environmental impact of China. Capitalist? Socialist? Anarchy?

I note that the problems of energy and the environment effect all of humanity, irrespective of social system. I have noted many times that neither anarchies nor socialist countries have avoided these issues, any more than capitalist nations have. In many places that are not ruled "for profit" the environmental devastation is far greater than what armchair "intellectuals" can even imagine. (Of course, my contention is that armchair "intellectuals" - especially the self declared kind - are themselves a big cause of the problem in the first place.) Therefore it should be clear that social systems or economic systems are not the cause of the disaster we face. I note that some of the most ravished places on earth are precisely those that have experienced grand social system experiments. People here often cry about Chernobyl - even as they ignore the disaster of Ukrainian coal mines - but Chernobyl did not occur in a malignant capitalist society. Instead it occurred in a place characterized by the grand socialist experiment, an experiment that did, after a while, flirt with anarchy.

Anarchies fare the worst in terms of environmental degradation and in terms of human suffering. The matter of course, is much more serious for those who are experiencing anarchy rather than people of questionable moral standing or wax romantic about it. But let's face it, the reason that our world is so severely threatened is precisely because there are whole lot of people who wiggle around offering all kinds of off topic evasions.

I've been hearing this kind of pseudo-intellectual crap my whole adult life. When I was a teenager, I even bought into some of it; there was a time that I even admired the mass murderer Chairman Mao. But I grew up, and developed some intellectual and moral sense and that has made all the difference.

You can be sure I will never read Bookchin. Given what I can glean from the report of his death - his obituary happily being the first time I heard of him - it would embarrass me to say that I had. I read a great deal but don't have as much time for it as I wish. Therefore it is necessary for me to use a shorthand to determine where my attention should lie. In general, I rely on quick scans to determine what is worth careful reading and what is not. Except for reading things that take less than fifty seconds to apprehend - your post being an example - generally I only read people who I expect, from such scanning, to be serious. That senile old fool, Bookchin, didn't make it through the scan.

But look on the bright side. Irrespective of whether you can work the ignore function consistently, I'm going to be writing here much less, since at the end of the day, I'm more and more resigned to the fact that nothing I can say or do is going to prevent everyone from getting exactly what they deserve.

I feel terrible because I have children, but I cannot avoid that reality that spitting into the wind generated by the silly speculations of billions of idiots is largely a waste of time.

[Viking12]

6. I used to find you unpleasant...

...but I've come to realize you're a harmless, ignorant blowhard. Kind of like the Cliff Claven of the E&E forum.

Anyone that would write a 1000 word rant trashing a prolific author that he'd never read is an intellectual midget. Anyone that reduces the world's energy and environmental problems to merely "a matter of physics, chemistry and technology" can never be taken seriously.

Buckminster Fuller once quipped, "An educated man knows everything about something, and something about everything." While you pretend to know everything about nuclear energy, it becomes more clear with each post you know nothing about economics, politics, psychology, or the art of persuasion.

[NNadir]

7. Maybe you're confusing quantity with quality.

Now, I get you're TV show reference, not because I wasted a lot of time watching sitcoms but because pop culture has this way of suffusing itself into life through because it's prolifically produced.

I know who Danielle Steele is too, and will never read any of her books, either. She's very prolific and she's an author and it's pretty easy to tell, as it is with your anarchist friend, that's she's tripe. I don't have to read her books to know that.

Given that you confuse the word "prolific" with "worthwhile," I'm quite sure that I am uninterested in your reading list. I am also uninterested in your derivative ideas about what does and does not constitute education. It is true, for the record, that for my money and time, I'm less interested in the social "sciences" than in other fields. I do question whether familiarity with the writings of anarchists makes one "politically aware."

Here's some Wikipedia quotes from your hero:

An anarchist society, far from being a remote ideal, has become a precondition for the practice of ecological principles." (from "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought", 1965)

"Peter Kropotkin described Anarchism as the extreme left wing of socialism - a view with which I completely agree. One of my deepest concerns today is that the libertarian socialist core will be eroded by fashionable, post- modernist, spiritualist, mystic individualism."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin

Libertarian socialist? Core?

The rest of the quotes there are similar worthless crap that is vague to the point of meaningless. I guess neither he, nor you, have marveled on the wonderful ecology of Dafur. Whether in your benighted view citing a hack anarchist would be an element of the "Art of Persuasion," as you call it is certainly not a concern of mine. Tell it to someone who cares.

In fact, I can't recall that I've ever seen a single original though you've produced here. The only reason I am even aware of you is that twice you offered negative opinions of me in threads, one in which you opined that I was a troll. So what? I've been attacked by much more sophisticated people who have done so in ways that were both more insightful and/or witty. I've had critics who have actually caused me to think. That's neither here nor there. I'm really not familiar with you, but I can guess pretty well, from the two or three posts you've written that I've actually read, where you're coming from. I certainly am relieved that you don't like me.

I'm sure you're very impressed with yourself. Many people with a deep appreciation of the social "sciences" are. Regretfully, I don't share your high opinion of your own intellect. This entire thread is a waste of time, as more and more threads are. As I said earlier, all that may be left is an opportunity for some Schadenfreud.

I hope when the seas rise, your television set is on high ground. I wouldn't want to miss an episode of whatever passes for culture in your mind, should the waters short the thing out.

And now, not wanting to waste any more time on sitcom thinking, I'll make you number 3 on my "ignore" list.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bananas]

10. who's #2?

#1 - jpak
#2 - ?
#3 - Viking12

[bananas]

9. You're on a mission?

"Well back to reality. More or less, I'm unavailable, since I'm out on a mission to recover the 313,978,781 people who were killed by the new Chernobyl at Forsmark, which is the greatest environmental tragedy of our times."

[NNadir]

11. Forsmark isn't the greatest environmental disaster of all time?

From the reaction at DU, I was certain that it at least killed as many people as say this disaster:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

As an arbiter of good energy sense and a deep committment to safety, I am quite sure that you, Bananas, have been a world leader in trying to prevent the scourge of new Chinese hydroelectric dams. Afterall, as you never tire of telling us, this disaster killed, according to Wikipedia, almost 175,000 people, 26,000 in a single night, and the rest from the resulting disease and famine. Moreover, you frequently post pictures from the 5,960,000 buildings that collapsed, and frequently tell us of the suffering of the 11,000,000 people affected.

I am convinced that this more recent case,

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WDP/is_2005_July_25/ai_n14940574

resulted in much further discussion on your part on how hydroelectric facilities continue to be too dangerous to contemplate, even in a time of global climate change.

I am also quite certain that you will revise my obviously low number of dead from the the Forsmark scram, and prove that I am minimizing the tragedy of the Formark disaster by asserting that only 313,978,781 people died when the reactor scrammed. Surely you will point out that everyone on earth will die after Forsmark, and note once again, that, after Chernobyl, everyone on earth will die.

Why, I'm quite sure that the Formark disaster has fully depopulated Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway as well as vast stretches of Northern Russia! Is it not the case? I always rely on you to produce clear and unbiased discussion of energy risk.

As soon as I can get there - there are some flight delays owing to the fact that we need to be sure that no one ever faces any kind of risk under any conditions (thereby assuring our immortality) - I intend to wade into the vastly radioactive wasteland (formerly known as Scandanavia) to expiate for my sins of claiming that nuclear energy is the only form of risk to which dumb people pay attention.

Now I understand why it was necessary for me to repeatedly bump (13 times) this thread because it so excited the imaginations of all of our anti-nuclear DU energy experts:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=43122

Certainly these 65 dead, in a Mexican coal mine, (and I never did find out if they bothered to dig out the bodies) pale in comparison to the 313,978,781 + killed at Forsmark, no?

And, can you imagine, in spite of this vast tragedy, the two surviving Swedes, clad in radiation protection suits, intend to restart Forsmark 1 in a couple of weeks after - get this - analyzing the problem that killed all of those people?

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NNadir]

13. I'm on a mission on behalf of the terminally stupid.

On this planet, terminal stupidity IS God.

Although I've never been particularly religious, I have finally figured that out, and so yes, one could argue that I'm on a mission from "God" as I prepare to sacrifice myself in highly radioactive Scandinavia to add myself to the piles of the hundreds of millions killed there.

So far as I'm aware, the ratio of people killed by Chinese nuclear plants to people killed by hydroelectric facilities is zero, but if you live on a terminally stupid planet, that statistic requires, even in the face of 200,000 actual deaths from dam failure, a statement about the risks of nuclear power plants in China. The two topics are in clear relation to one another. It is a perfectly reasonable means of rational analysis to assert that the failure of Chinese dams should raise concern about Chinese nuclear reactors. If any number of people are killed in any energy related procedure anywhere at any time, either by accident, or by war, or by terrorism the appropriate response is to say "nuclear." And what is the reason for that? Who the fuck cares? The word "nuclear" is so scary, that one can tear up constitutions that are more than two centuries old by merely saying the word "uranium," as in "We know Saddam Hussein has been seeking uranium in Niger." Using this word, "uranium" or similar words like "radioactive" or "nuclear terrorism" one can inspire the citizens of a prominent North American nation to rain petroleum fueled bombs on the most ancient cities of the Western world, those in the fertile crescent - where small trivial inventions like writing and agriculture were first practiced, in an orgy of homicidal frenzy.

We have a God indeed.

And now for your continued amusement here's a statement about the 2004 historical rate of death in Chinese coal mines, not mentioning the rate of death from burning coal, not that we care about anything like Chinese deaths when everybody in Scandinavia, a region of the world which after all is populated almost entirely by white people - and mostly blond white people at that - has been killed by the greatest environmental disaster in human history - the unplanned shutdown of the Swedish nuclear reactor, Forsmark I.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4330469.stm

Mind you, 6000 is just the official death toll, from the Chinese coal mines, I mean, and not from the scram at Formark I, the latter being the subject of wide international attention while the former - well, let's not bore anyone.

As we know well, real deaths from coal mining, as opposed to deaths that could happen in nuclear power plants, don't count. This is especially true in countries like China, where relatively few white people live.

[bananas]

14. bottom line

A round-trip flight to Finland is "rich toys for rich boys" - who's paying for it?
Are you being played, or will you get paid?
How much are your handlers getting paid?
What will you be doing there?
Do they have a tv interview set up?
An obese American flies in to lecture Finns on how wasteful they are?
Hill & Knowlton are getting paid well - are you?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Hill+Knowlton+nuclear&btnG=Search

[NNadir]

16. Solar energy promoters are paying for it.

They have been paid billions of dollars to produce 0.015% of the electricity of the United States. There should be a huge profit in that: The rate they collect for their energy is nearly 800% higher than the busbar cost of any other kind of power. Though they are not as flush with money as the ethanol farmers - who have been paid tens of billions of dollars to produce 0.2 exajoules of energy, the solar guys are pretty well off. They're sold out with orders.

The purpose of the entire exercise is not to have me lecture the Finns on anything, since - as the Finns are all dead from radiation poisoning. Dead people don't hear anything, irrespective of who the publicity company lecturing them is. Didn't you and your friends all hear that everyone in Finland is dead because of the Formark tragedy? The anti-nuclear industry is completely up in arms to disprove the nuclear industry's contention that there were no injuries whatsoever at Forsmark, that the reactor core was not damaged, and with some minor redesign, the reactor can be quickly restarted. Given the thosands of news stories and posts on the internet you, Bananas, and all of your friends know that the ratio of dead white blonde Scandanvians killed by Forsmark trivializies the hundreds of thousands of dead non white Chinese dam collapse victims at the Banqiao collapse, especially since the Banqiao dam collape didn't involve white people so much as people living in the anti-capitalist socialist nirvana of 1970's China. Ditto for the tens of thousands of dead non white Chinese coal miners, and of course, any incidental deaths from global climate change, not that your comrades have much interest in energy deaths from technologies that are not nuclear.

You guys always go for what's sexy.

I am white and my presence on the pile of dead bodies in Sweden will be more interesting and worthy of attention, than say, ten million Africans killed in a drought. No interview is set up. This is an execution, not a Greenpeace circus show. It's not like I'm going to hang from the ornamental mast of a huge diesel powered boat wearing a chicken suit to show that I am serious about renewable energy growing by 8,783,752% by 2584.

I don't know anything at all about Hill and Knowlton, which is an advertising company. I don't have a degree in marketing. If I did, maybe I'd market things, since I'm becoming, especially through stuff I read here, an expert on how gullible people are. I could for instance, claim that the solution to global climate change is to pass "gazillion solar roofs bills," and to produce breathless news conferences every time some guy somewhere runs his television for two hours a day on $30,000 worth of solar equipment. Once the bill got passed, I could collect a check even if no one actually put solar cells on their roofs, thus reversing cliamte change.

Now, since the coal companies - whoops I mean the "solar will save us" companies are paying - and getting me to shut up, I will be executed by standing next to the reactor - the "new Chernobyl" as it's called, which is spewing billion and trillions and quadrillions and brazillions of megacuries of radiation, killing everyone who sets foot in Scandavia.

I thought at your level of understanding of these things, you, Bananas, would know all about these things. Aren't you working on promoting wide misunderstanding of what happened at Forsmark?

[bananas]

15. By 2020, nuclear power will provide 4% of China's electricity

Wowee!
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_40/b3953066.htm
"nuclear power only kicked in about 2% of China's total power supply last year"
"In fact, demand for power is growing so fast that even if China builds all the nuclear plants on the drawing board, industry officials say atomic energy will account for only about 4% of total electricity generation. That's because the country is also building dozens of conventional power plants."

[jpak]

17. Sickest...Post....Ever....

OMFG