My Perspective

As a passive nihilist (born of skeptical pessimism) I tend to disbelieve in movements based on humanistic ideals. At the same time, I tend to doubt my own judgment in such matters because I know that I innately look at humans and the world from a rather dark corner. My continued interest in TZM (The Zeitgeist Movement) and TVP (The Venus Project) springs from my desire to be wrong in my negativity and open to the possibility of a better alternative.

When I posted my poll (How will humanity convert to a resource based economy? ) I was wondering how prevalent the idea of revolution is among people who wish to so dramatically alter human civilization from its' current trajectory. Given my penchant for negative forecasting, I don't think it is going to be very long before bad goes to worse and choices have to be made about how to respond to the deepening crisis of capitalism and the hardening of fascism.

My recent thinking on this subject has led me to the notion that the only way to get from here to an RBE (resource based economy) is through the bridge of socialism. Socialism has many faces and a bad reputation due to, among other things, Stalin-ism in the former Soviet Union and Mao-ism in China before they turned fascist. But those so-called Communist regimes had little to do with Marxist theory and the working people were not the beneficiaries as was planned before the counter-revolutions. Any revolution runs the risk of producing a worse situation than was the case before the revolt, but waiting for the PTB (powers that be) to come to their senses and decide that an RBE is in their best interest is not realistic.

A revolutionary communist movement with the objective of creating an RBE on a global scale could command the resources and political will to achieve what waiting on evolution cannot. Waiting for evolution will more likely bring about another dark ages if not the extinction of humanity. I'm not convinced we can avert disaster no matter what we do, but doing nothing but talking about some better future will clinch the deal. All species eventually go extinct, but humans appear to be the first that can foresee and maybe even forestall its' own demise.

Or am I just being too pessimistic...?