Darias wrote:
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Replying to post 1 by Furrowed Brow]
The market is not based on infinite growth. The economy does not have the capacity to sustain a city the size of a province or continent. Over consumption and a waste of resources is not driven by the market, but by political incentives in a controlled economy driven by spending rather than saving and a whole host of other perverted incentives (such as policies which favor oil industries, making it difficult for alternative energy companies to compete fairly in the marketplace).
Whether the economy is controlled or out of control there is no pressure on a market to be economical when resources are abundant, and any blow back from pollution or destruction of environment is generations away. The
market is about now, and it does not plan long into the future beyond that what its resource of capital can bear. And it will always cuts its losses now to protect its capital. Business will not throw itself on the fire to save the long term future of a market. The impulse is to extract wealth from the market now, not ensure wealth can continue to be extracted from the market in say 700 years times, or even twenty years.
Infinite growth is a problem of national economies and nation states and is a promise to the population of a state to entice them to stay in line and not get uppity.
Darias wrote:Agenda 21 is a political agenda, and therefore violent by its very nature.
I've heard this kind of argument from folk like Stefan Molyneux and other libertarian Ayn Rand fans who have a voice in alternative media. I guess I don't really buy it or maybe it is better to say I buy it completely and accept that all politics and all relationships are based on some level of threat and implicit coercion. The only way to avoid this is to take to the hills and live as a hermit and hope no one finds you. So the question is really what relationships, politics and agendas we accept because we think they are good for us, and which ones we reject because we think they are bad for us.
Darias wrote:Secularism is that which is not particularly religious. Secularism isn't necessarily anti-theistic. It isn't necessarily violent unless it is imposed.
But how can a state be secular without imposing secularism either by way of law or institutional structures. Clearly secularism is a political agenda because it is the separation of church and state, and secularism can be threatened and overturned.
Darias wrote:Religion is not necessarily violent unless it is imposed and forced upon others.
I think even the act of building a church is
violent in that a church sits on land that signals I cannot use that land for say planting wheat or building a swimming pool. If I tried I would be ejected from the land or receive threats of ejection backed up by legal sanctions. In this sense all property is a bundle of latent violence. I think Jean Jacques Rousseau said something along the lines of the first person to put a stake in the ground and say this land is mine founded both civil society and by implication introduced a tyranny. But this is more than just a question of property. the acceptance of rights is backed up by the implicit threat of violence. If I have a right to life and liberty then there is a right to protect these things. I'd say all religion is also a form of political union because they make some claim on how society ought to be organised, it claims a right to exist, and therefore it has a right to defend its existence.....and that implies some degree of
violence.
So yes maybe Agenda 21 is threatening because it is a political agenda. But is it needed because it identifies real problems, or is it just a power grab?
Have we cleared up the point Agenda 21 is not atheism, inspired by atheism or in any way atheistic?
