Figuring out how to spend billions avoids the fact that we are clueless
A just submitted reply to an article on allocating billions in the NYT.
What expense will be worth a dime in a century? I do not think it is at all clear that any allocation of any sum makes sense without such a long hard look. Infrastructure? Are we talking about renewing and enabling a culture of oil and private vehicles? Oil will run out. The question warrants attention. Education? How and for what? Is it predictable work will be this or that? Is the degree to which we will or should work be an issue? Everything is more or less up for grabs. No segment of society has had the gumption to say so. Everyone seems to be watching to see when crisis will shake us from reverie. Such thinking as I have done leads to massive changes society seems unwilling to entertain. A move to a world of regions envisioned by Christopher Alexander and others (minus cars!), a move to ethics and aesthetics in thinking as a basis for all human action, and the transition of religion from divided survival modes to accepting universal spirituality as the future. All these developments have to do with a willingness to allocate everything in the future to what will not hurt or harm the people and the world. This alone would make militarism no option at all. We would go nonviolent. We would see democracy as the essential nature of reality because only individuals, all individuals, have the right to determine how they will live. We would reject punitive responses to wrongdoing and use understanding as a basis for response. No takers, no future.
