{"id":34024,"date":"2018-05-07T07:17:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T12:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34024"},"modified":"2018-05-07T07:17:15","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T12:17:15","slug":"george-monbiots-out-of-the-wreckage-a-friendly-critique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34024","title":{"rendered":"George Monbiot\u2019s Out of the Wreckage; A friendly critique"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"post-image\">\n<div class=\"fimg-wrapper fimg-cl\">\n<div class=\"featured-image\">\n<div class=\"fimg-inner\">\n<div class=\"vm-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"vm-middle\">\n<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2018-05-07\/george-monbiots-wreckage-friendly-critique\/\">George Monbiot\u2019s Out of the Wreckage; A friendly critique<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"backstretch\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/DRKq-jTWAAUHt-P.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section class=\"post-content\">Few have made a more commendable contribution to saving the planet than George Monbiot. His recent book, <u>Out of the Wreckage<\/u>, continues the effort and puts forward many important ideas\u2026but I believe there are problems with his diagnosis and his remedy.<\/p>\n<p>The book is an excellent short, clear account of several of the core faults in consumer-capitalist society, and the alternatives advocated are admirable. George\u2019s focal concern is the loss of community, and the cause is, as we know, neo-liberalism. He puts this in terms of the \u201cstory\u201d that dominates thinking. Today the taken for granted background story about society is that it is made of competitive, self-interest-maximizing individuals, and therefore our basic institutions and processes are geared to a struggle to accumulate private wealth, rather than to encouraging concern for each other and improving the welfare of all. Thatcher went further, instructing us that there is not even any such thing as society, only individuals. George begins by rightly contradicting such vicious nonsense, pointing out that humans are fundamentally nice, altruistic, caring and cooperative, but we have allowed these dispositions to be overridden primarily by an economic system that obliges us to behave differently.<\/p>\n<p>He gives heavy and convincing documentation of- this theme. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with several indicators of the sad state of affairs. \u201c \u2026 this age of atomization breeds anxiety, discontent and unhappiness.\u201d (p. 18.) \u201cAn epidemic of loneliness is sweeping the world.\u201d (p. 16.) Chapter 3 deals with the way neoliberalism has caused the social damage that has accumulated over the last forty years.<\/p>\n<p>But my first concern with the book is that disastrous as it is, neo-liberalism isn\u2019t the main problem confronting us and likely to destroy us.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Monbiot\u2019s Out of the Wreckage; A friendly critique Few have made a more commendable contribution to saving the planet than George Monbiot. His recent book, Out of the Wreckage, continues the effort and puts forward many important ideas\u2026but I believe there are problems with his diagnosis and his remedy. The book is an excellent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[1760,111,2557,161,6112,6996,20062,6665,13548],"class_list":["post-34024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-book-review","tag-capitalism","tag-community","tag-consumerism","tag-george-monbiot","tag-neoliberalism","tag-out-of-the-wreckage","tag-resilience-org","tag-ted-trainer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34025,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34024\/revisions\/34025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}