{"id":9499,"date":"2015-06-28T07:04:04","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T12:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9499"},"modified":"2015-06-28T07:04:04","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T12:04:04","slug":"beyond-the-real-time-catastrophe-of-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9499","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Real Time Catastrophe of Capital"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"subheadlinestyle\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/06\/26\/beyond-the-real-time-catastrophe-of-capital\/\" target=\"_blank\">Beyond the Real Time Catastrophe of Capital<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"subheadlinestyle\">Dystopia Now<\/div>\n<div class=\"main-text\">\n<p><strong>A Pundit Takes on the Pope: \u201cDynamists\u201d and \u201cCatastroophists\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a recent column on Pope Francis\u2019 latest encyclical<em>,\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/w2.vatican.va\/content\/francesco\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html\"><em>Laudato Si<\/em><\/a>, the conservative\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/21\/opinion\/sunday\/ross-douthat-pope-francis-call-to-action-goes-beyond-the-environment.html?_r=0\">Ross Douthat says<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cAfter this document, there\u2019s no doubting where Francis stands in the great argument of our time\u2026.But,\u201d Douthat elaborates, \u201cI don\u2019t mean the argument between liberalism and conservatism. I mean the argument between dynamists and catastrophists.\u201d Here\u2019s how Douthat understands that \u201cgreat argument\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDynamists are people who see 21st-century modernity as a basically successful civilization advancing toward a future that\u2019s better than the past. They do not deny that problems exist, but they believe we can innovate our way through them while staying on an ever-richer, ever-more-liberated course\u2026.Dynamists of the left tend to put their faith in technocratic government; dynamists of the right, in the genius of free markets. But both assume that modernity is a success story whose best days are ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCatastrophists, on the other hand, see a global civilization that for all its achievements is becoming more atomized and balkanized, more morally bankrupt, more environmentally despoiled. What\u2019s more, they believe that\u00a0<em>things cannot go on as they are<\/em>: That the trajectory we\u2019re on will end in crisis, disaster, d\u00e9gringolade\u2026that current arrangements are foredoomed, and that only a true revolution can save us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Douthat puts Pope Francis in the \u201ccatastrophist\u201d camp because of the pontiff\u2019s call for humanity to take climate change seriously by undertaking global action and \u201cradical change\u201d to move off fossil fuels and selfish profiteering and consumerism. Thanks to anthropogenic global warming, the Pope writes, \u201cDoomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beyond the Real Time Catastrophe of Capital Dystopia Now A Pundit Takes on the Pope: \u201cDynamists\u201d and \u201cCatastroophists\u201d In a recent column on Pope Francis\u2019 latest encyclical,\u00a0Laudato Si, the conservative\u00a0New York Times\u00a0columnist\u00a0Ross Douthat says\u00a0that \u201cAfter this document, there\u2019s no doubting where Francis stands in the great argument of our time\u2026.But,\u201d Douthat elaborates, \u201cI don\u2019t mean [&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":[2484,6790,141,6789,6475,6571,1921,6471,6791],"class_list":["post-9499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-catastrophe","tag-catastrophists","tag-climate-change","tag-dynamists","tag-encyclical","tag-laudato-si","tag-new-york-times","tag-pope-francis","tag-ross-douthat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499","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=9499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9500,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499\/revisions\/9500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}