America’s Deficit Attention Disorder

[polly7]

(This also applies to Canada and many other countries, in case someone thinks I'm not being fair by posting it here. I just thought it was a very good read.)

Published Aug 15 2012 by Yes! Magazine, Archived Aug 15 2012
America’s Deficit Attention Disorder
by David Korten

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-08-15/america%E2%80%99s-deficit-attention-disorder

Conclusion:

......There is no magic bullet quick fix. We must reframe the debate by bringing life values and living systems logic to the fore and turning the prevailing rights hierarchy on its head. The rights of nature must come first, because without nature, humans do not exist. As living beings, our rights are derivative of and ultimately subordinate to the rights of Earth’s living systems.

Human rights come, in turn, before property rights, because property rights are a human creation. They have no existence without humans and no purpose other than to serve the human and natural interest. Corporations are a form of property and any rights we may choose to grant to them are derivative of individual property rights and therefore properly subordinate to them.

The step to a prosperous human future requires that we acknowledge life, not money, as our defining value, accept our responsibilities to and for one another and nature, and bring to the fore of the debate the social and bio-system deficits that are the true threat to the human future.

Replacing cultures and institutions that value money more than life with cultures and institutions that value life more than money is a daunting challenge. Fortunately, it is also an invigorating and hopeful challenge because it reconnects us with our true nature as living beings and offers a win-win alternative to the no-win status quo."

[Igel]

1. If you look in "bio-systems" you'll find few rights.

There's no right to eat.

There's no right tobe healthy.

I guess there's a right to speak your mind, using some sort of a communications system.

More complex systems (think "primates&quot have some sort of idea of fairness. But it's strictly perception-based and immediate, enforced by the mob or the individual. That's the only legal due process in nature.

There's a right to rape, in most cases, as long as the female can't stop you. Or, I guess, the male. Except that females have the right to kill their mate, whether he's raped her or not.

There is the right to self defense. Heck, there's also the right to violence in order to secure things like food and shelter and sex.

First amendment: The right of the organisms to free expression and implementation of self-awareness shall not be infringed.

Second amendment: The right of an organism to secure, by any means it deems appropriate, food, shelter, sex, or survival shall not be infringed.

Third amendment: The right of an organism to implement its conception of individual or group-based fairness shall not be infringed; however, such an organism is subject to the same treatment should the way it implements equity be perceived as non-equitable by other members of its species.

Nature values no life. Forms of life, however, while not usually valuing itself, does act to defend itself and ensure its own survival.

(This is the kind of drivel Rousseau rather liked when he was fairly young. As he matured, he rather changed his opinion. "We" like the young Rousseau, before he became all fact-based and non-preachy.)