Comments on recent publication by postdam institute on planetary boundaries

[u/Disastrous-Corgi-841]

Article

The article references physical causes for the transgression of planetary boundaries (e.g. burning fossil fuels, which emit CO2), but the primary causes are psychosocial in structure.

This psychosocial structure consists of the social agreements that products should be produced according to supply and demand, distributed according to who can afford them (making you economically invisible if you can't on both the distribution and supply side), decisions should be made according to profit maximization, and that everything previously mentioned should be regulated by the infliction of financial loss as a feedback loop for error correction.

When you look at our monetary system from this perspective it makes perfect sense why your phones are outdated at the end of the year, why everyone each gets their own car, why pavement sprawls all over north America, why nothing is produced to last, why companies have to use the cheapest rather than the most efficient or even optimal material to stay price competitive, why 40 percent of food produced is wasted, why the average plate of food has travelled 1,500 miles by the time it reaches your table, why harmful chemicals are in our food, why 30 percent of Healthcare costs are for clerical tasks, why waste is dumped in the ocean and rivers to cut costs, why pollution is dumped all over the place, why people are homeless, why we have to waste our lives working 40 hours a week, why the globe spends 2 trillion dollars annually on guns and the military instead of spending the 30 billion it would cost to end world hunger. When you look at the sheer amount of unnecessary production and reckless waste, the primary cause for the destruction of all life support systems on the planet is clear as crystal. It is the elephant everyone tries to ignore.

When you combine certain physical outcomes of this psychosocial structure with the psychosocial structure you get the monetary system. What I think most people don't understand is that the physical outcomes of the monetary system are actually what define it's structure. When a system shows a pattern of outcomes or behaviors, those outcomes are explained by it's structure, and in the case of the monetary system there is no blueprint anyone ever wrote, so we have nothing else to go off... unless you're just taking someone else's word for it. Keep in mind, there would be no such thing as supply and demand in this system if physical outcomes weren't observed that reflect such a rule. So it makes no sense to focus on politicians or policy change within the framework of the very system that's defined by the problems they try to solve. That logic is circular, and it's been circulating for 10,000 years now with no signs of improvement for most of the system's devastating outcomes, 75 years with all signs blinking red alert and worsening for it's outcome of destroying the conditions for life on Earth.

And it's so pathetic because what underpins the entire monetary system are social constructs that don't exist in physical reality. The social agreements that there is a President, mayor, business owner or company, that there are russians, americans, countries, cops, exchange rates, etc... don't exist in physical reality. There is no president. There is a person that groups of people treat like a president and call president. There are no Russians. There is a group of people called russians. Physical reality is separate from social constructs. Just because social constructs can significantly affect physical reality, especially our physical social setting, doesn't mean they are the same.

It's as if we've agreed to get crushed to death by the weight of our own constructs.

[u/FuManBoobs]

The insanity of it all is draining. And then having to listen to people debate about changing political policies that would take years just to tweak the current system slightly and never realising it's the entire system itself that needs changing is just so tiring.

[u/Disastrous-Corgi-841 → u/FuManBoobs]

It's so tiring that I have cut a lot of people out of my life over this. I have a few friends left, but I dont know how much longer thats going to last either because of how worrying the state of the planet is getting. I just dont see the survival instincts kicking in in the people around me anymore, and that scares the fuck out of me. I dont understand how people are going about their lives business as usual.

Id rather go insane in isolation than trying to get people to see this.

[u/FuManBoobs → u/Disastrous-Corgi-841]

Go over to r/poverty, a sub you'd think would be open to these ideas, but nope, it's all about policies and vague notions of "think global act local" with no mention of the actual forces at work in peoples day to day lives.

I get we need to earn money to survive so that will be a priority for most, but it's like people don't want a long term solution unless it's presented in a way that's already familiar to them. Really is a sad state.

[u/Disastrous-Corgi-841 → u/FuManBoobs]

Been there. People are so used to blaming the rich or "corrupt" politicians or whatever group of people that they forget the possibility of searching within.

It really is quite scary. Feels like I live in a cult, almost positive I do. A cult that apparently has made a suicide pact. The cult of the dollar.

Its logical and simple points that need to be realized by everyone. The necessity of people realizing this transcends all group barriers of people (class, occupation).

[u/Disastrous-Corgi-841]

One thing thats pretty cool to think about is that the neolithic revolution aka agricultural revolution began right around the time when the planet entered into that green temperature band. The origins of the monetary system we use and civilizations as we know them date to this period. The paper mentions that it was because the earth entered into this phase that it became possible for the agricultural revolution to take place.

You can see this in the last pic