Note By HealthWrights Staff

asteroid 1

In this provocative essay Chris Hedges quotes Ronald Wright, the author of "A Short History of Progress": "If we continue to refuse to deal with things in an orderly and rational way, we will head into some sort of major catastrophe, sooner or later. If we are lucky it will be big enough to wake us up worldwide but not big enough to wipe us out." Capitalism is not geared to make rational long term decisions for the benefit of the species and the planet. It is driven exclusively by the desire to make even larger profits in the short run for the already rich. The idea that "If we are lucky [the catastrophe] will be big enough to wake us up worldwide but not big enough to wipe us out," was the thesis of an "An Astroid of Oil" published here during the Massive Deepwater Horizon Gulf disaster. I had hopes at that time that this would serve as a wake-up call. It didn't. Nor did the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster alert most people to the need for a radical change. One wonders how big the catastrophe will have to be before we will be willing to face the facts that truly radical change is needed. In the meantime perhaps all we can do is to continue to point out the meaning of the series of catastrophes that we will inevitalbly face.

 


The Article

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_20130113/