We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Profit Pathology and Its Alternatives [47:46m video]

Click here to access speech by Michael Parenti carried on Dandelion Salad website. 

If you have not heard the insightful views of Parenti before, you should definitely hear him take apart the many myths capitalists use to sell their system, the many contradictions in the system, and disasters it causes for working people that results from capitalism for the first 32 minutes. The balance of his talk is about his views on socialism which I think are much less important. 

This was an informal presentation to a group at Utah Valley University at Orem, Utah sometime earlier this year.