“Woke”
. . . is thought to mean “I’ve become conscious” or “now I understand” re: issues that concern social injustice, structural racism, environmental degradation, etc.
“Is it conventional wisdom that the United States is the land of the free, the home of the well-off, and a force for democracy worldwide?” Well, wake up, US affluence was built on the backs of slave labor and our geopolitical influence is a function of maintaining over 500(!) military bases worldwide, more than any other imperial power in history.
“Have we been taught that free-market capitalism is the system that fosters prosperity because it’s most conducive to economic efficiency and optimal allocation of resources?” Well, wake up, what it really fosters is social and environmental exploitation … and a degree of inequality that explains the current scourge of oligarchy and plutocracy.
The “woke” awarenesses are commendable. An issue is that they tend to lead to an over-idealistic vision re: “A Better World is Possible.”
Surely a better world is possible. But there needs to be a deeper awakeness, a more discerning enlightenment, regarding what kind of world ultimately will be satisfactory and sustainable … based on a more realistic appreciation for the actuality of the human condition.
[the following adapted from Kirk Sale’s 1983 E. F. Schumacher Society Annual Lecture]
I must add here a note that may be painful for many social changers having a progressive vision: Bioregional diversity means exactly that. It does not mean that every region, every polity or commonwealth, will build upon the values of democracy, equality, liberty, freedom, justice, and other suchlike desiderata. It means rather that truly autonomous bioregions will likely go their own separate ways and end up with quite disparate values, beliefs, standards, and customs; diverse economic and political systems — some direct democracies, some representative democracies, yet, also, undoubtedly, all kinds of aristocracies, theocracies, principalities, duchies, and palatinates as well.
We must cultivate systems which allow people to be people in all their variety, to be wrong upon occasion and errant and bad and even evil, to commit the crimes that as near as we know have always been committed — hostility, brutality, subjugation — and yet systems in which all social and civil structures will work to minimize such errancies and, what is even more important, hold them within strict bounds should they occur.
Bioregionalism, properly conceived, is such a construct, for it provides a scale at which misconduct is likely to be mitigated because bonds of community are strong, and material and social needs for the most part fulfilled; a scale at which the consequences of individual and regional actions are visible and unconcealable, and violence can be seen to be a transgression against the environment and its people in defiance of basic ecological common sense; a scale at which even error and iniquity, should they happen, will not do irreparable damage beyond the narrow regional limits and will not send their poisons coursing through the veins of entire continents and the world itself. Bioregionalism, properly conceived, not merely tolerates but thrives upon the diversities of human behavior and the varieties of political and social arrangements those give rise to, even if at times they may stem from the baser rather than the more noble motives.
