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Foster Gamble Again
A couple of days ago I received an email from a Pagan list connecting to a “New Paradigm” conference where prominent speakers would be libertarians mixing a dose of conspiracy theory, libertarian boilerplate, and New Age rhetoric into a supposed ‘New Paradigm” for a new world. I warned the list’s members not to be taken in and some were appreciative. But given they have re-emerged into my awareness, I think it is fitting that I repost a slightly edited version of a write up I put on a local list after I heard Foster and Kimberly Gamble at an increasingly surreal presentation they gave at the Institute for Noetic Sciences last year.
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An Evening with the Gambles
Foster and Kimberly Gamble are the producers of the well known New Age movie “Thrive.” On Thursday, March 6 they gave a presentation to a packed audience at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in the hills south of Petaluma. I decided to attend although I had long been a strong critic of the movie’s libertarian vision of what a thriving world would be like. Like so many ideologies, libertarianism promises infinitely more than it can deliver. I had been assured by the gathering’s organizer that I would have an opportunity to ask questions and enter into dialogue, and it seemed a worthwhile thing to do. I even took a copy of my new book Faultlines: the Sixties, the Culture War and the Return of the Divine Feminine, to give to the Gambles. more »
What is Indigenaity in Religion?
With small changes this article appeared in The Interfaith Observer. SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/gus/Downloads/INTERFAITH.doc Can indigenous peoples not practice indigenous religions? What…
Not Just Construction: the shadow side of large organizations
Why do big organizations so often seem perverse, and why do people who are a part of them so often…
Hayekian Insights on Capitalism Part III: Capitalism and Nature
Capitalism undermines the natural systems that support human well-being for the same reason it undermines civil society: the values it…
Capitalism 3.0: A Wonderful Book
Peter Barnes, a founder of the progressive phone company Credo and of the Mesa Refuge, has written Capitalism 3.0, a…
Re-thinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully with Nature
http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/167/201…
Creating Institutions of Care: The Case for Democratic Forest Trusts
In: Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2005. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World…
Turning the Tables: The pathologies and unrealized promise of libertarianism
As a scholar and former libertarian, I have been disappointed at libertarians’ general failure to engage in serious debate with their critics, but I have also been disappointed with most critics’ relatively simplistic attacks on libertarian ideology. I wrote this chapter for a book of essays criticizing libertarianism. Some are among the best critiques written, but none but mine are written “from the inside” so to speak. It demonstrates how libertarian ideology does not understand its own key concepts, such as individuals, freedom, coercion, power, property, contracts, and democracy. Not only does this failure undermine their policy conclusions, it also prevents them from seeing the real possibilities opened up by taking individual freedom as the major value.
This chapter is from Georgia Kelly, ed., Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism. NY: Praxis Peace Institute 2013. Order information for the book is here. more »
Answering critics of Pagan polytheism
Bizarrely some Pagans are trying to claim the term “polytheist” for themselves, and deny it to anyone who looks at…