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July 06, 2004
Rifkin Redux
Hello all. Back with another episode of the wit and wisdom of Jeremy Rifkin. Before I begin though, perhaps I should address a question Eric raised. Who the hell is Jeremy Rifkin and why should you care? To be honest, I've been following his career so long, I had forgotten that he might lack the brand recognition he once commanded. Back in the 80's, it seemed like you couldn't read an article on biotech or gene-splicing without being subjected to his "balancing viewpoint". He founded a small but energetic lobbying organization, the "Foundation on Economic Trends" and instigated a number of annoying lawsuits intended to spike the guns of the nascent biotech industry. Beyond that, he was a moderately prolific author, with no little popularity among the birkenstock set. I first became aware of him in 1987, while reading a refutation of his work in a popular science book. Frankly, what I read did not predispose me to rush out and buy his book. However, in one of those funny little coincidences that make life spooky and mysterious, the VERY NEXT DAY I was urged to read it by a young woman of my acqaintance. Strongly urged. She said if I read ONE BOOK that year it should be "Entropy" by Jeremy Rifkin. She made me promise. So you see, none of this is my fault. A week later, I chanced across that same young woman at a loud boozy party. She asked me if I had read the book yet, and if so, what I thought of it. I proceeded to tell her (in a loud boozy way)that the book might have been considerably improved by the addition of some real physics. I believe I was on point 4 of my 19 point critique when she began edging away from me with that oh so familiar desperate look. Her parting shot was "I still think the book has good ideas." Against igorance, the gods themselves, etc. More to the point, the people skills, much practice they require. I haven't seen her since, but she left a rich legacy. To my surprise I found myself getting a real jones for dear Mr. Rifkin. There was just something so endearingly awful about his lackluster prose and luddite pretensions, that I couldn't get enough of him. I found "Algeny" and read it cover to cover. Then I read Stephen Jay Gould's review of the book "...a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship." Don't hold back Steve, tell us how you really feel. "Among books promoted as serious intellectual statements by important thinkers, I don't think I have ever read a shoddier work." Um, yeah, what he said. I actually HAVE read shoddier works, but I had to dig for em'. Being sporadically completist, I decided to plow through his entire available works. A public library expedition ensued, leading me straight to the subject of today's post "The Emerging Order"( co-authored with Ted Howard ). Cha-ching! Up till this time I had subscribed to the default interpretation of his motives and ideology. He presents himself as a vaguely leftish lawyerly type, well groomed, well tailored, sober as a deacon. Digging into background, we find he cut his political teeth in the 60's anti-war movement. He was a national coordinator for the "National Committee for a Citizen's Commission of Inquiry on United States War Crimes in Vietnam". In 1972 he helped found the "People's Bicentennial Commission" He helped sponsor the first national anti-Vietnam War rally in 1967. In 1966 he organised student opposition to germ warfare at the University of Pennsylvania. So far, so normal. I knew lots of guys like that in college. They tasted the sweet nectar of political activism and never looked back. What sets Jeremy apart from that crowd is that he ISN'T a liberal, secular-humanist, one worlder chowderhead. Within his Dr. Phil-ish breast beats the fiery and brimstony heart of a mystic. A mystic who loves you, yes YOU brothers and sisters, and wants what's best for you. Which, by the way, will involve completely tearing down and rebuilding the structure of modern capitalism. You don't mind, do you? Which takes us back to the question, why should you care? To paraphrase another critic, why flog the carcass of Rifkin's work? Because it isn't dead yet. Because the man would dearly love to be a menace. Because his paltry, stunted vision of the Human Future would preclude the "full flourishing" of our loved descendants. Because he actually had credibility in Washington once, and would like to get it back, God help us. What I'm hoping to do here is exhume some of his more spectacular quotes from the memory hole and prop them up, zombie-like, in Eric's nice, shiny, digital window display. People should know that he has a very, very long history of misanthropic anti-tech screedery. Beyond that, I would hope to address the line-up of usual suspects who find themselves fellow travelling with him. This is a bit of a shift from Classical Values more usual beat. If you find the daily political churn more engrossing, well, I can't really blame you. But someday, the war will be over (or at least managed), and we can turn our attention back to peace time pursuits. And the churn will always be with us. So I say, take a few minutes for the long view. The really long view. If Rifkin, Kass, and company have their way, a great many people are going to die useless, premature, preventable deaths, for no good reason whatever. They will be dying for half-wit ideology, the bad dreams of small dreamers. To ridicule such ideas is no less than they deserve. But enough preamble, lets get quoting!! (Note the contractually mandated CV exclamation marks!!)
...whatever the standard or expert opinion to which one turns, there is no doubt that the oil spigot is about to run dry. p48
It's hard for most of us to imagine that the usable oil on this planet will be gone in the next twenty years or so. After all, it took nearly three billion years of natural evolution to create this tremendous stock of energy. Nonetheless, there is only enough ultimately recoverable oil reserves left to provide each person with 500 barrels. This means , says Lester Brown, that the average American, driving a full-size automobile and averaging 10,000 miles per year on the road, would use over forty barrels per year, or his entire share of of the remaining oil, in just twelve years. p 49 Good thing Reagan deregulated when he did, eh? These are pretty much a standard part of the Rifkin wind-up, the intro panic graphs, intended to assure that reader that things really ARE as bad as he says they are. Authoritative sounding figures supply him with literal scare quotes.
For the past thirty years, the American economy has been relying on technological advances in specific growth industries, most of which are now maturing and showing signs of leveling off in terms of growth. Wonder drugs, the computer industry, photocopying and television immediately come to mind. All of these growth industries have been heavily dependant on large amounts of energy and other nonrenewable resources. More important still, there appears to be nothing on the horizon that can begin to replace these older technologies. About the only major technological advances in recent years capable of reaching a consumer market potential of 100 percent are permanent press pants and pocket calculators. It's not surprising that Dr. James L. Heskett, of the Harvard Business School, has remarked: "We have seen the topping out of technology. We won't have the technological advances we've had in the last twenty or thirty years." p 82
Today, the capitalist system serves much the same function as the Catholic Church did during the medieval era...The capitalist church, like the Catholic Church of six centuries ago, is slowly losing its authority...The American public has become increasingly hostile to the economic system, a trend that will escalate as we move further and further into economic contraction between now and the turn of the century. The list of grievances has become almost endless: unsafe products permanently disable and kill tens of thousands of Americans each year, corporations bribe candidates and illegally buy elections, chemical companies pour deadly substances into rivers and lakes, and the system itself seems unwilling or unable to curb inflation or ease unemployment. p 218-219
The mass anxiety wrought by the steady breakdown of the present system and the emergence of a new and still undefined economic order is becoming more pronounced with each succeeding day. This anxiety is not yet manifesting itself as a frontal assault on capitalism, science, technology and the professional class...Still, like the Reformation period, the submerged anxieties produced by the shifting from one epoch to another are surfacing around specific occurrences that are related to the larger picture...disease is, once again, beginning to provide dramatic focus for the expression of society's individually and collectively felt anxieties. Not surprisingly, the evangelical-Charismatic movements are turning their attention to this area of concern. p 219
Cancer is the new plague. It strikes without warning and seemingly wihout reason....
Just as the Catholic Church was unable to deal satisfactorily with the anxiety wrought by the arbitrary nature of the plague and its ruthless destruction of human life, today's capitalist establishment is also without answers. If there is one element that has shaken public confidence in science and technology more than any other it would be the ineptness of the commercial health establishment and government in dealing with cancer...Today, with billions of dollars of tax money spent, a solution is no more in the offing than before. The reason is that the problem does not lend itself to a particular scientific cure....
On the contrary, it is science itself that is responsible for cancer....
While it is conceivable that the medical establishment could find a new technological cure for cancer, it is more than likely that the cure itself would merely serve to create an even greater set of problems in human biology at some future date. Ultimately, the answer to the problem of cancer (and other more sophisticated diseases that might replace it ) lies in the establishment of a new world view based on an ecologically balanced steady-state economic system. Only by slowing down the entropy process and restoring the natural balance and interplay of nature can the problem of cancer be ultimately put to rest. Until that realization sets in, the popular response to cancer...is likely to ba a mixture of public resentment and hostility toward the scientific medical establishment (which is justified) and a search for alternative cures. That search has already begun.... p 221
Today, millions of Americans are professed adherents of faith healing as an alternative to medical science.... p 221 The Charismatics have found a new confidence amidst the anxiety and chaos of the modern world...That confidence is providing the liberating energy and the potential revolutionary power that could dislodge the existing order. p 222 While we’ve already caught a glimpse of the revolutionary potential in the shift of faith from medical science to faith healing, the full gravity of what’s taking place only becomes apparent upon deeper examination of the underlying assumptions behind the Baptism of the Holy Spirit… p 222 Do you begin to discern the tenuous lineaments of The Solution?
For the Charismatics, proof of election or salvation is supernatural, not materialistic. One becomes convinced that he is saved by the Baptism of the Holy Spirit….for the Charismatic, observable proof is to be found in special gifts... p 223 One of the important aspects of special gifts is that they are, in fact, observable and repeatable, just like scientific phenomena. Unlike science, however, their manifestations do not depend on what the individual does, but what God (through the Holy Spirit) does. The individual is no longer in “control” as with scientific truths. Instead, He becomes the faithful repository of supernatural truths. When a Charismatic “lays hands” on someone, and in so doing, cures them of an ailment by the special gift of faith healing, there is no doubt that the results of the procedure are often observable-as observable as the results of a medical operation. But it is not the special skills or knowledge of people that cures the victim, but the indwelling spirit of God…. p 223
The Charismatics have replaced the scientific method with supernatural power….They have taken the human being from a horizontal perspective to a vertical one…..their challenge to the existing order is profound and could well end up turning the world upside down, just as the Reformation did a half millennium ago. To begin with, vertical experience provides an ahistorical context. The Charismatics believe that God can speak to each person today just as authoritatively as he spoke to the Apostles 2000 years ago. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit sets up a nonlinear frame of reference…His revealed truths are timeless. When they reside in the individual human being and reveal themselves through special gifts, they act to liberate people from the limited world of life and death, past and future. During these moments man and woman become at one with God and the unity of his total being. p 224 While this might appear abstract, at first, it has very real consequences in everyday life. For example, one of the overriding themes of the age of expansion is “technique”….The ultimate objective of technique is to overcome time and space limitations altogether and to produce an ideal, efficient state. Technique is humanity’s way of trying to create a timeless world, a world of total unified being, omnipotent, all present and eternal. Technique is a horizontal race to a vertical finish. Of course, human beings can never win the race; in fact, we can never even finish it. The more people apply technique, the more we reduce the components of life to their particulars and the further away we slide from the universality we’re striving for. The age of expansion is characterized by the notion that people can overcome all limits. Time and space, however, are the very real limits imposed upon all life. By trying to overcome these limits, people try to become God; this failure is reflected in a world in shambles, destroyed largely by science, technique and our own hubris. p 225
The Baptism of the Holy Spirit eliminates the need for efficiency and technique. In so doing, it sets up conditions for return to a balanced ecosystem. With special gifts people can overcome this world’s time and space limitations and become one with God directly, now. Humanity doesn’t need to get sidetracked on a long and futile journey technologizing people and nature…..Speaking in tongues is a more powerful form of communication than any satellite network…..The gift of prophecy is more powerful than any computer information system……it is providential and inerrant. p 225
It is no accident that the Charismatic movement has emerged at the very time that our economy is moving from the industrial to the postindustrial age…p 225
Special gifts, say the Charismatics, are God’s signs. In a secular sense, they are indeed signs-signs of the anxiety and hostility being engendered by the emergence of the new postindustrial order. Imagine, for a moment, the significance of tongues….Speaking in tongues contradicts all communications theory…..If everyone spoke in tongues, it would be indecipherable according to communications logic. Yet millions of people are now doing just that. They are speaking in tongues and the evidence is that they are communicating more effectively with each other as a result. ….p 227 Next stop Alderaan, twenty minutes... Anyone can speak in tongues; it provides the kind of access that people feel is denied them by those who hold a monopoly over communications in this society. Speaking in tongues requires no special training. It is a universal language available to all men and women……It does not provide partial information, or inaccurate information, but the complete body of truths necessary for life. This is so because the truths are those revealed by God, and therefore all-inclusive. I'm tempted to say"Don't get cocky, kid!". But this all happened a long time ago. Backed up by the most sophisticated communications hardware that money can buy, evangelicals are now threatening the long-standing hegemony over the airwaves previously enjoyed by CBS, NBC, and ABC…..All of this is just for openers, boasts Jim Bakker, head of PTL television network. PTL stands for both “People That Love”and “Praise The Lord”. p 106
During the show viewers are urged to call in and discuss their personal and spiritual problems with some of the 7,000 trained volunteers staffing some sixty regional telephone centers strategically placed across the country... …..the studio lights darken, the camera scans the audience as heads are lowered in prayer…looking into camera left, the Reverend James Bakker, attired in an egg-blue suit, standing against a blue-velvet background, begins quietly: “There is a prostate gland condition that God is healing right now …there is a spinal condition, perhaps a missing disc that is being restored…someone to my left has a kidney ailment…there are growths and in the name of Jesus those growths are gone…you will not need surgery…there is something that goes into the marrow of the bone…and the Lord is healing it.” A toll-free telephone number is flashed on and off the TV screen. The telephone banks begin to light up as thousands of callers from across the country dial in. The operators have a computer form in front of them listing ailments in alphabetical order, starting with arthritis. Other boxes list major emotional and spiritual problem areas. p 107
The answer to impending resource limits is Elmer Fucking Gantry... Maybe this explains how he learned to work a room. In books to come, Mr. Rifkin grows a tad bit more shy about exposing his secret heart. But if you know what to look for, it's all still there. I can prove it. Our next Rifkin Opus, mercifully not soon, will be "Entropy", the big daddy book of Rifkindoom. In it, he lays out a more secular path to eco-salvation, but if you're a Giant Puppet Head person, don't worry. We still get to destroy Capitalism!
posted by Justin on 07.06.04 at 09:09 PM
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Good day to each and every one of you, and welcome to the Carnival of the Vanties Number 95, the Bastille Day Edition. Since today is July 14th, French Independence Day (also known as Bastille Day), I was thinking I... [Read More] Tracked on July 14, 2004 01:07 AM
Comments
What kind of technology would Rifkin have us use to halt cancer -- after all, cancer has been around as long as the written word. So -- oh, I get it! If we stop writing, the cancer goes away! Hmm... Doug Campbell · July 7, 2004 02:32 AM Wow, that's a lot of manure to swim through. Was there supposed to be a diamond at the bottom it all? This sort of Luddism is getting distressingly common among the "progressive" left. A perfect example is one of the most recent threads in this blog, "How to Save the World": http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/ This guy believes that: the life of hunter-gatherers was idyllic, peaceful and pretty much disease-free; we all lived longer (except for those who got eaten by predators) and had more quality time; mankind's invention of agriculture and civilization was just a huge mistake leading to hierarchy, tyranny, squalid concentration and plagues; we're all worse off than our hunter-gatherer ancestors; anyone who says otherwise is a victim of progressivist propaganda; and if we all knew the real truth, we'd all just walk away from civilization altogether. I kid you not; read the blog yourself if you don't believe me. The flowcharts are especially amusing. (Of course, he doesn't explain why he himself has not abandoned the evils of civilization; too cold, perhaps? Not enough night life?) I strongly suspect that Dogbert wrote a book as a hoax, and this guy swallowed it whole. Raging Bee · July 7, 2004 11:03 AM It's interesting that this is seen as something a little different from the usual thing on "Classical Values".On reading this Rifkin drivel, the first thing that popped into my mind was a very "Roman" reference: The resemblence of Rifkin's Luddism to the early Christian Fathers' contempt for Greco-Roman philosophy and technologies. "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Rifkin, meet Tertullian. Tertullian, Rifkin. Demetrius · July 7, 2004 01:15 PM Raging Bee, my apologies for the excessive length of the post. All manure and no diamond pretty much sums up the Rifkin canon. Basically, I'm trying to expose people to manure they haven't read yet, and encourage them to spread it around, so the length is sadly unavoidable. J. Case · July 7, 2004 02:33 PM First, I wasn't demanding an apology, just stating that there was a lot of manure. Now all I need to do is find something useful that will grow in it. Second, I believe that much of this neo-Luddism comes from a desire to have a quiet pretty world where everyone benefits, no one gets hurt, and there's no radical change to upset the "balance of nature" once it is established. They've pretty much realized that such a "steady-state" system (Rifkin's phrase) is impossible in the modern high-tech world, so they're imagining an idyllic "golden age" in the past where everything was perfect and everyone was happy, until some evil trickster made people want more, and the balance was forever lost. If you read the blog I cited, you'll find a story surprisingly similar to the Garden of Eden/Fall of Man story, without the God bits, since religion is backward and stupid and uncool. Underlying all this is a certain amount of flat-out selfish hypocricy: the authors of all this dreck won't actually give up THEIR modern conveniences; nor will they mention how many (other) people have to die before "sustainability" is achieved and the old pre-civilization "balance of nature" is restored. It's sort of like a bunch of prissy suburbanites who want all the amenities of prosperous city life, but don't want to look at the ugly factories, workers, and infrastructure needed to produce them. Raging Bee · July 7, 2004 04:28 PM Mark 16:17-18 Hmmm.... This hunter-gatherer Eden? Feminists have long theorized that it was women who invented or discovered agriculture. If both theories are true, then Woman (Eve, Pandora) was responsible for the Fall of Man. Hmmm.... Schopenhauer? Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato the Elder) the Lesbian-worshipping gun-loving selfish aesthete · July 8, 2004 01:02 AM The theory is that women invented or discovered agriculture - and everything else pertaining to harmony with nature - and men took control of it, beat the women into submission, and invented capitalism and hierarchy to compensate for their insecurity about something or other. Raging Bee · July 8, 2004 10:25 AM |
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Brilliant!