Many progressives have a firm belief that the current capitalist system of capitalism is sucking the planet dry. True enough, yet the roots of this system go way deeper than capitalism or corporations. The core of the problem revolved around the excessive human ego and the patriarchal mentality of nearly all the world's civilizations.

Capitalism works because it encourages people to produce more and to innovate, creating jobs and economic prosperity. Without these things it is difficult for us at this time to imagine how we could have social stablity. So there is an understandable obsession towards more and more growth. Capitalism however as it is currently constructed is not sustainable in any sense of the word as it functions in an exploiative and unsustainable way encouraging people that consuming more and more stuff is key to success and well being in life.

The question is whether capitalism is essentially exploiatative as Noam Chomsky and
company say--the old guard left--or whether a new transitional (such as what Paul Hawken talks about in his book Natural Capitalism) form of capitalism can emerge to help us to realize this vision of a sustainable and socially just society?

After participating in the 2003 planetwork conference I come across Chris Dent's Glacial Erratics Blog. He describes the Planetwork people as a "soft money crowd..." I assume because many of the participants are rich in ideas but have no money to implement them. This is the case with most progressive gatherings. It is important to understand the dynamic here and why it may be ineffective and dysfunctional.

What is lacking in the progressive community is a level of financial critical mass that is inclusive rather exclusive. Too many people want to do good, but cannot seem to put the pieces together so that they feel like they are a part of a larger globally linked human infrastructure for effective social change. But critical mass is not simply about money, it is about how we can develop the empowerment and to empower others through effective social networking systems. The creation of small, decentralized but highly networked human scale models of sustainable development should complement better use of information technologies.

Ahh, and where "capitalism is mistrusted and conservatives are considered an appalling subspecies...." the traditional ideological terms conservatism or liberalism have limited meaning in our world today. Francis Ford Coppola came to Arcosanti (www.arcosanti.org) and spoke at Paolo Soleri's weekly school of thought about this briefly. He said simply killing them off (those "appalling conservatives" who control our socioeconomic systems) is simply too messy (it is also not compatable with the idea of tolerance and respect for diverse perspectives and the people who express them).

We need to help those who are mired in the mainstream, (which i believe is basically conservative in that it is resistent to signficant and evolutionary social change based on deeply held fears) view of the world to see that their way of seeing the world is detrimental to their future and humanity's future. Creaively and innovatively communicate with those who defend the status quo with all their energy.

But it is not really about conservative or liberal or capitalist or anti-capitalist. The people who obsess about these things are reactionaries and they come in all the ideological colors of the spectrum. These people spend so much time talking about how evil the other side is that they have no time to think about sustainable, human scale solutions to massive global problems.

We need to better communicate with ourselves those who are supposedly on the same page. and i think that is what the people who came to Planetwork are attempting to do.