[onlooker]

I am making this post because I am highly intrigued by the inclinations of our various members here with regard to their sources of information about important subject matters. I think we can all here agree that over time under the strictures of Capitalism wealth has become ever more concentrated. Also, that Corruption is endemic and ubiquitous. So then the connection begs to be made, that the financial hegemonic interests have corrupted and bought off all major institutions and spheres of human concern. Certainly, we can say that Media has and is being bought off at least in the Western world. So my point, is when I see people relying on the mainstream media for information and then some who (rightfully) eschew utilizing it as an important source of information, I realize we have a dichotomy that is intriguing. So where do other members stand on what and whom we can believe in, in these turbulent changing times. Personally, I feel that they're is little that comes from official sources that can be trusted.

[ennui2]

The problem, Onlooker, is just because you can imagine a greed-motive doesn't mean everybody and everything is acting on it.

When you start off a sentence with "Certainly", btw, it's usually a fallacy. It's "certain" to you but not "certain" to those who disagree with your conclusion, witness:

Certainly, we can say that Media has and is being bought off at least in the Western world.

It's true that some media has a proven bias. MediaMatters has devoted itself to exposing the bias in Fox News and right-wing talk, for instance. And this goes beyond merely imagining connection. It goes into testimonials from reporters who have been issued talking-points handed down by Roger Ailes.

That doesn't mean you can use the same overall logic to just make sweeping statements about all media. People who make those statements are really just whining that the media won't push THEIR agenda, whatever it may be. The purpose of the MSM is to deliver news in measured tones, not to give flip-chart presentations about Overshoot and die-off.

Doomers are by nature extremists. That means they will be perennially disgruntled with anything BAU. BAU lifestyles, BAU entertainment, BAU news. To doomers, all of it is self-reinforcing. But it's totally unrealistic to expect anything otherwise. And yet, we HAVE seen a fair amount of doom from the media (witness Earth 2100, Incredible Journey of Oil, Homeproject, An Inconvenient Truth, DiCaprio's 11th Hour, Year of Living Dangerously). To say that the media has not done its job to cover doomer issues is simply false. What it ISN'T doing is ranting and raving about it 24/7. And you can see from how few posters are here, few people in general are consumed about it on a daily basis anymore. Those who were 10 years ago have quote moved-on unquote.

Doom is real, and it doesn't NEED to be plastered over the news 24/7 to be real. But how people deal with doom, by and large, is to just go through the stages of grief, come out the other end, and realize how powerless we are. Then you're left right smack dab where you started. You're just a schmuck you has to put his pants on one leg at a time and trudge to work for his daily bread just like the blue-pillers.

That's why the residual doomers here tend to be those who have tons of idle time on their hands due to being retirees or vagabonds or hippies of some sort.

[SeaGypsy]

Of course Ennuiprick is straight in with his weird angle on MSM & a few generalised insults. I'm not sure who else the OP refers to on his side of the fence here, pretty sure it's just him & maybe his buddy Adam.

[ennui2]

Yeah, everyone other than me and AdamB are loyal tinfoilers, right?

[SeaGypsy]

You are just a royal pain in the arse in my opinion, basically vacuous, boring & pretty much full of nothing but yourself & your contempt for just about everyone here. I don't know WTF you do for a living these days, but you sure have a lot of spare time on your hands. Why not use it to do something worthwhile?

[ennui2]

No amount of time I spend here is any more questionable than yours or any other poster. So you're in no position to judge how I spend my time. If what ticks you off the most is the fact I'm not a 911 troother there are plenty of other sites dedicated to the topic. As far as I'm concerned the tinfoil is just noise and totally OT.

BTW, if you teeter too much into namecalling I'm gonna start flagging your ass. Try to keep it about the issues.

[SeaGypsy]

Flag me then, big deal, truth is adequate defense.

[Newfie]

FWIW,
I think MSM is pretty empty of truth and/or reality. I get some news here, an odd bit elsewhere, but mostly feel left in an information vacuum.

Frankly I think that most business is built on some kind of lie, our product is better, our method is better, our returns are better. It is also part of our legal system, opposing lawyers, each making the best case possible, stretching the truth. Politicians are mostly lawyers, trained advocates, focused on winning vs truth.

So, yes, I agree Onlooker. We see a similar situation.

[Ibon]

Yes MSM is devoid of truth and reality and is corrupted by the interests of corporations. This can lead one to erroneously conclude that dismantling this corruption or speaking truth can lead us out of our collective quagmire.

Blaming MSM, BAU, elites, corporations or capitalism keeps the focus of systemic problems within the confines of human endeavors and institutions.

Imagine a moment that the MSM would remove the shackles of parasitic corporations and start out the newsday speaking truth and reality.

What real impact would this have on our ecological dilemma?

[Newfie]

I think MSM is part of the capitalist corporate structure, they are shackled by their own internal structure.

But to answer your question I do think telling the truth would have effects, but it would take quite a while. The immediate effect would be a howl of complaint. After a while it would settle down and some civil discourse would evolve. Propaganda/advertising does work after all, fundamentally it's not a lot different from telling the truth.

[onlooker]

If we go by the reasonable premise that all people act on their self interest, I do believe things could have been different. If our entire societies could have functioned with relative transparency and honesty with a minimum of corruption, we could have collectively understood the grave ramifications to everyone of continuing this type of Industrial Civilization and its most pernicious aspects. Then it follows we also may have collectively chosen different paths. I know many ifs and mays. As it is all this line of inquiry is futile as we are set now on an irreversible course to encounter severe overshoot consequences.

[ennui2]

Imagine a moment that the MSM would remove the shackles of parasitic corporations and start out the newsday speaking truth and reality.

What's that "truth and reality" of which you speak?

The fact is everyone has their own wish-list of things they'd like the MSM to talk about. Some people would take that statement to mean something completely different from what you had in mind. That's why a lot of this sentiment is simply the fantasy we have of using the MSM as our own personal ideological mouthpiece (ala Network).

[Newfie]

It should be pretty easy to come up with a top 5 issues

Over population
Financial complexity
Water
Resource depletion
Etc

[yellowcanoe]

It should be pretty easy to come up with a top 5 issues

Over population
Financial complexity
Water
Resource depletion
Etc

These are all indicators that we live in a finite world and are approaching the limits of growth. We've had almost 8 years of low growth since the financial crisis despite governments and central banks throwing everything they have at the problem and yet society and the MSM still project the belief that we absolutely have to get back to a high rate of growth. I would say the number one problem our society has is an inability to comprehend the end of growth even though for most of human existence growth was not the norm.

[Ibon]

That's why a lot of this sentiment is simply the fantasy we have of using the MSM as our own personal ideological mouthpiece (ala Network).

The fantasy for me goes much deeper than each individual's subjective interpretation of truth and reality. What I am trying to address is that when any of us claim dysfunction from any of our major institutions; media, government, religions, economic system, etc.... what lies underneath this claim is that our dilemma is still fixable with enlightened understanding.

What is fixable has two components as I see it. The first one is to get everyone to agree and find consensus about what is the priority of truth and reality we need to address. What you mentioned. Let's take Newfie's suggestions. Do any of us here dispute this. Probably not really. To get the greater consensus of all world governments to agree? Is this probable? Realistic? I think it is close to impossible now. Not in the future. But now yes, highly highly improbable.

The second component is then executing the necessary changes to address over population and consumption. Just like there are 1000 interpretations of truth and reality there would be 1000 interpretations of how this should be executed. Equitably? Do we only address birth rates or recognize increasing the death rates in reference to over population. On consumption how would we execute a global moratorium or a set of limits or guidelines on which individual or which nation gets allocated how much resources?

Why do I bring this up? behind every boogyman we claim as the culprit; the MSM, BAU, Capitalism, Neo cons, Koch brothers, civilization, agriculture, bla bla bla bla,,,,, We do not look much beyond the short term horizon of naming and blaming and go beyond that and then work through the scenarios of executing the necessary changes.

Of course I opened this dialogue because you all know where I am eventually heading.

This is not fixable with human agency this late in the game. Not without external consequences.

Every couple of months I will jump in here to remind us all of this once again.

Back to pinning my bugs.

[Ibon]

Inertia means we bumble into the future blindly until catalysts jolt us into consensus. Consensus and will and unity comes from external human agency, not from within the dysfunction itself.

[Tanada]

It should be pretty easy to come up with a top 5 issues

Over population
Financial complexity
Water
Resource depletion
Etc

These are all indicators that we live in a finite world and are approaching the limits of growth. We've had almost 8 years of low growth since the financial crisis despite governments and central banks throwing everything they have at the problem and yet society and the MSM still project the belief that we absolutely have to get back to a high rate of growth. I would say the number one problem our society has is an inability to comprehend the end of growth even though for most of human existence growth was not the norm.

While I agree with most of your post I take issue with the last statement,

I would say the number one problem our society has is an inability to comprehend the end of growth even though for most of human existence growth was not the norm.

The biological imperative of life has always been and shall always be grow to the limits available. Before fossil fuels supplied an easy store of energy humanity was still growing and expanding as hunter gatherers gave way to agriculturalists. I looked up some stats last night for a different project, my state of Ohio had 45,685 humans in the 1800 census counting whites, blacks and native Americans. It was nearly all woodlands with the native Americans practicing limited agriculture with much hunting and gathering in their diet. Having just suffered sweeping plagues that killed between 50 and 90 percent of First Peoples total population. In 1803 Ohio officially became a state and the flood gate opened as the state put land up for sale to anyone willing to lumber/farm/mine it. Between the 1800 census and the 1850 census so many people wanted to farm the rich lands of Ohio that the population grew to 1,980,329 with nothing but muscle power to cut down forest and put it to the plow. There were no steam tractors or even mechanical reapers during that period, just simple farm techniques based on human and animal muscle power. The highest pre-European First People population projected for what is now the state of Ohio is between 400,000 and 500,000 thousand people.

Growth is what biological systems do. Our major problem is fossil fuels not only gave us a massive energy boost to support more growth, they also changed the atmosphere and have a limited supply. All of the prior bursts of growth our species experienced were based on renewable limits, the amount of farmable land, the amount of water available to irrigate that land and the amount of fish that can be caught. In Europe before Coal became a major source of energy the forests were protected because they were the source of energy for cooking and heating and metal working. Once coal replaced wood as the primary energy source many of those fuel forests were cut down and converted to farm land to feed more people and grow the population. Around Ohio and Indiana and Michigan you can drive through rural areas and see scattered across the land a wood lot of a few acres on nearly every piece of farm. Those were the wood supply for the farms that existed before mechanization, they supplied heat and cooking fuel year around in a sustainable size wood lot for every family farm. As time goes on now, starting back in the 1970's, many of them have been ripped out by big agricultural concerns as they buy up land and convert them into mega farms on the model of the great plains. All obstacles to the machines are to be removed be they trees, old empty farm structures, or drainage ditches that can have a drain pipe installed and be filled over. In other places where the smaller farmers have gone bankrupt or died the small lots are returning to woodlot, along highways and in small areas excluded from convenient mechanical exploitation. IOW the woods are growing and expanding wherever they can just as humans are. just as the wildlife that lives in those patches of woods do. Growth is life, life is growth, we just took it to insane levels by harvesting fossil fuels.

[ennui2]

"you all know where I am eventually heading. "

Overshoot predator.

[AgentR11]

The MSM exists simply to sell soap; truth, partial truth, or complete lack thereof has nothing to do with it. The only thing that matters is that the story is cheap to produce, has a catch for "outrage of the day", and doesn't overly interfere with the purpose of the media.

You can however, use an intersect principle; if you take, say, the NYT, FT, Taas, and Xinhua; those facts that they agree on, are likely to actually be true. And surprisingly enough, there's quite a few facts that they do agree. Problem is, none of those facts generally produce the required "outrage of the day". No good guys, no bad guys, just national and personal interests seeking their logical conclusion.

Once you can accept that, you can build your own narrative independent of government press secretaries, and with it, parse information to reveal something close to ground truth.