Noam Chomsky, 'The Human Species Has Never Faced A Question Like This’ (2016)

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1. Iran isn't occupying or threatening other countries. Who is? Get educated people!
2. I differ
3. I don't think Chomksy was honest here. He may prefer to state optimism, who wouldn't, but as per his admittance, he knows that the willingness to seize the opportunities he spoke of, will come too late as it would have already been two decades ago.
   
   For all the good activism has done, and it's done a lot, those were 'mere' changes in subsystems. Now we are dealing with the system at large. We take everything for granted and nothing we do or consume is sustainable in any relevant sense of the word. All of it will have to go for any meaningful change to happen. All of it. And no one can even begin to envision that because we compartmentalise our knowledge about the consequences of further warming and our day to day lives.
4. Thank you, Mr. Chomsky.
5. "Pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will."
6. It's so satisfying doing acid and watching timothy leary how to operate you brain, and not knowing what youre watching at the time, then watching the hollywood palace and seeing an old ad for Burlington Fabrics and think to yourself, holy fuck it's right in our face how they're trying to distract us, and then a week later Noam Chomsky confirms what you had thought
7. It is too late for our civilization. We just have to decide if we want humanity to survive to make a new civilization in 500 or 1000 years....We might be able to save humanity, but following the path we have taken so far we are racing toward another great extinction event where 98% of all life on earth dies...
8. Chomsky for Pres!!
9. Greed is a pathology and therefore does no recognise reason. It is little different in its characteristics to drug / alcohol addiction or psychopathy.
   
   Capitalism is the insane asylum turned inside out, allowing the greed-afflicted to run amok.
10. This improved my opinion of Chomsky's political ideas a little.
11. I love Chomsky for his foreign policy analysis, but his domestic analysis is subtly subversive to standard terminology. Worker control of factories is not "Democracy" it is Communism or Socialism. Now, where Marx falls down is in his analysis of the creation of capital, which he posits as a theft. Incorrect. Capital is created through deferred consumption primarily. Think of people stranded on a desert island. They can increase productivity if some people are assigned to make tools rather than gather food, but initially there will be less food, less consumption.
    A pure capitalist is someone who defers consumption in order to save (or who inherits savings). But most people are not capitalists because they do not save. In fact, they consume more than they produce, causing debt. For workers to own the factory, they would have to be forced to defer consumption. Force implies government.
    As to "compassion", "sympathy" and these other aspects of "solidarity". What you are asking of people is for those who defer their consumption to subsidize those who do not, ignoring disasters which often spur people to compassion. In normal day-to-day, savers are averse to bailing out spenders.
12. " The Institutional Requierement of Short Term Profit Making evidently overwelms . . . a chance for decent existence. . . It is really Criminal Inmorality ":Noam Chomsky
13. thank you ...
14. It's evolution all over again. Evolution denialism has been ongoing for a century and a half, even though the science was settled long ago. If the Climate Change denialists can obfuscate and lie about CO2 pollution for a fraction of that time, we are in for a sad future.
15. Great man but I would put up the treble in the final edit as his voice is soo deep
16. It is good to see caring people that want a better world but this is not a realistic interpretation of climate change.
17. The cause of all this is greed and selfishness.
    There is more than enough for everyone,
    but sharing and helping each other is not profitable for the Corporation that is America.
18. Well it´s interesting that Noam only talks about CO2 and the petrol industry, when farming of cattel and pigs is responsible for 50% of green house gases, is the major cause of rain forest destruction, and also plays a major role in sea pollution.
19. WHAT IN GODS NAME is that photo at 11:44 ?
    
    Bono turning up in the Savannah with no pilot in designer clothes , handbag , and his GUITAR ?
    Ive never seen anything as fake and photo-shopped as that ?
20. He's 87! Holy cow