- Take a look at recent history
since the second World War.
Something really remarkable has happened.
First, human intelligence created
two huge sledge hammers capable
of terminating our existence
or at least organized existence.
Both from the second World War.
One of them's familiar.
- A scientific thunderbolt gives
a preview of its destructive force.
One of Japan's arsenal cities was selected
as the first to feel the weight
of atomic power.
- It was immediately obvious
on August 6, 1945,
a day that I remember very well.
It was obvious that soon technology would
develop to the point where it would
lead to terminal disaster.
The scientists certainly understood this.
In 1947,
the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
inaugurated its famous doomsday clock.
How close is the minute hand to midnight?
And environmental disaster which wasn't
thought about much in 1945,
but it turns out we now understand
that at the end of the second World War
the world also entered into a new
geological epoch.
It's called the anthropocene,
the epoch in which humans have
a severe, in fact, maybe disastrous impact
on the environment.
There was a sharp spike in such activities
and disaster after 1945.
So, geologists pretty much even formally
date the origin of the
anthropocene to about
the same time as the nuclear age.
Observing that the
Bulletin analysts in 2015
mentioned both
and moved the clock to
three minutes to midnight,
the closest it had been since 1984.
Immediately after the Trump election,
late January this year,
the clock was moved again to two
and a half minutes to midnight.
Closest it's been since '53.
So, there's the two existential threats
that we've created.
In the case of nuclear war,
maybe wipe us out.
In case of environmental catastrophe,
severe impact.
Then a third thing happened.
Beginning around the '70s,
human intelligence dedicated itself
to eliminating,
or at least weakening,
the main barrier against
the threats.
It's called neoliberalism.
If you ask yourself,
it was a transition at that period
from the period of what some people call
regimented capitalism, '50s and '60s,
the great growth period,
egalitarian growth.
A lot of advances
and social justice and so on.
That changed in the '70s
with the onset of the neoliberal era
that we've been living in since.
- We deregulated the airlines,
we deregulated the trucking industry,
we deregulated financial institutions,
we decontrolled oil
and natural gas prices,
and we negotiated lower trade barriers
throughout the world
to get rid of needless
and burdensome federal regulations
which benefit nobody
and which harm all of us.
- And if you ask yourself
what this era is,
it's crucial principle is undermining
mechanisms of social solidarity
and mutual support
and popular engagement
in determining policy.
It's not called that.
What it's called is freedom.
- I'm not in favor of fairness.
I'm in favor of freedom.
And freedom is not fairness.
Fairness means somebody
has to decide what's fair.
- But freedom means subordination
to the decisions of concentrated,
unaccountable, private power.
That's what it means.
The institutions of governance
or other kinds of association
that could allow people to participate
in decision making.
Those are systematically weakened.
Margaret Thatcher said it rather nicely
in her aphorism about there is no society
only individuals.
She was actually, unconsciously no doubt,
paraphrasing Marx who in his condemnation
of the repression in France
said the repression is turning society
into a sack of potatoes.
That just individuals amorphous mass
can't act together.
That was a condemnation.
For Thatcher, it's an ideal.
And that's neoliberalism.
We destroy or at least undermine
the governing mechanisms in which people,
at least in principle,
can participate to the extent
the society's democratic.
So, we can then undermine unions
other forms of association,
leave a sack of potatoes,
and meanwhile transfer decisions
to unaccountable private power
all in the rhetoric of freedom.
Well, what does that do?
The one barrier to the threat
of destruction is an engaged public,
an informed, engaged
public acting together
to develop means to confront the threat
and respond to it.
And that's systematically weakened
for people to become more passive
and apathetic
and not disturb things too much.
And that's what the
neoliberal programs do.
So, put it all together
and what do you have?
A perfect storm.
This is all very simple.
It's all in front of your eyes.
All you have to do is look.
Takes no profound intelligence,
takes no special insight.
Just look at what's in front of your eyes.
It's right there.
In fact, I think a lot of people see it.
