Learn to swim...

I have been wondering about some things lately; some things that I think you might be wondering about too in your own lives. What is my top priority? Having an enjoyable life where I enjoy the respect of my peers or doing the maximum to advance my ideals? Right now, I am not so sure that I like my answer. The one thing I have always respected about myself is my ambition, but I am not sure that I have always pointed my energy in the right direction. I have a propensity to get lost in numbers that define strength or intelligence, while losing sight of my purpose. I think it is important to achieve individual success and happiness, but that is supposed to serve primarily as a conduit to a higher purpose. Thus, I think it is important to re-declare the purpose of my life, while recognizing my uncertainty as to the path it should take. Please permit me to quote myself. "I am a political being. I do not believe in the political system of my homeland. I do not believe that I can accomplish my political goals through our political or academic institutions. I am an eco-socialist and I wish to contribute directly to the creation of a world more in line with my ideals. I have no idea what I should do to advance toward this end, but I am vain enough to believe that if the world does not move rapidly in this direction, our future will be wrought with peril. I am a scientist-in-training and I wish to contribute directly and significantly to the advancement of knowledge in my field. I believe that I can accomplish this within the academic institutions of my country. I do not know how to resolve the contradiction between these ambitions." So, that is my uncertain purpose. I feel that I have taken a reasonable course to fulfill my scientific ambitions; however, I am uncertain as to the best means of accomplishing my political goals. I have been thinking long and hard about this during my many wanderings over the past month. I am open to suggestion, but I have very little faith in the capacity of human societies to be persuaded to undergo radical change through rational argument alone. Typically change is forced upon people by violence or nature. I believe that we will see great political change in our lifetime and it will be driven by our planet Earth.
It was long thought that capitalism would meet its end when the growing working class identified the sources of their exploitation and united across national boundaries to take control of international capital. Of course, this did not happen and it never will. There are many reasons for this and I will only discuss a couple of them. First of all, the industrial working class has largely been exported to the developing world and the working class of the Western world has been largely placated by social democratic innovations, such as social security, unemployment insurance, and collective bargaining rights. Secondly, the working class in the Western world has largely been switched from industrial and agricultural labor to service jobs of a less physically demanding nature.
This being said, capitalism as we know it will still end and it will do so very soon. It may come to a grinding halt in my lifetime. While we as Westerners have been able to export tyranny and the exploitation of labor to the developing world so as to maintain democratic capitalism at home,  our attempts to export environmental destruction are sure to fail. This is because the environment recognizes no national boundaries and economic policies that we pursue in America/Europe can lead to climate change, desertification, and ocean acidification on the other side of the globe. Further, capitalism is based on a principle of permanent economic growth through the exploitation of labor and consumption of non-renewable resources. On the face of it, this is intrinsically unsustainable as permanent economic growth cannot be achieved using non-renewable resources. With the human population and per capita consumption both growing rapidly on a global level, especially in the developing world, we are tearing through the world's resources at an exponential rate and altering the climate in profound, often irreversible ways. Thus, in order to achieve global environmental sustainability, we must abandon the growth paradigm that all major world economies are based upon. We cannot expect that each new generation should have a greater per capita income than the generation before, and we cannot permit the human population to continue to grow. While it is impossible to speak of a human carrying capacity because human lifestyles and rates of consumption vary across regions and time, it is clear that a combination of economic and population growth cannot be maintained indefinitely. There is only one Earth, we cannot export the consequences of our actions on the environment as we were able to do with labor.
Capitalism is based on the privatization of profit and the socialization of cost; we have seen a perfect example of this with the current financial crisis. Private institutions (banks, funds, etc.) reaped profits from reckless financial activities and when the market went south, we had to pay with our taxes and our jobs to bring it back up. When the system collapsed, these private institutions lacked the resources to rebuild on their own and required massive subsidies from the public to prop the system up again. As repugnant as this system may be, it will not be eradicated on any moral grounds. It will end, because at some point we will have to simply maintain what we have or perhaps make due with a lot less in order to maintain a livable environment for ourselves and our descendents. This cannot be achieved without an increased reliance on global governance and an increasing central control of the economy; all of the things that conservatives fear.
In my mind, our democracies are trivial things. Public opinion has little connection to truth and justice, especially in a country such as mine where public education is of such a poor quality. We will only change when we are forced to change and nothing short of nature itself will force us into said change. We can only hope for our own sakes that we will be forced to change before it is too late. So, to quote Maynard James Keenan of Tool, "I'm praying for mayhem. I'm praying for tidal waves. I want to see the ground give way. I want to see it all come down. Mom, please, flush it all away."
We as humans are resilient beings. I am sure we will find a way to survive albeit in a far different societal construct. However, change will not come through peaceful gradualism, but rather through a punctuated equilibrium that will result in great suffering for the generations who happen to inhabit our Earth when the time comes. We are quite young, perhaps it will begin with us. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the time is now as extreme weather events have grown rapidly in prevalence in recent years. With sea levels conservatively projected to rise 12 inches by 2050, it is anticipated that if things stay the same, large segments of American coastal cities could be under water well before the end of the century, including New Orleans and Miami. Other coastal cities, such as New York, are expected to face increased incidence of flooding. This says nothing about the disastrous consequences of our rapacious global economy for the developing world: flooding in Bangladesh, desertification in China, depletion of fresh water resources in Africa, etc. Thus, I leave my fellow Americans with an appropriately ominous quote from Bill Hicks: "Learn to swim! I will see you down in Arizona Bay."