On this day, December 7 in 1928 – Noam Chomsky was born.
Happy 94th birthday, Noam.
Here’s a couple of quotes, for those of you who want a taste. The first is (obvs) on climate. The second is on… heroes…
“Take the Kyoto Protocol. Destruction of the environment is not only rational; it’s exactly what you’re taught to do in college. If you take an economics or a political science course, you’re taught that humans are supposed to be rational wealth accumulators, each acting as an individual to maximize his own wealth in the market. The market is regarded as democratic because everybody has a vote. Of course, some have more votes than others because your votes depend on the number of dollars you have, but everybody participates and therefore it’s called democratic. Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don’t have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren’s interests is being irrational, because what you’re supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational.
Interview by Yifat Susskind, August 2001 [52]
And also, on heroes
I gather it’s your belief that when we focus on heroes in the movement, that’s a mistake, because it’s really the unsung heroes, the unsung seamstresses or whatever in this movement, who actually make a difference.
They’re the ones, yes. Take, say, the Civil Rights movement. When you think of the Civil Rights movement, the first thing you think of is Martin Luther King. King was an important figure. But he would have been the first to tell you, I’m sure, that he was riding the wave of activism, that people who were doing the work, who were in the lead in the Civil Rights movement, were young SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] workers, freedom riders, people out there in the streets every day getting beaten and sometimes killed, working constantly. They created the circumstances in which a Martin Luther King could come in and be a leader. His role was extremely important, I’m not denigrating it, it was very important to have done that. But the people who were really important are the ones whose names are forgotten. And that’s true of every movement that ever existed.
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Chomsky/chomsky-con5.html
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 307ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
Why this matters.
Noam has mattered. Movements matter.
