David Attenborough

October 2024 Forums General discussion David Attenborough

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  • #216991
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    He has a new documentary coming out soon

    And from the trailer it seems he once again pushing the misanthropic idea that mankind is not part of nature. We are “intruders” and “late-comers” and the natural world would be better without us.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-56752541

    And the interview highlights the fact that his views are being accepted unquestioningly by many.

    There was once a Scottish Television documentary series call “This Wonderful World” and i many clips was devoted to the wonderful world of human culture particularly handicrafts – something David Attenborough appears to be ignorant of.

    #217024
    rodshaw
    Participant

    He has never learnt to substitute “the capitalist system” for “humans”.

    #217025
    Bijou Drains
    Participant

    David Attenborough on BBC “We are going to have to live more economically than we do. And we can do that and, I believe we will do it more happily, not less happily. And that the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow.”

    “That doesn’t mean to say that capitalism is dead and I’m not an economist and I don’t know. But I believe the nations of the world, ordinary people worldwide, are beginning to realise that greed does not actually lead to joy.”

    As the man said – “close but no cigar”

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Bijou Drains.
    #217043
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Any link to that quote, BD.

    It is the closest i have seen of any critique of capitalism by David Attenborough

    #217050
    Bijou Drains
    Participant
    #217051
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Cheers for the video clip, BD.

    A useful addition to our case

    As you say he talks the talk about the culpability of the profit system but his underlying solution is for people to live “more economically”, that “Western culture will have to pause”…he means austerity and again it is placing blame on individuals and not what creates consumerism, in the first place. He won’t call for the end of capitalism

    I don’t know if he has been to any of the run-down council estate near his home in Surrey but how much more economising do we have to do even in our Western culture much less in the slums of Mumbai or the favelas of Brasil.

    It is not our personal choice that nearly everything we buy falls apart within a year or needs replaced.

    Not that i begrudge anybody a nice home in suburbia but that we all should have one and our case is the socialism is capable of providing such for everybody, capitalism cannot.

    #217063
    rodshaw
    Participant

    Maybe he needs telling that he doesn’t have to be an economist to see that capitalism needs to go. Indeed, economists are probably among the last people who’d say this.

    In his wildlife programmes he talks of humans causing the problems, but on primetime viewing he probably wouldn’t get away with putting the finger on capitalism directly even if he thought so.

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