[ What I Am Looking At ] Naomi Klein
January 18th, 2011
This TED Talk of Naomi Klein reminds me that I need to right a wrong. I never gave her work a fair look. Perhaps it was because she focused on some of the same narratives that I did and I held those around my circle in much higher esteem. I need to change that and finally read her book the “Shock Doctrine.”
Regardless, this is a great talk that proportions the right mix of critique in this tragedy: Risk Assessments, The Precautionary Principle (Thanks Carolyn Raffensperger), Hubris, and Feminism.
The precautionary principle needs to be in a kind of inverse proportion to power, in that it should be applied more stringently to actions and activities that are more powerful, and less so where they are less powerful. Thus, a single human being’s actions should be governed more by the freedom principle than by the precautionary principle, unless the single human being is waving a gun, for example, whereas a corporation’s actions should be governed more by the precautionary principle than by the freedom principle, generally speaking.