"Creating an Understanding"

Reading the excellent report put out by the Indigenous Environmental Network on carbon taxes/ pricing schemes, I found this at the very end in the "what-is-to-be-done" section. Somehow, the work of "creating an understanding" has to take priority. Coincidentally, because this is a subject I have pondered a great deal on, I picked up a couple of books on the subject of ideology and its hegemonic power. This is basically the complex task of "creating an understanding", one which proves popular and spreads, ultimately affecting the political sphere. Capitalism is the near perfection of this process. From its roots as an economic system, it has successfully spread and embedded itself in every sphere, from philosophy to popular culture. And most sucessfully, it has neutered politics, turning them into a Spectacular form of enetertainment for your passive enjoyment ( even joissance). By co-opting the primary sphere in which it was theoretically able to be challenged, it has achieved a hegemony barely dreamed of by its early proponents. That means this project of "creating an understanding" which is countervailing to the imperatives of capitalism is a tricky bit of business. And not as easy as setting up billboards, writing books or blogs, or giving good speeches. The indigenous folk, along with Deep Greens, are prosletyzing, promoting a spiritual cosmovision for us moderns to adopt. Gramsci saw the process unfolding thusly: "The realization of a hegemonic apparatus, in so far as it creates a new ideological terrain, determines a reform of conciousness..." The project is the creation of the New Man, as Durkheim and Che Guavara hoped to achieve. Again, capitalism has been incredibly successful at this project, creating what we can call homo economicus, the satisfied customer/producer.