Writing on the Wall

I have just been very entertained.

Allen, my new Taiwanese-Canadian web-friend asked me to go look at the film Zeitgeist (Z)

So I did the unthinkable and threw myself into a conspiracy theory film. And I have to say it was really good fun, I was thoroughly gripped and entertained throughout, and learned some very interesting things, although verifying them is entirely another matter.

So I want to do a sort of film review of this web film. It is a film that attempts a global vision, and that is distributed on a global media, and so is probably worth debating as a form of emerging global public debate.

It is interesting how constructing myths these days so often takes the form of debunking other myths. Z takes this form, part I attacking Christianity, Part II attacking the official account of 9-11, part three turning explanatory and discussing the history and power of the federal reserve and of the banking elite that are standing behind it. The synthesis is that these banking groups have been triggering wars for profit for donkey’s years, that they are happily dumbing down the American public, and that they hope to produce a world government, totalitarian in its application of accounting standards.

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For a society that is so oriented to growth and progress, we seem remarkably immune to good news. We have a deep philosophical cynicism about such simple things as love and sympathy, even though there is evidence that these are forces with significant impact in our world. We are suspicious of ideas like happiness, even if they are central to our highest ethics, both freedom and progress. How can you be free if you are so unhappy you cannot enjoy your good fortune? How can there be progress where this becomes a general condition? Progress or Prozac?

Take the decline of violence in the world: There are fewer and smaller wars now than ever before. The depressing spectacle of embedded journalism, during the last attempt to make war work, had lying beneath it a very good piece of news. People so dislike seeing others blown to pieces, that wars must now be structured around the public not seeing this happen. The media has extended people’s senses, and with it their consciences, and this has shaped the geopolitical ‘realism’ of the most powerful players in the world.

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Graham Thompson writes about neo-liberalism off the back of a conference at SOAS on corporate social responsibility. However, whilst articulating that neo-liberalism has moral content, he does not go very far in exploring the implications of that morality:

Responsibility and neo-liberalism | openDemocracy

My commentary was as follows:

Thompson argues coherently that neo-liberalism has become internalised into a form of governmentality, where a certain kind of personal responsibility works hand in hand with the outer forms of governance.

However it is important to remember that this internalisation of responsibility is neither new, nor unique to neo-liberalism, and that what are significant are the specific forms these internalisations take.

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Here is a reponse to a comment piece in the Guardian, from UN official, about the upcoming IPCC report on the impacts of climate change, particularly in the tropics:
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Tide of suffering

What needs to be borne in mind in this is the high proportion of earnings that the cost of food represents for the poor.

When we talk about climate change, we seem to forget that all these effects, rising sea levels, changes in weather patterns, an overall drying trend globally, will all tend to impact on food production, and thus the price of food.

This is already happening: The world has been in net food deficit for the last couple of years: Not just because of climate change, but because of various forms of environmental degradation, that climate change is likely to make worse.

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Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The point of no return

The sense of resignation is more than troubling, it speaks of a collective cynicism. It seems that government is publically saying it will try and stop climate change, but privately admitting to itself that it cannot summon the political will to challenge vested interests.

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In response to Diane Coyle’s article on the open democracy site:

Economics, the soulful science Diane Coyle - openDemocracy
There is a history to Economics notoriety, and also to its attempted rehabilitiation since the 1980s.

The dominant form of economics globally is a particualr strand of “laissez faire” neo-liberal economics, overseen by Washington-based international institutions, set up to run the world, and marginalise the UN, during the post-war settlement.

There is a revolving door between US government particularly the treasury and staffing in these insitutions. These institutions, which are often seen as extensions of US foreign policy, have done immeasurable damage to developing countries, since their “structural adjustment policies have failed so spectacularly.

It is clear that this represents the dominant stream in economics, since the post 1980 shift in the profession coincided with these huge financial institutions finally caving in under the overwhelming evidence and criticisms mounting against their policies.

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The tension between those that see things in terms of dominant groups persuading the rest to do their bidding, and practical folk who are concerned with how things get done, has some very interesting philosophical underpinnings.

Action requires a basis. This is simple in principle: In order to exercise agency and bring about some outcomes in preference to other outcomes, you need to be able to exercise some control. That control is in turn only possible if you can render things in some way predictable.

Fixed forms therefore either need to be picked out as stable entities from the surroundings, or need to be rendered as fixed entities by some sort of effort. This applies as much to representations as it does to materialities. These two can be seen as aspects of social practices also.

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Richest 2 Percent Own Half the World’s Wealth - Yahoo! News

If the richest 2% own half the world’s wealth, and half the worlds population share less than 1% of the worlds wealth, how can economists and policy makers avoid dealing with equality as a social good?

Well one answer is to concentrate on absolute rather than relative poverty. If enough wealth can keep on being drawn into the economy, then surely it does not matter how rich the rich are, as long as the poor are getting better off?

But this is not a realistic proposition. You just have to look at the sources of wealth to see that this approach is running out of steam, since there is only so much new wealth you can draw into the world economy.

You can extract wealth from nature, but the current global environmental crisis suggests that we cannot keep expanding how much we do that forever. As that source of wealth dries up we have to start thinking about making better use of what we have, which partly means sharing it out more equally.

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Problem
The movement of heavy goods has many environmental impacts associated with it. In a city like London, limiting the movement of heavy goods is key to reducing air pollution, road injuries, noise pollution, as well as for meeting carbon emission targets. With the Mayor’s current emphasis on such issues, alongside a consultation on a possible low emissions zone for London, this seems like a time to address such issues.

The procurement strategies of large institutions are a major issue, in terms of heavy goods deliveries. If these institutions could be persuaded to purchase their heavy goods more locally, this could have a great impact on the amount of large-vehicle traffic on the streets.

But in order to do this, there first need to be indicators of the knock on effect of procurement strategies on heavy-goods traffic. The Mayor has cited local government procurement in London as an area where heavy goods traffic could be influenced downwards, so it seems like a good time for procurement indicators to be developed further.

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Constitutions and revolutions are born out of discussion. A blog seems like a good salon for discussing a global constitution. But where should we start?

There has been quite some debate on such issues recently, much of it can be seen on the website Open Democracy. For instance, George Monbiot

http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/George_Monbiot.jsp

and David Held
http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/David_Held.jsp

have both put forward their ideas there.

What do we mean by ‘humanity’?
However both of their approaches seem to me to need a stronger initial focus, or philosophical starting point. They both seem to hinge around an emerging ‘human’ identity, born of a globalising moment, some sense of cosmopolitanism.

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