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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There is a new book out on the history of imagined futures. This has some interesting implications for development:
Imaginary futures: frozen and fluid time Richard Barbrook - openDemocracy

Funnily enough, development studies and this kind of social theorising seldom shake hands. I had a few things to say about this:
What is interesting about the information age is that communication becomes a stand-in for the future, for progress.

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Johnathon Freedland, one of the few journalists out there with a good grip on global goings on, calls for optimism for lefties worldwide, in the face of a drubbing in Europe:
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Dont be fooled by Europes mood. Globally, the left is reawakening

My comment was that the need for left wing thought globally is certainly there:

There is an obvious risk of revolution world wide. When people have nothing to lose they will take to the streets. If global warming goes above 2 degress there is a good chance of poor people starving all over the world due to a hike in food prices. This trend is already emerging with biofuels.

The left’s big problem has been one of scale: Corporations have gone international, but Unions, and politics have not, hence Blair’s surrender to globalisation.

But social problems are global too, and that is catching up on us. It is currently only the left that is campaigning for a global politics to reign in this ludicrous inequality, and so provide support to the weaker parts.

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There is a fascinating tale of free TV’s in Tamile Nadu that needs further follow up, that I stuck up on the prospect blog. Please do go comment, its a little slow right now:
Free TVs in Tamil Nadu

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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E-participation seems to be taking various forms. Apart from the recent emerging role of YouTUbe in the US Primaries (see the videos here) there is also the issue of epetitions.

Waste of time? I almost thought so, but..
I signed an epetition a while back and then forgot about it. Then I got this email back:

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New Statesman - Trident: Why Brown went to war with Labour

There is another theory as to why trident is being renewed, being advanced by a long term Canadian defence analyst, Gwynne Dyer, with a pretty long academic track record in the area.

Planners do thought experiments to work out future scenarious, especially military planners. So lets go on a little journey. What happens if we miss our Global warming targets, and have a more than 2 degrees c rise?

Well Gwynn Dyer claims that military planners in the UK have noticed that our land area will allow us to support 60 mllion people under such conditions, wheras continental Europe’s agriculture will most likely largely collapse. This raises the prospect of lifeboat Britian collapsed by hungry environmental refugees from the mainland.

But how to keep them out? Well, a nucear deterrent might help.

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The two people who mind the garden in our house, between them they earn 2000 rupees a month. That’s about £25-30. Funny thing is that the housekeeper, who makes 1000 rupees a month (for half-time work, that’s a relatively good deal for the market she is operating in) questioned why they struggled to get by on that money.

The answer came back that so many people come and eat at their house. In other words, on that kind of money, they are acting as a form of local social welfare, and it would be seen as strange if they didn’t do so. Upshot of it is that the wife of our care-taking couple has arthritis and needs 30 rupees (50 pence) to get on a bus to the local state hospital. I suspect that this is true, but actually don’t care if it is not. It is almost harder to deal with their honesty than with being ripped off.

Funnily enough I just read a piece by John Gray in the New Statesman about human agency, and the wierd take poltical philosophers tend to take on it. It was incidentally about Nazi Germany.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200703120045

Gray, as ever, was taking a pop at our weird image of enlightenment man being able to transform the world at will. OK John got the message. He also had a plug to his latest book , something characteristically morose and pessimistic. His point being that people often don’t have control over their lives.

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