https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5a-s9kLo5kaZjZkY2M3ZWMtZTg3Yy00OGIyLWJhMjItY2Q4YjE2N2I3NmRl&hl=fr
This is an alphabet that can be written from any angle in any direction as all the signs are different, which means that it is not constrained by direction as most alphabets tend to do ( see Lara Borodotsky). Great for the dyslexic and for spatial awareness ( increasing spatial awareness increase the capacity for empathy).
And learn Esperanto.
Two projects to add to my constitution as international ways of communication.
( I have already learned the alphabets, I just need to learn Esperanto)
The idea is not to have language-based inequality to start with.
Friday 29 July 2011
Tuesday 26 July 2011
Arts and thinking about arts
A few months ago, one of my flatmate had advised me to turn this blog into an art critic blog as well as a social critique one. Somehow, the idea was that showing how polymath I could be in different areas of life would attract readership and show that I am not a stupidly single-minded revolutionary looser. It is true that presented as such, something he did not do by fear of me feeling insulted, I do see his point as holding some truth and I might actually start doing so. It is not easy though to set myself as a critic when I have a slightly universalistic approach to manufactured goods. I will not either be Kantian and declare that the beautiful can be found solely in the landscapes and the complexity of the world where we realize that we are part of something bigger.
The transcendence of the 'what-makes-us-feel-but-we-do-not-know-why' is of no interest for me here. It is though an interesting debate as to why should it not interest me when I say that I have a universalistic approach to the arts when some of the cultures of this world have worked at imitating the world. I am of course thinking of the Nippon culture, that has worked so well at imitating the beautiful chaos of the world.
Well the imitation and the real are two separates objects and it is actually the imitation that will find a defense in this article. Art is purely imitation and imitations should be brought back to the stage as being the center of all that is worthy in art. The real question is how complicated and hidden are the imitations unto which we are going to find some pleasure.
It is here that is revealed the slow downturn of our culture in the 20th century as observed by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki and Salinger. What the heck am I talking about? Well, Tanizaki's “Praise of the Shadow” is one of the best essays written explaining the essential differences between Western Culture and Far-Eastern Culture at the beginning of the 20th century. What people have called modernity was not about the objectification of nature ( most social theorist have defined modernity as the phenomenological switch of nature as being a controllable force rather than something in the power of the Gods) but rather about fighting off our fears and to present the obvious as we like to imagine it.
Adaptations of our reality have rarely been as obvious as the one we have found them in the 20th century. It is just a fact that auto-biographies and biographies have never been sold so much. Films are re-made constantly so the subtle critics of our reality are in our face with a loud noise so we do not need a cultural context to understand the origins of the music. Sciences are now in the domain of the everyday life as we see no problem at qualifying people around us as schizophrenics, bi-polars, depressed, demented, neurotics or closet-homosexuals when this lexicon is vulgarized in newspapers.
At the same time, while we reiterate all the known-knowns of our world's universal consciousness, we have now this slight tendency of forgetting what are the problems for which we have never found an answer and for which there are always ways to find new ways to illustrate the problematics. We take what we know for granted and do not look back unto how this knowledge has been founded. We watch whatever we do not want to discuss, we ignore the illustrated problems, what are the dimensions of human nature we do not yet understand, what the author might have tried to find in himself and instead get entertained by what we are satisfied to know.
Subtlety. Subtlety of course does not mean that anything produced has to be buried under an arrogant vocabulary and in a saturation of cultural references. Subtlety is best found in originality. “Me, you and everybody else we know” is a film with interlocking unusual stories reflecting on our lives. It is simple, has no special effects and half the cast is played by children, so hardly the Shakespearian trained talent. And yet there are so many grounds for discussion that the point of the film, the meaning behind, cannot be understood. It is not absent. It is just that it shows the known-unknowns of humanity.
Of course, it is so easy for me to come with my cultural references and shout: “ Be simple but be smart” and then drop a Nipponese author unto your lap and you might feel stupid not having read it ( you should be! [no, I'm just joking- it is in the end just a comparative analysis of toilets]). This is though not the point. The point is that something somewhere did not go right. I will not say that it is the democratization of culture that made ignorance and entertainment the dominant steam-roller of our culture, as did Adorno and Horkeimer hinted at.
I was for a time-being tempted to say that it is the problem of domination in our history. That we have forgotten the secular culture of the people against the high culture of the aristocracy. Brining back everybody to the same grounds so we can equally build from that was the solution defended by Mao should be considered. That is just the antithesis of A&H and it keeps us stupid though. We do need historical references as they show more about ourselves than any modern craft ever can. We do though need to understand the historical contexts unto which every references have been made and constructed to emancipate ourselves from the domination of high-culture.
The problem though might be as Adorno and Horkeimer proclaimed in their theory of the culture industry. The culture industry theory states that the producers of culture are the holders of the mean of production and as such, enlightenment is not in their profit. Why would Time-Warner or NewsCorp. let their public known that they sell just corrupted imitations that do not provide any content that might help us towards emancipation. Even in the mode of production there is something weird and hegemonic: why was Trafalgar square un-kettled by policemen when it was invaded by ignorant zombie-wizards are the release of the last Potter film? No one wonders.
'Made in Dageham' was declared by all its public the best British film of 2010. It made me cry. Have you heard of it? Now, have you heard of 'The King Speech' ? What did you get from it? Nothing obviously, there was nothing in it, I do not think it is repeated enough. Nothing! More than nothing, it has erased all the interesting psychological aspect of the poor guy not wanting to be King and his little brother not expecting to be king because he does not know what it means. Should I talk about ' The Black Swan' that portrayed women as being incapable of being professional and sensual at the same time for fear of going crazy ?
This corruption of the arts by the producers was made very discreetly through this innovative mode of ideological domination that is the intellectual property. Intellectual property did not exist before the 19th century. What this concept, now widely blindly accepted, made is creating a new unlimited resource for production so the limits of capitalism could be extended for a few centuries. It also created the illusion that everybody could make something and gain some money out of it. The film industry though is the clear example that as much as it has developed through capitalism, diversity in it has disappeared because of the oppression of the big studios, the big producers. What about Youtube?
If we do nothing, it will be the same story.
Internet will be controlled because it reduces intellectual property back to what it should have been: the collective patrimony unto which humanity can constantly relearn itself. Museums should be free, of course, but should not represent either the art market of the rich. What is presented in the museums is what has been established by rich owners as good art and some of their painting are kept in sight for everybody so the other paintings they own still holds their value. Paintings should be shared, for free, as should books, as should music, as should dances, as should philosophy.
Why, oh, why, did I mention Salinger alongside Tanizaki about the lack of arts in the 21st century? It is just that Salinger heroes always look at the world around them and are slightly depressed that it does not represent all the potential of humanity. The potential of humanity exists only for the un-atheists, the people capable of reflecting about a world before their existence and after their deaths. The potential of humanity has existed sometimes, in parsimony, if the few examples found in its history. I was reading a reference to Kipling trip to the United-States where he was corrected on a reference by a farmer (“It is not Montaigne who said so, it is Monteskiew!”). It made me think of Oscar Wilde's trip where he made conferences on literature and life to interested miners.
The Big Fat Lady exists, somewhere.
They all held the belief that humanity had the potential to see in arts something that can emancipate. But to do so, we do have to be critical and show our criticisms. More than that, we do have to beat ourselves constantly for not looking further into the depth of any crafts, to the point where there is just darkness and try to make sense of the obscure within humanity, of what cannot be understood, because otherwise we are as good as pigs satisfied to live in mud and ready to be eaten when it is too early.
to read : "In Praise of the Shadow" by Jun'Ichiro Tanazaki, The complete collection of J.D. Salinger ( do not stop at " the Catcher in the Rye" otherwise you will never understand Holden Caulfield but will make me feel like him), Civilization and its discontent by S.Freud ( not an art piece, still relevant), Maps and Territory by M.Houellebecq. Everything, in the end, might be worth reading.
And do watch "Made in Dagenham" to understand, in relation with the King's Speech, what is wrong with our world.
Sunday 17 July 2011
You and I do nothing to help
We are all doing meaningless work for a meaningless future. We work to be comparatively ridiculously paid to buy entertainment and stuff we already have, to feel slightly better. Better than the neighbor who has slightly less, better so we are closer to the neighbor owning slightly more. I do not know if we can be proud of ourselves, of what we give to our children. We give the over-production of an earth with limited resources for increasing inequalities.
Society is built on the illusion that it is, like our portrayal of nature, a system, that works like a machine, that is controlled, that is sustainable by our reasoning, by the fact that we all live our lives. We live in the politics of daily life, in office politics, in family politics, and those are already hard enough without complicated it by taking a step back to understand the whole picture. There is an analogy between the whole earth and computers: we know how to work with them, it does not mean we know how they work. Earth and society are the result of a long history of processes, life world and system world being constantly in relations.
Society though is essentially wrong, when we compare it to some of the pragmatically perfect societies that we have thought off and keep thinking about. A few people around the world, through time, at least since the French Revolution, have imagined perfect societies, not fake-utopia stuck in a strict space-time, but a few things have prevented changes and these obstacles to the general good are mostly due to the one percent of the population that owns most of the wealth. They get to decide how global politics work, so they do not loose too much.
It all starts with the illusion of national democracy. Nations having democracies are also the nations have integrated into a global economy. Global economy works by having some organizations calculating a certain output of a country, called economic growth, and depending on this evaluation, will lend them a certain amount of currencies. We have here actually a microcosm of any service company, where all the employees compete against each other, though all in their own private work, to be the one receiving the best title (e.g. manager, partner, associate, director-manager, combined with the belittling definition as junior or senior,...), so the best salary. Nations compete against each other and have to make some sacrifices on their prosperity, as competition leads to sacrifices in the employee's life out of the office.
The people paying are the citizens of the nations. It is also the illusion of democracy that politicians do not make concessions to rich people. A good example here is England where the media make the politicians, obviously meaning that politicians will have to rub the newspapers' owners on their good sides. American politicians have to rub the different hedge-fund owners, industry owners, intellectual property owners, on their good sides to receive the party contribution to insure good publicity ( paying for posters, T.V. ads, grass root workers). That is also why politicians have been asked to eradicate the word 'working-class' from their speeches, so there are no more distinctions and everybody can feel like a consenting middle-class.
Why do we accept this? It is mostly for the same reasons that most people do not participate in work-unions anymore: it is the worst way to receive a promotion. What kind of factory owner would accept a worker who is ready to strike for some other worker's right. Solidarity is not productive, and this is how alienation works. Alienation from other workers is the best way to receive a slightly better salary, at the cost of the other poor soul. Same goes for the country… Why would countries unite against banks if they can receive a better estimation of their own growth ?
“What is the alternative?” is an argument proposed by the overall consenting population against any idea of change. And it is true, history has not proven many alternatives right. Of course, history is written by the countries which destroy the smaller countries. I said that Viet Nam had an interesting system and I was told that a famine in the 80's decimated the country. Of course, Viet Nam liberated Laos from the worst regime history has seen, with the help of the Soviet Union and North Korea. This desperate alliance from Viet Nam resulted in their outcast from the world. As much as there was a famine due partly to mismanagement, and the fact that the Americans created a fake market in the south during the war, the world never apologized for going to an ideological war with Viet Nam and letting them starve for an action that we would all approve now. Any socialist country was forced into poverty by the 'powerful' nations of the world (there are no powerful nations, just powerful owners of production backing up consenting nations).
We see this same portrayal of dangerous alternative in the image of Iran being 'utterly evil' or Anonymous being a destructive terrorist organization. I participate in some of the Anonymous forums, and I have to say that there is nothing terrorist about them, rather the opposite, they provide information that should be news in mainstream media. As an example, did you know that the mayor of Orlando made food donations to homeless people a crime? Did you know that the American government is legally forcing people to give testimonies against Bradley Manning (Do you know Bradley Manning? The guy who indirectly forced Western Governments to do nothing against the Arab Spring, who is being tortured at this moment in American jails).
Our capitalist society has produced great technological advancements, I am told. The problem is that even technological advancement nowadays is a decision made by big companies trying to make more profits, it has nothing to do with technological advancements improving our lives. Internet for example, this great invention, is now being reinvented so it will be entirely privatized. Even the dark internet ( the one accessed through Tor, I2P; the one that cannot be access through your mainstream browser) will not exist anymore, so all the big companies, and the nations working for them, will be able to control and destroy small alternate economy systems, like bitcoin. The game industry provides products that make us live faster and made my generation attention-deficit (meditation alternatively makes anyone smarter). Thank You technological advancement for your private transport raising the cost of public transports. Thank You technological advancement for always creating 'new' products where all the complimentary goods cost twice their real values. Thank you technological advancement for winning your battle against open source knowledge.
The world is now too big, too complex to provide an alternative, is another argument I am confronted with often. And I am afraid that it is true, that I have been brought up in the perfect environment to study mental environments (how do we come to think the way we do), when most
people have not had this luck. I do try to make most of it though.
We are all working for someone, and most of the time we do not know whom, even with the best of intentions. The German civil society does not understand they still work for a logical hegemony when it voted against nuclear energy. What they have voted for is lesser finance and support for research and investment into smart nuclear energy. Chernobyl incident killed 47 people since 1986. Why is this fact ( World Health Organization 2006 report) being left out of mainstream media ? The problem with nuclear energy at the moment is that we do not yet how to work nuclear fusion, so there is no waste and an eternal cycle of energy production, which theories actually find possible. This requires major investment, just like building nuclear reactors requires investments. Instead, the Germans have opted for 'sustainable energy'.
Sustainable energy is the lie of the energy industry, one of the best of the century probably. Why? Well lets take solar panels. Solar panels capacities work with processors just like our computers. Which means that they the industries come every two years with an effectively much better product, which means that all the old ones have to be thrown out and to be replaced. We have now a new consumption cycle for energy bringing in far more money than an eternal energy source could...
Am I a pessimist? Some politicians do go into politics so the future looks slightly brighter. Politics on the world scale works on compromises with the big companies, always threatening to outsource their industries, their labor, their revenues, or the little taxes they pay. So industries make promises to politicians. Politicians do not tell the people that they received promises from the industry owners about a slightly better future, because who would vote for a powerless politician? We are therefore left with the lies for votes. Or worse, with hypocritical liberals like Mrs.Merkel, having one of the most protective industries in the world, limiting competition in the country, and blaming the Greeks for helping their exports (a low Euro is good for exports...), telling the village Germans that the Turkish low-wage labor they have imported does not integrate well but hiding how much they need them.
I say nothing new, and yet most of the people I know do not want to do anything. Why? Fear of loss I would say. Of course fear of loss exists in everybody who has got something to lose. We are ready to make concessions only when we are more afraid of what we do not know. Naomi Klein's ¨shock doctrine” is a good example of a tool for change. An example of the shock doctrine is actually the United States, which never had a more conservative way of life (e.g. rate of women firefighter, decline in union membership, the freedom of liberal market,...) since 9/11. And this is not profiting the general population.
Another sociologist (most sociologists by the way are very left-oriented politically, except the crappy ones like A. Giddens), called Helmut Rosa observed that our society is accelerating. We compete to be faster constantly, which means effectively that we stress more and with stress disappears natural empathy. Our natural empathy disappears because of our entertainment as well. Accelerated games, accelerated films, accelerated television.
Television was problematic as the intelligentsia of the world for a long time did not accept this institution. It took the New-York Times's critics, and the fact that you had to pay for different programs (best Bourdieusian recipe to make a high-class taste) to make most of the society spend most of their evenings in front of it, myself included. Fact and fiction mingled to create the entertainment we seriously needed to not realize that we are the ignorant working-class, just like the poor workers of the third world, and that we accept our fate because we just do what we do.
Society is built on the illusion that it is, like our portrayal of nature, a system, that works like a machine, that is controlled, that is sustainable by our reasoning, by the fact that we all live our lives. We live in the politics of daily life, in office politics, in family politics, and those are already hard enough without complicated it by taking a step back to understand the whole picture. There is an analogy between the whole earth and computers: we know how to work with them, it does not mean we know how they work. Earth and society are the result of a long history of processes, life world and system world being constantly in relations.
Society though is essentially wrong, when we compare it to some of the pragmatically perfect societies that we have thought off and keep thinking about. A few people around the world, through time, at least since the French Revolution, have imagined perfect societies, not fake-utopia stuck in a strict space-time, but a few things have prevented changes and these obstacles to the general good are mostly due to the one percent of the population that owns most of the wealth. They get to decide how global politics work, so they do not loose too much.
It all starts with the illusion of national democracy. Nations having democracies are also the nations have integrated into a global economy. Global economy works by having some organizations calculating a certain output of a country, called economic growth, and depending on this evaluation, will lend them a certain amount of currencies. We have here actually a microcosm of any service company, where all the employees compete against each other, though all in their own private work, to be the one receiving the best title (e.g. manager, partner, associate, director-manager, combined with the belittling definition as junior or senior,...), so the best salary. Nations compete against each other and have to make some sacrifices on their prosperity, as competition leads to sacrifices in the employee's life out of the office.
The people paying are the citizens of the nations. It is also the illusion of democracy that politicians do not make concessions to rich people. A good example here is England where the media make the politicians, obviously meaning that politicians will have to rub the newspapers' owners on their good sides. American politicians have to rub the different hedge-fund owners, industry owners, intellectual property owners, on their good sides to receive the party contribution to insure good publicity ( paying for posters, T.V. ads, grass root workers). That is also why politicians have been asked to eradicate the word 'working-class' from their speeches, so there are no more distinctions and everybody can feel like a consenting middle-class.
Why do we accept this? It is mostly for the same reasons that most people do not participate in work-unions anymore: it is the worst way to receive a promotion. What kind of factory owner would accept a worker who is ready to strike for some other worker's right. Solidarity is not productive, and this is how alienation works. Alienation from other workers is the best way to receive a slightly better salary, at the cost of the other poor soul. Same goes for the country… Why would countries unite against banks if they can receive a better estimation of their own growth ?
“What is the alternative?” is an argument proposed by the overall consenting population against any idea of change. And it is true, history has not proven many alternatives right. Of course, history is written by the countries which destroy the smaller countries. I said that Viet Nam had an interesting system and I was told that a famine in the 80's decimated the country. Of course, Viet Nam liberated Laos from the worst regime history has seen, with the help of the Soviet Union and North Korea. This desperate alliance from Viet Nam resulted in their outcast from the world. As much as there was a famine due partly to mismanagement, and the fact that the Americans created a fake market in the south during the war, the world never apologized for going to an ideological war with Viet Nam and letting them starve for an action that we would all approve now. Any socialist country was forced into poverty by the 'powerful' nations of the world (there are no powerful nations, just powerful owners of production backing up consenting nations).
We see this same portrayal of dangerous alternative in the image of Iran being 'utterly evil' or Anonymous being a destructive terrorist organization. I participate in some of the Anonymous forums, and I have to say that there is nothing terrorist about them, rather the opposite, they provide information that should be news in mainstream media. As an example, did you know that the mayor of Orlando made food donations to homeless people a crime? Did you know that the American government is legally forcing people to give testimonies against Bradley Manning (Do you know Bradley Manning? The guy who indirectly forced Western Governments to do nothing against the Arab Spring, who is being tortured at this moment in American jails).
Our capitalist society has produced great technological advancements, I am told. The problem is that even technological advancement nowadays is a decision made by big companies trying to make more profits, it has nothing to do with technological advancements improving our lives. Internet for example, this great invention, is now being reinvented so it will be entirely privatized. Even the dark internet ( the one accessed through Tor, I2P; the one that cannot be access through your mainstream browser) will not exist anymore, so all the big companies, and the nations working for them, will be able to control and destroy small alternate economy systems, like bitcoin. The game industry provides products that make us live faster and made my generation attention-deficit (meditation alternatively makes anyone smarter). Thank You technological advancement for your private transport raising the cost of public transports. Thank You technological advancement for always creating 'new' products where all the complimentary goods cost twice their real values. Thank you technological advancement for winning your battle against open source knowledge.
The world is now too big, too complex to provide an alternative, is another argument I am confronted with often. And I am afraid that it is true, that I have been brought up in the perfect environment to study mental environments (how do we come to think the way we do), when most
people have not had this luck. I do try to make most of it though.
We are all working for someone, and most of the time we do not know whom, even with the best of intentions. The German civil society does not understand they still work for a logical hegemony when it voted against nuclear energy. What they have voted for is lesser finance and support for research and investment into smart nuclear energy. Chernobyl incident killed 47 people since 1986. Why is this fact ( World Health Organization 2006 report) being left out of mainstream media ? The problem with nuclear energy at the moment is that we do not yet how to work nuclear fusion, so there is no waste and an eternal cycle of energy production, which theories actually find possible. This requires major investment, just like building nuclear reactors requires investments. Instead, the Germans have opted for 'sustainable energy'.
Sustainable energy is the lie of the energy industry, one of the best of the century probably. Why? Well lets take solar panels. Solar panels capacities work with processors just like our computers. Which means that they the industries come every two years with an effectively much better product, which means that all the old ones have to be thrown out and to be replaced. We have now a new consumption cycle for energy bringing in far more money than an eternal energy source could...
Am I a pessimist? Some politicians do go into politics so the future looks slightly brighter. Politics on the world scale works on compromises with the big companies, always threatening to outsource their industries, their labor, their revenues, or the little taxes they pay. So industries make promises to politicians. Politicians do not tell the people that they received promises from the industry owners about a slightly better future, because who would vote for a powerless politician? We are therefore left with the lies for votes. Or worse, with hypocritical liberals like Mrs.Merkel, having one of the most protective industries in the world, limiting competition in the country, and blaming the Greeks for helping their exports (a low Euro is good for exports...), telling the village Germans that the Turkish low-wage labor they have imported does not integrate well but hiding how much they need them.
I say nothing new, and yet most of the people I know do not want to do anything. Why? Fear of loss I would say. Of course fear of loss exists in everybody who has got something to lose. We are ready to make concessions only when we are more afraid of what we do not know. Naomi Klein's ¨shock doctrine” is a good example of a tool for change. An example of the shock doctrine is actually the United States, which never had a more conservative way of life (e.g. rate of women firefighter, decline in union membership, the freedom of liberal market,...) since 9/11. And this is not profiting the general population.
Another sociologist (most sociologists by the way are very left-oriented politically, except the crappy ones like A. Giddens), called Helmut Rosa observed that our society is accelerating. We compete to be faster constantly, which means effectively that we stress more and with stress disappears natural empathy. Our natural empathy disappears because of our entertainment as well. Accelerated games, accelerated films, accelerated television.
Television was problematic as the intelligentsia of the world for a long time did not accept this institution. It took the New-York Times's critics, and the fact that you had to pay for different programs (best Bourdieusian recipe to make a high-class taste) to make most of the society spend most of their evenings in front of it, myself included. Fact and fiction mingled to create the entertainment we seriously needed to not realize that we are the ignorant working-class, just like the poor workers of the third world, and that we accept our fate because we just do what we do.
Friday 8 July 2011
PRAGMATIC ME
I am not an idealist, though I did in the past claim I was, I now believe with a slight arrogance that I am not more an idealist than anyone else. Idealism is synonymous to religiosity and ideology, as it is just a belief leading the lives of individuals. There is a probably difference in the fact that religious people are effectively slightly more sincere about their faith than the idealism of the lay person.
Idealism is the stuff of the everyday man everybody, whether they are aware of it or not, is idealist. The ideologies we have seen throughout history lead most of the time everybody to accept the world as it is. Though I am wrong when I say ‘as it is’ since everybody wishes some tiny or important changes in their life or in society. Idealism is hidden in the lies we tell ourselves everyday when we think that some ideas are impossible. That is true idealism, as it shows the ideal of the world we now live in.
I have somehow discovered an example of problematic hidden idealism in a discussion that often comes to be heated. A multi-party democracy is the regime under which we live now. It is also our excuse to judge in an ethnically-centred use of the Human Rights any other types of regime. This is the idealism I am talking about.
Now reflecting on idealism, I see suddenly myself as a hyper-pragmatic as I saw all the logical sense of a one party regime against the blind ideology of our system. The argument often used to judge one-party regimes is that they do not allow dissent or opposition. I have now a few questions and observations about both system that could show that both regimes are as faulty in their current states. And we might have no right to judge a regime over an other regime.
Every party has oppositions within their own party. As an example, some British conservative party members accept that homosexuals receive the same rights as heterosexuals while others do not. Now, because most parties do not want to fall into the disarray of looking inconsistent, they have accepted in the 20th century the dictatorial form of party discipline. This concept of party discipline, as a tool of control, is far more dangerous in a lot of ways than the idea of a one party regime.
I have a problem with multiple parties as it is still only a social representation of archaic tribal disputes where no one is concerned in the end with the goal of the policies for everybody on a long term, but instead with the concern is on the pure defence of the party lines told to follow. Of course, party members do have the right to vote on the party lines of thoughts but we can now observe today in politics that opposition parties are most of the times against the governing party choices out of principle rather than out of reason.
Would an opposition party make good arguments, should the party in power normally not admit that it has made a mistake and then accepts the laws proposed by the opposition. Or is the ideal of a multi-party democracy not inherently forbidding accepting the opposition’s point of view as it would mean to admit defeat on some level. “How could we let a minority tribe make a decision!?” is the shock of our regime ideology. The issue is even more complicated as accepting that the other is right would effectively prove that a one party democracy is far more intelligent than the stubbornness of a multiple party one.
Another level where a governing party cannot accept the opposition’s ideas is because, as I’ve already said, politics nowadays is mainly tribal. I vote left because my parents and my friends vote left. I vote right because my parents and my friends vote right. I vote centre because I have changed social milieu I used to live in and I am a bit lost – it is by the way why Europe finds itself nowadays in an in-between state where all the parties set themselves in the centre as they know that society is shifting - and the centre is the safest position to take as it accepts as many ideas as possible. Somehow a one party regime could let this question out on a public sphere and also let the voice of the extremes at least be heard. Why would extremes be heard? Be extremisms is only relative to the perceive centre set by the main parties…
I do not have many examples of countries where a one-party regime lives in a comfortable society and where repression never happens. Then again, no country exists where some form of repression does not exist. This is where hyper-pragmatism comes into play and states that the best of everything should be รก goal for everybody and not merely accepts what is going on or ask for some slight liberal changes because we deny to ourselves there is something wrong with the system.
Viet Nam has actually a one-party policy which until the 21rst century did not work too badly. It has sent to prison some of its opponent, some allegedly intelligent dissents not deserving such a fate, some allegedly supported by the American government and its allies, others being just religious nuts wanting to make public what could have been private. Yet, it has a sensible one-party regime where people often vote for the person they find to be the most qualified for the job, and not for the person with the best facial symmetry on the list they think they ought to vote on.
Also, it has to be observed that Viet Nam does not exactly have only one parliament, but authorizes that passed laws be contested by interests groups like workers unions. This is somehow fairer for the common worker than a system where the majority in both electoral chambers passes a law which affects groups and they cannot go to a higher court to contest it except if it breaches the European declaration of Human Rights. And even in this case, I am waiting to see how long it will take for British prisoners to get the right to vote.
On the question of idealism and pragmatism, I am now to realize that my pragmatism is actually an attempt at going beyond the ideology in which we are lock due to a misunderstanding of our history. The First World War is often blamed on the accumulation of spending on ‘defence’ budget of European countries. Whenever I ask about military spending, the counter argument is exactly the language one based on the use of ‘defence’. It is though inconsistent as defence in our contemporary western countries means the collection of a variety of ballistic armaments we could not use in our own country for it would destroy our own basic infrastructures.
More than that, military spending is purely ideological as it is based on a socially constructed fear of being attacked. Costa Rica since its creation almost never had any army and yet has never been invaded. Now, this could mean that it is because it has strong allies pressuring the world not to attack this country. On the other hand, Switzerland has one of the most important army in the world and yet never had to use it at all. Switzerland is more vicious in the fact that even if it has a strong army, it would always anyway support and bow to the strongest whatever the moral sacrifice it means.
On the other hand, we find heroes of history from which we have learned nothing like Gandhi, who have fought off a whole empire without raising a weapon. Somehow these forgotten heroes of pure pragmatism have not inspired us enough.
Idealism is the stuff of the everyday man everybody, whether they are aware of it or not, is idealist. The ideologies we have seen throughout history lead most of the time everybody to accept the world as it is. Though I am wrong when I say ‘as it is’ since everybody wishes some tiny or important changes in their life or in society. Idealism is hidden in the lies we tell ourselves everyday when we think that some ideas are impossible. That is true idealism, as it shows the ideal of the world we now live in.
I have somehow discovered an example of problematic hidden idealism in a discussion that often comes to be heated. A multi-party democracy is the regime under which we live now. It is also our excuse to judge in an ethnically-centred use of the Human Rights any other types of regime. This is the idealism I am talking about.
Now reflecting on idealism, I see suddenly myself as a hyper-pragmatic as I saw all the logical sense of a one party regime against the blind ideology of our system. The argument often used to judge one-party regimes is that they do not allow dissent or opposition. I have now a few questions and observations about both system that could show that both regimes are as faulty in their current states. And we might have no right to judge a regime over an other regime.
Every party has oppositions within their own party. As an example, some British conservative party members accept that homosexuals receive the same rights as heterosexuals while others do not. Now, because most parties do not want to fall into the disarray of looking inconsistent, they have accepted in the 20th century the dictatorial form of party discipline. This concept of party discipline, as a tool of control, is far more dangerous in a lot of ways than the idea of a one party regime.
I have a problem with multiple parties as it is still only a social representation of archaic tribal disputes where no one is concerned in the end with the goal of the policies for everybody on a long term, but instead with the concern is on the pure defence of the party lines told to follow. Of course, party members do have the right to vote on the party lines of thoughts but we can now observe today in politics that opposition parties are most of the times against the governing party choices out of principle rather than out of reason.
Would an opposition party make good arguments, should the party in power normally not admit that it has made a mistake and then accepts the laws proposed by the opposition. Or is the ideal of a multi-party democracy not inherently forbidding accepting the opposition’s point of view as it would mean to admit defeat on some level. “How could we let a minority tribe make a decision!?” is the shock of our regime ideology. The issue is even more complicated as accepting that the other is right would effectively prove that a one party democracy is far more intelligent than the stubbornness of a multiple party one.
Another level where a governing party cannot accept the opposition’s ideas is because, as I’ve already said, politics nowadays is mainly tribal. I vote left because my parents and my friends vote left. I vote right because my parents and my friends vote right. I vote centre because I have changed social milieu I used to live in and I am a bit lost – it is by the way why Europe finds itself nowadays in an in-between state where all the parties set themselves in the centre as they know that society is shifting - and the centre is the safest position to take as it accepts as many ideas as possible. Somehow a one party regime could let this question out on a public sphere and also let the voice of the extremes at least be heard. Why would extremes be heard? Be extremisms is only relative to the perceive centre set by the main parties…
I do not have many examples of countries where a one-party regime lives in a comfortable society and where repression never happens. Then again, no country exists where some form of repression does not exist. This is where hyper-pragmatism comes into play and states that the best of everything should be รก goal for everybody and not merely accepts what is going on or ask for some slight liberal changes because we deny to ourselves there is something wrong with the system.
Viet Nam has actually a one-party policy which until the 21rst century did not work too badly. It has sent to prison some of its opponent, some allegedly intelligent dissents not deserving such a fate, some allegedly supported by the American government and its allies, others being just religious nuts wanting to make public what could have been private. Yet, it has a sensible one-party regime where people often vote for the person they find to be the most qualified for the job, and not for the person with the best facial symmetry on the list they think they ought to vote on.
Also, it has to be observed that Viet Nam does not exactly have only one parliament, but authorizes that passed laws be contested by interests groups like workers unions. This is somehow fairer for the common worker than a system where the majority in both electoral chambers passes a law which affects groups and they cannot go to a higher court to contest it except if it breaches the European declaration of Human Rights. And even in this case, I am waiting to see how long it will take for British prisoners to get the right to vote.
On the question of idealism and pragmatism, I am now to realize that my pragmatism is actually an attempt at going beyond the ideology in which we are lock due to a misunderstanding of our history. The First World War is often blamed on the accumulation of spending on ‘defence’ budget of European countries. Whenever I ask about military spending, the counter argument is exactly the language one based on the use of ‘defence’. It is though inconsistent as defence in our contemporary western countries means the collection of a variety of ballistic armaments we could not use in our own country for it would destroy our own basic infrastructures.
More than that, military spending is purely ideological as it is based on a socially constructed fear of being attacked. Costa Rica since its creation almost never had any army and yet has never been invaded. Now, this could mean that it is because it has strong allies pressuring the world not to attack this country. On the other hand, Switzerland has one of the most important army in the world and yet never had to use it at all. Switzerland is more vicious in the fact that even if it has a strong army, it would always anyway support and bow to the strongest whatever the moral sacrifice it means.
On the other hand, we find heroes of history from which we have learned nothing like Gandhi, who have fought off a whole empire without raising a weapon. Somehow these forgotten heroes of pure pragmatism have not inspired us enough.
Wednesday 6 July 2011
After the 90's
When was the world what it ought to be? There are so many conflicting ideas, facts that nothing makes sense and no ideal makes sense. Between the two world wars ( the one written in capital letters), there was more global exchange than there is now. There was of course less political interaction, less social interactions and less informations in general on what was going on the other side of the world. Most of the informations would travel as fast as they could, most of the time disappearing in the midst of population who had no interest in distributing the news. All was irrelevant, all was transformed.
By the end of the twentieth century, we are all link together through phones, internet, television and even newspapers. It was not their own President the French saw in 1998 for the Monicagate, it was Bill Clinton, the man from Arkansas. Informations were finally global and everybody was free to interpret it as they wished. Of course, this is the illusion of every individuals as cultural biased would always reinterpret the information, leading Clinton to be an example for Berlusconi or an unlearned lesson for Wiener.
The world, by the end of the twentieth century was also a world united to solve all the problems. It would solve the debt in Africa, eradicate the hunger, see the tyrants of the world quiet down and it was in an engaged spirit that humanity would step into its third culturally-constructed millenium. It went alright until George W. Bush won against Al Gore in the elections. It is not a question of being political, it is solely how the democratic process got overruled that was significant for the rest of the world. Its leading power was transformed into an oligarchy of lawyers and judges ready to protect their own interests.
No wonder then that a band of terrorist acted on our worldly unconscious and taught the hypocritical hyper-nation a lesson that has never been correctly learned. It was somehow looked as a selfish personal attempt at harming the United States by an extremist group. It is the slight insult that we profess and feel guilty about as soon as we leave the insulted. We did not mean to be mean, we did not mean to be destructive and we know full well that it will come back to us in unexpected way. There was though inside our brain, in the back of our thoughts a growing frustration to say how it is, say what we think even when we are not ready to admit it to ourselves.
The U.S.A. before and after the 9/11 strike, did not believe in global warming, provided minimum help to developing countries and was all in all a great power that would show such a power for good in parsimony. Even the help for developing countries was a form of blackmail and not given blindly. There was a control on the spending ( American goods only) and on the infrastructure of the country ( no competition to the American goods). The U.S.A.had always a lot to offer for the world, and when it was most expected that this generosity which would have meant that this nation no one dared to compete against could have lead by example into a better future.
We had waited and nothing came but Titanic, Godzilla and the Matrix. Those were the promises of the American dreams. It was a society as stiff as the Victorians, as stupid as lizards and though everybody knew it was just a dream, no one raised themselves against it because America was a blockbuster. Nothing could stand against it, not even the Americans. This was the dream that was slowly coming out, the frustration felt by the world but whom no one dared to think to much out loud, by fear of losing the little they had gained from it.
What a surprise 9/11 seemed to be for everybody. And yet... nothing changed. Why nothing changed is because the Americans had finally the excuse for not caring for the rest of the world. It was just about rightfully defending their interests. And who would say there is something wrong in that? Except the rest of the world, which slowly started to see that there was something wrong with the whole unraveling of this situation?
The United States at the beginning of the 20th century had this same self-centered point of view over the world, something that totally disappeared after the world war 2. They did not want to join any global organizations and Woodrow Wilson had to defend the idea of being at the center of the world with a congress that did not give a damn about the world. Obama now finds himself in the same position as the congress is asking him what the hell they are doing in Libya.
I guess that there is at the moment a global zeitgeist of protectionism of the nation as the world crumble because of a clique of rich and we just like to blame the Other. We do not have yet identified an other, but it would be interesting to see who is going to come along. The similarities with the crisis of the 1930's has not only sprung in my mind, but it the mind of a few European leaders, an example being Sarkozy who in 2010 tried to make the Gipsy's the Other and found himself in an awkward position where the population went ' hey wait a sec' : they have not done anything wrong.
Hitler found actually the perfect scapegoat as the Jews in his time where holding some of the businesses of Germany and it was understandable to be jealous with a few of them. 70% of the lawyers for example were Jews. The problem was the profession and the system, but instead of saying so, which appears too complicated and intelligent for the general population, he found the symbolic representation of a frustrating system. There is no more equivalent. The families of owners around the world have different backgrounds. Everybody is a winner in the system, except that this is only an illusion, and that comparatively there are still a majority of losers.
The common grounds for the owners of the modes of productions are that they are from old families and that someone always grow to be a winner in these families and play his cards really well. It is true that there are some losers in these families, but they are eternally take care for until a succession of generations loose the ability to play the hands they have been dealt with. It is though the exception.
The frustration of the populations over the lies of the system, and the fact that rich families are coming back on the compromises they did with humanity at the end of world war 2 and at the end of the 19th century is not going to help them, but it is because they have managed to alienate every body but the the civil servants who have still a notion of allegiance to the state. The difference between a State and a private enterprise is that the private enterprise has no guilt cleaning up on a monthly basis any elements that is not productive enough to replace it until it finds a good element. The State, by providing the security of the employment has created a sense of protection that does not provide an incentive to work. But material gain is rarely an incentive to work, except for manual labor.
I do not know again where I have started, and how I should end. I do believe that we have a tension inside us between accepting the system and playing the game, and observing that the game is rigged. It has the appearance of a game, and the people who want to play try to play it well and want to always ameliorate their cards, their chances. Most people at some point tell themselves it is what it is and we should go with the flow, otherwise we loose. It is the fear of losing that blocks any reflection for better change. Instead, we legitimize our actions by looking at our competition and finding problems in their actions. No one likes to judge oneself action or unintended consequences of thoughts. ' We have played the game so we understand why it is played'. But who thinks about who sets the rules, who thinks about what we really want and not what we have been made to think we want ?
By the end of the twentieth century, we are all link together through phones, internet, television and even newspapers. It was not their own President the French saw in 1998 for the Monicagate, it was Bill Clinton, the man from Arkansas. Informations were finally global and everybody was free to interpret it as they wished. Of course, this is the illusion of every individuals as cultural biased would always reinterpret the information, leading Clinton to be an example for Berlusconi or an unlearned lesson for Wiener.
The world, by the end of the twentieth century was also a world united to solve all the problems. It would solve the debt in Africa, eradicate the hunger, see the tyrants of the world quiet down and it was in an engaged spirit that humanity would step into its third culturally-constructed millenium. It went alright until George W. Bush won against Al Gore in the elections. It is not a question of being political, it is solely how the democratic process got overruled that was significant for the rest of the world. Its leading power was transformed into an oligarchy of lawyers and judges ready to protect their own interests.
No wonder then that a band of terrorist acted on our worldly unconscious and taught the hypocritical hyper-nation a lesson that has never been correctly learned. It was somehow looked as a selfish personal attempt at harming the United States by an extremist group. It is the slight insult that we profess and feel guilty about as soon as we leave the insulted. We did not mean to be mean, we did not mean to be destructive and we know full well that it will come back to us in unexpected way. There was though inside our brain, in the back of our thoughts a growing frustration to say how it is, say what we think even when we are not ready to admit it to ourselves.
The U.S.A. before and after the 9/11 strike, did not believe in global warming, provided minimum help to developing countries and was all in all a great power that would show such a power for good in parsimony. Even the help for developing countries was a form of blackmail and not given blindly. There was a control on the spending ( American goods only) and on the infrastructure of the country ( no competition to the American goods). The U.S.A.had always a lot to offer for the world, and when it was most expected that this generosity which would have meant that this nation no one dared to compete against could have lead by example into a better future.
We had waited and nothing came but Titanic, Godzilla and the Matrix. Those were the promises of the American dreams. It was a society as stiff as the Victorians, as stupid as lizards and though everybody knew it was just a dream, no one raised themselves against it because America was a blockbuster. Nothing could stand against it, not even the Americans. This was the dream that was slowly coming out, the frustration felt by the world but whom no one dared to think to much out loud, by fear of losing the little they had gained from it.
What a surprise 9/11 seemed to be for everybody. And yet... nothing changed. Why nothing changed is because the Americans had finally the excuse for not caring for the rest of the world. It was just about rightfully defending their interests. And who would say there is something wrong in that? Except the rest of the world, which slowly started to see that there was something wrong with the whole unraveling of this situation?
The United States at the beginning of the 20th century had this same self-centered point of view over the world, something that totally disappeared after the world war 2. They did not want to join any global organizations and Woodrow Wilson had to defend the idea of being at the center of the world with a congress that did not give a damn about the world. Obama now finds himself in the same position as the congress is asking him what the hell they are doing in Libya.
I guess that there is at the moment a global zeitgeist of protectionism of the nation as the world crumble because of a clique of rich and we just like to blame the Other. We do not have yet identified an other, but it would be interesting to see who is going to come along. The similarities with the crisis of the 1930's has not only sprung in my mind, but it the mind of a few European leaders, an example being Sarkozy who in 2010 tried to make the Gipsy's the Other and found himself in an awkward position where the population went ' hey wait a sec' : they have not done anything wrong.
Hitler found actually the perfect scapegoat as the Jews in his time where holding some of the businesses of Germany and it was understandable to be jealous with a few of them. 70% of the lawyers for example were Jews. The problem was the profession and the system, but instead of saying so, which appears too complicated and intelligent for the general population, he found the symbolic representation of a frustrating system. There is no more equivalent. The families of owners around the world have different backgrounds. Everybody is a winner in the system, except that this is only an illusion, and that comparatively there are still a majority of losers.
The common grounds for the owners of the modes of productions are that they are from old families and that someone always grow to be a winner in these families and play his cards really well. It is true that there are some losers in these families, but they are eternally take care for until a succession of generations loose the ability to play the hands they have been dealt with. It is though the exception.
The frustration of the populations over the lies of the system, and the fact that rich families are coming back on the compromises they did with humanity at the end of world war 2 and at the end of the 19th century is not going to help them, but it is because they have managed to alienate every body but the the civil servants who have still a notion of allegiance to the state. The difference between a State and a private enterprise is that the private enterprise has no guilt cleaning up on a monthly basis any elements that is not productive enough to replace it until it finds a good element. The State, by providing the security of the employment has created a sense of protection that does not provide an incentive to work. But material gain is rarely an incentive to work, except for manual labor.
I do not know again where I have started, and how I should end. I do believe that we have a tension inside us between accepting the system and playing the game, and observing that the game is rigged. It has the appearance of a game, and the people who want to play try to play it well and want to always ameliorate their cards, their chances. Most people at some point tell themselves it is what it is and we should go with the flow, otherwise we loose. It is the fear of losing that blocks any reflection for better change. Instead, we legitimize our actions by looking at our competition and finding problems in their actions. No one likes to judge oneself action or unintended consequences of thoughts. ' We have played the game so we understand why it is played'. But who thinks about who sets the rules, who thinks about what we really want and not what we have been made to think we want ?
Old story, for the English
I never thought I would agree on the a political decision with an Archbishop ( being Belgian is part of this anticlerical instinct) but the comment of the Archbishop of Westminster on the Big Society made me retract on my position. The Big Society was the English “Yes you can” of last year, a part ideology, part slogan generating ideas and debates. The opposition and the Conservative Party both outlined their points of view whilst the Liberal-Democrats stayed quite silent. The position of the libdems is understandable. The Big Society is the part of the conservatives' unenviable cuts program put forward, as it was the one that involved the least controversial ideas.
The plan is to give more powers to communities, encourage volunteering and relegate some of the government services to co-ops. Who could argue with that? People doing it for themselves, direct people helping people volunteering without any of those detached Whitehall “fatcats” involved. The conservatives partner in this dissolution Walz, the libdems, remained remarkably muted on the subject however. So do they prefer a distanced over-powerful central government preferring civil servants to engaged citizens ? It is hard to choose the later, it’s clearly more complex than simple ideology, the problem with the Big Society is in its application.
The Con-Dem coalition has started its governance by laying out their plans to cut government spendings. The Big Society is the safety-net for all the people relying on the soon-to-disappear public services. That is where we find the first problem for the creation of this Big Society. The government started by cutting public services first, posing a simple solution to those not wanting to see misery around them, get out there and help others.
It is hard to push people to be involved in their communities, so why not make it an inescapable moral obligation? Maybe an exaggeration but it's easy to see citizens will go down the road to help each other. People have already started marching down those same streets to acknowledge that the cuts are contraversial. We can say that the Big Society is slowly appearing, though probably not the way the Conservatives expected it to be.
The privatisation of the public services started under Thatcher and Cameron is following her lead. His proclaimed intention is to, when possible; transfer the power to co-operatives and mutualities. It is a better plan than to give the duty of the services to private companies driven only by the need to make profit rather than helping the collective.
Committees are preparing for a bank to help these communal organisations. The Bank funds will come from unused bank accounts. This idea is interesting. The details are yet very blurry though. The question of interests on the loans for example has not yet been debated. It would be another burden to charge interest on people trying to start a co-operative not only affecting those running the groups but for those that group provides for as well.
The transfer of powers to localities is an idea that could attract of lot of minds. Empowering localities mean that people would not feel as distanced to power as they feel now. Bristol is a good example of a local government having to decide on a controversial decision such as preferring Tesco over a co-operative. This was before the conservative pledged to back-up co-operatives. The point though is that local governments do not have to abide by the people's will until their re-election is challenged.
If the Big Society in the last months ( this article was actually written in Mars - and does not mention the resignation of the ' Architect' of the Big Society- due to lack of support from the Government - if that does not prove the lack of faith of the Conservatives I do not know what does ) it is because Liverpool's council withdrew itself from the trial the government organised in partnership with the city and three other localities. Liverpool is led by a Labour councillor, so it might be a political decision to exit this test. The justification for not participating was that the cuts in services discouraged volunteers already on the ground. Attracting new, motivated people to the Big Society while simultaneously cutting and demotivating those already involved is not the best foundation on which to build an organisation fuelled by goodwill.
This is a point that has been outlined by a few research institutes. To build a cohesive society, there must be a balanced material equality between all its members. Equalitytrust.org is an easy to access and understand research institute proving many times this point. The most interesting graph is the one correlating social trust and equality. The countries with the greatest ratio of equality, the usual Vikings, have the greatest level of social trust. Japan has a similar level of equality of income but not of trust. The difference might lie here in the fact that Japan does not have a history of social trust and has a very competitive educational system.
Comparative researches have also been done to observe the causal sequencing of trust and equality. The people arguing against a universal welfare system say that if people do not trust each other, why should we be obliged to help everybody. This puts us in a social trap. The proof against this argument though was outlined by a thinker called Bo Rothstein. He has compared Sweden and the United States social trust and welfare systems. The decline of the welfare system in some states of the United States correlated with their decline in social trust.
It is an important part of the conservative agenda: transforming the structure of Britain to make it more similar to the American. Charity is an important part of society. The Godfather showed that is how respectability is obtained in the new world. Charity is actually a very vicious instrument of class domination. A simple example is that Eton is one of the largest charities in the United Kingdom. Except for donating the current Prime Minister, I’m not sure how it benefits more to society.
Charity might be the main aspect of the Big Society. Any donation to charities are tax deductible. That is how tax evasion, or defending tax cuts, is legitimized: it is more money to give away. As said before, it is easy to make a charity that serves only private interests. Ikea is owned by a charity for example. So it does not have to share its profit to help everybody. It’s Obligation to society is to expand and make more tax money for the state, taxes that are rarely paid due to large tax loopholes, Boots for examples headquarter’s is a Postbox in Switzerland. Charity is actually far more vicious than the loophole of the rich to escape providing for everybody. Oscar Wilde explained it a century ago. Charity is the way for rich people to satisfy their guilt over poverty. Giving makes them feel good. It is purely selfish as the reason for misery is never questioned. Charity is solving a problem in appearance. Charity is not immoral, but should never have existed. Donating is only pushing on the problem for tomorrow and that is what is never said.
A few practicable alternative societies have been provided in the last twenty decades. Most of them do insist on localism. They do also insist on a sense of community. All these programs centre their attention to prosperity and eradicating poverty. If we do not pay attention to these alternatives we will reach a real crisis. Equality is of importance as growing income disparity leads to social unrest. A theory approached for the unrest in the middle-east is that the rise in food price has made the gap in income more observable and so more shocking than ever.
Equality of health, education, transport, information should be essentials provided to everybody for charities to disappear. Tim Jackson was asked by the previous Labour government to outline a way out of the economic crisis. He presented it and the government refused to acknowledge it, it was too good a solution probably. His point was that a neo-liberal economy fed on disparities and competition. Both these elements are though destructive to a Big Society. The only alternative is a deep structural change.
Here lies the irony of it all: the conservative did provide us with the goal but are working hard at making it unreachable.
The plan is to give more powers to communities, encourage volunteering and relegate some of the government services to co-ops. Who could argue with that? People doing it for themselves, direct people helping people volunteering without any of those detached Whitehall “fatcats” involved. The conservatives partner in this dissolution Walz, the libdems, remained remarkably muted on the subject however. So do they prefer a distanced over-powerful central government preferring civil servants to engaged citizens ? It is hard to choose the later, it’s clearly more complex than simple ideology, the problem with the Big Society is in its application.
The Con-Dem coalition has started its governance by laying out their plans to cut government spendings. The Big Society is the safety-net for all the people relying on the soon-to-disappear public services. That is where we find the first problem for the creation of this Big Society. The government started by cutting public services first, posing a simple solution to those not wanting to see misery around them, get out there and help others.
It is hard to push people to be involved in their communities, so why not make it an inescapable moral obligation? Maybe an exaggeration but it's easy to see citizens will go down the road to help each other. People have already started marching down those same streets to acknowledge that the cuts are contraversial. We can say that the Big Society is slowly appearing, though probably not the way the Conservatives expected it to be.
The privatisation of the public services started under Thatcher and Cameron is following her lead. His proclaimed intention is to, when possible; transfer the power to co-operatives and mutualities. It is a better plan than to give the duty of the services to private companies driven only by the need to make profit rather than helping the collective.
Committees are preparing for a bank to help these communal organisations. The Bank funds will come from unused bank accounts. This idea is interesting. The details are yet very blurry though. The question of interests on the loans for example has not yet been debated. It would be another burden to charge interest on people trying to start a co-operative not only affecting those running the groups but for those that group provides for as well.
The transfer of powers to localities is an idea that could attract of lot of minds. Empowering localities mean that people would not feel as distanced to power as they feel now. Bristol is a good example of a local government having to decide on a controversial decision such as preferring Tesco over a co-operative. This was before the conservative pledged to back-up co-operatives. The point though is that local governments do not have to abide by the people's will until their re-election is challenged.
If the Big Society in the last months ( this article was actually written in Mars - and does not mention the resignation of the ' Architect' of the Big Society- due to lack of support from the Government - if that does not prove the lack of faith of the Conservatives I do not know what does ) it is because Liverpool's council withdrew itself from the trial the government organised in partnership with the city and three other localities. Liverpool is led by a Labour councillor, so it might be a political decision to exit this test. The justification for not participating was that the cuts in services discouraged volunteers already on the ground. Attracting new, motivated people to the Big Society while simultaneously cutting and demotivating those already involved is not the best foundation on which to build an organisation fuelled by goodwill.
This is a point that has been outlined by a few research institutes. To build a cohesive society, there must be a balanced material equality between all its members. Equalitytrust.org is an easy to access and understand research institute proving many times this point. The most interesting graph is the one correlating social trust and equality. The countries with the greatest ratio of equality, the usual Vikings, have the greatest level of social trust. Japan has a similar level of equality of income but not of trust. The difference might lie here in the fact that Japan does not have a history of social trust and has a very competitive educational system.
Comparative researches have also been done to observe the causal sequencing of trust and equality. The people arguing against a universal welfare system say that if people do not trust each other, why should we be obliged to help everybody. This puts us in a social trap. The proof against this argument though was outlined by a thinker called Bo Rothstein. He has compared Sweden and the United States social trust and welfare systems. The decline of the welfare system in some states of the United States correlated with their decline in social trust.
It is an important part of the conservative agenda: transforming the structure of Britain to make it more similar to the American. Charity is an important part of society. The Godfather showed that is how respectability is obtained in the new world. Charity is actually a very vicious instrument of class domination. A simple example is that Eton is one of the largest charities in the United Kingdom. Except for donating the current Prime Minister, I’m not sure how it benefits more to society.
Charity might be the main aspect of the Big Society. Any donation to charities are tax deductible. That is how tax evasion, or defending tax cuts, is legitimized: it is more money to give away. As said before, it is easy to make a charity that serves only private interests. Ikea is owned by a charity for example. So it does not have to share its profit to help everybody. It’s Obligation to society is to expand and make more tax money for the state, taxes that are rarely paid due to large tax loopholes, Boots for examples headquarter’s is a Postbox in Switzerland. Charity is actually far more vicious than the loophole of the rich to escape providing for everybody. Oscar Wilde explained it a century ago. Charity is the way for rich people to satisfy their guilt over poverty. Giving makes them feel good. It is purely selfish as the reason for misery is never questioned. Charity is solving a problem in appearance. Charity is not immoral, but should never have existed. Donating is only pushing on the problem for tomorrow and that is what is never said.
A few practicable alternative societies have been provided in the last twenty decades. Most of them do insist on localism. They do also insist on a sense of community. All these programs centre their attention to prosperity and eradicating poverty. If we do not pay attention to these alternatives we will reach a real crisis. Equality is of importance as growing income disparity leads to social unrest. A theory approached for the unrest in the middle-east is that the rise in food price has made the gap in income more observable and so more shocking than ever.
Equality of health, education, transport, information should be essentials provided to everybody for charities to disappear. Tim Jackson was asked by the previous Labour government to outline a way out of the economic crisis. He presented it and the government refused to acknowledge it, it was too good a solution probably. His point was that a neo-liberal economy fed on disparities and competition. Both these elements are though destructive to a Big Society. The only alternative is a deep structural change.
Here lies the irony of it all: the conservative did provide us with the goal but are working hard at making it unreachable.
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