http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/
The last 2 episodes of The Forum have been of particularly interest to the intellectual heavyweights (ha!) whose philosophies underpin the activities of the RAC (not that one) who's only official public mouthpeice you are reading now. In the last Forum, Tim Flannery discussed the possible emergence of the super-organism, a new life-form composed of the collaboration of all mankind, solving the global problems he's created (mankind that is, not Tim Flannery) and becoming a planetry consciousness. He states that globalisation could be the beginning of this development and it's certainly worth ruminating on that, particularly as the last blog post approvingly referred to the work of Peter Watkins who slagged off globalisation good and proper. While we're on the subject I'm aware that a line I used in review of his films was lifted directly from the introduction to 'La Commune' I'd linked to. An embarrassing accident that certainly sheds some light on how easy it is to think you've had a clever opinion whereas in fact it's just someone elses you've only just been exposed to and then forgotten. When I say 'you' I mean of course 'me'. You know, that crazy idiot pariah person.
Crazy idiot pariah or not, I'm way ahead of Tim Flannery. Here's a 2006 post from the now defunct EMPIRE OF CRACKERS blog originally titled Play It Agin, Yortlebluzzgubbly, which is of course a quote from Alan Moore's Ballad of Halo Jones. The picture which accompanied this peice is shown here (slightly too big-must fix!) and features characters from the Tartakovsky/McCracken stable:
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One of the interesting features of life is its tendency to form into more and more complex forms despite irresistible entropy. Like the enemy in our endless dualist world myths that divide the world into chaos and order, evil and good, Ahriman and Ormizhad, physics presents us with a name for the force that causes ordered structures to collapse and diffuse. Perhaps my human brain is too programmed by culture to see it any other way.
BUT the reality behind this is that life uses this constant movement as the source of the energy to build these structures we consume , inhabit and form part of. More and more complex structures develop out of the chaos of these collisions with a kind of ratcheting; every increase in complexity increasing the ability of these structures to accumulate more energy. Of course, being designed by chaos, most structures fail to achieve this objective but they don't last long in the game of course. Accidentally better random forms soon proliferate and find better ways of filling the space and accumulate that energy. Some even work out how to replicate themselves.
Six steps in the history of evolution from non-living forms to intelligent community:
1-Atoms (eg Carbon)
2-Molecules (Amino acids)
3-Complex Molecules (DNA)
4-Cells (Amoebas)
5-Organs/Organisms (Humans)
6-Super-Organisms (Communities)
At the moment, we're between 6 and 7, but what form will 7 take? We've been trying through lots of structures that aint worked or are Homo-Erectus*-like intermediates like city states, empires, nations, monarchies, fascism, communism etc. The United Nations is a hopeful start to a planetry organism but has built into it the inherent weakness of it's own structure, nation states. At its most visible level it is a body for the leaders of humans, or at least, the leaders of artificially-defined areas containing communities of humans. The ratchet effect may not work with such fragile cogs.
The key is voluntary co-operation. If it cannot be obtained find other ways of obtaining it. Ultimately coercion is loosening that ratchet and letting the entropy take us back a few more squares on the big board. (Jesus Koosie! These metaphors are all over the place!) Co-operation exists on every level of life, for example, the Mitochondria in our cells that allow us to use oxygen were originally parasitic organisms that invaded our ancestor cells and well.....love.
Stage 7 is the Empire of Crackers and the germ in the seed has emerged on the continent of North America and is spreading its information round the world on its predecessor's communications systems. The future isn't a military nightmare like Star Trek but an acceptance of the universal truths that what is best for individual is best for the world, that desire is there to help us not command us and that no man should feast while another man starves. I've been accused of having a vision tainted by former communist indoctrination that seeks big truths and big solutions but ain't no-one going to turn me around. I'm going all the way to stage 10 with the little fluffy pink one**and the big stoopid dragon because the universe is love!!!
*This sounds gay. Seriously, it's one of our antecedents.
**This sounds gay. Um it might be but I ain't. Like I care! Don't give me that feminine side crap. Only 1 chromosome is sexual. Therefore I'm 22/23 a woman. So there.
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I'm well aware there's a lot wrong with that post. For one thing there are 23 pairs of large linear nuclear chromosomes in human cells, though I'm correct in pointing out that only 1 pair differentiates males from females. You get the point. The Zoroastrian truth-god Ormizhad is actually spelled Ahura-Mazda, a confusion in my mind originating from Philip K Dick. As for the 'emerging in the North American Continent' bit, I'd probably be less inclined to include that now, though that was where the internet begun which may be a significant tool in this evolutionary process. It was also where Crackers came from so...er....good. This is still his army! Or her army. Whatever.
Now going back to Flannery v Watkins globalisation- good or shit debate, I'll try and sort this out as best I can now. Globalisation is obviously a necessary process in the formation of the coming super-organism but it is a globalisation of univeral self-interested solidarity rather than the existing model of a global free-for-all that increases the rate at which all aspects of human life is commoditized. Free trade between humans and their associations must be the basis of the enlightened world-community (communism, I'm guessing, comes much later when the term no longer means what it does now) but in no sense is the current globalised world market 'free trade'. Free associations of humans are normally stamped down by the arbitrary, hierachical and immoral associations like nation states and multi-national corporations, which may be reasonably successful systems of control, manufacture and distribution but exist merely to perpetuate themselves and will seek to abort the coming super-organism as a function of their own survival consciously or unconsciously by their actions. Yes that makes it all clear. Um. As for the justified concern that globalisation is creating a global monoculture where the diversity of human and non-human systems is being eradicated, this I believe also a result of the flawed competitive national-capitalist model whereby all human communities are forced to follow a uniform developmental strategy with a fixed single outcome. Within the coming super-organism where co-operation rather than competition resumes it's place as the predominant evolutionary driver, a diversity of form benefits all componants of the super-organism and this era will begin to see more interesting forms of life develop where the divisions between male and female, human and animal, material and spiritual will be questions of day to day life choices rather than the oppressive monoliths they are at this time.
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