Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Love will keep us together

Today's pic is 'An Old Church' by LS Lowry. At the centre is the blackened Church, probably once rising above fields now dwarfed in the mid 20th Century by mills and smoking Chimneys. I like the girl in her red hat and all the little dogs. This version may be a little small to catch the details.

Historians of the future may well call this period 'the crisis of the 21st Century' or more traditionally 'the crisis of the 3rd Century' using the French Revolution's Year Zero as the starting point. Like the original 3C-Crisis, a convergence of misfortune challenges the assumptions of enduring civilisation. In this case I'd cite the continuing failure of macro-economics, the endless low-intensity conflict (still concentrated on the great land-bridges), proliferation of nuclear weapons, the invincibility of crime/corruption and of course, environmental changes. When there is clear blue sea between us and the north pole then this last factor will find itself properly back at No.1 barring some unforeseeable catastrophe. Each one of course is fuelling the others and I've usually put the breaking point at somewhere around 2020, however you can never tell one way or another. Things can spiral downward from diplomatic spat to nuclear stand-off in a matter of weeks, alternatively people can put up with a seriously shit situation for years and years and years. Apart from the French of course, who set up burning barricades at the drop of a hat. Good on 'em! They're at it right now. Hopefully ushering in a new epoch but...

It's hard not to doubt it. Of course if the mobs were to actually over-run the existing order in one of the major nations it would certainly shake things up a bit. Obviously we have seen this within our lifetimes with the overthrow of the communist oligarchies but it's not really a brilliant comparison. The revolutionists of 1989 knew exactly what was in store once the ruling Parties were thrown out; i.e. Representative Democracy and Free-Market Capitalism. Today's revolutionaries would be in a more similar situation to the Bastille-stormers of 1789, having to make it up from scratch, learning what they may from previous versions of the new world. More similar to the cold-war ending uprisings are the continuing upheavals in North Africa and the Middle-East that share the same sense of an external support for the real internal anger. Such is the inertia in these societies that even very impressive mass-action has only really forced the elites in these societies to remove the most obvious reeking corrupt elements whilst retaining everything else about the society absolutely the same.

This has rather gone off in an extreme and opposite direction in Syria where popular anger was not strong enough to effect the necessary settlement on an intransigent elite strongly supported by its own sectional constituency who had seen how abrupt democratisation had played out against secular notions of freedom in neighbouring Iraq. The result of this unstoppable force meets immovable object stuff has predictably been a full-on armed insurrection and military repression. Like in Chechnya in the 90s, the moderates of the opposition were either quickly killed, turned militant or just side-lined through the irrelevance of their position. Whereas in Chechnya the authorities could then drive their opponents into the hills as extremist guerillas increasingly isolated from the aspirations and moral norms of the civilian population, in Syria this cannot happen. The rebellion has nowhere else to go and is well-supported by neighbouring powers. Where is this one going to stop? If you were in Power in Syria why not raise the stakes and use those WMD and force the hand of the Americans? It seems that the powers-that-be have left it a little late for a peaceful settlement like Egypt or Yemen. Stoopid, Stoopid Americans (and us!) going into Iraq like that on the WMD pretext. Means they have to do something if Assad deploys. What if the flashpoints start flashing then? Georgia, Israel, Iran etc. Kashmir, Formosa, Venezuela, Sudan. Congo, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Kurdistan. The world of competing nation states is a ticking time-bomb. Revolution today or war tomorrow! Probably both.

The fact that a 1789-style epochal uprising seems so unthinkable tells you how far we are from having any new ideas. In fact it seems more likely that good old authoritarian utopianism will turn up again in the same sort of places it turned up last time. It may even be to our benefit you know. It certainly moderated capitalism having a collective alternative working (sort-of) alongside it. If you ask me the fact that the gap between rich and poor, at least in UKOGBANI and more than likely in the US and Europe too, has expanded in the last 20 years is no coincidence. I'm sure there are other explanations. Never fear Leftard pals! The victory of the 'Private/ Drive-It-Yourself' Philosophy is really only temporary. Competition can't compete with itself! Co-operation makes you more competitive. Competition forces you to co-operate! 

 
Well here's the embed which confusingly is the title to this post. It's Neil Sedaka's greatest song but I really think Captain and Tenille really nail it. Lyrics a bit unnecessary again but meh! Sing along to this lovely, bouncy song. What is love, anyway? Now apparently I'm not the first to adress this rather important question.It is right this should be so. Well it gets a little bit confused because the word has all these connotations like intense loyalty to kin-folk, really, really wanting to get so close to another person that stuff comes out of you or just liking someone or something a real lot. Or apparently even what God feels about all of us all the time? Yuck! Well I'll try presenting a unified term in accordance with my entirely false and made-up religious beliefs: Love is the desire every individual being experiences as their innate drive to incorporate themselves into greater being. Where it is thwarted it turns them into defectors against life itself. It is the realisation of love, most evident as the emotion of compassion, that will pull us back from the brink and turn the page from the long age of war to the beneficent Empire of Crackers that is the only solution to the crisis of the 3rd century. It's the next step forward bringing into reality a world where a Universal Declaration of Human Rights is written there in stone in all places where humans gather as it was in the age of Ashoka and like in that enlightened ancient Kingdom there will be a secret police so that the Emperor knows exactly how nice everyone is being to each other.


No comments: