hard lessons in a global society

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One of the most obvious results of US exceptionalism and unilateralism has been the collapse of global cooperation as forums such as the UN are no longer seen to represent the weaker, developing countries but to be vehicles for legitamising US policy. The consequences of this permeate far and wide throughout global society and one of the saddest aspects of this is described in this article by MJ Robbins, who blogs for the Guardian as The Lay Scientist. 

The following paragraph struck me as highly pertinent in the wake of my recent post on human sustainable development and my point in the comments that cultural influences that promote fecundity as a desirable trait are, alongside US exceptionalism, one of the most malignantly sociopathic influences upon our species. 

"In a male-dominated culture with a strong tradition of polygamy (in the Islamic north at least), where children are seen as gifts from God, the power of men is measured by the size of their families, and different political, ethnic and religious groups compete to be the most populous, fertility is an especially sensitive issue."

Whilst America continues upon its historical course of imperial conquest, subjugation and exploitation there is little hope that genuinely benevolent campaigning organisations can make much impact in their attempts to confront and reform such appallingly destructive and regressive cultures. Oh, and they're not going to make much progress in Nigeria either. LOL

on democratic participation and work hours

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How many times have you heard people say, when confronted with a political position, something along the lines of "oh I don't have time to follow politics"? We must all have heard some similar excuse and I, like many of you, have often put this down to willful ignorance, laziness or some other dysfunction. On reflection, however, I appreciate that politics is fiendishly complicated, not least because of the inordinate amount of proganda and misinformation propagated by the media. The situation is made worse in countries such as the UK, that have unreformed and near-mediaeval constitutional arrangements.

I will happily spend several hours a day reading links from twitter and other sources to keep up to date on developments that personally interest me. Although I consider myself well-educated I still can't offer any truly informed opinion on issues such as health and safety policy, social care, the health service and other issues that I'm just not that excited about. And so I'd like to contrast my position with what must be a significant minority of the electorate of the UK who don't possess the means to access virtually any reasonably objective sources of information about our democracy. These people still spend a considerable fraction of their waking hours at work or occupied in some other useful activity such as caregiving.

Citizens not having time in their lives to acquire sufficient knowledge to engage in constructive politics is a glaring symptom that our economic culture is depriving people of the opportunity to participate in our democracy. For our democracy to function these people need the personal time to allocate to such activity, the information technology to access them and the langauge and comprehension skills to understand them. 

To emphasise this point, let me present a contrasting example of the electorate to my first one. Instead of Mrs Caregiver, lets look at Mr Accountant. Mr Accountant works 70 hour weeks for a big firm in the city. In this capacity he might well be an expert in accountancy law and policies affecting it but he lacks any broader understanding of politics. He has no incentive to gain one, either, because his six figure income allows him to afford a lifestyle remote from the majority and unaffected by such piddling social issues as unemployment, healthcare, environmental or foreign policy. This man has no greater incentive to engage in enlightened politics than Mrs Caregiver.

sociopathy grows from a sick society

Decca Aitkinhead (cool name!) has a profound point to make on CiF about the proliferation of violent assaults by youths.


"The proper question to ask isn't how to stop children getting their hands on booze, but why so many feel the need to self-medicate themselves into states of violent psychosis."

"Happy people do not, as a rule, self-medicate with alcohol, or want to hurt innocent strangers when they have. They just don't - whatever the licensing laws may or may not allow. If your head is an essentially OK place to be, you won't suffer from a constant, ravening desire to get out of it."

"This kind of drinking shouldn't be mistaken for hedonism, but nihilism."

I can profoundly empathise with this position as I was in a similar state as a child. I wasn't violent- quite the opposite- I was often the target of violence but I was a deeply unhappy child and I used to self-medicate with alcohol at first and then stronger substances as I grew older. To an extent, I still do. But my anger arose from a very clearly perceived injustice: As a grammar school student I was continually forced to conform to victorian standards of discipline and ethics which rang false with my intuited humanist values of equality, secularism and freedom. My peers in my home town were rarely from the same shool, who's catchment area was far wider than local comprehensives and consequently I was outnumbered by "townies" as they were known at my establishment. The townies- understandably- treated me as a "toff", despite the fact that I was at the school on a scholarship, and I was a pariah to them. So, rejected by my school fellows for being a troublemaker and challenging authoritarianism and my local peers for being part of a perceived elite I had few friends and was even actively persecuted by some of the townies, leading to a sense of rejection and despair and a vicious circle of self-obsession and recrimination that was relieved through intoxication

This situation is far from that of the "youths" described in Decca's article but the underlying unhappiness is the link. The children of today cannot see the values that schools attempt to impose upon them anywhere else in society. Obedience to the law and the rejection of violence as a means to an end: Hmmmmmm, lets try and think of a recent example of government action which might reveal the hypocrisy of demanding that our children adhere to such principles. Moderation and responsibility: Media frenzies over celebrities engaging in affairs, public brawls, coke binges and pointless excess would instantly invalidate that one. Engaging with "the community" and a sense of civil duty: Reports of rampant capitalism, fat cats, city bonuses, corruption, and profiteering abound in every newspaper. Without any evidence that the values we attempt to impose upon them matter to much of the rest fo society it is little wonder that teenagers- who are quite smart enough to see the hypocrisy of this- resort to surly nihilism and sociopathy. And who can blame them? It is not as if there are only a few people like me out there with strong feelings on the injustice and stupidity of our current society but the same government gets voted back in every time and the opposition are even worse! Well done the youths, I say- drink and be merry and if anyone gets in your way fucking stab the cunt- life's not going to get any better so why worry about the future?