7.4. giving meaning to one’s life
This article is 5,200 words long and covers the following :
7.4.1. pointing fingers at scapegoats is no solution
7.4.1.1. Sinophobia and the yellow peril
7.4.1.2. China is the chance of humanity
7.4.2. fairy-tales, magic, dystopian adventures
7.4.3. escaping the negativity by scanning for positivity
7.4.3.1. a worldview that quietens the mind.
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Complete table of content of Part 7.4
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From whatever angle we look at the predicament of humanity, in this year 2020, one fact detaches from the overwhelming
ambient noise. To survive “the great convergence”, of the various crises that are maturing in Late-Modernity, humanity has to find a way to switch from “the reason at work within capital” to “the reason at work within life”. What this means in practical terms is that the systemic reality of the principle of life has to be integrated in the worldviews and in the systems of governance of all nations on earth.
In all scenarios we might think about the fact is that humanity’s future will emerge at the intersection of ‒ people’s shared worldviews ‒ their societal systems of governance. We know for a fact that maintaining the status quo drives us straight into a calamity in both the dimensions of ‒ our governance-world ‒ the side-effects of Modernity. What we experience in Late-Modernity is not comparable to past crises of power societies. The impact of the fall of the American empire can’t be compared to the impact of the fall of the Roman empire for the good reason that our earthly context in Late-Modernity is radically different from the earthly context in the 5th and 6th centuries.
The fall of the Roman empire happened in a context of slow speed, of localized governance-world problems, and so the process was unfolding gradually and slowly over centuries. Humanity’s present contextual settings are radically more fragile. Today’s context is a global convergence of governance-world problems with the multiple side-effects of Modernity. In other words the unfolding of today’s fall of the USA is due to take place within the rather short span between the instantaneous and a short few decades.
In the worst-case scenario governance-world problems will eventually be resolved militarily. In Roman times armies needed to move on foot, for weeks or months, to go blow up the enemy. Today’s armies can send ICBM’s that are able to carry hyper-sonic glide vehicles that blow up the adversary on the other side of the earth within less than half an hour. And nothing, in the actions of the US system of governance today, assures us that an hour later we’ll still be there to talk about this aberration.
In the most probable scenario governance-world problems will eventually be resolved by the fall of the American empire under the weight of insurmountable debts and a dollar that abruptly loses its value. The probability of a kinetic conflict in the near future is rather low. The American military brass is not suicidal indeed. It does not want to engage in a conflict with an alliance of Russia and China that has a super armament in the fields of hyper-sonic glide vehicles and anti-missile systems.
In all probability finance will determine the outcome of the Late-Modern power games. But this financial outcome will take place in the context of the great convergence ‒ of the crisis of the governance-world ‒with the side-effects of Modernity. Taken individually the side-effects of Modernity, all, have the potential to slowly destroy life on earth.
Climate change is one of those side-effects and scientists have documented how it slowly impacts life on earth. But when the climate interacts with other side-effects, like ‒ life-extinction ‒ deforestation ‒ top soil erosion ‒ pollution ‒ habitat destabilization ‒ the activation of virus-bacteria-fungi ‒ invasive plastic nano-particles ‒ and so many more, their interactions are powering feed-back loops that push some of them over tipping-points from where there is no return while their effects are immediately devastating.
In all scenarios we might think about the fact is that humanity’s future will emerge at the intersection of ‒ people’s shared worldviews ‒ their societal systems of governance. We know for a fact that maintaining the status quo drives us straight into a calamity in both the dimensions of ‒ our governance-world ‒ the side-effects of Modernity. What we experience in Late-Modernity is not comparable to past crises of power societies. The impact of the fall of the American empire can’t be compared to the impact of the fall of the Roman empire for the good reason that our earthly context in Late-Modernity is radically different from the earthly context in the 5th and 6th centuries.
The fall of the Roman empire happened in a context of slow speed, of localized governance-world problems, and so the process was unfolding gradually and slowly over centuries. Humanity’s present contextual settings are radically more fragile. Today’s context is a global convergence of governance-world problems with the multiple side-effects of Modernity. In other words the unfolding of today’s fall of the USA is due to take place within the rather short span between the instantaneous and a short few decades.
In the worst-case scenario governance-world problems will eventually be resolved militarily. In Roman times armies needed to move on foot, for weeks or months, to go blow up the enemy. Today’s armies can send ICBM’s that are able to carry hyper-sonic glide vehicles that blow up the adversary on the other side of the earth within less than half an hour. And nothing, in the actions of the US system of governance today, assures us that an hour later we’ll still be there to talk about this aberration.
In the most probable scenario governance-world problems will eventually be resolved by the fall of the American empire under the weight of insurmountable debts and a dollar that abruptly loses its value. The probability of a kinetic conflict in the near future is rather low. The American military brass is not suicidal indeed. It does not want to engage in a conflict with an alliance of Russia and China that has a super armament in the fields of hyper-sonic glide vehicles and anti-missile systems.
In all probability finance will determine the outcome of the Late-Modern power games. But this financial outcome will take place in the context of the great convergence ‒ of the crisis of the governance-world ‒with the side-effects of Modernity. Taken individually the side-effects of Modernity, all, have the potential to slowly destroy life on earth.
Climate change is one of those side-effects and scientists have documented how it slowly impacts life on earth. But when the climate interacts with other side-effects, like ‒ life-extinction ‒ deforestation ‒ top soil erosion ‒ pollution ‒ habitat destabilization ‒ the activation of virus-bacteria-fungi ‒ invasive plastic nano-particles ‒ and so many more, their interactions are powering feed-back loops that push some of them over tipping-points from where there is no return while their effects are immediately devastating.
Taken together the governance-world and the side-effects of Modernity have pushed humanity into a corner and the most probable outcome is the institutional collapse, of the US and other countries, that will be followed by a destabilization of the living habitat of most species. In such a dire context, I think that, we have to give meaning to our lives in order to survive the knowledge of our predicament.
The following pages are an attempt at just that. They form a continuation of what I wrote in “What’s going on ? Part 7. Finding meaning in life”.
7.4.1. pointing fingers at scapegoats is no solution
Western Modernity, with its scientific and technological wonders, has separated the individuals from one another, from their society, and from all other entities in their habitat. As a result the individuals are trapped in the egotistic illusion of their absolute centrality. Since in their minds nothing has any longer a higher status than their own ego, the words of priests politicians economists intellectuals scientists doctors engineers, are no longer trusted.
The Western media peddle fake news, the politicians peddle propaganda, the intellectuals peddle frivolous theories that ignore the primacy of the principle of life, and all kinds of charlatans peddle egotistical flights of fancy on the web market-places for ideas. No one knows any longer what is true and what is false. As a result trust has gone away. A virus of suspicion has infected our minds. People have become wary of each other, of public, and of private institutions. Everyone is on his own now ruminating in loneliness about who she/he should blame for her/his miserable life.
Deaths by suicide, by drug overdose, by heavy drinking, by binge eating are all on the rise. The national curve of life expectancy in the Anglo-sphere has peaked and is going down. Anger is rampant. People are looking for a culprit. The politicians are eager to suggest a scapegoat that will deflect the anger pointing at them, at their sponsors the big capital holders, at their colleagues in the media and in academia.
Yesterday the Germans deflected popular anger toward the Jews, the Gypsies.
The Western media peddle fake news, the politicians peddle propaganda, the intellectuals peddle frivolous theories that ignore the primacy of the principle of life, and all kinds of charlatans peddle egotistical flights of fancy on the web market-places for ideas. No one knows any longer what is true and what is false. As a result trust has gone away. A virus of suspicion has infected our minds. People have become wary of each other, of public, and of private institutions. Everyone is on his own now ruminating in loneliness about who she/he should blame for her/his miserable life.
Deaths by suicide, by drug overdose, by heavy drinking, by binge eating are all on the rise. The national curve of life expectancy in the Anglo-sphere has peaked and is going down. Anger is rampant. People are looking for a culprit. The politicians are eager to suggest a scapegoat that will deflect the anger pointing at them, at their sponsors the big capital holders, at their colleagues in the media and in academia.
Yesterday the Germans deflected popular anger toward the Jews, the Gypsies.
Today the Americans deflect popular anger toward the Chinese.
7.4.1.1. Sinophobia and the Yellow Peril
China is the most populous country on earth and it has already arguably the largest economy in the world. Its civilization is the only one that survives among the earliest ones that emerged some 5,000 years ago. But most importantly China inherited a unique knowledge base that was built in continuity and on on top of animism which was the knowledge base that had been accumulated over the tens of thousands of years preceding the stabilization of power societies.
The US Trump tantrum of vile racist hate is proclaiming loud and clear its enmity of the new center of gravity of the economy-world located in East-Asia with Beijing at the core. The last time something similar happened was when the Brits began to vilify Germany, after its political unification in 1871, which transformed the new nation into a rival :
The territory of Germany had been governed as a confederation of autonomous principalities since 843 following the division of the Carolingian Empire after Charlemagne’s death. In 1871 Prussia unified the principalities and the Federal state of Germany was born that would guide the late industrialization of the country. The Brits, in alliance with other European powers, defeated Germany in 1918. But the history of Germany contrast sharply with the history of China which, let’s never forget this, is the oldest polity surviving on earth.
The US Trump tantrum of vile racist hate is proclaiming loud and clear its enmity of the new center of gravity of the economy-world located in East-Asia with Beijing at the core. The last time something similar happened was when the Brits began to vilify Germany, after its political unification in 1871, which transformed the new nation into a rival :
"In 1887, the label Made in Germany was introduced, to get British buyers to adhere to the concept of "buying British". After suffering slight losses, German manufacturers soon found the label to be of good use. But it shows another reason for British sentiments against Germany. The British Empire was one of the leading economic powers in the world and did not want to lose its place to Germany. With increasing economic power of the German Empire the Germans were perceived as competitors more and more.
(…)
Following the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 between Britain and France, official relationships cooled as did popular attitudes towards Germany and German residents in Britain. A fear of German militarism replaced a previous admiration for German culture and literature.
(…)
In Great Britain, anti-German feeling led to infrequent rioting, assaults on suspected Germans and the looting of stores owned by people with German-sounding names, occasionally even taking on an antisemitic tone. Increasing anti-German hysteria even threw suspicion upon the British royal family. King George V was persuaded to change his German name of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor and relinquish all German titles and styles on behalf of his relatives who were British subjects.” (1)
The territory of Germany had been governed as a confederation of autonomous principalities since 843 following the division of the Carolingian Empire after Charlemagne’s death. In 1871 Prussia unified the principalities and the Federal state of Germany was born that would guide the late industrialization of the country. The Brits, in alliance with other European powers, defeated Germany in 1918. But the history of Germany contrast sharply with the history of China which, let’s never forget this, is the oldest polity surviving on earth.
7.4.1.2. China is the chance of humanity
China survived as a civilization, as a polity, because its worldview and its system of knowledge were at all times keeping its people glued together through the continuum of its cultural field. It is also what allowed the country’s territory to grow, paradoxically, while being invaded and ruled by foreigners but this is another story.
The continuum of China’s cultural field is unique in the world. It unifies the production of people’s daily lives through a shared set of pragmatic principles that were induced slowly by their ancestors’ observation, about the nature of life and about the way of nature, over the span of tens of thousands of years preceding the stabilization of its institutions of power. The animistic pragmatism of the Chinese cultural field is unique and contrasts sharply with the ideologically driven cultural field of the West.
China’s knowledge base is a unique treasure of humanity that the Chinese could jealously keep for themselves. They nevertheless seem ready to share it with the rest of the world. But today a bunch of ignorant Western sycophants, and incompetent state managers, are scapegoating China which threatens to cut humanity’s access from this knowledge treasure trove. These incompetents are scapegoating China for the sole reason of deflecting their peoples’ anger for the miseries they themselves have inflicted on them and upon the whole earth. Shame on them.
Over the last centuries China has been coerced, through force by Western powers, into accepting the enslavement of its people to opium. The country was badly destabilized and the memory of its knowledge base got largely lost. By chance its imperial archives have been preserved and some of its history has been rediscovered, over the last seventy years, that illustrates a pragmatic knowledge concerned primarily with the synchronization of the actions of its society with ‘the way’ of nature and ‘the way’ of life.
But so much more work has to be done to get a better overview of the sum of daily life pragmatism that the Chinese civilization could be sharing with the rest of the world. The fact of the matter is that the wisdom of its inherited knowledge, and of its cultural field, is what made possible the Chinese economic miracle of these last 40 years. Were all nations on earth given to share in this wisdom there is no doubt that they could reproduce the same kind of miracle to the benefit of the whole of humanity this time. But to share this treasure the rest of the world and China have to learn to cooperate. Unfortunately the West is more inclined on imposing its own ideological values.
The continuum of China’s cultural field is unique in the world. It unifies the production of people’s daily lives through a shared set of pragmatic principles that were induced slowly by their ancestors’ observation, about the nature of life and about the way of nature, over the span of tens of thousands of years preceding the stabilization of its institutions of power. The animistic pragmatism of the Chinese cultural field is unique and contrasts sharply with the ideologically driven cultural field of the West.
China’s knowledge base is a unique treasure of humanity that the Chinese could jealously keep for themselves. They nevertheless seem ready to share it with the rest of the world. But today a bunch of ignorant Western sycophants, and incompetent state managers, are scapegoating China which threatens to cut humanity’s access from this knowledge treasure trove. These incompetents are scapegoating China for the sole reason of deflecting their peoples’ anger for the miseries they themselves have inflicted on them and upon the whole earth. Shame on them.
Over the last centuries China has been coerced, through force by Western powers, into accepting the enslavement of its people to opium. The country was badly destabilized and the memory of its knowledge base got largely lost. By chance its imperial archives have been preserved and some of its history has been rediscovered, over the last seventy years, that illustrates a pragmatic knowledge concerned primarily with the synchronization of the actions of its society with ‘the way’ of nature and ‘the way’ of life.
But so much more work has to be done to get a better overview of the sum of daily life pragmatism that the Chinese civilization could be sharing with the rest of the world. The fact of the matter is that the wisdom of its inherited knowledge, and of its cultural field, is what made possible the Chinese economic miracle of these last 40 years. Were all nations on earth given to share in this wisdom there is no doubt that they could reproduce the same kind of miracle to the benefit of the whole of humanity this time. But to share this treasure the rest of the world and China have to learn to cooperate. Unfortunately the West is more inclined on imposing its own ideological values.
7.4.2. fairy-tales magic and dystopian adventures
Trapped in their egotistic illusion of self-centrality many Westerners obviate their daily miseries by following all kinds of charlatans who peddle them fairy-tales of knowledge, happiness, or love. There is a buoyant cottage industry out there making good money from the individuals yearning for something ‒ that they can believe in ‒ that they can share with others. In the present ‘Western worldview void’ meaning and trust have become easy commodities for charlatans to make a fast buck.
The confusion, ‒ between truth and lies ‒ between social loneliness and cinematic narratives ‒ between a trust deficit in others and the propaganda of their society, has mired the individuals in gloom and doom perceptions about the future that make them ideal candidates for swindle. Some sects have refined their techniques to the point that their customers soon become their slaves for life. Nathan Rich’s (2) life experience is living proof that escaping from this kind of social vortex is not for the faint of heart. Many are so addicted to fairy-tales that they convert to magic in order to escape the vortex.
But the chances of magic beating the social bitch are nil. Some will never awake to the reality that they’ll never beat the bitch and so they’ll continue dragging their anger further down the road of their sad lives. Others convert to political and philosophical promises of Saturday night liberation that never come. And when occasionally these promises materialize they find themselves regimented in an enterprise that does not follow the rails of the original narrative.
The strongest promises today come from populist groups that pitch the dream of a past that never existed in the first place and that in any case would be impossible to implement in the present. Maga comes immediately to mind but this is a trend that is seen spreading around the whole Western hemisphere :
The confusion, ‒ between truth and lies ‒ between social loneliness and cinematic narratives ‒ between a trust deficit in others and the propaganda of their society, has mired the individuals in gloom and doom perceptions about the future that make them ideal candidates for swindle. Some sects have refined their techniques to the point that their customers soon become their slaves for life. Nathan Rich’s (2) life experience is living proof that escaping from this kind of social vortex is not for the faint of heart. Many are so addicted to fairy-tales that they convert to magic in order to escape the vortex.
But the chances of magic beating the social bitch are nil. Some will never awake to the reality that they’ll never beat the bitch and so they’ll continue dragging their anger further down the road of their sad lives. Others convert to political and philosophical promises of Saturday night liberation that never come. And when occasionally these promises materialize they find themselves regimented in an enterprise that does not follow the rails of the original narrative.
The strongest promises today come from populist groups that pitch the dream of a past that never existed in the first place and that in any case would be impossible to implement in the present. Maga comes immediately to mind but this is a trend that is seen spreading around the whole Western hemisphere :
“The world is silently witnessing the erosion of democratic, progressive, secular and liberal cultures of governance. The contemporary governments are becoming more authoritarian and threaten the multicultural mosaic of societies around the world. The governing and non-governing elites falsely argue that democracy breeds inefficiency and creates functional barrier to the animal spirit of profit making and entrepreneurial activities. The majority of people are conspicuously silent. “ (3)
Propaganda is pounding unrelentingly and advertising China’s authoritarianism in the hope to circumvent this Western illiberal trend in the making from reaching the minds of the citizens’. But having been forced to watch, for over half a year, the competition between Western and Chinese systems of governance in their approach to the corona-virus, the citizens have finally had enough.
The propaganda of their governments is so far out of touch with their daily lives that they come to believe that, after all, the Chinese people might perhaps have a better governance deal than their own. People slowly start to question the Western myth of democracy and the myth of China’s authoritarianism. What their eyes see makes their minds think that in democracy power is in the hands of lobbyists working for big capital while the Chinese authoritarianism that propaganda peddles looks more like a form of communitarianism that cares first and foremost for peoples’ well-being.
Such ideas are the summit of the unacceptable in the eyes of Western decision-makers. How dare these 'deplorables' venture to think for themselves ? Such ideas have been anathema in the West since time immemorial. So the bulldogs have been unleashed against China and the tone of their attacks is getting louder and hotter. In the voice of Pompeo, for example, you can hear the vibrations of a greater energy, a higher and more varied pitch, a faster flow of words with more pauses as if fear was shadowing his anger. The spectacle is Chaplinesque. Will a director please give us a motion picture about the fear in the minds that shadows the anger in the talk of US policy makers ? This feels like history in the making. Something is happening in America that presages a moment that will be remembered by future generations :
The corona-virus has lifted the veil on the reality of US and other Western economies and the picture is not rosy to say the least. Decision-makers suddenly discover that their countries are entering a depression so severe that they will be set back for at least a decade and when things slowly start to stabilize, 5 years or more from now, the map and the landscape of the world will be unrecognizable. The USA will have veered in third world territory and its people will have re-discovered the slow life of “made by hand”.
The contrast with China, that US decision-makers start to intuit, is boiling their minds into rage. But fear shadows the anger in their voices. They just can’t contain themselves any longer. If it were not for the cold reasoning of the military, Pompeo and his ilks would already have launched a hot war against China. But the military knows better. As things stand, with Russia and others looking over Chinese shoulders, its nose would be bloodied from the moment the decision to act was falling. No wonder the military is not keen to send its foot soldiers in the world of neocons’ dreams.
The propaganda of their governments is so far out of touch with their daily lives that they come to believe that, after all, the Chinese people might perhaps have a better governance deal than their own. People slowly start to question the Western myth of democracy and the myth of China’s authoritarianism. What their eyes see makes their minds think that in democracy power is in the hands of lobbyists working for big capital while the Chinese authoritarianism that propaganda peddles looks more like a form of communitarianism that cares first and foremost for peoples’ well-being.
Such ideas are the summit of the unacceptable in the eyes of Western decision-makers. How dare these 'deplorables' venture to think for themselves ? Such ideas have been anathema in the West since time immemorial. So the bulldogs have been unleashed against China and the tone of their attacks is getting louder and hotter. In the voice of Pompeo, for example, you can hear the vibrations of a greater energy, a higher and more varied pitch, a faster flow of words with more pauses as if fear was shadowing his anger. The spectacle is Chaplinesque. Will a director please give us a motion picture about the fear in the minds that shadows the anger in the talk of US policy makers ? This feels like history in the making. Something is happening in America that presages a moment that will be remembered by future generations :
“Recently, …, the tenor of our anger has shifted. It has become less episodic and more persistent, a constant drumbeat in our lives. It is directed less often at people we know and more often at distant groups that are easy to demonize. These far-off targets may or may not have earned our ire; either way, they’re apt to be less invested in resolving our differences. Without the release of catharsis, our anger has built within us, exerting an unwanted pressure that can have a dark consequence: the desire not merely to be heard, but to hurt those we believe have wronged us.’
(...)
Ordinary anger can deepen, under the right circumstances, into moral indignation—a more combustible form of the emotion, though one that can still be a powerful force for good. If moral indignation persists, however—and if the indignant lose faith that their anger is being heard—it can produce a third type of anger: a desire for revenge against our enemies that privileges inflicting punishment over reaching accord.
We are further down this path as a nation than you may realize.” (4)
The corona-virus has lifted the veil on the reality of US and other Western economies and the picture is not rosy to say the least. Decision-makers suddenly discover that their countries are entering a depression so severe that they will be set back for at least a decade and when things slowly start to stabilize, 5 years or more from now, the map and the landscape of the world will be unrecognizable. The USA will have veered in third world territory and its people will have re-discovered the slow life of “made by hand”.
The contrast with China, that US decision-makers start to intuit, is boiling their minds into rage. But fear shadows the anger in their voices. They just can’t contain themselves any longer. If it were not for the cold reasoning of the military, Pompeo and his ilks would already have launched a hot war against China. But the military knows better. As things stand, with Russia and others looking over Chinese shoulders, its nose would be bloodied from the moment the decision to act was falling. No wonder the military is not keen to send its foot soldiers in the world of neocons’ dreams.
7.4.3. escaping negativity by scanning for positivity
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, by President Reagan. He is well known for his careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. As chairman of The Institute for Political Economy Dr. Roberts “promotes the truth, as he sees it, no matter where the information leads him” :
“Within the last few days two commentators I respect—The Saker and Dmitry Orlov—have written that the United States is now undergoing systemic collapse.
My view, reflected in my articles published over the years, is that the United States ceased to exist decades ago. It is only the foundational strength of the country put in place by great men, such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison, that has kept the image alive of a functioning country.
The United States has lost its youth.
Once the bedrock of a country is discredited among the young generation, the country collapses. It is too late to do anything about it.
The question is: who will survive it?” (5)
What Dr. Roberts calls the bedrock of a country is the country’s worldview, the continuum of its cultural field, and its system of governance. While agreeing with Dr. Roberts’ statement I think that it is more important to address possible remedies than to stay stuck in criticism.
There is no natural law anywhere that states countries are destined to collapse. Collapse takes place because a country makes the mistake to let its societal cohesion wither away. Cohesion is what ensures societal reproduction over the long haul of many generations. A country may make a mistake but it may also act wisely. A country acts wisely by boosting its societal cohesion and it realizes this by enhancing the worldview shared by its citizens through the promotion, by its system of governance, of life above capital. That’s what I want to address here under.
There is no natural law anywhere that states countries are destined to collapse. Collapse takes place because a country makes the mistake to let its societal cohesion wither away. Cohesion is what ensures societal reproduction over the long haul of many generations. A country may make a mistake but it may also act wisely. A country acts wisely by boosting its societal cohesion and it realizes this by enhancing the worldview shared by its citizens through the promotion, by its system of governance, of life above capital. That’s what I want to address here under.
7.4.3.1. a worldview that quietens the mind
In reaction to a wave of doubt, and a vague dream of a better tomorrow, that swept over the Western world by the end of the nineteen sixties its big capital holders have engaged on the path of a class war at the world level and their weapon of choice has been the diffusion of ideology through propaganda to bamboozle the kids of 1968 (6) and the generations that followed them.
Their ideology was running on double-tracks :
Their ideology was running on double-tracks :
-
a renewal of Liberalism :
Later this renewal came to be known under its public moniker of “neoliberalism”. Big capital holders had diagnosed that the growth of profit generation, within Western countries, had peaked and was destined at best to plateau and at worse to slip downwards. Since they had convinced themselves that they were in a class war they thought that their ideology should be let to run in overdrive. The strategy that emerged from this overdrive was to tear open national borders :
- to ensure the free flow of capital around the world which would expand the field where big capital holders would be able to generate profits. This is what later would be called globalization. Note that, when things started to turn sour economically back at home because of these policies, big capital holders and their servants used their propaganda to deflect criticism over to the countries of the South (China is responsible for stealing US jobs right).
- to ensure the spread of liberalism around the world which would act as the ideological foundation to resist and to fight the demands of traditional cultures abroad. Note that silence is being kept total about the savagery of the destruction of local economies, local cultures, local languages, and so on. It is in this sense that I accuse Modernity of having been the historical summit of totalitarianism.
- to ensure a deepening of liberalism at home by doubling down on technological development and by “rationalizing” the working of the state (termination of protection institutions and concentration on the sole institutions of power). This eventually concluded with the most egregious inequality ever observed.
The strategy was implemented starting in the beginning of the seventies first by instituting a free flow of credit to the big capital holders to help them finance ‒ their investments abroad ‒ their investments at home in the information technologies that were necessary to manage the flow of their investments abroad. The technique used to finance a free flow of credit was “fiat money” (7).
“In order to maintain a semblance of vitality, western capitalism entered into a period of steroid-enforced growth based upon increasingly unorthodox methods. This inflexion point took place in 1971 when in a televised broadcast Richard Nixon took the US off the gold standard and introduced a fiat standard based purely upon the US dollar. This was a little later supplemented by the US-Saudi agreement whereby oil would be fixed to a dollar price. At a stroke, these two events destroyed the Bretton Woods system of a dollar-gold standard with the $ convertible with gold at $35 per oz. The old order was finished; a new ideological economic regimen was rolled out.” (8)
This US unilateral decision was world-changing to say the least. -
A renewal of the cultural field :
This was undertaken under the guise of a new intellectual approach centered around Postmodernism and Critical theory.
Basically, in their class war mood, big capital holders wanted to get rid, once and for all, of all competition with “the reason that is at work within capital”. What this implied technically was the destruction of all worldviews or grand narratives about the working of reality that people had been sharing along the entire history of humanity.
Fifty years later we observe the following :
- death of worldviews in the West :
- Marxist ideology is dead in the water and leftist thought was manipulated into identity politics, into democracy and human rights advocacy, into center left neoliberalism, into…
- the labor movement has atrophied and is a spent force that has no real impact any longer on political decision making. This means that middle class workers are on their own… ready to be bamboozled by Trump like opportunists.
- Christianity, which had been the worldview shared by all Westerners over nearly the totality of the last 2000 years, fell into desuetude.
- cultural disintegration, the fall of labor and the resulting domination of big capital, Christianity’s fall into desuetude, Western societal atomization and the emergence of China as an industrial power weakened Western economies and gradually shifted the center of gravity of the economy-world toward East-Asia with Beijing at the core.
- Western societal atomization :
Losing the worldviews, that bonded the people into tightly knit groups, societies rapidly fragmented. The new information technologies furthermore exacerbated this fragmentation. They glued the individuals to their screens separating them from one another, from their traditional interest groups, and from their society. This radical separation boosted the individuals’ egotistic self and everybody landed into the devastating mental state of hyper-individualism that commands the rejection of any and all “authority” or “knowledge”.
Societies had suddenly atomized.
The best example, of what is atomization in action, is the USA fighting the corona-virus. As any honest observer will attest this kind of atomization drives people crazy and their societies enter the territory of pure madness with all the dangers that this implies for humanity as a whole.
As I explained somewhere else societal atomization is the ultimate symptom of societal death. It means that the glue, that bonded the individuals into societies, has dissolved and the individual atoms now roam around like crazy particles. Such societies continue nevertheless to run some further powered solely by their force of inertia. But their fall is inevitable. After societal inertia has been burned out chaos rapidly sets in opening the path to a transition toward some other future arrangement…
The situation of the West contrasts radically with the rest of the world. Outside of the West, and some Northern islands that converted to liberalism, the nations composing the rest of the world conserved their traditional worldviews. Russia is a living illustration of that reality. After the collapse of the U.R.S.S. in late-1991 the country entered into a decade of chaos when its resources were looted by good thinking liberals and former apparatchiks alike.
The soviets had decimated the institutions of Christian Orthodoxy which had been the Russian traditional worldview for the past 1000 years. In the chaos, and the looting, of the post-collapse the country sank into despair. Alcohol consumption went up astronomically. Population plummeted. Social misery was everywhere. The election of President Putin absorbed the shock and ignited a spark of hope. He understood that his citizens had to be glued around a common set of beliefs in order to possibly turn the situation around and Orthodox churches reopened, or were rebuilt, around the country.
The fact is that sharing a worldview is a must have for all societies that want to reproduce over the long haul. What follows is a sketch, of my thinking about why worldviews are so important, as I elaborated in “7.3.3. The mind is an extension of life” :
The soviets had decimated the institutions of Christian Orthodoxy which had been the Russian traditional worldview for the past 1000 years. In the chaos, and the looting, of the post-collapse the country sank into despair. Alcohol consumption went up astronomically. Population plummeted. Social misery was everywhere. The election of President Putin absorbed the shock and ignited a spark of hope. He understood that his citizens had to be glued around a common set of beliefs in order to possibly turn the situation around and Orthodox churches reopened, or were rebuilt, around the country.
The fact is that sharing a worldview is a must have for all societies that want to reproduce over the long haul. What follows is a sketch, of my thinking about why worldviews are so important, as I elaborated in “7.3.3. The mind is an extension of life” :
- humanity navigates blindly in the darkness of a reality that is unattainable. We are very small particles of a whole that is unthinkably large…
- the inaccessibility of the true nature of our reality means that unknowns endlessly nag the human mind with unanswered existential questions like ‒ what is this thing we live in ‒ what is life ‒ are we alone in the universe ‒ and so on
- all societies, at the exception of nations in Late-Modernity, helped the individuals to escape this anxiety by sharing approximations of reality with all members of the societal group. Time passing societies actualized their approximations by integrating replicable cultural memes reflecting “the air of the times”. I call such approximations of reality “societal worldviews”.
- approximations of reality are based on long haul observation of the constraints imposed on life by nature and how they help or hinder societies to evolve successfully. Successful societal evolution means that a society can reproduce over the long haul of many generations which, in turn, helps to ensure the long haul reproduction of the species. By implication an evolution that leads to collapsing societies puts the reproduction of the species in danger. This means that approximations of reality are societal mental extensions of the species’ strategy which consists in the following :
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◦ the reproduction of the species is the paramount strategy of the principle of life. The extinction of a species is its ultimate failure to participate in whatever the plan of the universe might be
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◦ the role of individuals and of societies is to ensure an increase in societal complexity and, in the grand scheme of U the universe, this enriches the complexity of the species
The principle of life shows us the path to societal reproduction and further development. See 7.3. the principle of life.
My diagnostic about the situation of Western countries was spelled out all along the pages of this book and my conclusion is that these societies are rapidly slipping into oblivion.
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Notes
1. See "Germanophobia" a presentation by Wikipedia
2. “Nathan Rich. Life Story Part 1” YouTube by Nathan Rich. 2019-02-12.
3. “Regimes Without Reason and Conscience”, in Counter Currents, by Bhabani Shankar Nayak. 2020-08-01.
4. “The Real Roots of American Rage”, in the Atlantic Ideas. January/February 2019 Issue , by Charles Duhigg
5. “The Collapse of the United States Is No Longer Avoidable”, Institute of Political Economy, by Paul Craig Roberts. 2020-06-30
6. Me included naturally.
7. Fiat money means that the process of money creation is paper detached from any reserve value. This means that for the first time in history the value of money was contained in the blind trust of the market. In other words going forward new money would be issued as paper not guaranteed by anything of real value other than blind trust (no intrinsic value). The decision to transit to such a fiat money system was taken by the US unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the dollar to gold which meant a unilateral break up of the agreements signed in 1944 at Bretton Woods.
The Bretton Woods system was a system of rules agreed upon by the West + Japan on managing their commercial and financial relations. Basically after Bretton woods money creation was guaranteed by gold and each country‘s monetary policy had to keep its foreign exchange rates within 1 percent of its value in gold.
8. “The Twilight of Neo-liberalism?” on The Saker Blog, by Francis Lee. 2020-08-03.
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