chazwin wrote:
> Thought this article might be of interest.
>
>
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization/worst_ideas_4228.jsp
>
>
> A 2007 warning: the world's twelve worst ideas
> Fred Halliday
> 8 - 1 - 2007
>
> The world is full of conformism masquerading as profundity, says Fred
> Halliday, who explodes twelve global falsehoods.
>
> In identifying error, two great models at either end of modern times
> exist. The first is part thirty-nine of Francis Bacon's Novum Organon
> (1620), with its four categories of idol: those of the cave (of
> individual men), the tribe (human nature), the marketplace (intercourse
> of men with each other) and the theatre (philosophical dogma). The
> second is Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short
> History of Modern Delusions (2004).
>
> Some errors are products of the unchallenged, the routine, the
> conventional. Some are new, products of fashion, of novelty, even of
> globalisation. Everyone has his or her own selection, born of
> profession, personality, place. The list could be a long one but, like
> Christ and his disciples, twelve seems a comfortable figure, at once
> extensive and compact. Here, for 2007, is one suggested list, in
> ascending order:
>
>
>
> Number twelve: Human behaviour can be predicted
>
> In the name of a supposedly "scientific" criterion of knowledge,
> scholars are berated for not predicting the end of the cold war, the
> rise of Islam, 9/11 and much else besides. Yet many natural sciences
> - seismology, evolutionary biology - cannot predict with accuracy
> either. Human affairs themselves, even leaving aside the matter of
> human intention and will, allow of too many variables for such
> calculation. We will never be able to predict with certainty the
> outcome of a sports contest, the incidence of revolutions, the duration
> of passion or how long an individual will live.
And yet it seems humanity is being directed along a path of greater
predictability. Greater determinism, lending itself to greater control
and better - if that's the right word - managment. Tools like Profiles,
almost demand the expected behaviour. Our streamline culture evolving
to cater for this segregation of predictable types. Meanwhile in the
wings we have the psychologists directing the trafic of humanity. These
learned few, projecting upon the many, a simplistic model of desired,
and thus, predictable behaviour.
>
> Number eleven: The world is speeding up
>
> This, a favourite trope of globalisation theorists, confuses
> acceleration in some areas, such as the transmission of knowledge, with
> the fact that large areas of human life continue to demand the same
> time as before: to conceive and bear a child, to learn a language, to
> grow up, to digest a meal, to enjoy a joke, to read a poem. It takes
> the same time to fly from London to New York as it did forty years ago,
> ditto to boil an egg or publish a book. Some activities - such as or
> driving around major western cities, getting through an airport, or
> dying - may take much longer.
Its not that the world is speeding up, as there is less time to exist at
a slower pace. We are cogs in the machine, the will of this machine coming
before that of the individual or humanity. What is it they say - time is
money? So we fill all available time consuming and producing. Our
entertainments seeming to only to perpetuate these primary directives,
consume and produce. No the world isn't speeding up, its just machine
competing with humanity for its greater efficency.
>
> Number ten: We have no need for history
>
> In recent decades, large areas of intellectual and academic life -
> political thought and analysis, economics, philosophy - have jettisoned
> a concern with history. Yet it remains true that those who ignore
> history repeat it; as the recycling of unacknowledged cold-war premises
> by the Bush administration in Iraq has devastatingly shown.
History suits those prepared to learn from its mistakes. It suits those who
strive to make life better. History suits those who look forward to the new,
with an idea of who and what we were. On the other hand if one have no
imaginattion, and has no need of dreams, then one could simply repeat the
old. Memory dominating the journey at the cost of imagination and invention. Let us champion the strile ideas of
tradition, ideas replayed out of for
fear of the new, the unpredictable, the unknown.
> Number nine: We live in a "post-feminist" epoch
>
> The implication of this claim, supposedly analogous to such terms as
> "post-industrial", is that we have no more need for feminism, in
> politics, law, everyday life, because the major goals of that movement,
> articulated in the 1970s and 1980s, have been achieved. On all counts,
> this is a false claim: the "post-feminist" label serves not to register
> achievement of reforming goals, but the delegitimation of those goals
> themselves.
Epoch, there's so much dread in that word. The feminist Epoch. I wouldn't
call it that. Feminism was the recognition of a monumenatally unfair
state. It was about empathy for those countless generations caught in
the systemised mistreatment of half the population. It was a moment of
awakening from tradition. Feminism now seems to mean a kind of Equality,
few conceptualise in that struggle. The right to be equally stern,
equally brutal, equally crass. Yeah maybe Epoch was the right word after
all.
> Number eight: Markets are a "natural" phenomenon which allow for the
> efficient allocation of resources and preferences
>
> Markets are not "natural" but are the product of particular societies,
> value systems and patterns of state relation to the economy. They are
> not efficient allocators of goods, since they ignore the large area of
> human activity and need that is not covered by monetary values - from
> education and the provision of public works, to human happiness and
> fulfillment. In any case the pure market is a fantasy; the examples of
> the two most traded commodities in the contemporary world, oil and
> drugs, show how political, social and cartel factors override and
> distort the workings of supply and demand.
Markets natural? In what part of nature would you have these Conglomerates
with their wasteful obosolecences, monopolising tastes, in the name of
the greater sales. Greater profits. The markets are a kind of evolved
dependancy, efficent or self-serving they may be, but to call them natural,
seem to miss what natural really means.
> Number seven: Religion should again be allowed, when not encouraged, to
> play a role in political and social life
>
>>From the evangelicals of the United States, to the followers of Popes
> John Paul II and Benedict XVI, to the Islamists of the middle east, the
> claim about the benefits of religion is one of the great, and all too
> little challenged, impostures of our time. For centuries, those
> aspiring to freedom and democracy, be it in Europe or the middle east,
> fought to push back the influence of religion on public life.
> Secularism cannot guarantee freedom, but, against the claims of
> tradition and superstition, and the uses to which religion is put in
> modern political life, from California to Kuwait, it is an essential
> bulwark.
Heaven forbid, we should fight our wars in the name of God. Heaven forbid
we should all learn to hate in the name of the saviour, or Ala, or the
profits ;). Holy wars and inquisitions, fear and brimstone, the group and
this powerful form to control. Its history again, and the answers found
there. Ideology before the word was invented, a kind of convergence of
state and mind, when life allowed few choices. Are we evolving or devolving
towards old solutions?
>
>
> Number six: In the modern world, we do not need utopias
>
> Dreaming, the aspiration to a better world and the imagination thereof,
> is a necessary part of the human condition.
Yeah, what right has man to dream? Why should he strive to make life
better? The only point of dreams is surely to sell the next product,
no?
Utopia, is a yearning in the heart of the dissatisfied, its the goal
sought by the uncomfortble with the strongest sense of his discomfort.
Only those who have it easy could think we have no need utopias. Only
the blinkered or the strile could look on life and not want better.
And yet utopia is the extreme case, the heaven on earth. Its easy to
mock this goal when its presented as this extreme. And so as we mock
we content outselves with what we have, not seeing the trick played
on our imaginations.
>
> Number five: We should welcome the spread of English as a world
> language
>
> It is obviously of practical benefit that there is one common,
> functional, language of trade, air traffic control etc, but the actual
> domination of English in today's world has been accompanied by a tide
> of cultural arrogance that is itself debasing: a downgrading and
> neglect of other languages and cultures across the world, the general
> compounding of Anglo-Saxon political and social arrogance, and the
> introverted collapse of interest within English-speaking countries
> themselves in other peoples and languages, in sum, a triumph of
> banality over diversity. One small but universal example: the
> imposition on hotel staff across the world, with all its wonderful
> diversity of nomenclature, of name tags denoting the bearer as "Mike",
> "Johnny" and "Steve".
Ha ha ... this reminds me of the Mac giving up their Power Pc chips
in favour of the ubiquitous Intel fries. All the better to share
those pesky viruses. We should all operate by the same system, the
same mode of thought, the same means to expression. This isnt' just
about language, its also about thought. the uniform mind which follows
a uniform language. Language with its highly effective directions.
All this is of course the machine talking. The machine and its souless
quest for greater and greater efficency. The result are the cultures
lost or homodgenised to look and feel the same as every other culture.
All so that the machine can sells a standard product to all.
>
>
> Number four: The world is divided into incomparable moral blocs, or
> civilisations
>
> This view has been aptly termed (by Ernest Gellner) as "liberalism for
> the liberals, cannibalism for the cannibals". But a set of common
> values is indeed shared across the world: from democracy and human
> rights to the defence of national sovereignty and belief in the
> benefits of economic development. The implantation of these values is
> disputed, in all countries, but not the values themselves. Most states
> in the world, whatever their cultural or religious character, have
> signed the universalist United Nations declarations on human rights,
> starting with the 1948 universal declaration.
The world it seems to me is divided according to what the local
evironment determines is sustainable.. morality as tradition follows
in the wake of this age old decipline. I should have a view, one way
or the other, but for now its enough to observe what is.
>
> Number three: Diasporas have a legitimate role to play in national and
> international politics
>
> The notion that emigrant or diaspora communities have a special insight
> into the problems of their homeland, or a special moral or political
> status in regard to them, is wholly unfounded. Emigrant ethnic
> communities play almost always a negative, backward, at once hysterical
> and obstructive, role in resolving the conflicts of their countries of
> origin: Armenians and Turks, Jews and Arabs, various strands of Irish,
> are prime examples on the inter-ethnic front, as are exiles in the
> United States in regard to resolving the problems of Cuba, or
> policymaking on Iran. English emigrants are less noted for any such
> political role, though their spasms of collective inebriation and
> conformist ghettoised lifestyles abroad do little to enhance the
> reputation of their home country.
The Disporas are the nerve endings in this super organism of humanity,
whether or not they accept that role. They feel before the rest, the
future finds them first. Better or worst, it happens first amidst the
diasporas. I suppose it comes back to that often used phrase. "A society
may be judged by how it treats its poorest, weakest, and most vulnerable
people". You might even say you can tell a nation's future by the way
it treates its poor, since the same advanatage or disadvantage found in
that treatment, becomes an irresistable habit of ecconomic determinism.
You might even say it is ecconomics which is blind. To continue the
Utopian theme, you could say a nation only lives up to its dreams, it
is only healthy when the poorest have a stake in their nation's future,
when they can aspire to make a difference, or aspire to that lofty place.
> Number two: The only thing "they" understand is force
>
> This has been the guiding illusion of hegemonic and colonial thinking
> for several centuries. Oppressed peoples do not accept the imposition
> of solutions by force: they revolt. It is the oppressors who, in the
> end, have to accept the verdict of force, as European empires did in
> Latin America, Africa and Asia and as the United States is doing in
> Iraq today. The hubris of "mission accomplished" in May 2003 has been
> followed by ignominy.
The real question here is who is "They"?
> Number one: The world's population problems, and the spread of Aids,
> can be solved without the use of condoms
>
> This is not only the most dangerous, but also the most criminal, error
> of the modern world. Millions of people will suffer, and die premature
> and humiliating deaths, as a result of the policies pursued in this
> regard through the United Nations and related aid and public-health
> programmes. Indeed, there is no need to ask where the first mass
> murderers of the 21st century are; we already know, and their addresses
> besides: the Lateran Palace, Vatican City, Rome, and 1600 Pennsylvania
> Avenue, Washington DC. Timely arrest and indictment would save many
> lives.
Makes you wonder what we did before family planning.... oh hum. ;-/
[Here's hoping this wasn't just another case of the provocative bait.
Meanwhile boom boom signals his displeasure. Now lets see if this
makes it out of this sandbox. ;-/ ]
In case i haven't said it, Great post!!
