Cosmos

Noun

κόσμος (kosmos)

1. Order

2. Lawful order, government

3. Mode, fashion

4. Ornament, decoration

5. Honour, credit

6. Ruler

7. World, Universe, the Earth

8. Mankind

(link 1)

I have just finished watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series which I found amazing and inspiring. I won’t comment on the science of which I know little so my comments will focus on the last episode ‘Who Speaks for Earth?’.

What is it to acknowledge reality, to acknowledge the world? Is it science? Seemingly, but I believe not quite. It is love. Love is the acknowledgement of difference, of accepting something as it is despite our preferences or hopes or fears or grief. There are two options: love and nihilism, which like most things are probably a gradient as opposed to discrete phenomena, also there are points where sufficient love is reached and all the positives that follow from it exist whilst contrariwise there is a point where nihilism is prevalent and oblivion approaches swiftly. These are two different modes of living, of getting by, of being day to day. What we acknowledge when we acknowledge is (of course as contemporary continental philosophy knows) the other, something which our minds cannot control with an idea or understanding and is able to surprise us and show us something different due to its nature of being singular, of being different. Humanity, whether our society or ones foreign to our homeland, or nature or space are pretty much the three main things people fixate upon, find important and love (the number of categories is contingent and not important; these three function mainly as examples, illustrations). The ideal is to be open, simply capable of loving and/or understanding why others love a phenomenon and not too confined to a specific thing with love. Scientists can love space and the books and journals devoted to documenting it but can be closed to finding politics, the study of society or the study of human culture important. Likewise social scientists and scholars of culture (in this sense I mean the humanities; literature, music etc.) can be closed off to nature beyond the animal kingdom and space. Neither is more permissible than the other, yet some are more practical; mainly removing the log from our own eye, that is seeing human societies are sustainable, before removing the speck from the other’s (that is, trying to appreciate distant galaxies). A further reminder that being closed is always evil is climate change, the physical world seemed insignificant but now is of paramount significance. Moreover if we don’t watch space an asteroid or some other phenomenon could jepardise the future of humanity. We should try and be open to all yet should also do what our best judgement deems necessary to reach the more longer term.

“Where does the story begin? Where are the sources of our individual life? What remote adventures and forgotten passions have molded our being? What secret influences have shaped our profiles, gestures, and emotions? What whim or wisdom has provided us with that abundance of contradictory features in our character? Where do we come from? Who are we?

Undoubtedly, we are more – something weirder and greater – than our biography indicates and our consciousness grasps. Nobody, nothing is disconnected. A comprehensive rhythm determines our thoughts. Our individual destinies are interwoven with the texture of a vast mosaic portraying and developing throughout the centuries the same age-old patterns. Every movement we make repeats an ancestral rite and at the same time foreshadows the attitudes of future generations. Even the most solitary of our heart anticipate or echo the repertoire of past or coming passions”

“Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscences, and yet there is no reality except the one we remember. Every moment we pass through derives its meaning from the preceding one. There Would be no present nor future if the past were blotted out in the minds of men. It is our capacity for recollection which stands between us and chaos – a rather fragile bulwark, we must admit.”

– Klaus Mann

“I know that you know as well as I do how fast thoughts and associations can fly through your head. You can be in the middle of a creative meeting at your job or something, and enough material can rush through your head in the little silences when people are looking over their notes and waiting for the next presentation that it would take exponentially longer than the whole meeting just to try to put a few seconds’ silence’s flood of thoughts into words. This is another paradox, that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person’s life are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn’t even the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of the regular sequential clock time we all live by, and they have so little relation to the sort of linear, one-word-after-another-word English we all communicate with each other with that it could easily take a whole lifetime just to spell out the contents of one split-second’s flash of thoughts and connections etc. – and yet we all seem to go around trying to use English (or whatever language our native country happens to use, it goes without saying) to try to convey to other people what we’re thinking and to find out what they’re thinking, when in fact deep down everybody knows it’s a charade and they’re just going through the motions. What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant. The internal head-speed or whatever of these ideas, memories, realizations, emotions and so on is even faster, by the way – exponentially faster, unimaginably faster – when you’re dying, meaning during that vanishingly tiny nanosecond between when you technically die and when the next thing happens, so that in reality the cliche about people’s whole life flashing before their eyes as they’re dying isn’t all that far off – although the whole life here isn’t really a sequential thing when first you’re born and then you’re in the crib and then you’re up at the plate in Legion ball, etc., which it turns out that that’s what people usually mean when they say ‘my whole life’, meaning a discrete, chronological series of moments that they add up and call their lifetime. It’s not really like that. The best way I can think of to try to say it is that it all happens at once, but that at once doesn’t really mean a finite moment of sequential time the way we think of time while we’re alive, plus that what turns out to be the meaning of the term my life isn’t even close to what we think we’re talking about when we say ‘my life’. Words and chronological time create all these total misunderstandings of what’s really going on at the most basic level. …”

– David Foster Wallace

An epigrammatic digression about knowledge, potential knowledge and knowledge getting in the way of knowledge (so many symbols/marks in our discourse we cannot see, with sufficient freedom, a phenomenon). The virtue of science is it is it’s free inquiry, better stated as it’s attempt at self-effacement (trying to minimalise one’s presuppositions and biography as we confront a phenomenon; we always bring some baggage but I believe we can minimalise that baggage so we can sufficiently observe and receive from the phenomenon). The dance of subject and object is a hellish riddle of a riddle, yet we must acknowledge it and not forget the virtue of science, which demands modesty (claims like “science is so modest it can know anything and with infallibility reveal absolute truth!” have always been the undoing of science’s strengths; yet too many scientists blemish the enterprise of science by holding too tightly and emphatically onto this provisional, reliable process/way of determining the best knowledge).

One final digression, digressing from my digression, scientists too often play down the social sciences when they boast about science; they go to evolution and modern biology, Copernicus, Hubble and modern astronomy and needlessly separate lovers of wisdom. Not philosophers (I like Nietzsche will try and eschew them to reach ground with more explanatory power). What is important is the method: love (sincerity and valuing the strangeness and uniqueness of what we investigate). Love is true to linguistics, archeology, history, sociology, philosophy, literary criticism, chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, medicine, mathematics. Pretty much going to university (when it teaches love) is science. Love is messy and precarious and some will not like the juxtaposition existent with instinct, yet the universe is one natural lovely precarious mess. That is given, we are thrown into a situation that is what is and like human mortality we must do our best to accept it.

Science is invaluable, but we must acknowledge three things, three spheres (I follow in the footsteps of Kant). We must acknowledge science (pure reason), democracy/ethics (practical reason) and culture (judgement, the sublime, the values we value, what we find important/significant). Love and nihilism I am making a meta-value, a stance before these three spheres which ensure human freedom and enlightenment, justice and wellbeing and purposefulness and fulfillment. Love is what makes these wheels turn. I adore Carl Sagan and other advocates of science, yet science has not been good at political action. The Russell-Einstein manifesto of 1955 did not eliminate nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war. Furthermore the scientists who knew the Earth was warming in the 60s and 70s didn’t mount effective activities to combat it. You must do more than simply publish the truth. The realm of politics is often undignified, arduous and graceless, human all too human, yet this arena of the polis, of practical reason is of paramount importance. You cannot continue to think if you cannot continue to eat. Science is a privileged practice, along with professional politicking. We must create the firmest foundation which applies to everyone: material and symbolic (e.g. psychological, political, spiritual) wellbeing and no war or conflict. I theme this no violence, no violence in general. Love and no violence towards the wellbeing of people or the stability of societies. Science has it’s place but science alone can’t solve every problem. Other institutions like democracy need to be used. We need a multipronged approach to ensure that if extraterrestrials ever judge as they would acknowledge that we can take care of ourselves and be self-sufficient.

Speaking for humanity and speaking for Earth can’t be done with a few words, nor will few people alone accomplish the task. To speak for is to represent, and perhaps the essence of humanity is that it is forever trying to represent itself. Achieving sustainability with humanity involves many institutions which are best fitted to the tasks of our many problems (for example, science to understand climate change, democracy to achieve wellbeing and fight climate change, and culture to educate and promote the humanities so we have narratives to think of ourselves in and of infinite importance to find life purposeful so we don’t become depressed, don’t become apathetic and apolitical and don’t become nihilistic and closed thus ultimately ignoring reality and committing self-destruction). I’ll end hear because I can’t really end at all and say “all you need is love”.

Film Festivals in Melbourne

I was recently astonished to learn about how many annual film festivals there are in marvelous Melbourne. I knew Melbourne had some good alternative cinemas (that is, not the same old s**t) like the Astor Theatre, Cinema Nova and of course the grand, multifaceted ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image). Yet that there are roughly 2 dozen film festivals, not just the Melbourne International Film Festival, surprised me. Another fact to illustrate Melbourne’s strong association with film is that the world’s first full feature film was filmed in Melbourne, The Story of the Kelly Gang (link 1).

Film Festivals in Melbourne:

• Window on Europe Film Festival, 5 years running, middle of March (link)
• Nordic Film Festival, 2 years running, middle of October (link)
• Spanish Film Festival, 13 years running, middle of May (link)
• Indian Film Festival, 8 years running, middle of March (link)
• Palestinian Film Festival, 3 years running, middle of November (link)
• Israeli Film Festival, 7 years running, late August (link)
• Arab Film Festival, 5 years running, November (link)
• Greek Film Festival, 16 years running, October (link)
• Indonesian Film Festival, 5 years running, late August (link)
• Russian Film Festival, 7 years running,  late August (link)
• Japanese Film Festival, 14 years running, early December (link)
• Chinese Film Festival, 14 years running, late February (link)
• Audi Festival of German Films, 9 years running, late April into early May (link)
• Italian Film Festival, 11 years running, late September into early October (link)
• Queer Film Festival, 20 years running, middle of March (link)
• The Other Film Festival, 5 years running, late August (link)
• La Mirada Film Festival, 4 years running, early April (link)
• Ventana Film Festival, first year running, early March (link)
• The Australian International Experimental Film Festival, 2nd year running, late April into early May (link)
• Melbourne International Animation Festival, 10 years running, late June (link)
• MUFF: Melbourne Underground Film Festival, 11 years running, late August (link)
• MIFF: Melbourne International Film Festival, 59 years running, late July into early August (link)
• St Kilda Film Festival, 28 years running, late April into early May (link)

Also there is the Melbourne Cinémathèque (link) which shows classic and international film. Melbourne Filmoteca (link) shows regular films from Latin America, Spain and Portugal. The Astor Theatre (link) screens cult movies and the Cinema Nova shows international films (link). Further, there is the great Moonlight Cinema (link), the Rooftop Cinema (link) and St Kilda Openair (link). Melbourne is already one of only three cities declared by the UN to be a city of literature, I think it has a pretty good case to be a city of film as well.

Leaving the Great Books Unfinished, a comment

There is no novel so great that I cannot put it down. I made it through a hundred and fifty pages of “War and Peace.” I called it quits on “Moby Dick” after the sixth chapter on the subtle complexities of whale oil. “Wuthering Heights” withered after seventy pages. “Gravity’s Rainbow” only lasted nine. I’ve accumulated a pretty impressive list of books that I’ve stopped reading. In fact, my growing catalog rivals many lists of the greatest novels ever written.

Whether it’s an overbearing workload, the death-march pace of classes with gargantuan reading lists, my own lackadaisical demeanor, or books that are three hundred pages too long, I constantly find myself tossing aside several unfinished books each semester. I like to think that I read more carefully and thoughtfully than other students, that it just takes me longer to read a book satisfactorily and that there isn’t enough time to finish everything. But my rationalization often ignores the embarrassing truth.

I usually make a judgment about a book after reading the first chapter; sometimes even the first page. If I don’t find a novel interesting, I generally stop, no matter how distinguished its literary pedigree. I quit reading “Kristin Lavransdatter” (Sigrid Undset’s Nobel-Prize winning historical romance set in 14th century Norway) after the first sentence, “When the earthly goods of Ivar Gjesling the Younger of Sundbu were divided up in the year 1306, his property at Sil was given to his daughter Ragnfrid and her husband Lavrans Bjorgulfson.” Perhaps I was unfair to Ms. Undset, but I do not regret my escape for a moment.

This phenomenon is hardly unique to me. It has become an epidemic among our generation. Rather than vainly lamenting the trend, it is more pragmatic to analyze it. The most useful critical exercise we can perform is to examine candidly why people stop reading a book rather than focusing on why people start reading books. Usually someone does not stop reading a novel for a sharply-defined ideological reason, but rather because the book failed to engage them. Is it possible sometimes the book is to blame and not the reader? Countless thinkers have offered explanations for this problem, but few actually explore the qualities of the literature itself that might distance books from their potential readers.

Some naysayers pontificate about the imminent death of literature because young people don’t read anymore. They often cite the waning attention span of younger generations arising from technology. Harold Bloom said in an interview that the problem is primarily a result of technological change: “People are trapped in the age of what you might call the triple screen: the motion-picture screen—and this is in ascending order of evil in terms of what it does to their minds throughout the world—the television screen, and finally the computer screen, which is the real villain.” Mr. Bloom extends his argument further in his book “How to Read and Why” by asserting that in the age of the internet “information is endlessly available to us. Where shall wisdom be found?”

This line of reasoning goes on to argue that today’s children, raised in this hi-tech age obsessed with the speed of information and communication, no longer have the patience necessary to read works of any length. My dad never misses an opportunity to wax nostalgic about the lost simplicity of his childhood when he sees me working on the computer with four other windows open while listening to music and having a conversation on iChat.

Novels are antithetical to the hasty lifestyle of today’s world. Reading forces us to pause our own lives in order to inhabit the consciousness of another being. One of the great discoveries of reading is that slowing down life allows one to appreciate the world more deeply. Many believe that it is exactly this ability to slow down life that has become increasingly difficult and uninteresting for younger generations.

While there may be some truth in the claims about cultural decline, I believe the issue is more complicated. It’s reductive and overly deterministic to claim literature is doomed because it’s an antiquated technology in the modern era. In fact, the very reasons some critics cite for the death of reading prove why literature is especially essential for our generation.

Reading pulls us away from an environment flooded with constant activity. It forces us to cast aside everything else and give undivided attention to a book for a sustained period of time. The contrast between the calm of the printed page and the frenetic pace of contemporary life is greater today than for any previous generation. Technology intensifies the interior world of self-reflection found by reading literature because it is so different than the rest of our lives. Paradoxically, the current technological age heightens the particular power of literature—making books truly indispensable to our generation.

This conclusion permits the question: If books are so valuable, why is it so easy for students to stop reading them? There is no single answer or simple explanation to this issue, but I think there are valid intellectual and emotional reasons why books often fail to engage with young readers that run far deeper than shortened attention span or the temptations of Facebook. Attempting to understand the multifaceted roots of this trend is critical for comprehending literature’s role in the future.

I remain convinced that our generation loves literature. Whether people enjoy fiction for the lowbrow thrills of adventure and basic storytelling or they savor the intellectual pleasures of literary novels, I’ve found that pretty much anyone can enjoy reading. Now more than ever it is critical to re-evaluate how younger generations view and interact with literature. In the meantime, it looks like my list is about to get longer.

—Columnist Theodore J. Gioia can be reached at tgioia@fas.harvard.edu.

(Link 1)

Interesting article. While I agree that there is no single or simple answer about reading not being a priority I think technology and our moment in history has something to do with it. I believe that reading and being engaged with technology (be it internet, video games, the computer or something else) are not estranged and different but, on the contrary, are fundamentally the same in that they are completely immerse us. They compete over the same desire, not over mutually exclusive desires.

I am reading Shakespeare right now, one of many great writers I have put aside, and while you do need solitude to start reading once you are going it is as bustling and even as cacophonous as surfing the net on several webpages at once or engaging in some other thought juggling, short attention span type of modern technology (keeping track of the scene setting, the characters present, their agendas, their dialogues; reading is no calm, harmonious moment of reflection where we gain clear Progress and learn how to enlighten ourselves. It may provide these things, but not at all necessarily).

I think limited time is the main issue. Another issue may be limited information about books and reading. The latter especially; the idea that you can just saunter along in a book and don’t have to speed through it the day you purchase it is beyond the mind of young people today (I’m 22 by the way, I see the attitude with many people around me), whose main exposure to books is in school with deadlines and modern frantic scheduling. Further on information about books one type of technology often references and/or advertises another type of technology. Rarely do relevant books we may like get a mention. We need both institutions to slow down a bit and demand less frantic, non-stop routines and individuals to learn that they can ‘recklessly’ (it seems to some) start a book without trying to finish it.

Elite

“1823, from Fr. élite “selection, choice,” from O.Fr. fem. pp. of elire, elisre “pick out, choose,” from L. eligere “choose” (see election). Borrowed in M.E. as “chosen person,” esp. a bishop-elect, died out mid-15c., re-introduced by Byron’s “Don Juan.” As a typeface, first recorded 1920.”

(link 1)

C. Wright Mills suggests in his work The Power Elite that elites might be what Jacob Burckhardt said of ‘great men’, that is ‘they are all that we are not’. In the discourse of the word elite the emphasis always seems to lie upon decision making and capacity for decision making. “[T]hey are in positions to make decisions having major consequences”, Mills states.

What I find interesting is that there always are elites and they are pretty much uncontested. The word “elite” started gaining bad connotations during the twentieth century, perhaps due to the rise of the middle class and perhaps due to their unwillingness to acknowledge there are a group of humans who decisively order the society they live in. The words ‘politician’, ‘CEO’ and ‘professor’ are often employed, yet the recognition of their underlying  commonality is downplayed; they are elites and cannot really be contested in their decision making except by other elites.

In The Power Elite, produced in the 1950s, Mills regularly identifies corporations (economic sphere), ‘the machinery of the state’ (political sphere) and the ‘military establishment’ (military sphere) and on occasion acknowledges the media as the key domains of elites. Two other key points are also that all spheres are linked together and that elites are not solitary figures but exist in groups of elites.

Mills also notes that the main three spheres often act in unison: ‘the fact of the interlocking is clearly revealed at each of the points of crisis of modern capitalist society-slump, war, and boom’. I think this recipe was valid in the 20th century, but George W. Bush and his 20th century minded gang proved that politics and corporations and military activity don’t propel each other in the present, the 21st century with an increasingly globalised world, as they did last century.

“The higher circles in and around these command posts are often thought of in terms of what their members possess: they have a greater share than other people of the things and experiences that are most highly valued. From this point of view, the elite are simply those who have the most of what there is to have, which is generally held to include money, power, and prestige-as well as all the ways of life to which these lead. But the elite are not simply those who have the most, for they could not ‘have the most’ were it not for their positions in the great institutions. for such institution are the necessary bases of power, of wealth, and of prestige, and at the same time, the chief means of exercising power, of acquiring and retaining wealth, and of cashing in higher claims of prestige’.

What Mills is pointing out is that the simplistic Marxist analysis, the elites are ‘the haves’ whereas everyone else are ‘the have nots’  is false or not the whole story. The elites are not like the aristocracies, which had members who clearly had no ability for decision making. Elites, on the other hand, seem to at least require seeming ability to make decisions, hence need to be imaginable to become elites by others and then require some level of proficiency once a decision making role has been acquired. Also on this point a since elites are always in groups an individual must be able to appear like an elite through the scrutiny of elites to gain and maintain a decision making role.

But does this all seriously exist, is a decision making role identifiable and justifiable? There is a fusion between the disciplines of psychology and economics called behavioral economics, which in it’s classical, mainstream school of thought contends that people are not all rational beings with perfect skills for making decisions. On the contrary, research has shown that people are “prone to incorrectly weigh initial numbers, draw conclusions from single cases rather than a wide range of data, and integrate irrelevant information into our analysis.”

In a book by a professor of law and a professor of behavioral economics titled Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness it is contended that we need “choice architects” to order our social structures to protect ourselves against our inherent mental shortcomings (the word elite is definitely hard for people to swallow. Why such a stubbornly held illusion of freedom or repression of dependence?). The professors then

‘build on behavioral economic research that reveals inertia to be a powerful element in how we act. Most people, they argue, will choose the “default option”—i.e., they will follow a particular course of action that is presented to them instead of making an effort to find an alternative or opt out. Further, they write,

These behavioral tendencies toward doing nothing will be re- inforced if the default option comes with some implicit or explicit suggestion that it represents the normal or even the recommended course of action.

[They] propose to use default options as “nudges” in the service of “libertarian paternalism.” For example, to promote a healthy diet among teenagers, broccoli and carrots would be presented at eye level in the cafeteria and would be easily available, while it would take considerable effort for students to locate junk food, thereby nudging them into accepting a healthier diet. But all choices should be “libertarian”—people should be free to opt out of “undesirable arrangements if they want to do so.” The soft paternalistic nudge Sunstein and Thaler envisage should try “to influence choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves.” They are very clear that nudges are not mandates, and that behavior should not be forcefully directed by changing economic incentives. Your doctor should not be paid less if she follows a course of treatment that she can defend as reasonable, even if she deviates from officially issued guidelines. To prevent policy planners from going down the slippery slope of coercion, there should, in Sunstein’s view, be safety rails. Whatever the proposal put forward, he has written, people must retain “freedom of choice” and be able to oppose the more objectionable kinds of government intervention.’

(link 1)

Anyone adept at reading social commentaries will identify this well defendable, sound propositions as geared towards an American audience (by the way, The Power Elite is meant to solely describe the American situation of elites) as the hard to swallow idea of any governmental or institutional intervention or efforts has to be sugar coated and downplayed with the term ‘libertarian’. I digress…

Mills touches on how the elite are self effacing and able us to ignore their power. The example he provides of American politicians identifying themselves as ‘public servants’ is illustrating. A contemporary example is Microsoft’s Windows 7 advertisements, which have single individuals state ‘windows 7 was my idea’, claiming the new features put in were centrally for the sake of service.  That individuals present themselves one by one in simple circumstances in the TV commercials of Windows 7 is also another stroke of self effacing talent, as the mega-entity which is the corporation Microsoft, worth 77  USD Billion in assets, could in theory do whatever it wants is overshadowed with the themes of responsiveness and good faith.

An extension from elite people could be to elite institutions. Government is a necessary elite institution, the military is a necessary institution in the business of force. To go back to to Mills’ three main spheres though, are there or should there be commercial entities which have significant influence and can make decisions which have incomparable effect on their affairs? Should one of the most haunting phrases of contemporary times, ‘too big to fail’, have a place? Firstly it is clear that national economies have entities like this, hence the Global Financial Crisis. Though I think it would be right if entities like this didn’t exist, as some sort of post-cyberpunk dystopian reality comes too near to existence with elite corporations existing.

It seems, like the bell curve, like a specialised producer popping up in a free market, there will always be an efficient role for elites to serve (and even though it is largely lip-service, we should try and make elites speak about ideas of service so often until as much of a culture of elites serving non-elites comes into existence as it can; sometimes the magicians believe their own magic). It would be ideal though if there were a competitive marketplace of candidates for every decision making role and there was significant oversight into every decision making role elites occupy.

The Future

The next decade or so will see three main issues affecting the well-being of everyone.  Those three issues are China, the Middle East and developed, regular countries and how they handle the changing world.

China is the prime power in the rising countries of Asia. When a country makes rapid economic growth of roughly 10% GDP a year, increased spending on military and a seeks to consolidate it’s leadership’s power, i.e. the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the balance of power and relations between countries changes. Prime example: Copenhagen (Link 1 and 2). Western powers surely were limited in leadership and appropriate action, giving 100 billion US dollars to developing countries over 10 years is below what many commented was required, yet Chinese assertiveness was the greater negative force by attempting to cloud all agreements and overseeing that nations resume business as usual. Copenhagen supports premises we knew about the world prior to the event. China wants to throw it’s new political weight around, multilateral activity goes against China’s attempt to stand alone (China tries to get the benefits of globalisation like trade and technological benefits, without the negatives of transparency and oversight in trade and autonomy and freedom in living and technological use (no Google sharing too much information, for instance)), by the way Bush taught us even the USA can’t simplistically be isolationist and downplay relations between countries, and last globalisation is only increasing.

Big questions about China: will China seek territorial expansion, has China consolidated territory beyond China Proper (Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and more), what is China’s sphere of influence (how important is China in East Asia, to many African countries seeking economic and wider development, and so on) and lastly will China be an example for unchecked power around the world and help a new generation of authoritarian leaders and one party states emerge? These questions will be left open though I shall attempt to provide some answers in the future.

One last point on China. Democracy doesn’t need China, China needs democracy. If China was democratic I would die a happy man. If the CCP were democratically elected I wouldn’t mind them at all. Yet no democracy is always negative, ideas of authoritarian capitalism (the Beijing Consensus jibberish etc.) are delusional, as there has been prosperity in Asia before (Japan and the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan), how quickly did some forget them?).

The cons with the current arrangement are rampant corruption and lack of party discipline. As Hu Jintao has commented corruption is a “life or death” issue for the CCP and probably the political system of one party rule in China. Because the CCP has to police itself, there are no external, specialised institutions to watch over political corruption and the judiciary is not just. As perceptive commentator professor David Shambaugh proves persuasively that the CCP is in peril unless it performs drastic change. Without oversight lack of discipline exists meaning China’s growth could only increase if the wheels of it’s political system were greased with democracy. Just look at the UK, which last year had thousands of dollars, compared with political system imploding amounts of corruption, being exposed by the media causing a raucous and investigations. (Link 1, David Shambaugh China’s Communist Party, 2009)

Why is the Middle East so volatile? Because there are clumsy, unreliable governments from Egypt to Yemen to Afghanistan and all in between along with an abundance of the what is probably the world’s most valuable resource petroleum or crude oil. Throw in conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq and continual problems in Israel/Palestine along with Iran possibly on the path to civil war the Middle East will continue to be associated with uncertainty and drama. Also escalating tensions between Iran and Israel, which are largely groundless intimidation and politics continues. Iran and Israel politicians have too many internal issues to seriously bother with each other. War is not at all going to happen in the foreseeable future, but words matter somewhat and a acrimonous environment in Middle Eastern politics adds further volatility.

What about the nukes? Well the only power with nuclear weapons in the Middle East is Israel which is believed to have roughly 80 warheads. Given that Tony Blair and other politicians have said things like Iran is equivalent to Iraq before Saddam Hussein was removed and given the tolerance of Israel’s wars in Lebanon (2006) and Gaza (2009), along with ‘preemptive war’ in both Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States receiving no real punishment it must be said that there are terrible  precedents in recent history for death and destruction. What about Iran? Iran has barely managed to enrich uranium to 5% over several years in it’s nuclear flirtations and it only has one enrichment plant in Natanz, which took many years to build. Ahmadinejad recently announced he will build ten enrichment plants over one year and implies often Iran will be a muscular nation, suggesting a nuclear arsenal. Yet this can’t be taken seriously at all given the snail’s pace of enrichment hitherto, the fact that there isn’t another gear to shift into to make nuclear weapons-Iran would probably have done so if it could-and the international community will fight Iran every time it tries to make actual steps to developing weapons. It is pure rhetoric that Iran will get weapons which is done to rally Iranians around nationalism and stop them thinking about living standards, freedoms and rioting. (Link Iran 1, Link Israel 1, 2)

The largest concern around the middle east is an unknown variable will explode the volatility existent in the region. Perhaps extremist Islamic terrorism or a military freak out by Israeli hardliners. Whatever may appear the Middle East has crucial ties to the well being of everyone in the world, and everyone should hope the region follows Latin American and turns many seemingly entrenched dictators and one party states into democracies and stable economies.

Developed countries, liberal democracies, free societies; call them what you wish, you know them when you see them, are going to enter what is probably the highest state of interrelations and ignoring of traditional, national boundaries in human history. The following shall contain extensive cribbing from Timothy Garton Ash. Exhibit A:

“At decade’s end, the Copenhagen summit on climate change was a perfect vignette of this world of global problems without global governance. In theory, the nearly 200 states of the so-called “international community” would, under UN auspices, seal a legally binding international agreement to address the most obviously global challenge of our time. In practice, at 7pm on the very last day, the US president walked in to what is described as an “unscheduled meeting” with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa, and asked “Mr Premier, are you ready to see me?” The five – America, China, India, Brazil, South Africa – then cobbled together a weak political declaration of intent, which the conference subsequently, under protest, endorsed. At the crucial meeting, Europe was nowhere to be seen. Europe’s leaders were then photographed huddling disconsolately around a coffee table with Obama, looking like the losing team in a pub quiz.”

(Link 1)

We should move beyond the nation state, that was so 20th century, and George W. Bush educated the world that defiant, simple nations will not thrive in the 21st century. It is not even a question, circumstance, history, fate, pick your god, has thrust us into a new age and we must adapt or face extinction. I would love to see nations which speak positively and often of other countries and relationships with them, strong regional entities like the EU in not just Europe but Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacific. Furthermore like Bertrand Russell I wish hard and often for a world government, which doesn’t do much heavy lifting but can quell conflicts between parties like a nation to it’s citizenry. I hope Europe is the example, it must be for everyone’s sake, of enduring national identities who coexist in relative harmony and union. The stubbornness and potential evil of the nation-state will be put on trial and in the coming decade we will get a good understanding of whether nation-states can willingly buttress themselves in the international context they are inevitably in.

Is there really that much of a need for international cooperation? Timothy Garton Ash persuasively states there is with “the financial crisis, organised crime, mass migration, global warming, pandemics and international terrorism, to name but a few” subjects which can seriously effect the stability of countries like Canada, Australia, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria and many more. The global financial crisis felt in most countries, mass migration becoming commonplace and media from all over the world being seen daily by each of us should persuade an open mind that national boundaries aren’t as important as they used to be. (Link 1)

What is needed is something more than talented, adaptive international institutions. We need citizens, regular people everywhere to speak when governments are listening and to dictate to them which way to go. This is an entirely new spin on this old demand of citizenship: citizens must not only know domestic affairs fluently but must have sufficient knowledge of neighouring countries (not the old nationalistic tribalism), of distant countries (not stereotypical and folk knowledge) and of complicated phenomena like climate change, other religions and the global economy (I have serious doubts that even daily intake of the best newspapers and TV news, the standard decent reception of knowledge, will provide sufficient depth and coverage regarding the world of the future). We need serious investment in education in every country, regulations on news and probably subsidies and government owned television networks to provide respectfully accurate information and we need to hope that people don’t shelter themselves away from the big world and be consumers all of the time and citizens none of the time. I have a firm belief that the standard person will be Atlas in the near future. I hope that education, citizenship and commercialism are all tackled appropriately by the masses of the world. Because no matter how big we build our cities and no matter how ubiquitous our technology is to avert crises we need everyone to simply support free, smart, tolerant societies which are responsible members the international community of nations.

Declaration of Principles

This blog is first and foremost personal. It is about my person and is not meant for public communication, gospel, propaganda and so forth. It is a hopeful gesture for synthesis and harmony; weaving together thoughts and cathartically and purposelessly writing which otherwise wouldn’t have come into existence.

This blog is intended to be frequently updated and with lengthy description. The writing shall follow Australian usage and is intended to be pedagogical. There will be formal writing mistakes. It is desired that with each post superior writing practices are gained and nagging, blemishing writing practices are abandoned.

This blog will be filled with content in a free association manner. Anything and everything may be written on. When it organically follows matters will be written on and when energy dissipates matters will be dropped without concern.