Survive- The Economic Collapse

by Piero San Giorgio

  Global Culture

  <
  benjamin disraeli

  politician

  //1804-1881//

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  jean-paul besset

  politician

  /1992/

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  pier paolo pasolini

  filmmaker

  /1922-1975/

  <
  george w. bush

  politician

  /october 2001/

  The human being is an exceptional animal. He is aware of himself, and aware that he is aware of himself. He is capable of incredible extrapolations, projecting himself into the future, foreseeing potential dangers, and reacting in time. If a human being as an individual has so many capacities, however, what is his behavior like in society, in the midst of his culture?

  Cultures, fashioned by their environments and by the shocks they have undergone over the course of ages, may well be neither equal nor morally equivalent. However, one must admit that the only objective criterion for measuring their effectiveness is to ask: Are they able to survive?

  A culture that survives in its environment for centuries is eminently respectable, however barbaric it may seem to a foreign observer. Such observers are often impudent enough to judge it by their own ethnocentric criteria, which may only be valid in a specific context. Cultures that have not survived—which were unable to defend themselves against invaders and internal enemies, which were unable to remain dominant or foresee catastrophes—can only be observed, in the best cases, in museums or history books.

  How does it stand with our own culture? Are we able to understand the problems with which we are confronted? Are we able to act effectively for the goal of our collective survival?

  First of all, I think it is increasingly erroneous to speak of “cultures” today. Globalization has gradually turned local cultures into a big global one; though it has many aspects, regional variations, and subcultures, this global culture has become dominant and imposed its values upon most of the West (and increasingly, much of the world). This has not happened without damage, without the destruction of local traditions and customs. Of the some 6,000 languages in the world, half are no longer taught and will disappear within a generation. The real “Clash of Civilizations” is between global and traditional cultures, some of which will fight to the death to avoid disappearing. This is tragic, because in the disappearance of distinct societies and peoples, there are so many irremediable losses for the cultural and genetic patrimony of mankind.

  So much of global culture comes out of the United States and benefits from the dynamism of that country, from its military victories, its movie industry, and genuinely efficient pragmatism. But the global culture is not at all uniquely American. Its strength lies in allowing the addition of elements from different cultures (Italian pizza, Turkish kebob, Japanese sushi, French perfume. . .) and transforming the working classes into consumers, thus eliminating the social barriers that once separated producers and consumers. The electronic-gadget industry and the study of frivolity are essential elements for understanding this global society (for which Michel Clouscard and Jean-Claude Michéa have presented valuable analyses).

  In the post-WWII years, society evolved away from strict moral doctrines to permissiveness, from traditional and repressive “fascism” (as critics liked to call it) to a new society of unhindered enjoyment, with post-‘60 indulgence disguising the economic degradation of the working classes.

  This culture is now moving increasingly towards economic liberalism: it acknowledges that market law directs the economy and human activities. It is also libertarian, as it puts personal freedom, individualism, above all else, including morality. Karl Marx already saw this in his time, writing in the Communist Manifesto:

  Wherever the bourgeoisie has come to dominate, it has destroyed all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic conditions. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley bands that attached man to his natural superior, leaving no other bond between man than naked self-interest, inexorable “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentality in the icy water of egotistical calculation.

  I don’t feel any real nostalgia for feudalism or the caste system, where men were separated by birth into different social groups and had little hope of changing their material conditions. But one can’t help but admit that within two centuries, traditional social structures and conditions have been radically changed.

  Consider, for example, the peasants who, by working the land, were the source of all wealth. In the 20th century, the peasantry of Western countries was converted into an industrial (and post-industrial) workforce; so many of their folkways disappeared, or else became cultural displays for tourists. This historical phenomenon has radically changed the relationship between man and his natural life-surroundings, has alienated him from the fruits of his labor, and caused him to lose sight of the interdependency of all the components of nature. Life has become a matter of artifice, an illusion of living disconnected from the earth, no longer aware of the natural equilibrium. This is why global urban culture has nothing but contempt for rural and traditional life. It has become normal to believe that, before the era of industrialization and development, the populations of Third World countries lived in conditions more miserable than today. The contrary is true. Of course, there were no hospitals or modern medicine, and child mortality was high (as in Europe at the same time). But the many narratives of the first voyagers to distant lands concur regarding the lack of poverty, relative material abundance, and good physical health (due to natural selection) that prevailed in the “New World.” Like the European peasantry, these populations produced essentially all they consumed and were self-sufficient. The very notion of poverty certainly did not have the sense it does today in our commercial world. According to the African specialist Bernard Lugan, the word “poor” did not exist in most African languages: its closest equivalent was “orphan.” Men in traditional societies possessed little but did not consider themselves poor, insofar as they were all bound in a network of social relations, organic communities, and extended families structured as clans. What are today considered economic functions correspond to what were then social functions.

  The first great snag for our new global culture comes from the fact that economic functions cannot entirely respond to human needs. These derive from man’s brain, which was fashioned in three great evolutionary stages: reptilian, mammalian, and human. Three types of needs correspond to these stages: physical and emotional needs, and the need for meaning. Man feels fulfilled and happy when these three types of needs are being satisfied. Passive consumption cannot answer all of them. If we want to be physically, emotionally, and intellectually happy, we must be active in these three domains; this can only be accomplished by socialization and the experience of an activity or work that provides meaning.

  The great error of socialism was claiming that individuals are not motivated by self-interest and competition. Even when
people do something out of love or generosity, they often expect something in return, if only recognition and consideration. The great error of any capitalist ideology is to think people are only motivated by materialism and immediate personal interest. Most people set a value on their families and friends that can’t be expressed in monetary terms, and they are prepared to make sacrifices— even give their lives—for those they love.

  The second fundamental snag for the dream of globalization comes from the fact that life in a global culture involves being ruled by a system that, while appearing to function well, is bound to be unhealthy. This system bears within itself the seeds of self-destruction. Few and weak values and founding myths, management by an increasingly corrupt oligarchy, unbound praise of individualism, futility, and stupidity—this is called “decadence.”

  Great powers in History, such as Egypt, Persia, Rome, the Spain of Charles V, the Ottoman Empire, France under Louis XIV or Napoleon, Victorian England, Imperial or Nazi Germany, the USSR, China, or the United States of America all required a common founding myth, which gave their people the strength to devote their existence and give their lives in the service and for the glory of their cause.

  In Imperial Rome, there reigned the myth of inevitability and the primacy of Roman civilization in relation to others, considered barbarians. The USSR defended the myth of the classless society. Having theoretically removed social and ethnic classes through the Revolution, the Soviets’ claim to authority rested on their having created an egalitarian society that fulfills everybody’s needs: they had eliminated excessive wealth and allowed every citizen, even the most humble, the opportunity to improve himself and live in security and dignity. Over the course of decades, and many disenchantments, this powerful myth lost credibility in daily life. At the end of the 1980s, no further great common effort was possible, and the superpower collapsed.

  In the United States and the West, the myth is that of the middle class: everyone can dream of obtaining, through honest toil, a simulacrum of landed nobility, symbolized by a freestanding house with a bit of land large enough for a lawn and a parking place. Moreover, the concept of “middle class-ness” is sufficiently vague and flexible to allow persons of genuinely different social classes, having nothing in common but an automobile, to be spoken of in this same way. An automobile is an extension of the personality, a symbol of social success, of seductiveness and sexual potency, a central element of modern civilization—and only possible thanks to petroleum. Without that, the dream collapses.

  There are, of course, other Western myths: the omnipotence of the market, which always has a miracle solution for every problem; that capitalism and democracy are, by definition, the best possible systems; the religion of “human rights,” which can justify any action, however malicious, anywhere in the world in the name of a “good” cause: neocolonialism, mass immigration, meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, bombings and invasions of sovereign nations, theft of resources, the kidnapping of children from their culture for adoption, etc.

  These myths are constructed on a basis of verifiable truth. After all, the growth and supremacy of the West over a period of centuries is impressive. Improvements in our quality of life are evidence of the well-founded nature of the values conveyed by these myths. But is this due to our value system, or merely to our access to cheap and abundant fossil fuel? It always comes back to this same question. And now that a country like China, not very democratic or capitalistic (in the liberal sense of the term), is getting along extremely well without these Western values, one may wonder whether a strong causal connection ever existed between liberal democracy and economic success.

  The value system tied to global culture has nothing to do with justice, or even being nice. It favors the search for the greatest power and the greatest personal wealth possible. Being rich and powerful is not, in most cases, connected to altruistic attitudes but to narcissism and egotism—that is, sociopathy. It’s neither good nor bad, it is, but it’s interpreted as it must be good. This system gets people to believe that if we all behaved in egotistic and atomized ways (if the worst opportunists, sociopaths, and crooks were put in charge politically and economically) and finally if the rich got richer, this would be good for most of us. It is constructed on a profession of faith, on a sort of religious or magical thought, and not at all upon empirical observation or reality. The system’s lucky break was to have coincided with a period of abundant, cheap energy. One of the effects of this faith is to define short-term profit as the ultimate and only objective. This is why companies are supposed to be competitive: to make a profit in order to survive and reward their shareholders. The well-being of employees and any other parameters not directly useful in the short term are neglected.

  As in the feudal age, when the sons of lords were trained in war beginning at youth, the children of the well-off classes learn very early on how to be competitive and maximize their profits. Business schools are nothing but factories for creating champions of short-term profit. With long teeth and sharpened claws, the intriguers are ready for anything, servile to the powerful and pitiless with the weak: we have educated generations of war criminals. These CEOs, CFOs, and traders (though they don’t chop off limbs with machetes or gas civilians) nevertheless provoke economic dislocations such that millions of lives are ruined. It would be interesting to have a magistrate propose defining financial crimes against humanity, crimes as serious as those judged at Nuremburg in 1946. One can imagine that a populist government, faced with public anger, might charge popular tribunals with hearing such cases.

  It is easy to see that this model is insupportable in these times of crisis. It’s not that it uses industrial processes or market forces to determine prices, or that it is founded on competition and self-interest. The problem is that this system does not recognize the need for limits—limits to the exploitation of resources, limits to competition, limits to inequality, etc. It’s like driving a car with an accelerator but no brakes. Modern industrial society is not only ecologically unsustainable but also socially unsustainable. It results in poverty: material poverty in poor countries and emotional poverty in rich countries. The culture of consumption creates false needs, false desires for power, status and wealth instead of satisfying the genuine needs of the senses. This culture constructs an illusion of scarcity so people can satisfy their emotional needs by the act of buying. Finally, it provokes real scarcity in poor countries, where there are already too few resources to cover basic needs: food, drinking water, health, and education.

  Whose fault is it? Who built this system?

  Westerners born after 1945, known as Baby Boomers, are probably the most irresponsible generation of all time. Sorry, dudes, but here’s why. Born into a period of rapid growth, Baby Boomers benefited from a powerful and rich welfare state bringing them education, leisure, and infrastructures beyond historical comparison. All this was the work of the preceding generation that had experienced the Great Depression, the Second World War, and reconstructed everything in the course of the 30 glorious postwar years. The Baby Boomers never really had to strain themselves: too young for the last colonial wars (with the notable exception of the Vietnam War for Americans), never having difficulty finding work, they benefited from all the feats of technology and medicine and spent their youth enjoying themselves and experimenting with drugs and “free love” against a backdrop of rock music. They even allowed themselves, following the “summer of love” and the European “revolutions” of May 1968, the luxury of questioning all that Western civilization had achieved over millennia. Casting aside all morality as an obstacle to immediate enjoyment, they found themselves making money in the 1980s and ‘90s, and now they are in the driver’s seat, showing off their lack of education, their incompetence, and their contempt for the past. Like spoiled children, these Americans and Europeans born after the Second World War have squandered natural and cultural capital for their petty enjoyment. Worse, after accusing their parents’ generati
on of “racism,” “fascism,” and even “genocide,” the Baby Boomers, now entering their dotage, demand that their retirement be paid for by the following generation (which is much more deprived than they were.)

  The result of these past 40 years is the construction of a system founded upon egotism and exploitation, which has filled our hearts with greed, indifference, and violence. Fear, hatred, anger, conflict, and violence are the natural products of a system where wealth is subtly (but ever more visibly) transferred from the poor to the rich, and where the media show the world the immense luxury in which the rich live. The poor are afraid of being unable to escape their poverty, and envy the rich. The rich are afraid the poor will take their wealth by force, or through democratic political methods.

  To maintain these wealth differences, walls of various sorts are built. The rich increasingly live in gated communities, and elite groups are working to create institutions and means of doing business that are unaffected by national democratic governments. You only have to look into the Bilderberg Group, the B’nai B’rith, the Trilateral Commission, Skull and Bones, the Bohemian Grove, or similar groups and webs of influence to perceive the attempts at creating a powerful superstructure above the world’s nation-states. But then, creating a world government, for example, or putting billionaires in charge, will no more resolve our problems than endless G8 or G20 meetings.

  We live in an economic apartheid system where sections of town—and, in some cases, entire countries—have become ghettos for the poor. No one wants you if you are poor, unless you accept being a wretch. The world is divided into three great zones: rich countries, where corrupt and corrupting oligarchs reign over progressively stupefied and distracted masses; emerging countries, usually undemocratic, where corrupt but not necessarily corrupting oligarchs reign over masses reduced to slavery; and finally poor countries, where the very idea of a state only exists episodically. In this latter world, by far the hardest but not necessarily the ugliest, corrupt-and-corrupting oligarchies dominate masses that are kept in poverty and ignorance.