dark matter essay
(C) 2013
  • about
    • values
    • competences >
      • china
      • intellectual property >
        • What is original?
        • talks & lectures
      • work & vocation
      • personal and organizational development >
        • definitions and techniques
        • syst lexicon
        • projection #1
        • projection #2
        • projection #3
  • blog
  • STP journal
  • book reviews
    • Boy by Roald Dahl
    • Digital Dementia by Manfred Spitzer
    • Evolution's Meaning and Objective by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
    • Focus - The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman
    • Going Solo by Roald Dahl
    • Homo Deus by Yuval N. Harari
    • Iron John by Robert Bly
    • Irresistible by Adam Alter
    • Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux
    • Steve Jobs by Walter Isaakson
    • The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson
    • The Great Disruption by Francis Fukuyama
    • The Monk Who Sold His Ferarri by Robin Sharma
    • The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin
    • The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder
    • Weltentwerfen by Friedrich Boerries
    • World Order by Henry Kissinger
  • film reviews
    • Alphabet (2013)
    • Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
    • Bad Santa (2003)
    • Captain Fantastic (2016)
    • Concussion (2016)
    • Demain | Tomorrow
    • East is East (1999)
    • Her (2013)
    • Kinsey (2004)
    • Laura Croft II - The Cradle of Life
    • Le Planete Sauvage (1973)
    • Pope Francis by Wim Wenders
    • Suzaku (1997)
    • SIlence (2016)
    • The Challenges of Rudolf Steiner (2011)
    • The Program (2015)
    • The Salt of the Earth (2014)
    • The Straight Story (1999)
  • topic essays
    • anthropology >
      • on economics >
        • Do we reward our contributions to society the way we should?
        • International Tax Evasion
        • capitalism
        • on profit, passion & purpose
      • on humor
      • on politics >
        • zur lage der nation: le grand peur II
        • Analyse NR Wahl 2013
        • zur lage der nation
        • Wutbürger - anger citizens
        • World Order - Book Review
      • Identity: Warum mich Trachten entfremden
      • on gender and sexuality
      • on religion
    • art
    • creativity >
      • Transforming the IP System
    • education >
      • Mindful Parenting
      • Alphabet - Documentary Review
      • Henry Kissinger on Education
      • learning environment
      • Musicalized - Rich Music for Poor Times
      • screen education
      • Sting on how he became to be what he is and creativity
      • On Bi- and Multilingual Instruction
      • A Playground of Growth
      • On Procrastination
    • neurology >
      • On Football and Oxytocin
    • on nutrition
    • psychology >
      • algorithm of love
      • art of loving
      • applied virtues
      • emotional intelligence
      • grundformen der angst
      • grit - key to success
      • happiness
      • on love and grief
      • triangular love
      • yale intro to psychology
    • quotes worth quoting
    • sports >
      • kiting
      • yoga
      • squash
    • writing
  • travel essays
    • one step into camino frances
    • journey to the center of the earth
    • Alto Adige - An Example how European Integration can Succeed
    • on the friendship highway
    • en viaje de andalusia
    • sawasdee krub - a quiet holiday in thailand
    • Viking Myths and Hanseatic Harmony
    • How Airbnb Explains Bureaucratic Futilism and Why the Chinese hukou System Could be a Solution to the European Migration Crisis
    • On Slovenia and Integration or Isolation in Post Nationalist Europe
    • who moved my swiss cheese?
    • On Taiwan and its Identity Crisis
    • On Nippon Sakoku
    • Expectations of and Deliveries in Down Under
    • Silence on Kumano Kodo
    • Zwischen der pannonischen und mandschurischen Ebene treibend
    • Thoughts on Freedom and Order While Dozing in Berlin
    • On Interrail and Climate Ticket
    • On Morroco, Islam and Faithfulness
  • contact

On Waging War and Democratic Decline

3/2/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
We tend to think that the threats to our society or to ourselves are outside of us. We fear that some enemy will destroy us. But a society is destroyed from the inside, not from an attack by outsiders. [Choegyam Trungpa]
 
During the last few days I have read many opinions, comments, columns and essays on the war in the Ukraine, and have noticed that there are two large groups: a majority which condemns Putin for being a vile aggressor and a minority which condemns the US and NATO alliance for pushing their sphere of interest too far. While it is the people who lose their homes and livelihoods who need our empathy and support, it is important to highlight that neither Putin nor Biden are to blame. Writing from Central Europe, it is paramount to realize that the enemy is right among us.
 
The only root cause for this conflict is to be found in the decay of Western democracy through an informal alliance of the superrich, who undermine the spheres of trust which have been built in Western democracies after WWII through welfare systems and a fairer distribution of wealth. These spheres of trust have been undermined starting with job outsourcing and cutbacks in welfare systems in the 1980s. These spheres of trust have been corrupted by financial globalization ever since. 
Picture
The aggressors are right amongst us. We know them by name. They are listed in international, European and national Forbes lists of wealth. They sit in every European society with legal entities that slowly but gradually exploit the average citizen and thus weaken democracies. They have their allies in politics, financial and legal consulting industries and their singular objective is profit maximization.
 
Democracies are sick to the bone because they have been deprived by a global elite from what is the sometimes easily overlooked essence of a democracy: economic distribution and fairness. We are made believe that democracy is about casting a vote, but that is only the institutional expression of a system which aims for respect, choice and transparency. The true essence of democracy is not political but economic participation. With the increase of populations, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and the automation of blue and white color labor, democracy has been seriously weakened.   
 
Putin may be a regressive bully, but like in every classroom, it is a system without checks and balances which gives bullies the opportunity to oppress others. The strength of a society lies in its social capital; and the social capital of Western democracies has been depleted by excessive capitalism.  What we have seen in the past with the rise of Donald Trump – another regressive bully - is the expression of this general cultural decay which we tend to overlook because it happens gradually. The striking rise of homicide rates in the US is another indicator which is the direct result of this democratic decay which put approx. 20 mio. Americans at the beginning of Covid-19 within days out of their jobs.

It is capitalist greed which has destroyed the working middle class has prevented an earlier transition away from fossil fuel and Russian gas dependency. It is capitalist greed which has deprived Europe from a sound manufacturing infrastructure by moving entire industries including their supply chains to China. Those who now proclaim sanctions don’t realize in which fragile situation we are and what consequences we need to put up with when global trade will come to an abrupt stop. We create transformation by chaos not by design.
 
If we want to stop further escalation, we are well advised to focus our energies at fixing what is broken at home:
  • tax the rich and shut down tax exemption heavens – not only for Russians, but everywhere and for everybody
  • stop blaming Putin for the apathy, ignorance and greed which has led to his strength
  • invest in sustainable energy infrastructure
  • reward jobs which create added value in societies
  • shrink inflated bureaucracies to a sound size
  • use this opportunity to drive a truly post-national organization
 
If we want to drive escalation, then we are advised to do continue doing what has been done so far:
  • threaten loudly with sanctions
  • shift to nuclear power
  • invest in a futile arms race
  • give more financial and political power to Brussels where too many people sit idly not doing what they are supposed to
 
It is now important to practice peace with every breath, as Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh writes. It is vital to think about what we can fix in our own small sphere of influence, before we arrogantly tell others what they should be doing. I am telling this also myself and ponder on what I can improve. But as films like the Economics of Happiness or A Quest for Meaning have shown clearly, an individual cannot change the institutions which run our societies like huge flywheels.
 
Being a European citizen, I must deplore the missed opportunities of the past 30 years which would have offered themselves to us. Security does always start with energy not with weapons and EU bureaucracy and politicians have blatantly failed in what would have been so obvious: investing into non-fossil and non-nuclear infrastructure instead of deepening the dependency on Russian imports. I still remember a photovoltaics project in Maghreb Africa which would have been largely financed by a Munich based insurance giant. It would have created stability in the region and cohesion around the Mediterranean Sea. A peaceful enlargement of a post-national and post-religious Europe that shares energy security interests and cooperates for the survival of the next generation.
 
If the rich are responsible for the decay of democracy, then politicians and governments around the world are guilty of being accomplices in this crime against humanity. Neither Putin’s attack on the Ukraine nor Trump’s attack on the Capitol would have been possible in a sane society where democracy is so strong that it defies agitators, dictators and bullies. Governments which are ripe with corruption and lobbyism are the systemic hotbed in which democracy dissolves, until we end up with tyranny and despotism like in ancient Rome.
Picture
For the last few years I have shunned most media and read only books. I have however quite frequently read Azeem Azhar’s weekly newsletter. While I have enjoyed his eloquent insights on technological developments around the world, I have always felt a futility in his single-minded focus on technology as a panacea to the ills of this world. This week’s extraordinary newsletter revealed that he too is part of the problem without realizing it.
 
Azeem is a member of the global financial elite which operates from locations like London always lightyears ahead of a normal person, riding an exhilarating wave of technological progress. He declares the German no to nuclear power to be an anti-scientific decision and puts himself thereby in the camp of conservatives which do not understand that the greed for infinite power supply is in direct contradiction with an ecological transition that is based on finite resources and an economy of moderation. He makes a pact with Macron and others who don’t agree that energy security is the foremost area which has to be thought if not global then at least transnational. It is not a coincidence that the foundation of the EU was a treaty which forced France and Germany to cooperate on steel and coal. This treaty needs to be renewed in Europe and bordering nations on photovoltaics and related industries.
 
Every penny which is now invested in arms is invested wrongly. Every soldier which is sent into battle is sacrificed for a war which cannot be won: nobody ever wins in a war but the generals and kings who don’t fight the battle but move human resources over a battlefield and deliberate in the officers’ casino which battalion they can spare or which not. The peace which we have enjoyed since WWII did rest on nuclear proliferation and strong democracies. It did not rest on tanks, artillery or large standing armies. So, please do not fall for calls of hotheaded European politicians or London venture capitalist who think that military investment and intervention will help us out of this crisis in the long run.
 
There is this saying that the cold war was won by blue jeans. While the consumer culture has in the era of climate change a rather negative connotation, we need to remember that it was the promise of a society with a rather meritocratic access to the economy and the freedom to choose certain consumer products which eventually dismantled the former soviet block. It was not open war, but better values and opportunities to genuinely improve one’s lot which made people give up upon communist dictators.
 
If we want to win this new war against authoritarian regimes mushrooming across the globe, it is our foremost duty to strengthen democracy by taxing the rich and making our version of the human story more attractive than the one unfolding in other places of this world. In doing so, we shall not forget that we must overcome nationalism and must strive in the era of the Anthropocene for a new understanding of what it means to be human.
 
Addendum: a friend of mine posted a couple of really interesting maps on Ukraine which made me recall [> recommended read from 2016] how the artificial boarders of Europe which were created over the centuries still do create natural fault lines which spark conflict. The Ukrainian distribution of ethnic groups is quite similarly diverse to the one in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, where the historians defined the shooting of an unimportant Hapsburg prince as the start of WWI. While a sense of nationalism can spark wars without doubt, we need to look beyond the ethnic and political tensions and ask ourselves if war would be possible if we were to create the economic frame conditions which allow for peaceful cooperation between different cultural backgrounds. Thomas Piketty has shown in his longitudinal study that the root cause for WWI was a peak in unfair wealth distribution. The same is true for much of the political upheaval of the recent years, including the Ukrainian conflict. The silver lining around this dark cloud is the hope that mankind manages to move into a truly post-national form of organization which rests on a social contract that distributes wealth fairly around the globe and thus eliminates archaic battlefield thinking. As long as we fight one another we fight ourselves.
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Aging
    Art
    Atonement
    Austria
    Bottom Up Focus
    Buddhism
    Calexico
    Capitalism
    Children
    China
    Cinema
    Climate Change
    Csr
    Democracy
    Denmark
    Digital Media
    Economics
    Education
    Enlightenment
    Europe
    Famous Quotes
    Football
    Hamburg
    Hansa
    Happiness
    Health
    History
    Humor
    Hungary
    Ibizagate
    Individuation
    Innovation
    Integration
    Kiting
    Kurt Schuschnig
    Learning
    Life Guidance
    Love
    Medicine
    Meditation
    Memory
    Meritokratie
    Music
    Nationalism
    Neos
    Nepotismus
    Neurology
    Neuroscience
    Nutrition
    Oxytocin
    Parenting
    Philippines
    Politics
    Psychology
    Religion
    Research And Development
    Scandinavia
    Sebastian Kurz
    Slovakia
    Snowboarding
    Spain
    Sports
    Success
    Suffizienz
    Taiji
    Taoism
    Taxation
    Technology Transfer
    Top Down Focus
    Traffic
    Travel
    Turkey
    Urbanization
    Vikings
    Wise Living
    Work
    Writing
    Yoga

    Archives

    January 2023
    November 2022
    September 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    July 2019
    February 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    September 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    August 2009

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly