They're off again

They’re off again.

It’s the end of September.

Looking out my window
I notice the swallows congregating
around the end of the building.
As they hover anenergy is palpable
as if in preparation for something big.

The news on the radio invades my attention.
It’s telling that Irish people are emigrating again.
The newspaper on the floor of my room tells of
the destruction of an immigrant camp in France by the police.
Another newspaper headlines brain drain from Ireland.

I look out the window again.
The swallows are gone.

Two crows sit on the roof peacefully surveying the scene.

It’s the end of September.
That’s the way it goes.

BG-September 2008.

“THE ONLY CERTAINTY IS UNCERTAINTY.”

This was the comment of a journalist recently after speeches by the British minister of finance and the chairman of the Bank of England relating to the British and international economic crisis. On hearing such comments one is moved to ask; how did all this uncertainty happen? Was it an act of God? Was it caused by economic policies or the absence of such? Most would have to admit that it was not caused by an act of God but by human incompetence arising from the imposition of global financial despotism by an elite who imagined a reality for themselves that is disconnected from the reality of the diversity of human circumstances. Evidence of this financial despotism was apparent in the brutal violence used against peaceful demonstrators at global financial forum over the past quarter century.    

“Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top reaching heaven; so that we may become a great people and not be scattered over the face of the earth.” (Genesis 11-4)

The architects of globalisation set up a system in which all countries and global systems would be absorbed into one entity. It was a process that did not involve the whole of reality because it excluded the most important market, the labour market, people. It failed to realise that labour market conditions differ from place to place and do not fit into any economic architect’s system. The reason for the neglect of the people market arose because those who planned a global system did so out of a mindset that treated people as commodities, units of labour, voiceless consumers. People’s aspirations were excluded by an economic moat that became a chasm between those who produced wealth and those who serviced wealth. The architects of globalisation saw only one reality, like the architects of the Tower of Babel, their own reality. That reality has failed with disastrous effects on those, excluded, people. In the face of the destitution of many, the architects of globalisation continue to reward themselves outrageously while those who are excluded pick up the bills through taxes. 

“Just over 200 “core” staff at ……… took home £554 million last year… this is an institutional bank raid…The scale of injustice is blatant.” (Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian, 30/5/11)

Regularly, the media reports the imbalance of the kind reported by Madeleine Bunting. But it does not seem to shock any more, leaving one to wonder if the public has lost its sense of outrage even when thousands are unemployed, in debt, on welfare benefit and emigrating. One regularly hears commentators saying that people are angry but it would seem that they are unable to direct their anger, as if they are incapable of identifying who has caused their anger, who is the culprit. Daily, they hear of people imprisoned for shoplifting but none of those who wrecked the banking seem to be behind bars. So, sadly, people direct their anger at the poor, unemployed, welfare recipients, immigrants, homeless, beggars and those of difference. They are the new media-generated enemies. The rise of intolerance across Europe is palpable and, tragically, becoming acceptable.    

“What is distinct about today’s global tyranny is that it is faceless. There’s no Fuhrer, no Stalin, no Cortes. Its workings vary according to each continent and its modes are modified by local history, but its overall pattern is the same, a circular pattern. The division between the poor and the relatively rich becomes an abyss. Traditional restraints and recommendations are shattered. Consumerism consumes all questioning. The past becomes obsolete. Consequently, people lose their selfhood, their sense of identity, and they then locate and find an enemy in order to define themselves. The enemy-whatever their ethnic or religious nomination-is always found among the poor.“(John Berger. Bento’s Sketchbook, 2011)

In the political arena there are few effective voices questioning a system that failed, is broken and is in the throes of being repaired. However, there are some voices in the political, media and other arenas that are objectively critical, offering an alternative. Will repairing a breaking system just buy time until the next set of predators suck the resources out of the system? Yet, if someone questions the system and calls it to account due to the absence of a critical political opposition there is deep-seated anger directed at the questioner. Archbishop Rowan Williams came under serious criticism when he questioned the present British government’s intent in regard to polices that are not properly exposed to public argument. In making his opinions public one has to assume that he was being critically constructive. After all, he is part of the system. 

“Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around…It isn’t enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, “This is the last government’s legacy,” and “We’d like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit.” To acknowledge the reality of fear is not necessarily to collude with it. But to recognise how pervasive it is risks making it worse. Equally, the task of opposition is not to collude in it, either, but to define some achievable alternatives. And, for this to happen, we need sharp-edged statements of where the disagreements lie.” (Archbishop Rowan Williams, New Statesman, 10/6/11)

Yet, his exhortations are not new or isolated. Many have been sharing similar ideas over the years and in recent days. Helena Smith reporting about the Greek crisis (The Guardian, 15/6/11) echoed the Archbishop’s words when she wrote, “With Europe’s debt crisis intensifying by the day, fear seems to be the single biggest factor motivating those in charge of policy on the common currency.” But, it is obvious that the enmeshed state and corporate sector cannot manage constructive criticism and does not seem to be listening. Both the state and the corporate sector are trying to prolong a culture of silent non-sense that brought about the present economic fiasco. The danger is that the public become resigned to coping with a tired democracy that has been exhausted by predatory forces over the past quarter century.  Cornel West, observes this in his book, Democracy Matters, when he writes;

“The pervasive climate of opinion and the prevailing culture of consumption make it difficult for us to even imagine the revival of the deep democratising energies of our past and conceive of making real progress in the fight against imperialism. But we must remember that the basis of democratic leadership is ordinary citizen’s desire to take the country back from the hands of corrupted plutocratic and imperial elites. This desire is predicated on an awakening among the populace from the seductive lies and comforting illusions that sedate them and a moral channelling of new political energy that constitutes a formidable threat to the status quo.”

Are there signs of a democratic, participative renewal? There are, but they are finding it difficult to break through due to the emergence of designer-funded groups who are trying to re-image the past in order to maintain the elitist structures  that brought about the present crisis of fear in ordinary people‘s lives. Fear in people’s lives is tangible as they experience the rise in food costs passing through supermarket checkouts. Many workers have had no pay increases this year. Yet, they are regularly told that prices for basic commodities will continue to rise. And this is a global experience. Imagine how people in the developing world are feeling if people in the developed economies are afraid about their futures.

John Berger, writing in the 1980s reminded us about what has emerged over the past decade and particularly the past few years;

“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.”              

The European Union is at a fork on the road. So far, it has been an economic, market-morality driven union that has neglected the development of a political union. It seems the mercantile paradigm from the colonial era of seeing different others as a threat has not been eradicated in bringing about inclusive solidarity in Europe as envisioned by the founders. Evidence of exclusion is the rise of political parties that are opposed not just to demographic diversity but to the very idea of a union that connects people in Galway, Gdansk, Genoa and beyond in tolerance and solidarity. Will the failure of the European Union be caused by tension in the global economic system? Or will it be caused by the failure of its agencies and those of the Member States to respond in solidarity to allay fear, anxiety and uncertainty among the general population? Can the leadership of the European Union take a different route and set standards in imaging a different future? The present impasse caused by the failure of the Irish, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese financial systems should not signal a return to the past. Avoiding the horrors of the past alone should in itself be a stimulus in finding an inclusive, equality-based, shared future that the young Italian diplomat envisioned in the past and the founders of the European Union set in motion.     

Back in 1942 a young Italian diplomat wrote a report for his government after completing his tour of duty in a variety of European capitals including Germany. He wrote:

“They (Germany) have no idea that no economic order can rule if not based on a political order, and to make the Belgian or Bohemian worker work, is not enough to promise him a certain wage, but one must give him a sense of serving a community, of which he is an intimate part, which he feels an affinity with and in which he recognises himself.” (Luciolli, Italian Diplomat’s Report 1942)  

However, has the European Union, and other global institutions, in devising a different system in which there will be inclusive access for the well being of all, particularly the weak, the political ingenuity and courage to challenge a prevailing legacy of colonialism that justified its existence by exploiting the weak, voiceless and different who work in the high streets of the global village? Most think the will to change is there but doubt the motivation. However, the human spirit to be free has overcome institutional obstruction expressed in greed, fear, hatred, torture and indifference. The human spirit is not confined to a brand or slick presentation of paltry politics devoid of spirituality. Politics devoid of spirituality is as poor as  spirituality devoid of politics. What kept Mandela, Ghandi, King, Havel, Aung San Suu Kyi and others going in their darkest days? Shallow politics or politics inspired by hope?   

The voice of a ninety-year old man, Stephane Hessel, expresses the urgency for radical change. He saw Europe get off its knees after the wars of the last century and renew itself to what it is today. However, he has this warning;

“The immense gap between the very poor and the very rich never ceases to expand. This is an innovation of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. The very poor in the world today earn barely two dollars a day. We cannot let this gap grow even wider. That alone should raise our commitment.” (Time For Outrage, 2011)

At the moment, around the world wars are being conducted to control markets-drug markets, human markets of trafficking and other illegal goods. For example, is the drug war on the Mexican/American border a vision of the struggle to control other markets in the future? Ordinary people fear for their lives as they go about their legitimate daily tasks in cities and towns on the Mexican/American border. Likewise in enclaves adjacent to tourist resorts inside countries similar drug wars are carried on by drug cartels for market control. Good people are reduced to living in virtual prisons. The despotism of the global markets has increased the fear of people everywhere. The journalist outside the Guildhall in London after the speeches of the financial titans put the overall global situation in context by his comment-the only certainty is uncertainty.”

Where to begin?

“History is made by successive shocks, of confronting and overcoming successive challenges. Societies progress, and in the end, having attained complete liberty, may achieve a democratic state in some ideal form.“ (Stephane Hessel, Time for Outrage, 2011)

The recent struggle by people in North Africa and the Middle East in ridding their countries of despots is a good example of the desire of the human spirit to be free. And not just free of political tyranny but the idols of cultural, religious and market dictatorships that have crushed rather than freed the human spirit. Looking back at the many points of liberation it is obvious that the non-violent ones, hope-driven, stared painful truths in the face and persevered without cynicism or pessimism. Nelson Mandela , Aung San Suu Kyi and Fidel Castro are the best modern examples. Daily, the spirit of Mandela is renewed by the people of North Africa, the Middle East and beyond. Cornel West writes that;

“Democracy is always a movement of an energised public to make elites responsible-it is at its core and most basic foundation the taking back of one’s powers in the face of the misuse of elite power. In this sense, democracy is more a verb than a noun-it is more a dynamic striving and collective movement than a static order or a stationary status quo. Democracy is not just a system of governance, as we tend to think of it, but a cultural way of being.”(Democracy Matters)

Watching the struggles of people against powerful despotic state/market force for a more enhanced equality and quality of life should give each of us the impetus to pull the curtains of indifference and reject the comfort of the status quo. See what is happening in our own squares. Listen to the anguish, anxiety and fear of people and try to integrate it mentally and emotionally so that we can truly say with those who struggle -I am with you.

“It is true that the reasons for outrage today may seem less clear or the world more complicated. Who runs things? Who decides? …This is a vast world, and we see its interdependence. We are interconnected in ways we never were before, but some things in the world are unacceptable. To see this you have to open your eyes…The worst possible outlook is indifference that says, ’I can’t do anything about it, I’ll get by.’ Behaving like that deprives you of one of the essentials of being human: the capacity and freedom to feel outraged. That freedom is indispensable, as is the political movement that goes with it…We can identify two great new challenges:

1) The immense gap between the very poor and the very rich never ceases to expand.

       (See Merrill Lynch and Capgemini annual wealth report. (The Guardian,23/6/11)

2) Human rights and the state of the planet.” (Stephane Hessel, Time for Outrage, 2011)      

How to get involved? There are many movements that have emerged over time to confront the complacency and nihilism of the status quo. Presently, many people, outraged by the undermining of hard-won rights, conventions and trust are associating themselves in local democratic movements imbued by the bravery of ordinary people demonstrating on city streets and squares for their freedoms in other countries. Of course, the enemies in these democratic struggles are highly visible despots that have managed feudal systems of repression over many years. In other areas the culprit is not as visible and difficult to direct anger at. Professor Zygmunt Bauman, Leeds University, writing in 2003, noted that:

“The present-day individual miseries are not synchronised; to each door catastrophe knocks selectively, on different days, at different hours. The visits are apparently unconnected. And the disasters are not misdeeds of an enemy whom one can name, point a finger to, unite against and stand up together. They are the dealings of mysterious forces without fixed address-hiding under curios and baffling names of financial markets, global terms of trade, competitiveness, supply and demand. Of what possible use can friends be when one loses one’s job in another “downsizing” exercise, wakes up to the obsoleteness of hard won skills, to the neighbourhood or the family or the partnership suddenly falling apart…Our sufferings divide and isolate: they set us apart, they tear up the delicate tissue of human solidarities.” (Europe of Strangers, Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds)   

However, it is important, even in the starkness of Professor Bauman’s vista, to be able to belong to a community that one can relate to, contribute to and be supported by. This is the challenge for the future. Expression is the best antidote to depression. Expression takes place in communities. Over the past twenty years economics have been prioritised in the public discourse to the detriment of community and civic society. A deified market has no morality. This is evident in the fragmentation of communities by the rise of crime, suicide, illegal drugs and the cost of security to society. 

Priority to community is recommended by Robin Dunbar, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oxford. (The Guardian, 25/4/11) 

“Our real problem for the future is how to overcome this social fragmentation by recreating a sense of community in our increasingly urbanised world.”

The call to community is endorsed by many modern thinkers. David C. Korten writing recently asks the question;

“What is real wealth?… Real wealth is a healthy, fulfilling life; happy children; loving families; and a caring community within a beautiful, healthy natural environment. It is a fulfilling means of livelihood that affirms our inherent worth and service. It is a peaceful world. These are the things of real value, and their presence or absence is the only truly valid measure of economic performance.”(Agenda For A  New Economy, 2010)

What shocks do we need to create new attitudes, new vocabularies, new outlooks, new visions, new certainties? Is there a leadership capable of outlining them? I hope so!