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Briefing Paper Series |
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Bernt Pölling-Vocke (bernty@gmx.com) |
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Master of International Relations |
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Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand |
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What would a better world look like and how do we get there? | ||
In
many aspects, the world we live in is better than worlds of the past, at
least if we focus on a short-term anthropocentric perspective. Modern
science has swamped us with a wide array of advancements and the world
recently appears to become more peaceful wherever capable, so-called
democratic governments are in place. Is this world as good as it can get?
Have the developed rich reached utopia and made it to the Pareto-optimum
of human excellence, thus set a path for all to follow? For
those praising the day, it might be advisable to rejoice every single
second of our current existence, as we have cheerfully set course for
potential disaster. Happily and increasingly optimistic, we are racing
towards a cliff. Without major cultural changes, Nietzsche’s vision of
the clever animal that invented knowledge and shortly after had to die
is becoming reality. We are sleepwalking into a technologically
restructured world without political discussion about what we are
constructing. There is absolutely no guarantee that peace between
democracies is here to stay, no matter how much less than three decades
of reality appear to prove. There is no proof whatsoever that the
globalization of neo-liberal, growth-oriented practices does not at some
point of time collide with the discarded concept of growth’s limits,
and in the light of impending problems, humanity excels in regard of
pathological denial.
Dramatic
cultural changes are necessary. Even though nobody is capable of
predicting when time is running out, there is no reason to assume that
such knowledge would do us any good without a new culture, a different
approach to life and a new understanding of economic development. It
does not require magic to know that peak oil, a much lesser
“catastrophe” than rapid climate change, is set to occur as close to
immediately as anything imaginable, never mind a decade or two, even
though past predictions turned out wrong. Nevertheless, we propel ahead
at full speed, demand more and more of ever less and even cloak such
behaviour as rational, or at least economically rational. Economic
rationality is one of the core problems of our existence, as its
irrationality appears difficult to top. The belief that markets will get
the job done once it is time to do so is interesting, even more if one
takes a closer look at the Hubbert peak theory’s curve. Without a
doubt, markets will have to do a hell of a job. What
is needed is a “real” attitude towards human existence. Currently,
we globalize an unreal rationality, unreal and unsustainable needs, an
unreal conception of “well-being” and unreal “selfs”. As it is
always impossible to do just one thing, the globalization of western
science and political practices, otherwise called development / economic
development, also globalizes the western “self”, thus the
then-rational Me-first attitude so little in accordance with the true
Homo sapiens. “Quite logically, evolution promoted not only the
fittest Homo sapiens, but also those capable of cooperation. The biggest
ego and a mighty club are of little advantage if one’s path crosses
with a small number of smaller egos with smaller clubs but a pretty good
idea how to beat simultaneously. Just as for nature, a society is more
than the sum of its parts, and an exaggerated cultivation of maximised
parts is the wrong path to maximise the total outcome. If we were to
successfully globalize western living standards and economic
opportunities, “living” would turn into “dying”, as the result
would equal complete justice and complete catastrophe” (Bernt Pölling-Vocke).
What
is needed for a better world? Just two simple maxims, as far as I am
concerned: On the one hand, maximised en-masse happiness should be the
driving factor all policies are measured against. If something does not
increase happiness, why bother? On the other hand, these policies would
need compatibility with sustainability, which more likely than not
excludes the myth of global, sustainable growth. Everything that makes
people less happy than before should be deemed irrational, no matter how
economically rational it might appear. Neo-liberal “terror regimes”
forcing their subjects to sacrifice themselves in the name of a global
race to the bottom are not rational. Neither is the continued, political
focus on economic growth once a certain threshold of material wealth is
reached; in the case of Japan a six-fold increase in GDP per capita
since the 1950s has apparently not correlated with a major change in
perceived happiness, therefore it might be wise to question whether
economic growth was beneficial at all. Results for most of Europe and
the United States do not differ dramatically, with happiness reaching
high levels in the early 70s, but remaining more or less stable
afterwards (Layard). Nevertheless, economic outputs skyrocketed whereas
mental diseases and personal insecurity in the light of neo-liberal
reforms expanded just as fast, but why bother with collateral damage? In
regard of national development, especially for poor countries, economic
growth makes sense, but once a certain threshold of well-being is
reached, the political aim of economic growth needs scrapping. Whether a
level of adequate development for more than 6 billion humans is possible
is difficult to answer. Even before, economic growth should just be one
of many aims, but if we chew over the wisdom of clever animals as
Jeffrey Sachs, little else seems to matter at all. Additionally,
anything not absolutely necessary for human survival or increased
happiness, which includes the satisfaction of some non-vital needs, but
tending towards unsustainability ought to be irrational. A
better world would put more emphasis on smallness than bigness. Regions
do not need disempowering superstructures as the European Union, but
regional empowerment. This does not discard the notion of the nation
state or global governance in general, which is necessary for global
issues, but nevertheless regions should become more self-sufficient. The
globalization of unreal needs and their stupid satisfaction only boosts
suspect measures as GDP, which also receives a boost if a formerly clean
river is polluted and its waters need treatment to serve human needs,
whereas non-human nature is forced to suffer. There would still be
global markets for products irrational to produce regionally, but there
is little reason why every corner of the world should only live up to
the ideals of some narrow comparative advantages. Additionally, people
could be re-empowered simultaneously, as there is no reason to oppose
increased, but not exclusive, direct democracy on regional levels. But
how do we get to a world of more empowered regions, intelligent
globalization and ecological rationality? How do we smarten the clever
animal up? The issue of peak oil tells us that we can’t, as we are so
entrenched in our current phase of denial that we cannot even react to
the stumbling blocks in clear sight. Somehow, it will all work out or
science will save the day, many believe. Or hope. Or are too preoccupied
to question. In the end, there are always the forces of the market to
hope for. Peak oil in itself might lead to a rethinking of global
markets, plain simply if past processes become economically irrational,
but this might equally well not happen. Mass-migration might become an
important issue. Currently, real sustainability is marginalised to the
extreme, and even most critics of neo-liberalism only focus on
inequalities or, more radically, call for something along the lines of
socialism, even though there is no evidence that a more equal
distribution of unncecessarities does any good. If the factory is the
problem, worker-owned factories cannot be the answer. The
problem of agency is enormous, and it seems plausible to think that
nature itself might become the agent once current, human mainstream
rationality, functioning along the lines of “the fact that human
population is on catastrophic course does not lead to the conclusion
that catastrophe will occur” (Arne Naess), fails. What is important
for those believing in the advantages of a world of sustainable
smallness is the communication of their vision, which is likely to fall
on deaf ears until catastrophe knocks on the door. As Noam Chomsky once
said, “either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is
saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from
Neptune”. Without developed alternatives to contemporary
growth-oriented cultures at hand, there is no guarantee that these will
automatically spring up once they are desperately needed, or, as Leszek
Kolakowski said: “It may well be that the impossible at a given moment
can become possible only by being stated at a time when it is impossible”.
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