The Quiet Road

My hastily written post (Tories living in Stalinist Britain) about the arrest of British tory MP, Damian Green (or more accurately about the absurd statements made about his arrest by the tory party) got quoted all over the place. As a result my readership has more than doubled in the past couple of days. Not quite as dramatic as the infamous Joss Whedon link that saw thousands of people showing up, but a bit weird all the same. Of course, it’s pretty much guaranteed that none of the new folks will stick around to become regulars, but all the same, I bid you a hearty “Welcome!”

From what I can gather, I’ve mostly been cited or linked-to in a positive context (e.g. Bloggerheads, Chicken Yoghurt, Liberal Conspiracy, Shiraz Socialist, and more). Though there has been one clear denunciation, from a blogger called A Very British Dude (I know!), who accuses me of promoting a “pinko mythology”. As well as that, someone on the comment-thread on the Liberal Conspiracy post seems to imply that my position is based upon support for the British Labour Party.

Regular readers will — of course — realise just how absurd both accusations really are. However, many of my visitors right now won’t be regulars, so let me take this opportunity to dispel those misconceptions as well as provide a little bit of information about where I do stand (in the hope that it might, perhaps, provide some food for thought).

Firstly let’s point out that ‘pinko’ implies a kind of wishy-washy left-wing liberalism. According to Wikipedia (that font of all conjecture):

Pinko is a derogatory term for a person regarded as sympathetic to Communism, though not necessarily a Communist Party member. The term has its origins in the notion that pink is a lighter shade of red, the color associated with communism; thus pink could be thought of as a “lighter form of communism” promoted by mere supporters of socialism who weren’t, themselves, “card-carrying” communists.

I am not a communist. However, I am a collectivist. Albeit in a restricted sense. Certainly I am an opponent of capitalism and I believe that a free-market in non-renewable natural resources is both a symptom of, and a contributing factor in, a collective psychosis that dominates modern civilisation. If you insist upon viewing politics in terms of colours, then I guess I’d be dark green with enough red to create a kind of muddy brown hue, flecked with non-militaristic white.

The reason I balk at the “communist” label is because I strongly disagree with a whole host of traditionally communist positions which are common to both the Marxist-Leninist and Maoist flavours. Two points in particular make it utterly impossible for me to board the communist bus.

Firstly, there’s an emphasis on “work” — in the sense of economic activity — and “progress” within communism that I believe; (a) is almost identical to that found in capitalist ideology, and (b) leads inevitably to large-scale ecological destruction, which is little short of suicidal.

Secondly, communism — like capitalism — is an ideology which insists upon viewing the world primarily in economic terms.

I just can’t get behind that. I’m not disputing that the economic model of human activity has valid uses and is appropriate for many situations. However my own position is that the vast majority of people who subscribe to an economic and/or political philosophy are guilty of ignoring Alfred Korzybski’s famous golden rule: “The map is not the territory”.

I believe that our civilisation is facing an imminent crisis; one that we are ill-equipped to deal with. That crisis could be loosely described as “unsustainability”. In other words, we have developed systems of production and distribution upon which we have come to depend, but which cannot be sustained even in the short term because they rely upon the consumption of non-renewable natural resources at a rate that cannot be maintained for very much longer.

As a result, I do not believe that the economic model of human activity should be given anything like the prominence (indeed, the primacy) it has enjoyed during the last few centuries. Partly because economics is so riven by politics that it engenders a kind of tribalism in those who view the world in economic terms. A tribalism we can ill afford right now. And partly because economics is an extremely limited map; one that ends up actually contradicting reality when a certain narrow set of preconditions are not met. But because so many people fail to grasp Korzybski’s golden rule, those contradictions are simply ignored — occasionally even openly denied against all the evidence — by those who seek the comfort of a simple model of reality.

I’ve recently completed a Master’s thesis on Group Psychodynamics. I believe that a synthesis of psychodynamics and systems-theory will provide the best model with which to understand the issues surrounding sustainability. We should also be cautious, of course, about mistaking that map for the territory, but I believe that it will prove to be a far more useful one, all told, over the coming years and decades.

Leastways, it will do if anyone bothers to consult it.

Road to … where?

So broadly speaking, where would this map take us?

Firstly profit needs to be eliminated as the primary motive for the production and distribution of food, energy and all non-renewable resources. Concentrations of power and capital need to be curtailed in all but the most narrow of circumstances. Biodiversity should be preserved as a matter of extreme urgency and the conversion of currently ‘untouched’ land into agricultural or urban land should cease immediately.

Economic activity needs to be minimised. Not maximised as is the current trend. This is not a prescription for starvation. “Minimised” does not mean eliminated, and a policy of minimisation would involve differentiating between essential and non-essential activity; retaining the former in as efficient a manner as possible while eliminating the latter if it consumes any non-renewable natural resources.

Non-essential economic activity could continue so long as it is sustainable (under a strict definition of sustainability). In the words of Gregory Bateson:

[A sustainable civilisation] shall consume unreplaceable natural resources only as a means to facilitate necessary change (as a chrysalis in metamorphosis must live on its fat). For the rest, the metabolism of the civilisation must depend upon the energy income which Spaceship Earth derives from the sun.

It goes without saying that the replacement of our current unsustainable life-support systems (the production and distribution of food and other essentials) with sustainable substitutes will itself require a significant investment of those “unreplaceable natural resources”. This is unavoidable, though we should obviously strive to make the process as efficient as possible.

All of this needs to be done in an environment of rapidly decreasing consumption in those areas currently over-consuming and a planned, incremental increase of consumption (particularly food) in those areas currently experiencing shortages (this will hopefully prevent the movement of large populations which itself consumes resources in a number of direct and indirect ways).

A large number of powers currently enjoyed by central governments need to be delegated to local communities and the localisation of production and consumption should be encouraged where possible.

Conversely, some powers need to be denied to “the public” entirely. Whether or not a population votes to continue — for example — burning petrol in their private cars, is entirely irrelevant. Such activity is damaging to humanity and the planet as a whole, and those who decide to act in that way should be prevented. This is why democracy will have to be abandoned. Local communities should be organised along democratic lines, but their powers limited by a framework of rules defined by an understanding of sustainability.

Oh, there’s plenty more, but that should be enough to be getting on with. I trust, though, that I’ve provided enough information to demonstrate that I’m not a stooge of the British Labour Party trying to score partisan points against the tories in order to keep Gordon Brown in power…?

As you no doubt already know, dear reader, I’m not exactly a champion of free-market capitalism. My opposition is rooted in philosophical — and increasingly, psychodynamic — objections rather than traditional economic ones and my grasp of the more arcane aspects of economic theory is not very strong. Better than Sarah Palin‘s I’d wager, but not very strong all the same.

So I don’t claim to understand precisely how this credit crisis developed, nor how the various bail-out packages around the world hope to solve it (this is as good an explanation for the non-expert as I’ve found though).

I’m fairly certain, however, that the root cause of the whole thing can be traced to a willingness in people (both large institutions and a whole bunch of mortgage applicants… though mostly large institutions) to take out loans they couldn’t afford to cover. In other words, to sign contracts that obliged them to pay back money they simply did not have.

My question to you, should you happen to understand all of this, is how exactly is the decision by the Irish government to guarantee 6 banks to the tune of €400 billion any different? This represents 37 years worth of Irish tax receipts. It’s twice the GDP of the entire nation. Put simply, Ireland does not have this money.

I realise that the point of the guarantee is to shore up confidence in the banks and thus avoid having to bail them out in the first place; that the government is making this promise in the belief that they’ll never actually have to honour it. But the people who allowed this crisis to develop in the first place, and whose judgment should therefore be considered extremely suspect, are the very same ones now drawing up this plan.

So based on their track-record, there’s no reason to believe that this €400 billion guarantee won’t be called upon. And it won’t necessarily be because of a bank collapse. All it’ll take is just one greedy son of a bitch in one of these banks to find a way to make money off this guarantee (which will be law within a matter of hours); to find some legal loophole that allows them to syphon public money into their own pocket. Then, with a few coke-fuelled phonecalls every single banker in Ireland will be following suit.

This plan could bankrupt the country for generations to come. And yet it’s been hurriedly implemented by a government that frankly doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing, at the behest of the greedy fools who created the problem in the first place.

Over on a web forum I visit occasionally, we’ve been discussing the ‘Facebook’ website / social engineering experiment. And I think I may have gotten a bit ranty to be honest. Given that this is a more appropriate forum for such rantiness, I figured I’d reproduce my “summary position” here.

Even without following those discussions, it’ll come as no surprise to you that I’m firmly in the anti-Facebook camp. And when I say “firmly”, I mean in the sense that they’re having to build me a special camp in the next field… even further from the pro-Facebook camp than the regular anti-Facebook camp.

A couple of days ago, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made a speech about the company’s plans for the future. It contains an interesting statement. And by “interesting”, I mean “fucking terrifying”.

But before I get onto that, let me recap the main pre-existing arguments for never visiting the facebook site ever again.

They fall into three broad categories.

Firstly, the question of what happens to your information once it gets uploaded to Facebook is a very murky one. They certainly never explicitly claim copyright or ownership of your information, but they do claim all manner of usage rights that amount to almost the same thing in practice, even if not by legal definition. Within this same point is the fact that Facebook made it impossible to delete your account up until recently (when bad publicity forced them to change policy). They still make it difficult (you can’t delete your info, you ask them by email to do it for you) and — vitally — given that they are not obliged to notify you when they sell your data to a third party, you have no idea whether or not it’s already been flogged to UltraMegaCorp by the time they get round to deleting it.

And in practice, it almost certainly already has. Because Facebook have an ongoing relationship with numerous corporations to provide them with user data on a regular basis. These include Coca-Cola, Blockbuster, Verizon, Sony Pictures and Condé Nast. Amongst others.

Secondly, the political and philosophical problems posed by any large centralised database are, at the very least, worthy of cautious consideration. A consideration that few have given it. Mostly because it’s “voluntary”, not because people are unable to consider these things. When the government propose it and talk about it being mandatory, then people rightfully question the decision.

Thing is, the same problems that exist with a mandatory database also exist with a voluntary one if everyone volunteers.

These kinds of databases are an absolute nightmare from a social justice and civil-liberties standpoint. They encourage an uncomfortable power/control relationship between those who control the data and those who provide it. While on the one hand, the data will allow the database owner to track and identify broad trends within the data-set, it will also allow them to identify mechanisms to manipulate those trends, and the interactive nature of the Facebook website may even provide the mechanisms by which such controls are put in place.

“Is control controlled by it’s need to control?” as Burroughs perceptively asked. And yes, it is. But control still tends to come out better in its relationships with those it controls.

If you get me.

And this is problematic even if control is benign. Even if the guy at the top is Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Even if he’s in charge, the risks of him screwing things up are just too great.

Which brings me onto Number 3. It’s very much linked to the second argument, but deserves a bold intro of its own.

Thirdly, it’s not James Stewart running this thing. It’s the fucking CIA!

And no. That’s not a kooky conspiracy theory. Check it out for yourself. There’s been articles written on the subject in the mainstream media, and Facebook haven’t argued with any of them to the best of my knowledge (which I feel certain they would do if they were nonsense). One of the big finance guys behind Facebook is a board member for In-Q-Tel.

In the words of Tom Hodgkinson’s Guardian article…

I’d rather not link directly to their website, by the way. Yes I am that paranoid. The strapline for In-Q-Tel dot com?

Ohhhhhhkaaaaaay. I mean honestly. If you’re not going to be paranoid about those people, who are you going to be paranoid about? Eh?

Think about that for a second. I’m not saying that Facebook is the CIA, by the way. Merely that they are part-funded by a guy who kind of works for the CIA. So I think you’ll agree, despite their claims to the contrary, the idea that the CIA don’t have open access to this data, and aren’t analysing it for some reason is, oddly enough, the far-fetched one in this particular instance.

Weird, huh?

I have this image of the CIA opening up a website and asking people to volunteer as much personal information as possible. And of people signing up in their droves. 90 million people at last count. And I say to myself, “don’t be silly Jim, that image is too far-fetched. Even Philip K. Dick would have rejected it as too implausible for a short story”.

People, willingly donating a ton of data (that’s imperial, not metric by the way, we’re talking a lot of data) about themselves to the C.I. fricking A. For them to make shitloads of money with by selling it to Coca fricking Cola. Money to fund Eris-knowns-what, but I doubt it’s cat fricking sanctuaries. I mean these people will be classified as a terrorist organisation by future historians! Don’t be willingly surrendering your life history, personal philosophy, favourite books, music, films to them. Don’t tell them who your friends are, and where you like to hang out and what medication you’re on and what mood you’re in. Don’t open yourself up to these people! And don’t be filling in their silly little tests.

– What answer did you choose for question 6? “C” huh? Y’know only 8% of respondents chose “C”? Funny that… …

What do you mean: “funny that… …”?

– “Ohhhh… Nothing.”

Because they ain’t just making money off your data, they’re giving it to the folks downstairs in psy-ops. And they’ve been cooking up some deeply strange stuff to do with it.

And look, when I say “these people”, they’re probably nice enough, y’know? Treat their friends and family well, and give to charity regularly. But they’re on the wrong mission. And that’s what’s important here.

It’s hardly a coincidence, therefore, that Peter Thiel (the power behind the throne at Facebook) should be a self-described neoconservative activist who espouses a philosophy that can be accurately summarised as…

No. No. No! You don’t want to be helping people like him (a) get richer, or (b) do anything at all that he wants to do.

Right? When the nutter down the road starts ranting about destroying the real world and creating a new one that he controls… you feel a bit sad for him and hope he’s feeling better soon. When a billionaire with CIA connections starts expressing those thoughts out loud… you hope you’ll not be the only one at the barricades come the day.

Anyways, that’s my Facebook rant. Sorry it went on so long, but it’s always good to get that kind of thing off your chest.

(and to those who say, ‘But I don’t give my real details’, I would suggest that doesn’t actually invalidate most of the above… even assuming they ain’t logging your IP address. Which, let’s face it, they probably are. If the people behind Facebook asked you to help them out with this social engineering experiment they’re running, would you really want to take part even under condition of anonymity? Really?)

Anyways, the recent development that sparked this little outburst is the news that the CEO of Facebook (the chap on the throne, situated in front of Peter Thiel) gave a recent speech in which he outlined the next steps for the company. It included the line…

Is it just me that doesn’t want those people to have that kind of product?

UPDATE 3:30pm: As pointed out in the comments below, and upon re-reading The Guardian article, it does seem like I may have misinterpreted the financing of Facebook. Although a director of In-Q-Tel is a major advisor to Facebook, there’s no evidence provided that Facebook is actively funded by them. So it may well be that they are not benefitting financially from the company. I stress “may”, because I still feel that many of the connections between the US intelligence community and Facebook will be — almost by definition — clandestine. The CIA, like all national secret services, is not an organisation known for conducting its business in public. Even if they are not direct investors in the corporation, I believe they will still benefit financially, as well as in other ways, from having access to the information provided by Facebook users. Thanks to Michael, in the comments, for highlighting the potential inaccuracy.

George Monbiot has written an excellent piece in The Guardian about the unsustainable nature of the modern fishing industry and the destruction it is wreaking on our oceans (Trawlermen cling on as oceans empty of fish – and the ecosystem is gasping).

The comments that follow the article are fairly predictable and fall into two broad categories. The first — and largest group — expressing their agreement with Monbiot and adding their voice to a collective lament about the stupidity of humanity. The second, smaller group, grudgingly admitting that Monbiot has a point (his article largely states obvious truths and refrains from making too many value judgments of the kind that provoke the typical Monbiot-backlash) but bringing up “the tragedy of the commons” to nip in the bud any notion that the reason for this ecological destruction might be free markets, capitalism or the profit motive. In fact, they reason, it’s only happening because we’re not capitalist enough!

The argument is a simple one. Because the fishermen don’t own the oceans, they have no incentive to take care of it. The answer, therefore, is to privatise it. So long as it’s just some indefineable collective thing… “nature”, for want of a better word… people have no interest in protecting it. As soon as it is turned into property, on the other hand, it becomes important enough for the owners to preserve.

Tim Worstall‘s comment sums this position up succinctly:

Yes, it’s the Tragedy of the Commons and as Garrett Hardin pointed out the only way to solve it is to apportion property rights. We can see that the bureaucratic apportionment of quotas doesn’t work for public choice reasons. We thus need to move to the alternative system, direct ownership for the long term of the fishing rights by the fishermen.

Tim Worstall

I’ve gone over that comment maybe half a dozen times, and I state without exaggeration that it is one of the most depressing statements I’ve ever read. Partly because of the sentiment it expresses and the profound disrespect for nature as a thing in itself that it accepts without resistance — indeed appears to embrace — but mostly because it may well be true. At least in the context of modern civilisation.

To me, the real tragedy of the commons is that we have come to think in such terms.

Unlike almost every other human culture that has ever existed (unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the few exceptions are the “civilised” or “city-building” cultures), we no longer have a sane relationship with nature. The Hopi people didn’t need to apportion property rights to know it was a bad idea to shit in the stream they drank from. There was a basic but very deep understanding that nature — the environment — was a large system of which they were merely a part. This leads to the, I would have thought, blindlingly obvious conclusion that any activity which is clearly destructive to the larger system, is almost inevitably going to be destructive to the culture… the people… the person carrying out the destructive act. And this is the case even if the impact is not immediately apparent. With cities (or perhaps it was large-scale agriculture, it’s hard to know) came the tendency to see a separation between humanity and nature.

To me this represents nothing less than a collective psychosis. A “psychotic break” in as literal a sense as that term could ever be used.

A simple analogy

It’s not at all difficult to follow. Just as an individual human being is part of a wider system (society), so our culture is part of a wider system (the environment*).

Now, imagine an individual who suffers from a delusion which convinces him or her that they are not part of society; that they exist separate and distinct from it; and in fact, it exists simply to satisfy their demands. This belief is so strong that they view and treat all of society, including the very people themselves, as personal property to be exploited as they see fit and without regard for any consequences to that society.

Such a person may well treat others acceptably because they do not wish to damage their property, but this isn’t an indication that they’re not psychotic. And nor is it a guarantee that they won’t cause a considerable amount of suffering with their actions if given free rein. I would certainly question the wisdom of anyone who felt the best thing for all concerned would be to provide them with the tools to act out their delusion and treat society as personal property.

Furthermore, such a person is almost certainly not well-qualified to judge the amount of damage they are doing and, therefore, cannot even be trusted to know when they have begun to threaten their own survival. Self-destructive behaviour is hardly unknown amongst those experiencing psychosis.

A way out?

I’m pretty much convinced that we’ve passed the point where we can simply “reinject” some sense of reality into modern civilisation — at least within the required timespans. Relearning an appreciation of nature as part of us, and of us as part of nature, probably can’t be done quickly enough.

On the other hand, we have actually developed a system, imperfect though it is, which allows us to regulate our collective behaviour with a degree of success… the law. See, when Tim Worstall insists that “the only way to solve” this problem is to apportion property rights, he is clearly mistaken. It would be theoretically possible to declare the oceans to be… oh, I dunno, a Vital Element of Our Survivial? (VEOS? Someone can come up with a better term). A sustainable fishing strategy would be developed (erring always on the sustainable side) and society would employ fishermen to carry it out.

And when Tim speaks of “public choice” being the primary reason why such a strategy might fail, then he may, in practice, be right. But it is clear to me that it’s wrong to allow a psychotic individual to seriously harm themself out of respect for their choice. We understand that there is a high enough probablility that they aren’t currently capable of sound judgment, to warrant intervention out of concern for their well-being.

Likewise, if the public demand fish at an unsustainable rate, then we’re not acting in sound (collective) mind. We need to make it clear to everyone that demanding resources at an unsustainable rate represents a collective madness. We need to make it clear that insofar as morality is linked with the prevention of human suffering, such demands are deeply immoral. We need to make it clear that while such ways of thinking may well be ingrained, we can no longer allow them to dictate our behaviour in the world. We need to ensure that everyone knows new rules — a kind of imposed collective super-ego, if you will — are now required to govern our interaction with the environment.

And yes, those found acting outside the rules would be viewed and treated the same way we would treat anyone who seeks to endanger the survival of millions.

If you’d spent the past 10 years or so reading about the oil industry, you would have heard about a man called ‘T. Boone Pickens’ on a number of occasions and secretly thought to yourself, “what a fantastic name!”

Pickens is one of the most respected men in the Texas oil industry and has been for many years. Like other industry insiders (such as Campbell and Laherrère) and academic petrogeologists (such as Deffeyes), Pickens is the sort of guy whose opinion on this subject should be listened to. He knows more about the global oil industry than damn near anybody else you care to mention. So if his views are found to contradict the models and forecasts of economists, it can only be blind faith in the free-market that allows a person to summarily dismiss the former in favour of the latter.

Anyways, two days ago Pickens was invited to speak before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where he stated in stark terms that global crude oil production has peaked.

And Pickens is very firmly putting his money where his mouth his. He is currently in the process of financing the world’s largest Wind Farm project.

Tim Worstall is no fool. He’s extremely right wing (in the libertarian, rather than the overtly dictatorial, sense… though in truth, I tend to see the two as being far closer than most right-wingers would admit, but that’s a discussion for another day) and an outspoken champion of free markets. Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that he’s misguided rather than evil, and I believe he has of the same opinion of me (could be wrong, of course). This means that dialogue is possible without it inevitably descending into insults and obfuscation.

That said, because I know he’s not a fool, I tend to get a little irritated when I see him deliberately misinterpret my position in order to make it appear foolish (or if you’re also a right-winger, then perhaps “more foolish than it really is” would be a better choice of words… even the most dogmatic free-marketeer will accept that there are levels of left-wing foolishness and the “moderately foolish” can be easily painted as the “very foolish” given selective quotation and/or the use of insupportable assumptions).

Recently, in response to my Constructivism entry, Tim posted One Way of Looking at the World. Here he takes the following statement of mine:

By “heavily taxed” I do — of course — mean “nationalised”. I do not view non-renewable natural resources as appropriate commodities to be traded for profit.

and asserts that such an approach is “not a very clever one” because, sarcastically, “The Soviets certainly did that really well”.

This is a personal bugbear of mine. Essentially the idea is that by advocating a particular philosophy (in this case the removal of a specific resource, commodity, or set of resources / commodities from the free-market system and placing them into collective ownership), one is automatically advocating the worst historical example of that philosophy.

There’s an obvious logical fallacy there, and it’s an annoying one. But, let’s be frank, we are all guilty of occasionally shielding our beliefs with fallacious reasoning. Those beliefs are precious to us and, as such, we may not always be entirely discriminating when it comes to defending them. However, ultimately we do ourselves a disservice when we slip into this mode of debate. If I object to the principle of private corporations on the grounds that many of them actively supported Hitler’s Germany, I would be rightly lampooned, and the phrase Godwin’s Law would quickly rear its head. Yet seemingly intelligent people see no absurdity in tarring all talk of collective ownership with a Stalinist (or Maoist) brush.

Similarly, when I object to free markets in non-renewable resources, I do not bang on and on about Enron every fecking time. That’s because I’m smart enough to be aware that nobody (well, nobody sane) is actually defending the corrupt and disastrous implementation of free-market principles. When a pro-capitalist* defends the free market in oil (for example) they tend not to use the Exxon Valdez oil-spill to support their position. So objecting to the free market in oil on the grounds of Exxon’s environmental record is not particularly useful (an oil tanker run by an anarcho-syndicalist collective could still end up running aground and polluting the wilderness).

Far more useful is an approach which acknowledges that any general philosophy can be corrupted and subverted and that human error can creep into the best systems. So instead of focussing entirely upon those individual corrupt instances (or, as is often the case, the very worst of those instances), one instead addresses the very claims made by proponents of that philosophy. It is only then that honest debate emerges and progress can be made towards — if not a common ground, then at least an understanding of one another’s position.

But so long as I insist that private corporations are evil because they were willing to trade with Nazi Germany, I will look just as foolish as the capitalist who insists that collectivism can never work because the Soviets couldn’t manage it.

Justin at Chicken Yoghurt has made some suggestions as to how the British Labour Party might reconnect with the electorate in the wake of the sound kicking they received in the local elections this week. His ideas are good ones in my opinion, but they wouldn’t save Labour even if the party was far-sighted enough to implement them. Which it’s not.

In reality, nothing’s going to prevent a Tory victory at the next general election. Well, nothing beyond the wildly implausible. Britain is fed up with Labour. And what’s more, Britain doesn’t like Gordon Brown. The poor bloke is on a hiding to nothing; he’s got no charisma and he’s leading a government that people don’t feel they can trust. In our ultra-mediated world, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Plus the economy won’t be kind to him between now and the next general election. Every Labour soundbite that followed the meltdown this week insisted that the poor result was due to a downturn in the economy. I have news for them… no it wasn’t. The electorate gave you a thrashing because they don’t like you any more. Get your heads around that and you may not spend quite so many years in the wilderness after the next election. That said, the economy will be a major factor at the general election. And not in a good way.

Smart Labour strategists (I assume there are a couple) are already thinking about how best to exploit the predictable mess of 2010 from the opposition benches.

The tragedy of all this is the fact that the electorate don’t have the imagination to look beyond the tories when it comes to choosing a replacement. And they certainly don’t have the imagination for what’s really needed… to look beyond party politics entirely.

I’ve just realised that, despite the title of this post, none of this is very constructive really. But the trouble is — as Burroughs says in Interzone —

We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decisions […] The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident; inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.

… and I really don’t see much room for constructive improvement until we’ve shrugged off this foolish way of running our affairs.

All the same, in the spirit of constructivism in its broadest sense, and having already ruled out any real likelihood of saving the British Labour party, here’s some ideas that I believe should be implemented by the people of all industrialised nations (and if they insist on going through the party-political system to do so, then so be it). Oh, and I don’t vouch for the popularity of these policies, merely their urgent necessity…

1. The fundamental philosophy that public transport needs to be given priority over private car ownership should inform all relevant policies. Car ownership should be made more expensive and less convenient, while public transport should be expanded.
2. All new buildings must be built to passivHaus standard, or equivalent. Profits from fossil fuels should be heavily taxed* and the revenue used to upgrade the energy efficiency of current building stock.
3. The building of new fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants should be halted. The question must cease to be “how do we supply our demands with renewables?” And it must become “how do we modify our demands to meet the supply from renewables?”
4. Airport expansion projects should be halted. Aviation fuel, like all fossil fuels, should be heavily taxed. Plane tickets should be taxed and the money used to subsidise train tickets.
5. An examination of the food production and distribution system should be carried out. This should be done with an eye to optimising it based on two priorities; (a) the physical health of the population, and (b) the environmental impact of that system. Financial profit is not to be considered a priority, and questions of raw production efficiency (units per hectare, for instance) should not over-ride health and environmental concerns.

Oh, and there’s plenty more where that came from. Stuff about limiting property ownership and about fundamentally restructuring the way political decisions are made. It’s real nightmarish fringe stuff, I guess, when viewed from the modern political mainstream.

But that can change too, you know. And sometimes faster than you’d think.

“The modern free market as manifestation of a collective pleasure principle”. That’s an idea that may well feature prominently in my thesis. I’ve got a self-imposed deadline of April 2nd to finalise the title. Right now I’m essentially researching three different thesis topics, which is fascinating and all, but not too efficient. Mind you, I’ve whittled that down from about six. The most recent to fall by the wayside was the idea of writing on Freud’s notion of compulsive repetition, via an analysis of the films of Takeshi Kitano. Sadly, I realised that despite my familiarity with his films, I’m not nearly familiar enough with Japanese culture to really do justice to the subject (though it’s definitely a paper I’d love to read).

But “the modern free market as a manifestation of a collective pleasure principle”? What the hell does that mean, right? Oh, and what’s the pleasure principle again?

Well, last question first I guess; a few paragraphs on Freud’s second topography wouldn’t go amiss.

The ego and the id

During Freud’s early work, he used a theoretical model of the mind / psyche now known as ‘the first topography’. This divided the psyche into three parts / processes; the conscious, the unconscious and the preconscious. However, he later revised this significantly into the second topography. There are still three parts / processes but now they are the id, the ego, and the super-ego*.

The ego is a conflation of the conscious and the preconscious of the first topography. By and large, it’s that part of the mind that we are aware of (though there are elements of the ego of which we are unconscious, confusingly enough). And it’s more than just awareness; the ego, for most of us, is where we locate our identity.

The id relates, more or less, to the unconscious of the first topography. It’s the part of the human psyche that contains the thoughts and memories of which we are currently unaware (including, though not limited to, those which are the subject of repression). Perhaps more importantly, to psychoanalytic theory at least, the id; the unconscious mind; is also home to a cauldron of desires and drives which motivate us as much as, if not more than, those desires and drives of which we are conscious.

In Freudian theory, the ego and the id are generally in conflict. The id is governed by “the pleasure principle” which is regularly misunderstood as being an instinct to seek out pleasure. In fact, Freud pointed out that the drive behind the pleasure principle is at least as much about the desire to avoid “unpleasure”. It’s what drives us to seek food when we are hungry. The ego, on the other hand, is governed by “the reality principle”. This is, in simple terms, an awareness of the appropriate way to interact with the external world.

So, for example, a hungry person who passes a market-stall containing fresh bread will be driven, by the pleasure principle, to consume it and so escape the hunger. The primary biological / unconscious / id imperative is a simple “eat that bread”. An infant in this position will consequently reach out and grab the bread (Freud believed that the ego, and therefore the reality principle, is acquired through development, while the id is innate). Someone who has developed a relatively normal ego, adequately governed by the reality principle, will — on the other hand — understand that the appropriate behaviour is to first buy the bread and then eat it. This is why, in Freudian terms, the primary tool deployed by the reality principle to keep the pleasure principle in check, is known as “postponement”.

The super-ego

Often seen as the poor cousin in Freud’s topography, the super-ego is usually of less interest to Freudians. Probably because they already have their hands full dealing with the id. All the same, it’s a fascinating part of his work and plays a pretty important role in my mapping of Freud’s topography onto groups rather than individuals. I’ve written before that “the super-ego is where culture lives”. I still believe that to be a true statement (albeit at the poetic end of truth), but it’s a very incomplete picture. I wrote it when discussing culture, not the super-ego.

Indeed, because parts of it are conscious and parts unconscious, the Freudian super-ego can be a little hard to pin down. Rycroft writes that the super-ego is that part of the psyche “where self-observation, self-criticism and other reflective activities develop” (guilt is a big weapon in the arsenal of the super-ego). Meanwhile, according to the bible, “Super-ego is the product of an internalisation of, and identification with, parent and parental authority, including prohibitions and values associated with that authority. Insofar as parental authority reflects the broader social context, the super-ego can be seen as the indirect product of the internalisation of society’s demands and values”.

I’m aware that the super-ego sounds a bit like the reality principle. But they are quite distinct, one being a regulatory function of the ego based upon both an awareness of the immediate environment and circumstances as well as an understanding of consequences and appropriate behaviour. The super-ego is — in part — where that “appropriate behaviour” is stored within our psyche. The reality principle is guided both by the ego and the super-ego with the goal of modifying the pleasure principle so that it doesn’t get us into trouble.

Applying this to groups

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, there are problems with trying to scale up Freud’s topography as a tool to analyse groups, organisations or cultures. But at the same time, there can be merit in doing so. Gregory Bateson is my main guide in this territory, and he has explained why this approach is both legitimate and useful. In Morale and National Character (1942), Bateson demonstrates that the relationships between sub-groups within larger groups are subject to analysis, contrast and comparison so that something we could rightfully consider “national character” begins to emerge. It’s worth pointing out that this analysis can be applied not merely to nations, but to any large group that adheres to a specific set of cultural norms.

For the sake of clarity, allow me to pause and provide examples of what I mean by “the relationships between sub-groups within larger groups”. Bateson’s essay is comparing the national character of Germany and England and does so by examining the culturally determined relationships that exist between (for example) men and women, parents and children, upper-class and lower-class, and so on. The essay is not an exhaustive case-study, and is largely about promoting the (at the time heretical) idea that western cultures and civilisations are just as open to anthropological and psycho- analysis as are the “primitive” cultures of Bali and Papua New Guinea where he did revolutionary work. Along the way, however, he convincingly demonstrates how pronounced character traits can emerge within large groups of people due to specific commonalities in their individual development, which are themselves culturally determined by, and specific to, those groups.

So when Bateson’s work is read in the context of Hostadter and Dennett’s theories about “mind” emerging from organised complexity, and even Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious, it doesn’t seem illegitimate to suggest that large groups can indeed by “psychoanalysed” (to use the term in it’s most broad sense) despite the apparent lack of an identifiable “psyche”.

The modern free market as manifestation of a collective pleasure principle

So let’s return to the original theme, and answer the first of those questions: “The modern free market as manifestation of a collective pleasure principle”… what the hell does that mean?

Well, a part of my hypothesis is the idea that there now exists a global civilisation that transcends national borders** but which can be defined largely by American cultural and economic influence. I’m not suggesting that this civilisation originated in America, merely that those cultural norms which have historically been embraced and promoted by American society, help define it. And thanks to US (and US-influenced) mass-media as well as global movements like feminism, the equal rights initiatives and multiculturalism, we have entered a period where the developmental experiences of American, Irish, British, German, Greek or Australian individuals are becoming far less distinct, opening the way for a collective analysis.

As part of that analysis, it is my suggestion that… you guessed it… the modern free market is a manifestation of our collective pleasure principle. It represents the demands (quite literally) of the collective. When those demands are repugnant or unreasonable then the market gets modified and restricted by laws (the passing of such laws being an example of our collective reality principle at work).

To take an unambiguous example, upon which I suspect we can all agree that a level of market intervention is required; much to our dismay, there exists a demand for — and market in — child pornography. Leaving aside the abstractions of “simulated child pornography” (as clearly there is a demand specifically for the non-simulated variety), we have passed laws making the sale or possession of such material illegal. This is noteworthy, because we have done so despite already having laws that outlaw its production. As a culture, we have understood that the market for this material is in itself problematic. We work, therefore, not merely at outlawing supply but also at attempting to curtail demand.

The basic analogy

An individual who allows their behaviour to be guided by an unregulated pleasure principle is likely to be both destructive to himself and his immediate environment (along with anyone who shares that environment with them). It is clear that we, as a civilisation, are capable of regulating our demands of the world. We possess the tools to do so. I would suggest, however, that we are guilty of significantly under-using those tools, and that the almost-unregulated demand for natural resources is resulting in behaviour both destructive to ourselves and to our immediate environment.

The news came across the wires. Thatcher’s been admitted to hospital, they said. Tests, they said. And I wondered if the old woman was going to die this time. Would this week be the one filled with headlines about her death? And what would those headlines read?

Certainly there’ll be the tributes. Lots and lots of tributes. And many of them will be coming from those who should know better. Or, at least, did know better. There’ll be hagiographies a-plenty and the long-compiled documentaries will finally get their airing.

But there’ll also be those unwilling to hide behind the worn shield of speaking no ill of the dead. Such a strange taboo. As though history were not already littered with the inglorious and often ill-spoke-of dead. No, some will refuse to remain mute. To allow the moment merely to pass in bitter remembrance, but respectful silence.

Because she has earned contempt. Not respect. And to allow the inevitable revisionist airbrushing to get underway without objection, without an attempt to provide balance. Some sense of reality. Now that would be a real crime.

I was reading a messageboard. Somebody had posted the news of Thatcher’s hospitalisation. It was soon followed by the brief observation, “best news I’ve heard all day”. Someone else responded, “Can you think of a better PM in your lifetime…?” And it appears, as divisive as she was in power, she remains so today.

I didn’t experience Thatcher’s rule in the same way as many. I wasn’t living in Sheffield in the 1980s. Or Derry. Or Glasgow. Or North Wales. Or serving on the General Belgrano. In fact, when I arrived in England in the late 1980s, it was as someone in a position of privilege. That was thanks to the policies of decades of American presidents who aggressively promoted the interests of their transnational corporations, rather than anything Thatcher had done, but nonetheless I was never at the sharp end of her policies. Because of this, I don’t have that gut-level sense of jubilation at the thought of her death that some of the people I know possess.

All the same, even as a teenager I was aware both of how fortunate I was to be such an obvious beneficiary of capitalism, and also of how fundamentally unjust the entire system is. Some of my formative years were spent viewing “the developing world” from behind the windows of Hilton Hotels. If you’re one of those embarrassingly sensitive youngsters, that’s the kind of experience that poses lots of troubling questions.

Some people dismiss this as “liberal guilt”. But that’s bullshit. I’m Irish Catholic. What I don’t know about guilt isn’t worth knowing. It wasn’t guilt. Not for me anyway. No it was, rather, a sense of despair. I believed — as I still believe — that the human race has both the talent and the resources to ensure that millions of us don’t have to live in a condition of extreme poverty on the very edge of starvation. Yet we allow it to happen. More than that, we’ve built a global economic system that positively encourages it. Requires it, even. The collective will to help others simply did not exist within us. And the more I thought about that, the more angry I became.

But angry at who? Well first I was angry at God. For making me believe we were made in His image and then providing clear proof that we weren’t. Genuine religious faith is a terrible thing to lose, let me tell you. Then I got angry at my Dad. How dare he be so successful? How dare he try to elevate himself and his family above the suffering I so despised? And see, that didn’t make much sense either. Then I got really angry at myself. Much to my surprise, that didn’t do much good. And all the while I’ve been especially angry with The System. With The Man. Even when The Man was me.

And Thatcher, you see, is one of the many faces of that system. A personification of the injustices of the human race. She openly embraces that darkness in the human heart that condemns us to live out our worst aspects. My despair. My complicity. Even the futility of my opposition. All are contained within Maggie Thatcher. While her death won’t change any of that, it will at least represent that possibility. And for a few moments, I will enjoy that much.

Goose Green (Taking tea with pinochet) by Christy Moore

I was reading an article and stumbled across the phrase “a $1.5 trillion war in Iraq”. One and a half trillion dollars, in essence, pissed down the drain. And very little to show for it except a shitload of murder and mayhem.

It struck me that in terms of cold dollars alone, that spectacular blunder has pretty much caught up with Dubya’s $1.6 trillion tax-cut (implemented a few months prior to September 2001 and now a forgotten, minor footnote in a dire presidency).

But lately I’ve also been reading a bit about the US sub-prime credit crisis that’s been giving the global economy a serious kicking. It turns out everyone’s in a tizz about a 600-800 billion dollar hole in a total housing debt of 1.9 trillion.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

I may as well make it explicit… while it’s throwing trillions around, why doesn’t the US government declare a Housing-Debt Amnesty? How about this… the treasury pays 100,000 dollars off every single mortgage*. No means testing, no favouritism, just a flat payment. For most low-income homeowners (i.e. the ones currently defaulting in large numbers), 100k will cover the entire loan leaving them outright owners of their property. For everyone else, it’ll ease the burden. What a gift to the poor homeowners of America! The president who did that would end up on Mount Rushmore.

I’m sure a passing capitalist can explain why it’s a bad idea.

Incidentally, I’m well aware that the really poor people aren’t homeowners at all, and this doesn’t help them. I’m not suggesting this is a solution to poverty. I’m just suggesting it’s a better way to spend a trillion and a half dollars than blowing up another country, or tax breaks for the wealthy. Oh, and before you complain about banks getting paid public funds… I’m making a value judgement here: it’s better to give public money to banks in return for houses for poor citizens, than to give public money to Blackwater in return for killing foreigners.