The neoliberal insurgency that ruined the West
The neoliberal insurgency that ruined the West
As societies we walk away from ourselves consumed by babble and the treachery of false prophets.
As societies we walk away from ourselves consumed by babble and the treachery of false prophets.
******
Preface
One of the maxims I live by is that all the great ideas have been expressed. Time and time again we fail to act on them. Dating back to Antiquity we have inherited a great humanist legacy produced by the greatest thinkers and writers. We shun the great legacy as children shun the wisdom of parents. Not only arriving from our cultures but others, much older,, having even greater wisdom and foresight. Yet we can do no more than vilify them and wage war against them in our desperate fury.
Since when did knowing our history, our legacy, who we are and where we are going become a crime—as it is now?
I have also thought how wonderful it could be if there could be an open dialogue between politicians and philosophers. Politicians do without thinking; while philosophers do the thinking with no platform for implementation. While the politicians are mired down in the present, blinded by partisanship, power, privilege and ideology philosophers think holistically seeing the big picture becoming the prophets seeing into the past, present, and future.
What weighs mostly on my mind is that we are in a time where we shun, the legacy— the philosophers and true prophets— who are agents of the legacy; the “village elders” to whom we should be listening. Instead psychotic quislings lead us into ruinous warfare with endless lies and deceptions.
The indoctrination is so replete it has become a crime to speak for peace and civility.
Too much of what is written and broadcast today is propaganda and infotainment, a retreat into lassitude and complacency rather than becoming acquainted with the real world we live in. As Neil Postman pointed out in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death we are no longer informed but mesmerized by the media. We are bombarded by a glut of information and entertainment to the point we are in a constant state of mass distraction Where Postman wrote a benchmark book for our times John Ralston Saul becomes an oracle of things to come for Canada and the world.
When future historians write about the decline and fall of Western Civilization they will record, that like the Romans, we simply amused ourselves to death gorging on junk food, actual and cerebral.
The neoliberal insurgency
Philosophers have the habit of making comments packed with relevance and foresight. This does not come about by some magic. It is because they are the observers and analysts of our time, much like historians, economists and other sciences. They are not “running for office” so they can speak all the truths, both reassuring and challenging.
The John Ralston Saul quote above marks the great neoliberal rupture of our societies. This was the day governments of the West abdicated. They allowed corporations to take over our “social systems” leaving corporations to “undermine and corrupt “ to their liking up to including perpetual war for perpetual profits. Fifty years later we are left to dance among the ruins, and the ruins only become deeper and more toxic.
Neoliberalism was a formal declaration war on nation states and an escalation of class warfare. Corporate power was freed to reign supreme over societies with politicians as their bought and paid for lackeys. Democratically elected governments were no longer accountable to their electorates, but to their corporate handlers.
China and the America host the world’s largest corporations. The difference is that in China all corporations, public or private, are government controlled in service to the national good. Under neoliberalism in the West corporations are completely deregulated practicing predatory capitalism free to steal the wealth and resources of the countries and colonies they control. Neoliberalism is a hand-in-glove ideology with imperialism and neo-colonialism.
China and Russia are not the enemy. They are targets for corporate take over by insatiable megalomaniacs holding the world hostage to their imperialist wars— corporate wars for corporate profits.
The ruins are not tangible. They are the ruins of greed, corruption, moral depravity and ruinous ideologies. Where glass towers stand tall they are the edifices of our crass conceits.
Historians will record the arrival of neoliberalism as the trigger event for the final collapse of Western Civilization.
The wars we are seeing are the aftermath of the collapse of neoliberalism. While China and Russia were building strong economies and re-inventing themselves; the neoliberal West was waging endless wars and economic plunder and pillage— operating a global extortion racket. Now that its dominance is being challenged it blunders into more and greater wars as if war will be its salvation when it only seals its fate as a failed empire.
Its only real option is to re-invent itself and join the emerging multipolar world accepting its role as a major world power, but it does not get to be the tail the wagging the dog.
No single state or faction can be allowed to dominate planet Earth. It can only be governed by a consortium of major powers working in harmony toward global peace and security for all. This is the reality of the 21st century where statecraft and equilibrium must prevail above all else. Anything less means planet Earth will go into a dark age.
Sheldon Wolin is another political philosopher with great insight when he advanced the concept inverted totalitarianism. It is in essence totalitarianism with the trappings of democracy but no actual democracy. In other words the 2024 presidential election is a farce where whoever wins makes no difference. The American political system is so corrupted no president alone can reform the system. It will require a whole slate of reform minded candidates.
In indigenous cultures, the village elders-the sages- were at the very epicenter of the culture as it was there wisdom and knowledge that insured the perpetuation and security of the culture long into the future. Now the wisdom and knowledge passed down to us spurned by tyrants and despots. The village elders are considered pariahs pushed to the margins. Honest debate and dialogue are suppressed and punished . A dissenting opinion is treason and peace is a brief intermission between endless wars.
We vilify Russia and China when peace is their first prerogative. They have known war and revolution. They know the ruinous costs, and want none of it.
The neoliberal insurgency was a war, a class war, declared on their own populations by political and economic elites…”which is after all not a natural state.”
*******
Well worth reading:
The New Woke Order
*******
