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Article # 1146 Sunday, August
5, 2012 Why Are Things Crumbling Around
Us…and Could Easily Get Worse?* (Author of the
book “The Code for Global Ethics”, Prometheus) "There are no nations. There are no
peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third
Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One
vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-varied, multi-national
dominion of dollars." Clip from the
movie "Network" (American
satirical film, 1976) "Each
candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election.
However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For
then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for
election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for
office." Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), Italian writer, statesman
and political thinker, Florentine patriot, author of 'The Prince', 1512 “The
survivors of a generation that has been of military age during a bout of war
will be shy, for the rest of their lives, of bringing a repetition of this
tragic experience either upon themselves or upon their children, and . . .
therefore the psychological resistance of any move towards the breaking of a
peace . . . is likely to be prohibitively strong until a new generation . . .
has had time to grow up and to come into power . On the same showing, a bout
of war, once precipitated, is likely to persist until the peace-bred
generation that has light-heartedly run into war has been replaced, in its
turn, by a war-worn generation.” Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), British historian, (A Study
of History, Vol. 9, Oxford University Press, London, 1954) I- I believe that we live presently in what I would
call a semi-civilized world; and I would like to demonstrate it. We live indeed
in a troubled period. When we look around us and see what is happening, we
really feel that everything is collapsing. In a recent
article, for example, it was said: "Indifference
to the importance of ethics and the common good is the Holy Grail of modern
finance." In fact, I do
not think it is only in financial matters that we are regressing morally, but
in many other areas. There is a
risk, in my view, that this twenty-first century will be more like the
nineteenth and be the opposite of the second half of the twentieth century, during
which humanity made considerable progress regarding international law and
individual and collective rights —including the right of education for
all—the triumph of the democratic way of government over all others and
a better distribution of the collective wealth. Conversely, if
we were to continue on the current trend, the twenty-first century would be a
world in which militarized empires and financial empires impose their laws,
where other types of empire would impose their backward and totalitarian
religious doctrines, where a self-centered individualism would erode the
social fabric based on empathy and solidarity, and where wealth and power in
society would be unduly concentrated. And, if I may cite Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely”,
this will also mean a more corrupt world. Indeed, in
many fields, we see that the priority given to human beings–the only
moral agents, it must be emphasized–is being neglected and has even
become secondary to other priorities that fall within a narrow ideology and
are far from being moral. The consequence is that the public interest, the
common good, is increasingly being sacrificed in favor of ideological
interests and economic interests, when it’s not to systems that crush
rather than free the people. In short, I
believe that at the beginning of this twenty-first century we are in the
midst of a moral and intellectual regression, as we gradually move away from
the social and economic progress that was made during the twentieth century,
and all that for a return to the jungle of the nineteenth century, when
immoral and lawless empires controlled the planet and crushed peoples at
will. In some areas,
notably regarding religion, there seems to be a wish to return to the darkness
that existed before the eighteenth century, the century of the Enlightenment,
that paved the way for the immense human progress the world has made since. II- I see five main causes for this moral
regression–if not an actual decline or even decadence–in the
march for human progress. I summarize: What I see is - First, a
poor model of economic development. - Second. Our
democracies, under the impact of technology, give more power to money and to
those who control it. - Third, the
weakening of nation states. - Fourth. As a
result of modern communication technology, homo sapiens is
becoming homo digitalis. - Finally, a
fifth cause of the current decline is an old, religion-based moral code. a - What about the current economic model based on globalization,
especially financial globalization, with hardly
any restraints? For some thirty years now–and I blame some doctrinaire
and apologist operators partly for this drift and also the influence of some
economists who were too doctrinaire–we have adopted an economic
development model in which people seem to count less and less and money
counts more and more. The current economic model based on stateless capital
is, in my opinion untenable, because it is a source of repeated crises that
are nearly impossible to solve. – So, a
bad business model to revisit. b - Secondly,
our political
models, some dating back several centuries, are also outdated
and counter-productive; they have changed little and have even worsened in
the last thirty years. Indeed, their major shortcomings are now reinforced by
the technology of communications. They give real power in our societies not
to individuals, but to the occult forces of money
whose privileges seem to have no limit. – So, we
are saddled with a bad political model that is in need of reform. c - Thirdly, the weakening of nation states
combined with the current explosion of world population, if not properly
managed (we must prepare to have eight to ten billion world population in a
few decades), may precipitate the world toward the lowest common denominator
both socially and economically. As a
consequence of the bad economic model to which I refer, rather than
privileging free trade in goods and services to raise standards of living
(for my part I have always been a supporter of free trade), we have instead
abolished for all practical purposes the borders of nation states for the
benefit of faceless and stateless multinational corporations. In some
quarters, we have confused the idea of free trade in goods and services
according to the comparative advantages of each country with the idea that
such comparative advantages do not count and that a country could abandon its
industrial and technological advantages with impunity, with no risk to its
standard of living. – This is simply false. Countries that
abandon their economic comparative advantages get poorer, even if some
corporations and some banks can benefit from the situation. This is the big
difference between the common good and special interests. Today, in many
countries, it is special interests that dominate the public interest or the
common good. We have even
put aside the idea of adopting an industrial strategy to increase
productivity, wages and employment, in the mistaken belief that
markets–free-for-all markets it must be said, working perfectly and
self-regulating–would lead to the greatest common good if left alone.
This is a view that does not square well with reality. The scandal
regarding the manipulation of the short term interest rate called the LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate) by a few large
banks in London is a perfect illustration. When we look around, what we see
is that the countries that are currently doing the best economically, such as
China or Brazil, are the very ones that have adopted a pro-active industrial
strategy in the context of free trade. When companies
can roam the globe in search of the lowest production cost and an almost
complete absence of taxation, in practice this means they search for the
lowest wages and the lowest tax rates and regulations. In 2011, in the United
States for example, the entire corporate world paid 11 percent in federal and
state taxes on profits, while the poorest twenty percent of Americans contributed
17 percent tax of their income. In the current system, the tax burden is
being shifted more and more from corporations and the owners of capital
toward individual taxpayers, often among the poorest. A recent
study indicates how the super-rich of this world avoid paying
their fair taxation share. It is estimated that as much as $32,000 billion of
their wealth is stashed away in tax havens. The same thing can be said for
large
international corporations. As
long as these corporations do not repatriate the profits they make abroad,
those profits may end up not
being taxed at all. For instance,
this brings me to say that the U.S. doesn’t have a deficit problem. It
has a tax collection problem, and that’s because it has a political
corruption problem. There is no
doubt that the combination of economic globalization and political corruption
has shifted the tax burden in a very regressive way from corporations and
owners of capital to individuals in general, and towards the poor in
particular. And, when a
badly designed immigration policy is implemented as well, the demographic,
social and economic balance in countries with high living standards is upset,
and the result is magnified. We then witness a true economic disarmament of
the states that translates into structural budget deficits and an exploding
and uncontrollable public debt. We observe this currently in Europe and in
the United States. Both are regions where economic stagnation seems to be
permanently installed and where western civilization is the most threatened
and even endangered. The economic
model of excessive globalization is actually a return to the situation that
prevailed in the nineteenth century, under the gold standard. This model is
generating major economic and social inequalities in many countries. In fact,
it is a model that is fundamentally hostile to the middle class, i.e. to the
great majority of people, and which concentrates wealth and power in the
hands of a fraction of the population (the famous 1%!) It is a source of
income stagnation for most individuals. Studies show, in
fact, that intergenerational social mobility and equal opportunities in
industrialized countries of America and Europe fall when economic and social
inequalities grow, as it is the case presently. Ultimately,
this will translate into a loss of democracy, because there can be no true
democracy in a country where the middle class is atrophied or absent and
where a regime of systemic inequalities prevails. Therefore, I
come to the conclusion that the all-out economic globalization that is
currently being imposed on countries is a failure. This is a bad economic
model because it transfers the real power in our societies from elected
officials to large corporations and to owners of capital. They in turn use it
to corrupt the political system and to create financial crises like the one
the world has been experiencing since 2008. I would like to
quote French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) who
summarized a situation like the one we are saddled with in this way: "When plunder becomes a way of life
for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in
the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that
glorifies it." There is no
better example of this wise maxim than the U.S. Supreme Court's decision two
years ago (January 19, 2010) decreeing that financial and industrial
corporations are not only legal entities that have been granted privileges,
but that they are in fact “human beings” with full human rights,
some even more important than those endowed to humans. The Court stated that
such artificial entities could spend uncontrolled and unlimited amounts of
money, actually billions of dollars, and this anonymously, to influence U.S. elections
at all levels. Every ordinary
American's voting rights were suddenly sharply devalued. As a consequence,
nobody can say that the government of the United States is "the government of the people, by the
people and for the people," as President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in 1863 (in his Gettysburg
Address). Political power
in the United States has de facto been transferred to corporations and to
owners of capital. Remember, this is the same U.S. Supreme Court that put
George W. Bush in power in 2000, even if the Republican candidate received a
half million fewer votes than Democratic candidate Al Gore, with the
disastrous consequences that we all know. Here in Canada,
we have become prisoners of the old British electoral model that gives power
to candidates who receive a plurality of votes, but not necessarily a
majority of votes. This means that when people divide their support among a
half-dozen political parties, one particular party can take power and govern
as if it had a majority, sometimes with less than forty percent of the
popular vote. On May 2,
2011, for example, the Conservative party of Stephen Harper formed a
“majority” government while receiving only 39 percent of popular
support, and this moreover after having relied on dishonest dirty tricks.
Since then, that party has governed as if it had obtained 100 percent of the
votes. In reality, the polls currently give the Harper government little more
than one third of popular support. Nevertheless, on July 1st of this year,
Harper even went so far as to order the playing of the British anthem
“God Save the Queen” before playing the Canadian national anthem
on official occasions, thus insulting not only the vast majority of Quebecers
but probably also a majority of Canadians. Despite the
glaring flaws of such an electoral system, Canadian politicians seem to revel
in it, and there is no reform in sight. A voting system with runoff
elections, such as in France, would be logical, but our politicians pretend
to ignore the problem. Therefore, I say that democracy is in trouble in
Canada. In fact, it is in trouble everywhere. In some respect, democracy is
fast becoming an anachronism, destined to be replaced by oligarchies and
plutocracies. I would add
that the rise of militarized empires, and the decline in respect for
international law that we have witnessed for some time, open the door to a
return of imperial wars or to wars of hegemony. Such imperial wars seem to be
concentrated at the beginning of each century. Indeed,
British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) identified the existence of
one hundred year cycles of imperial war and peace over the last five
centuries (“A Study of History”). The Kosovo war
of 1999 took place without the approval of the United Nations and with only
the uncertain legal backing of NATO. Since that precedent, an imperial war
outside of the current international legal framework is certainly possible. In fact I would
venture to say that if the Republican candidate Mitt
Romney were to be elected to the U.S. presidency in November,
(certainly a possibility), his repeated promises to go to war against Iran
and his obsequious attitude toward Israel could easily lead to a global war,
involving not only the United States and Iran, but also Europe, Russia and
China. (Remember that when the conditions were ripe, it took but a single shot
to trigger the 1st World War in 1914!) – Indeed, with a devout and
ruthless Mormon as head of the U.S., the table would be set for a world war
involving the three Abrahamic religions, Christian, Islamic and Judaic. I do
not predict that. I am only afraid that it could happen. World Wars of
Hegemony 1494-1516: World War (France) 1580-1609: World War (Spain) 1688-1714: World War (France) 1792-1815: World War (France) 1914-1945: World War (Germany) 1999-2015(?): World War (!) (United States) d – As a fourth cause of the current moral
morass, I identify a more technological cause, that is to say the emergence
among the younger generations of a homo
digitalis, who is
certainly connected by technology, but by a technology that isolates and
which can eventually dehumanize the individual in confining him to a virtual
space where human warmth and human interactions are greatly reduced. This new
human is plugged in digitally and awash in information–and also in
propaganda–but is also, paradoxically, more isolated, more fragmented,
more homogenized, more individualistic, more competitive, less cooperative,
more selfish, narcissistic and more fundamentally perhaps, more conservative
in many respects. Some studies and
tests done in the U.S. show that American college students are showing about 40 percent less empathy for others than did students of 20 or 30
years ago.1 In other words, social consciousness in future leaders
of tomorrow is down. This bodes ill for the future. We can certainly
ask the question: Is technology–which is developing faster than the
moral sense–creating sociopaths2, that is human beings who
have barely a modicum of compassion for others? We already know,
from experience, that psychopaths3–that is to say, people
who have no remorse for their crimes, no empathy or sympathy for
others–may occasionally climb to the highest spheres of political
power. These are in fact people who show a particular mental structure in MRI tests. They represent about one percent of
the population.4 If the population
of the future is itself becoming antisocial, it is not only moral regression
that lies ahead. A regression in the entire social and economic scale of
values could occur. Another example where
technology advances faster than the moral sense is the use of unmanned
Predator drones, controlled from far away (in fact, the control centers are
in the United States), to kill so-called “enemy” people in remote
lands. To his discredit, the current Democratic president, Barack Obama, (a
Nobel Peace prize winner!), has authorized an explosion of such remote
controlled bombings, especially in Pakistan, but also in other countries. – We
must therefore get prepared: Future warfare is bound to become increasingly a
derivative of video games. e - I come finally to the fifth cause, in my opinion,
of the current decline and decay, and this cause is specifically moral. It is
of course connected to the first four causes. We live, indeed,
under the influence of a bad moral code of religious origin, that
unfortunately creates systematic divisions between human beings and which
justifies, and even encourages, conflicts between human beings by sticking to
some intransigent dogmatism. We must be
concerned, if not horrified, by the rise of obscurantism, of anti-scientific
sentiment, of the myth of creationism and of religiosity in general in some
powerful countries, especially in our own neighbor, the United States. Under
these conditions, the rise of imperialist and militarist sentiment in that
country should be a great concern to the world. IV- General Conclusion How to tackle
all these problems? I have a
general conclusion and some more specific conclusions. My most
general conclusion is that the world needs now a moral revolution. I am under
no illusions that this kind of fundamental change might occur soon; it could
perhaps necessitate that the situation escalate to a point that change
becomes inevitable. This could only happen after a major cataclysm. My specific
conclusions are more practical. Regarding the
economy and politics, for example, the remedies are obvious enough: we must
stop digging and undertake real fundamental reforms. First, we must
stop managing the entire economy according to the interests of bankers and
speculators. The problem is that these big interests corrupt politicians and
control the media so that nothing gets done, except that things get worse.
Also, secondly, it is essential to restore power to the people and to reduce
or eliminate the influence of money in politics. In other words, we must do
the exact opposite of what the U.S. Supreme Court says should be done. The same thing
can be said about our archaic voting system. At the very least we should copy
the French political model and have run-off elections, to prevent political
adventurers from gaining almost absolute power with a minority of popular
support. In regard to the
moral character of individuals, studies show that there are only twenty
percent of people who are spontaneously empathetic. Therefore, as the Chinese
philosopher Hsün Tzu (c.310—c.220 BC) once said "The
nature of man is evil; his goodness is only acquired by training," the teaching of moral rules of life in
society seems to be an unavoidable necessity. Regarding the
climate of permanent war in which we live presently, I just wish that the
cycle of one hundred years of hegemonic world wars, identified by Toynbee and
others, won’t apply to our century and that war-crazy psychopaths will
not succeed. Otherwise, the disaster that could hit humanity would be
unparalleled. I finally
conclude that our civilization is still very primitive. Indeed, humanity has
a long way to go, because we're still in the infancy of a genuine
civilization. 1. See Sara Konrath's research
(University of Michigan: Institute for Social Research), based on 72
different studies of students in American colleges, done between 1979 and
2009. 2. Sociopathy is an antisocial personality disorder is
a mental health condition in which a person has a long-term pattern of
manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others. This behavior is
often criminal. (See Blais and al., “Personality
and personality disorders”, in Stern and al., eds. Massachusetts General Hospital Comprehensive Clinical Psychiatry. 1st ed. Mosby Elsevier, 2008, chap 39. 3.
Psychopathy is a mental
disorder in which
an individual manifests amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish
meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn
from experience, etc. (See Skeem and al., "Psychopathic Personality: Bridging the Gap
Between Scientific Evidence and Public Policy", in Psychological Science in the Public
Interest (December 15,
2011), 12 (3): 95–162. 4. See Robert
Hare and Paul Babiak,
“Snakes in
Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work”, 2007. According to Dr. Hare, it is in
politics and in business that one finds the largest concentration of
psychopathic personalities. See also“Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us” by Robert D. Hare, 1999. * Notes for a
presentation by the author at the Conference of the International Humanist
and Ethical Union (IHEU), Montreal (Quebec), August 4 2012. Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, an economist, is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist
Principles”, Please visit
the book site at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ Posted,
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