Two important components of what will impact any human future appear to be left out: the inevitable decline of net surplus energy via hydrocarbons and the coming consequences of ecological overshoot. These biophysical aspects cannot help but have oversized impacts on the future of our complex societies.
Since the countries that espouse these are precisely the same ones that make an issue about racism, sexism, etc., it follows that such worries are no more than another invented power play.
Of course not. Politicians, in general, are not particularly clever and need legions of fellow travellers to fill in the details and add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing tale.
I don’t disagree with you there but they also tend to overwhelmingly look to their bureaucrats and the priesthood of that non-scientific world of economics for their justifications. Not physicists, geologists, or biologists.
That's when electrification of transport actually makes sense, but it needs nuclear power, also we need to end planned obsolesence but that is in principle possible
Neither nuclear power nor electrification of transportation are ‘sustainable’. Scale is a huge impediment to such projects as both require significant hydrocarbon inputs (as well as other finite materials/minerals)—to say little about the ecosystem destruction that would result in any attempts.
Yes and no, currently it does, but it's not necessarily the case, in the case of steel, there are ore reduction methods based on hydrogen that can be obtained by electrolysis, construction equipment can be electrified to a great extent, even without using big batteries as the range required isn't great, transport to site can be rail based.
in terms of electrification of transport in general, fossile fuels are used in the process of making batteries, mostly on the mining and stages of material processing requiring heat, the heating part for example is done using fossile fuels because it's cheaper, that doesn't mean however that it can't be done electrically if you have the right grid.
The mining part is likely possible, idk the details however.
Now, consider that by doing this you are also freeing energy resources that would be used in energy production that then can be re invested in adittional oil free capacity, and in terms of batteries, they can be recycled, and there are cobalt free technologies, albeit they have lower energy density.
What is likely going to give here is this ridiculous disposable consumption, in which you change car, phone or computer as you change socks, without getting any benefit from it.
Now as this article says, very accurately, having a defeatist perspective on life ensures failure
To pick one example of the many problems with moving to electricity.
The energy density of batteries is unlikely to be even close to what we need to replace diesel. Mining and construction will therefore be very difficult once we lose access to hydrocarbons (and hydrogen is not the solution, either).
Energy is not fungible. You cannot simply substitute electricity for oil, or gas.
I'd also add that what your touting here is an unproven technology. It may scale, but it may well not (and that's ignoring the many other issues with nuclear power).
We may get lucky, but it seems foolish to bet a civilization on it.
We will have to agree to disagree. Recognising and accepting the limits of human technology and growth (and the hugely negative impacts both of these have on the more fundamental and important ecosystems) is not defeatist.
Failure to recognise and accept such limits and the negative impacts that arise from such endeavours can and likely will exacerbate our primary predicament of ecological overshoot.
Not necessarily growth, but keeping a good standard of living without collapsing and developing poor nations in a way that suits them, exponential growth is and was always a farce, the American way of life wasn't something that made sense, but guess what, most people around the world don't aspire to that, and when they do, it's usually because they have been propagandized, with little reflection
‘Collapse’ (decline/simplification) is inevitable. Pre/history demonstrates that every experiment with complex societies for the last 12,000 years has ended that way. Our fate will be no different. Throw overshoot—thanks to gargantuan net energy surpluses from hydrocarbons—on top and humanity’s path appears set.
Most people aspire to something like the Japanese/European style of life, and that's no more attainable.
Our world is built upon energy dense hydrocarbons - both for transportation (mining requires diesel - electric batteries will not cut it) and heat (lots of industrial processes require far higher heat than is possible with electricity - and there's no efficient substitute). And most renewables are also heavily dependent upon fossil fuels for their construction/installation.
There may be a way to transition, but we're not doing it - and if we wait until crisis hits then transition may well be impossible.
Actually Christianity doesn't teach "progress" towards a Last Judgement, although 19th Century Protestantism (technically, not actual Christianity but a number of schismatic groups) tended to teach making "progress towards the Kingdom" through earthly power. I assume that is to what you refer.
But I think the real problem may be the absolutes in which you are dealing. Foucault, like many people today, seemed to find comfort in generalizations ("everything is power")--and one can always generalize anything into commonality. So there's comfort there, even if the model is not accurate and, often, is based on lies that are compounded the deeper one gets into it. The current political focus is on generalizations (attacking "isms") to try and build common purpose. As you've noted, people can see right through how empty these statements are.
But the application of "everything as power", while true at some levels, tends to be false in the lives of most "common" people. I think that the higher one goes in political circles, the more the focus on "power" as a goal in and of itself (something of a pyramid scheme). In the lives of normal people, it does show up (it is a cultural phenomenon, after all) but not nearly like it does in "higher circles". Most normal people understand that they are, generally speaking, powerless and don't spend much time in trying to accumulate it. We could say that courtesy is valued by the powerless, or the humble. I tend to be a believer in the idea of Subsidiarity, but I'm also realistic enough to know that any serious change in this direction is highly unlikely to happen. We react and survive more than we exert power. Perhaps that's something of a microcosm of how the common man lives on a daily basis?
Anyway, I agree that long-term thinking is a lost art, especially in the "higher" societal classes. But short-term thinking is also being forced upon the middle and lower classes by economic and political decisions. Safety nets are being removed and living paycheck-to-paycheck (in wage slavery?) seems to be more and more the norm. I'm considering retiring to Russia simply so I can afford to retire! It's an unfortunate situation that is becoming more and more unfortunate.
As for the long-term thinkers, their plans will depend largely upon an economic collapse in the West. I won't be around long enough to see how that turns out, I expect.
"But the application of "everything as power", while true at some levels, tends to be false in the lives of most "common" people. I think that the higher one goes in political circles, the more the focus on "power" as a goal in and of itself (something of a pyramid scheme). In the lives of normal people, it does show up (it is a cultural phenomenon, after all) but not nearly like it does in "higher circles". "
This is because power selects strongly for sociopathy. In fact, power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats.
There is a problem in terminology in this essay. To designate a part of the political world as 'left' must be predicated on this part being anti-capitalist, and to be in search of radical social justice and egalitarianism and all the other associated aims of, broadly, the Marxist and Anarchist and similar 'left' movements. Organisations or impulses which do not maintain these aims need a new designation, such as pseudo-left or fake-left or capitalist-left or even 'new'-Left. But it is just misleading to dignify such organisations as the UK 'Labour' Party with any imputation that they are 'left'. The British 'Labour' Party almost never were 'left' in any meaningful way, Keir Hardy and the tokenism of the 'Health Service', Jeremy Corbyn and all. It was at all times a 'reformist-Capitalist' party, which never envisaged an end to capitalism. (That is not to say that the fruits of tokenism was not worth having - just that it was not grounded in a lasting and impregnable settlement - see the UK 'Health' service today).Similar strictures apply to the various 'Green' parties, many of which in Europe have shown themselves to be much more reactionary than 'green'.
This is a problem I regularly encounter, and I usually put "Left" in quotes like that, or add a qualification of some kind. On the substance I agree absolutely. I this essay I tried to distinguish between the views of the traditional and genuine "Left" which was class-focused, and the state of the parties which once had that label and have now gone nuts. There really isn't a single word to describe this.
I find myself similarly frustrated with the increasingly useless catch-all term, "left" for entirely disparate groups and motivations. It's almost as useless as "far right" -- both are little more now than casually constructed terms of abuse entirely free of actual content.
But we can't just settle for no designation. The term 'left' has been eviscerated by its usage in US politics, where it actually means 'liberal', and is used as a catch-all insult by the right. This is part of the long and unfortunately successful campaign by US capitalism to destroy and demonise solidarity and political action from the US working classes. The constant rightwards march of European previously leftist parties has not helped either. 'Left' must be defined as an anti-capitalist movement or party. No anti-capitalism, no 'left' designation. However, to get there I wouldn't start from here!
And there is no problem with using 'right' - it means the reactionary (not used as an insult here) and traditional and conservative movements in politics.
I love Foucault. "Foucault it!" has been a favorite expression of mine for quite a while. I think your analysis of his contribution is fair. Indeed, one of my grievances towards him is the ultimate nihilism his perspective leads to, since there's no upside to aim for (ex love, community, spirituality).
I think your analysis of the lack of understanding of "time" in the west is good, but ironically it's possible to use your examples (SA, Islamic social movements, and brief mentions of Russia and China) as examples of groups with (legitimate) grievances of the unbalance of power in their regards as forming a core component in their motivation to struggle towards their goals against domination (check out James Scott, weapons of the weak).
I think an analysis of the absence of long-term time should also consider the vacuity of Western intellectualism in the same vein as "Foucault is great, but then what?", in the sense that my feeling as someone who is both Western and Eastern, the dominant intelligentsia of the West has always (historically) been trapped in the monkey brain without paying our dues to a spiritual existence because "the church" (in its various denominations) was always more of a social-political management system. In fact, if we look at the orthodox traditions, which often maintain mystic/esoteric elements, they seem to be more grounded on a natural (non human centric) existence, while the West, through its insistence on an endless search for a future progress without a well defined end goal, has lost its marbles, so to speak. And as you rightly write, is eating itself in consequence of its lack of awareness of itself, unable to enact a "real" course correction (even electing so called anti-establishment or populist or right-wing parties and politicians won't fundamentally change anything; the "elites" are too invested to take a step back, they might not be even able even if they wanted, realistically).
I'm not a doomsayer, just realistically, to return to long-term thinking and planning and action has a number of requirements, like community (who), purpose (what) and values (why) that our own intellectual endeavors have undermined without replacing them with a better version. And so it'll be necessary to undertake a struggle against difficulty, to find meaning, but which presupposes things fall apart first.
This return can just happen, in my view, when things get worse. People and politics need to see a growing poverty joined with complains and social discomfort. There is not political will in the leadership class nowadays. Just then, when things get bad, could the realism and long-term views reborn.
However, this reborn will took place in a world that is not the same of the XIX or XX centuries. The relative power of European countries today is a lot smaller that it was then. The reborn, consequently, will took place in a smaller scale. I hope that people assume that when faster better.
Respecting the power, I didn't read Foucalt. However, explaining the behaviours of peoples based on power (or on emulation, research for approbation, social dynamics of groups...) is not excluding collective actions or improves. I mean: belonging to a long-term grupal cause could be explained in a "micro level" for status, approbation, desires of have power in the group (and that is: be the most engaged with the cause) and so on. That's why the cultural aspects of each society are so important: because they "channel" this universal aspects of human being and societies in different ways with different effects.
Ken Arrow used to joke that, if his theory (general equilibrium) is right, markets wouldn't exist because, were that the case, every transaction would take place at the beginning of time and there would be nothing left to be transacted. This paradox, at least back in 1990s, used to be taken very seriously among econs and this pointed to a fundamental flaw in the way we looked (casually) at the markets. It's not for nothing that, after a few whiz bang papers early on his career, Arrow devoted most of his long academic life to making sense of knowledge and information and their consequences for markets and society (which did not yield any whiz bang papers and thus are largely neglected). The funny thing is that no one really seems to understand this now, that there's some kind of fundamental uncertainty that undergirds how markets work--and, basically, functions as the ultimate internal contradiction/time bomb that will rip it apart if people take the markets too seriously. Maybe we are approaching that point, with all the hubris of the all-knowing (self-claimed) modern Liberalism?
There is a weirdly contradictory attitude from modern social sciences vis a vis the "epistemological problem," so to speak (or, in other words, "in the long run, we don't know."). On one hand, there's the idea of diversified portfolios to minimize risk. On the other hand, there's the competing idea of "efficiency," or, "bet everything on the one surest thing." While the two are polar opposites in the big picture sense, they are linked by how sure we are about the universe: how you go about diversifying your portfolio is, in other words, how confident you are that you understand the universe. If you know nothing, you invest everywhere.. If you know everything, you invest in just one thing. If you just think you know everything, you could be the huge success (b/c that one thing that you bet on worked) or you lose everything. Trying to emulate the most successful people, in this logic, is a very likely path to failure because, most likely, they were reckless people who just got very lucky and they don't know (b/c we don't know much about the people who were equally reckless but not so lucky.)
This logic of diversified portfolio applies to "power" as well: Foucault might be right that everything about "power," but, at least, epistemologically, all "power" ain't the same. You create decentralized institutions and divest power because you don't know the state of the world for sure. You know that others know things that you do not or things might happen that you might be held responsible for if you have all the levers of power. So you let people who might be able to do things better (even for you) have control over things and give reins over things at the risk that things might go well and some other people may get the credit for them. Like the lucky people who mistake their good fortune for brilliance that lets them pick out "sure things," some people have exaggerated sense of how to best use power and centralize everything under their own control. Maybe they are that good (as individuals) and they can keep things going while they live (like Louis XIV or Qin Shihuangdi), but rulers don't last forever. The fallback from this is creation of, if you will, a political "mutual fund," a set of institutions with varying epistemological properties. The more decentralized/diversified they are, the more "inefficient" they will be, since they would be "wasting" resources on not-so-sure things. But maybe your sense of "sure things" is wrong and they may turn out to be wise investments after all. But everyone wants to be Louis XIV, including Louis XIV: you don't diversify because you think you know everything, and you sow the seeds of your destruction if you can't be the super-vigilant watchman all the time--even assuming that you can, theoretically, know everything if you put enough effort into it. But political institutions are increasingly in the hands of "know it alls" looking for the one sure thing and access to portfolio construction, if you will, is increasingly getting narrower. But, unlike Louis XIV or Qin Shihuangdi, these people don't have delusions of living forever. So we wind up with the risky attitude on the so-called leaders (but something that we often see in the financial world as well)--let's bet everything on the sure thing tomorrow, sell everything off to the next sucker, and cash out as soon as possible.
Even in social sciences, we recognize that this sort of short termism is dangerous in markets and economies more broadly. The market itself falls apart if everyone is out to cheat each other for the quick buck tomorrow because, with this attitude everywhere, nobody will want to cut deals with anyone else. The implication for the political universe seems much less understood. Of course everyone wants to maximize their power--much the way they want to maximize profits. But the efforts at maximizing power subverts the very basis of that power and makes it increasingly unstable (and makes the future pursuit thereof untenable.) But, of course, you don't care because it's "long term" and, "in the short term, you do know everything."
I find it odd that you say that Western elites no longer believe in change for the better. From where I sit out here in the Global South where we are constantly hectored about morals from "Those Who Know How to Make the World a Better Place", that seems patently incorrect. Fake news, as the Orange Man was wont to say. What evidence do you have that Western elites don't believe in making the world a better place? After all, it could be that they have just become utterly inept about it, so wrapped up in words that they mistake sermonising for actual planning because they have never had to actually plan and deliver. And that that came about because in the hubris and intoxication that came with the fall of the USSR, Western elites thought that they had won the End of History, and as the Supreme Power therefore no longer had to plan. They just had to throw a couple of upstart countries against the wall and beat them up to show them who was the boss from the time to time.
You have to differentiate between people who 'want to make the world a better place' like St Francis of Assisi, and 'people who want to make the world a better place' like 'any US President', before you can sensibly make such a comment.
Actually, I am merely pointing out that Aurelian is ascribing a depth of thought that I doubt has ever been remotely possible for someone like Macron or Trudeau or many of these other vacuous elites.
I was also pointing out that one can arrive at the same conclusion that he does about their failed plans without ascribing such depth of thought to them: one can believe that one is acting for the good of mankind in a purely puerile, unreflective sense. Many teens think like that. That one's belief is either immature or inaccurate is besides the point.
All I'm saying is that he does not need to rely on this particular claim to found his chain of argument and his argument would still hold. But I am very interested in knowing what the foundations of these particular claims are: does he have especial insight or knowledge of facts showing that people like Macron or Trudeau or other Western elites as a cohesive group have cited the philosophy of Foucault and then expressly drawn the conclusions that he says they have? If so, I am genuinely interested in finding out such information and was fishing for that.
If not, however, all this is is conjecture as to their intentions which cannot bear the weight of his statements and I think his argument is better off without it.
I hadn't intended to imply that individual politicians had read Foucault, and I doubt if they have. I was expanding Keynes's point about the influence of dead economists to the influence of dead thinkers of all kinds. Fifty years ago, political discourse was heavily influenced by third-hand Marxism and by a still optimistic socialism. Whatever your views, you would tend to express them in that context. I'm suggesting that the massive influence of poorly understood deconstructionist thinking over the last generation, in universities, in the media and elsewhere has had a similar effect. because these theories are ultimately gloomy and sterile, suggest that nothing can ever changed, their buzz-words are useful to politicians who don't actually want to change anything.
I have never studied Foucault, so what I know of his philosophy is what Aurelian has expounded here ( I intend to look for some of his writings now that I have been introduced, so to speak). But from what Aurelian has written in this piece, I do not think that "people like Macron or Trudeau .." need to have cited or studied Foucault to behave as if they believed that "everything is power" or to have no hope or plan for the future other than increasing their own power. That it ultimately leads to hopelessness would not occur to them, nor would they care as long as their personal desires are quickly fulfilled.
All of what you say of Macron or Trudeau may well be true - that they are simply power hungry. But unless you have hard evidence, all this is is imputing motives and intentions to people when all you know of them is what you read in the news. It is conjecture and not fact. That your conjecture may turn out to be true is neither here nor there. It is no better than Condoleeza Rice or Anthony Blinken saying that Putin is power hungry and wants to reinstate the Russian empire, with no evidence whatsoever other than some cherry picked quotes from his speeches.
The truth or untruth of the matter is not my point. Generally speaking (and not referring specifically to this essay), it is very easy to come up with an a priori assumption and spin off conclusions from there that sound very plausible and convincing. But if the second someone pokes at your a priori and the a priori turns out to not be true, the conclusions you founded the a priori on will collapse like a house built on sand.
In the case of this essay, I actually think Aurelian's points about the short termism of the Western political elite stand well on their own and do not need to rely on fancy references to Foucault and the loss of time in political philosophy to succeed. Furthermore, I think that relying on these references without proof weakens rather than strengthens his essay. He has been a consistently strong thinker and I think he can do better than this.
But, look, I get that the point I am making - about the quality of argument - is not something that matters to some people. Fine, so be it. But I generally find it useful to both examine the quality of someone's thinking process; it helps me examine my own thinking too.
Also, note that I asked for substantiation, which is my real interest. I am not entirely dismissing his views. Given that Aurelian has indicated that he has worked in government and suggested that he has done so at relatively higher levels, I was hoping that he could provide insight via his very specific experiences with government officials which would be enlightening and fruitful. And would buttress his statements as to Foucault's theories of power being accepted in political circles.
"The unavoidable consequence of the belief that everything is power, is the existence of some shadowy power elite that does think long-term, and does organise the affairs of the world in minute detail. The fact that no-one has ever seen them, that no two people can agree who and what they are or what they want, demonstrates that in the end this is a psychological question and not a political one. Whether we call them the Jews, the Freemasons, the Bilderberg Group, the World Economic Forum, or the current fashionable term the Empire, they must necessarily exist, if all is power, and action by others is pointless."
This strikes me as too much black-and-white.
a) No two people can agree on who and what they are and what they want?
Go to conspiratorial websites, and you'll find that many people agree on those points, on a regular basis.
By the way, some of these websites verge more toward the high-brow than the low-brow, as they include Off-Guardian (on "the left") and Unz.com (on "the right").
b) The best theories in the most accomplished science of physics, the theory of relativity and the quantum theory, are in mutual conflict. There are hardly any theoretical physicists that can agree on what are the answers to the basic problems in their field. Does it mean that the problems in fundamental physics are purely psychological and cultural?
c) It's difficult to dismiss nonchalantly the entirety of this message:
The West is not not One Thing, and its rulers have shown over and over again that they will squander any level of advantage handed to them. In part because of the precise malady you outline here.
Just as Western anti-natalism rewards those sub-populations most resistant to it, Western short-termism will reward the sub-populations who can and do think longer term. Its elites, who do have published long term plans, certainly hope so. But they can't manage a lemonade stand, there are other sub-groups who can manage and think long term, and where's the foreign power that will help them resist capable sub-groups the way they helped client rulers confound the Islamists? Importing foreign rapists and murders seems to be the play in that regard. History suggests that it will not be a good one.
Be the THEM that the future belongs to. Note: THEM, not "him," not individual. This is a group game. Find yours.
I enjoy reading everything you write, and all the erudite (and not so erudite!) comments from other readers. I appreciate the invitation to think deeply about world events and their history and possible outcomes.
One thing that greatly bothers me is the lazy labeling of political parties and movements as "left" and "right". These terms have become increasingly meaningless, and are used to refer to policies that have nothing to do with - often are antithetical to - the original meaning of the terms.
Calling 'progressive' agendas "left", and I would argue that many 'progressive' agendas are not only not 'leftist' but are not even 'progressive', does a disservice to every true leftist thinker and planner in our history! Likewise the use of 'right' and 'far-right' to describe everything from questioning the Covid hysteria to questioning immigration and border security issues does nothing to help readers understand what is actually being proposed.
Please, can you/we find either other terms to label different agendas? Or better yet, actually describe the policy/agenda without linking it to 'right' or 'left'?
A couple of criticisms, in an otherwise very thoughtful, and well presented analysis of this seemingly incapability of Western societies to comprehend the significance of time, especially its catalytic nature.
1. "Notoriously, in Afghanistan farmers moved from cultivating wheat to cultivating poppy," It needs to made clear that it was the US invasion of Afghanistan that caused the resurgence of poppy growing there, and that reports, are that currently it has been eradicated entirely since the Americans left. The coverage in the Western Mainstream Media almost uniformly condemned this with their focus being on the farmers who have lost income. (We know how the drug topic is discussed when the issue is in other geographic locations, such as Mexico, where it is invariably connected to crime and drug cartels.)
2. "Hezbollah has dominated political life in Lebanon for more than decade. Hamas was in power in Gaza for a similar period. All share the same objectives" Although, these two organizations may well share some, or even all, of the same methodologies, they do not share the same objectives as each other, nor do they have similar goals with the prior groups mentioned. Both Hezbollah and Hamas developed separately, and independently, as national liberation groups. They have never claimed to be interested in setting up, or restoring The Caliphate, which is the claimed goal of ISIS.
3. Your analysis did not delve more deeply into distinguishing whether, among those using long-term strategies to replace one power with their own power, there might be those who may well be using similar tactics, but are instead working towards a replacement of the current power with something more like we might call 'democratic,' which you showed with the example of South Africa and the ANC. I think there is reason to look more closely, with this example in mind, at those groups, rather than simply cast each of them into the same category, unexamined.
No, well there's only so much room in any essay. My point was that all these groups have patient, long-term strategies for building a political base, much as mass political parties of the West used to have. Ideology and ultimate objectives are a separate point.
It seems to me that "democracy", at least as preached and practiced by "the west", lends itself to short-term thinking - indeed, almost requires it. What government or leader who knows they may be ended at the whim of the voters every few years, can afford to do long term planning? Goals must be set for short term gains, and long term consequences can not be considered.
In Canada, over a long period of governments who leaned towards socially responsible policies - socialism - a robust 'safety net' was gradually enacted, and most citizens could count on their government largely providing an infrastructure that was affordable and inclusive of most. All it took was a couple terms of a corporatist government to dismantle much of our hard won socialist security and leave more and more Canadians struggling for basics. What is built up slowly by people of vision can be torn up in moments by people of greed and tunnel vision.
regarding democracy: I'm afraid it's even worse than that
there's only one condition to be a successful democratic politician: *hit shouldn't hit the fan during your term. It involves taking 100 bad long term decisions? No problem.
As long as a crisis isn't triggered during your term it's fine. Yes: a 10 times worse crisis will trigger later; but... long term you're dead, right? Someone else will pay the price; not you.
About time, one of the most profound teachings I learned from Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche was, "take the time to get bored." Our society seems to fear boredom, but I like to point out to the local sport fishing community, that in fishing, boredom is a virtue. A kind of 'boredom' lets us see things as they are, rather than a projection of our egoistic mind.
Then, we see every year a Fall and Winter which we believe will inevitably turn to Spring and Summer where crops will grow and animals will thrive. One of the most optimistic of all human activities is planting winter wheat as the days grow shorter and the leaves die and fall. But then in the Spring, green shoots show through the snow and a crop is almost inevitable.
"But if you push the idea too far, and say that all those who ever have striven, or ever will strive for justice are interested only in power, then you not only commit a historical nonsense, you foreclose any attempt at improving the human condition, ever. "
Fact-resistant power-people is nothing new. Nicholas Balabkins describes in "Germany under direct control" (1961) those fanatics who proposed the Morgenthau plan of deindustrializing Germany as those who ‘freely substituted normative views for positive propositions, and out of this mixture arose [a] “scientific” mixture for the treatment of post-war Germany’.
True, they were eventually defeated then. But that was during the heydays of production capitalism, when reality mattered even for the capitalists.
Really thought-provoking article, thank you! A related observation about our changing relationship to time -- funeral practices. Throughout the world, almost every society seems to have put a lot of emphasis on the treatment of the dead. The Egyptian pyramids are just the most dramatic example of the large resources devoted to that. Now, we in the West burn the bodies and dump the ashes wherever. At least in China, Korea, and such like places, they put the ashes in urns and set those urns in places where family members visit.
Analogously, at the other end of life, sophisticated Euros used to snigger at the older US custom of calling sons after their fathers, giving rise to Junior and the Third. They hardly do that in the US anymore -- just as the former English habit of naming children after grandparents has been replaced by naming them after whichever celebrity is today's hot item.
Arguably, people's loss of the former sense of continuity with past and future died along with religion, which at least led people to think occasionally about the grander scheme of things. Equally arguably, religion did not die in the West -- it was simply replaced by fashionable substitutes like "Anthropogenic Global Warming". But even there, the focus of that pseudo-religion was not on maybe making the world slightly better in two centuries time; rather, the focus was on avoiding imminent catastrophe and only 10 years to save the world.
Was the loss of religion a cause or an effect of our narrow focus on now? I don't know.
Two important components of what will impact any human future appear to be left out: the inevitable decline of net surplus energy via hydrocarbons and the coming consequences of ecological overshoot. These biophysical aspects cannot help but have oversized impacts on the future of our complex societies.
For more info on that see:
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/2025-a-civilizational-tipping-point
I’ve been following The Honest Sorcerer for several years; even worked with THS on a writing project. See: https://olduvai.ca/?page_id=65433
Sorry - bad feedback!
Since the countries that espouse these are precisely the same ones that make an issue about racism, sexism, etc., it follows that such worries are no more than another invented power play.
Interesting perspective but not one that the ecologists, biologists, and physicists who study these phenomena would likely agree with you on.
Of course not. Politicians, in general, are not particularly clever and need legions of fellow travellers to fill in the details and add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing tale.
I don’t disagree with you there but they also tend to overwhelmingly look to their bureaucrats and the priesthood of that non-scientific world of economics for their justifications. Not physicists, geologists, or biologists.
For more info on that see:
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/2025-a-civilizational-tipping-point
In terms of energy, not so https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53366-3
That's when electrification of transport actually makes sense, but it needs nuclear power, also we need to end planned obsolesence but that is in principle possible
Neither nuclear power nor electrification of transportation are ‘sustainable’. Scale is a huge impediment to such projects as both require significant hydrocarbon inputs (as well as other finite materials/minerals)—to say little about the ecosystem destruction that would result in any attempts.
Yes and no, currently it does, but it's not necessarily the case, in the case of steel, there are ore reduction methods based on hydrogen that can be obtained by electrolysis, construction equipment can be electrified to a great extent, even without using big batteries as the range required isn't great, transport to site can be rail based.
in terms of electrification of transport in general, fossile fuels are used in the process of making batteries, mostly on the mining and stages of material processing requiring heat, the heating part for example is done using fossile fuels because it's cheaper, that doesn't mean however that it can't be done electrically if you have the right grid.
The mining part is likely possible, idk the details however.
Now, consider that by doing this you are also freeing energy resources that would be used in energy production that then can be re invested in adittional oil free capacity, and in terms of batteries, they can be recycled, and there are cobalt free technologies, albeit they have lower energy density.
What is likely going to give here is this ridiculous disposable consumption, in which you change car, phone or computer as you change socks, without getting any benefit from it.
Now as this article says, very accurately, having a defeatist perspective on life ensures failure
To pick one example of the many problems with moving to electricity.
The energy density of batteries is unlikely to be even close to what we need to replace diesel. Mining and construction will therefore be very difficult once we lose access to hydrocarbons (and hydrogen is not the solution, either).
Energy is not fungible. You cannot simply substitute electricity for oil, or gas.
I'd also add that what your touting here is an unproven technology. It may scale, but it may well not (and that's ignoring the many other issues with nuclear power).
We may get lucky, but it seems foolish to bet a civilization on it.
We will have to agree to disagree. Recognising and accepting the limits of human technology and growth (and the hugely negative impacts both of these have on the more fundamental and important ecosystems) is not defeatist.
Failure to recognise and accept such limits and the negative impacts that arise from such endeavours can and likely will exacerbate our primary predicament of ecological overshoot.
Not necessarily growth, but keeping a good standard of living without collapsing and developing poor nations in a way that suits them, exponential growth is and was always a farce, the American way of life wasn't something that made sense, but guess what, most people around the world don't aspire to that, and when they do, it's usually because they have been propagandized, with little reflection
‘Collapse’ (decline/simplification) is inevitable. Pre/history demonstrates that every experiment with complex societies for the last 12,000 years has ended that way. Our fate will be no different. Throw overshoot—thanks to gargantuan net energy surpluses from hydrocarbons—on top and humanity’s path appears set.
Most people aspire to something like the Japanese/European style of life, and that's no more attainable.
Our world is built upon energy dense hydrocarbons - both for transportation (mining requires diesel - electric batteries will not cut it) and heat (lots of industrial processes require far higher heat than is possible with electricity - and there's no efficient substitute). And most renewables are also heavily dependent upon fossil fuels for their construction/installation.
There may be a way to transition, but we're not doing it - and if we wait until crisis hits then transition may well be impossible.
Actually Christianity doesn't teach "progress" towards a Last Judgement, although 19th Century Protestantism (technically, not actual Christianity but a number of schismatic groups) tended to teach making "progress towards the Kingdom" through earthly power. I assume that is to what you refer.
But I think the real problem may be the absolutes in which you are dealing. Foucault, like many people today, seemed to find comfort in generalizations ("everything is power")--and one can always generalize anything into commonality. So there's comfort there, even if the model is not accurate and, often, is based on lies that are compounded the deeper one gets into it. The current political focus is on generalizations (attacking "isms") to try and build common purpose. As you've noted, people can see right through how empty these statements are.
But the application of "everything as power", while true at some levels, tends to be false in the lives of most "common" people. I think that the higher one goes in political circles, the more the focus on "power" as a goal in and of itself (something of a pyramid scheme). In the lives of normal people, it does show up (it is a cultural phenomenon, after all) but not nearly like it does in "higher circles". Most normal people understand that they are, generally speaking, powerless and don't spend much time in trying to accumulate it. We could say that courtesy is valued by the powerless, or the humble. I tend to be a believer in the idea of Subsidiarity, but I'm also realistic enough to know that any serious change in this direction is highly unlikely to happen. We react and survive more than we exert power. Perhaps that's something of a microcosm of how the common man lives on a daily basis?
Anyway, I agree that long-term thinking is a lost art, especially in the "higher" societal classes. But short-term thinking is also being forced upon the middle and lower classes by economic and political decisions. Safety nets are being removed and living paycheck-to-paycheck (in wage slavery?) seems to be more and more the norm. I'm considering retiring to Russia simply so I can afford to retire! It's an unfortunate situation that is becoming more and more unfortunate.
As for the long-term thinkers, their plans will depend largely upon an economic collapse in the West. I won't be around long enough to see how that turns out, I expect.
"But the application of "everything as power", while true at some levels, tends to be false in the lives of most "common" people. I think that the higher one goes in political circles, the more the focus on "power" as a goal in and of itself (something of a pyramid scheme). In the lives of normal people, it does show up (it is a cultural phenomenon, after all) but not nearly like it does in "higher circles". "
This is because power selects strongly for sociopathy. In fact, power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats.
There is a problem in terminology in this essay. To designate a part of the political world as 'left' must be predicated on this part being anti-capitalist, and to be in search of radical social justice and egalitarianism and all the other associated aims of, broadly, the Marxist and Anarchist and similar 'left' movements. Organisations or impulses which do not maintain these aims need a new designation, such as pseudo-left or fake-left or capitalist-left or even 'new'-Left. But it is just misleading to dignify such organisations as the UK 'Labour' Party with any imputation that they are 'left'. The British 'Labour' Party almost never were 'left' in any meaningful way, Keir Hardy and the tokenism of the 'Health Service', Jeremy Corbyn and all. It was at all times a 'reformist-Capitalist' party, which never envisaged an end to capitalism. (That is not to say that the fruits of tokenism was not worth having - just that it was not grounded in a lasting and impregnable settlement - see the UK 'Health' service today).Similar strictures apply to the various 'Green' parties, many of which in Europe have shown themselves to be much more reactionary than 'green'.
This is a problem I regularly encounter, and I usually put "Left" in quotes like that, or add a qualification of some kind. On the substance I agree absolutely. I this essay I tried to distinguish between the views of the traditional and genuine "Left" which was class-focused, and the state of the parties which once had that label and have now gone nuts. There really isn't a single word to describe this.
I find myself similarly frustrated with the increasingly useless catch-all term, "left" for entirely disparate groups and motivations. It's almost as useless as "far right" -- both are little more now than casually constructed terms of abuse entirely free of actual content.
But we can't just settle for no designation. The term 'left' has been eviscerated by its usage in US politics, where it actually means 'liberal', and is used as a catch-all insult by the right. This is part of the long and unfortunately successful campaign by US capitalism to destroy and demonise solidarity and political action from the US working classes. The constant rightwards march of European previously leftist parties has not helped either. 'Left' must be defined as an anti-capitalist movement or party. No anti-capitalism, no 'left' designation. However, to get there I wouldn't start from here!
And there is no problem with using 'right' - it means the reactionary (not used as an insult here) and traditional and conservative movements in politics.
Apologies for the hasty grammar
Great essay and wonderful read! Thank you!
I love Foucault. "Foucault it!" has been a favorite expression of mine for quite a while. I think your analysis of his contribution is fair. Indeed, one of my grievances towards him is the ultimate nihilism his perspective leads to, since there's no upside to aim for (ex love, community, spirituality).
I think your analysis of the lack of understanding of "time" in the west is good, but ironically it's possible to use your examples (SA, Islamic social movements, and brief mentions of Russia and China) as examples of groups with (legitimate) grievances of the unbalance of power in their regards as forming a core component in their motivation to struggle towards their goals against domination (check out James Scott, weapons of the weak).
I think an analysis of the absence of long-term time should also consider the vacuity of Western intellectualism in the same vein as "Foucault is great, but then what?", in the sense that my feeling as someone who is both Western and Eastern, the dominant intelligentsia of the West has always (historically) been trapped in the monkey brain without paying our dues to a spiritual existence because "the church" (in its various denominations) was always more of a social-political management system. In fact, if we look at the orthodox traditions, which often maintain mystic/esoteric elements, they seem to be more grounded on a natural (non human centric) existence, while the West, through its insistence on an endless search for a future progress without a well defined end goal, has lost its marbles, so to speak. And as you rightly write, is eating itself in consequence of its lack of awareness of itself, unable to enact a "real" course correction (even electing so called anti-establishment or populist or right-wing parties and politicians won't fundamentally change anything; the "elites" are too invested to take a step back, they might not be even able even if they wanted, realistically).
I'm not a doomsayer, just realistically, to return to long-term thinking and planning and action has a number of requirements, like community (who), purpose (what) and values (why) that our own intellectual endeavors have undermined without replacing them with a better version. And so it'll be necessary to undertake a struggle against difficulty, to find meaning, but which presupposes things fall apart first.
In the meantime, just Foucault it!
This return can just happen, in my view, when things get worse. People and politics need to see a growing poverty joined with complains and social discomfort. There is not political will in the leadership class nowadays. Just then, when things get bad, could the realism and long-term views reborn.
However, this reborn will took place in a world that is not the same of the XIX or XX centuries. The relative power of European countries today is a lot smaller that it was then. The reborn, consequently, will took place in a smaller scale. I hope that people assume that when faster better.
Respecting the power, I didn't read Foucalt. However, explaining the behaviours of peoples based on power (or on emulation, research for approbation, social dynamics of groups...) is not excluding collective actions or improves. I mean: belonging to a long-term grupal cause could be explained in a "micro level" for status, approbation, desires of have power in the group (and that is: be the most engaged with the cause) and so on. That's why the cultural aspects of each society are so important: because they "channel" this universal aspects of human being and societies in different ways with different effects.
Ken Arrow used to joke that, if his theory (general equilibrium) is right, markets wouldn't exist because, were that the case, every transaction would take place at the beginning of time and there would be nothing left to be transacted. This paradox, at least back in 1990s, used to be taken very seriously among econs and this pointed to a fundamental flaw in the way we looked (casually) at the markets. It's not for nothing that, after a few whiz bang papers early on his career, Arrow devoted most of his long academic life to making sense of knowledge and information and their consequences for markets and society (which did not yield any whiz bang papers and thus are largely neglected). The funny thing is that no one really seems to understand this now, that there's some kind of fundamental uncertainty that undergirds how markets work--and, basically, functions as the ultimate internal contradiction/time bomb that will rip it apart if people take the markets too seriously. Maybe we are approaching that point, with all the hubris of the all-knowing (self-claimed) modern Liberalism?
Another quote from Keynes which is relevant here: “In the long run we are all dead”.
Two related comments:
There is a weirdly contradictory attitude from modern social sciences vis a vis the "epistemological problem," so to speak (or, in other words, "in the long run, we don't know."). On one hand, there's the idea of diversified portfolios to minimize risk. On the other hand, there's the competing idea of "efficiency," or, "bet everything on the one surest thing." While the two are polar opposites in the big picture sense, they are linked by how sure we are about the universe: how you go about diversifying your portfolio is, in other words, how confident you are that you understand the universe. If you know nothing, you invest everywhere.. If you know everything, you invest in just one thing. If you just think you know everything, you could be the huge success (b/c that one thing that you bet on worked) or you lose everything. Trying to emulate the most successful people, in this logic, is a very likely path to failure because, most likely, they were reckless people who just got very lucky and they don't know (b/c we don't know much about the people who were equally reckless but not so lucky.)
This logic of diversified portfolio applies to "power" as well: Foucault might be right that everything about "power," but, at least, epistemologically, all "power" ain't the same. You create decentralized institutions and divest power because you don't know the state of the world for sure. You know that others know things that you do not or things might happen that you might be held responsible for if you have all the levers of power. So you let people who might be able to do things better (even for you) have control over things and give reins over things at the risk that things might go well and some other people may get the credit for them. Like the lucky people who mistake their good fortune for brilliance that lets them pick out "sure things," some people have exaggerated sense of how to best use power and centralize everything under their own control. Maybe they are that good (as individuals) and they can keep things going while they live (like Louis XIV or Qin Shihuangdi), but rulers don't last forever. The fallback from this is creation of, if you will, a political "mutual fund," a set of institutions with varying epistemological properties. The more decentralized/diversified they are, the more "inefficient" they will be, since they would be "wasting" resources on not-so-sure things. But maybe your sense of "sure things" is wrong and they may turn out to be wise investments after all. But everyone wants to be Louis XIV, including Louis XIV: you don't diversify because you think you know everything, and you sow the seeds of your destruction if you can't be the super-vigilant watchman all the time--even assuming that you can, theoretically, know everything if you put enough effort into it. But political institutions are increasingly in the hands of "know it alls" looking for the one sure thing and access to portfolio construction, if you will, is increasingly getting narrower. But, unlike Louis XIV or Qin Shihuangdi, these people don't have delusions of living forever. So we wind up with the risky attitude on the so-called leaders (but something that we often see in the financial world as well)--let's bet everything on the sure thing tomorrow, sell everything off to the next sucker, and cash out as soon as possible.
Even in social sciences, we recognize that this sort of short termism is dangerous in markets and economies more broadly. The market itself falls apart if everyone is out to cheat each other for the quick buck tomorrow because, with this attitude everywhere, nobody will want to cut deals with anyone else. The implication for the political universe seems much less understood. Of course everyone wants to maximize their power--much the way they want to maximize profits. But the efforts at maximizing power subverts the very basis of that power and makes it increasingly unstable (and makes the future pursuit thereof untenable.) But, of course, you don't care because it's "long term" and, "in the short term, you do know everything."
I find it odd that you say that Western elites no longer believe in change for the better. From where I sit out here in the Global South where we are constantly hectored about morals from "Those Who Know How to Make the World a Better Place", that seems patently incorrect. Fake news, as the Orange Man was wont to say. What evidence do you have that Western elites don't believe in making the world a better place? After all, it could be that they have just become utterly inept about it, so wrapped up in words that they mistake sermonising for actual planning because they have never had to actually plan and deliver. And that that came about because in the hubris and intoxication that came with the fall of the USSR, Western elites thought that they had won the End of History, and as the Supreme Power therefore no longer had to plan. They just had to throw a couple of upstart countries against the wall and beat them up to show them who was the boss from the time to time.
You have to differentiate between people who 'want to make the world a better place' like St Francis of Assisi, and 'people who want to make the world a better place' like 'any US President', before you can sensibly make such a comment.
Actually, I am merely pointing out that Aurelian is ascribing a depth of thought that I doubt has ever been remotely possible for someone like Macron or Trudeau or many of these other vacuous elites.
I was also pointing out that one can arrive at the same conclusion that he does about their failed plans without ascribing such depth of thought to them: one can believe that one is acting for the good of mankind in a purely puerile, unreflective sense. Many teens think like that. That one's belief is either immature or inaccurate is besides the point.
All I'm saying is that he does not need to rely on this particular claim to found his chain of argument and his argument would still hold. But I am very interested in knowing what the foundations of these particular claims are: does he have especial insight or knowledge of facts showing that people like Macron or Trudeau or other Western elites as a cohesive group have cited the philosophy of Foucault and then expressly drawn the conclusions that he says they have? If so, I am genuinely interested in finding out such information and was fishing for that.
If not, however, all this is is conjecture as to their intentions which cannot bear the weight of his statements and I think his argument is better off without it.
I hadn't intended to imply that individual politicians had read Foucault, and I doubt if they have. I was expanding Keynes's point about the influence of dead economists to the influence of dead thinkers of all kinds. Fifty years ago, political discourse was heavily influenced by third-hand Marxism and by a still optimistic socialism. Whatever your views, you would tend to express them in that context. I'm suggesting that the massive influence of poorly understood deconstructionist thinking over the last generation, in universities, in the media and elsewhere has had a similar effect. because these theories are ultimately gloomy and sterile, suggest that nothing can ever changed, their buzz-words are useful to politicians who don't actually want to change anything.
I have never studied Foucault, so what I know of his philosophy is what Aurelian has expounded here ( I intend to look for some of his writings now that I have been introduced, so to speak). But from what Aurelian has written in this piece, I do not think that "people like Macron or Trudeau .." need to have cited or studied Foucault to behave as if they believed that "everything is power" or to have no hope or plan for the future other than increasing their own power. That it ultimately leads to hopelessness would not occur to them, nor would they care as long as their personal desires are quickly fulfilled.
All of what you say of Macron or Trudeau may well be true - that they are simply power hungry. But unless you have hard evidence, all this is is imputing motives and intentions to people when all you know of them is what you read in the news. It is conjecture and not fact. That your conjecture may turn out to be true is neither here nor there. It is no better than Condoleeza Rice or Anthony Blinken saying that Putin is power hungry and wants to reinstate the Russian empire, with no evidence whatsoever other than some cherry picked quotes from his speeches.
The truth or untruth of the matter is not my point. Generally speaking (and not referring specifically to this essay), it is very easy to come up with an a priori assumption and spin off conclusions from there that sound very plausible and convincing. But if the second someone pokes at your a priori and the a priori turns out to not be true, the conclusions you founded the a priori on will collapse like a house built on sand.
In the case of this essay, I actually think Aurelian's points about the short termism of the Western political elite stand well on their own and do not need to rely on fancy references to Foucault and the loss of time in political philosophy to succeed. Furthermore, I think that relying on these references without proof weakens rather than strengthens his essay. He has been a consistently strong thinker and I think he can do better than this.
But, look, I get that the point I am making - about the quality of argument - is not something that matters to some people. Fine, so be it. But I generally find it useful to both examine the quality of someone's thinking process; it helps me examine my own thinking too.
Also, note that I asked for substantiation, which is my real interest. I am not entirely dismissing his views. Given that Aurelian has indicated that he has worked in government and suggested that he has done so at relatively higher levels, I was hoping that he could provide insight via his very specific experiences with government officials which would be enlightening and fruitful. And would buttress his statements as to Foucault's theories of power being accepted in political circles.
On conspiratorial thinking:
"The unavoidable consequence of the belief that everything is power, is the existence of some shadowy power elite that does think long-term, and does organise the affairs of the world in minute detail. The fact that no-one has ever seen them, that no two people can agree who and what they are or what they want, demonstrates that in the end this is a psychological question and not a political one. Whether we call them the Jews, the Freemasons, the Bilderberg Group, the World Economic Forum, or the current fashionable term the Empire, they must necessarily exist, if all is power, and action by others is pointless."
This strikes me as too much black-and-white.
a) No two people can agree on who and what they are and what they want?
Go to conspiratorial websites, and you'll find that many people agree on those points, on a regular basis.
By the way, some of these websites verge more toward the high-brow than the low-brow, as they include Off-Guardian (on "the left") and Unz.com (on "the right").
b) The best theories in the most accomplished science of physics, the theory of relativity and the quantum theory, are in mutual conflict. There are hardly any theoretical physicists that can agree on what are the answers to the basic problems in their field. Does it mean that the problems in fundamental physics are purely psychological and cultural?
c) It's difficult to dismiss nonchalantly the entirety of this message:
https://twitter.com/Jay_D007/status/1670868127230435328
The West is not not One Thing, and its rulers have shown over and over again that they will squander any level of advantage handed to them. In part because of the precise malady you outline here.
Just as Western anti-natalism rewards those sub-populations most resistant to it, Western short-termism will reward the sub-populations who can and do think longer term. Its elites, who do have published long term plans, certainly hope so. But they can't manage a lemonade stand, there are other sub-groups who can manage and think long term, and where's the foreign power that will help them resist capable sub-groups the way they helped client rulers confound the Islamists? Importing foreign rapists and murders seems to be the play in that regard. History suggests that it will not be a good one.
Be the THEM that the future belongs to. Note: THEM, not "him," not individual. This is a group game. Find yours.
I enjoy reading everything you write, and all the erudite (and not so erudite!) comments from other readers. I appreciate the invitation to think deeply about world events and their history and possible outcomes.
One thing that greatly bothers me is the lazy labeling of political parties and movements as "left" and "right". These terms have become increasingly meaningless, and are used to refer to policies that have nothing to do with - often are antithetical to - the original meaning of the terms.
Calling 'progressive' agendas "left", and I would argue that many 'progressive' agendas are not only not 'leftist' but are not even 'progressive', does a disservice to every true leftist thinker and planner in our history! Likewise the use of 'right' and 'far-right' to describe everything from questioning the Covid hysteria to questioning immigration and border security issues does nothing to help readers understand what is actually being proposed.
Please, can you/we find either other terms to label different agendas? Or better yet, actually describe the policy/agenda without linking it to 'right' or 'left'?
A couple of criticisms, in an otherwise very thoughtful, and well presented analysis of this seemingly incapability of Western societies to comprehend the significance of time, especially its catalytic nature.
1. "Notoriously, in Afghanistan farmers moved from cultivating wheat to cultivating poppy," It needs to made clear that it was the US invasion of Afghanistan that caused the resurgence of poppy growing there, and that reports, are that currently it has been eradicated entirely since the Americans left. The coverage in the Western Mainstream Media almost uniformly condemned this with their focus being on the farmers who have lost income. (We know how the drug topic is discussed when the issue is in other geographic locations, such as Mexico, where it is invariably connected to crime and drug cartels.)
2. "Hezbollah has dominated political life in Lebanon for more than decade. Hamas was in power in Gaza for a similar period. All share the same objectives" Although, these two organizations may well share some, or even all, of the same methodologies, they do not share the same objectives as each other, nor do they have similar goals with the prior groups mentioned. Both Hezbollah and Hamas developed separately, and independently, as national liberation groups. They have never claimed to be interested in setting up, or restoring The Caliphate, which is the claimed goal of ISIS.
3. Your analysis did not delve more deeply into distinguishing whether, among those using long-term strategies to replace one power with their own power, there might be those who may well be using similar tactics, but are instead working towards a replacement of the current power with something more like we might call 'democratic,' which you showed with the example of South Africa and the ANC. I think there is reason to look more closely, with this example in mind, at those groups, rather than simply cast each of them into the same category, unexamined.
No, well there's only so much room in any essay. My point was that all these groups have patient, long-term strategies for building a political base, much as mass political parties of the West used to have. Ideology and ultimate objectives are a separate point.
It seems to me that "democracy", at least as preached and practiced by "the west", lends itself to short-term thinking - indeed, almost requires it. What government or leader who knows they may be ended at the whim of the voters every few years, can afford to do long term planning? Goals must be set for short term gains, and long term consequences can not be considered.
In Canada, over a long period of governments who leaned towards socially responsible policies - socialism - a robust 'safety net' was gradually enacted, and most citizens could count on their government largely providing an infrastructure that was affordable and inclusive of most. All it took was a couple terms of a corporatist government to dismantle much of our hard won socialist security and leave more and more Canadians struggling for basics. What is built up slowly by people of vision can be torn up in moments by people of greed and tunnel vision.
regarding democracy: I'm afraid it's even worse than that
there's only one condition to be a successful democratic politician: *hit shouldn't hit the fan during your term. It involves taking 100 bad long term decisions? No problem.
As long as a crisis isn't triggered during your term it's fine. Yes: a 10 times worse crisis will trigger later; but... long term you're dead, right? Someone else will pay the price; not you.
About time, one of the most profound teachings I learned from Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche was, "take the time to get bored." Our society seems to fear boredom, but I like to point out to the local sport fishing community, that in fishing, boredom is a virtue. A kind of 'boredom' lets us see things as they are, rather than a projection of our egoistic mind.
Then, we see every year a Fall and Winter which we believe will inevitably turn to Spring and Summer where crops will grow and animals will thrive. One of the most optimistic of all human activities is planting winter wheat as the days grow shorter and the leaves die and fall. But then in the Spring, green shoots show through the snow and a crop is almost inevitable.
"But then in the Spring . . ." That is not so inevitable as it once was.
"But if you push the idea too far, and say that all those who ever have striven, or ever will strive for justice are interested only in power, then you not only commit a historical nonsense, you foreclose any attempt at improving the human condition, ever. "
Are you not making an argument from consequences?
Fact-resistant power-people is nothing new. Nicholas Balabkins describes in "Germany under direct control" (1961) those fanatics who proposed the Morgenthau plan of deindustrializing Germany as those who ‘freely substituted normative views for positive propositions, and out of this mixture arose [a] “scientific” mixture for the treatment of post-war Germany’.
True, they were eventually defeated then. But that was during the heydays of production capitalism, when reality mattered even for the capitalists.
Really thought-provoking article, thank you! A related observation about our changing relationship to time -- funeral practices. Throughout the world, almost every society seems to have put a lot of emphasis on the treatment of the dead. The Egyptian pyramids are just the most dramatic example of the large resources devoted to that. Now, we in the West burn the bodies and dump the ashes wherever. At least in China, Korea, and such like places, they put the ashes in urns and set those urns in places where family members visit.
Analogously, at the other end of life, sophisticated Euros used to snigger at the older US custom of calling sons after their fathers, giving rise to Junior and the Third. They hardly do that in the US anymore -- just as the former English habit of naming children after grandparents has been replaced by naming them after whichever celebrity is today's hot item.
Arguably, people's loss of the former sense of continuity with past and future died along with religion, which at least led people to think occasionally about the grander scheme of things. Equally arguably, religion did not die in the West -- it was simply replaced by fashionable substitutes like "Anthropogenic Global Warming". But even there, the focus of that pseudo-religion was not on maybe making the world slightly better in two centuries time; rather, the focus was on avoiding imminent catastrophe and only 10 years to save the world.
Was the loss of religion a cause or an effect of our narrow focus on now? I don't know.