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.
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
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.
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'.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
"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. "
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 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 good reflection on differing conceptions of time is “Time’s Arrow, Times Cycle:Myth and metaphor in the discovery of geological time”, by Steven Jay Gold, noted paleontologist and theorist of evolution.
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.
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.
Well written and it provides a lot to ponder, which I always like
Short term thinking may not be a defining feature of the Collective West, but it has taken over the discourse completely. It is rather telling that this takeover has happened in a civilization that has embraced the concept of a 'clockwork universe' from the 16th century onward.
If the Cartesian revolution was to blame for the western shortsightedness then it should be at its peak about now. Western thinking may have detached itself from global 'mainstream' thinking for centuries but many of the ancient ideas, including concepts of time and consciousness, have started to seep back in.
It is rather ironic that Descartes tried to fuse the physical and metaphysical with his philosophy and achieved the exact opposite. Nearly four centuries beyond him we are coming full circle thanks to new discoveries in cutting edge science that his insights made possible.
Now will this remedy the western dogmatic preoccupation with chopping up time and profit in manageable chunks? Not immediately, but these things take time to turn around.
One can sense that change is in the air. Let's embrace that change without sticking to a timetable.
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!
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
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.
For more info on that see:
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/2025-a-civilizational-tipping-point
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'.
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.
Apologies for the hasty grammar
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?
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!
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 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.
Another quote from Keynes which is relevant here: “In the long run we are all dead”.
"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?
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 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'?
Look far to the west
swollen pride and arrogance
sorrowful blindness
A good reflection on differing conceptions of time is “Time’s Arrow, Times Cycle:Myth and metaphor in the discovery of geological time”, by Steven Jay Gold, noted paleontologist and theorist of evolution.
My usual italian translation, here:
Il lungo periodo.
Il futuro appartiene a loro.
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2025/01/il-lungo-periodo-il-futuro-appartiene.html
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.
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.
Well written and it provides a lot to ponder, which I always like
Short term thinking may not be a defining feature of the Collective West, but it has taken over the discourse completely. It is rather telling that this takeover has happened in a civilization that has embraced the concept of a 'clockwork universe' from the 16th century onward.
If the Cartesian revolution was to blame for the western shortsightedness then it should be at its peak about now. Western thinking may have detached itself from global 'mainstream' thinking for centuries but many of the ancient ideas, including concepts of time and consciousness, have started to seep back in.
It is rather ironic that Descartes tried to fuse the physical and metaphysical with his philosophy and achieved the exact opposite. Nearly four centuries beyond him we are coming full circle thanks to new discoveries in cutting edge science that his insights made possible.
Now will this remedy the western dogmatic preoccupation with chopping up time and profit in manageable chunks? Not immediately, but these things take time to turn around.
One can sense that change is in the air. Let's embrace that change without sticking to a timetable.