Wednesday 1 February 2023

To avert the next world war - An appeal to individual responsability


In 1848, after the restauration of monarchies all over Europe which followed the Congress of Vienna in the aftermath of the fall of Napoleon, a series of popular uprisings shook both the old and new worlds. The roots set by the French Revolution had not been extirpated.  



I remember it vividly.

When I was growing up in the 70s, whether you lived in Tehran, Kabul, New York or Moscow, women wore mini skirts and men sported bell bottomed pants, while both genders were undistinguishable in their  predilection for floral motifs. People across the globe were just as identical in their blind devotion to sex, drugs and rock and roll as they were in their utter loss of religious fervor and scarce sense of patriotism. 

A quarter of a century of indoctrination in peace-loving Illuminist internationalism by UNESCO, whose first director happened to be Julian Huxley, the brother of the more famous Aldous, had done an outstanding job at eradicating that archaically dogmatic world that lay defunct under the ruins of Berlin and Hiroshima, while ushering that creeping, uniform, reassuringly meaningless brave new one which we all got used to and became so jaded with.


Today, internationalism has become the dreaded "globalization", the European Union, which not even Napoleon was able to achieve, is seen as a collection of tyrannical bureaucrats disconnected from the populations which they don't represent, the world and its dog has re-descovered nationalism, a Crusader religious fervor is back in vogue and the Earth has become flat again, and all this, to the chagrin of Illuminism, which after three centuries of relentless popularity, is now widely regarded as the satanic conspiracy of a sect known as "Illuminati". 

So what happened ? Is one to believe in a clash of those "civilizations" which are back on everybody's lips?

After the collective planetary orgy of demented consumerism which lasted more than half a century, we have suddenly become jealous of our "cultures" once again? The various generations of boomers,bloomers, Xs and millenials,invariably conditioned by ubiquitous media to live only by the law of the purchasing impulse, to be what they own, to aspire exclusively to the ephimeral and the mundane, have now suddenly remembered that they are part of a "civilization"?

And if so, why? Just because of the financial crisis that crashed  the markets in 2001 and 2008? Just because the orgy could not continue at the same, doggedly exponential pace as before? 

And again, if so, how ? By replacing the global consumerist orgy with an endless succession of incomprehensible as absurdly unjustifiable conflicts which nobody really cares for ?          

Really ? Is this sudden collective metamorphosis even remotely credible? Even taking into consideration the ever shorter memory that so typically characterizes that "man without qualities" as dubbed by Robert Musil to illustrate the then burgeoning mass society at the eve of WW1, which still feels so ominously close?  

But I tell a lie when I claim that "nobody" cares about these wars, international policing interventions, special operations, or whatever one wants to call them.

Somebody does care.


Setting aside the Yom kippur war, the subsequent petrol shock provoked in retaliation by OPEC, the Iranian revolution and the Soviet-Afghan war, which were, in retrospect, relatively contained, merely preparatory events with respect to today's scenarios in terms of the collectively pervasive, ever more dogmatic animosities we now consider the norm, the current trend all started, I'd say, with the the first Gulf War of 1991, when the underlying reality of that relatively seemingly uneventful, numb, "New World", suddenly came knocking at the door for the bill, as the obvious, crudely came to be revealed even to the most hapless: the planet's flagship for democracy was in reality just a nepotistic cartel of oilers, bankers and weapon manufacturers, whom having found themselves freed from any antagonism against a defeated and agonizing Eastern Block( which happened to be officially dissolved by that same year)  demonstrated how the new, one and only global boss, had no scruples in waging the first total war since WW2, with the excuse of freeing Kuwait from an unlawful invasion, when the local thug and former ally pulled on his leash to turn against that very cartel which was drowning his eternal war effort with artificially plummeting oil prices, rather than persevering in his (this one of course very lawful) invasion of the land of the Ayatollahs, as he had been armed, bread and expected to do.  

By the second Iraq war, allegedly provoked by 9/11, it became even more obvious that the elephant in the living room didn't even need to make up credible excuses anymore : in the very own words of Bush Junior (did I mention nepotism ?) after raising, once again,both Iraq and Afghanistan to the ground : "oops, no nuclear weapons!"

And on it goes, from one story of bitterness and revenge by expended former allies ( or "partners") to another. From Bin Laden, former ally and leader of Afghan Mujahhidins, to the crazed ISIL bunch created out of nothing by the CIA and overtly protected by the US contingent in Syria, to the current phase, which sees a vengeful and paranoid Putin seeking to resuscitate the former prestige, influence and expanse of Holy Mother Russia, allegedly diminished by the betrayals of a hypocritical Western "partner", at the expense of the Ukranian populations. 

This takes us to the current modern day Greek Tragedy  which we are all beholding: On one side, the Ukranians, whose sole aspiration having become the Europeanisation of their country and the promise of material benefits that come with it,  twice ousted ,by the street, the pro-Russian candidate Yanukovych. On the other side,  their offended Russian cousins who saw in this a "Russophobic" stance, a betrayal of the Slavic brotherhood and a breach of both explicit and implicit agreements and mutual reassurances which came as a legacy of the dissolution of the USSR.

What followed, beginning with the Russian invasion of Crimea, is history.


Here's my claim :  the Russian population, or rather part of it, is indeed disgusted with what they consider to be a betrayal of former bonds by populations such as Poles and Baltics, in their having joined an organization, NATO, which was created for the specific purpose of containing the now defunct USSR, and which in their eyes has no further reason to exist, let alone grow and expand. The apparent leaning of Ukraine ( which means "border lands" in Russian) towards that camp, was the last drop. It's just as true, that many Ukrainians felt insulted in their sense of liberty and dignity by the influence of their Russian neighbor in their internal affairs, while they were recovering their sense of indipendent nationhood after so many years of cohabitation with other nations.

However,  Ukranians still spoke both languages in their households, as most of their families are mixed, just as many Russians consider Ukraine as a sister nation, given that so many of them have recent origins, family and/or friends in that country.


So how did  the current situation unfold ?


The question is rather: who asked Putin to invade Crimea? Would the Ukranian populations spontaneously have started a civil war in Crimea and then in Donbass had they been left to their own devices, keeping in mind their deep ethnic and cultural ties with the Russians?  Who does the current war benefit? What does Putin have in common with the American cartels? Why do the European bureaucrats feel that they should meddle in Eastern Slavic affairs? Why do the Anglo-American cartels feel the need to impeach a Eurasian rapprochement at any cost ?

So many obviously rethorical questions...The point being, that all these populations have no other real concern than to live a comfortable life, find a good job, raise their children, go on holiday twice a year and receive a pension when they age. They have been conditioned to be nothing more than consumers for generations. 

Otherwise said, there is today an abysmal divide in intentions and interests between the ruling class and the common man. The international ruling class of billionnaires ( of which both Putin and the Bushes are part) start the wars, and the ever more impoverished consumer has to fight them. 

And yes, this is no novelty. Kings and aristocracies of the past have always been related and intermarried across borders, while they thuggishly crushed and used the peasantry as cannon fodder in archane squabbles of which the common man understood nothing nor cared for. In the same way, as soon as the first blood was drawn, it became just as easy back then as it is today, to rally both camps around the cause of patriotism and just revenge, to give meaning to the deaths. And so the clockwork is wound up to run its inevitable, deterministic denouement.

There is however a fundamental difference with the past : if the worst that could happen back then, was the accumulation of corpses which ended up fertilizing the fields, today, the potential use of nuclear weapons could render those fields contaminated for innumerable generations to come.

It is with infinite sadness, upon witnessing the results of the first experimental explosion of the nuclear bomb to which invention he contributed, that Robert Oppenheimer recited verses of the Bhagavad Gita where Lord Krishna manifests himself to Arjuna in his most terrifying form to convince him to fulfill his duty of going to war even against his own relatives, as regardless of any events unfolding on the battlefield, the armies he was confronting would eventually be consumed by time, ultimate manifestation of the divine.

What was missed in this extremely fatalistic and somewhat cynical apology of duty however, is that we ourselves, as humanity, have become the deity. 

So when Nietzsche declared with great pathos more than a century ago, that "God was dead" (in the conscience of contemporary man), he couldn't envision back then that he was already being replaced by an entity which was to reveal itself to be much more than that "ubermensch" for which advent he advocated: from the discovery of atomic energy to that of the code of life itself, no day passes without groundbreaking progress in fields such as longevity, debellation of cancer and viruses, understanding of the very creation of the universe, artificial intellingence(if not even conscience), which have suddenly rendered much of the philosophical existential problems that had always haunted humanity to this day, all but obsolete. 

And yet, Nietzsche did however foresee correctly the danger that instead of a "superman", humanity could rather produce "the last man"; a quintessencially mediocre entity solely preoccupied with inane distractions and contented with tepid comforts.

The tragedy of the contemporary human condition lies precisely in this contradiction: to be a deity which has delegated its will power to a malignant Demiurge, which is the oligarchic ruling class of the transnational cartels. 

We might well be reaching Mars very soon, but we are still completely subjugated by a minority of thugs, be it under the guise of Western Corporations, Russian oligarchs or Chinese party apparatchiks,  swayed like so many reeds in the wind, our energies and bodies bled, our destinies determined, in a never ending pursuit of agendas that are to the vast majority of us, utterly and forever obscure.   

We are a malleable deity. Sapiently shepherded by an alternation of fear and granted petty pleasures. Our lives carefully catered for from cradle to grave by corporations which have all but replaced the nation state. We give them our allegiance, our souls, renounce our freedom of speech and thought, while they preoccupy themselves even with our "wellbeing". We are constantly polled, engaged in miriads of lame pursuits, taught that the corporation is our family, our home, our fatherland, made to sign documents to promise as much, constantly enlisted in meaningless, repetitive, brainwashing compliance trainings, encouraged to work more and more in the isolation of our homes, fed free pizza and even beer on the job. All the while, our real occupation is to desire and consume.

That's why I can't stop repeating it: this is our alibi. We, the common man, are not the ones to start the wars. We simply lack the energy, the immagination, the malice, the interest.


So how did we get to the current sorry state of affairs, the question begs ...


Freud dominated the past century and his shadow still looms large over this one. He discovered the subconscious, the profoundly irrational nature of man, allegedly. Well, it sure became a self-fulfilling prophecy, I say. That revival of reason, which began with the Renaissance and found its apotheosis in the age of Enlightenment, had already come under attack by Kant. Nietzsche again completed the job by calling for a triumph of the "Dionysian" (which might explain why he ended up hugging a horse and getting interned into an asylum for the demented). And Nietzsche had a huge influence on Freud, whom he knew personally.

I am not denying that there is an inherently weak, dark,  influenceable quality to the human mind; surely the consequences brought upon humanity by adepts of both Nietzshe and Freud such as messers Hitler and Goebbels, must speak for themselves. 

What I am saying is that the subconscious has to be wilfully encouraged to prevail over the rational. In other words, it's education, culture, nurture, that determine which side prevails in the average individual. If we fatalistically declare that man is intrinsically flawed, originally "sinful", fundamentally irrational and if on top of that you design a society which is based on the constant promotion, illustration, beatification, of whatever base instict, impulse, desire,goes through the mind,then what you get is unsurprisingly enough, the 20th century. If consumption is all you're taught from earliest childhood, including the consumption of feelings, people, music, sex, murder, by media that come to follow you ever closer, even into your bathroom, day and night, chances are that you will become a vacuous consumer of anything, including violence. I'm quite sure I'm stating the obvious.

Yes, "God is dead" all right. Or rather, he was. Because nowadays there is every intention to resuscitate him, judging by the way religions fanaticism and intolerance are making a come back. And this, obviously not because of a spontanuous need to restore order and morality, which do not need a superstructure such as religion to inhabit the conscience of men, but rather as yet another (well tried and tested) instrument of control of the masses by the usual suspects.

We, the people, don't need the empty shell of religion, made of the mind-numbing identities, superstitions and dogmas, that are so useful to the powers that be to sow their politics of division, just as we don't need that typically systematic, blind, maniacal repudiation of everything that religion stood for, which so characterized certain parts of society in the past century.

All that is useful in any religion, can be condensed into a single, perfect, ingenious precept : "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" ( although "do not do unto others as you would not have others do unto you" would be a good enough start). Any good deed, or at least the avoidance of harm, can be derived as a logical consequence of this single golden rule. I would like to add the need for Forgiveness, which although also derivable from the former, is particularly absent in our world.

This essence of any religion is what has organized, disciplined, civilized even the most remote and isolated human communities across the ages. It is what induced their martyrs to extreme sacrifice and built cathedrals that took centuries of painstaking patience and labor to be erected .

It is, what we have demonstrated time and again of being capable of, when freed from manipulation.  


So what then are we to do ?


Russians and Belorussians are being vilified for not making themselves heard, for allegedly not having the courage of rising against their tyrants, their local organized thuggish mafia, their Demiuge. This is a forgetful and unfair judgement that does not consider how many rebellions, revolutions, protests, both these populations have gone through in their not too remote past and in the recent one.

In the recent past they freed themselves from their middle-ages and then from the Soviets. Today, they are being confronted with sapiently malevolent modern organizations which follow their every move and crush their every expression of will.

In the West, we are getting drawn into a quagmire of which we are partly responsible, for having meddled into the affairs of the Eastern Slavs from the very inception of this tragedy during the Euromaidan. Although we all understand the risks of our current involvement, nobody dares to speak their mind freely, because we are steeped in a witch hunt atmosphere againt the "politically incorrect". 


There is an asset that has never existed before in our history, which potentially interconnects us all in a mesh network( every node is connected to every other node). We just need to know the email address of any person in order to reach them instantly. And yet, we are mostly using this asset for applications such as ...Tik Tok.


Don't go invading the streets. They are your streets.

Don't obstruct public services. They are your services.

Don't destroy others' property. It's not yours.

Don't point your finger at your leaders. They have been allowed in power by you, regardless of the political system. They are of you. Don't threaten them. Don't harm them. Forgive them and forgive yourself.

Rather, reach out to your local constituents, if you can, and express your thoughts. 

Get up, leave the smart phone, open the door, get out, knock at your neighbor's door. Tell them you'd  like to talk.

Whatever you do, it won't make a smidgeon of a difference. There will be no medals, no paradise. You will still remain trapped in this tiny bubble of air racing around in ellipses, somewhere in the universe. There might still be a catastrophic change of climate. You'll still die (although nowadays this may take a bit longer ) and you'll still end up in a hole to decompose.

But if in spite of the above, you can't find within yourself a plausible reason to try to individually make a change, no well-meaning person or group of can find one for you. 

(Although rest assured.... the ill-intentioned will immediately volunteer to do so).



"How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't. "
       
Shakespear- The Tempest


























 

Friday 30 November 2007

LIVELIHOOD , PROGRESS and CAPITALISM. A brief introduction to the concept of a BINARY SOCIETY .

Foreword :

The goal of this pamphlet is to promote a discussion about the points which it raises and which can make the subject of in-depth studies to be developped at will .
Although the model was originally mostly of a theoretical nature and was intended as an intellectual provocation , the collapse of Communism , the creation of free market zones in China , the advent of the internet and the dramatic manifestations of the greenhouse effect, have in recent years validated its theoretical applicability , practical viability and even necessity .




There is something about the homeland of Henry David Thoreau that challenges a man to seek independence and self-sufficiency , to want to live the course of human knowledge through his own individual and original experience .
As an adolescent Maryland schoolboy inspired by his writings , I set out in the early 1980s to explore the woods which my house overlooked .
The initial idea was to gather information about all useful plants, trees ,shrubs and man-made materials for the sake of developping a “technology of viably comfortable and self-sufficient livelihood ” .
Hence , I began by building a simple shelter , which I had to put to the test by spending a night in .
While I sat inside it , by the time it got dark , I suddenly heard a mild splashing noise coming from the creek which flowed a few yards from my shelter . As I focused my eyesight walking towards the source of the noise , and thanks to the reflection of the moonlight in the water , I was able to make out its size . It must’ve been a racoon or a dog . We both stopped and examined each other , neither proceeding any further or backing off .
Rabies epidemics were very frequent in the area and they didn’t spare the wildlife .
It was hence clear from the start that I needed light . Yet , to remain faithful to the purpose of my experiments , I needed to obtain it by myself without making use of ready-made marketed goods such as an electric torch . I couldn’t light a fire either , as it wasn’t allowed .
The creek could provide the energy I needed and not only for making light . I would transform the cinetic energy of its water into versatile electric power .
By the next time I was down at the shelter , I had my best schoolmate with me , and we started analysing the problem . Before even thinking about how to find the materials to build an electromagnetic coil , we heartily enlisted in the mission of building a mechanism to increase the water flow at will , which led to the building of a lock .
In brief , the initial purpose , which stemmed from an objective and simple need , was quickly diverted to an intellectual challenge .

Boys games , no doubt . Yet , these games say a lot about the society , the cultural and psychological mindset in which such boys were brought up .
A question then arose in my mind , and never left me ever since : could this transition from NECESSITY to INTELLECTUAL CHALLENGE or PLAY , have happened in the same way along the history of humanity ? Is there a line that was crossed at some point in time which separated an era where PROGRESS was the result of necessity, from an era in which it was triggered mainly by pure intellect ; a historical boundary between a reasonably dignified and comfortable existance for man and an era where technological advancement started being pursued for its own sake instead of for that of adding any objectively significant value to mankind’s overall sense of fulfillment ?

The encephalus of Sapiens Sapiens is at once an awsome and eerie creation , definitely unrivaled and unique in nature . This is a fact . However, one cannot but wonder what its purpose is , even when applying Darwin’s evolutionary theory , which is still the Bible of naturalism today .
This large amount of grey matter appears in the natural world at some point , and it thrives to the level of overwhelming , overpowering and quite often destroying the surrounding natural world to replace it with creations of its own . No doubt , it has been a success for its bearer , and by Darwin’s book , this should in itself explain its survival . Ethologists will tell you that the purpose of this hypertrophic intelligence is that of compensating for the lack of claws , fangs, horns , hooves or muscle . Fair enough .
But does it need to be that big ? Does it really NEED to be so vastly superior and with so many more functions than any other’s in nature in order to fulfill the purposes of self-defence ,survival and even evolutive success ?
Obviously not, and according to medicine , we only use a very modest portion of it .
It’s quite clear that we have an excess of this “thing” , and this surplus makes us play in a different league
even with respect to the natural environment of our own planet . That same environment from which we stemmed and which we now find even too petty, as we concieve , detect, monitor and in the near future probably will industrially extract , minerals that aren’t even of this Earth .
Whether we like it or not , whether we believe in the Bible or not , we have indeed become , the rulers of this planet and of all the other creatures that inhabit it .
Whether this was the design of a devine entity or not , isn’t the scope of this treatise which goal is to point out that naturalist theories do not apply to Sapiens Sapiens simply because it is not strictly part of the natural environment in which it was conceived , endowed as it is with a peculiar characteristic which purpose lies within its own self and which pursues designs and follows laws and behaviours which are intended for and explainable by only its own self ; the brain surplus .
This entity expresses itself through intellectual play . Technological progress for the mere sake of it, is its product .

After introducing NECESSITY and PLAY as the factors of PROGRESS , we must deal with a third element which is commonly deemed a fundamental engine of the latter and might appear as distinct from the other two : economy .
However , at a closer look , we must consider that as a behaviour , production finalized for trade is itself a by-product of either necessity or play .
Indeed , production can have the purpose of exchanging goods or of creating a surplus under the form of currency . The latter can be either regarded as an alternative to stocking food or can be used as a mean of readily acquiring all sorts of “unnecessary” goods without actually having to make them .
The classic economic approach would oppose to the concept of “necessity” that of “satisfaction” : the price of goods , the “market price” , is seen as a meeting point between the inclination of the purchaser to acquire a specific good and that of the offerer to sell it .
However , such approach takes for granted the existance of the MARKET as we know it , focusing on societies that have a merchant behaviour , thus disregarding those who don’t have any interest in a market economy , at least in the most basic traits in which it is intended .
Our objective is an approach that encompasses also these types of societies for as minoritary as they may be and therefore , classical economic theory cannot be entirely applied .

Coming back to the concept of a boundary line traced at some point in history to delimit NECESSITY from INTELLECTUAL PLAY , this is to be considered mainly as an intellectual provocation , a model . It isn’t in itself of much interest to find that specific point in time , provided it does exist .
This binary approach , with all the flaws that such simplification entails , has however the merit of introducing us to an equally binary splitting of the human soul and to the two , utterly distinct socio-economic systems that from them derive : STATIC and DYNAMIC .


According to the pre-socratic classical Greek philosopher Heraclitos , “all flows” , everything in nature is in perennial change . Indeed , this is confirmed by modern physics where systems are seen as being subjected to an “enthropy “ , an inner drive to evolve in a certain direction . “Static” situations or points of balance are therefore considered as plausible in very limited intervals of time during which a phenomenon is being observed and are refered to as “virtual balance” .
At the human scale however , and dealing with human behaviours, such lapses of time are far from being negligeable and most importantly , they are not perceived as such by humans .
Indeed , how does one account for the existance of human communities which refuse any form of change and are scattered all over the planet ?It has been suggested in the case of the pygmies , who show no interest whatsoever in any form of modern craft , that they are not part of the Sapiens Sapiens species . If this were true , which hasn’t been confirmed by genetic studies , what about the Germanic Mennonites who have colonized the Americas ? ( Amish)
What can explain their stubborn refusal to go beyond the technology of the 16th century ?
Furthermore , is their life less dignified or significantly shorter or spiritually less stimulating for as much ?
The Amish do not all refuse modern medicine and technology , but what is interesting is that they all feel that such advances need to be carefully vetted before being adopted and that they do not tend to participate
in their discovery .

Characteristics and scopes of the static and dynamic systems :

Absolutist man .

The prevalent system which we find today is definitely the dynamic one . The driving force of this system is a boundless ambition, the human tendency to yearn for the ABSOLUTE , to sit besides man’s very creator and eventually replace him thus transcending into the eternal .
This coincides with Thomas Hobbes’ vision of all humanity , whereas we deem it to be the trait of only a portion of it at a given point in time . I will therefore refer to this type as “absolutist man “ .
There is definitely a prevalent “deterministic” tendency in our world today , a sense that progress has a generally rising trend . This philosophical outlook was definitely set by the “Illuministes” of the 18th century as a consolidation of that empyrical framework for modern science layed out by the mathematician-philosophers of the 17th century , which itself found its roots in the anthropocentrism of the Renaissance .
The MARKET ECONOMY in the form of CAPITALISM , with its indipendent forces which miraculously meet to create WEALTH and INVENTION is the most powerful engine of PROGRESS known to man , and progress is the main drive and reason of existance of the ABSOLUTIST system .

However , the neurotic “frenzy” , the pressure that the ambition and the cruelty of the “survival of the fittest” law which comes with capitalism, the violent competition for resources and their uncontrolled consumption, the alienation brought by a life spent in crowded environments which crush the individual and his sense of belonging , cannot but make one yearn for a system which caters for human needs other than that of the fulfillment of a boundless existential ambition through technological progress and the accumulation of wealth for the mere sake of them .

Rational non-absolutist man .

As already mentioned , such humanity already exists : it is concerned with production merely as a mean of livelihood , regards natural resources as a commonwealth which possession is not worth the price of armed conflict (which is unknown to Bushmen , Pygmies and Amish ) as wealth and ambition are not driving forces but mere assets , it is resilient to change . For such reasons , I will refer to the members of this “static system” as “Rational non-absolutist man “ .
In detail , such system is characterized by small communities , direct democracy and self-government , a near self-sufficiency , recycling and rational management of resources , a near-barter economy , absence of criminality and warfare , social cohesion and welfare .

It is interesting to note how this humanity very closely matches that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
myth of the “good savage” while the “absolutist” type matches that of Hobbes’ pessimistic vision of man as a “wolf to other men” ( Homo homini lupus) . While there might have been a historical turning point in the numerical prevalence of one over the other , it must however be stressed , that a Rational non-absolutist society is not a substitute for the Absolutist one .Both systems cater for two core and partly conflicting needs of humanity and therefore both need to EXIST , CO-EXIST and EXCHANGE . Both must however remain relatively “pure” within their physical boundaries and scopes as only at this condition can they guarantee the fulfillment of those distinct human needs for which they have been brought into existance .


The binary model :

Before progressing into the outline of the BINARY MODEL , a historical digression must be made about its application to the classification of political doctrines and their viability .
In the late 1980s , well before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Capitalism to sole dominant political doctrine , I have asked myself the question of the sustainability of Soviet Socialism or Communism .
Applying the binary model , I couldn’t place this system in either the static or dynamic cathegories .
The ultimate goal of socialism infact , as intended by Marx , was the creation of a production system which , by the hands of the proletariate’s appropriation of the means of production , would yield great wealth for the whole of society . Although in Marx’s vision this would represent the end-point of history ( seen as an endless series of clashes between the social classes ) and was also associated with an equally utopistic disappearance of the State , and therefore contains elements of “stasis” in the long term ( note that a projection on the long term is itself a social concern ; according to the capitalist economist Keynes “ in the long term, we’re all dead ”), nevertheless , Marx’s core concerns are Wealth and progress and in this , he is the product of the bourgeois Victorian Age in which he lived , no more no less than were those same capitalists which he aimed to overthrow . This is made clear in his pamphlet against what he considered to be the “small-time socialists “ entitled “ Misery of philosophy” destined to the French anarchist Proudhon .
Yet , the planned economy of Soviet Communism , the single class system , the overbearing presence of the State in every aspect of the citizen’s life , could never achieve what the free market economy , with its “magic chaos” of resonating , indipendent forces could, and therefore , couldn’t be classed as a properly “dynamic” system, while itself proudly refused to be “static” . I therefore came to the conclusion that such ideology was an unnatural , artificial creation which could satisfy neither of the basic needs of humanity and was therefore destined to succomb to the competing capitalism .
Communism collapsed within less than a decade from this omen .
Conversely , the shunned and various anarchist communitarianisms (or associationisms) of Proudhon , Owen and Fourrier , have resisted and set strong roots within capitalist society itself in the form of cooperatives , societies of mutual assistance , rural chests , charities and trade-unionism . These doctines are alive and well and can be classed , to my opinion , within the “static” family .

A territory for the static system – the static area

It is obvious that “static” societies already exist , as minoritary and scattered communities all over the planet . Our purpose is to seek State recognition for the public interest of such communities in order to create PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS from them inspired, with a physical , tax-free territory assigned and guaranteed by the State, as already exists with National Parks and Reservations .
This aspect , although posing a legal and cultural challenge , is not entirely unexplored .
The Chinese , with their proverbial astute pragmatism , have already implemented something similar by the creation of “free market areas “ within the framework of the People’s Republic . Although these “capitalistic” areas are the minoritary ones , the concept remains the same : the recognition of the binary nature of man and of the vital importance to provide for both these natures in line , perhaps , with the Chinese concept of Ying and Yang , which is so different from the uncompromizing western approach to everything .

Ground rules and structure of the static society

The static society needs to be promoted as a general model , which uses the technological body of knowledge and social laws of the traditional communities in addition to any useful modern technology that can be imported from the dynamic area .

-Within the static area , these communities do not make use of currency or market . Their mean of trade is the barter .
-Their production is therefore not aimed at creating any surplus or added value but aimed at achieving a “dignified and reasonably comfortable livelihood” . The communities are rigorously self-sufficient in terms of food and clothing which they cannot receive from the dynamic area .
-Any imported technology or technological knowledge from the dynamic zone will be recyclable , spartan and strictly non-polluting . It will come with the necessary training and tools to MAINTAIN and REPAIR it within the static area , as a fully self-contained package . It will be mostly , if not strictly, about housing , energy and mechanized transportation kits .
-Any energy used within the static area is strictly renewable .
-The communities are autonomous , self-governed and self-policed . Their form of government is direct democracy by direct vote . The State Governement is however entitled to receive reports and to appoint survey officials to monitor the areas .

Exchange between the two zones

The main purpose of the static zone is to provide for a spiritually , psychologically and physically healthy life , an alternative to the stress , alienation and cyclic high unemployment rates of Capitalism .
Last but not least , it provides for a relief valve for the mass pollution of the over-populated dynamic zone .
As already mentioned , this system cannot cater for the human need for progress , which is best promoted by Capitalism , the ultimate dynamic system .
The two systems are therefore reciprocally in need of each other and are therefore bound to communicate .
The recent advent of the internet has offered a cheap , non-polluting mean to ensure this link .
In a lifetime , a dweller of the dynamic area might migrate several times to the static area and back . During their stay in the static area they will follow a physically productive and non-polluting lifestyle , while continuing to keep updated , trained or re-trained for an eventual re-immission into the competitive market economy of the dynamic area .
In turn , any productive surplus from the static area can be traded with the dynamic area in exchange of technology and knowledge .


Conclusion :

When I shared these thoughts with my father in the early 1990s , he asked : ” why separate in two distinct areas what already exists within a single one ? And won’t the two areas end-up merging into a single one again ,
given that they are inhabited by the same human species ? ”
A wise point . However , at the time , the greenhouse effect hadn’t yet been well detected and proven as being caused by human activity .
Although there are other reasons to justify the benefits of the binary system , a relief valve for CO2 producing masses is rapidly becoming the most significant one .
Time has become a critical factor in the resolution of this epocal problem and there isn’t enough of it to allow for the present capitalistic societies to adapt to new rules and regulations and energy sources , which imply the immediate re-engineering of the current production technology . The market economy does not just “do away” with what is killing it . Oil drilling wells cannot just be dismantled . For the market economy , “the show must always go on , no matter what” , provided the show is PROFITABLE and keeps workers in their jobs .
The same cannot be said about Rational non-absolutist man whose motto is : “ if it harms you , don’t use it , no matter what “ .
Ultimately , it is sensible to wish that in the long term ( I don’t want to espouse the keynesian boutade according to which we are all dead by then) the two systems will merge , after having sufficiently benefited from each other’s separate experiences to form a unique , balanced , wise , society .